And all this had to be done in an MSS-controlled building filled with surveillance cameras, and dozens of security guards, who would respond instantly to the tumult of an all-out catfight. If Dominika could not take the Chinese girl out quickly and silently, the responding security guards additionally could power the surveillance equipment in the apartment back on, documenting for Gorelikov and Putin Dominika’s efforts to save Nate. They would draw the same instant conclusion: Dominika was working for the Americans. She’d be arrested in Hong Kong, flown to Beijing for interrogation, bundled onto the interminable flight to Moscow, and then driven in a closed van directly from the tarmac to the gates of Butyrka Prison, where more than interrogation would be waiting for her. That is if Zhènniǎo didn’t kill her first.
She knew she couldn’t simply walk out of her apartment door tonight—it certainly was connected to an alarm—go down one floor, and gaily knock on Zhen’s door—also probably alarmed—to invite herself in for a late nightcap. She had scoped out her balcony, and that of Zhen’s apartment directly below. She thought she could climb over her balcony railing, lower herself as far as possible, and take a swinging drop down onto Zhen’s balcony. If she mistimed her swing, or if her hands slipped, nothing more would matter. They were nine stories up. Dominika had searched her apartment for any possible weapons. The kitchen was not stocked; there were no chef’s knives. She had found a small toolbox in the utility closet from which she took a box cutter with retractable blade and a medium-weight claw hammer. Both these potential weapons were close range and inefficient, but that’s all she had. She retracted the blade, tucked the box cutter into her bra, and stuck the handle of the hammer into her waistband. Time to go poison-bird hunting. She remembered to unlock her apartment door from the inside so she could get back in after she settled with Zhen.
The Grenville House building was totally dark. Dominika was relieved to find that by hanging by her fingers she could actually touch the lower balcony railing with her toes, and was able to drop quietly onto the dark balcony of Zhen’s apartment. The balcony door was open and she tiptoed in, passing into a wall of ylang-ylang fragrance. The sound of shower water came from the bedroom, and Dominika reached for the hammer as she moved forward in the dark. No hammer. She had not heard it slip out of her pajama bottoms or hit the driveway nine stories down.
Dominika peeked into the bathroom. Flickering candlelight was barely enough to see through the fogged glass partition of the big walk-in shower. Zhen stood with her back to Dominika beneath the rectangular rain showerhead luxuriating under the soft deluge, arms above her head, muscles in her buttocks bunching as she moved, wet hair slick on her skull. Dominika tried to remember the locations of the major veins and arteries in the human body, knowing the box-cutter blade was only an inch long. Get on with it, she told herself, before you start moaning like a cow.
A wave of rage boiled in Dominika’s gut for what she was about to do, for what They were forcing her to do. She measured the distance through the opening of the glass, and felt for the box cutter, thinking Slash, don’t stab, slash at throat, eyes, neck. Just before she stepped forward, her eye caught a kimono hanging on a wall peg and she left the box cutter alone, reached over, and drew the silk belt free, then quickly twisted two loops into a constricting slip knot, stepped into the shower, and slipped the loop over Zhen’s head, pulling the knot tight. Moving faster than humanly possible, Zhen turned to face her and tried to bow her head to slip the loop, but Dominika stepped outside the glass, drew the belt over the top edge, and pulled the belt down with all her might, adding her body weight, yanking Zhen’s cheek sideways against the inside of the glass with a clunk and, with another pull, off her feet. The glass kept Zhen’s hands and feet away from her.
Zhen’s toes drummed against the shower wall; her breasts, brown nipples, and pubic delta flattened against the wet glass, her fingers scrabbling at the material around her throat, but the soaked silk had tightened into an impossible knot, the loop pulling her head ear-high, and she shook like a fish side to side, and tried to push off the glass with her feet, her thighs flexing. Rasping grunts came out of her open mouth, but the noise of the shower covered the sound. After three minutes of violent thrashing, as the oxygen in her brain was used up, her kicking slowed, and her hands fell away from her throat, and she quivered for another three minutes, head canted sideways, spittle drizzling out of the corner of her mouth. Rivulets of water ran down the glass as Zhen stared through it dead eyed and openmouthed at Dominika, who had sat down on the bathroom floor with a thump, feet braced, holding the belt, her arms screaming, staring back at the wet corpse.
Five minutes, ten, an hour later—Dominika couldn’t tell—she made her cramping hands let go, and Zhen slid down the partition, her pancaked breasts squeaking on the wet glass, normally a bawdy and erotic sound during shower sex, but now it was ugly and final. Zhen flopped on her back, chin up, legs splayed, the shower water filling her mouth and dribbling down either cheek. Dominika turned off the water. The tock-tock sound of the dripping drain beneath the body was her only requiem.
Frantically drying her feet and legs, Dominika moved fast through the living room—no more chakras to palpitate with vibrating gongs here—opened the front door, ignoring the possibility of a silent alarm, and left it ajar, got into the stairwell, and pulled the handle of the fire-alarm box she had marked the day before. Now she wanted noise and confusion. The peculiar Hong Kong fire alarm was a woop-woop siren that brought tenants out into the hallway as Dominika ran up one flight to her apartment door, pushed it open, and quickly put on a robe, then stood in the corridor, looking uncertain and frightened. Rainy Chonghuan came running down the corridor in a hoisin-stained sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts, and he protectively bustled her down nine floors in a stairwell crowded with yelling residents, crying children, and a squawking cockatoo in a bamboo cage.
Dominika was booked into a luxury hotel suite in Kowloon that night, her clothes, toiletries, and belongings packed up and delivered to her the next morning. A shaken and embarrassed Rainy told her that fire investigators responding to the alarm had found Zhen Gao murdered in the operational apartment, strangled in the shower. The MSS were convinced that a CIA action team had killed her—likely they had rappelled from the roof—and that the American Nash had probably assisted. There were other theories as they cast wildly for explanations.
“No single person could have caught Zhènniǎo off guard, and bested her in combat,” said Rainy. “There’s no other explanation.”
“It could not have been a random crime? Rape? Robbery?” asked Dominika.
Rainy shook his head. “Impossible. She could have thrown a petty thief over the balcony railing with one arm.”
“An unfortunate and frustrating conclusion to this operation,” said Dominika. “What will you do now?”
Rainy wanted to regain some face in light of this debacle. “The gweilo, the foreign devil Nash, is in Hong Kong temporarily, without diplomatic immunity. Beijing has instructed me to direct the Hong Kong Police to arrest Nash on suspicion of murder. He will be remanded to Stanley Prison until his trial and sentencing, then sent to a Laogai, a work camp, in western China where he will learn to dig coal in the mines. That is if something worse does not happen to him while he is in custody.”