He also realized that emotion had sapped his energy. The terror of the torture chamber, the effort to maintain his self-control, the horror of Chen’s agony, the genuine sorrow over the man’s death — all had taken a toll. Over the killing of Kang and his three minions, Nicholai felt not a jot of remorse.
If the Buddhists were right, Kang would spend long ages in bardo, the limbo-like stage between death and rebirth, before returning to the earth for a lifetime of suffering.
Now Nicholai concentrated on his breathing, on attempting to recuperate his strength. He felt it slowly coming back, but whether it would be enough, and in time, was a real question.
The car arrived at the opera house.
“Go another block,” Nicholai said.
The driver went up a block and pulled over. Nicholai set the pistol down and then hit the driver with a shuto strike to the base of the brain. As the driver fell dead over the steering wheel, Nicholai got out of the backseat and walked to the Zhengyici.
A guard at the front door stopped him.
“My name is Guibert,” Nicholai said. “I am guest of Comrade Voroshenin.”
“The opera is almost over,” the guard complained.
“I was … otherwised engaged,” Nicholai answered, sliding his index finger back and forth through a “V” he made with his other hand.
The guard chuckled. “Go in.”
Nicholai stepped into the lobby, which was almost empty. Recalling the plan of the theater, he quickly found the stairs, bounded up, and walked down the corridor. Two of Voroshenin’s guards leaned against the wall outside his box. They straightened as they saw Nicholai, and one reached his hand inside his jacket.
Now, Nicholai thought, either Voroshenin has played his cards very close to his chest, or I am dead. He strode toward the guards and put his hands up in a “What are you going to do?” shrug.
The guard without the pistol was sullen. He patted Nicholai down from his armpits to his ankles, found nothing, and opened the door to the box.
The encroaching light caused Yuri Voroshenin to turn around.
Even in the dim light, Nicholai could see the surprise in his eyes. That’s right, he thought, I’m supposed to be dead. He edged past the guard standing inside the door and sat down next to Voroshenin.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” he whispered.
In Russian.
On the stage below, the sheng, lit by a vermilion lamp, his face vertically divided into a white-and-black design, delivered a speech bemoaning the loss of a battle. It was beautifully performed, every syllable perfectly in place.
Before Voroshenin could respond, Nicholai added, “I was unavoidably detained.”
78
XUE XIN SAW NICHOLAI go into the theater.
He turned to a small boy huddled against the flaming trash can and said, “Run. Tell your sifu that the performance has not ended.”
The boy ran.
Xue Xin waited until he saw Nicholai get into the theater, and then he ambled off, slowly working his way to the alley in back.
79
“GO PLAYER IS on the screen.”
“Jesus Christ.” Haverford felt limp. Sweaty and exhausted. Hel was a roller-coaster ride. “Where?”
“At Point Zero.”
“No shit.”
“No shit, sir.”
80
COLONEL YU RAN DOWN the hall and burst into Liu’s office.
“He’s at Zhengyici.”
Liu considered the development. It was one thing for the American agent to have made it to the opera house, quite another for him to complete his mission there. But if he did kill Voroshenin … then there was something to consider.
“Good tea,” said Liu.
81
DRUMS BOOMED and gongs clanged as the handsome sheng came back onstage.
The dan, beautifully garbed in a silk brocade robe, crossed the stage in tiny steps as delicate and light as falling cherry blossoms. She waved her fan, saw her lover, then looked up to the “moon” — a solitary white spotlight — and began her aria.
It was beautiful.
Her voice was a revelation, a seamless blend of form and emotion. As she built to her high note, Nicholai saw Voroshenin’s right hand slowly ease into his jacket at his waist.
Knife or gun? Nicholai asked himself.
Gun, he decided.
And what is he waiting for?
The same thing that you are — darkness and more noise. If he waits for the climactic moment, he can shoot you and have your body hustled out of here before anyone can notice, avoiding a public incident. Very smart of him, very disciplined.
The music began its rise.
Nicholai leaned over toward Voroshenin.
“I relate greetings” he said, whispering into Voroshenin’s ear, “from the Countess Alexandra Ivanovna. My mother.”
He felt Voroshenin’s body tense, his hand inch toward the pistol.
“Nicholai Hel.”
“I’m going to kill you in a moment,” Nicholai said, “and there’s not a single thing you can do about it.”
Xun Huisheng warbled:
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.
The drums rattled.
The gongs clanged.
The theater went dark.
Voroshenin went for the pistol.
Nicholai trapped his hand, breathed deeply, and released all the ki he had left into a single leopard paw strike to Voroshenin’s chest.
He heard the Russian grunt.
Then Voroshenin slumped back in his seat, his mouth a frozen oval.
The guard started forward.
“Too much vodka,” Nicholai said as he got up. Down in the orchestra, the audience was applauding wildly.
Nicholai walked out the door of the box.
“Your boss is sick,” Nicholai said.
They rushed inside.
Nicholai let his mind take over and walk him through the escape. Down the stairs and to the right. Down the hallway toward the interior stage door, where an old man sat on a stool.
“You can’t go in here,” the old man said.
“I’m sorry, liao,” Nicholai said as he swung his right hand in a lazy arc and struck him as gently as possible on the side of the neck. He caught the old man and lowered him gently to the floor, opened the door, found the next door to his left, and stepped out into the alley.
It was only as he walked out the back end of the alley that he felt something warm running down his left leg, then a jolt of burning pain, and realized that Voroshenin’s gun had gone off, and that he was shot.
Then he saw the monk standing at the end of the alley.
“Satori,” Nicholai said.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
The monk limped off in one direction, Nicholai in the other.
He saw it clearly now.
What would happen in the Temple of the Green Truth.
Satori.
The way out of the trap.
82
“SIGNAL.”
“What?” Haverford asked. He stubbed out his thirteenth cigarette of the night and rolled his chair over to the young agent who sat by the cable.
“Go Player is on the move toward Point One.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Haverford said, half in surprise, half in admiration.
Nicholai fucking Hel.
83
THE BLOOD FROZE on his skin, forming a bandage of sorts.
It didn’t hold up, as Nicholai walked quickly through the hutongs of Xuanwu, his heart beating strongly, pumping blood into his leg and breaking the intermittent clotting. But the cold slowed the blood loss and eased the pain.
Nicholai wasn’t thinking about his leg.
He placed a map of the district in his head, remembered Haverford’s instructions, and moved swiftly past t
he few people out on the streets in the winter night. Some watched him, most had their faces wrapped against the cold and were indifferent to this tall kweilo as he strode past them. None of them noticed when he dropped the crumpled tape recording into a trash-can fire.
Police sirens started to wail, headed toward Zhengyici Opera House.
Voroshenin’s body had been discovered.
Nicholai put the Go board in front of his eyes and scanned the new situation. The Kang stones had been removed, the Voroshenin stones captured. But Voroshenin’s corpse had been revealed, and soon — if it hadn’t already happened — the Chinese National Police would discover that their master Kang was also dead.
Murdered, if you care to call it that.
They would be coming for him, and the move now was to get to other black stones on the board.
He had an appointment in the Temple of the Green Truth.
84
WU ZHONG WAITED in the sanctuary.
A team member, a Muslim brother, had relayed the signal that “Go Player” was on the way.
Inshallah.
He got to his feet, stretched, and prepared his muscles for the task at hand.
The American had told him what to do.
85
NICHOLAI TURNED onto Niujie Street and saw the mosque, its three sections roofed in green tile, a small minaret with a crescent rising above the center section. A white-capped Hui Chinese waited by the iron gate.
“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.
Now he reached down in alarm and felt with intense relief that both limbs were still attac
hed to his body. But his left leg was hot and swollen, and now he recalled the fevers and the shaking, his head being lifted to receive sips of bitter tea, and the horrible pain as the truck bounced over rough roads as it first climbed and then descended hills.
Indeed, Nicholai saw that he was in the hills now. Outside the window he saw a lush forest of firs, pines, camphor, and nanmu trees in a series of rolling ridges below him. The landscape seemed impossibly green, after the white and silver of Beijing, and the blackness of the journey to this place, wherever it was.
Maybe I’m dead, Nicholai speculated without alarm. Perhaps this is chin t’u, the paradise promised by the amida Buddha. But the “pure land” was not for killers, and he had killed Yuri Voroshenin with a single leopard strike to the heart.
At first he thought this might have been part of his morphine-induced dreams — crazy, twisted images of Solange, Haverford, shengs and dans and sharp wires and men dressed all in black. But then he realized that the memory of killing Voroshenin was just that — a recollection of an actual event, and he felt some satisfaction at completing his mission, even though the Americans had betrayed him.
Nicholai blamed himself as much as them.
I should have seen it earlier, he thought as he lay in what he now realized was a hammock. I should have known that Haverford never intended to honor his part of the deal.
Even this small mental exertion exhausted him and he sank deeper into the hammock, feeling only now that his clothes were soaked with sweat. His leg hurt and his body still ached from the beating he had absorbed in the Temple of the Green Truth.
Then Nicholai heard footsteps and felt the palm of a hand on his forehead. The hand lingered for just a moment and then he heard a voice he recognized as the monk’s say, “The fever has broken. Good. For a while we thought we were still going to lose you.”