The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews (31)

Emptiness

Zhen disliked staying in the honey-trap apartment. Her personal flat was in a smaller building in Mid-Levels, where she was surrounded by her books, yoga materials, and comfortable furniture. Staying in this nearly empty apartment was an inconvenience. It, moreover, meant the assassination phase was near, and although she had no compunction about eliminating a target, she was always depressed at the conclusion of an operation. She enjoyed the hunt: engineering first contact, coyly developing the relationship, the heady thrill of seduction, and the dizzying anticipation of the final act, up to the moment she eased a steel needle between the cervical vertebrae of the neck, or looped a silk rope around a throat, or watched a victim’s eyes grow in alarm as the chest-constricting effects of a poison were first felt. But afterward there was an emptiness, a depression, a melancholy. An emptiness that yoga helped relieve.

Zhen always told herself that she worked as a poison-feather bird to feed her stomach, but she practiced yoga to feed her soul. Practice gave perspective, energy, and the strength to accept what she could not change. But there were some things she could indeed change. Her unhappy childhood and subsequent exploitation as a teenaged concubine, and the humiliating scurvy years in Nightingale School and at the Institute in Beijing learning to kill increased her resolve never to let anyone mistreat her again. The first time had been in London, at university, where she had been singled out as a shy exotic by a group of male students, the majority of whom were simply bullies, but one of them had wanted more. Zhen did not bring any of the usual weapons from the institute with her to the United Kingdom, except for two gongfu shàn, pleated kung-fu fighting fans, one black, one red, wide and delicate with expanding wings of edged metal affixed to the fan folds. These were medieval martial-arts weapons and Zhen could make them flutter like birds wings, snapping them open and closed with a report like a gunshot.

There was a complicated social protocol as well in the use of fans, ancient Chinese conventions essentially lost on most Britons, but Zhen had studied them because they would be most relevant when she returned to the Orient as a seductress. Drawing a closed fan along the cheek meant “I want you.” Touching the edge of the extended fan lightly with the fingers meant “I want to talk to you.” To tap the lips with a closed fan meant “kiss me.” None of these applied to the rangy British Romeo named Rowdy White who pushed his way into Zhen’s dormitory room one night, and stood amused as she held two puny folded fans in front of her, ready to defend herself. Rowdy’s cumulative experience with fans was limited to the big ostrich-feather variants used by the dancers in the strip clubs off High Street. When Rowdy reached to grab Zhen by the arm the black fan opened with a pop, deflecting his hand. Chuckling to himself, Rowdy again reached for her and the red fan snapped open, blocked his other arm, then folded in the blink of an eye, and snapped down across his wrist. That hurt. He snarled, stepped forward, arms extended, and both fans snapped open with a clatter like pigeons taking flight in a park, and the leading edge of one fan was raked across his face an inch above his eyebrows, slicing his forehead and blinding him as blood streamed into his eyes and down his cheeks. It was Zhènniǎo’s first blood, and she was mildly surprised how easy it had been.

She wasn’t hungry but she made a small pot of shēngcài soup, simple lettuce soup, and let it cool on the stove. She opened the balcony door for the night breeze, and sat naked on the big pillow on the floor in the darkened empty living room inhaling great draughts of air, distending first her stomach, then her diaphragm, then her lungs, and expelling her breath in reverse order, pulling her navel in and up, and locking her root chakra. She quietly repeated the Adi Mantra: ong namo guru dev namo, bowing to the teacher within, and continued breathing. She got to her feet and leaned forward into a deep lunge, her body glistening, breasts straining, muscular arms above her head, then flowed into a series of poses, her breath steady and hissing on the exhale. But something was wrong. Her concentration was off tonight.

She liked the young American, and had to admit to herself that he was decent and charming. His comments about freedom and Hong Kong were obviously recruitment talking points, but she agreed with them. She wondered what he’d be like in bed—she did not sleep with men after Nightingale School—but she didn’t much care whether he lived or died. She was alone in the world, not aligned with anyone, not with Beijing, not with the MSS, not with the hotel to which she devoted all her energies. She knew Nate was CIA, and that he wanted to recruit her. She had used her professional wiles to encourage him, flirted with him, and kissed him, all to maneuver him into the kill zone. Her recruitment was an impossibility, of course—she would never ally herself with the Americans—and besides, the MSS was observing everything. Zhen had been told that she had to elicit, or trick, or fuck the name of a mole out of him but if after two nights she was not successful, she was to assassinate him. It would happen tomorrow night.

She would take a vial of monkshood distillate mixed with fragrant ylang-ylang oil and using great care—a drop on her own skin could be fatal—apply the poison on Nate’s skin (she had established the practice of dabbing him with the oil over the last two nights), this time with a bamboo stick applicator. The aconitine would slowly flood his system and kill him hours later, long after he returned home. Zhen got to her feet, folded forward with her palms flat on the floor, and exhaled. She straightened, and walked to the bedroom to take a shower before bed, snapping lights off as she walked through the apartment. She lighted a sandalwood taper and took her shower by candlelight.

The woody fragrance of sandalwood was a nice change from the ylang-ylang oil, which hung heavy everywhere without dissipating, like the copper stench of stale blood in a charnel house.

Nearly midnight. It was a good thing that Benford and Nate were not going to hear what Dominika planned. There were no other options. They were going to kill Nate tomorrow night, and she didn’t even have to think too hard about it. She was going to kill Zhènniǎo, the poison-feather bird, or try to, anyway. Dominika stood in the darkened living room of her MSS guest flat wondering if she would survive the next half hour. She wore black pajama pants and a black T-shirt over a sports bra that flattened her chest and hugged her ribs. She didn’t want to be flopping around if she actually had to engage Zhen hand to hand. She wondered if the Russian Spetsnaz-derived Systema fighting technique she had learned over the years would even come close to what she imagined a Chinese assassin’s martial-arts skill would be. She still had to try. Otherwise Nate was dead.

Dominika had no intention of standing toe-to-toe with Zhen. She likely had weapons hidden all over the apartment, not to mention bullets, arrows, darts, and daggers, all dipped in lethal compounds. Having seen her move via surveillance monitor, Dominika also knew that Zhen was strong, lithe, and flexible, and no doubt would be able to absorb a lot of punishment in a stand-up fight. Dominika, therefore, had to ambush her and instantly incapacitate her. It would be the only way she could win.

And all this had to be done in an MSS-controlled building filled with surveillance cameras, and dozens of security guards, who would respond instantly to the tumult of an all-out catfight. If Dominika could not take the Chinese girl out quickly and silently, the responding security guards additionally could power the surveillance equipment in the apartment back on, documenting for Gorelikov and Putin Dominika’s efforts to save Nate. They would draw the same instant conclusion: Dominika was working for the Americans. She’d be arrested in Hong Kong, flown to Beijing for interrogation, bundled onto the interminable flight to Moscow, and then driven in a closed van directly from the tarmac to the gates of Butyrka Prison, where more than interrogation would be waiting for her. That is if Zhènniǎo didn’t kill her first.

She knew she couldn’t simply walk out of her apartment door tonight—it certainly was connected to an alarm—go down one floor, and gaily knock on Zhen’s door—also probably alarmed—to invite herself in for a late nightcap. She had scoped out her balcony, and that of Zhen’s apartment directly below. She thought she could climb over her balcony railing, lower herself as far as possible, and take a swinging drop down onto Zhen’s balcony. If she mistimed her swing, or if her hands slipped, nothing more would matter. They were nine stories up. Dominika had searched her apartment for any possible weapons. The kitchen was not stocked; there were no chef’s knives. She had found a small toolbox in the utility closet from which she took a box cutter with retractable blade and a medium-weight claw hammer. Both these potential weapons were close range and inefficient, but that’s all she had. She retracted the blade, tucked the box cutter into her bra, and stuck the handle of the hammer into her waistband. Time to go poison-bird hunting. She remembered to unlock her apartment door from the inside so she could get back in after she settled with Zhen.

The Grenville House building was totally dark. Dominika was relieved to find that by hanging by her fingers she could actually touch the lower balcony railing with her toes, and was able to drop quietly onto the dark balcony of Zhen’s apartment. The balcony door was open and she tiptoed in, passing into a wall of ylang-ylang fragrance. The sound of shower water came from the bedroom, and Dominika reached for the hammer as she moved forward in the dark. No hammer. She had not heard it slip out of her pajama bottoms or hit the driveway nine stories down.

Dominika peeked into the bathroom. Flickering candlelight was barely enough to see through the fogged glass partition of the big walk-in shower. Zhen stood with her back to Dominika beneath the rectangular rain showerhead luxuriating under the soft deluge, arms above her head, muscles in her buttocks bunching as she moved, wet hair slick on her skull. Dominika tried to remember the locations of the major veins and arteries in the human body, knowing the box-cutter blade was only an inch long. Get on with it, she told herself, before you start moaning like a cow.

A wave of rage boiled in Dominika’s gut for what she was about to do, for what They were forcing her to do. She measured the distance through the opening of the glass, and felt for the box cutter, thinking Slash, don’t stab, slash at throat, eyes, neck. Just before she stepped forward, her eye caught a kimono hanging on a wall peg and she left the box cutter alone, reached over, and drew the silk belt free, then quickly twisted two loops into a constricting slip knot, stepped into the shower, and slipped the loop over Zhen’s head, pulling the knot tight. Moving faster than humanly possible, Zhen turned to face her and tried to bow her head to slip the loop, but Dominika stepped outside the glass, drew the belt over the top edge, and pulled the belt down with all her might, adding her body weight, yanking Zhen’s cheek sideways against the inside of the glass with a clunk and, with another pull, off her feet. The glass kept Zhen’s hands and feet away from her.

Zhen’s toes drummed against the shower wall; her breasts, brown nipples, and pubic delta flattened against the wet glass, her fingers scrabbling at the material around her throat, but the soaked silk had tightened into an impossible knot, the loop pulling her head ear-high, and she shook like a fish side to side, and tried to push off the glass with her feet, her thighs flexing. Rasping grunts came out of her open mouth, but the noise of the shower covered the sound. After three minutes of violent thrashing, as the oxygen in her brain was used up, her kicking slowed, and her hands fell away from her throat, and she quivered for another three minutes, head canted sideways, spittle drizzling out of the corner of her mouth. Rivulets of water ran down the glass as Zhen stared through it dead eyed and openmouthed at Dominika, who had sat down on the bathroom floor with a thump, feet braced, holding the belt, her arms screaming, staring back at the wet corpse.

Five minutes, ten, an hour later—Dominika couldn’t tell—she made her cramping hands let go, and Zhen slid down the partition, her pancaked breasts squeaking on the wet glass, normally a bawdy and erotic sound during shower sex, but now it was ugly and final. Zhen flopped on her back, chin up, legs splayed, the shower water filling her mouth and dribbling down either cheek. Dominika turned off the water. The tock-tock sound of the dripping drain beneath the body was her only requiem.

Frantically drying her feet and legs, Dominika moved fast through the living room—no more chakras to palpitate with vibrating gongs here—opened the front door, ignoring the possibility of a silent alarm, and left it ajar, got into the stairwell, and pulled the handle of the fire-alarm box she had marked the day before. Now she wanted noise and confusion. The peculiar Hong Kong fire alarm was a woop-woop siren that brought tenants out into the hallway as Dominika ran up one flight to her apartment door, pushed it open, and quickly put on a robe, then stood in the corridor, looking uncertain and frightened. Rainy Chonghuan came running down the corridor in a hoisin-stained sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts, and he protectively bustled her down nine floors in a stairwell crowded with yelling residents, crying children, and a squawking cockatoo in a bamboo cage.

Dominika was booked into a luxury hotel suite in Kowloon that night, her clothes, toiletries, and belongings packed up and delivered to her the next morning. A shaken and embarrassed Rainy told her that fire investigators responding to the alarm had found Zhen Gao murdered in the operational apartment, strangled in the shower. The MSS were convinced that a CIA action team had killed her—likely they had rappelled from the roof—and that the American Nash had probably assisted. There were other theories as they cast wildly for explanations.

“No single person could have caught Zhènniǎo off guard, and bested her in combat,” said Rainy. “There’s no other explanation.”

“It could not have been a random crime? Rape? Robbery?” asked Dominika.

Rainy shook his head. “Impossible. She could have thrown a petty thief over the balcony railing with one arm.”

“An unfortunate and frustrating conclusion to this operation,” said Dominika. “What will you do now?”

Rainy wanted to regain some face in light of this debacle. “The gweilo, the foreign devil Nash, is in Hong Kong temporarily, without diplomatic immunity. Beijing has instructed me to direct the Hong Kong Police to arrest Nash on suspicion of murder. He will be remanded to Stanley Prison until his trial and sentencing, then sent to a Laogai, a work camp, in western China where he will learn to dig coal in the mines. That is if something worse does not happen to him while he is in custody.”

This was a whole new danger. If Nate was arrested and jailed, the MSS wouldn’t have to assassinate him. They would stage a dramatic show trial, with international coverage. He would die in a prison camp on the windswept steppes of western China. He had to get out of Hong Kong immediately. But would the Station learn about Grace’s death and the arrest warrant in time? Or would Nate blithely appear at her apartment tonight with a bouquet of flowers? Bozhe, God, he could walk right into their arms.

Dominika fought her panic: Would she have to barge into the US Consulate to deliver a warning? She daydreamed about it. The end of her career as a spy and the start of a life together with Nate. It was a warm daydream. He would be astonished to see her in Hong Kong, halfway around the globe. She imagined their first kiss in the lobby of the consulate, not caring who saw them. Snap out of it.

But the MSS made up her mind for her. A female escort stayed in the hotel room with her for the evening, and the next morning Dominika was driven to the airport by a dyspeptic Rainy Chonghuan and put on a direct Air China flight to Moscow, with no further courtesy calls in Beijing proposed or offered. It wasn’t exactly a snub: The Chinese were agitated and bewildered. The MSS, General Sun, and the Minister of State Security, moreover, were mortified over their operational failure, witnessed firsthand and up close by a Russian intelligence officer. The loss of face was too great for her to be received as a guest at the ministry. What would they think if they learned that their exalted guest from a fraternal service was the one who had throttled their highly trained executioner?

Now it was a race against time. Would the Americans learn about the warrant before Nate was rounded up by the Hong Kong Police? She wouldn’t know until tomorrow. The flight would take ten hours. She’d read the SVR Asia reports in the morning. Nate was on his own.

As it turned out, Dominika needn’t have worried. A cooperative young lieutenant in the Hong Kong Police who received an envelope every month for “confidential chats” with Bunty Boothby passed the news about the murder and the arrest warrant. The ASIS officer requested an urgent meeting with Nate and COS Burns. They all were seriously shaken to learn that gorgeous Grace Gao was an MSS bird dog. Nate was utterly gobsmacked when Bunty’s agent added that Grace had been part of an MSS operation to suborn Nate and elicit the name of their new PLA recruitment. A close call. But who had killed her? COS Burns paced in the five feet of his cubicle office.

“Right now, it doesn’t matter who whacked her. We’ll find out sooner or later,” he said. He pointed at Nate. “You just avoided the Little Bighorn.”

Nate put his head in his hands. “The university, and the restaurant, I should have seen it,” he said almost to himself. “I was too focused on signing her up.”

“You did nothing wrong,” said Burns. “By the book. I read and released all your cables and contact reports.”

“These things happen, mate,” said Bunty solicitously, one leg hooked over the arm of the couch in Burns’s office. “Tell me at least she gave you a gobby.”

Nate couldn’t leave Hong Kong or Macao by air, for both airports were being watched closely. There were no cruise ships in harbor. Bunty floated the idea that Nate could, just possibly, take a train from Hong Kong Hung Hom Station to Guangzhou’s East Station, and catch a flight to Seoul or Tokyo from there. He thought the MSS would never expect such a bold maneuver. That option would require Nate to wait for an unspecified amount of time for an alias passport from Langley, which was problematic. He couldn’t hide indefinitely in the consulate—too many locals.

Finally, the risk of Nate actually traveling into China to get out of China convinced COS Burns that the option was not viable. CIA Headquarters, meanwhile, was flooding Hong Kong Station with interrogatory cables about the developmental case against Grace, her murder, the continued security of the new asset SONGBIRD, and proposals for smuggling Nate out of Hong Kong. Benford personally spoke to Nate on the secure phone and seemed calm and mild.

“Your performance with SONGBIRD and with this woman was exemplary,” said Benford. “Keep me apprised of your exfil plans, and get back here as quickly as possible.” He hung up before Nate could reply, but from Benford this was a love letter. That was something, at least.

A day later, COS had a plan. They borrowed a uniform from the curious but cooperative assistant military attaché, a commander in the US Navy. The tech officer in the Station matched the color of Nate’s hair in a modified “lip brow” mustache, and gave him slightly longer sideburns and heavy tortoiseshell eyeglasses to round out his face. The next evening, humid and overcast, Commander Nash boarded a bus from the motor pool with twenty consulate employees, the majority of whom were from the Station. The bus drove down Connaught Road, through the tunnel under the harbor, and pulled up to the municipal pier on Canton Road in Kowloon for a public ship visit on the USS Blue Ridge, a six-hundred-foot amphibious command ship and the flagship of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, making her biannual amicable port call.

As they arrived, Bunty Boothby and Marigold Dougherty were hectoring Hong Kong Police on duty at the foot of the gangplank to be let aboard without invitations. Marigold was in a long dress and heels, yelling at Bunty for forgetting the invitations at home, calling him a nong and breaking into tears. The busload of consulate employees arrived, and the overwhelmed police privates hurriedly did a head count and let everyone on board. They didn’t blink at Nate in all the confusion. Bunty toasted Nate in the wardroom, thanked him for being a mate, and noted that Beijing would be “mad as a cut snake” when they eventually realized that Nathaniel Nash was out of China. At the end of the evening, a young petty officer switched places with Nate and got off the ship while Nate stayed aboard, out of sight.

The Blue Ridge departed Hong Kong the next morning and returned to fleet headquarters in Yokosuka, Japan, in three days, a transit of fifteen hundred nautical miles, during which time Nate stayed in his cabin, ate alone in the officers’ mess, and watched half a dozen movies. He brooded about Grace; he wondered about Dominika and the mole hunt, the briefing for the DCIA candidates, and his standing with Benford and Forsyth, and waited in uneasy anticipation of what they had in mind for him next. Overseas assignment? Secondment to FBI? A tiny cubicle in the basement of Headquarters?

He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling—he just knew—that he would see Dominika very soon.