If the Buddhists were right, Kang would spend long ages in bardo, the limbo-like stage between death and rebirth, before returning to the earth for a lifetime of suffering.
Now Nicholai concentrated on his breathing, on attempting to recuperate his strength. He felt it slowly coming back, but whether it would be enough, and in time, was a real question.
The car arrived at the opera house.
“Go another block,” Nicholai said.
The driver went up a block and pulled over. Nicholai set the pistol down and then hit the driver with a shuto strike to the base of the brain. As the driver fell dead over the steering wheel, Nicholai got out of the backseat and walked to the Zhengyici.
A guard at the front door stopped him.
“My name is Guibert,” Nicholai said. “I am guest of Comrade Voroshenin.”
“The opera is almost over,” the guard complained.
“I was… otherwised engaged,” Nicholai answered, sliding his index finger back and forth through a “V” he made with his other hand.
The guard chuckled. “Go in.”
Nicholai stepped into the lobby, which was almost empty. Recalling the plan of the theater, he quickly found the stairs, bounded up, and walked down the corridor. Two of Voroshenin’s guards leaned against the wall outside his box. They straightened as they saw Nicholai, and one reached his hand inside his jacket.
Now, Nicholai thought, either Voroshenin has played his cards very close to his chest, or I am dead. He strode toward the guards and put his hands up in a “What are you going to do?” shrug.
The guard without the pistol was sullen. He patted Nicholai down from his armpits to his ankles, found nothing, and opened the door to the box.
The encroaching light caused Yuri Voroshenin to turn around.
Even in the dim light, Nicholai could see the surprise in his eyes. That’s right, he thought, I’m supposed to be dead. He edged past the guard standing inside the door and sat down next to Voroshenin.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” he whispered.
In Russian.
On the stage below, the sheng, lit by a vermilion lamp, his face vertically divided into a white-and-black design, delivered a speech bemoaning the loss of a battle. It was beautifully performed, every syllable perfectly in place.
Before Voroshenin could respond, Nicholai added, “I was unavoidably detained.”
78
XUE XIN SAW NICHOLAI go into the theater.
He turned to a small boy huddled against the flaming trash can and said, “Run. Tell your sifu that the performance has not ended.”
The boy ran.
Xue Xin waited until he saw Nicholai get into the theater, and then he ambled off, slowly working his way to the alley in back.
79
“GO PLAYER IS on the screen.”
“Jesus Christ.” Haverford felt limp. Sweaty and exhausted. Hel was a roller-coaster ride. “Where?”
“At Point Zero.”
“No shit.”
“No shit, sir.”
80
COLONEL YU RAN DOWN the hall and burst into Liu’s office.
“He’s at Zhengyici.”
Liu considered the development. It was one thing for the American agent to have made it to the opera house, quite another for him to complete his mission there. But if he did kill Voroshenin… then there was something to consider.
“Good tea,” said Liu.
81
DRUMS BOOMED and gongs clanged as the handsome sheng came back onstage.
The dan, beautifully garbed in a silk brocade robe, crossed the stage in tiny steps as delicate and light as falling cherry blossoms. She waved her fan, saw her lover, then looked up to the “moon” – a solitary white spotlight – and began her aria.
It was beautiful.
Her voice was a revelation, a seamless blend of form and emotion. As she built to her high note, Nicholai saw Voroshenin’s right hand slowly ease into his jacket at his waist.
Knife or gun? Nicholai asked himself.
Gun, he decided.
And what is he waiting for?
The same thing that you are – darkness and more noise. If he waits for the climactic moment, he can shoot you and have your body hustled out of here before anyone can notice, avoiding a public incident. Very smart of him, very disciplined.
The music began its rise.
Nicholai leaned over toward Voroshenin.
“I relate greetings” he said, whispering into Voroshenin’s ear, “from the Countess Alexandra Ivanovna. My mother.”
He felt Voroshenin’s body tense, his hand inch toward the pistol.
“Nicholai Hel.”
“I’m going to kill you in a moment,” Nicholai said, “and there’s not a single thing you can do about it.”
Xun Huisheng warbled:
I have helped the lovers come together
Although I have suffered hard words and beatings
The moon is rising in its silvery glow
I am the happy Red Maid.
The drums rattled.
The gongs clanged.
The theater went dark.
Voroshenin went for the pistol.
Nicholai trapped his hand, breathed deeply, and released all the ki he had left into a single leopard paw strike to Voroshenin’s chest.
He heard the Russian grunt.
Then Voroshenin slumped back in his seat, his mouth a frozen oval.
The guard started forward.
“Too much vodka,” Nicholai said as he got up. Down in the orchestra, the audience was applauding wildly.
Nicholai walked out the door of the box.
“Your boss is sick,” Nicholai said.
They rushed inside.
Nicholai let his mind take over and walk him through the escape. Down the stairs and to the right. Down the hallway toward the interior stage door, where an old man sat on a stool.
“You can’t go in here,” the old man said.
“I’m sorry, liao,” Nicholai said as he swung his right hand in a lazy arc and struck him as gently as possible on the side of the neck. He caught the old man and lowered him gently to the floor, opened the door, found the next door to his left, and stepped out into the alley.
It was only as he walked out the back end of the alley that he felt something warm running down his left leg, then a jolt of burning pain, and realized that Voroshenin’s gun had gone off, and that he was shot.
Then he saw the monk standing at the end of the alley.
“Satori,” Nicholai said.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
The monk limped off in one direction, Nicholai in the other.
He saw it clearly now.
What would happen in the Temple of the Green Truth.
Satori.
The way out of the trap.
82
“SIGNAL.”
“What?” Haverford asked. He stubbed out his thirteenth cigarette of the night and rolled his chair over to the young agent who sat by the cable.
“Go Player is on the move toward Point One.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Haverford said, half in surprise, half in admiration.
Nicholai fucking Hel.
83
THE BLOOD FROZE on his skin, forming a bandage of sorts.
It didn’t hold up, as Nicholai walked quickly through the hutongs of Xuanwu, his heart beating strongly, pumping blood into his leg and breaking the intermittent clotting. But the cold slowed the blood loss and eased the pain.
Nicholai wasn’t thinking about his leg.
He placed a map of the district in his head, remembered Haverford’s instructions, and moved swiftly past the few people out on the streets in the winter night. Some watched him, most had their faces wrapped against the cold and were indifferent to this tall kweilo as he strode past them. None of them noticed when he dropped the crumpled tape recording into a trash-can fire.