Satori

“Yes, Comrade.”

“Oh, stop it. Get out, Vasili. Go see if the phones are working.” He watched as Leotov jumped up, crossed the room, then slowly closed the door so as to make the least possible noise and not give offense. It was profoundly aggravating.

As was the sudden appearance of a new player, this Guibert. The game was at a critical juncture – the move of a knight or even a pawn would achieve checkmate – and what a pleasure it would be to take this particular king off the board.

He’d had to deal with the obnoxious Chairman for twenty years – tolerate his boundless ego, his sexual voracity, his hypochondria and hypocrisy, his endless treachery and relentless ambition, but soon he would able to view Mao’s severed head in a bamboo cage hanging from the Gate of Heaven.

They’d already chosen his successor – Gao Gang was the Chinese party boss in Manchuria, and he was ready to step in. Just waiting for the word to be delivered via Voroshenin from the puppet-masters in Moscow.

If all goes as planned over the next few months, we will replace the troublesome Mao with the pliable Gao.

So this was not the time for an additional complication, especially one involving Liu. The general was too smart, too tough, and his own man. He’d already rebuffed numerous offers to buy him. And now what’s he up to with this gunrunning Frog?

Voroshenin opened his desk drawer and took out the vodka bottle. He’d promised himself that he would only take one drink in the afternoon, but Beijing was really getting to him and the alcohol might quell his sexual frustrations. Perhaps they would have actresses at the banquet tonight, maybe even whores.

As if there’s a difference.

As if there’s a chance, he admitted.

He knocked back the drink in one throw, looked at his watch, and decided that there was time to go and visit Kang Sheng, the head of the Chinese secret police. Another broken promise, he thought sadly. The better part of him didn’t want to go see the man, despised himself for it, and yet he was drawn.

22

KANG SHENG DRESSED all in black.

At this moment, the head of the Chinese secret police wore a black lounging robe and black pajama pants over black slippers, but he was known to go about in public in black padded coats, black suits, and black fur-lined hats. On a lesser person, this sartorial eccentricity would have been labeled counterrevolutionary decadence and had potentially disastrous consequences, but no one in Beijing had the nerve to think, much less utter, such an opinion.

Kang Sheng had been Mao’s chief torturer since 1930. He had personally tormented thousands of Mao’s rivals back in Jiangxi, and survivors whispered that they had heard the howling of his victims during the long nights in the caves of Yenan. What he didn’t know about xun-ban, torture, had yet to be discovered; although, to give him his due, Kang Sheng was ceaseless in his efforts to discover new methods of inflicting agony.

In fact, at this very moment Comrade Kang was diligently conducting research.

His new home near the old Bell and Drum Towers in the north-central district of the city was the former mansion of a recently deceased capitalist. More of a small palace, it had guest houses where Kang’s armed guards now resided, as well as courtyards, walled gardens, and pebbled pathways. Kang had done nothing to change it, except for the construction of a concrete-lined “cave” far in the back garden.

Now, teacup in hand, he sat back in a deep chair in the cave and enjoyed the screams of his latest subject.

She was the wife of a former general in the northwest district who had been accused of being a spy for the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan. A beautiful young lady – sable hair, alabaster skin, and a body that was a sensual pleasure to behold – she bravely refused to supply incriminating confirmation of her husband’s treachery.

Kang was grateful for her uxorial loyalty. It prolonged his pleasure. “Your husband is an imperialist spy.”

“No.”

“Tell me what he said to you,” Kang demanded. “Tell me what he whispered to you in bed.”

“Nothing.”

A knock on the door interrupted his enjoyment.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“A visitor,” came the answer. “Comrade Voroshenin.”

Kang smiled. There were so many ways of achieving power and influence. “Send him in.”

23

THE KEY TO THE CURRENT condition of Chinese plumbing, Nicholai decided, was never to take no for an answer.

He tried three times to get hot water from the taps of the bathtub before he succeeded, and when it finally came, it did so with a scalding vengeance, an all-or-nothing-at-all response to his repeated entreaties.

Gently lowering himself into the water, Nicholai was reminded of the tub he’d enjoyed at his Tokyo home in what seemed like a lifetime ago, but was barely four years. They had been happy, albeit short days, with Watanabe-san and the Tanake sisters in the garden he had carefully constructed with the goal of shibumi.

He might have lived his whole life there quite happily, had it not been for the honor-bound necessity to kill General Kishikawa that caused his subsequent arrest, torture, and imprisonment at the hands of the Americans.

And then the offer of freedom in exchange for this little errand.

To terminate Yuri Voroshenin.

Moreover, Nicholai despised nothing more than a torturer. A sadist who inflicts pain on the helpless deserves death.

But Voroshenin was only the first torturer on Nicholai’s list.

Next would come Diamond and his two minions who had shattered Nicholai’s body and mind and come close to destroying his spirit. He knew that the Americans didn’t expect him to survive the Voroshenin mission, but he would surprise them, and then he would surprise Diamond and the two others.

It would mean leaving Asia, probably forever, and that thought saddened him and caused him some anxiety about what life would be like in the West. A European by ethnicity, he had never even been there. His entire life had been spent in China or Japan, and he felt more Asian than Western. Where would he live? Not in the United States, certainly, but where?

Perhaps in France, he decided. That would please Solange. He could envision a life with her, in some quiet place.

Nicholai pushed the thought of her out of his mind to focus on the present. Picturing a Go board in his head, he played the black stones and placed them in their current position. The point now was to push forward to gain proximity to Voroshenin. To create a position from which to get Voroshenin in a vulnerable place.

Given the close surveillance, he couldn’t simply track the target down and find an opportune moment. No, he would have to find a way to lure Voroshenin to an isolated spot, while at the same time losing his Chinese tails.

He studied the imaginary board to find that opportunity, but couldn’t find it. That didn’t worry him – like life, the go-kang was neither static nor unilateral. The opponent was also thinking and moving, and very often it was the opponent’s move that provided opportunity.

Be patient, he told himself, recalling the lessons his Go master Otake-san had taught him. If your opponent is