Don Winslow - Satori

“You can’t go in here,” the old man said.

“I’m sorry, liao,” Nicholai said as he swung his right hand in a lazy arc and struck him as gently as possible on the side of the neck. He caught the old man and lowered him gently to the floor, opened the door, found the next door to his left, and stepped out into the alley.

It was only as he walked out the back end of the alley that he felt something warm running down his left leg, then a jolt of burning pain, and realized that Voroshenin’s gun had gone off, and that he was shot.

Then he saw the monk standing at the end of the alley.

“Satori,” Nicholai said.

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

The monk limped off in one direction, Nicholai in the other.

He saw it clearly now.

What would happen in the Temple of the Green Truth.

Satori.

The way out of the trap.

“SIGNAL.”

“What?” Haverford asked. He stubbed out his thirteenth cigarette of the night and rolled his chair over to the young agent who sat by the cable.

“Go Player is on the move toward Point One.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Haverford said, half in surprise, half in admiration.

Nicholai fucking Hel.

THE BLOOD FROZE on his skin, forming a bandage of sorts.

It didn’t hold up, as Nicholai walked quickly through the hutongs of Xuanwu, his heart beating strongly, pumping blood into his leg and breaking the intermittent clotting. But the cold slowed the blood loss and eased the pain.

Nicholai wasn’t thinking about his leg.

He placed a map of the district in his head, remembered Haverford’s instructions, and moved swiftly past the few people out on the streets in the winter night. Some watched him, most had their faces wrapped against the cold and were indifferent to this tall kweilo as he strode past them. None of them noticed when he dropped the crumpled tape recording into a trash-can fire.

Police sirens started to wail, headed toward Zhengyici Opera House.

Voroshenin’s body had been discovered.

Nicholai put the Go board in front of his eyes and scanned the new situation. The Kang stones had been removed, the Voroshenin stones captured. But Voroshenin’s corpse had been revealed, and soon – if it hadn’t already happened – the Chinese National Police would discover that their master Kang was also dead.

Murdered, if you care to call it that.

They would be coming for him, and the move now was to get to other black stones on the board.

He had an appointment in the Temple of the Green Truth.

WU ZHONG WAITED in the sanctuary.

A team member, a Muslim brother, had relayed the signal that “Go Player” was on the way.

Inshallah.

He got to his feet, stretched, and prepared his muscles for the task at hand.

The American had told him what to do.

NICHOLAI TURNED onto Niujie Street and saw the mosque, its three sections roofed in green tile, a small minaret with a crescent rising above the center section. A white-capped Hui Chinese waited by the iron gate.

“Go Player?”

“The opera is over.”

The Hui took Nicholai by the elbow, looked around, and quickly ushered him through the small courtyard and into the door of the section farthest to the right.

It was dark inside, lit only by oil lanterns, and Nicholai blinked to adjust his eyes as the door shut behind him. His escort led him through the foyer to a narrow set of stairs, then showed him into the basement and closed the door.

A tall, wide-shouldered man stood in front of him.

“Welcome, Go Player,” the man said in heavily accented Mandarin.

“Thank you,” Nicholai answered.

The man glanced down at Nicholai’s leg and then observed, “You are hurt.”

“Shot, I’m afraid.”

“The target?”

“Terminated.”

“You are certain?”

“Terminated,” Nicholai repeated. His leg started to throb and, worse, felt weak underneath him. This was very bad, because the Chinese man in front of him, struggling with his English, carefully pronounced, “Haverford sends his regrets.”

WU ZHONG MOVED with unbelievable speed for such a large man, and Nicholai just managed to slip the elbow strike that would have crushed his throat. The blow missed by a thread as Nicholai turned sideways and raised his forearm to block. He pivoted to throw a punch of his own at the man’s exposed temple, but his leg gave from under him and he toppled to the floor.

Wu Zhong turned, saw Nicholai on the floor, and raised his leg into an axe kick to cave in his opponent’s chest.

The leg came down, Nicholai rolled away, and Wu Zhong’s heel left a hole in the wooden plank. Wu followed with a low front kick to the head. Nicholai got his arm up in time and took the force of the blow on the shoulder, but his arm went numb. He rolled onto his back just as Wu Zhong reached down to grab him, slipped his kicking leg between Wu’s arms, and struck him full on the chin with the ball of his foot.

Wu Zhong flew backward. The kick should have killed him, or at least knocked him out, but Nicholai hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal in Kang’s cave, was weak with loss of blood and the blow he had just sustained, so the lethal power wasn’t there.

But it gave him time to jump back to his feet and set himself as Wu Zhong came in, throwing powerful left and right punches to drive Nicholai back toward the wall. Blood flowed freely from his wounded leg now, he felt lightheaded, and knew that if he allowed the larger, stronger man to pin him against the wall, he was finished.

He ducked under the next two punches and drove into Wu’s midsection, his leg sending a fierce jolt of pain through him as he pushed off the floor and drove Wu to the floor. Wu tried to wrap his forearm around Nicholai’s neck to snap it, but Nicholai jerked his head out of the trap as they fell to the floor. Wu did wrap his own leg around Nicholai’s right leg, trapping it, so Nicholai had no choice but to use his wounded leg to pry Wu’s legs apart. Then, despite the pain, he drove three successive knee strikes straight into Wu’s exposed groin.

The man groaned but didn’t yell, and he didn’t change his position. Instead, he brought his big arms up behind Nicholai and pounded his fists into the back of his neck and head.

Nicholai felt the fog gather around him.

First would come fog, then darkness.

He raised himself up to avoid the fists, and that’s what Wu needed. He bucked his hips and threw Nicholai off. Sprawling backward, Nicholai struggled to get up, but his wounded leg wouldn’t let him.

Wu struggled to his feet as Nicholai pulled himself backward along the floor, now seeking the wall so that he could ball himself up against it and try to weather the storm he knew was about to break on him.

The first kick came to the kidney, the next to the small of the back, the next to his wounded leg.

Nicholai heard himself howl in pain.

He pulled himself back, but his arms were too weak now and his feet could find no purchase on the floor.

He wanted to die standing.

He tried to push himself up, but his arms collapsed and he fell flat. All he could do was roll over so that he could at least die facing his opponent. In the clarity before death, he saw the Go board and knew the answer to why Haverford would leave the black stone in place.

He wouldn’t.

He didn’t.

Wu Zhong chambered his leg for the lethal axe kick.

“ Salaama ,” he said.

Peace.

The bullet struck Wu Zhong square in his broad forehead and he fell backward.