88
“H
OW LONG HAVE
you known my real identity?” he asked Yu.
“Since before you entered Beijing,” Yu answered. He recited Nicholai’s history to him — his birth in Shanghai, his removal to Japan, his killing of Kishikawa, his torture and imprisonment by the Americans.
The Chinese seemed to know it all. Nicholai could only hope that they did not realize the depth of his connection to the late Yuri Voroshenin.
“Am I a prisoner?” Nicholai asked.
“I would prefer to call you a guest.”
“Can the guest get up and leave?”
“The question is academic in any case,” Yu answered. “The reality is that you cannot get up, much less walk. And, even if you could, you have no place to go. They are hunting for you everywhere, Mr. Hel. This might be the only place in the world where you are safe.”
A sadly accurate summation of the reality, Nicholai thought, since the moment I killed Kishikawa-sama. The locations and circumstances change, but the fact does not.
I am a prisoner.
He heard Kishikawa’s voice.
If you have no options, then it is honorable to accept your imprisonment, although you might consider seppuku. But you have options.
What are they?
Nikko, you must find them yourself. Examine the go-kang. When you are trapped and can find no escape route, you must create one.
Again, please, how?
It is your
kang,
Nikko. No one else can play it for you.
“You wanted Voroshenin dead,” Nicholai said, probing.
“Obviously.”
“To create a rift with the Soviets.”
Yu nodded.
“And you rescued me from the American ambush because …”
“How often would we get a chance to obtain an American agent so motivated to cooperate?” Yu asked. “I’m sure you can tell us names, places, methods of operations. After all, you agreed to be rescued.”
Hel had understood the monk’s warning and signaled in turn that he understood, the act of a drowning man reaching out for the rope. Surely he knew it would come with a price.
Nicholai said, “I will tell you nothing.”
“The Americans betrayed you,” Yu answered. “Why would you hesitate to betray them in turn?”
“Their dishonor is their own,” Nicholai responded. “Mine would be mine.”
“How Japanese.”
“I accept the compliment,” Nicholai said. He tried to sit up, but the effort was painful and enervating. “I will not become an informer, but I will force the Americans to honor the arrangement they made with me.”
“And how will you do that?” Yu asked, amused at this wounded man who could barely support his own weight.
Yet there was something in Hel’s eyes that made Yu believe him.
89
“W
HERE IS HE?”
Singleton demanded.
“I don’t know,” admitted Haverford.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alive?”
“Again …”
Diamond didn’t bother to conceal his smirk. Singleton frowned at him and then turned his attention back to Haverford. “You don’t know much.”
“I’m trying to find out.”
“Try harder.”
Haverford thought briefly of defending himself. Voroshenin was dead, apparently at Hel’s hands, and the Chinese and Russians were snapping at each other’s throats. And while Hel had possibly escaped, he hadn’t been found — not by Moscow or Beijing anyway —because there had been no blowback at all. Apparently no one had connected Voroshenin’s assassination to the Company.
“I want him found,” Singleton said. “Do you understand?”
“I
do,” Diamond said, stressing the first-person pronoun and sounding like a sycophantic schoolboy.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Haverford asked.
“Hel’s gone over to the other side, and you know it,” Diamond said. “And I’m not so sure you’re not happy about it.”
“That’s a goddamn lie.”
“You calling me a liar?” Diamond jumped up from his chair.
Haverford stood up. “A liar, a torturer —”
They started for each other.
“This is not your sixth-grade schoolyard. Sit down, both of you.” Singleton waited until both men took their chairs.
My straight line and my circle, Singleton thought. We shall see which one wins. It is a basic law of Go and of life — the side that wins is the side that deserves to win.
Haverford thought of resigning on the spot. He could probably find a job in academia, or in one of the new “think tanks” — there’s a concept — now sprouting like mushrooms in the damp intellectual soil of the greater Washington metropolitan area. The place had, after all, once been a swamp.
But there was unfinished business, so he clamped his jaw tight and listened.
“Assume Hel is out there,” Singleton said. “Lure him in.”
“How?”
“You’re clever young men,” Singleton answered. “You’ll think of something.”
The meeting was concluded.
90
T
HINK LIKE
N
ICHOLAI
H
EL,
Haverford told himself as he left the building for his hotel in Dupont Circle. No easy task, he admitted, as it was probably true that no one else in the world thought like Nicholai Hel.
Well, try anyway.
He ran his thoughts through Nicholai’s options.
Would Hel …
Could
Hel …
Yes, he decided.
Both.
91
“I
’M GOING TO DELIVER
the weapons,” Nicholai said.
It was a bold, even risky move. A breakout maneuver on the
go-kang
that had small chance of success and could only place him in great danger. Still, when one is surrounded there are few choices other than to surrender, die, or break out.
“Please don’t be ridiculous,” Yu answered. “Your cover as an arms merchant was just that, a cover. Not a reality.”
“I saw the rocket launchers,” Nicholai said. “They looked quite real.”
“Props,” Yu answered, “for your little opera. The play is over, Mr. Hel.”
“And yet here you are in Yunnan,” Nicholai answered, “for weeks now, near the Vietnamese border. Perhaps that is mere coincidence, or perhaps you are overly solicitous of my recuperation, but more likely it’s because you intend to take the rocket launchers across the border into Vietnam.”
“Even if that were true,” Yu said, “it hardly concerns you.”
“Let me tell you why it does,” Nicholai said. “I have demonstrated skills that might be very useful. I’m fluent in French, have an established cover as an arms merchant, and I’m a
kweilo,
which would give me certain advantages in the French colonies. So much for my utility, here is my offer: I will deliver the weapons to the Viet Minh and retain the payment as my recompense for services rendered. Once the weapons have been safely delivered, you will provide me with a new identity and documentation. Then we are quit of each other.”
It seemed the perfect solution, Nicholai thought. The Americans, through the gift of the rocket launchers, would unintentionally honor their deal with him, and it would have the added effect of harming their interests.
“You think a lot of your value, Mr. Hel.”
“It is simply an objective evaluation.”
Yu stared at him. “If you reemerge anywhere in Indochina, the Americans will find you.”
“Just so.”
Yu agreed to consider his offer.
The Americans will find me, Nicholai thought when Yu left the room. No, we will find each other, and I will hold Haverford accountable for his treachery.
And then I will find Solange.
92
D
IAMOND PORED
over the Hel file.
God
damn
it, he thought. How could Hel have escaped the trap in the Beijing temple and that Chinese kung-fu son of a bitch who was supposed to have been so good? Yeah, so goddamn good that he let Hel put a bullet in his head and kill the rest of his men as well.
Two swings at Hel, he thought, two misses. First he dispatches the two would-be killers in Tokyo, then the massacre in Beijing.
Three strikes and you’re out, Diamond told himself.
The next try has to connect.
But you have to
find
Hel before you can kill him.
“Lure him,” Singleton had said.
Easy for the old fart to say, a little harder to do. Lure him with what? What bait can you set that would bring Hel in?
Diamond went back to studying the file that Singleton had forced Haverford to turn over. Start at the beginning, he told himself.
Start in Tokyo.
Find the bait that will bring that arrogant half-Jap bastard waltzing in.
93
N
ICHOLAI’S ROOM WAS
pleasant.
Large, airy, made entirely of poles, it sat on stilts, the space below housing chickens and a pig. Nicholai learned that it sat on the edge of a remote Buddhist monastery in the hills of Wulian, high above the Lekang River, and that the nearby villagers were Puman people, an ethnic minority that spoke a Dai dialect but little Han Chinese. He could see the people through the window — the men wore black turbans, the women colorful headscarves with pieces of silver sewn into them.
It was all so different from drab Beijing.
As a further comfort, Yu had acquired all of Guibert’s clothing and personal effects and had them brought to Yunnan. Nicholai particularly appreciated the razor and small travel mirror, and one morning asked for a bowl of hot water so he could shave.
His image in the mirror was a bit of a shock. His skin was pale, his face drawn, the beard gave him the look of a prison camp survivor. Shaving made him look and feel better, but he realized that he would have to start eating regularly to regain his health.
“I want to get up,” he said.
The young monk who had brought the water looked nervous. “Xue Xin says not for five more days.”
“Is Xue Xin here at the moment?”
The young monk comically looked around the room. “No.”
“Then help me get up, please.”
“I will go ask —”
“If you go ask,” Nicholai said, “I will try to get up on my own while you are gone, and probably fall and die as a result. What would Xue Xin say to you then?”
“He would hit me with a stick.”
“So.”
The monk helped him out of the bed. Nicholai tentatively put some weight on the wounded leg. The pain was ferocious, and it started to buckle beneath him, but the monk steadied him and they walked across the room.
Then back again.
After three trips, Nicholai was exhausted and the monk helped him back into the bed.
The next morning he walked outside.
Painful and slow at first, his walk from the village to the monastery became part of a thrice-daily routine as he rebuilt his physical and mental stamina. Making his unsteady way along the narrow, stone-laid paths, he focused on details — unraveling individual birdsong from the cacophony of a score of species, identifying types of monkeys from their incessant chatter and warning screeches, distinguishing plants and vines from among thousands in the verdant forest.
The jungle was reclaiming the monastery.
Its vines cracked the old stones, swallowed columns and stiles, crept over flagstone pavilions like a patient, persistent tide of Go stones on a board. Yet statues of Buddha peeped through the vegetation, his eyes content with the knowledge that all things change and all physical matter inevitably decays.
The discipline of the walk was good for Nicholai’s mind, and every day the pain lessened and his strength returned until he could walk with strength and confidence. His spirit recovered as well, and soon he began to think about the future.
He almost tripped over the monk.
Xue Xin was on his hands and knees with a small blade, carefully trimming vines away from a stone path that led to a modest stupa. The monk wore a simple brown robe tied at the waist with a belt that had faded almost to white.
He looked up and asked, “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Xue Xin slowly got to his feet and bowed. Nicholai bowed deeply in return.
“You don’t bow like a Frenchman,” Xue Xin said.
“I was raised in China,” Nicholai answered. “Later in Japan.”
Xue Xin laughed. “That explains it. The Japanese, they like to bow.”
“Yes, they do,” Nicholai agreed.
“Would you like to help?” Xue Xin asked.
“Forgive me,” Nicholai said, “but it seems an impossible task.”
“Not at all. Every day I clean each day’s growth away.”
“But it grows back,” Nicholai said. “Then you just have to do it again the next day.”
“Exactly.”
So Nicholai took to helping Xue Xin with the repetitive task of trying to keep the path clear. They met every morning and worked for hours, then stopped and took tea when the afternoon rain slashed down. Nicholai learned that Xue Xin was an honored guest at the monastery.
“They put up with me,” Xue Xin said. “I work. And you?”
“I don’t know if I am a guest here or a prisoner,” Nicholai answered truthfully, although he left it at that.
“As in life itself.” Xue Xin chuckled. “Are we its guest, or its prisoner?”
“As life dictates, I suppose.”
“Not at all,” Xue Xin answered.
“What do you mean?”
“It has stopped raining,” Xue Xin observed in response. They went back to work on the path.
The next day Xue Xin observed, “You attack the vines as if they are your enemy.”
“Are they not?”
“No, they are your allies,” Xue Xin answered. “Without them, you would not have a useful task to perform.”
“I would then have another useful task,” Nicholai answered, annoyed.
“With another set of ally-enemies,” Xue Xin said. “It is always the same, my Eastern-Western friend. But, by all means, if it makes you feel better, attack, attack.”
That night, lying in his
kang
, lonely and missing Solange, Nicholai had a crisis of the mind and soul. Raised as he was, he was familiar with basic Buddhist philosophy — only the unfamiliar would call it a religion, or the Buddha a god — that all suffering comes from attachment, that we are prisoners of our longings and desires that keep us bound to the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. He knew the Buddhist belief that these longings make us take negative actions — sins, if you must — that create and accumulate bad karma that must be ameliorated through the lifetimes, and that only enlightenment can free us from this trap.
He got up, took his flashlight, and made his way to Xue Xin’s cell. The monk was in full lotus position, meditating.
“You wish to trim vines by moonlight?” Xue Xin asked. “Very well, but do it without me, please.”
“I want my freedom.”
“Then trim vines.”
“That is glib,” Nicholai answered. “I expect more from you than Zen riddles.”
“You are suffering?”
Nicholai nodded.
Xue Xin opened his eyes, exhaled a long breath as if to reluctantly end his meditation, and then said, “Sit down. You cannot find enlightenment, you can only be open to it finding you. That’s
satori.”
“And why you chose it as a code word,” Nicholai said. “Back in Beijing.”
“You needed to see things as they really were,” Xue Xin answered. “Until then, there was no helping you.”
“If you cannot find
satori,
how—”
“It might come in a drop of rain,” Xue Xin continued, ignoring the question, “a note from a faraway flute, the fall of a leaf. Of course, you have to be ready for it or it will pass unnoticed. But if you are ready, and your eyes are open, you will see it and suddenly understand everything. Then you will know who you are and what you must do.”
“Satori.”
“Satori,”
Xue Xin repeated. Then he added, “If our thoughts imprison us, it stands to reason that they can also set us free.”
Yu came to see him the next morning.
The Chinese had accepted his offer.