Satori (16 page)

47

H
E KNOWS,
Nicholai thought.

Chen droned on in his enthusiasm about the acrobatic troupe.

Voroshenin knows.

The car slowed to negotiate a patch of black ice.

He knows my real identity.

Or does he? Certainly, he suspects.
Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled.
Did I react? To the language, the name, the insult? Even for a second? If even for a fraction of a second, Voroshenin would have picked it up.

Assume the worst, he told himself. Assume that Voroshenin now thinks he knows that you are Nicholai Hel. What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows you are here to assassinate him. It only means that he knows you are not who you claim to be.

Bad enough, but not necessarily fatal.

But why, Nicholai pondered, is Voroshenin keeping the appointment at the opera?

Because he doesn’t know. He only suspects, which is why he was probing, why he stretched a line of stones deep into my defense. A risky move, because he’s given so much of his thinking away. But Voroshenin is no fool, he must have thought it worth the risk. And was it?

Face it, you don’t know. He’s a chess player, not a Go player, Nicholai thought, cursing himself for not knowing more about the Western game. It was linear, though, he knew that, and geometrical — rich in forward, machinelike thinking, poor in subtlety and nuance. Voroshenin believes that he sacrificed a minor piece — a “pawn,” I believe — to expose a more important piece of mine, and now he invites my countermove.

I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.

No more than I.

I hope you can still come.

Why wouldn’t I?

A lot of reasons, Nicholai thought, including the very real possibility that my purpose here has been discovered, “compromised,” in Haverford’s jargon.

By rights, he knew that he should use one of the dead drops to report this development to the American, but he also knew that he wouldn’t. Haverford might call the mission off — “abort” — and Nicholai didn’t want that.

He wanted to kill Yuri Voroshenin.

Fine, he thought, envisioning the Russian’s florid face as he delivered his adolescent insult.

You play your chess game, I will play Go.

We shall see who wins.

48

V
OROSHENIN WAS
furious.

Livid with himself.

Clumsy, ham-handed, and stupid, he thought as he pushed open the door of the Russian Legation. How could I have thought he would fall for such an elementary trick?

But was there a glimmer? Just a trace?

He walked up the stairs to his office and immediately went for the vodka bottle. It’s improbable, he told himself. Improbable, unlikely, and so anachronistic, the offended son coming to settle a score older than he is, to redeem his mother’s honor. No one kills for honor anymore, that died with the Romanovs.

And assuming that Guibert
is
Hel, he doesn’t necessarily know who I am, or that I had any relationship to his mother.

So, if Guibert is Hel, what the hell is he doing here?

In the guise of a French arms dealer.

His paranoia rising, Voroshenin pulled the shades on the window. He sat down, but soon found himself pacing back and forth in the room.

Assume he is Hel, he told himself.

What of it?

Why is he here?

To know that, you must first answer the question of who he’s working for. Well, you know that he was last in the control of the Americans. Did they simply turn him loose after a few years? He killed a Jap general whom they were going to hang anyway, so easy come, easy go?

Highly unlikely.

In the first place, the rigid Americans don’t possess that level of moral flexibility. In the second place, Hel couldn’t obtain a “cover” without professional help and backing. The Guibert cover — if that’s what it is — is both sophisticated and deep. Someone went to a lot of trouble and expense to place Guibert in Beijing, and no intelligence service of any government would do that so some young man with a grudge can pursue his romantic notion of revenge.

For what, then?

Voroshenin walked to the window, edged the bottom corner of the curtain open, and peeked out onto the street. It was empty, quiet, a gentle snow falling.

He let the curtain fall back.

Hel was in American control, but he appears now as a French national.

Is this a French operation? Doubtful — the French were still supine from the war, and more than had their hands full in Vietnam. They were not about to do anything that would bring China into that mess.

All right, so Hel was in American control, appears as a French national, albeit with a Chinese background. Is this a Nationalist operation? Is Hel on loan from the Americans to the Nats, and if so, for what purpose? It didn’t make sense — why would the Nats use a Westerner when they had thousands of disaffected Chinese available?

So that leaves the Americans, Voroshenin concluded.

Don’t dismiss the obvious just because it’s obvious.

Hel was in American control and still is. Quite a useful tool, really — familiar with China, speaks the language. Has Russian and French as well.
Born
to be a spy, when you think about it. You’d have recruited him yourself, and it’s a pity that Gorbatov didn’t when he had the chance.

So assume Hel is working for Washington.

What’s his task?

His cover as an arms dealer puts him in touch with the Ministry of Defense and he was hosted at dinner by —

Liu.

General Liu.

Mao’s chief and only rival.

Could the Americans be using Hel to make overtures to Liu? Or has he already accepted them? His smile genuine for the first time that night, at last Voroshenin saw the entire board, his next move, and its potential result.

I’m sorry, Alexandra, he thought, your son will have to die under exquisite torture, but that is the cost of allowing oneself to become a pawn in someone else’s game.

He looked at his watch.

It was only midnight.

Kang Sheng would still be up.

49

N
ICHOLAI SLIPPED OUT OF
the hotel.

He simply took the elevator down to the basement, had a pleasant chat, and shared a few cigarettes with the men in the kitchen and then went out the delivery entrance at the back of the hotel.

Then he walked briskly into the Legation Quarter. The streets were almost empty now, this late at night, with most of the Beijingren securely tucked away inside their living units. Lights were on, of course, in the Russian Legation, and Nicholai stood across the street under an elm tree and watched the front door.

A car pulled up and waited, its tailpipe smoking in the cold.

Voroshenin, trailed by his faithful hounds, came out a few minutes later and got into the car, which quickly pulled out.

A nice piece of luck, Nicholai thought, for the move he contemplated was a terrible risk. But Otake-san had taught him that very often not taking a risk was more dangerous than taking one.

Cupping his hands against the bitter wind, he lit a cigarette, moved to a spot under the glow of a streetlight, and waited.

It took twenty long minutes for Vasili Leotov to work up enough nerve to come out. Chin tucked into his collar, hands jammed into his coat pockets, his head on a swivel looking nervously about, he crossed the street.

Nicholai walked slowly away, out of range of the listening devices that doubtless studded the Soviet building. He could hear Leotov’s footsteps crunch on the snow, following him. He shortened his step and slowed his gait, allowing the smaller man to catch up with him.

If I have guessed right, Nicholai thought, I might become a wealthy man.

If I have guessed wrong, I will certainly be a dead one.

50

K
ANG SAT BACK
and savored his Dragon Well tea — the finest in China, supplied only to Mao and himself — as he regarded the Tang Dynasty painting on the wall. The overall effect was sublime, so Kang was more than annoyed by the interruption.

What was that
mao-tzi
Voroshenin doing here after midnight?

Kang sighed and gave permission to allow him in. Then he put a smile on his face and walked out to greet his unwanted and uninvited guest.

“An unexpected pleasure,” Kang said.

Voroshenin caught the tone. “It’s urgent.”

“Apparently,” Kang said. “Please come in.”

Kang walked him into the large sitting room, which was filled not only with paintings but also with bronzes, rare ceramics, and ancient seals, all liberated from the former possessing classes. His collection of fine art was worth many thousands of yuan; his assemblage of erotica only slightly less valuable in terms of money, far more precious in the influence it purchased with Mao, a fellow enthusiast.

Had Voroshenin, the poor lonely fellow, come on some pretext to see if there was new pornography? The Russian looked at the Tang painting, a classically formed depiction of a southern mountain.

“New?” he asked.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s good.”

The
mao-tzi
wouldn’t know good from garbage, Kang thought. That being the case, he didn’t offer him tea — which anyway wouldn’t be appreciated — but some rice wine instead. The Russian was an incipient drunkard, it would sooner or later kill him, and Kang hoped it was sooner.

The drink having been offered and accepted, the Russian said rudely, “Quite an art collection you have here.”

Kang didn’t like the smirk on his face. “I do what I can to preserve our cultural treasures,” he said, “at least the ones not already stolen by Europeans.”

They both knew that the best collections of Chinese art were to be found in the Hermitage and the Louvre. One day, Kang thought, we shall get them all back. “You said something about an urgent matter.”

“What if,” Voroshenin said, “Liu could be linked to the Americans?”

“What if shit were gold?” Kang responded.

“What if,” Voroshenin countered, “Guibert were made to say that this arms shipment to the Viet Minh was a sham, to cover up something else?”

“Such as?”

“What if he were to confess,” Voroshenin asked, carefully selecting his words, “that the weapons were not for the Viet Minh, but were to be diverted to counterrevolutionaries in Yunnan instead?”

“Then I am very much afraid,” Kang said, “that would implicate General Liu in an imperialist plot to overthrow the People’s Republic. The Chairman would be shocked and heartbroken, of course.”

It was a delightful thought. Kang had been searching for years for a pretext to arrest Liu, one that the army and public would accept, and this dissolute Russian might just have handed it to him.

“But why would Guibert confess to something like that?” Kang asked, his eyes alight with wry amusement. Actually, he could think of a dozen reasons — “Toads Drinking,” “Monkeys Holding a Rope,” “Angel Plucking a Zither,” or perhaps some new technique that had yet to be discovered or named. “And how are the Americans involved in this?”

“Guibert,” Voroshenin answered, “is actually an American agent named Nicholai Hel.”

He told Kang what he knew of the Guiberts and of Nicholai Hel, omitting, of course, his own past with Alexandra Ivanovna.

“Do we know this for a fact?” Kang asked.

“No,” Voroshenin admitted. “But I’m reasonably sure.”

“ ‘Reasonably sure’ is not good enough,” Kang said. “I can’t arrest a foreign national on ‘reasonably sure,’ torture him, and then find out that he really is this Michel Guibert. Even the French might object to that.”

It is tempting though, Kang thought, so tempting. The thought of parading an American spy down to the Bridge of Heaven and having him shot … The titillating image of that bastard Liu following him a few days later … It would solve so many problems. But this “Guibert-Hel” connection — it was tenuous at best.

“What would you need?” Voroshenin asked.

Kang leaned back and thought about it for a few moments. “Perhaps if the father were to tell us this is not his son …”

51

N
ICHOLAI ROSE BEFORE DAWN
, performed ten “Caged Leopards,” and then got dressed to go out for his morning run.

The very real prospect that this might be his last morning sharpened the air, brightened the colors, and lifted the mundane sounds of the city’s waking to the level of a symphony. The rumbling of a truck engine, the jingling of a bicycle bell, the clatter of a trash can being dragged across the pavement all had a clear, crystalline beauty that Nicholai appreciated for the first time.

The trees, then, took on a startling fresh beauty, artful compositions of silver, white, and black, delicately and perfectly balanced, changing tones with the gathering light. The ice on the lake reflected their images back to themselves as a friend reveals to a friend his best qualities.

The morning was truly beautiful, the tai chi players truly beautiful, China itself was truly beautiful and Nicholai realized with some sorrow that he would miss it all if he should, as was probable, die tonight.

But that is tonight, he thought, and this is this morning, and I am going to enjoy every moment of it.

As he ran onto the arched bridge to the Jade Isle, another jogger fell in behind him.

This was new, and Nicholai was aware of the interloper’s footfall behind him. He flexed his hands, preparing them for the leopard paw, if necessary. The runner was catching up with him, and Smiley and the Greyhound were a good twenty yards behind.

“The Dream of the West Chamber,
” he heard the runner puff.

“What about it?”

“Be quiet and listen.”

In short bursts, the runner gave him the bones of the story, then said, “Near the end, the
sheng
and the
dan
find each other again …”

The runner sang:

I have helped the lovers come together
Although I have suffered hard words and beatings
The moon is rising in its silvery glow
I am the happy Red Maid.

“There will be much noise — gongs, drums, cymbals, then a moment of darkness …”

“Yes?’

“That is your moment.”

The runner picked up his pace and sprinted past Nicholai onto the island, then disappeared around a curve. Nicholai held his own pace and then saw an odd sight.

A lone monk walked toward him on the bridge.

He had a strange gait, as if walking were painful or he had some old injury that still troubled him. He came in small, delicate steps, as an old man would who feared that the bridge was slippery with ice, but as he came closer Nicholai saw that he wasn’t really old.

His eyes were old, though. They stared straight at Nicholai’s as if searching for something, and Nicholai recognized that those eyes had seen much, too much, things that no eyes should be made to see. Eyes that held knowledge that no man should be forced to know.

Nicholai stopped in his tracks.

The monk said softly, “
Satori
.”

“What?”

“Satori.
To see things as they really are.”

The monk turned around and limped back toward the Jade Isle.

Nicholai hesitated and then followed him. “What am I not seeing?”

“The trap,” the monk answered. “And the way out of it.”

The vegetables were delicious, the steamed bun delicious, even the ordinary tea outdid itself.

I should “die” more often, Nicholai thought, if this is what the possibility of imminent death does for the senses. He could only imagine how making love to Solange today might feel. One might die from just the heightened pleasure.

A silly thought, he chided himself. You won’t die from pleasure — you’ll die in the trap, unless you find the way out. But, like all traps — in Go or life itself— the way out is never back the way you came.

Once in, you can only get out of the trap by going through the trap.

Chen arrived to take him to the Ministry of Defense.

“That acrobatic troupe was good last night, eh?” Chen asked, sitting down at the table. Sharing breakfast with Guibert had become a habitual perquisite.

“Superb. Thank you for taking me.”

“Too bad that Russian had to show up.” Chen looked around, leaned across the table, and muttered, “Tell you something?”

“Please.”

“I hate those
mao-tzi
bastards.”

“I’m not overly fond myself.”

Chen smiled with satisfaction at the shared intimacy. “Good buns.”

“Quite good.”

“I’m sorry you’ll be leaving soon,” Chen said, looking down at his plate.

“Am I leaving soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ah.”

“We should be going.”

The day was now bright and sunny. A warming front had come in —jackets were left unbuttoned, scarves hung loosely around necks, people tilted their faces to catch the warmth of the sun. Nicholai insisted they take a detour into Xidan to buy some roasted chestnuts.

“You’re cheerful today,” Chen observed as they munched on the treats.

“I love China.”

They got back into the car and drove to the Ministry of Defense.

“The payment went through,” Colonel Yu said.

“Of course.”

Yu handed Nicholai a sheaf of travel papers. “Your train to Chongqing leaves tomorrow morning at nine. Please be on time. Rail tickets are difficult to acquire.”

“What do I do when I get to Chongqing?”

“You will be contacted.”

Nicholai looked skeptical. In truth, he couldn’t care less, but the role had to be played out to the end. “You told me you would give me an exact location.”

“I’m afraid that is not possible at the moment,” Yu said. “Don’t worry. We wouldn’t cheat you.”

“It’s a long train trip to Chongqing,” Nicholai answered. “I don’t want to run into some accident. Or find myself wandering about the city and not hearing from you.”

“I give you my word.”

“I gave you my money.”

Yu smiled. “Again, it always comes back to money.”

“I didn’t hear that you declined the payment.”

“What will you do on your last night in Beijing?” Yu asked.

“I’m going to the opera.”

“An imperial relic.”

“If you say so.” Nicholai stood up. “If I get to Chongqing and do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, I will go to the Viet Minh and explain that they were cheated by the revolutionary comrades in Beijing.”

“Comrade Guibert, you are an arms merchant …”

“I am.”

“So you will sell these weapons to our Vietnamese comrades.”

“Yes.”

“For a profit.”

“That’s the idea, yes.”

Yu frowned. Torn between candor and courtesy, he finally said, “I do not understand how a man can live without ideals.”

“It’s easy when you get used to it,” Nicholai answered.

“And it does not bother you,” the young colonel said, “that these weapons might be used to kill your own countrymen?”

“I have no country,” Nicholai said, realizing that this was a rare statement of truth.

“The
people
are my country,” Yu said with practiced conviction.

Nicholai looked at his fresh face, aglow with idealism. With any luck, he thought, he’ll have time to grow out of that.

He walked out of the office and the building.