Satori - Don Winslow [48]
“Religious superstition,” Chen felt obligated to say, in order to cover himself in political orthodoxy. “You are a Catholic, I suppose?”
“By birth,” Nicholai replied.
Halfway through the meal, Nicholai excused himself to go to the toilet. The waiter gave him only the slightest glance as he passed by him near the kitchen and eased through the narrow hallway to the toilet.
Locking the door behind him, Nicholai relieved himself to satisfy any listening ears, and turned on the tap to wash his hands and cover the sound of lifting the lid of the old water tank. The message, written on cigarette paper, was stuck to the inside of the tank by a piece of gum.
Nicholai translated the code, committed it to memory, then tore the paper into small shreds, dropped them into the toilet, and flushed.
“You feel all right?” Chen asked him when he returned to the table.
“Splendid,” Nicholai answered. “Why?”
“I was worried that the eel might have upset your stomach,” Chen said.
“It’s a common dish in my part of France,” Nicholai said.
“Ah.”
The waiter was a young man, handsome, with high cheekbones and startling blue eyes. His hand trembled just a little as he handed Nicholai the bill. “Was everything as you hoped, Comrade?”
“It was everything I’d been told,” Nicholai said, glad that Chen was busy mopping up the last of the red sauce with a steamed bun and didn’t notice the waiter’s anxiety.
“I am so pleased. I will tell the chef.”
“Please do.”
The car and driver were waiting out front.
“Shall we walk instead?” Nicholai suggested.
“It is very cold.”
“We’re well fortified,” Nicholai said, patting his stomach, “inside and out.”
Chen agreed but was not pleased. A car and driver were major privileges, and now the foreign guest wanted to walk like a peasant. Still, he must be humored — the whisperings were that he had just concluded an important piece of business with the Ministry of Defense.
Shoes crunching on the snow, Nicholai listened to the rhythm of his footfalls as he reviewed Haverford’s instructions in his head.
Complete the termination. Run out of the theater, through the market, and into the Temple of the Green Truth. The extraction team, anti-Communist Hui Muslims, will be waiting for you. They will take you by truck to the port of Qinhuangdao, where a fishing boat will take you out to an American submarine in the Yellow Sea. Good luck.
Good luck indeed, Nicholai thought. It would take insanely good luck even to get out of the opera house, never mind make it through the narrow streets to the mosque. And then would the “extraction team” be able to get him through the multiple checkpoints all the way out to Qinhuangdao?
Doubtful.
But there was little point in dwelling on the unlikelihood.
37
NICHOLAI GOT UP for his morning run.
This time Smiley and the Greyhound were ready for him, and Nicholai wryly noted that they were now wearing running shoes, at least the PLA version of them.
Nicholai didn’t really like running — it seemed a dull, repetitive exercise, lacking the excitement of cave exploration or the demands of “naked kill” kata, but he supposed that it served a cardiovascular purpose.
Hitting a stride, he turned his mind to the challenge of killing Voroshenin. The Russian had a box at the theater, which provided the necessary privacy but would be easily secured. Doubtless his three bodyguards would be present, as would the usual Chinese security, both plainclothes and regular police.
Voroshenin’s guards will doubtless search me, Nicholai thought, before allowing me into the box next to their master, so I can have no kind of weapon on me. That’s not particularly a problem, he told himself; in fact, it’s the precise reason you were selected for this assignment and are now jogging through the brisk Beijing air instead of rotting in your Sugamo prison cell.
The killing itself would be relatively easy — at some point Voroshenin