42
V
OROSHENIN SET DOWN
the file.
Staring out the window, he forced himself to focus on the current applications and not drift into the realm of memory.
The reports, many of them copies of old and handwritten documents, were unanimous in the opinion that the Countess Alexandra Ivanovna had fled Russia in 1922, but that much Voroshenin already knew. Apparently she took the quite common eastern route, through Manchuria and into then wide-open China, where she was reputed to have settled in Shanghai. Although she had all her household possessions, she was otherwise penniless — but, again, Voroshenin knew that — and survived by using her wit, beauty, and seductive skills to charm a series of wealthy expatriates and adventurers.
Voroshenin had no doubt about her seductive powers, having experienced them himself. The memory of her lush body, satin skin, and …
According to the reports, Ivanovna had seduced a German nobleman, become pregnant by him, and then refused the pro forma offer of marriage from the young Keitel zum Hel. Sometime around 1925 or ‘26, she gave birth to a son, whom, unreconstructed aristocrat that she was, she christened Nicholai.
Nicholai Hel, Voroshenin noted, was almost precisely the same age as Michel Guibert. It was a coincidence, but the men Voroshenin knew who believed in coincidence were all dead men.
Such as zum Hel, who had died at Stalingrad.
Ivanovna disappeared from intelligence reports until 1937, when the Japanese occupied Shanghai and her house was commandeered, literally, by the Japanese general, Kishikawa. The cited informants salaciously repeated gossip that the relationship became something a bit more than hostess and hosted, and Voroshenin felt an unexpected twinge of jealousy, remembering afternoons in …
The countess might very well have made herself vulnerable to charges of collaboration had she survived the war, but she died of natural causes.
But what of the son? Voroshenin wondered.
On the subject of Nicholai Hel, the files had nothing more to offer. The boy simply disappeared from the record, which was not unusual, Voroshenin reassured himself. In the chaos that was wartime Asia, hundreds of thousands of people simply disappeared.
Now, as Voroshenin sat in his office at the Russian Legation, he wished that he
had
ordered Ivanovna to be executed — or done it himself — before the bitch could spawn.
But is it possible?
Is it possible that this Guibert is Hel, come for his vengeance?
Just when I am on the verge of making my escape?
43
T
HEY TOURED ALL
the major sights.
Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, the Bell and Drum Towers, and Beihai Park.
“Which you’ve already seen,” Chen remarked.
He was relieved when Nicholai suggested that they go to Xidan Market to sample the street vendors’ wares. It was bitterly cold now, in the gloaming dark of late afternoon, and they paused by the open braziers and trash-can fires to warm their feet and hands as they wandered through the
hutongs
of Xidan. During one such hiatus Nicholai finally learned that the driver’s name was Liang Qishao and that he was a Beijing native, as he treated both men to fried dough cakes, mugs of hot green tea, scorched sausages, roasted chestnuts, and bowls of sweet porridge.
Nicholai enjoyed the outing, a colder and somewhat tamer version of his youthful forays into the seedier parts of Shanghai, and the common food was as delicious as anything served in the finer restaurants.
Sated, he said to Chen, “Now I would like to go to church.”
“To church?”
“A Catholic church,” Nicholai clarified. “I am French, after all. Do any survive in Beijing?”
Liang nodded. “Dongjiaomin. ‘St. Michael’s.’ In the Legation Quarter.”
“Could you take me there?” Nicholai asked.
Liang looked to his boss.
Chen hesitated, then nodded.
“All right.”
The church was lovely.
Nicholai was not a devotee of religious architecture, but St. Michael’s had an undeniable charm, its twin Gothic spires rising above the otherwise low skyline. A statue of the Archangel Michael stood above the two arched doorways.
Chen had him dropped off on the east side of the building, off the main street, and neither he nor Liang accompanied him through the iron gate into the courtyard. Nicholai enjoyed the rare moment of privacy before going inside.
The interior was relatively dark, lit only by candlelight and the dim glow of a few low-wattage wall lamps behind sconces. But the fading afternoon sun lit the stained-glass windows with a subtle grace, and the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful.
As Solange had tutored him, Nicholai dipped his fingers in the small well of holy water and touched his forehead and shoulders, making the sign of the cross. He walked down to the altar, knelt in front of the votive candles, and said a prayer. Then he retreated to the pews and waited for someone to come out of the confessional booth.
She was a Chinese woman, her head covered in a black scarf, and she looked at Nicholai and hurried out, frightened. He waited for a moment, remembering the words Solange taught him, and then went in and knelt in the confessional and said in French, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
He could barely make out the priest’s face through the screen in the darkened booth, but it looked Asian.
“What is your name, son?”
“Michel.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
Nicholai recalled the number called for. “Forty-eight days.”
“Go on.”
Nicholai confessed a precise list of “sins,” in precise order — lust, gluttony, dishonesty, and lust again — Haverford’s small joke. When he had finished, there was a short silence and the priest’s face was replaced with a piece of paper.
“Can you see?” the priest asked. He turned up the lamp a bit.
“Yes,” Nicholai said, studying the floor plan of the Zhengyici Opera House. A certain box was circled in red.
He memorized the plan — the doorways, stairs, the halls — then said, “I have it.”
The priest’s face came back into view. “Your sins are forgiven you. Ten Hail Marys, five Apostles’ Creeds, and an Act of Contrition. Try to curb your lust. God be with you, son.”
Nicholai left the confessional, returned to the altar, knelt, and said his prayers.
44
V
OROSHENIN SAT
and thought.
There was something about the name Kishikawa.
A few minutes later, he thought he recalled something and got on the phone. Half an hour later, he was on the line to Moscow, in touch with an old colleague, Colonel — now General — Gorbatov.
“Yuri, how are you?”
“In Beijing, if that answers the question.”
“Ah. To what do I owe —”
“Does the name Kishikawa mean anything to you?”
“I was the Soviet part of the joint Allied prosecution of Japanese war criminals outside of Tokyo back in ‘48,” Gorbatov answered. “Kishikawa was my biggest fish. Why do you ask?”
“Did you execute him?”
“We were going to,” Gorbatov said. “Didn’t get the chance.”
“Why not?”
“It was extraordinary, actually,” Gorbatov said. “Quite the story. There was this young man who worked as a translator for the Americans and was somehow a friend to Kishikawa. Actually he was the son of a Russian aristocrat … hold on … it’s coming to me … Ivanovna. A countess, no less.”
“Do you remember his name? The young man’s?”
“He was quite a memorable chap. Very self-possessed —”
“His name, Piotr?”
“Hel. Nicholai Hel.”
Voroshenin actually felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “What happened to the general?”
“That’s the extraordinary part,” Gorbatov answered. “Young Hel killed him. In his cell. Right in front of the guards, some sort of Japanese strike to the throat. Apparently he wanted to save him the shame of hanging.”
Voroshenin felt his own throat tighten. “Is this Hel in our custody?”
“No, the Americans took him. We were happy to see him go, believe me.”
“Do we know what happened to him?”
“I don’t,” Gorbatov said. “Glad to wash my hands of it. Very spooky, the whole thing, if you ask me. On which subject, why are you asking, Yuri?”
“A favor, Piotr?” Voroshenin asked. “Forget I called?”
He hung up the phone.
45
N
ICHOLAI PUSHED A CHAIR
against the wall to create some space in his room, then he stripped down to his shorts and did twenty repetitions of the demanding
hoda korosu
“Caged Leopard”
kata.
He selected this particular form because it stressed close-in fighting — precise strikes that demanded the buildup of force at short range. Starting with the entire room, he performed the
kata
in increasingly smaller circles, until by the end he barely moved his feet as he fought in the tightening bamboo cage of his imagination.
Although the form included brutal elbow and knee strikes, its principal feature was its unique “leopard paw” hand posture, the fingers bent at the second knuckle but not closed to make a complete fist. The striking surface was therefore thin, just the second knuckles, intended to penetrate a narrow space.
Precision was key.
That, and the concentration of force, and Nicholai practiced until he could generate explosive power in a strike that traveled just two inches before striking its target. He thought he might have as much as six inches to two feet in the actual situation, but didn’t want to allow himself the mental leisure of that luxury.
Physically exhausted but mentally invigorated when he finished, Nicholai sat on the floor, pulled himself into a rigid meditation posture, and envisioned the plan of the Zhengyici Opera House.
He had the floor plan perfectly in mind, and now he worked from the box Voroshenin had reserved, out the hallway, and down a set of stairs. A left turn would take him into the main part of the theater, then into the lobby and out the main doors. But a right turn at the bottom of the stairs led to another short corridor and a door that would lead to the backstage area.
At that point, he could turn right to go backstage or left into the alley behind the theater.
So there it was, and he mentally walked through the escape route. Out of the box, left down the hallway, down the stairs, right down the hallway, left out of the building. He “walked” it twenty times in his mind before adding the next mental level.
Obstacles.
First would be Voroshenin’s guards, but if he performed the strike properly, they would not know anything was wrong for another crucial minute. But he had to consider the possibility of having to fight his way out. There was no way to know how the guards would be positioned, so that would have to be improvised on the spot. But that was the purpose of kata, to train the body to react instantly to any threat, without the fatal necessity of thought.
So he dismissed the guards from his mind.
The hallway outside the boxes should pose no problems. There might be Chinese police, but if the killing of Voroshenin raised no outcry, he should simply be able to walk past them on his “way to the toilet.”
But he mentally slowed his pace, “walking” casually, not as a man who has just killed, but as one who simply needed to empty his bladder.
He walked down the stairs and took a right. At the end of the hallway was a door to the backstage, and there would almost certainly be an employee of the theater, a doorman, to bar the way of adoring fans.
Killing the man would be easy.
But killing the innocent doorman would be a shameful dishonor, out of the question, so now Nicholai mentally rehearsed a nonlethal blow to the side of the neck, to the carotid artery, to disable but not kill. He threw the strike, lowered the man to the floor, and opened the door.
The next door was just to his left, and he stepped out into the cold night air.
Simple, he thought, then chuckled at his self-delusion.
Simple,
if
you get within lethal proximity to Voroshenin.
If
you perform the perfect strike that renders him quietly dead while still sitting up in his seat.
If
the guards notice nothing amiss.
If
you don’t have to kill three more men and then fight your way through the Chinese police.
If all of it goes your way, it’s simple and easy, but those are a lot of
ifs.
Small wonder Haverford had given him a one in a hundred chance of success and survival.
And if
not?
he asked himself.
If not, then that is your karma, your “joss” as the Chinese would have it, and you will be killed.
Are you prepared for that?
Yes.
Kishikawa’s words came back to him.
When one is prepared to die, that is settled. There is then only the action to consider. Think then only of success, because failure will take care of itself.
Nicholai sat for another hour and envisioned the entire operation, step by step, going perfectly. He got up, coaxed hot water from the taps, and bathed. Then he dressed and went down into the lobby, where Chen was waiting to inflict more hospitality on him.
46
T
HE ACROBATS WERE
wonderful.
Superb athletes, they performed amazing feats of strength, balance, and courage. It all brought back to Nicholai happier childhood days in Shanghai, going to the street circuses and marveling at the performers.
The show tonight was held under a huge tent, dangerously warmed with gas heaters. The floor was pounded dirt and the audience — even the important officials and foreign guests such as Nicholai — sat on rough wooden benches, ate peanuts and tossed the shells on the ground, but it all added to the ambiance.
The other difference was in terms of theme — the acrobats of Nicholai’s childhood had been colorfully dressed as kings, generals, courtesans, monkeys, dragons, and tigers and performed their tricks to ancient folktales. The performers tonight were clad in PLA uniforms and arranged their tricks around heavy-handed political tableaus such as “The PLA Liberates the People from the Evil Imperialists,” or “The Peasants Successfully Struggle Against the Landlord,” or the ever piquant, oh-so-whimsical “Dijuan Factory #10 Produces a Record Annual Output of Ball Bearings.”
Still, the acrobatics were fantastic and entertaining, even wedged into the relentless propaganda. If the costumes lacked color, the performers did not, and Nicholai found himself absorbed in admiration of their skill. They tumbled, did double somersaults, swung from the tops of bamboo poles, balanced on wires, created impossibly high human towers.
“Amazing, aren’t they?” Voroshenin said in French as he stepped over the bench and squeezed between Chen and Nicholai. “Sorry.”
A somewhat sorry-looking man stood behind Voroshenin, and Nicholai noticed that the Russian didn’t bother to offer him a seat. He was clearly an underling of some sort, but not, judging by his spindly frame, a bodyguard.
Nicholai turned and introduced himself. “Michel Guibert.”
“Vasili Leotov.”
“ ‘Dijuan Factory #10’ is one of my all-time favorites,” Voroshenin observed, ignoring the introductions, and Nicholai couldn’t tell if he discerned irony in his tone. Certainly he could discern the vodka on his breath.
“It’s superb,” Nicholai said.
The circus ring became a sea of red, as some of the performers unfurled enormous flags, then turned them flat as other acrobats used them to leap from one flag to a higher one to a higher one, as if they were climbing the sky on the red clouds of dawn. The audience gasped as the final performer reached the pinnacle. Steadying himself with one hand on a skinny bamboo pole, he used the other to pull a final flag from inside his jacket, and waved it as all the actors sang “We Rise Ever Higher on the Wings of Chairman Mao.”
“Soon,” Voroshenin said, “there will be no art, no grace or charm in this country. Only ‘Mao thought.’ It will be a wasteland.”
“Surely you’re having a joke on me.”
“It will be dull as the proverbial dishwater,” Voroshenin added. He tilted his head toward Leotov, still standing over his shoulder. “Dull as this one, if that’s possible.”
Nicholai felt embarrassed for Leotov, slid over on the bench as far as he could, and asked, “Wouldn’t you care to sit down?”
“He wouldn’t,” Voroshenin interjected. “He is as you see him, a post. Besides, if you aren’t bored enough already, you soon would be with him as a companion. His conversation is as vapid as his face, which strains credulity, I understand. I mean, look at the fellow.”
Leotov’s humiliation was palpable, but he said nothing. Then Voroshenin leaned in toward Nicholai and whispered, in Russian, “Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled.”
Nicholai felt the insult burn, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m
sorry,” Voroshenin said. “I lapsed into Russian there for a second. One forgets sometimes what country one is in.”
But had there been the slightest blink? Voroshenin asked himself. The slightest glimmer of self-consciousness in the eye?
Nicholai wondered the same thing. He fought to keep the fury off his face as he asked, “But what did you say?”
Peering back into those green eyes, Voroshenin switched to French. “Just that I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.”
“No more than I.”
“I hope you can still come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Cymbals and gongs clashed as the voices rose to a climax.
The two men held their gaze.