Satori

“I’m listening,” Diamond said.

He chuckled to himself.

Benton liked his job, was lucky to still have it, and wanted to keep it.

36

“YOU ARE A…” Chen searched for the word in Chinese, then decided on French. “… gourmet.”

Nicholai shrugged. “I’m French.”

When he’d returned from his meeting with Yu, a pretty desk clerk at the hotel handed him his key and asked if he needed a suggestion as to a restaurant for the evening.

“Please,” Nicholai said.

“May I recommend Hong Binlou?” she asked.

Chen was quite pleased that Guibert wanted to go to the distinguished old establishment to sample its distinctive Muslim cuisine. One of the perquisites of being an escort to a foreign visitor was the opportunity to dine in restaurants that he otherwise couldn’t afford. Or, even if he had the money, frequent custom of the finer establishments could expose him to accusations of decadence.

Of course there was no pork, but that was more than made up for by the succulent lamb on wooden skewers, the Mongolian hotpot, and especially the sliced sauteed eel.

The waiters, all of the Hui people who had migrated from the western provinces generations ago, wore short white jackets, black trousers, and, as Muslims, white pillbox caps. The few women in the place, mostly relatives of the owners, were veiled or wore shawls to cover their heads.

“Religious superstition,” Chen felt obligated to say, in order to cover himself in political orthodoxy. “You are a Catholic, I suppose?”

“By birth,” Nicholai replied.

Halfway through the meal, Nicholai excused himself to go to the toilet. The waiter gave him only the slightest glance as he passed by him near the kitchen and eased through the narrow hallway to the toilet.

Locking the door behind him, Nicholai relieved himself to satisfy any listening ears, and turned on the tap to wash his hands and cover the sound of lifting the lid of the old water tank. The message, written on cigarette paper, was stuck to the inside of the tank by a piece of gum.

Nicholai translated the code, committed it to memory, then tore the paper into small shreds, dropped them into the toilet, and flushed.

“You feel all right?” Chen asked him when he returned to the table.

“Splendid,” Nicholai answered. “Why?”

“I was worried that the eel might have upset your stomach,” Chen said.

“It’s a common dish in my part of France,” Nicholai said.

“Ah.”

The waiter was a young man, handsome, with high cheekbones and startling blue eyes. His hand trembled just a little as he handed Nicholai the bill. “Was everything as you hoped, Comrade?”

“It was everything I’d been told,” Nicholai said, glad that Chen was busy mopping up the last of the red sauce with a steamed bun and didn’t notice the waiter’s anxiety.

“I am so pleased. I will tell the chef.”

“Please do.”

The car and driver were waiting out front.

“Shall we walk instead?” Nicholai suggested.

“It is very cold.”

“We’re well fortified,” Nicholai said, patting his stomach, “inside and out.”

Chen agreed but was not pleased. A car and driver were major privileges, and now the foreign guest wanted to walk like a peasant. Still, he must be humored – the whisperings were that he had just concluded an important piece of business with the Ministry of Defense.

Shoes crunching on the snow, Nicholai listened to the rhythm of his footfalls as he reviewed Haverford’s instructions in his head.

Complete the termination. Run out of the theater, through the market, and into the Temple of the Green Truth. The extraction team, anti-Communist Hui Muslims, will be waiting for you. They will take you by truck to the port of Qinhuangdao, where a fishing boat will take you out to an American submarine in the Yellow Sea. Good luck.

Good luck indeed, Nicholai thought. It would take insanely good luck even to get out of the opera house, never mind make it through the narrow streets to the mosque. And then would the “extraction team” be able to get him through the multiple checkpoints all the way out to Qinhuangdao?

Doubtful.

But there was little point in dwelling on the unlikelihood.

37

NICHOLAI GOT UP for his morning run.

This time Smiley and the Greyhound were ready for him, and Nicholai wryly noted that they were now wearing running shoes, at least the PLA version of them.

Nicholai didn’t really like running – it seemed a dull, repetitive exercise, lacking the excitement of cave exploration or the demands of “naked kill” kata, but he supposed that it served a cardiovascular purpose.

Hitting a stride, he turned his mind to the challenge of killing Voroshenin. The Russian had a box at the theater, which provided the necessary privacy but would be easily secured. Doubtless his three bodyguards would be present, as would the usual Chinese security, both plainclothes and regular police.

Voroshenin’s guards will doubtless search me, Nicholai thought, before allowing me into the box next to their master, so I can have no kind of weapon on me. That’s not particularly a problem, he told himself; in fact, it’s the precise reason you were selected for this assignment and are now jogging through the brisk Beijing air instead of rotting in your Sugamo prison cell.

The killing itself would be relatively easy – at some point Voroshenin would lean toward the performance on the stage, thereby exposing his neck or throat to a lethal strike. If this were a suicide mission in the Japanese style, there would be nothing further to consider. Nicholai would simply prepare himself for death and that would be that.

But given that you do not prefer to die, he thought as he turned north toward Beihai Park, you must then consider how you are going to dispatch Voroshenin and get out of that box, never mind the building.

The theater will be dark, with the bright lights focused on the stage, so that was an advantage. Then there is the noise. Beijing Opera, with its drums, gongs, and shrill vocalizations, seemed to the uninitiated a migraine- inducing cacophony that would easily drown out the sound of Voroshenin’s dying. (Although Nicholai hoped to reduce that anyway with an efficient strike.)

He entered the park and then decided to give his followers the gift of a little variety by taking the west instead of the east path around the lake. It’s the least that I can do, he thought, for getting them up so early, and there is no scheduled dead drop on the bridge anyway.

But, he thought, what if I can kill Voroshenin without anyone noticing at all? Then I could simply get up and walk out, followed only by my Chinese handlers, whom I could then leave behind in the hutongs of Xuanwu before disappearing into the mosque.

Is it possible? he asked himself as he jogged along the lake’s edge.

Of course it is, he thought, hearing the voice of General Kishikawa. Never consider the possibility of success-consider only the impossibility of failure.

Hai, Kishikawa-sama.