Satori - Don Winslow [35]
Kang Sheng had been Mao’s chief torturer since 1930. He had personally tormented thousands of Mao’s rivals back in Jiangxi, and survivors whispered that they had heard the howling of his victims during the long nights in the caves of Yenan. What he didn’t know about xun-ban, torture, had yet to be discovered; although, to give him his due, Kang Sheng was ceaseless in his efforts to discover new methods of inflicting agony.
In fact, at this very moment Comrade Kang was diligently conducting research.
His new home near the old Bell and Drum Towers in the north-central district of the city was the former mansion of a recently deceased capitalist. More of a small palace, it had guest houses where Kang’s armed guards now resided, as well as courtyards, walled gardens, and pebbled pathways. Kang had done nothing to change it, except for the construction of a concrete-lined “cave” far in the back garden.
Now, teacup in hand, he sat back in a deep chair in the cave and enjoyed the screams of his latest subject.
She was the wife of a former general in the northwest district who had been accused of being a spy for the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan. A beautiful young lady — sable hair, alabaster skin, and a body that was a sensual pleasure to behold — she bravely refused to supply incriminating confirmation of her husband’s treachery.
Kang was grateful for her uxorial loyalty. It prolonged his pleasure. “Your husband is an imperialist spy.”
“No.”
“Tell me what he said to you,” Kang demanded. “Tell me what he whispered to you in bed.”
“Nothing.”
A knock on the door interrupted his enjoyment.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“A visitor,” came the answer. “Comrade Voroshenin.”
Kang smiled. There were so many ways of achieving power and influence. “Send him in.”
23
THE KEY TO THE CURRENT condition of Chinese plumbing, Nicholai decided, was never to take no for an answer.
He tried three times to get hot water from the taps of the bathtub before he succeeded, and when it finally came, it did so with a scalding vengeance, an all-or-nothing-at-all response to his repeated entreaties.
Gently lowering himself into the water, Nicholai was reminded of the tub he’d enjoyed at his Tokyo home in what seemed like a lifetime ago, but was barely four years. They had been happy, albeit short days, with Watanabe-san and the Tanake sisters in the garden he had carefully constructed with the goal of shibumi.
He might have lived his whole life there quite happily, had it not been for the honor-bound necessity to kill General Kishikawa that caused his subsequent arrest, torture, and imprisonment at the hands of the Americans.
And then the offer of freedom in exchange for this little errand.
To terminate Yuri Voroshenin.
Moreover, Nicholai despised nothing more than a torturer. A sadist who inflicts pain on the helpless deserves death.
But Voroshenin was only the first torturer on Nicholai’s list.
Next would come Diamond and his two minions who had shattered Nicholai’s body and mind and come close to destroying his spirit. He knew that the Americans didn’t expect him to survive the Voroshenin mission, but he would surprise them, and then he would surprise Diamond and the two others.
It would mean leaving Asia, probably forever, and that thought saddened him and caused him some anxiety about what life would be like in the West. A European by ethnicity, he had never even been there. His entire life had been spent in China or Japan, and he felt more Asian than Western. Where would he live? Not in the United States, certainly, but where?
Perhaps in France, he decided. That would please Solange. He could envision a life with her, in some quiet place.
Nicholai pushed the thought of her out of his mind to focus on the present. Picturing a Go board in his head, he played the black stones and placed them