The Miko - 02 (76 page)

Russilov, one hand on his holstered pistol, took the man’s arm in a viselike grip.

Watching them depart, Protorov tried vainly to control the rage sweeping through him, shaking him like a tree in a storm. He could not believe it. How could this happen? he thought. It was outrageous, inconceivable. He
would
not believe it.

He turned back to Nicholas’ limp body. He looked upon it as one does one’s own failings. He despised it with a fierceness that bordered on pain. He remembered striking down an icon once, a Crucifix made of wood, painted in gilt and white, bright red where drops of blood leaked at open palms, crossed ankles, bethorned forehead.

It broke when it fell, and he ground it underfoot with the heel of his polished boot. The agony it had conveyed, which, for the owner, at least, had been transmuted into a constancy of faith, had been incoherent to him.

Yet now the extreme of pain the Crucifixion represented was revealed to him. It was as much a shock to him as if he had woken up in the morning to find that his legs had been amputated. Abruptly the world was not the same anymore, and never would be again. A certain peace—a wholeness not only of flesh but of spirit as well—was gone, and in its stead rose, a torment, engulfing and endless.

Up until this moment there had never been any real doubt in his mind that he would achieve his goals. Lofty or not, they would be his. He was clever and he was ruthless. Like Einstein, he was an intuitive thinker who could make great leaps that bypassed plodding logic. That, he knew, was as close as man would ever get to traveling at the speed of light.

Now he had to face the crushing reality that that was not enough. He would not learn the secret of
Tenchi
, he would not make his summit; there would therefore be no coup. No greatness for Viktor Protorov. History would not enthrone him. It would now not even notice him.

Protorov looked at Nicholas Linnear with a murderous glare and saw only his own undoing. He saw how close he had come to ultimate victory…and how far away. It was knowledge that he could not tolerate.

A man berserk, he railed at the cool flesh, pounding it over and over again while great gasping grunts emanated from him in such profusion and with such clarion pealing that even Russilov dared not reenter the vault.

But even this physical venting of his rage and pain was not enough. The body was manacled, an absolute prisoner. To strike his late client thus—a man who had caused him to lose everything—both diminished Protorov and increased his agony.

Swiftly, still grunting like a wild boar, he unfastened the leather straps that bound Nicholas to the wheel. First fingers and wrists were freed, then thighs and ankles. Lastly the waist strap came undone, and the form fell onto him with the force of a sack of cement.

Clawing and kicking, Protorov thrust the body away from him while at the same time seeking to follow it to attack it anew now that it had been freed and, in his mind at least, was fair game for him.

What could he think then when, in the midst of his red, red rage, a corpse pronounced deceased by his neuropharmacologica expert reached an arm out and grasped the side of his corded neck?

For the Western mind death is a difficult commodity to come by. Because there is no acceptance of it, because there is no thought as to its confluence with life, human beings are, more often than not, most difficult to kill.

The simple fact is that the organism does not want to die. To this end it will cling tenaciously to life, it will push the body to superhuman, inexplicable feats of strength and endurance. Cars have been moved by quite ordinary people in this kind of situation, extraordinary jumps have been made, exposure to the elements sustained beyond all measure.

Then there is the body itself. A bullet to the head may be turned aside by the skull. Similarly, a knife thrust can be deflected by an intervening rib.

In the East, however, where traditionally death means nothing, it is different. Death comes with the speed of a lightning bolt, giving the spirit of the organism no time to react at all. Ancient teachings, as well, allow an assailant to actually use the human body against itself.

And that was precisely how death came to Viktor Protorov, how Nicholas Linnear did, indeed, become C. Gordon Minck’s terrible swift sword. Perhaps he knew to what use he had been put. Certainly he did not care.

Nothing was in his mind—his spirit was as clear as a mountain lake after a strong rain—as he pressed inward with the thumb of his left hand, breaking apart Protorov’s collar bone and using it as a sword to sever the vital arteries that rose upward from the heart like a branching tree.

There was nothing to it. It was over in the space of a double heartbeat. It was so simple. Thirty-five years of personal training, perhaps a thousand more before that for the discipline itself, made it so.

Nicholas was slow to rouse after that. The process by which he had withdrawn blood from the surface of his body, by which he had stilled his pulse and his pressure, was an enormously complex and draining one, both physically and mentally.

Slowly, blood returned to all of him and his skin blushed. He was heating up again, a dying sun returning from the embers of dormancy.

Slowly he focused on the grotesquely canted corpse sprawled beside him. Blood drenched them both, binding them in a last attempt to bridge a gap that could never be spanned.

Nicholas felt no remorse. Though there was no fine feeling in snuffing out the life of another human being—or even an animal, for that matter—the elation of life lifted him in its glorious embrace. He was alive and Viktor Protorov was dead. He was flooded with the juices of life. He rode all the air currents of the world, swam in all the seas, lakes, and streams. He padded through the forests and loped across the plains. He stalked the veldts, skittered through the deserts. There was not any place on earth where he was not at that moment. Connected once more to the cosmos, he stood at the Void and was replenished.

“And this is for Third Cousin Tok himself,” Nangi said, sliding HK $6000 across the table to Fortuitous Chiu. “I want you to be generous with the
h’eung yau
,” he said, knowing that the sowing of fragrant grease brought great face with it. “But also be certain to stress the patriotic elements of this matter. I want it made perfectly clear to Third Cousin Tok just who these people are. In that event there will be genuine pleasure in what they will be doing.”

Fortuitous Chiu nodded. “I understand completely.”

“Good.” Nangi smiled. He had already sown his seeds in the form of anonymous calls to several police sergeants—one in Wan Chai, one in Central, a third in Stanley—who, it was suspected by the Green Pang, were working for the Communists. When Nangi had asked Fortuitous Chiu why they were allowed to operate, the young Chinese had smiled and said, “How do the
quai loh
put it? Better the devil you know than the one you do not.”

“You’d do well at the Golden Mountain,” Nangi had said, using the Chinese designation for America.

“Perhaps,” the young man had said. “But I have no wish to leave the Crown Colony. My fortune will be made here.”

Nangi had no doubt about that at all.

Now, as the heavy fog of twilight settled over Hong Kong like a mantle of velvet, he rose and said, “I’m starved. Shall we have dinner?”

Fortuitous Chiu nodded. “Where would you like to go?”

“I want a fine Chinese meal,” Nangi said. “I’ll leave it in your hands.”

The young man looked at him for a moment. Then he bowed slightly and, without making another gesture, said, “This way, please.”

Fortuitous Chiu took him into the countryside, north into the New Territories. Gradually, as they approached the border of China itself, the communities became smaller, high rises giving way to two- and three-story housing, strung together by arcs of slapping washing. Naked children ran in the dirt streets. Dogs barked angrily and fought with each other amid the trash heaps.

Parking, they crossed a kind of central square where hawkers abounded, edged down a side street that was impossibly narrow. “This is the restaurant we will be going to,” the young man said, using his chin to point. “It’s the best of its kind in Hong Kong.”

They went past the place and entered an open-air market. Nangi saw that this was built on a long dock. He could see the water, the fishing boats tied up, their crews making ready for the early morning’s sail.

As they walked between rows of stalls, Fortuitous Chiu said, “Usually those boats return with holds filled with more than fish. It’s a bit too hazy tonight to see, but just across there is Communist China. Refugees are brought in here all the time.”

All the stalls sold live fish. Tanks were set up, filled with seaweedy water in which somnolently swam fish big, medium, and small, shellfish such as giant prawn and abalone, conch and crab. Squid with the black button eyes of the dead were much in evidence, as were crayfish as large as lobsters.

“What is your preference?”

“We are in China,” Nangi said. “A Chinese should choose.”

Fortuitous Chiu took this responsibility quite seriously. As they moved from stall to stall, he would indicate an item here, two there. As they were drawn out of their tanks he would handle them all, sniffing and prodding like an old woman to make certain he was picking the finest specimens of the lots. Then would begin the haggling, a game of endless manipulation and strategy that, like gambling, fascinated and invigorated the Chinese.

At last, carrying his catch in plastic bags made heavy and bulging with sea water, Fortuitous Chiu led Nangi back to the restaurant.

The owner, a fat, sweating Chinese, greeted the young man with the kind of respect one normally accords a visiting lord. Nangi wondered at this but he knew that good manners forbade him from asking Fortuitous Chiu about it.

That evening they dined on no less than nine courses of exquisitely prepared seafood, from succulently sautéed abalone to grilled crayfish, choked with fiery hot chili sauce that made even Nangi’s eyes water, made him long for the relative calm of
wasabi
—the traditional Japanese green horseradish—he loved so much.

For more than three hours they feasted and in true Chinese fashion talked of nothing of serious import during that time. The Chinese—as opposed to the Japanese, who were far more fanatic about business—believed that nothing should take away from the savoring of a meal. In that respect they were the French of the Far East.

When, at length, they returned to the hotel, Nangi bade Fortuitous Chiu come with him. Stuffed into the mail box of Nangi’s room behind the concierge’s desk was a telephone message.

There was no number to call back. Rather, the slip of paper contained an address, a date—tomorrow’s, or rather, because it was already after midnight, today’s—and an hour, two
A.M.
Madonna, Nangi thought disconsolately on the elevator ride up, what am I going to do now?

“I’m to meet a man this morning,” he told Fortuitous Chiu when they had reached his room. “In just under two hours.” He read off the address, which was on Wong Chuk Hang Road.

“That’s Ocean Park,” Fortuitous Chiu said. “Normally it would be closed this late but this week it’s being kept open all day and all night to coincide with the Dragon Boat Festival, which is actually the day after tomorrow, the fifth day of the fifth moon; also to raise money for the amusement park. The tourists, they say, love it.”

Nangi went into the closet, rummaging around out of the other’s sight for a moment. He returned with two identical manila envelopes. He handed one to Fortuitous Chiu.

“I must take one of these with me tonight,” he said. “The copy you have was destined for the Governor. I wanted you with the Governor at the same time my meeting was taking place. I would have felt safer that way. But now—”

“Hold on,” Fortuitous Chiu said. “May I use the phone?”

“Of course.”

For a little more than five minutes he spoke in a choppy, rapid-fire dialect.

Fortuitous Chiu put down the phone, turned to Nangi. “It’s all set now. No sweat.”

“What’s all set?”

“At two this morning,” he said, “I will be sitting opposite the Governor of Hong Kong.”

Nangi was nonplussed. “I—I don’t understand. How is that possible?”

“My father is taking care of it. Like I said, no sweat.”

Nangi recalled the manner in which Fortuitous Chiu had been received at the restaurant in the New Territories. He thought of the power of Third Cousin Tok. He thought of the Green Pang. Lastly he thought of the five Dragons, the five heads of the Hong Kong Triads, the most powerful men in the Colony. Who could Fortuitous Chiu’s father be to be able to reach the Governor at this time of the night? How powerful did he have to be? How much clout did he need to possess?

Nangi bowed slightly. “I am in your debt.”

“As I am in yours. I have gained great face with my father.”

Now, to business. “You will sit with the Governor,” Nangi said. “God alone knows what you will converse about.”

“My father will do all the talking.”

Nangi thought about that. “If I don’t call you by three, you must assume the worst. Give the Governor all the evidence against Liu.”

“It will cause a sensation,” Fortuitous Chiu said. “A scandal of the highest order. The Communists will lose enormous face.”

“They will, won’t they?” Nangi said, musingly.

“Very bad for them.”

Nangi nodded. “Either way, it’s very bad for them.”

They stood facing each other in the room. There was not much more to say, and time was running short.

Fortuitous Chiu gave a little bow. “Until we meet again…Elder Uncle.”

Nangi held his breath. The honor which he had just been accorded was vast. “Elder Uncle” was a term used to connote respect and a certain sense of friendship that was not possible to accurately translate into Western concepts.

“May all the gods protect you,” Nangi whispered. He was speaking of the myriad Chinese deities, none of whom he, needless to say, believed in, but who were very important to Fortuitous Chiu. Silently, then, he prayed for them both. Godspeed.