Satori - Don Winslow [60]
“He wouldn’t,” Voroshenin interjected. “He is as you see him, a post. Besides, if you aren’t bored enough already, you soon would be with him as a companion. His conversation is as vapid as his face, which strains credulity, I understand. I mean, look at the fellow.”
Leotov’s humiliation was palpable, but he said nothing. Then Voroshenin leaned in toward Nicholai and whispered, in Russian, “Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled.”
Nicholai felt the insult burn, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m sorry,” Voroshenin said. “I lapsed into Russian there for a second. One forgets sometimes what country one is in.”
But had there been the slightest blink? Voroshenin asked himself. The slightest glimmer of self-consciousness in the eye?
Nicholai wondered the same thing. He fought to keep the fury off his face as he asked, “But what did you say?”
Peering back into those green eyes, Voroshenin switched to French. “Just that I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.”
“No more than I.”
“I hope you can still come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Cymbals and gongs clashed as the voices rose to a climax.
The two men held their gaze.
47
HE KNOWS, Nicholai thought.
Chen droned on in his enthusiasm about the acrobatic troupe.
Voroshenin knows.
The car slowed to negotiate a patch of black ice.
He knows my real identity.
Or does he? Certainly, he suspects. Your mother was my whore, Nicholai. I rode her like a sled. Did I react? To the language, the name, the insult? Even for a second? If even for a fraction of a second, Voroshenin would have picked it up.
Assume the worst, he told himself. Assume that Voroshenin now thinks he knows that you are Nicholai Hel. What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows you are here to assassinate him. It only means that he knows you are not who you claim to be.
Bad enough, but not necessarily fatal.
But why, Nicholai pondered, is Voroshenin keeping the appointment at the opera?
Because he doesn’t know. He only suspects, which is why he was probing, why he stretched a line of stones deep into my defense. A risky move, because he’s given so much of his thinking away. But Voroshenin is no fool, he must have thought it worth the risk. And was it?
Face it, you don’t know. He’s a chess player, not a Go player, Nicholai thought, cursing himself for not knowing more about the Western game. It was linear, though, he knew that, and geometrical — rich in forward, machinelike thinking, poor in subtlety and nuance. Voroshenin believes that he sacrificed a minor piece — a “pawn,” I believe — to expose a more important piece of mine, and now he invites my countermove.
I’m looking forward to the opera tomorrow night.
No more than I.
I hope you can still come.
Why wouldn’t I?
A lot of reasons, Nicholai thought, including the very real possibility that my purpose here has been discovered, “compromised,” in Haverford’s jargon.
By rights, he knew that he should use one of the dead drops to report this development to the American, but he also knew that he wouldn’t. Haverford might call the mission off — “abort” — and Nicholai didn’t want that.
He wanted to kill Yuri Voroshenin.
Fine, he thought, envisioning the Russian’s florid face as he delivered his adolescent insult.
You play your chess game, I will play Go.
We shall see who wins.
48
VOROSHENIN WAS furious.
Livid with himself.
Clumsy, ham-handed, and stupid, he thought as he pushed open the door of the Russian Legation. How could I have thought he would fall for such an elementary trick?
But was there a glimmer? Just a trace?
He walked up the stairs to his office and immediately went for the vodka bottle. It’s improbable, he told himself. Improbable, unlikely, and so anachronistic, the offended son coming to settle a score older than he is, to redeem his mother’s honor. No one kills for honor anymore, that died with the Romanovs.
And assuming that Guibert is Hel, he doesn’t necessarily know