a way that pretended to be friendly but was in truth quite aggressive. One of them had already seen Sokolov, absurdly conspicuous in his shaved head and plastic poncho, and was pointing him out to a fellow. Sokolov cruised into the other fork and, as soon as he was out of view, sprinted flat out for a hundred meters or so, just to get out of hailing range.
An alley presented itself on his left, and he ducked into it. Following it back toward the looming hotel, he began to see landmarks he recognized. Running up a stone stairway overarched with big old trees, he emerged into the somewhat larger street that ran past Olivia’s building. Standing right there were a couple of old ladies out for a walk who looked at Sokolov as if he were a marmoset in a zoo. He nodded to them politely and turned in the direction of Olivia’s building. Two young women emerged from a gate and pursued him up the street for a short distance, giggling and pantomiming picture-taking gestures. They wanted to get a snapshot of him to show their friends. He quickened his pace and declined the offer.
He had to get out of this fucking country
Then, there it was. The gateway to the compound that housed Olivia’s building, absolutely distinctive because of a tree that had taken root on top of the adjoining wall and spread its weird molten limbs all over the stonework, trying to find some actual dirt to grow in, possibly seeking refuge from the relentless attentions of three different kinds of flowering vines that were using it as a trellis. Sokolov checked in all directions and saw nothing untoward on the street. He walked through the gate into the walled garden that surrounded the building.
The place was constructed in a generally European style as reinterpreted by whatever local artisans the owner had been able to hire a hundred years ago. It was vaguely Classical, with a row of four spindly pillars supporting a veranda and, above it, a balcony. Ahead of him, on the veranda, silhouetted against the lights of the entryway, were four men, checking the place out, talking on phones. Darting their heads this way and that. Sokolov, feeling like a little kid playing some kind of ridiculous game, stepped behind a tree so that they wouldn’t see him if they looked back. It had been a hell of a long time since he had been reduced to hiding behind a tree, and he did not view it as much of a professional achievement.
One of the four men was dressed in a bulky, ill-fitting uniform.
Sokolov squatted and peered through a bush.
The one in the uniform ascended the steps and pushed his way through one in a row of four wooden doors, glass-windowed but guarded with ironwork. Beyond these was a broad entrance hall, probably a foyer back in the days when it had been some important businessman’s villa. In its new incarnation, this had been lined with mailboxes and provided with a few benches and low tables. A set of inner doors sealed it off from the stairs that gave access to the various units, but Sokolov knew from earlier reconnaissance that these were not locked. The building wasn’t secured at all; the only lock between these men and the inside of Olivia’s flat was the one on her door.
The other three men took a last look around and went inside.
Sokolov broke from cover and ran around to the side of the building that faced the water and the city lights of Xiamen. Olivia’s little terrace was two stories above his head. A tree sprouted from the ground near the building’s corner, too close to the building. It had probably been a volunteer seedling at the outbreak of the Second World War. It had grown up wild during the decades when no one was looking after the place, until the new owners, finding this mature, fifteen-meter tree on their property, had gone after it with pole saws, lopped off the lower limbs, and pruned it up into something that looked a little closer to proper landscaping. It was neither the easiest nor the hardest climbing tree that Sokolov had ever seen; the only reason he hadn’t gone up it earlier was that, in broad daylight, anyone could have seen him out the window of flats on lower levels.
He climbed it now, not with a lot of grace or dignity, but he didn’t fall and he didn’t kill a lot of time. A surviving limb arched away from the trunk toward the building’s corner. He shinned out on it, finding himself a couple of meters above the building’s roof and a couple of meters away. The jump was not especially difficult, though Jeremy Jeong’s dress shoes betrayed him as he was shoving off and he ended up catching the eave in his belly rather than landing flat on the tiles as he had envisioned. He lashed out with his left hand and grabbed the bracket of a satellite dish antenna. With his right he gripped the coaxial cable that ran up to it. Getting both hands then on the cable, he let himself slide down until his flailing feet found what he was pretty sure was the concrete railing around Olivia’s terrace. Placing his weight on that, he leaned back to clear the building’s eave, then pivoted and dropped to a squat on her terrace. This was barely large enough to support one chair and a tiny table. From here, access to her flat was barred by a glass door with an iron grille. Through it, he could see all the way through her bedroom and into the little sitting room beyond it.
The door was locked. Earlier today, he had gotten it open by jerking out the hinge pins. For he had noted on one of her phone pictures that the installers had committed the grievous error of situating these on the outside. Still, it had taken several minutes of screwing around.
He could not see Olivia, but he could see her shadow moving on the wall and the floor. He was fairly certain that she was standing near the flat’s door.
He pulled his little flashlight out of his bag, slid it between the bars, and rapped sharply on the glass. Then he turned it on and aimed it at his face.
The shadow froze, then went into slow movement. Olivia peered around the corner for an instant, then drew her head back sharply. He could see her hand coming up to her mouth. Then she risked another look.
What would she do when she recognized him? Calling the PSB would be a perfectly rational option.
Instead she moved his way decisively and unlocked the terrace door, then stood aside to let him enter the bedroom.
“Someone’s knocking at the door—says he’s a security guard,” she said.
“Get dark, warm clothes,” Sokolov said. “Put them in a bag with water and food. Other than that, ignore everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“
Sokolov shoved the Makarov through its rail, chambering a round. He then put it back into his waistband.
He strode to Olivia’s door, undid the lock, and hauled it open.
The man in the security guard uniform was standing there, hand raised to knock again. Two of his friends were lurking a couple of paces behind him. The third was farther away, keeping a lookout at the top of the stairs.
Sokolov grabbed the “security guard” by the hair, hauled him inside the apartment, slammed the door, and locked it.
The guard pulled a knife—Sokolov could discern this from the way he had chosen to move—and tried to hit him with a direct overhand stab. Sokolov blocked it to the outside with his left forearm, wrapped his arm around the other’s like a vine, getting him just above the elbow, then jerked up until he heard a crack. This left the security guard standing very close to Sokolov, a little bit sideways. Sokolov brought his right knee up into the other’s groin. When he doubled over, Sokolov jammed his thumb into the man’s throat to bring him upright again, then brought his forehead down on the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it. Finally, Sokolov pulled his knife from his trouser pocket, gathered his arm above the opposite shoulder as if to deliver a backhanded chop to the neck, and swung the blade all the way through the security guard’s throat.
Before the man could fall down, Sokolov opened the apartment door again and pushed him straight out the door, directly into the arms of one of his friends, fountaining blood from both carotids.
The other friend was standing just off to the side. Sokolov grabbed the man’s jacket, pulled him forward, and rammed his knife straight up into the underside of the man’s chin until the handle stopped against the point of his jaw.
The sound of a weapon being cocked: the man at the top of the stairs. Sokolov stepped back, slammed the apartment door closed, locked it, then fired half of a clip through the wood, aimed toward the man who was burdened with the security guard’s body.
Seeing as how gunfire had started, Sokolov checked his watch, wondering how many minutes it would be before the authorities shut down the ferry terminal.
A few rounds came through the door in his general direction, but this was the man at the top of the stairs firing down the hallway; the bullets were passing into the wall at a shallow angle and getting lost as they felt their way around its internal structure. The weapon was a submachine gun, firing pistol rounds with nothing like the
