Beyond all Limits (22 page)

And then – when the man turned slightly at the bend in the stairwell – Kowalski’s right arm came down in a blindingly quick action, the cleaver flying through the air, tumbling over itself in tight arcs once . . . twice . . . and then embedding itself in the side of the man’s skull with a huge geyser of blood, which covered the dark walls of the stairwell like black paint.

The man dropped dead to the floor before he’d had a chance to move the dagger even a quarter of an inch, and Asami was racing back up the stairs into his arms.

Kowalski could hear the heavy footsteps of men racing through the downstairs foyer for the stairs – backup for the gang. In the distance, he could hear sirens approaching, the police no doubt called by the building’s residents, some of whom were watching through the cracks in their doors.

Kowalski pulled Asami back down the corridor. They were going to have to get out of there fast – but they wouldn’t get far without clothes or passports.

They reached their room, a horror house coasted with thick blood and eviscerated human tissue, and Kowalski was surprised how calm Asami remained in the face of such gruesome terror, almost as if she was used to it.

Together, they pulled on their clothes as fast as they could and Kowalski turned to the window, breaking it open with an elbow and hurling their bags into the street below. He climbed out onto the window ledge, all too aware of the footsteps racing down the hallway towards them, and gripped hold of the metal drainpipe at the side, sliding three stories down to the rain-soaked street below.

He called for Asami, who was waiting on the ledge, and he saw hands reaching through the window for her as she grabbed hold of the drainpipe, half sliding and half falling down the side of the building.

Kowalski was waiting for her at the bottom, and she fell into his arms, saving her from the impact with the concrete sidewalk.

Kowalski looked up, saw men shouting down to the street below, some of them fighting to get out onto the window ledge first.

Kowalski had no idea what was going on. Why did they want Asami so badly? Was it revenge, just because Kowalski had beaten those first three thugs who had been attacking her? Or was there something else going on?

The streets were coming alive, crowds moving towards the apartment complex, curious onlookers mixed with armed policemen blasting on whistles.

Everything was confusion, the crowd was absorbing Kowalski and Asami, hiding them even as the police tried to separate everyone; but was the crowd friendly? Or was it filled with more gang members, after their blood?

And then Kowalski felt Asami being pulled away from him, and when he turned to her, he saw it was girls from the local bar, trying to pull her to safety; and Asami nodded that she would go with them, Kowalski understanding that they would be harder to identify if they split up, yet unwilling to let her go; something deep down, a gut feeling he could never place, told him that if he let her go, he would never see her again.

‘Meet me by the river tomorrow,’ he whispered to her, knowing she would understand the place he meant, the verge where they had first kissed in the neon-lit rain.

She nodded, her eyes locked with his, and then she let her hand go loose, allowing the girls to pull her away to hide her; and then Kowalski was alone in the crowd, letting it pull him away in the opposite direction, his heart empty.

He had gone to the river the next day, waited there from dawn til dusk, all the while aware that the police would be looking for him, the gang too.

He continued to wait, looking for her from the shadows, but she never showed; knowing he was due to report for duty in just a few more days, he started to look for her through the city, starting with the bar she’d been pulled into on that first night.

But every way he turned he was met with stony silence, unable to gain any clue to her location; but then he went back to the bar for a final check, and a young girl came to him, passing him a note.

I am safe
, it said simply.
But I am afraid we can never see each other again. It is too dangerous, and I love you too much to do that to you.

I am sorry.

You will be in my heart forever –

Asami

Kowalski’s heart sank like a stone when he read the message, all of his half-envisioned dreams about their future together shattered irreparably.

But she was safe, and that was really all that mattered.

He just hoped it was true.

But for Kowalski, he knew it was time to return home; he’d outstayed his welcome here, and knew his luck couldn’t last any longer. The ‘unknown westerner’ would be found soon enough if he stayed, either by the remaining gang members or by the Bangkok police – and he didn’t know which would be worse.

And so Mark Kowalski accepted the situation for what it was and booked himself on the first flight home for the United States, unsure how he was going to continue with his life as it was.

It turned out that things returned to normal quite quickly for him back in the States – the discipline of military life gave structure that was comforting and even pleasurable, in a vaguely masochistic sort of way.

Later that year he was promoted to Lieutenant, due in no small part to his performances in Iraq, and then – his recent experiences making him even more driven and single-minded than he was before – he passed the arduous selection for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, otherwise known as SEAL Team Six – his dream ticket.

He’d also moved in with his girlfriend Claire, the relationship – in the absence of his true love, Asami – somehow becoming more and more serious without him even realizing.

And then, when he got his papers to relocate to Dam Neck, Virginia – the home of Team Six – he had asked Claire to marry him, if for no better reason than being hounded into it.

It was destined not to last, and it didn’t – the couple was married in 2004, and divorced three years later after he had been recruited into the mysterious and clandestine Systems Research Group. He was operational too often, or else on training, to make a marriage work, and his heart wasn’t really in it.

But he could never quite rid himself of the nightmares of that dark, dingy, blood-spattered room. It was one thing to kill a man at long – or even close – range with a rifle or a pistol, as Kowalski had done many times in battle; but it was another thing entirely to do so with bladed weapons.

To be so close to your opponent, to feel their coppery, hot blood on your bare skin, their very life-force draining away over you as they breathed their last, was something he had never before experienced in quite the same way.

He’d seen bad wounds before – gut shots, rounds that had traveled through one man’s abdomen and intestine before coming out of his leg, IEDs that had blown limbs off – but the sights in that apartment block were singularly gruesome, and stayed with him for a long time afterwards. Skulls split wide open, internal organs eviscerated everywhere, the stench of blood and sweat and death; and all by his own hand.

He had become reconciled to killing long ago, but something about the savage deaths of those men in that Bangkok apartment served to change him in some indefinable way. If he had been inured to violence and brutality beforehand, now he had become even more so, and – despite the nightmares and the troubling images that continued to plague him for months to come – the incident in the end made him stronger, and more prepared to face the demons that would continue to come at him throughout his life.

And one more thing had also happened – except for the occasional nightmare of that bloody room, he had finally, mercifully, and entirely forgotten about the woman he had loved there.

Mark Cole stirred on his bed in the Beijing Grand Hyatt, having fallen into a nightmarish sleep, reliving his past life in vivid, Technicolor detail.

And then, all of a sudden, he sat bolt upright, sweat dripping down his face and neck despite the air conditioning.

Aoki Asami.

He couldn’t believe how long it had been since he had truly thought of her, remembered her; even when he’d been in Bangkok the year before, his memories had barely been stirred.

But having remembered at long last, seen her eyes again in those long-repressed memories, he was no longer in any doubt.

Aoki Michiko
was
Asami’s daughter.

She was
his
daughter, created by an intense love cut short all too soon.

But why did she hate him?

He had no idea what she had been told about him when she was growing up; perhaps Asami had told her that he was a monster, a villain, a psychopath? Or maybe Asami had gone back to her husband, given birth, and then Michiko had been abused by the man? Or Asami had been punished for her infidelity? Perhaps even killed? Would Michiko not then blame everything on Cole?

He felt the sweat start to pour again, wiped his face with his hand.

It was useless to try and second-guess anything; the things that could have happened to Asami and her daughter since she disappeared in Bangkok were infinite.

But one thing Cole
had
decided – when all this was over, he was going to take some leave and track Michiko down, just as she’d tracked
him
.

Only then would he learn the answers to his questions.

His heart rate increased automatically as he back-tracked his thoughts.

When all this was over?

He’d never intended to go to sleep, and he suddenly realized that he had no idea how long he’d been out of it.

As he raised his wrist to check his watch, he hoped beyond hope that it wasn’t all over already, hoped he hadn’t missed his appointment with Wu, his only clear shot at getting the man.

He looked at the time and his body relaxed slightly, his heart reducing its heavy beating in his chest.

It was okay; there was still time.

Cole knew his body had awoken him not because of the nightmarish images, but because it was such a finely honed machine that it knew he had a job to do. A sixth sense kept him constantly aware, always on the alert. It never let him down.

He shook his head in wonder; it would be literally impossible for him to sleep through an operation.

As he rose out of bed and strolled across the marble floor to the huge double wardrobes, his mind flashed again on those hacked, dead bodies lying in their thick pools of congealing blood, and asked himself – not for the first time – exactly what sort of man he was.

But he knew the answer already.

He was the sort of man who always got the job done.

5

Everyone was geared up now, the fire was out, equipment was stowed. Force One was ready.

Navarone checked his watch –
1403 hours
. Just twenty-seven minutes until Cole’s meeting with Wu, and he’d received nothing from his boss, or from Liu, to suggest it wasn’t going to go ahead as planned.

The Forbidden City above them was surrounded by a moat, six meters deep by fifty-two meters wide. A wall provided further protection, ten meters high and nearly three and a half kilometers long. To prevent tunneling, the paving was fifteen layers thick.

But the wall – and the moat – only went so far underground.

The original, isolated sewer network underneath the city was deemed insufficient by the communist government, who dictated that it should connect to the more modern system of Beijing, beyond the walls. They therefore authorized tunneling under those walls, providing access from the outside into the Forbidden City.

Navarone could understand why – it was the Zhongnonhai that was now the seat of government, not the Forbidden City; the old walled palace compound was now just a tourist attraction – albeit one that had been closed to the public since Wu’s coup. It was now simply a prison.

The compound held not just the Politburo, but any number of government and political groups which had not immediately acquiesced to Wu’s demands to assume control.

But they were not Force One’s concern; it was the Politburo it was concerned with, or – at the very least – those members of the Politburo steering committee that would provide a nucleus for a replacement government after the military regime had been deposed.

Julie Barrington was waiting in an elevated position on top of the ladders near their point of entry into the city – underneath the vast courtyard complex of the Hall of Imperial Supremacy.

The intelligence Force One had received from Liu Yingchau explained that – although the Politburo was moved regularly – they were always held within one of the self-contained palace compounds. This way the outer walls could be guarded, and the courtyards gave the prisoners some space to walk and get some fresh air, while still being physically contained.

Liu had let them know that the Politburo was currently being held within the northeast sector of the Forbidden City, known as the Outer Eastern Palace. This area – surrounded by lofty, red perimeter walls – was further split into three sections.

There were western and eastern compounds, and then there was the central compound where the Hall of Imperial Supremacy was located; and it was within those walls that the Politburo was currently being held.

There was no direct access from the sewers into this compound, which complicated matters somewhat; but if there wasn’t already a way in, Force One was just going to have to
make
one.

Barrington was perched near the curved, rough stone ceiling of the sewer tunnel, at the point where the holes had been drilled and filled four hours earlier. At this particular section, there was only two meters of earth and stone between the sewer and the interior of the hall.

Barrington was now monitoring the location of the people above through a combination of X-Ray and thermal sensors, along with specialist radar, and a Wi-Fi device that relied on radio waves and other portions of the electromagnetic system, and operated in a similar fashion to radar and sonar but with enhanced imagery capabilities. Two meters was thick, but the combination of the different instruments meant that she was able to create an overall picture that would be quite accurate.

The rest of the team was taking notes of the location of the people above, figuring out movement patterns, establishing who was who, and running through their actions on contact, time and time again.

When they got the word, they would be ready.

Duanwujie
, Cole had discovered, was the correct term for what the rest of the world knew as the Dragon Boat Festival. In China, it was known as Duanwujie – the Double Fifth Festival – due to its falling on the fifth day of the fifth traditional lunar month.

He had also learnt that three major things happened during the celebrations – sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, known as
zongzi
, was eaten in large quantities;
xionghuang
wine – made with realgar, an arsenic sulfide – was drunk to excess; and the famous dragon boats would race against each other in any waterway long enough to hold them.

Established over two thousand years ago, the festival commemorated the death of the beloved Chu Kingdom poet and statesman Qu Yuan, who committed suicide by throwing himself into a river after Chu had been invaded and overrun by the forces of the Chin State on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.

Local people threw lumps of rice in the river to make sure the fish did not eat his body – the origin of zongzi – while at the same time other locals took their boats out in order to retrieve the dead poet, which resulted in the subsequent tradition of dragon boat racing. And at the same time they were doing that, an old doctor poured realgar wine into the river in order to kill the river monsters and protect Qu Yuan’s spirit, which was why the same wine was still imbibed today.

Understanding such a tradition might not have added anything to Cole’s tactical decision-making, but – perhaps due to the influence of Asami, he now considered – he always tried to learn all he could about the cultures and customs of the countries he operated in, especially if he was going to end up right in the middle of such a cultural celebration.

And now was exactly such a time, Cole reflected as he entered Beihai Park through the teeming South Gate Entrance. Everywhere he looked, people in colorful clothes were parading happily through the gate into the park, security only partially visible. It was clear that Wu didn’t want the whole thing to be a military operation just because he would be there today; he wanted ‘his’ people to go on as normal, celebrate the festival as they always did, and engage with them on equal ground, show them that he was one of them, that everything he did was for the Chinese nation. It made sense, and Cole admired the man’s psychological acumen.

Cole could tell from the attitude of the people around him that they were not at all unhappy to be under Wu’s rule. Despite a crippled US aircraft carrier off their coastline, and their nation’s military being involved in two recent invasions – or perhaps because of it, Cole realized – the mood was buoyant. And it was only partially caused by the quantities of xionghuang wine that had already been consumed.

The people who streamed through the gate with Cole were of all ages, from babies to the elderly and infirm. Families entered with picnics, teenagers with friends and open bottles, couples holding hands; all with smiles and laughter.

It was a far cry indeed from the last time Cole had been in Beijing, confronted with the cold, grey granite face of communism – both in its architecture and its people. He wondered how far the change could be attributed to the leadership of General Wu and his promises of a new and more powerful Chinese empire.

There weren’t many foreigners in the crowd, Cole had noticed instantly, and as he passed through the South Gate he was stopped immediately by a pair of armed guards. From their uniforms, Cole could see they were members of the elite Macau Guard Unit, brought in by Wu to help protect the area alongside the Hong Kong Special Operations Unit. Despite the security presence being subtle, Cole could see they were still taking no chances.

‘Identification?’ one of the soldiers asked in good English. His manner was polite and professional, and Cole noted that they were not aiming their weapons at him – yet.

He reached into his pocket and handed over his passport – or at least, Dietrich Hoffmeyer’s CIA-altered passport.

The man looked at it and nodded. ‘You have an appointment, yes?’ he asked, and Cole realized that it wasn’t just that
all
foreigners were being stopped; he’d been stopped because he’d already been identified.

‘Yes,’ Cole responded. ‘I hope I’m on time.’

‘Your timing is fine,’ said the man, before clicking on his radio and firing off a burst of staccato, sing-song Cantonese; totally different to the Mandarin spoken by the majority of mainland Chinese, and further proof of Wu’s desire to bring in outsiders to protect him. He received an unintelligible reply, and looked back up at Cole. ‘Please wait here,’ he said. ‘You will be escorted to your meeting shortly.’

‘Thank you,’ Cole said with a smile. He was impressed that they had called for an escort; less professional soldiers may well have abandoned their posts and escorted him themselves, or at least split up their two-man team. But not these guys; the first man’s eyes remained on Cole while his opposite number scanned the crowds around him.

He didn’t have to wait long. Soon enough, two more men approached, and Cole saw that they belonged to the Hong Kong SOU, the unit most closely responsible for Wu’s safety.

These two men were also polite, and as the first pair melted away back into the crowd, Cole’s new escorts performed a thorough and professional body search for weapons or anything which might be considered inappropriate – a recording device, for instance. They first of all cast the metal-detecting wand over him, and then went hands-on. Of course they found nothing, as there was nothing to find; Cole was going to kill Wu with his bare hands.

‘Okay,’ said one of the men, again with good English, ‘follow me please.’

He led off, the crowd separating for him immediately as they saw his assault rifle, creating a clear path for them. Cole noted how the second man slotted in behind him, so that he was trapped between the two of them.

They walked northwest on the path that followed the five-meter-high walls of the Round City, until they came to the colorful stone archway that marked the entrance to Yong An Bridge, a beautiful, multiple-arch construction built in the thirteenth century.

Another pair of soldiers nodded to Cole’s escorts as they passed through the archway onto the bridge, and Cole continued to take in his surroundings as he went, eyes scanning and recording the images. He took note of where the guards were, pleased to see that the latest report from Liu was perfectly correct: where all the different buildings were, where different kinds of people were grouped within the crowds – families, couples, teenagers, business people – all in case he had to make an emergency tactical withdrawal.

He wasn’t overly worried – he had an appointment with Wu after all, he had no weapons, and his method of execution was so effective mainly because it was undetectable. Like he had in his countless mental rehearsals, he fully expected to get the job done and then simply be escorted back out of the park, with nobody any the wiser. And even when the general collapsed an hour later, his heart given out completely, nobody would ever suspect that it had been something to do with the foreign businessman he had met earlier.

They passed underneath the next colorful archway, signaling their arrival onto the Jade Flower Islet, the thirty-six meter tall White Dagoba dominating the scene, perched on top of the islet’s central hill.

Cole had learnt from Liu that while most of the islet was open to the public, the northern section where White Dagoba Hill descended back down to the lakeside was closed off and reserved for Wu De and the other generals and aides from his military government.

But as they marched across the path leading east around the base of the hill, Cole noted that security was tighter over the whole island than it had been on the mainland side; picnickers and revelers were being much more closely monitored here, by a much larger guard force. Cole took in each and every detail – faces, weapons, positions, movements – as he followed the lead soldier towards the northern shoreline.

The eastern side was much quieter than the west, Cole observed, but that was only to be expected – the dragon boat races would occur towards the northern and western sides of the lake, so people on the east side of White Dagoba Hill would see nothing. But from his brief glance westwards from the memorial archway, he could see that the entire western side of the island was already too saturated with people to contain any more. New arrivals were therefore being ushered eastwards, where a myriad of stalls selling the ubiquitous zongzi rice and xionghuang wine had been set up to assuage the disappointment of missing the races. As a result, they were doing a thriving business with the latecomers, who sat, chatted, ate and drank all around the small, wooded island.

The general and his entourage, Cole knew, were located in the Long Corridor, stretched out across the northern shore. Based on the corridor in Jiangtian Temple in Zhenjiang, Jiansu Province, the Long Corridor was an exquisite architectural marvel. Three hundred meters long, the corridor building was open to the lakeside at the front and enclosed by latticed windows at the rear, and was painted in red and decorated with the most beautiful multicolored embellishments across its entire length. It had two levels, and according to Liu, Wu would be on the second floor, centrally located in an upper pavilion that would provide perfect views of Beihai Lake and the dragon boat races. And – perhaps more importantly from a public relations perspective – it would also give the crowds a perfect view of the general, who would no doubt be resplendent in full uniform and battle honors.

It wasn’t long before the path they were on met the eastern end of the Long Corridor, and Cole could immediately see that security was taken a lot more seriously here. The entrance to the corridor had a six-man team guarding it, with sentries and look-outs positioned through the tree-clad hills surrounding the area.