Satori - Don Winslow [43]
Nicholai kept running, aware that he was leaving the chugging Smiley far behind. It wouldn’t be long, though, before the Greyhound joined the chase and caught up with him. He sped up, barely avoided a spill on a sheen of black ice, regained his balance, and kept running until he reached Beihai Park.
He slowed to a jog again and trotted along the edge of the lake.
Even in winter, the early-morning tai chi players were out, moving slowly and gracefully against the silver sky, and Nicholai was suddenly, serenely happy to be back in China again. He ran along the lakeside and then turned left on the arched bridge to the Jade Isle.
He stopped at the apex of the bridge, put his hands on the tiled rail, and stretched his legs. Looking under his arm, he saw the Greyhound running along the lake, headed toward him. Nicholai reached into his left pocket, his hand screened by his body, took out the note, and slipped it under the loose tile.
Then he finished his stretch and resumed his run, making a circuit around the White Pagoda and then heading down toward the South Gate. Smiley stood on the south bridge, cupping a cigarette in his gloved hands. Nicholai ran past him and headed back toward the hotel.
The air in the lobby felt hot and close.
Nicholai went straight to his room, coaxed some lukewarm water from the tap, and took a quick bath. He made a single cup of tea from the water in his thermos, got dressed again, and went down to the dining room, where he got more tea, a baozi, and some pickled vegetables. He enjoyed the moist, chewy warmth of the steamed bun as he thought about the “dead drop” he had made on the bridge.
Fairly confident that he had done it cleanly, he had to acknowledge the possibility that he had been caught at it, in which case he knew that the note was now in the possession of code-breakers, and that he would soon be back in a prison cell, a torture chamber, or both.
He couldn’t read Chen’s face as his handler came through the door and approached him.
“How are you this morning?” Chen asked.
“A little the worse for wear,” Nicholai answered. “And you?”
“Very good,” Chen said. “Colonel Yu would like to see you now. Are you ready to go?”
Nicholai was ready.
29
THE MONK, HIS HANDS FOLDED in front of him, stepped out of the White Pagoda.
Earlier, just after dawn, the monk known as Xue Xin had meditated in the tower and stared out the window onto the Jade Isle bridge and seen the man lean against the railing.
Now he walked slowly toward the bridge. Slowly because he did not want to appear to be in a hurry, but also because his legs were oddly bowed and he had little choice but to walk slowly.
He knew that he was risking his life, knew that there was a strong possibility that any of the other strollers in the park, or one of the tai chi players, or a street hawker, even one of the other monks might be a police spy waiting to see who came to pick up the message.
Then one of two things would happen. Either they would arrest him immediately, or they would lay back and follow him, hoping that he would lead them to the entire cell. But he knew that he wouldn’t let that happen — he was experienced enough to spot surveillance, and skilled enough to dispatch himself with his own hand should it come to that.
Xue Xin would not allow himself to be captured.
He had been captured before.
Tortured, he had learned what no man should have to learn — the sounds of his own screams — and when they returned him to the cage it was only the kindness of his cellmate that kept him alive, gave him hope when he wished to die, shared the meager handfuls of rice that were their starvation diet.
Now, ten years later, he still limped.
He knew that he shouldn’t be alive at all. His captors had decided to kill them all before the Japanese took over, so they marched them to a field outside the prison, handed them sharpened sticks, and made them dig a long trench.