Olga sat hunched at an outside table of the hotel at the beginning of the bridge, on the Macao side, the long-forgotten coffee cold in front of her, her mind suddenly blocked by the reflection, confronting at last something that she had been avoiding for too long.
Why didn’t Yuri suffer any agonized guilt?
Olga supposed that for his specialized department Yuri’s indoctrination had been much more exhaustive than hers but she knew one thing — the basic justification — remained the same. Which meant Yuri was calculatingly — dear God, how calculating! — prepared to murder, without any excuse. Her reasoning became jumbled, trying to hold different thoughts at the same time, irritated at mentally invoking a god in whom she didn’t believe and at the uncertainty she suddenly felt, facing up at last to the numbing callousness in someone she loved so much. Did she have the right, to think like this? Hadn’t she known — but refused to recognize — all along that Irena Kozlov was being manipulated towards her own murder? Of course she had. ‘You know I’ll do anything you want.’ Her own words — the long-ago undertaking after a night of lovemaking when he’d first proposed the idea — echoed in her mind, as if she could actually hear herself saying them. She’d known then what it meant and she’d conducted the entrapment interviews knowing what it meant. The only change to all the unobjected planning was that until twenty-four hours earlier it was going to be Yuri and not herself who carried out the act. So she was as culpable and as callous as he was: worse than him, even, someone prepared to be involved in murder providing it wasn’t her who had to pull the trigger or detonate the bomb.
Olga squeezed her eyes tightly against the tears of complete honesty, worried at attracting attention from the few people about her. She had to do it! She had to stop hiding behind mixed-up thoughts about a half-forgotten religion she didn’t profess and mixed-up thoughts about a morality she didn’t have: to seek out Irena Kozlov in the hotel she could clearly see across the other side of the river and pull the trigger of the special plastic assassin weapon that did not show up on airport security monitors, the Technical Division’s invention that employed compressed air to fire the killing, poison impregnated plastic bullets. Dear God — damn the readiness of the plea! — how much she hoped she could do it!
Calling upon the theory so well taught at Balashikha, Olga decided it wasn’t going to be easy, irrespective of her personal anxieties. From where she sat, the hotel appeared to dominate the far side of the bridge: anything or anyone crossing it would be fully visible all the time, like someone going over a drawbridge to a medieval castle. And Olga reckoned from the antipathy existing between them in Tokyo that Irena Kozlov was probably more likely to identify her than any other member of the Soviet embassy.
Which was only one of the difficulties. The Englishman, Charlie Muffin, had already proved his cleverness in getting Irena safely away from Japan. Professional, Yuri called the man, in reluctant admiration. Definitely someone who couldn’t be underestimated. And what back-up did the man have?
Olga sighed, thinking back to the training and its most basic precept: never move before a complete and thorough reconnaissance to learn everything possible about the target’s surroundings, and only move when you were sure of avoiding arrest or detection, after the act. She would not be able to do any of that, Olga accepted: the possibility of Irena spotting her was too great, and without reconnaissance she couldn’t properly plan the killing, and without a proper plan she couldn’t devise a guaranteed escape.
Oh dear God! she thought, too consumed by apprehension to care any longer about invoking the deity. She was numbed with fear, a physical sensation like the tingling which happened on bumping the sensitive part in the elbow, and there was another feeling, a welling sickness deep in her stomach, so real that she began to perspire, frightened she was going to vomit.
Olga stood, hurriedly spilling coins on to the table to pay for the coffee and starting off away from the bridge into the township. As she walked she told herself she was utilizing her tradecraft, losing herself in the jumble of streets instead of crossing directly to pursue Irena Kozlov from the hotel where a waiter or another guest might have remembered her later during any police enquiry, but she forced herself to admit the other, more important reason. She was delaying what she had to do, by any means she could find.
She crossed the colonial square beneath the unfocussed statues of Portuguese founders and plunged into the winding, haphazard alleyways beyond. Like Hong Kong, that other nearby relic of colonialism, Macao was being returned to Beijing and everywhere had the atmosphere of soon-to-leave neglect, like a house allowed to run into disrepair because its owners were about to move somewhere better. The warrens were crowded with stalls and people and noise and smells and bustle, and she let herself be jostled along by the tide, a piece of willing flotsam. Still going in the wrong direction.
There were cabs on the wider cross streets. She let two, empty, pass her and only tentatively hailed the next, but the driver was alert, jerking into the pavement, careless of upsetting both the pedallo driver and the tourists in his rickshaw, which shuddered to a halt against the pavement with obscenity screaming louder than the brakes.
Olga closed her eyes once more, against the scene this time, as if she did not want to see herself set off. Everything was an effort and she forcibly made it to look again. The car was just crossing the statued square: through a gap between the squared buildings Olga could see the yellow-stained river but not the bridge or the hotel beyond. No reconnaissance, no plan, no reconnaissance, no plan: the flaws repeated themselves in her mind and she frowned, trying to recall a familiar imagery and realized it was like the litanies she’d learned as a child in incense-filled churches with head-bowed parents, bribed with sweetmeats into obedience. The taxi went around the centrepiece directly in front of the bridge and then began its climb towards the far side and she saw, with the benefit of some elevation, that there were buildings beyond the hotel. She leaned forward, changing the address, gesturing to go by the Hyatt to the further cluster, the relief popping inside her. She would be far less conspicuous to anyone in the foyer arriving on foot than she would be by car.
The additional buildings appeared to be some sort of apartment complex. Olga paid the taxi off and for the benefit of the driver, making his turn to go back to the town, covered herself by appearing to enter the middle block. She waited until the car was actually on the bridge before emerging, going with reluctant slowness towards the hotel. She remained in the shadows of the last group of buildings, further protection to make her entry safely. Almost at once she was aware of the tourist coach crossing the bridge over which she had just come and smiled, at her good fortune. Olga didn’t supposedly believe in superstition any more than in religion, but she crossed her fingers and pressed them tight together, hoping the luck would last. She was aware for the first time how much her hands were sweating and instinctively pushed them down the sides of her skirt, to dry them. The wetness came back, immediately.
She timed her move with the confused disembarkation of a group she decided was German, letting herself be carried into the hotel as she had allowed herself earlier to be jostled through the alleys of Macao. Directly inside, she eased away, anxious not to be challenged by any tour leader. The reception area faced her, the elevators to her right. The ground area stretched away even further to the right, and Olga saw a magazine kiosk and moved towards it, eager for any excuse to orientate herself further. The move put her in the corner of the building, from which she could see the foyer completely to her left now, with the lounge and bar directly in front. There appeared to be a coffee shop alongside the lounge and another larger dining area to the far side of the main bar. She bought two English-language magazines — Newsweek and Cosmopolitan — for their protection and went cautiously into the lounge, intent on everyone around her, looking for the face of Irena Kozlov, briefly relieved at not locating the woman but not relaxing for a moment. There were no hide-away nooks or banquettes: the best was a table beside which some long-fingered plant emerged limp-wristed from an ornate tub, and Olga moved as quickly as she safely could towards it.