“What do I do when I get to Chongqing?”
“You will be contacted.”
Nicholai looked skeptical. In truth, he couldn’t care less, but the role had to be played out to the end. “You told me you would give me an exact location.”
“I’m afraid that is not possible at the moment,” Yu said. “Don’t worry. We wouldn’t cheat you.”
“It’s a long train trip to Chongqing,” Nicholai answered. “I don’t want to run into some accident. Or find myself wandering about the city and not hearing from you.”
“I give you my word.”
“I gave you my money.”
Yu smiled. “Again, it always comes back to money.”
“I didn’t hear that you declined the payment.”
“What will you do on your last night in Beijing?” Yu asked.
“I’m going to the opera.”
“An imperial relic.”
“If you say so.” Nicholai stood up. “If I get to Chongqing and do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, I will go to the Viet Minh and explain that they were cheated by the revolutionary comrades in Beijing.”
“Comrade Guibert, you are an arms merchant…”
“I am.”
“So you will sell these weapons to our Vietnamese comrades.”
“Yes.”
“For a profit.”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
Yu frowned. Torn between candor and courtesy, he finally said, “I do not understand how a man can live without ideals.”
“It’s easy when you get used to it,” Nicholai answered.
“And it does not bother you,” the young colonel said, “that these weapons might be used to kill your own countrymen?”
“I have no country,” Nicholai said, realizing that this was a rare statement of truth.
“The people are my country,” Yu said with practiced conviction.
Nicholai looked at his fresh face, aglow with idealism. With any luck, he thought, he’ll have time to grow out of that.
He walked out of the office and the building.
52
EMILE GUIBERT LEFT his mistress’s flat in Hong Kong’s Western District.
In a nice part of town, the flat was expensive-merde, la femme was expensive – but both well worth it. A man comes to a certain age and success, he deserves a little comfort, not a tawdry assignation in some “blue hotel” over in Kowloon.
He decided to walk to his club for his afternoon pastis. It was a pleasant day, not overly humid, and he thought that he could use the exercise, although Winifred had given him quite the workout.
A lovely girl.
A Chinese pearl, Winifred, delightful in every aspect. Always beautifully dressed, beautifully coiffed, always patient and eager to please. And not some foulmouthed salope, either, but a young lady of refinement and some education. You could have a conversation with her, before or after, you could take her to a gallery, to a party, and know that she wouldn’t embarrass herself or you.
Winifred was the new love of his life, in fact, a new lease on life itself, the very renewal of his youth.
Lost in this reverie, he didn’t notice the three men come in. One stepped around him toward the elevator, the other went to check his mail at the boxes along the opposite wall. The third barred the doorway.
“Excuse me,” Guibert said.
He felt a forearm come around his throat and a cloth held against his face.
53
HAVERFORD SAT in the “situation room” in the Tokyo station and finished his coded cable to Singleton in Langley.
ALL IN PLACE. + 6 HRS. ADVISE PROCEED OR ABORT.
Part of him still hoped that Singleton would call the whole thing off. It was so risky from so many angles. Fail or succeed, Hel could be captured. If captured, he might talk. If he talked, Kang would quickly wrap up the whole Beijing network, from the White Pagoda to St. Michael’s to the Muslims in Xuanwu. Liu could be terminally weakened and China forced even deeper into the Soviet orbit.
“Great rewards demand great risks,” Singleton had said.
Fine, Haverford thought.
In fact, everything was in place.
The extraction team was embedded in the mosque, its leader had successfully been infiltrated into the country. A string of “sleeper alerts” about a Chinese attempt on Voroshenin’s life had been successfully planted into the Soviet intelligence services through double agents and would be triggered after his assassination. A similar string – indicating that the killing was a disinformation plot by the Soviets and laying the blame on an apparatchik named Leotov – had been laid with the Chinese.
As for the assassination itself, Hel had done a brilliant job of luring Voroshenin onto the killing ground. Hel was fully briefed on the site, the opportune moment of the opera, and his “escape route.”
Haverford looked at his watch, a graduation gift from his old man. Five hours and fifty minutes until the opera commenced. An hour or so after that, the termination.
The train was in motion.
Nothing could stop it now, unless Hel backed out – which he wouldn’t – or Singleton called it off, which was unlikely.
Still, Haverford hoped he would and sat waiting for the “abort” cable.
54
VOROSHENIN SAT by the phone.
The damn thing was quiescent and the clock not his friend. Barely three hours now until his appointment with Hel.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that “Guibert” was Hel and the more concerned he became that whatever Hel’s assignment with the Americans, he had really come on a mission of vengeance.
If this were Russia or one of the Eastern European satellites, he would simply have the young man killed. Or if it were a city in Western Europe, he could arrange for his quiet disappearance. Even in China, just a few years ago, a few coins and a whisper in the right ear and the young Hel would be fish food by now.
But not in China these days. Even with the Soviets’ enormous influence, Beijing wouldn’t easily tolerate an unsanctioned killing on its territory. There would be an incident, and an incident could very well send him back to a cell in Lubyanka.
Better there than dead, though, he thought, fingering the pistol he had slipped into his belt that morning before leaving his quarters. If it is Hel, and if he does intend to kill me for some fancied transgression against his slut of a mother, I do not have to play the sacrificial lamb.
They say he killed that Jappo general with a single strike to the throat.
Well, let him try.
I have three bodyguards, all trained in judo, all armed. And if somehow he gets through them… Voroshenin touched the gun butt again and felt reassured.
But why is my hand shaking? He took another sip of vodka. When this is over I shall have to do something about the drinking, he thought. Perhaps go off to one of those spas in the mountains. Clean air, exercise, and all that.
Hopefully it won’t come to my shooting Hel, he thought. Hopefully they will have picked up the elder Guibert, sweated him, and made him admit that his real son died in that car crash. Then I will not have to worry about it at all. I can enjoy the opera knowing that young Hel will be singing a different kind of aria, to a tune of Kang’s composition.
But ring, damn phone.
55
THE OLD MAN WAS tougher than he looked.
“I have met the Sûreté,” he told them, “the Gestapo, L’Union Corse, the Green Gang. What do you bande d’enfoirés have to show me that I haven’t already seen?”
They threatened to kill him.
He shrugged. “I’m old. I take one decent shit every three or four days, get one good hard-on a week, if I’m lucky. I sleep three hours a night. Be my friends, kill me.”
They threatened to hurt him.
“What can I tell you that I haven’t told you?” Guibert answered. “You show me pictures, I’ve told you, yes, that is my worthless son. The one who thinks that money squirts out of chickens’ asses and that you should always hit on sixteen. Hurt me.”