Don Winslow - Satori

“Guibert” opened his eyes.

“Where are we?” Nicholai asked.

“You don’t need to know,” Yu answered.

The air, while cool, was still warm for winter, and the nanmu tree Nicholai could see through the window didn’t grow up north. The brief dialogue he had overheard as the attendants came in and out was unintelligible to him, not Han Chinese at all, so he guessed that it was some southern tribal dialect.

“Sichuan or Yunnan,” he said.

“Yunnan,” admitted Yu. “In the Wuliang hills.”

“Why?”

“Beijing was unhealthy for you.”

Nicholai remembered his manners. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“Gratitude is misplaced,” Yu answered. “I was doing my duty, Mr. Hel.”

“HOW LONG HAVE you known my real identity?” he asked Yu.

“Since before you entered Beijing,” Yu answered. He recited Nicholai’s history to him – his birth in Shanghai, his removal to Japan, his killing of Kishikawa, his torture and imprisonment by the Americans.

The Chinese seemed to know it all. Nicholai could only hope that they did not realize the depth of his connection to the late Yuri Voroshenin.

“Am I a prisoner?” Nicholai asked.

“I would prefer to call you a guest.”

“Can the guest get up and leave?”

“The question is academic in any case,” Yu answered. “The reality is that you cannot get up, much less walk. And, even if you could, you have no place to go. They are hunting for you everywhere, Mr. Hel. This might be the only place in the world where you are safe.”

A sadly accurate summation of the reality, Nicholai thought, since the moment I killed Kishikawa-sama. The locations and circumstances change, but the fact does not.

I am a prisoner.

He heard Kishikawa’s voice. If you have no options, then it is honorable to accept your imprisonment, although you might consider seppuku. But you have options.

What are they?

Nikko, you must find them yourself. Examine the go-kang. When you are trapped and can find no escape route, you must create one.

Again, please, how?

It is your kang, Nikko. No one else can play it for you.

“You wanted Voroshenin dead,” Nicholai said, probing.

“Obviously.”

“To create a rift with the Soviets.”

Yu nodded.

“And you rescued me from the American ambush because…”

“How often would we get a chance to obtain an American agent so motivated to cooperate?” Yu asked. “I’m sure you can tell us names, places, methods of operations. After all, you agreed to be rescued.”

Hel had understood the monk’s warning and signaled in turn that he understood, the act of a drowning man reaching out for the rope. Surely he knew it would come with a price.

Nicholai said, “I will tell you nothing.”

“The Americans betrayed you,” Yu answered. “Why would you hesitate to betray them in turn?”

“Their dishonor is their own,” Nicholai responded. “Mine would be mine.”

“How Japanese.”

“I accept the compliment,” Nicholai said. He tried to sit up, but the effort was painful and enervating. “I will not become an informer, but I will force the Americans to honor the arrangement they made with me.”

“And how will you do that?” Yu asked, amused at this wounded man who could barely support his own weight.

Yet there was something in Hel’s eyes that made Yu believe him.

“WHERE IS HE?” Singleton demanded.

“I don’t know,” admitted Haverford.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Alive?”

“Again…”

Diamond didn’t bother to conceal his smirk. Singleton frowned at him and then turned his attention back to Haverford. “You don’t know much.”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“Try harder.”

Haverford thought briefly of defending himself. Voroshenin was dead, apparently at Hel’s hands, and the Chinese and Russians were snapping at each other’s throats. And while Hel had possibly escaped, he hadn’t been found – not by Moscow or Beijing anyway -because there had been no blowback at all. Apparently no one had connected Voroshenin’s assassination to the Company.

“I want him found,” Singleton said. “Do you understand?”

“I do,” Diamond said, stressing the first-person pronoun and sounding like a sycophantic schoolboy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Haverford asked.

“Hel’s gone over to the other side, and you know it,” Diamond said. “And I’m not so sure you’re not happy about it.”

“That’s a goddamn lie.”

“You calling me a liar?” Diamond jumped up from his chair.

Haverford stood up. “A liar, a torturer -”

They started for each other.

“This is not your sixth-grade schoolyard. Sit down, both of you.” Singleton waited until both men took their chairs.

My straight line and my circle, Singleton thought. We shall see which one wins. It is a basic law of Go and of life – the side that wins is the side that deserves to win.

Haverford thought of resigning on the spot. He could probably find a job in academia, or in one of the new “think tanks” – there’s a concept – now sprouting like mushrooms in the damp intellectual soil of the greater Washington metropolitan area. The place had, after all, once been a swamp.

But there was unfinished business, so he clamped his jaw tight and listened.

“Assume Hel is out there,” Singleton said. “Lure him in.”

“How?”

“You’re clever young men,” Singleton answered. “You’ll think of something.”

The meeting was concluded.

THINK LIKE NICHOLAI HEL, Haverford told himself as he left the building for his hotel in Dupont Circle. No easy task, he admitted, as it was probably true that no one else in the world thought like Nicholai Hel.

Well, try anyway.

He ran his thoughts through Nicholai’s options.

Would Hel…

Could Hel…

Yes, he decided.

Both.

“I’M GOING TO DELIVER the weapons,” Nicholai said.

It was a bold, even risky move. A breakout maneuver on the go-kang that had small chance of success and could only place him in great danger. Still, when one is surrounded there are few choices other than to surrender, die, or break out.

“Please don’t be ridiculous,” Yu answered. “Your cover as an arms merchant was just that, a cover. Not a reality.”

“I saw the rocket launchers,” Nicholai said. “They looked quite real.”

“Props,” Yu answered, “for your little opera. The play is over, Mr. Hel.”

“And yet here you are in Yunnan,” Nicholai answered, “for weeks now, near the Vietnamese border. Perhaps that is mere coincidence, or perhaps you are overly solicitous of my recuperation, but more likely it’s because you intend to take the rocket launchers across the border into Vietnam.”

“Even if that were true,” Yu said, “it hardly concerns you.”

“Let me tell you why it does,” Nicholai said. “I have demonstrated skills that might be very useful. I’m fluent in French, have an established cover as an arms merchant, and I’m a kweilo, which would give me certain advantages in the French colonies. So much for my utility, here is my offer: I will deliver the weapons to the Viet Minh and retain the payment as my recompense for services rendered. Once the weapons have been safely delivered, you will provide me with a new identity and documentation. Then we are quit of each other.”

It seemed the perfect solution, Nicholai thought. The Americans, through the gift of the rocket launchers, would unintentionally honor their deal with him, and it would have the added effect of harming their interests.