Nagin squared his shoulders and faced the admiral. “If Tian wants to take it that far, we’ve had a long time to get ready for it.”
Pollard smiled. “So have they.”
CHAPTER 7
Pioneer owed his freedom to the habit of catching his mistakes before he made them. He controlled his thoughts with discipline that a monk would have coveted and he always thought twice before moving once. Though he knew it wasn’t true, he assumed the enemy would never make an unforced error and that only by doing the same could he survive. He had conditioned himself to settle for winning by stalemate, so it had never occurred to him that misfortune would stalk his enemy the way it had always stalked him.
He’d come to Jingshan Park to clear his mind. It was a more sultry day than usual for Beijing’s winters when he arrived, and others had flocked to the park to enjoy the warmth. He found a group of older men standing near the Pavilion of Everlasting Spring — not living up to its name this season — practicing the art of water calligraphy on the cement sidewalk stones near the gardens. Each man held a brush with a white handle long enough for the horsehair tip to touch the ground. They would dip the instrument in water, roll the end on the ground until it came to a fine point, and write pictograms on the stone walkway. It was a practice thought to stimulate the mind, and Pioneer found it calming to watch. He was no artist, but when one of the elderly men had offered him a turn, he took the brush without protest and joined in the craft. His unnamed patron left him the brush, the chill in the air finally reaching his old bones and forcing him to go home for some relief.
Pioneer’s characters weren’t elegant. There was such a thing as sloppy Chinese handwriting, but artistry wasn’t the point. He stayed for hours, finding it easy to lose himself in the hobby, and he paid little attention to the crowd of tourists and locals that he and the other men drew. He wasn’t a natural showman. Espionage had taught him to shun public attention, but he felt very peaceful at the moment and he wasn’t engaged in an operational act, so there was nothing illegal for anyone to see. Some of their spectators watched them for only a few minutes before moving on; others stayed for an hour or more despite the chill. There was more than enough artwork for them to see. The characters would have disappeared quickly during any other season. A warmer sun would have evaporated the water almost as fast as they were written, but that was not the case today. The temperature fell as the evening approached, and the ground grew colder than the air. The wet pictographs remained, forcing Pioneer and the others to move down the sidewalk to keep a clean canvas in front of them, the crowd moving with them. Finally, the cold became too much for him and Pioneer handed the brush to another old man and walked north to Lotus Lane, a strip along the south shore of Qianhai Lake lined with restaurants and bars. He began searching for something warm to drink. There were a number of coffeehouses, and Pioneer had developed a taste for the Western brew.
In retrospect, the man on the bicycle should have struck Pioneer as being out of place. Normally he was observant enough to notice such things, but his focus on the water calligraphy had been total and he hadn’t seen the man ride past him in Jingshan Park three times. As Pioneer entered the pedestrian-only zone of Lotus Lane, the man followed behind him and attempted to dismount his bicycle before it came to a complete stop. The front wheel hit an icy patch on the road and the bicycle shot out from under him as the cyclist put his foot down to catch himself. His shoe landed on the same black ice and went sideways, and its owner collapsed in an ungraceful heap, taking a pair of nearby pedestrians with him. His leg broke under his weight in two places and he cried out in shock at the sharp pain. One of the pedestrians, a woman, shouted in surprise as the bicycle struck her behind the knees, pitching her forward onto her face. Her reactions were slowed by the several drinks she’d had midafternoon, and her face smashed into the concrete, breaking her nose with a cracking noise that Pioneer could hear. The second victim, a man, stumbled as the woman struck him on the way down, throwing him forward onto the decorative cement rail to his right. He caught himself before he went over but couldn’t get his own footing on the ice and fell to the ground bruised but still luckier than the other two.
Pioneer turned toward the ruckus, not fast enough to see the accident, but quickly enough to see the full aftermath. The woman was lying on her stomach in shock, blood streaming from her broken nose. He saw the man lying near the rail, a look of pain on his face but trying to get to his feet. The cyclist was clutching his leg, which was bent at an unnatural angle that made Pioneer sick. Without thinking, he moved toward the man to help him. The man rolled onto his side, and Pioneer saw a two-way radio fall from his coat. It was a Motorola, black, somewhat larger than the kind that a tourist might have for personal use, and was attached by wire to a clear acoustic tube speaker that it had ripped from the cyclist’s ear on its way to the ground. The man tried to grab for the radio and earpiece but they were out of reach, and then he made the mistake that fully destroyed his cover.
Pioneer leaned toward the downed man. The cyclist saw him approaching and froze. He was a junior officer who lacked experience, and his panic was strong enough to override the few months of training he did have. His instincts told him to avoid contact with the target — usually the right response, but not now at a moment when the target was entirely focused on him. The officer jerked away, exactly the wrong move for a crippled man in need of immediate help. The cyclist realized his mistake and made a second by looking directly at Pioneer to see if the target had penetrated his cover, as if the earpiece hadn’t been enough. The clear plastic coil would have screamed security service in any country.
Pioneer looked directly at the crippled man’s face and saw… recognition. He was quite sure they had never met. Pioneer’s memory for faces was good. It was the necessary by-product of years of counter-surveillance practice, but the injured man’s look settled the question in Pioneer’s mind as to who he was. Pioneer reflexively held his own features rigid to show nothing in return. His mind sorted the possible responses and only one fell out that would preserve any hope of his continued survival at all.
He retrieved the radio and earpiece and held them out to the man.
The cyclist’s face showed as much surprise as pain as he took them from his prey. It was not an act he would have expected. Maybe this target hadn’t figured out that he belonged to the MSS? Was that possible?
Pioneer wasn’t nearly stupid enough for that, though he didn’t know that the woman with the broken nose and the man by the railing were MSS as well, as were six other people in the immediate vicinity. Pioneer helped the cyclist to stand on his one good leg and moved him inside to a bar ten feet away, where he could at least be warm while he waited for medical assistance. He retrieved a rag with ice from the bartender and returned outside to the woman, who had been helped to a sitting position by her MSS partners. Her coat was ruined by the bloodstains and Pioneer feared she would faint if she took a look down at herself. He gently tilted her head back and applied the ice, then helped her stand and moved her into the bar to sit next to her partner.