Satori

“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.”

86

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.

Nicholai turned his head in the direction of the shot.

Colonel Yu lowered his pistol.

The monk, standing behind Yu, squatted beside Nicholai and said, “Satori.”

“You’re late,” Nicholai said.

Then he blacked out.

Part Three: WULIANG MOUNTAINS, YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA

87

THE SOUND OF A FLUTE WOKE HIM.

At first Nicholai thought it was a bird singing, but then he heard the deliberate repetition of a particular phrase and realized that he was listening to someone play a lusheng.

But there was birdsong in the background.

Birdsong and clean fresh air, and then he knew that he was no longer in the city, or in the tight, fume-choked back of an army truck, but somewhere in the countryside, perhaps even in the wilderness.

He turned toward the slight breeze he felt on the back of his head, but movement was still painful and difficult, and it took him over a minute to roll over and feel the cool air dry the sweat on his face.

His leg throbbed in protest of the motion.

A voice snapped an order in a language that Nicholai did not understand, and then he heard footsteps quickly shuffling across a wooden floor.

He didn’t know where he was, but then it seemed like a long time since he had known. The last thing that he clearly remembered was his fight with the formidable bajiquan practitioner and his rescue by Yu and the monk. He remembered waking up briefly in the back of what must have been a truck – because its rattling forced him to suppress a scream of pain before he blacked out again. He recalled being given a shot of what was probably morphine, and the deep, painless slumber that followed, and he had a vague memory of being lifted out of the truck and placed in another, soft worried voices, and a nightmare in which he heard concerned whispers and hushed discussions about amputating his leg.