NICHOLAI HEL WATCHED the maple leaf drop from the branch, flutter in the slight breeze, then fall gently to the ground.
It was beautiful.
Savoring the first glimpse of nature that he’d had after three years of solitary confinement in an American prison cell, he breathed in the crisp autumn air, let it fill his lungs, and held it for a few moments before he exhaled.
Haverford mistook it for a sigh.
“Glad to be out?” the agent asked.
Nicholai didn’t respond. The American was as nothing to him, a mere merchant like the rest of his compatriots, peddling espionage instead of automobiles, shaving cream, or Coca-Cola. Nicholai had no intention of engaging in meaningless conversation, never mind allowing this functionary access to his personal thoughts.
Of course he was glad to be out, he thought as he looked back at the bleak gray walls of Sugamo Prison, but why did Westerners feel a need to voice the obvious, or attempt to give expression to the ineffable? It was the nature of a maple leaf to drop in the autumn. I killed General Kishikawa, as close to a father as I ever had, because it was my filial nature – and duty – to do so. The Americans imprisoned me for it because they could do nothing else, given their nature.
And now they offer me my “freedom” because they need me.
Nicholai resumed his walk along the pebbled path flanked by the maple trees. A bit surprised that he felt a twinge of anxiety at being outside the closed, small space of his cell, he fought off the wave of dizziness brought on by the open sky. This world was large and empty; he had no one left in it except himself. His own adequate company for three years, he was reentering a world that he no longer knew at the age of twenty-six.
Haverford had anticipated this, having consulted a psychologist on the issues that face prisoners going back into society. The classic Freudian, replete with the stereotypical Viennese accent, had advised Haverford that “the subject” would have become used to the limitations of his confinement and feel overwhelmed at first by the sheer space suddenly confronting him in the outside world. It would be prudent, the doctor warned, to transfer the man to a small, windowless room with voluntary access to a yard or garden so that he could gradually acclimate himself. Open spaces, or a crowded city with its bustling population and incessant noise, would be likely to upset the subject.
So Haverford had arranged for a small room in a quiet safe house in the Tokyo suburbs. But from what he could learn from what there was to be learned of Nicholai Hel, he couldn’t imagine the man being easily overwhelmed or upset. Hel displayed preternatural self-possession, a calm that was almost condescending, confidence that often crossed the line into arrogance. On the surface, Hel appeared to be a perfect blend of his aristocratic Russian mother and his samurai surrogate father, the war criminal Kishikawa, whom he had saved from the shame of a hangman’s noose with a single finger-thrust to the trachea.
Despite his blond hair and vibrant green eyes, Haverford thought, Hel is more Asian than Western. He even walks like an Asian – his arms crossed behind his back so as to take up as little space as possible and not cause inconvenience to anyone coming from the other direction, his tall, thin frame slightly stooped in modesty. European in appearance, Haverford decided, Asian in substance. Well, it made sense – he was raised by his émigré mother in Shanghai, and then mentored by Kishikawa when the Japs took the city. After the mother died, Kishikawa moved the boy to Japan to live with and study under a master of the impossibly complicated and nuanced board game Go, a sort of Jap chess, albeit a hundredfold more difficult.
Hel became a master in his own right.
So is it any wonder that Hel thinks like an Asian?
Nicholai sensed the man’s thoughts on him. The Americans are incredibly transparent, their thoughts as obvious as stones at the bottom of a clear, still pool. He didn’t care what Haverford thought of him – one doesn’t solicit the opinions of a grocery clerk – but it did annoy him. Shifting his attention to the sun on his face, he felt it warm his skin.
“What would you like?” Haverford asked.
“In the sense of what?”
Haverford chuckled. Most men emerging from long confinement wanted three things-a drink, a meal, and a woman, not necessarily in that order. But he was not going to indulge Hel’s arrogance, so he answered, in Japanese, “In the sense of what would you like?”
Mildly impressed that Haverford spoke Japanese, and interested that he refused to surrender such a small stone on the board, Nicholai responded, “I don’t suppose that you could organize an acceptable cup of tea.”
“In fact,” Haverford said, “I’ve arranged a modest cha-kai. I hope you find it acceptable.”
A formal tea ceremony, Nicholai thought.
How interesting.
A car waited at the end of the walk. Haverford opened the back door and ushered Nicholai in.
THE CHA-KAI WAS not only acceptable, it was sublime.
Nicholai savored each sip of the cha-noyu as he sat cross-legged on the tatami floor next to the lacquered table. The tea was transcendent, as was the geisha who knelt nearby, discreetly just out of hearing range of the sparse conversation.
To Nicholai’s shock, the functionary Haverford knew his way around the tea ceremony and served with impeccable courtesy, his ritual flawless. Upon arrival at the teahouse, Haverford had apologized that there were, by necessity, no other guests, then led Nicholai into the machiai, the waiting room, where he introduced Nicholai to an exquisitely lovely geisha.
“This is Kamiko-san,” Haverford said. “She will serve as my hanto today.”
Kamiko bowed and handed Nicholai a kimono to put on, then offered him sayu, a cup of the same hot water that would be used to brew the tea. Nicholai took a sip, then, as Haverford excused himself to go prepare the tea, Kamiko took Nicholai outside to the roji, the “dew ground,” a small garden that held only arrangements of rocks but no flowers. They sat on the stone bench and, without conversation, enjoyed the tranquility.
A few minutes later Haverford, now kimono-clad, walked to a stone basin and ceremonially washed his mouth and hands in the fresh water, then stepped through the middle gate into the roji, where he formally welcomed Nicholai with a bow. In turn, Nicholai purified himself at the tsukubai.
To enter the cha-shitsu, the tearoom, they had to pass through a sliding door that was only three feet high, forcing them to bow, an act that symbolized the divide between the physical world and the spiritual realm of the tearoom.
The cha-shitsu was exquisite, elegant in its simplicity, a perfect expression of shibumi. As tradition demanded, they first walked to an alcove, on the wall of which hung the kakemono, a scroll with painted calligraphy appropriate to the day’s occasion. In his role as guest, Nicholai admired the skillful brushwork, which depicted the Japanese symbol for satori.
An interesting choice, Nicholai thought. Satori was the Zen Buddhist concept of a sudden awakening, a realization of life as it really is. It came not as a result of meditation or conscious thought, but could arrive in the wisp of a breeze, the crackle of a flame, the falling of a leaf.
Nicholai had never known satori.
In front of the kakemono, on a small wooden stand, was a bowl that held a single small maple branch.
They stepped over to a low table, on which was a charcoal burner and a kettle. As Nicholai and Kamiko knelt on the mat by the table, Haverford bowed and left the room. A few moments later a gong sounded, and he returned carrying the cha-wan, a red ceramic bowl that contained a tea whisk, a tea scoop, and a cloth.
As teishu, the host, Haverford knelt at his proper place at the table, directly across the hearth from Nicholai. He wiped all the utensils with the cloth, then filled the bowl with hot water, rinsed the whisk, then poured the water into a waste bowl and carefully wiped the tea bowl again.
Nicholai found himself enjoying the old ritual, but did not want to be lulled into complacency. The American had obviously done his research and knew that in the few years of freedom Nicholai had enjoyed in Tokyo before his imprisonment, he had established a formal Japanese household, with retainers, and had observed the old rituals. Surely he knew that Nicholai would find the cha-kai both nostalgic and comforting.
And it is both, Nicholai thought, but be cautious.
Haverford presented the tea scoop, then opened a small container and paused to allow his guest to appreciate the aroma. Nicholai realized with surprise that this was koi-cha, from plants one hundred years old, grown only in the shade in certain parts of Kyoto. He could not imagine what this mat-cha might have cost, then wondered what it might eventually cost him, given that the Americans had not gone to such extravagance for nothing.
Pausing for precisely the correct time, Haverford then dipped a small ladle into the container and scooped out six measures of the finely powdered pale green tea into the cha-wan. He used the bamboo ladle to heap hot water into the bowl, then took the whisk and whipped the potion into a thin paste. He examined his work, then, satisfied, passed the bowl across the table to Nicholai.
As ritual demanded, Nicholai bowed, took the cha-wan with his right hand, then passed it to his left, holding it only in the palm of his hand. He turned it clockwise three times and then took a long sip. The tea was superb, and Nicholai politely finished his drink with a loud slurp. Then he wiped the rim of the cha-wan with his right hand, turned it once clockwise, and handed it back to Haverford, who bowed and took a drink.
Now the cha-kai entered a less formal phase, as Haverford wiped the cha-wan again and Kamiko added more charcoal to the hearth in preparation for making cups of thinner tea. Still, there were formalities to observe, and Nicholai in his role as guest began a conversation about the utensils used in the ceremony.
“The cha-wan is Momoyama Period, yes?” he said to Haverford, recognizing the distinct red tincture. “It is beautiful.”
“Momoyama, yes,” Haverford answered, “but not the best example.”
They both knew that the seventeenth-century bowl was rightfully priceless. The American had gone to immense trouble and expense to arrange this “modest” cha-kai, and Nicholai could not help but wonder why.
And the American could not quite contain his satisfaction at pulling off this surprise.
I don’t know you, Hel, Haverford thought as he sank back into his own seiza position, but you don’t know me either.
In fact, Ellis Haverford was something quite different from the Company thugs who had beaten Nicholai to a bloody pulp during three days of brutal interrogation. A native of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he had spurned Yale and Harvard for Columbia, as he couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to live anywhere but on the isle of Manhattan. He was majoring in Oriental history and languages when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and was therefore a natural to go into an intelligence desk job.
Haverford refused, joined the Marines instead, and commanded a platoon on Guadalcanal and a company in New Guinea. Purple Heart and Navy Cross on his chest, he finally conceded that his education was being wasted, agreed to go into the covert side of the war, and found himself training local resistance movements against the Japanese in the jungles of French Indochina. Haverford was fluent in French, Japanese, and Vietnamese and could make himself understood in some parts of China. As aristocratic in his own way as Hel – although he came from far more money – Ellis Haverford was one of those rare individuals who seemed comfortable in any setting, including an exclusive Japanese teahouse.
Now Kamiko served thin tea and brought out mukozuke, a tray of light snacks – sashimi and pickled vegetables.
“The food is good,” Nicholai said in Japanese as Kamiko served.
“It’s garbage,” Haverford answered, pro forma, “but I’m afraid it’s the best I can offer. I am so sorry.”
“It’s more than enough,” Nicholai said, unconsciously slipping into Japanese manners that he had not had the opportunity to use for years.
“You are more than kind,” Haverford responded.
Aware of Kamiko’s passive attention, Nicholai asked, “Shall we switch languages?”
Haverford already knew that Hel spoke English, French, Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese, and, randomly, Basque – so there was quite a menu from which to choose. He suggested French and Nicholai accepted.
“So,” Nicholai said, “you have offered me one hundred thousand dollars, my liberty, a Costa Rican passport, and the home addresses of Major Diamond and his apprentices in exchange for my performing a service that I assume involves a murder.”
“ ‘Murder’ is an ugly word,” Haverford answered, “but you have the basic elements of the deal correct, yes.”
“Why me?”
“You have certain unique characteristics,” Haverford said, “combined with specific skills required for the assignment.”
“Such as?”
“You don’t need to know that yet.”
“When do I begin?” Nicholai asked.
“More a question of how.”
“Very well. How do I begin?”
“First,” Haverford answered, “we repair your face.”
“You find it unpalatable?” Nicholai asked, aware that his once handsome countenance was indeed a lopsided, swollen and disjointed mess from the fists and truncheons of Major Diamond and his associates.
Nicholai had worked for the Americans as a translator until he had killed Kishikawa-san; then Diamond and his goons had beaten Nicholai before subjecting him to mind-altering, horrifying experiments with psychotropic drugs. The pain had been bad enough, the disfigurement still worse, but what hurt Nicholai even more was the loss of control, the terrible helplessness, the feeling that Diamond and his disgusting little helpers had somehow stolen his very being and played with it the way a twisted and stupid child might have toyed with a captive animal.
I will deal with them in due time, he thought. Diamond, his thugs, the doctor who administered the injections and observed the results on his “patient” with cold-blooded clinical interest – they will all see me again, albeit briefly, and just before they die.
Right now I must come to terms with Haverford, who is essential to achieving my revenge. At least Haverford is interesting – impeccably dressed, obviously well educated, just as obviously a scion of what passes for the aristocracy in America.
“Not at all,” Haverford said. “I just believe that when you damage something, you should repair it. It seems only fair.”
Haverford is trying to tell me, Nicholai thought, in a quite un-American subtle way, that he is not them. But of course you are, the clothes and education are but a patina on the same cracked vessel. He asked, “What if I do not choose to be ‘repaired’?”
“Then I am afraid we would have to cancel our arrangement,” Haverford said pleasantly, glad that the French softened what would be a harsh ultimatum in English. “Your current appearance would prompt questions, the answers to which don’t match the cover we’ve taken a lot of trouble creating for you.”
“ ‘Cover’?”
“A new identity,” Haverford answered, reminded that while Hel was an efficient killer he was nevertheless a neophyte in the larger world of espionage, “replete with a fictitious personal history.”
“Which is what?” Nicholai asked.
Haverford shook his head. “You don’t need to know yet.”
Deciding to test the board, Nicholai said, “I was quite content in my cell. I could go back.”
“You could,” Haverford agreed. “And we could decide to bring you to trial for the murder of Kishikawa.”
Well played, Nicholai thought, deciding that he needed to be more cautious when dealing with Haverford. Seeing that there was no route of attack there, he retreated like a slowly ebbing tide. “The surgery on my face – I assume we are discussing surgery…”
“Yes.”
“I also assume it will be painful.”
“Very.”
“The recuperation period?”
“Several weeks,” Haverford answered. He refilled Nicholai’s cup, then his own, and nodded to Kamiko to bring a fresh pot. “They won’t be wasted, however. You have a lot of work to do.”
Nicholai raised an eyebrow.
“Your French,” Haverford said. “Your vocabulary is impressive, but your accent is all wrong.”
“My French nanny would be greatly offended.”
Haverford switched to Japanese, a better language than French to express polite regret. “Gomen nosei, but your new dialect needs to be more southern.”
Why would that be? Nicholai wondered. He didn’t ask, however, not wanting to appear too curious or, for that matter, interested.
Kamiko waited at their periphery, then, hearing him finish, bowed and served the tea. She was beautifully coiffed, with alabaster skin and sparkling eyes, and Nicholai was annoyed when Haverford noticed him looking and said, “It has already been arranged, Hel-san.”
“Thank you, no,” Nicholai said, unwilling to give the American the satisfaction of correctly perceiving his physical need. It would show weakness, and give Haverford a victory.
“Really?” Haverford asked. “Are you sure?”
Or else I would not have spoken, Nicholai thought. He didn’t answer the question, but instead said, “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I will not kill an innocent person.”
Haverford chuckled. “Small chance of that.”
“Then I accept.”
Haverford bowed.
NICHOLAI STRUGGLED against unconsciousness.
Yielding control was anathema to a man who had lived his life on the principle of firm self-possession, and it brought back memories of the pharmacological torture that the Americans had inflicted on him. So he fought to stay conscious, but the anesthesia took its course and put him under.
As a boy he had commonly experienced spontaneous mental states in which he would find himself removed from the moment and lying in a serene meadow of wildflowers. He didn’t know how it happened or why, just that it was peaceful and delicious. He called these interludes his “resting times” and could not understand how anyone could live without them.
But the firebombing of Tokyo, the deaths of friends, then Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the arrest of his surrogate father General Kishikawa as a war criminal – that cultured man who had introduced him to Go and to a civilized, disciplined, thoughtful life – had robbed him of his precious “resting times,” and, try as he would, he could not seem to recover the serenity that had once been natural to him.
Tranquility was harder to achieve when they put him on an airplane with blackened windows and flew him to the United States, taking him off the flight with bandages around his face as if he had been wounded. He found it harder yet to maintain his equanimity when they rolled his stretcher into the hospital and put the needles into his arm and a mask over his nose and mouth.
He woke panicked because his arms were strapped down to the gurney.
“It’s all right,” a female American voice said. “We just don’t want you rolling around or touching your face.”
“I won’t.”
She chuckled, not believing him.
Nicholai would have argued further, but the pain was acute, like a horribly bright light shimmering in front of his eyes. He blinked, then controlled his breathing and sent the light to the other side of the room where he could observe it dispassionately. The pain still existed, but it was now a detached phenomenon, interesting in its intensity.
“I’ll give you a shot,” the nurse said.
“It isn’t necessary,” Nicholai answered.
“Oh,” she said, “we can’t have you wincing or clenching your jaw. The surgery on your facial bones was very delicate.”
“I assure you that I will lie perfectly still,” Nicholai answered. Through the slits that were his eyes he could now see her preparing the syringe. She was a Celtic-looking healthy type, all pale skin, freckles, rusty hair, and thick forearms. He exhaled, relaxed his hands, and slipped them through the bonds.
The nurse looked terribly annoyed. “Are you going to make me call the doctor?”
“Do what you think you must.”
The doctor came in a few minutes later. He made a show of checking the bandages that covered Nicholai’s face, clucked with the satisfaction of a hen that has just laid a splendid egg, and then said, “The surgeries went very well. I expect a successful result.”
Nicholai didn’t bother with a concurring banality.
“Keep your hands off your face,” the doctor said to him. Turning to the nurse, he added, “If he doesn’t want anything for the pain, he doesn’t want anything for the pain. When he gets tired of playing the stoic, he’ll call you. Take your time getting there if you want a small measure of revenge.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I do good work,” the doctor said to Nicholai. “You’re going to have to beat the women off with a stick.”
It took Nicholai quite a while to work through the idiom.
“There will be some minor paralysis of some small facial muscles, I’m afraid,” the doctor added, “but nothing you can’t live with. It will help you keep that indifferent front of yours.”
Nicholai never did call for the shot.
Nor did he move.
CAMOUFLAGED BY NIGHT and the monsoon’s slashing rain, the one they call the Cobra squatted perfectly still.
The Cobra watched the man’s feet plop down in the mud and slosh onto the trail that led toward the bushes where he would do his personal business. It was his routine, so the Cobra was expecting him. The assassin had sat and waited many nights to learn the prey’s habits.
The man came closer, just a few feet now from where the Cobra waited in the bamboo beside the narrow footpath. Intent on his destination, the man saw nothing as he wiped a sluice of rain from his face.
The Cobra chose that moment to uncoil and strike. The blade – silver like the rain – shot out and slashed the man’s thigh. The victim felt the odd pain, looked down, and pressed his hand to the bloody tear in his pants leg. But it was too late – the femoral artery was severed and the blood poured around his hand and through his fingers. Already in shock, he sat down and watched his life flow into the puddle that quickly formed around him.
The Cobra was already gone.
IF MAJOR DIAMOND was pleased that Nicholai Hel had accepted the deal, he wasn’t overly demonstrative in his enthusiasm.
“Hel’s a half-Nippo nut job,” Diamond said, “with scrambled brains.”
“Yes,” Haverford answered, “you had something to do with scrambling them, didn’t you?”
“He was a Commie agent.” Diamond shrugged. Sure, he’d roughed Hel up a little, used him as a guinea pig for some of the new pharmaceutical techniques. So what? They were at war with the Communist bloc and it was a dirty war. Besides, Hel was an arrogant young shit – that superior, condescending attitude of his just made you want to hurt him.
Diamond thought he’d left him far behind when he transferred to the new CIA and left Japan for the Southeast Asian assignment, but the troubling Hel was like a kite tail. They should have executed him when they had the chance – now they were going to use him as an asset?
It was just like that pansy-ass pinko Haverford, another over-educated, know-it-all little prick. Shit, Haverford had fought with the Viet Minh during the war, and what the hell kind of name is Ellis, anyway?
Now Haverford said, “Hel was not a Communist agent, a Soviet agent, or an agent of any kind. As your ‘interrogation’ of him proved, by the way.”
Haverford despised Diamond, from his looks to the core of his alleged soul. The man resembled nothing more than an overstrung guitar with a pair of thin lips and drooping eyelids, and the inner man was even uglier. A bourgeois thug who would have been a cheerful Nazi save for the accident of his American birth – more’s the pity – Diamond was the sort of intelligence officer that the army seemed to crank out like so many widgets – unimaginative, brutal, his prejudices undisturbed by thought or education.
Haverford hated him, his class, and what they threatened to do to America’s relationships in Asia.
John Singleton, head of the CIA’s Asia Desk, sat behind his broad desk observing the debate. His white hair lay over his craggy face like snow on a rocky mountain, his pale blue eyes were the color of ice.
He was truly a “cold warrior”; in fact, the coldest man that Haverford had ever known.
Singleton’s ruthlessness had made him a legend. The éminence grise of the Washington intelligence community, he was respected – even feared – from Foggy Bottom to Capitol Hill, even to Pennsylvania Avenue itself.
For good reason, Haverford thought. Compared to Singleton, Machiavelli was a naïve choirboy and the Borgias subjects of a Rockwell painting. Standing beside Singleton, the devil himself would appear as the angel Lucifer before the fall.
Chief of the OSS Asian Bureau during the war, Singleton was reputed responsible for guerrilla operations in China and Vietnam and was even thought to have been influential in the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After the war he had politically survived the “loss” of China, the surprise invasion of Korea, and even attacks from McCarthy and his cohorts. In fact, Singleton was probably more powerful now than ever, a fact that his many enemies, albeit quietly, attributed to his close relationship to Satan.
Now he looked across his desk at the two rival officers.
“Is Hel unstable?” he asked Haverford.
“To the contrary,” Haverford answered. “I’ve never met a man as self-possessed as Nicholai Hel.”
“What are you, in love with the guy or something?” Diamond chimed in, his mouth leering with the crude homophobic implication.
“No, I’m not in love with the guy,” Haverford answered tiredly.
“Kill this mission, sir,” Diamond said to Singleton. “It’s too risky and Hel is a loose cannon. I have much more reliable assassins in southern China that we could send to -”
“Hel is perfect,” Haverford said.
“How so?” Singleton asked.
Haverford laid out his reasoning – Hel was fluent in Chinese, Russian, and French. He was a trained martial artist who could not only execute the sanction, but do so in a way that would leave the manner of death ambiguous, a crucial factor in achieving the maximum positive result.
“Why is French important?” Diamond asked, smelling trouble.
“It’s why we brought you in for briefing,” Singleton said. “Ellis?”
“Hel’s cover will be a French arms dealer,” Haverford said, anticipating Diamond’s discomfiture with great pleasure, “selling weapons to the Viet Minh.”
Indeed, Diamond’s lips bent into a grimace.
“As that affects your Indochinese bailiwick,” Singleton said, “we thought you should know.”
Great, Diamond thought. I don’t have enough trouble trying to keep the Frogs from punting another war without my own team sending aid to the enemy? “You’re not telling me that you’re actually going to -”
“Of course not. It’s just a cover to get Hel to Beijing,” Haverford said. “But we didn’t want you overreacting to any radar pings you might pick up.”
Diamond glared at Haverford. “Keep your boy the hell away from my turf.”
“Don’t worry.”
But Diamond was worried. If knowledge of Operation X – and his real role in it – ever reached Washington… “X” was an Indochinese op, run by the Frogs, so he thought he had it nicely contained. Now this Hel business threatened contamination.
Diamond turned to Singleton. “Sir, I’d like to be kept current with all phases of the operation, if you don’t mind.”
“You’ll be briefed,” Singleton assured him. “Ellis, keep him posted on everything you do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Ellis, if you could stay for a moment.”
Diamond left the meeting. Nicholai Hel free, he thought in the elevator. He felt the involuntary tremor in his leg. Face it, he thought, you’re afraid of the guy, and with good reason. He’s a trained killer with a grudge against you.
And then there’s Operation X.
If there’s even the slightest chance of that getting out.
He couldn’t allow it to happen.
“Does Hel know the identity of his target?” Singleton asked Haverford.
“I haven’t told him yet.”
Singleton thought this over for a few moments, then asked, “Is there anything to what Diamond said? About Hel being a loose cannon?”
“I don’t think so,” Haverford answered. “But I’ve taken the caution of providing, to mix nautical metaphors, an anchor.”
Singleton dismissed Haverford, then checked his schedule with his secretary and saw that he had a few moments for reflection. He went into his private study, sat down at his table, and contemplated the Go board in front of him.
He’d been at this game against himself for some weeks now, and the shapes of the opposing stones were slowly becoming beautiful. They could almost be called graceful in the delicate interplay between the yin and yang of opposites. Only on the go-kang did life promise perfect balance.
Diamond would be Diamond and Haverford would be Haverford – they were virtually fixtures on the board.
But Hel…
Singleton moved a black stone.
Hel would soon learn the identity of his target and would be, shall we say, motivated.
But to do what?
How would this Go player respond? It was not an exaggeration to say that the immediate future of Asia depended on the complex persona of Nicholai Hel.
An “anchor,” Singleton mused.
How interesting.
SOLANGE WAS as lovely as her name.
Her hair was the color of spun gold swirling with streams of amber, her eyes as blue as a midday sea. An aquiline nose betrayed the Roman colonization of her native Languedoc, but her full lips could only have been French. A light spray of freckles disrupted an otherwise almost monotonously perfect porcelain complexion, and the soft curve of her high cheekbones prevented what might be an unfortunate severity. She was tall, just a head shy of Nicholai’s height, longlegged and full-bodied, her breasts stretching taut the simple but elegant blue dress.
But it was her voice that affected Nicholai the most. Low but gentle, with that particular Gallic softness that was simultaneously genteel and sensual. “Welcome to my home, monsieur. I hope you will be comfortable.”
“I’m sure I will be.”
Solange offered her hand to be kissed, as if most of his face weren’t obscured by bandages. He took her hand in his – her fingers were long and thin – and kissed it, the cotton of the bandage touching her skin along with his lips. “Enchanté.”
“May I show you to your bedroom?”
“S’il vous plaît” said Nicholai. The long flight from the United States back to Tokyo had tired him.
“S’il vous plaît,” she said, gently correcting his pronunciation to hold the “a” sound a touch longer.
Nicholai accepted the criticism and repeated the phrase, echoing her enunciation. She rewarded him with a smile of approval. “Your nanny was from Tours, perhaps? The purest accent in France. But we need to give you an accent du Midi.”
“I understand that’s why I’m here.”
“I am from the south,” she told him. “Montpellier.”
“I’ve never been.”
“It is beautiful,” she said. “Sunny and warm. And the light…”
His bedroom was simple but tasteful, the walls a yellow that was cheerful without being oppressively chirpy, the spare furniture painted a middle-range blue that perfectly complemented the walls. The large bed – after the cot in his cell it looked massive – was covered with a blue duvet. A single chrysanthemum had been placed in a vase on the bedside table.
“It is a Japanese flower, no?” Solange asked.
“Yes.”
“And you have missed them?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling oddly touched. “Thank you.”
“Pas de quoi.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The proper response would be to say ‘je vous en prie,’ “she said, “but the-comment vous dites – the ‘vernacular’ would be ‘il n’y a pas de quoi’ or simply ‘pas de quoi.’ Vous voyez?”
“Très bien.”
“Very good,” she said. “But roll your ‘r’ on your tongue, please. Comme ça.” She formed her mouth into a shape that Nicholai found rather attractive. “Très bien.”
“Très bien.”
“And a bit more through the nose, please.”
He repeated the words, giving the ending a nasal twang.
“Formidable,” she said. “Notice the trace of a ‘g’ at the end, but just a ghost of one, please. You don’t want to sound like a rustic, rather a cultured man of the south. Are you tired or would you like to take lunch now?”
“I am more hungry than tired.”
“I have taken the liberty of preparing something.”
She led him into a small dining room. The window gave a view onto a karesansui Japanese rock garden bordered by a high bamboo wall. The garden had been done with skill, and reminded him of the garden he had so meticulously constructed at his own home in Tokyo. He had found a measure of contentment in that home before making the decision to kill Kishikawa-sama. He asked, “Am I allowed the freedom of the garden?”
“Of course,” she said. “This is your home for as long as you are here.”
“Which is for how long, please?”
“As long as it takes you to recuperate,” she said, effortlessly deflecting the real question. Then, with a smile that was just mischievous, she added, “And to learn proper French.”
Solange gestured to a chair at the table.
He sat down as she walked into the kitchen.
The room, like the rest of the house’s interior, was completely European, and he wondered where she had acquired the furnishings. She probably hadn’t, he decided, it was more likely her American masters who provided the resources to replicate a French country house, albeit with a karesansui. Doubtless they’d calculated that he would absorb his French “cover” through some sort of decorative osmosis, just as doubtless after consultation with a “psychologist,” one of those priests of the new American civil religion. Nevertheless, the room was pleasant and stimulating to the appetite.
So was the aroma coming from the kitchen. Delicate, with a trace of wine perhaps, and he thought he detected the musty aroma of mushrooms. Solange returned and set a stoneware casserole on the table, removed the lid and announced, “Coq au vin. I hope you like.”
The smell was tantalizing.
He said, “I have not had European cuisine in many years.”
“I hope it will not upset your stomach,” she said. “It is necessary, though, that you eat mostly French food from now on.”
“A pleasure, but why?”
Solange pursed her lips into a pretty pout, then answered, “I wish to say this delicately, without giving offense…”
“Please be blunt,” he said, although he doubted that bluntness was in her repertoire.
“As it is,” she said, “you smell like a Japanese. Il faut que vous ayez l’odeur d’un vrai français.”
“I see.” It was so, of course. In his prison cell, he could discern the nationality of someone coming down the corridor by his odor. The Americans had that beef smell on them, the Russians the strong scent of potato, the Japanese guards smelled of fish and vegetables. And Solange? All he could smell was her perfume.
“May I serve?” she asked.
“Please.”
She ladled out a healthy portion of the rich chicken and wine dish, then took some asparagus spears from another dish and put them on his plate. Then she poured him a glass of rich red wine. “It is good to serve the same wine in which you braised the chicken. Good French wine, monsieur.”
“Call me Nicholai.”
“Eh bien, Nicholai,” she answered. “Please call me Solange.”
“What a lovely name.”
She blushed, and it was very pretty. Then she sat down and served herself, but waited for him to taste his food. When he did, she asked, “Do you like?”
“It’s extraordinary.” He was telling the truth. The flavors, subtle yet distinct, burst in his mouth, and the taste of the wine recalled boyhood meals at home with his mother. Perhaps, he thought, I might take up European wine… if I survive. “My compliments to the chef.”
She bowed her head. “Merci.”
“You made this?” he asked, surprised.
“I love to cook,” she said. “I’ve had little chance these past few years, so it is a great joy.”
Solange took up her fork and ate with a relish that would have been considered unbecoming in a Japanese woman, but in her was quite appealing, a joie de vivre that Nicholai hadn’t seen during the long years of war, the hungry occupation, the lonely prison. It was a pleasure to watch her enjoy the meal. After a few minutes he said, “So the man I am meant to imitate, he ate French food even in Asia?”
“I believe so.”
“How did he manage that?”
“Money,” she answered, as if it were obvious. “Money makes all things possible.”
“Is that why you work for the Americans?” he asked, instantly regretting it and wondering why he felt an impulse to offend her.
“Tout le monde,” Solange said. “Everyone works for the Americans now.”
Including you, mon ami, she thought, smiling at him. She got up from her chair. “I made a tarte tatin. Would you like some?”
“That would be nice.”
“Coffee?”
“I would prefer tea, if you have it.”
“Coffee for you now, Nicholai,” she said. “Un express avec une cigarette.”
She left for a minute, then returned with the apple tarte, a small pot of espresso, and a pack of Gauloises and set them on the table.
“I apologize for my rudeness,” Nicholai said. “I have become unused to conversation.”
“Pas de quoi.” She liked that he apologized.
The tarte was delicious, the coffee, surprisingly more so. Nicholai sat back in his chair and Solange nudged the pack of cigarettes toward him. “Take two,” she said, “light them, and give one to me.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed. “Didn’t you ever go to the cinema?”
“No.” It always seemed an odd concept to him, to sit and stare at other people’s fantasies projected through a strip of celluloid.
“I love the cinema,” Solange said. “I wanted to be an actress.”
Nicholai thought to ask what had prevented her – certainly she was attractive enough – but then decided that the answer might cause her sadness, so he refrained. Instead, he shook two cigarettes from the pack, put them both in his mouth, then struck a match and lit them. When the tip of one glowed, he handed it to her.
“Formidable,” Solange said. “Paul Henreid would be jealous.”
Nicholai had no idea what she meant, but he inhaled the smoke and endured a spasm of coughing. It hurt where the stitches were. “It’s been a while,” he said when he recovered.
“Apparently.” She laughed at him but he didn’t feel in the least offended or embarrassed. It was more as if they were sharing an amusing moment, and he started to laugh himself. Again, it hurt a little bit, and he realized that it had been a very long time since he’d laughed with another person.
Solange discerned his thought. “It is good, no? We have not lived through laughing times, I think, you and me.”
“Nor the world at large,” Nicholai said
She refilled his wine glass, then her own, lifted it and said, “To better times.”
“To better times.”
“You must learn to smoke, Nicholai,” she said. “All Frenchmen smoke.”
“I sneaked cigarettes when I was a boy in Shanghai,” Nicholai answered. “The Chinese smoke like chimneys. Smoke, and spit.”
“We can do without the spitting, I think.”
After lunch he strolled in the garden.
It had been very well done, indeed. Pathways led around an area of gravel carefully raked to replicate the ripples of the ocean. A small “island,” of short grass and stone, in the middle of the “sea,” represented the mountains of Japan. Shrubs had been perfectly placed around the path to offer a fresh perspective at every curve.
Like life itself, Nicholai thought.
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS passed in pleasant routine.
Nicholai woke early and went into the garden to meditate. When he came out, Solange had a café au lait and a croissant ready for him, and while it took him some time to get used to the concept of bread for breakfast, he came to enjoy it. After breakfast they engaged in conversation, during which she corrected his accent and suggested current slang and vernacular. Solange was an exacting taskmistress, which Nicholai appreciated.
For her part, Solange knew that the slightest slip, a careless anachronism or a lapse into a stilted formality, could cost him his life. So she pushed him hard, insisted on perfection, challenged his intellect and considerable talent for languages. He exceeded her expectations – his pride made him a superb student.
They conversed through lunch, and then Nicholai took his customary walk in the garden. Knowing that he needed solitude, she was discreet enough never to accept his polite invitation to join him. Instead, she had a small rest before starting preparations for dinner. When he came back, they would go over maps of Montpellier, photographs of certain cafés, restaurants, and landmarks that a native would know. She quizzed him about the Place Ste.-Anne, the marketplace, who sold the best peaches, where one could get a decent bottle of wine for a price.
Following the afternoon study session, Nicholai repaired to his room to rest, study, and bathe, which he did in a gloriously hot Japanese tub. He emerged from the near-scalding water delightfully refreshed, and then dressed for dinner, which was always French and always superb. After dinner they had a coffee and a cognac, conversed casually, perhaps listened to a little radio until Solange retired to her bedroom.
Then Nicholai changed into a gi and went out into the garden for his nightly ritual. At first, Solange peeked through her window blinds to watch him perform the intricate maneuvers of the kata – the repetitive martial arts routines – of hoda korosu, “naked kill.” He appeared to be dancing, but after a few nights of watching Solange started to perceive that he was fighting numerous imaginary enemies coming at him from all directions, and that the motions of the “dance” were in fact defensive blocks followed by lethal strikes. If it was a dance, it was a dance of death.
Nicholai enjoyed these sessions very much – it was a joy to exercise in the garden, it calmed his mind and spirit, and besides, his instinct told him that he might very well need to polish his rusty skills to survive the mission, the target of which Haverford would still not disclose.
So Nicholai exercised with a purpose, glad to find that his mind and body responded even after the years of relative inactivity – although he did thousands of press-ups and sit-ups in his cell – and that the complicated and subtle movements of the hoda korosu kata came back to him.
He had started studying “naked kill” during his second year in Tokyo. The rarefied form of karate – which itself means “empty hand” – was taught by an old Japanese master of the lethal art who at first refused to teach an apparent Westerner the ancient secrets. But Nicholai persevered, mostly by kneeling in a painful position at the edge of the mat and watching, night after night, until finally the master called him over and administered a beating that was the first of many lessons.
Essential to hoda korosu was the mastery of ki, the internal life force that came from the proper management of breath. It was ki, flowing through the body from the lower abdomen to every vein, muscle, and nerve in the body, that gave the hoda korosu strikes their lethal force, especially at close range.
The other necessary element was the ability to calm the mind, to free it for the creativity to find a lethal weapon among common objects that might be at hand in the suddenness of an unexpected attack.
As he resumed his practice now, the first few nights were brutal in their clumsiness and would have been appalling had he not found his ineptitude almost comical. But his quickness and strength developed quickly and it wasn’t long before he reacquired some skill and even a measure of grace. His master had taught him – sometimes with a bamboo rod across the back – to train with utter seriousness, to picture his enemies as he dispatched them, and Nicholai did this as he slid back and forth across the garden, repeating the lengthy kata dozens of times before he stopped, his gi soaked with sweat. Then he treated himself to a quick bath, collapsed into bed, and was soon asleep.
One morning, two weeks into his stay, Solange surprised him by saying, “This is a big day for you, Nicholai.”
“How so?”
“The unveiling, so to speak.”
“Of…”
“You, of course,” she said. “Your face.”
He had gone to the doctor’s office once a week for the hefty Irish nurse to change his wrappings, none too gently at that. But she had deliberately kept him away from a mirror until the healing process was complete, so this would be the first time that he would see his reconstructed face.
If he was at all nervous or anxious, he didn’t betray it. It was as if Solange had told him that they were going to see a photo exhibit or a film. He seemed detached. If it were me, she thought, I would be a mess – he was as cool as a March morning, placid as a still pond.
“The doctor said that I could do it,” Solange said.
“Now?” Nicholai asked.
“If you wish.”
Nicholai shrugged. It would be nice to have the bandages off, certainly, but he wasn’t really all that curious about his face. He had sat in solitary confinement for those years, where it really didn’t matter what one looked like – there was no one there to react except the guards.
But suddenly he felt a twinge of anxiety, which surprised and displeased him. Suddenly it did matter to him what he looked like, and he realized that it was because of her.
I care what she thinks, he marveled to himself. I’m afraid of how she’ll react when the bandages come off and I am still ugly. He didn’t know that such feelings still resided in him.
Remarkable, he thought.
“I’m ready,” Nicholai said.
They went into the bathroom. She sat him down on a stool in front of the mirror, stood behind him, and gently unwrapped the bandages.
He was beautiful.
There is no other word for it, Solange thought. He is a beautiful man. His emerald green eyes stood out now against the high, sharp cheekbones. His long jaw was strong, his dimpled chin cute without being at all effeminate. And he was youthful-looking – far younger than his twenty-six years, even with all he’d been through.
“Bravo, Doctor,” Solange said. “Are you pleased?”
I’m relieved, Nicholai thought, seeing the smile on her face. She would have feigned the smile in any case, but he was relieved that the surgeon’s apparent skill had saved them both that indignity. He said, “I’m not sure that I recognize myself.”
“You are very handsome.”
“You think so?”
“Listen to you, fishing for a compliment,” Solange said. “Yes, I think so. You are very handsome. But now you make me feel so old.”
“You’re beautiful and you know it.”
“But fading,” she says. “Perhaps I should go see this doctor…”
HAVERFORD CAME that afternoon.
He inspected Nicholai’s face as if it were a product to be testmarketed and then pronounced it satisfactory. “He did a good job.”
“I’m pleased that you’re pleased,” Nicholai answered.
They sat down in the dining room. Haverford spread a file out on the table and without preamble began, “You are Michel Guibert, twenty-six years old, born in Montpellier, France. When you were ten years old your family moved to Hong Kong to pursue your father’s import-export business. You survived the Japanese occupation because your family were residents of Vichy France and therefore at peace with the Axis powers. By the time the war ended you were old enough to go into the family business.”
“Which was?”
“Arms,” Haverford said. “La famille Guibert has been in the weapons black market since the ball-and-musket era.”
“Is there an actual Guibert family,” Nicholai asked, “or is this a total fiction?”
“Papa Guibert is quite real,” Haverford answered.
“And does he have a son?”
“He did,” Haverford answered.
He spread out photographs of what certainly could have been a young Nicholai happily playing in a Chinese courtyard, helping the cooks, smiling over a birthday cake. “Sadly, Michel was in a terrible car crash. Disfiguring, I’m told. Requiring massive reconstructive surgery. He looks somewhat like his old self.”
“Did you arrange for this ‘accident’.?” Nicholai asked.
“No,” answered Haverford. “My God, do you think we’re monsters?”
“Mmmmmm… The mother?”
“She died just recently. You were very torn up about it.”
“You amaze and appall me,” Nicholai said.
“You’ve matured quite a bit,” Haverford continued. “You used to have quite the reputation as a gambler and ladies’ man and Papa banished you back to France for the last three years. You blew a shitload of the family’s money at Monaco, repented of your profligate ways, and have returned to redeem yourself.”
“How so?” Nicholai asked.
“You don’t need to know yet,” Haverford answered. “Study the file. Solange will help quiz you on the details. When you’re thoroughly conversant with your new past, I’ll brief you on your new future.”
My “new future,” Nicholai thought. What a uniquely American concept, perfect in its naïve optimism. Only the Americans could have a “new” future, as opposed to an “old” one.
“Now we need to take some photos,” Haverford said.
“Why?”
Because they were assembling a file on Guibert, explained Haverford. No one in the arms trade would go very long in this day and age without acquiring a jacket in every major intelligence service in the game. The photos would be placed in CIA, Deuxième Bureau, and MI-6 files, then leaked to the Chinese through moles. Photos of Michel Guibert would be inserted into old Kuomintang police files that the Reds were currently sifting through. The “wizards in the lab” would make Guibert appear on streets in Kowloon, casinos in Monaco, and the docks of Marseille.
“By the time we’re done,” Haverford chirped, “you’ll believe you’re Michel Guibert and that you sat out the war in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, from now on you answer to ‘Michel’ and only Michel. Not ‘Nicholai.’ Got it, Michel?”
“As difficult a concept as that might be,” Nicholai answered, “I believe I have a grasp of it, yes.”
Solange came back into the room carrying a stack of clothes that she draped over the back of a chair. “Your new wardrobe, Michel. Très chic.”
She went back out to get more.
Nicholai examined the clothes, which appeared to be secondhand. Of course they were, he thought. It makes perfect sense – when you step into someone’s life, you step into his clothes, and those clothes would be worn, not new. He examined the labels. Some of the older clothes were from a tailor in Kowloon, but most were French, and mostly from expensive-sounding shops in Marseille. A few of the shirts and two of the suits came from Monaco. All of them were expensive and of lightweight fabrics – silk and cotton. There were several pairs of twill khaki trousers, pleated, of course. It seemed that Michel favored white and khaki suits with colorful shirts and no ties.
And the clothes smelled – of sweat, tobacco, and cologne. You have to give the devil his due, Nicholai thought. Haverford had been nothing if not thorough.
Solange returned with more clothes, stood with the tip of her index finger to her lips and contemplated the wardrobe and Nicholai. “Let me see, what shall you wear for the first shot? It is set in Hong Kong, no?” Her serious concentration on this make-believe was quite charming. She selected a shirt, put it back, chose another, and matched it with a suit. “This, yes? Oui-parfait.”
She handed the selections to Nicholai and ordered him to go change. When he came back from the bedroom dressed as Michel, Haverford had a camera ready. They went out in the garden to get a “blurred, outdoor” background. In what became a painfully tedious afternoon for Nicholai, they repeated this process numerous times, Solange having a wonderful time, however, selecting Michel’s ensembles.
“That was excruciating,” Nicholai said after Haverford finally left.
“It was fun,” Solange answered. “I love fashion, and Michel has a sense, no?”
“You chose all those clothes, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t think I’d let them dress you out of fashion, do you?”
After a dinner of suprêmes de poulet à l’estragon with green beans à la provençale, a dessert of tarte aux poires et à la frangipane, and the requisite espresso, cognac, and cigarette, Nicholai studied the Guibert file. The fiction was impressive in its volume and detail, but Nicholai had no trouble memorizing apparently important trivia such as which tabac Michel favored in Montpellier, his father’s choice in whiskey, or his mother’s maiden name. His mind crammed with such detail, he changed into his gi, went to the garden to perform his kata, bathed, and went to bed.
HIS PROXIMITY SENSE woke him.
During his years in prison he developed an almost extrasensory awareness of the presence of another living being, a radarlike perception of the intruder’s exact distance and angle of approach.
Now someone was in the room.
In the space of a second, his mind ran through the possibilities and he selected the vase on the bedside table as the best, most easily reached weapon. Then he smelled the Chanel No. 5 and felt her presence. Enough moonlight came through the shutters to reveal Solange standing in the doorway, her body more revealed than hidden by the filmy black peignoir.
“Three years is a long time to be without a woman,” she said. “Too long, I think, no?”
Her perfume filled his head as she came to the bed and kissed his mouth, his ears, his neck, his chest, and then slid down. He was dizzy with pleasure as she did delicious things with her mouth and long elegant fingers and it wasn’t long before he gasped, “Solange, please stop. I’m afraid I’ll… and I don’t want to… before -”
Solange stopped, laughed gently, and said, “After three years, mon cher, I think you will recover quickly, no?” She resumed her ministrations and soon he felt the unstoppable wave roll through his body, his back arched like the most powerful samurai bow, and she held him tight with her full lips until he sank back onto the bed.
“Très fort,” she whispered in his ear as she slid up his body.
“Well, after three years…”
She laughed and rested her head on his chest. Her hair felt wonderful on his skin. They rested for a little bit and then he felt himself recovering. “I told you so,” she said as her hand reached down to stroke him. “I want you inside me.”
“Are you…”
“Wet?” She guided his hand for him to feel for himself. “Oh yes, my darling, for weeks now.”
She lowered herself onto him.
Nicholai couldn’t believe her sheer beauty as he watched her rise and fall on him. Her blue eyes shone with excitement, pinpoints of sweat appeared on her long neck, her rich mouth smiled with pleasure. He reached up and caressed her heavy breasts, so different from the delicate Japanese women he had known, and she moaned her approval. Her loveliness, the wet heat of her, wrapped him in pleasure. He took her by the waist and turned her over so that he was on top of her, then pressed his lips into the crook of her neck and thrust into her, steadily and insistently but without hurry.
Vocal in her arousal, she throatily whispered and then shouted the dirtiest of French obscenities as she encouraged him, dug her long nails into his buttocks, and pushed him harder. His sweat mixed with hers, they slid together, and then she announced her petite mort, her hips rose off the bed, she held him inside her and said, “Vous me faites briller. Vous me faites jouir. Come with me. Now.”
Her voice and words sent him over the edge, there was no holding back, and he poured himself into her, then collapsed on her and felt her breasts flatten beneath him. They lay there for quite a while, then he heard her say, “I suppose it would be cliché to want a cigarette.”
Nicholai got up, found a pack, put two cigarettes into his mouth, lit them both, and handed her one.
So lovemaking was added to their daily routine, although the sex was hardly routine.
Solange delighted in dressing up for the boudoir and had a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of lingerie that she enjoyed modeling for him. Nor was Nicholai loath to be the audience for this erotic fashion show, as she changed her hair, her makeup, and even her scent, to suit the outfit. Her taste was exquisite, daringly erotic without ever crossing the line into the burlesque, always stylish, never obvious. Her tastes in bed were eclectic as well, and she gave Nicholai every part of herself, reveled in his taking her. As genteel as she was at the dining table, she was equally, surprisingly earthy in the bedroom.
“You have the mouth of a sailor,” he told her one night without a trace of disapproval.
“But you love my mouth, no?” she answered, and then proceeded to prove to him that he did. Nicholai did love her mouth, her hands, her fingers, sa cramouille, sa rose. He was fast coming to the truth that he simply loved her. One night after a particularly robust lovemaking session, she inhaled her postcoital cigarette and said, “No offense, Michel, but you make love like a Japanese.”
Nicholai was a bit taken aback, but more curious than offended. “Is that bad?”
“No, no, no,” she said quickly. “It is not bad, is just different than… a Frenchman. A bit… comment vous dites… a bit ‘technical,’ no? If you are a Frenchman, you must make love d’une manière plus sensuelle, a bit more like music than science.”
She knew, sadly, that he would soon leave to perform the errand for the Americans. And as a man, he had needs, and would satisfy those needs, perhaps in a brothel. The girls would talk, and if they talked of a Frenchman who made love like a Japanese, it would not do.
“Is this part of my training?” he asked, staring hard at her. He looked hurt. “Are you part of my training?”
“For all your boyish looks,” she said, refusing to lower her eyes in shame, looking right back at him, “naiveté nevertheless does not become you. Are you asking me if I am a whore for the Americans? My darling, we are both whores for the Americans. I fuck for them, you kill for them. Don’t look so hurt, I adore making love to you. Vous me faites briller. You make me shine, no?”
He heard the formal “vous,” as opposed to the more intimate “tu,” and wondered if she perceived their relationship as only business.
In any case, Solange taught him how to make love like a Frenchman.
TWO NIGHTS LATER they tried to kill him.
Nicholai was halfway through a difficult kata, “Tiger Burst Through Bamboo,” when his proximity sense told him that he was not alone in the garden. The first assassin – clad all in black, a wicked dagger in his right hand – dropped down the wall in front of him. Nicholai saw his would-be killer’s eyes focus slightly over his shoulder, so knew that there was another assassin coming up from behind.
The dagger thrust came low where Nicholai expected it. He shifted into a cat stance and swung his right hand in a low, outward crescent, sweeping the knife hand away from his body. Then he stepped in, grabbed the attacker by the collar of his gi and pulled him down, pivoted, and slammed his head into the garden wall. He heard the neck break but didn’t stop to look as he ducked under the hatchet blade that the second assailant swung at his head. Nicholai came up and jammed his left hand, poised into a tiger’s claw, into the man’s eyes, the other into his groin. Dropping his left hand, Nicholai locked the elbow of the arm holding the hatchet and lifted himself onto his toes. The arm snapped like dry wood. The hatchet dropped. Nicholai spun so that his back was to the attacker and he drove an elbow into the man’s solar plexus. He released the broken arm, spun again, and delivered a shuto strike to the carotid artery.
The man dropped to the ground.
Nicholai knelt beside him, felt his pulse, and cursed himself for striking too hard. His skill had not returned to the point where he could precisely calibrate the force of a blow, and the man was dead. This was unfortunate, because he would have liked to question him to find out who had sent him and why.
Clumsy, Nicholai told himself, clumsy and imprecise.
You will have to improve.
He went back into the house and used the telephone to dial the number that Haverford had given him for emergencies. When the American answered, Nicholai said, “There are two corpses in the garden. I imagine you will want to remove them.”
“Stay inside. I’ll have a cleanup team there right away.”
Nicholai hung up. Solange was standing in the doorway, looking at him. She wore a simple white silk robe, held in place by a wide silk belt tied in a bow that begged for tugging. A kitchen knife was clutched in her right hand, held low by her thigh, and her amazing green eyes blazed. She looked to Nicholai as if she were indeed ready to kill someone.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine. A bit more winded than I’d like to be, perhaps.” He wondered at his lack of emotion, then decided that the adrenaline surge had yet to recede and was masking whatever he might feel about his close call, and the killing of two men.
Nicholai looked at the knife in her hand and asked, “Were you going to use that?”
“If I had to,” she answered. “Are they dead?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure.”
“Quite sure.”
Solange walked into the kitchen and came back with two squat glasses of whiskey. “I don’t know about you, but I need one.”
Nicholai took the drink and knocked it back in one swallow. Perhaps, he speculated, I feel a bit more than I thought.
“You are trembling a little,” she said.
“Perceptions to the contrary,” Nicholai answered, “I am not a practiced killer.”
It was true. He had killed Kishikawa-san out of love – something a Western mind would struggle to understand. But that act of mercy could not inure him against the professional dispatching of two sentient beings, who, despite the fact that they tried to kill him first, were still human. As the adrenaline faded, he felt an odd, contradictory mix of elation and regret.
Solange nodded her understanding.
The “cleanup” crew arrived before Nicholai and Solange could finish a second drink. Haverford, uncharacteristically dressed in an untucked shirt and blue jeans, came in through the kitchen door. “My God, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Nicholai answered.
“What the hell happened?” Haverford asked.
Nicholai told him about the assault, omitting the details of his counterattack, only saying that he was sorry to have killed the second man. He could hear the soft sounds of the crew working outside, removing the bodies, wiping up the blood, restoring the pebbled paths to their pristine order. As if, he thought, nothing had ever happened.
The head of the crew came in, whispered something to Haverford, and left.
“They were Japs,” Haverford said.
Nicholai shook his head. “Chinese, or at least in the employ of the Chinese.”
Haverford looked at him curiously.
“The Japanese don’t use hatchets,” Nicholai explained. “The Chinese do, and only Chinese tongs, typically. Besides, no Japanese assassin would have fallen so easily for “The Angry Monk Paints the Wall.” Someone in China wants me – or Michel Guibert – dead.”
“I’ll get on it,” Haverford answered. “And I’ll increase security around here.”
“Don’t,” Nicholai said. “Security will only draw attention. The interesting question is, How did they know where I was.”
Haverford frowned and Nicholai enjoyed his discomfiture, a welcome crack in the wall of his confidence, almost worth a near death to see. The agent said, “We should probably move you.”
“Please don’t,” Nicholai answered. “It’s pleasant here and there’s really very little danger. If the assassins were Japanese, they would try again and again until they succeeded. But the Chinese think differently, they would never repeat a failed stratagem. I’m safe until I leave here.”
Haverford nodded. “Could I have some of that scotch?”
After Haverford and the cleanup crew left, Nicholai and Solange went to bed but did not make love. Neither of them felt particularly sexual after the events of the evening. They lay in silence for a long time until Nicholai said, “I am very sorry. Please accept my apology.”
“What for?”
“For bringing bloodshed into your home.”
Solange could see the shame on his young face. Truly, it was the end of youth, this killing business. She knew that any decent person who still had a soul felt revulsion at the taking of life. And she knew that she couldn’t remove his pain, only share it with him, make him know that he was not a monster, but a flawed human being trying to exist in a flawed world.
“Do you think,” she asked, “I have not seen bloodshed before?”
Her head on his chest, his arm around her, she told him her story.
She was a beautiful child, the pride of the quartier. Even as a little girl her skin, her eyes, her hair, the perfect bone structure of her face made her a treasure. As she grew into adolescence, the men of the neighborhood stole shamed, sidelong glances while strangers in the city at large were not so polite, verbally expressing their desires in graphic terms.
Mama guarded her daughter’s virtue zealously. She gave her a cultured, religious education with the sisters, took her to church every Sunday and on all days of holy obligation. Most of all, she went to great lengths to keep from Solange the knowledge of how her nice clothes and new pairs of shoes were paid for.
There was sometimes a little money left over for Solange to go to the cinema, and she would sit in the lovely, cool darkness, watch the silver fantasies play in front of her, and dream of one day becoming an actress herself.
Everyone said that she was certainly pretty enough.
Her mother disapproved – actresses were little better than whores.
Solange met Louis at a formal dance held between their two schools, and she found him distressingly attractive. He was tall and thin, with wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes, and he was intelligent and charming. The son of a prominent city doctor, he was relatively rich but nevertheless a passionate Communist.
He was also passionate about Solange. He truly cared for her, but could not help but test her virtue as they sat under trees along the banks of the canal, or in the cinema, or even at his house at the rare times his parents weren’t home, or at her apartment when her mother was “out.”
Mama was terrified at the beauty she had become. Proud, yes, but fearful, and she began to lecture her incessantly on the evils of men. “They only want sex,” she harangued, “and your precious Louis is no different. But don’t give in – only a salope sleeps with men without marriage.”
One night Louis walked her past a large four-story house.
“What is it?” Solange asked.
“It’s a brothel,” Louis said, at the very moment the door opened and Solange saw her mother step out to take a smoke. Her black hair was disheveled, her lips were puffy. She lit her cigarette and turned to see Solange staring up at her.
“Go home,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please, Solange, go now.”
But Solange just stood there in shock.
Finally, Louis took her by the arm and led her away.
The Nazis came to the south of France later that year, after the Allies invaded North Africa. German soldiers occupied the city, the police helped them locate Jews, La Résistance organized, and the Gestapo came in to track them down.
The head of the Gestapo in Montpellier was a certain Colonel Hoeger, and one afternoon he stepped out of his headquarters to enjoy the sunshine and ended up enjoying the sight of Solange as well.
“Look at that creature,” he said to his captain. “How old do you think she is?”
“Sixteen? Seventeen?”
“That face,” Hoeger said, “and the body. Find out about her.”
“She’s a child.”
“Look at her. She’s ripe.”
Madame Sette’s had become the brothel of choice for the German occupation forces, and Madame was rapidly becoming a wealthy woman.
As for Solange, she had become used to her mother’s occupation, having learned the sad lesson that what was once unbearable becomes commonplace with time. She and Mama had a civil if emotionally distant relationship, and Marie even came to feel somewhat relieved that she no longer had to disguise what she did. Solange even went to Madame Sette’s from time to time – to bring her mother a meal, or deliver a lipstick she had forgotten, or some other minor errand. The girls took to calling her Little Miss Prim, but gradually with some affection, and every time Madame saw her, she would importune her to consider coming in to make some real money.
Solange, of course, always refused.
She turned more and more to Louis. They spent virtually all their free time together, although Louis was very busy with his studies at Montpellier’s excellent and ancient medical school.
He was busier with the Resistance, even more passionate about his communism now that he lived cheek by jowl with facism. A messenger at first, he rode his bicycle around the city with coded messages hidden inside his medical texts, but it wasn’t long before his intelligence and courage brought him to the attention of the leaders and they began to give him more responsibility.
With them came greater risk, and it terrified Solange. She knew of the torture chambers in the basement of Gestapo headquarters, had heard the firing squads, and carefully avoided the scenes of gallows that had been hastily constructed for captured Resistance. She begged him to be careful.
Of course he said that he would, but he also found the dangers exhilarating, and he returned from missions with an already keen joie de vivre honed to an edge. Louis wanted to live, and that included making love to this beautiful girl whom he did love, very much.
But she turned him down.
“I don’t want to become my mother.”
Solange was bringing her mother a tin of hot soup – Marie had a slight cold – and Colonel Hoeger was sitting in the parlor. His face was flushed with drink as he looked at her with delighted surprise. “Do you work here?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity.” He looked her up and down, slowly and lasciviously, not troubling to disguise his want. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes.”
Hoeger’s tone sharpened. “What is it?”
“Solange.”
“Solange,” said Hoeger, tasting it as he wished to taste her. “A lovely name for a lovely girl.”
Three days later, Hoeger made a direct approach. He waited outside until he saw Solange coming across the square, and then approached her.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle.”
“Bonjour, monsieur.”
“Is there something fascinating on the sidewalk, Solange?”
“No, sir.”
“Then look at me, please.”
She looked up at him.
Apologizing for his rude behavior at the brothel, he now made a direct offer. “Civilized,” he called it. She would not be a whore, but his mistress. He would provide her with a suitable apartment, a budget for clothing and some luxuries, and appropriate – really quite generous – gifts from time to time. In exchange, she would… well, certainly she knew what she would provide in exchange, certainly they didn’t have to go into such details, did they?
Solange slapped him.
Hoeger had not been slapped since he was a boy and he actually glanced around the square to see if anyone had noticed, then remembered himself and said, “You are very rude.”
“As opposed to yourself- sir – who has just made an immoral proposition to a seventeen-year-old girl.”
“You are free to go.”
“Bon après-midi.”
“Bon après-midi.”
Solange was home before she gave in to her terror. She trembled for a good ten minutes, made a cup of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table to compose herself. Louis came over, but she told him nothing of the encounter, lest he do something foolishly gallant.
Two days later, Louis was arrested.
“It was a week from a Zola novel,” Solange told Nicholai now, lying with her head in the crook of his arm. “One of the bad ones.”
She said it ironically, dismissing the possibility of self-pity, but Nicholai heard the deeply buried hurt in her voice as she continued her story.
They caught Louis red-handed – stopped him on his bicycle and found the coded messages in his anatomy text. They hauled him to the cellar of Gestapo headquarters, where Hoeger went to work on him. The handsome boy was quickly handsome no longer. Unfortunately for Louis, he was brave, loyal, and committed, and would not reveal names.
Solange heard about it that afternoon. She went to her room and sobbed, then washed her face, combed her hair and put on the prettiest dress she owned, examined her image, and undid the top two buttons to reveal a deep décolletage. Sitting in front of the mirror in her mother’s bedroom, she applied makeup the way she had seen the whores do it.
Then she walked to Gestapo headquarters and asked to see Colonel Hoeger.
Shown into his office, she stood in front of his desk, made herself look him in the eyes, and said, “If you release Louis Duchesne, I will give myself to you. Now and anytime that you wish. In any way.”
Hoeger looked at her and blinked.
Solange said, “I know that you want me.”
He burst into laughter.
Hoeger laughed until tears ran down his fleshy cheeks, and then he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and got up. “Get out of my office. The nerve of you. Do you think I would risk my career, betray my country, just for the honor of breaking your cherry for you?”
Solange stood her ground. “Can I see him?”
“Certainly,” Hoeger answered. “You can see him hanged. Thursday noon.”
In the square around the gallows where five ropes dangled from the crossbeam, a crowd formed and stood in sullen silence until a German army truck pulled up. Soldiers jumped out the back first, then hauled out a group of prisoners, five in all, who had been sentenced to death.
Louis was the last taken out.
There was nothing romantic about it, nothing heroic. Louis looked badly beaten, limp and in shock, his hands tied behind him as they dragged him up to the gallows. Standing there in just a bloodstained white shirt and dirty brown trousers, he peered out at the crowd uncomprehendingly, and Solange wondered if he was looking for her.
I should have given myself to him, she thought. I should have loved him completely. I should have taken him inside me, wrapped myself around him, and never let him loose.
A soldier went down the line. He finally came to Louis, jerked his head back roughly, put the noose around his neck, then bent down and tied his ankles together. At the colonel’s orders, they put no hoods over the condemned heads.
Louis looked terrified.
Other soldiers formed a line between the crowd and the gallows, lest anyone try to interfere or run up and pull on the legs of the hanged to break their necks and abbreviate their agony.
Solange forced herself to watch.
An officer shouted an order.
There was a crack of metal and wood and Louis dropped.
His neck jerked and he bounced. Then he hung there twisting – his legs kicking, his eyes bulging, his tongue obscenely thrust out of his mouth – as his face turned red and then blue.
Finally – it seemed like forever – he was still.
Solange walked away through the crowd.
She heard a man’s voice say, “He was a hero.”
“What?”
It was Patrice Reynaud, a railway conductor who had been a friend of Louis. Patrice kept walking, but repeated, “He was a hero, your Louis.”
“Your Louis,” Solange thought. If only I had let him be my Louis.
That night she walked over to La Maison de Madame Sette and went into the woman’s little office.
“I am ready to begin work,” she said.
Madame looked at her skeptically. “Why now, chérie?”
“Why not now, madame?” Solange answered. “Why delay the reality of life?”
“Your mother will not like it.”
Marie didn’t. She yelled, she lectured, she wept. “I didn’t want this kind of life for you. I wanted something better for you.”
So did I, Solange thought.
Life decided otherwise.
Madame Sette, of course, was delighted and decided to make an event of it. She spent an entire week promoting the auctioning off of Solange’s virginity. The girl would fetch a very high price.
“I will give you half,” Madame told her. “That is more than I usually give.”
“Half is fine,” Solange answered.
Put it away, don’t squander it, Madame advised her. Put your savings in the bank, work hard, and someday you can open up a little shop of your own. A woman should have her own money in this world, her own business.
“Yes, madame.”
The big night arrived, and the parlor was packed with German officers. Most of the local Frenchmen would have nothing to do with this, and those that would had been intimidated by word from the Resistance that it would not treat gently any man who bid for the virtue of a martyr’s girl.
Solange let Madame dress her for the occasion.
A crude mockery of wedding garb, the white diaphanous gown concealed little, her white lace headpiece was set gently on her hair that fell freely and shining down her back, adding to the image of virginity. Her makeup was slight and subtle, a little pencil to widen her already beautiful eyes, and just a shade of blush appropriate to a young bride.
Solange felt disgust.
Disgust when Madame insisted on examining her to verify her purity, disgust when she was being dressed up for the ceremonial travesty, disgust as she sat in the “bridal suite” and prepared herself for the event, disgust when she was led into the room, which fell instantly silent as men swallowed their lust. Disgust when Madame started the bidding high and it quickly went higher as the men were willing to spend small fortunes to have what they saw beneath the wedding gown.
Hoeger sat silent, his position and authority speaking for him. He let the bidding rise to an unprecedented height, then lifted the index finger of his right hand. The bidding stopped right there. No one, certainly not his subordinate officers, had the nerve to outbid the commander of the city’s Gestapo.
Madame quickly counted three and closed the bidding.
Hoeger took Solange by the arm and led her down the hallway to the “bridal suite.” He stripped off the dress, threw her down on the bed, and took her.
Solange moaned. She groaned in pleasure, called him her man, told him to do it harder, told him it was wonderful, he was wonderful. Said if she only knew, she would have let him before, let him anytime. She bucked and tensed, screamed as she came.
“You beautiful creature,” he panted. “I had no idea.”
She sighed. “So much pleasure.”
He closed his eyes, went back at it, intent on his own pleasure.
She reached under the mattress for the knife that Reynaud had given her, brought it up, and slashed his throat.
The Resistance got her out of the brothel and hid her in the back of a produce truck, then in a small cellar in the slums of Marseille. She was in the tight, dark space for three weeks and thought she might lose her mind before they finally took her out and up into the air, into the light. She still had nightmares.
There was plenty of work for her there, in the brothels frequented by the Germans. Her job was to listen, to pick up bits and pieces, and as a result trains were derailed, messages intercepted, Resistance fighters escaped just before the Gestapo came for them. And if one of the officers was gunned down at his favorite café or outside of his mistress’s place – all the better.
Solange never went home.
In the hungry winter of 1946, she returned to the only work she knew, becoming the mistress of an American officer. When he was rotated home, she found another, then another. This last one begged to marry her and take her back to Texas, but she told him not to be so foolish.
Shortly after, she met an OSS officer who said that they might have use for a woman like her.
With that, Solange finished her story.
Nicholai held her close until she finally fell asleep.
IN THE MORNING, Nicholai summoned Haverford and demanded to know the identity of the person he was meant to terminate. “As I’m a target now myself,” Nicholai said over coffee and croissant, “I think I have the right to know.”
Solange left the house earlier to buy groceries.
Haverford listened, seemed to seek a response in the milk swirling around in his cup, then looked up and answered, “You’re right. It’s time.”
“So?”
“The Soviet commissioner to Red China,” Haverford said. “Yuri Voroshenin.”
The name hit Nicholai like a hard slap, but – and perhaps only thanks to the minor paralysis of his facial muscles – he managed to keep his expression placid as he feigned a lack of recognition and asked, “Why eliminate him?”
“Korea,” Haverford answered.
Egged on by the Soviets, the madman Kim had invaded South Korea and the United States was forced to intervene. When MacArthur’s counterattack pushed to the Yalu River near the border with China, Mao felt that his hand had been forced and sent three hundred thousand troops into Korea.
The United States and China were at war. Worse, the conflict isolated China from the West and forced it to accept Soviet hegemony, thereby creating a solid Communist bloc from the Elbe to the shores of the Pacific.
“We have to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow,” Haverford concluded.
“By assassinating this Voroshenin?” Nicholai asked. “What good will that do?”
“We’ll hand the Russians sufficient evidence to blame the Chinese,” Haverford explained. “The Chinese will, of course, know that they didn’t do it, and conclude that the Soviets sacrificed one of their own in order to blame the Chinese and demand further concessions – perhaps permanent bases in Manchuria.”
It’s a classic Go ploy, Nicholai thought, to sacrifice a line of stones to lure your enemy into a misapprehension of your strategy. Uncharacteristic of Americans, who reveled in the childlike game of checkers. A deeper mind was behind this maneuver. It could be Haverford, but certainly he lacked the position to authorize a killing at this high level.
Who is it, then? Nicholai wondered.
Who is this Go player?
“Tell me about Voroshenin,” he said.
“DISABUSE YOURSELF of the notion that we’re sending you to murder some innocent diplomat,” Haverford told Nicholai.
Yuri Andreovitch Voroshenin was a high-ranking member of the KGB, a fact that the Chinese knew and deeply resented.
“Above all else,” Haverford warned, “our boy Yuri is a survivor.”
He laid out what the CIA knew about Yuri Voroshenin.
Born in St. Petersburg in 1898, the son of a schoolteacher, Voroshenin was a committed revolutionary even as a boy. By the time he was fifteen he had spent time in three Tsarist jails, at seventeen he barely escaped a traitor’s noose and was exiled to Siberia. The Bolsheviks ordered him to join the army in 1914, and he surfaced as a leader of the 1916 mutiny that sent soldiers streaming home from the front.
Haverford took out a photograph that showed a young Voroshenin in an army greatcoat and soldier’s peaked cap. Tall and thin, with the typical wire-rimmed spectacles of the left-wing Russian intellectual, he sported an open, happy grin that was unusual for an earnest revolutionary.
The great year of 1917 found him home, now an agent in the Petrograd division of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage, the VchK, the “Cheka.” Violence was rife in the hungry city – demobilized soldiers shot, robbed, and raped. Mobs looted churches, stores, and the homes of the rich. The wives and daughters of bankers, generals, and Tsarist officials sold themselves as prostitutes to feed starving families.
Nicholai knew all about the Petrograd Cheka.
“You needn’t enlighten me,” Nicholai said. “My mother told me the stories.”
The Cheka began the Red Terror, a war of extermination against its “class enemies,” shooting dozens, sometimes even hundreds of “White” Russians in any single day, without trial or due process. Voroshenin cheerfully participated in the slaughter. “Why bother with a Commissariat of Justice?” he asked once in a party meeting. “Let’s just call it the Commissariat for Social Extermination and get on with it.”
They got on with it.
His tortures became the stuff of nightmares. He tied captured White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces, he shoved prisoners into nail-studded barrels and rolled them down hills, he peeled the skin off captives’ hands to create “gloves” of flesh. His name became a tool that mothers used to frighten their children.
In 1921 he helped suppress the mutiny at the naval base at Kronstad, accomplished with great bloodshed. Then he turned his attention to striking workers in the starving, freezing city. Through the firing squad, the truncheon, and the torture cell he reestablished order, then began tearing down sections of the city to provide fuel for the rest of it. All this activity brought him to the attention of the rising power in Moscow, Joseph Stalin.
“He next shows up in China,” Haverford went on. “In, of all places, Shanghai.”
It was, after all, at Stalin’s insistence that the Nationalists slaughtered the Communists there in 1927, and Uncle Joe thought Chiang Kai-shek could use an adviser experienced in such matters.
Nicholai was just a small boy when this happened, but he nevertheless remembered it. He used to prowl the streets of Shanghai, knew the “Reds” from the “Greens,” and when the shootings, stabbings, and beheadings of thousands of young Reds occurred, it was for him childhood’s end.
“We lose track of him for the next fifteen years,” Haverford said. “No one knows where he was or what he was doing, but it’s a pretty fair bet that he was involved in the Trotsky assassination in Mexico as well as Stalin’s staged murder of Sergei Kirov as a pretext for his great purges of the 1930s.”
The purge turned on Voroshenin himself. The dictator’s paranoia led him to imprison and execute his most gifted and ruthless subordinates, especially those who had stories to tell, and Yuri was tossed into Moscow’s dreaded Lubyanka Prison.
Voroshenin’s career should have ended there, with a bullet in the back of his head. But, as noted, he was a survivor who used all his craft, guile, and courage to survive his interrogations. He became a source of information too valuable to kill, and he sat in his cell for three long years, listening to the screams of less talented men, hearing their executions, and waiting for a moment of opportunity.
“Prison teaches you patience,” Voroshenin later said.
“It does,” Nicholai agreed, to Haverford’s blush.
Hitler opened the prison door when he invaded Russia. Faced with destruction, Stalin could no longer afford to keep his best people locked up. Voroshenin was quickly rehabilitated and released.
Yuri landed on his feet again.
Rather than be sent to the killing grounds of the war against Germany, he used his former connection to the Kuomintang to be assigned back to China, and found himself reunited with Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing. His assignment was not to help the Generalissimo fight the Japanese, but to track down Mao and his Communists, whom Stalin accurately viewed as a potential future rival.
Voroshenin had no problem fighting against his brother Marxists. No longer a true believer, he had lost his faith in Lubyanka, and was now a hardened cynic, believing in the advance of nothing except Yuri Voroshenin. To that end, he would ally himself with anyone, and as easily betray them.
Haverford showed Nicholai another photograph of a khaki-clad Voroshenin standing outside a Daoist temple with Chiang. Bareheaded, his hairline receding into a widow’s peak, his skin pale and drawn from the years in prison, there was still a vitality about him. His shoulders were wide, if a little stooped, and he had certainly put on no weight since his youth. A handsome man, powerful, he loomed over Chiang as both men pretended to study a map for the benefit of the photographer.
“Our man Yuri stayed with the Nats through the whole war and then some,” Haverford said. “When Stalin called all his agents back from China, he was afraid they’d been contaminated by Mao, so he had them purged.”
Again Voroshenin’s head should have been the first on the block, but he was the first to inform on his comrades and became the supervisor, rather than the prime victim, of the purge. Voroshenin personally conducted the interrogations, directed the torture, supervised the executions, in some cases pulling the trigger himself.
And now he was back in China.
“This is the man,” Haverford said, “that Stalin chose to represent him in China.”
It was a deliberate slap in the face, but what could Mao do about it? Isolated abroad, struggling to create a government and a viable economy at home, he needed Russian aid. If that meant swallowing his pride, the Chairman was willing to smile and bow and do it.
For the time being.
Nicholai listened to the biographical sketch of the Russian murderer and torturer, but much of it was redundant. From his mother, the Countess Alexandra Ivanovna, he already knew a great deal about Yuri Andreovitch Voroshenin.
The question was how to accomplish the mission.
Beijing at the start of 1952 was perhaps the most tightly guarded city in the world. The Chinese secret police were everywhere, and the “Order Keeping Committees” – volunteer snitches and informers – were on every block and in every factory.
Worse, foreigners were a rarity in the country. Mao used the Korean War as a pretext to deport “spies” and “agents,” and the very few Westerners who remained were kept under constant surveillance.
“Why do you think that I – as opposed to another one of your ‘assets’ – have a chance to succeed at this?”
The question had been much discussed in rooms at Langley, and now Haverford debated with himself how much of the answer he should share with Nicholai Hel.
“The assignment requires someone who is fluent in Chinese,” Haverford said, “but who could pass for Russian if the moment demanded it.”
“You doubtless have many such people on your payroll,” Nicholai observed.
“True,” Haverford answered. “But in addition to being multilingual, the man must also be brilliant, unflappable, and a trained killer who can do the job without the benefit of a gun or other standard weapon. At this point the list of available candidates gets very short.”
Nicholai understood the thinking. A gun would be very hard to arrange in a police state, and in any case, Voroshenin wouldn’t be likely to let an armed assassin anywhere near him. That made sense, but Nicholai knew that there were other qualifications that narrowed the pool of candidates down to him, and he wondered if Haverford knew of the very personal motivation he had to kill Voroshenin. Certainly Haverford was manipulative enough – he wouldn’t blink at it. But Nicholai doubted that he knew – there was really no way that he could. No, Nicholai thought, he chose me for other reasons.
“You also require,” he said, “a man desperate enough to accept an assignment that has only a slight chance of success, and almost no chance of escape even if he succeeds in the mission. Isn’t that true?”
“Only partially,” Haverford answered. “We’ll have an extraction team standing by to get you out. But the odds are, yes, slim enough to require a man who otherwise has little to lose.”
Well, Nicholai thought, that would be me.
Or “Michel Guibert.”
The identity solved the problem of inserting Nicholai into Beijing. There was no “cover” available as a Russian, because he would instantly be spotted as an imposter. Obviously, he couldn’t be Chinese. An American or British identity was likewise impossible.
But the Guiberts had been particular darlings of the international left since the days of bomb-throwing anarchists with mustaches, and Papa Guibert had paid particular attention to the French Communists in Vichy during the war. So the Guiberts were exactly the type of capitalists that the Communists would tolerate.
And now the Chinese, Haverford explained, had a particular use for the son.
“It’s about Vietnam,” he said.
“More precisely?”
Both China and Russia supported Ho Chi Minh and his insurgency against the French colonial regime in Vietnam. Ho’s Viet Minh troops needed weapons – preferably American as the United States supplied the French and the Viet Minh could rearm themselves with captured ammunition. China possessed a large cache of American arms through weapons captured in Korea, and because the Americans had also armed the Kuomintang, from whom the Communist victors had seized mountains of American weaponry.
“Why can’t the Chinese simply send the guns to the Viet Minh?” Nicholai asked.
China shared a border with Vietnam and the Viet Minh controlled the mountainous area on the frontier. It should have been a simple matter to bring the armaments through the remote terrain to the Viet Minh strongholds.
“They can and do,” Haverford answered. “But it all comes down to money.”
Of course, Nicholai thought.
“The Chinese are cash poor,” Haverford explained. “They’d like to make some dough – especially in foreign currency – from the deal. At the same time, they don’t want to be seen making a profit off the backs of their revolutionary Asian comrades. So you provide a convenient excuse. ‘Gee, we’d love to give you the weaponry, but those slimy Guiberts got to them first. But we can make them sell the guns to you at a price.’ ”
So that was the plan. Nicholai, under the cover of “Michel Guibert,” would be inserted into Beijing to conclude an arms deal with the Chinese, under the pretext of then turning around and selling the guns to the Viet Minh.
“That gets me into Beijing,” Nicholai said, “but how does it get me into, shall we say, ‘operational proximity’ to Voroshenin?”
Haverford shrugged. “You’re the Go master.”
JOHN SINGLETON RECEIVED word of the failed attempt on the asset Nicholai Hel with little surprise and measured satisfaction.
After all, if Hel could be killed so easily he was not the man for the job after all – Yuri Voroshenin would be no easy prey. The fact that Hel had dispatched his would-be killers with apparent ease boded well for the mission.
But Diamond, Singleton thought as he moved a white stone into its new position, is so predictable, and disappointingly so. That, combined with his seeming lack of creativity, created some concern about his suitability for the Indochinese posting.
However, the old Go maxim, “Defeat a straight line with a circle, a circle with a straight line,” held a great deal of truth. Diamond, for all his many shortcomings, was certainly a straightforward type, who at least would not trip himself up by overthinking a situation.
Then there was the “circle,” Haverford, nuanced to a flaw. Singleton was reminded of the old saying that “a liberal is a man who will not take his own side in an argument,” and that certainly described Ellis Haverford. But would he have the courage to choose a course of action and take it?
We shall see, Singleton thought as he turned the go-kang around.
That is the wonderful thing about playing both sides of the board.
You never lose.
DIAMOND SMASHED the wall with his fist.
It hurt.
Examining his scraped knuckles, he cursed again. Two on one, a surprise attack, and the goddamn Chinese screw it up. At least they had the decency to get themselves killed in the process.
A jolt of fear sickened his stomach.
Hel is the real deal. You’ll have to find a better way to get to him.
SOLANGE CAME through the door.
Nicholai got up and helped her put the groceries away.
Haverford noticed the little domestic tableau and it worried him. Due to the previous night’s attempted assassination, they had accelerated the schedule for Hel’s departure. He’d mastered the French dialect, absorbed everything they’d given him in an amazingly short time, and recovered his fitness. It was time to move, and he didn’t want his agent balking now because he’d found love. Although, he admitted, what man wouldn’t fall in love with Solange?
“Did I interrupt something?” she asked.
“No,” Nicholai answered quickly. “Haverford is just dropping off a file for me to read.”
He stressed the “read” to let the American know that he didn’t want to be “briefed” anymore and was capable of digesting the file himself.
Haverford smiled. There was always a power struggle between an operative and his handler; it was to be expected and even encouraged. He was glad to see Hel’s emerging assertiveness – confidence was a good thing in an operative. To a point. But the wise handler knew when to negotiate, when to insist, and when to yield.
“I was just leaving,” Haverford said, getting up from the table. “The croissants were, as always, très délicieux.”
“Merci.”
After Haverford left, Solange turned to Nicholai and asked, “Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“That I was a prostitute.”
The question surprised him. “It is an honorable profession in Japan.”
“It isn’t in France.”
“I’m not French,” Nicholai said. “There’s nothing about you that I find to be anything but a delight, a joy, and an honor.”
Solange came into his arms, kissed him lightly on the neck, and said softly, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“And I with you.” His words surprised him as much as the actual emotion, something he had not felt for years, something he had taught himself never to feel again. It had been his experience that anyone he loved went away, usually through the portal of death.
“Je t’aime; je t’aime; je t’aime.”
“Je t’aime aussi,” Nicholai said, delighted to hear the “tu.” “But what are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” She sighed, her breath warm and moist on his skin. “There is nothing to do about it except to love each other while we have each other.”
They went into the bedroom to do just that.
Nicholai got up while she was still sleeping, went into the kitchen, and found a can of green tea hidden in the back of a cupboard. There is no reason, he thought as the water heated, that Michel Guibert could not have developed a taste for excellent green tea during his years in Hong Kong.
When the water boiled he poured it into the pot, waited a minute, then stepped outside and poured it onto the ground. He repeated the process, then poured the water in for the third time and let it sit, recalling the old and wise Chinese adage regarding the steeping of tea: The first time, it’s water; the second time, it’s garbage; the third time, it’s tea.
Nicholai waited impatiently, then poured the tea into a small cup and sipped. Excellent, he thought. Refreshing in a way that coffee, no matter how good, could never be. He took the tea out into the garden, sat on one of the stone benches, and listened to the water gurgle down the rocks.
Just last night, he thought, I killed two men here and now there is not a trace, as if it never happened. And in a sense it didn’t, in a true Buddhist sense this life is just a dream, a samsara of false perceptions that we are somehow separate from any other being or entities. In killing those men I died myself; in my surviving they live in me. I fulfilled their karma, and they mine. It will be the same with Voroshenin.
The Russian’s karmic consequence had been a long time coming.
Over thirty years.
Nicholai wondered if Voroshenin even remembered, or if he did, even cared. Probably not, Nicholai decided.
Do you even want to go through with this? he asked himself.
True, the Americans are offering me a vast sum of money, a passport, and my freedom, but the temptation is to go in and wake Solange, pack a few things, and run where they cannot find us.
But where, he asked himself, would that be?
You have no passport, no papers, no money. Where and how far could you run if you couldn’t get out of Japan? And in this closed, tight society, where could two round-eyes hide? And for how long? A few weeks, at the most optimistic assessment. And then what? Now that you know the identity of the target, the Americans would have to terminate you.
And Solange, too.
They’ll believe you talked to her, told her everything. While it is usually true that what you don’t know can kill you, in the topsy-turvy world in which I now exist, what you do know can kill you just as easily. If Solange knew the identity of my target, she could be in serious danger.
So there you are, he thought. She is a hostage to your actions.
I cannot allow another person I love to die.
I couldn’t bear it.
But can you do it all? he asked himself. Assassinate Voroshenin and still have a life with Solange? Is it too much to ask in this world?
Perhaps, he thought.
But he decided to try.
Solange came out of the bedroom and into the garden. Her hair was charmingly tousled, her eyes heavy and still sleepy.
Nicholai put the file on his lap and closed it.
“We are keeping secrets?” she asked. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to know.”
She lit cigarettes and handed him one. “I don’t care about whatever men’s business you and Haverford are cooking up. In the end, there is only food, wine, sex, and babies. That’s all anyone really cares about. The rest of it? Silly male games. Go play. Come back and give me a baby.”
“I would like that,” Nicholai said. “Very much.”
“Good. I want to get dinner ready.”
She kissed him on the forehead and went inside.
Nicholai went back to studying the file. He couldn’t have cared less about Voroshenin as a human being, assuming a fact not in evidence, but was deeply interested in him as a target. As such, it was necessary to know how his mind worked – his likes, dislikes, his habits.
In addition to a predilection for sadism, the man also drank, perhaps to excess. But all Russians drank. Nicholai doubted there was a vulnerability there.
The file suggested that he also liked his women – no surprise to Nicholai. Could that present an opening? Possibly, but the “new” Beijing was famously puritanical. The Communists had closed the brothels, and most of the professional mistresses had fled with the Kuomintang. If Voroshenin had a woman in the city, he would keep her well hidden – which suggested possibilities – but would also keep the arrangement very secure.
What else?
Voroshenin played chess – again, most Russians did – but apparently quite advanced, as one would expect. He liked to eat well, he knew his wines, and had developed in his years in China a taste for Beijing opera.
That was about it.
Nicholai closed the file.
SOLANGE WAS AWAKE when Nicholai came into the bedroom.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” he said.
“I know,” Solange said. “I felt it.”
He lay down beside her. She rolled over, laid her head on his chest, and he put his arm around her. “I’ll come back for you.”
“I hope so.”
“I will.”
When he went out the door in the morning, she had only one word for him.
Survive.
Outside, a maple leaf detached from its branch, flickered beautifully in the sunlight, and then fell.