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.