Free The Golden Mountain Murders by David Rotenberg Page A

heading our way, Premier, what should we do?” But Brezhnev doesn’t answer. It’s seven minutes to the hour. All his concentration is on getting through those seven minutes to his next smoke. Missiles be damned, I need that smoke.
    The assassin smiled. When he met Premier Brezhnev he had been sure to have his conference set for just past the half-hour. It had been a very successful meeting. The Bear had been smoking, happily. He had listened carefully as the old assassin had laid out the conditions upon which the Guild would accept work from the Russian. Brezhnev had commissioned two assassinations through the haze of his smelly Ossetian tobacco. The old assassin had bowed shallowly and replied that he would present the opportunity to the Guild. He did nothing of the sort. The Russians were the enemy – always had been and always would be.
    Now he too had a habit, the old assassin thought. Sweets. He craved sweets – like this BeaverTail concoction for which he was waiting in line. He’d first seen a ski-jacket-clad woman eating one on the street. He had stopped and stared, then tracked down the source of the sticky Canadian delicacy, and now he waited patiently for his turn.
    “In the car and out of the car and in the car and out of the car and in the car and out of the car . . .” the girl sang quietly as if to comfort herself – although it occurred to the old assassin that the child was commenting on the trip she had had with her parents. He looked at the parents. They didn’t seem to be having much fun either; maybe a BeaverTail would perk them up.

    The BeaverTail was a disappointment. Although sweet, it was a wheat pastry. And wheat, though now popular in the New China, was not something that he had ever developed a taste for. So he picked the syrupy parts and the hard candy off the flat dough and sucked on them as he watched the sun set over the mountains that encircle Banff. I hope Fong is enjoying his time with the sick Long Nose, he thought as he watched the fading of the light. Quickly, he was surrounded by the darkness and the cold. He cast aside the remainder of the BeaverTail, purposefully missing the municipally supplied garbage can. Several passersby stared at him. One was about to comment then thought better of it. This overconcern with cleanliness reminded him of Japan. He hated Japan. A little filth was only human. It stopped obscenity like he had seen as a boy in Nanking during the war.
    His training had not been completed when the word came to the school that they were all needed in the old capital. By then the Japanese had controlled most of China for almost a decade. The Manchu emperor was a contemptuous joke and the Japanese were bleeding China for all it was worth to support their war effort against the Americans. The Japanese soldiers who had invaded China were cruel but well trained. They were committed occupiers – Japanese descendents of the Samurai. In their own way honourable. But as the war wore on and China was no longer a military concern, the Japanese rotated their troops. These new soldiers were conscripts, often illiterate country people, who hated the Chinese with a passion that only a child can have for a powerful parent. The hatred had come to a boil when Nanking refused to surrender. A brief battle ensued and the much-underarmed Chinese were quickly defeated.
    Then the Japanese soldiers were let loose on the populace. Thousands of women were dragged from their homes, stripped naked and gang-raped. Old men were nailed to walls, young men castrated, whole ancient inner-courtyard compounds were sealed shut with all their generations locked inside while the buildings were set alight.
    Then the Guild of Assassins had arrived. They were not large in numbers, but they were trained to kill. His first night in Nanking the old assassin had killed seven Japanese soldiers as they sat by their guard post and told stories of Chinese women crying beneath them as they had their way. Of