Search for the Buried Bomber

by Xu, Lei

  The road went on forever. The saddle ridge coiled itself back and forth through the range. As our driver threaded his way along the twisting mountain passes, we soon lost all sense of direction. We could only resign ourselves to going wherever it was we were being taken. We drove along at a terribly slow pace, and the truck broke down frequently. Our tires kept sinking into the black morass of fallen leaves that littered the path. I can't remember how many times I was awoken to get out and help push. By the time we finally reached our destination, four days and five nights had passed.

  I remember our arrival as if it were yesterday. A sweeping valley appeared before our exhausted eyes. Amid the thick brush, we could see rusted chain-link fencing crawling with green vines. Looking closely, we could just make out the faint trace of Japanese characters written on the wooden fence posts. Inner Mongolia had been part of Manchukuo, a puppet regime the Japanese had established in the Northeast. They had carried out all kinds of secret activities throughout the region. While prospecting, we would often come across hidden Japanese bunkers built into the mountains. Most had been doused in gasoline and set alight when the Japanese withdrew, but some still contained strange installations. I remember once finding a three-story building in which each story was only half the height of an average human. There were no stairs and you had to climb a chain to reach the next floor. To this day I still have no idea what that building could possibly have been used for.

  After we drove past the fence and the trees that stood behind it, there appeared to us a number of simple wooden cabins, all of them in advanced states of disrepair. Long, tendriled vines climbed the walls. The roofs seemed to have collapsed beneath the weight of fallen leaves. They looked to have been abandoned for thirty to forty years. Several PLA trucks were parked alongside the cabins, and more than ten military tents had been set up. Seeing our truck arrive, a number of engineering corpsmen hurried over to help us unload our belongings.

  Rong Aiguo was here as well, but he didn't come greet us. He just stood at a distance and watched, his expression serious as ever. I later realized this was the last time I ever saw the man. I don't even know whether Rong Aiguo was his real name. After the project was over, I ran into most of the men who served beside me at 723, but I never saw Rong Aiguo again or heard even a single mention of his name. I asked many veteran officers—men with vast numbers of contacts—as well as the numerous high-ranking military commissars with whom I sometimes worked. None of them had ever heard of a Rong Aiguo. I have to believe that whatever Rong Aiguo's true identity was, it was something remarkable. He wasn't just some common official within the engineering corps. Of course, all this was after the fact and has nothing to do with the events that were about to unfold.

  After exiting the truck, we were led to our rooms in the broken-down log cabins and helped to settle in. These had previously housed Japanese soldiers, and the furniture they'd used was still there, all of it neatly arranged but ruined to such a degree that the wood flaked off like butter when rubbed between one's fingers. The rooms had been quickly straightened up for our arrival and lime powder sprinkled about to kill any insects, but one shake of the bed's wooden baseboard and a whole pile of unidentifiable dead insects came pouring out. The baseboard itself was soaking wet. There was no way to sleep on it. The only thing to do was unroll our sleeping bags and sleep on the floor. I detested those cabins. The atmosphere inside them gave me a strange, uncomfortable feeling. People from my generation are all similar in this respect: as soon as we enter a place somehow connected to Japan, a heavy, difficult-to-express feeling comes over us. Still, I had no choice but to stay there.

  After we finished unpacking, a young private took us to get something to eat. Some of the other guys and I stuck by Old Cat. Of all of us, he seemed the most at home. I'd watched him when we first rolled in. As soon as he saw all the tents already laid out, he began to smirk, as if he knew what was about to happen. There was a certain gravity to Old Cat, and you could tell he had a handle on things. I breathed easier at his side.

  It was a quiet afternoon. As night fell the twenty or so of us were led to a large tent. A curtain had been drawn at the front of the room and a projector set up at the back. The man conducting the meeting was a colonel. I felt that I'd seen him before, but couldn't remember where or when. He began by very formally welcoming us to the 723 Project and apologizing for the inconvenience we had suffered due to its secrecy. Of course, his face didn't betray a hint of regret, and as he spoke he wasted few words.

  "Today's meeting will contain national secrets of the highest order," he said, "and so I must request that you all raise your right hands and swear that, for the rest of your lives, you will never divulge what you are about to learn, not to your wives, your parents, your fellow soldiers, or your children."

  We were all accustomed to taking oaths. Our work as prospectors often involved national secrets. We were frequently required to swear that we would keep our work confidential before beginning a project. In those days, taking an oath was a serious thing, seen as representing our revolutionary sentiments. These days taking an oath is about as meaningful as having lunch.

  At the time, national secrets were divided into three levels: confidential, secret, and top secret. For the most part, prospecting projects—like the Daqing oil field, for example—were considered secret, even though photographs of them were still sometimes published in newspapers. None of us had ever worked on a top-secret-level project before. We really had no idea what sort of extraordinary information we were about to be privy to, nor could we have ever imagined.

  A number of us glanced around the room from one face to another. We'd been held in suspense for such a long time. I admit having been a little excited. Of course, there were many who remained unimpressed. It was common in those days to make a big hubbub about insignificant events. We'd often be told with great seriousness that we were about to be informed of an issue of extreme national secrecy, and it would turn out to be some ridiculous trifle—the recent whereabouts and mundane behavior of some Party leader, for example.

  Someone later explained national secrets to me in this way: if a secret involves the livelihood of the people, it's confidential; if it involves the economy or military affairs, it's secret; and if it involves Party leaders or some impossible-to-explain subversion of the current worldview, only then is it considered top secret.

  Of course, in all plans there exist a few snags. As I watched Old Cat swear himself to secrecy, I saw him use his other hand to draw an X on his thigh, meaning the oath wouldn't count. This was a pretty grade-school maneuver, but I could understand being fed up with the absurdity of it all. I mean, the older generations of my family had been involved in some illicit dealings, activities much worse than violating an oath, and none of it had seemed to leave the least sort of negative impression on my father's character. Besides, most people probably wouldn't believe me anyway.

  As the oath ended, each of us was filled with his own thoughts. Then the colonel extinguished the lantern and someone at the back of the room started the projector. As it began running, I realized how ignorant I really was—this would be no slide show. That little machine was a film projector. We'd only watched movies on huge screens with correspondingly large projectors. We were all very curious about this miniature version. The colonel, however, gestured sternly for us to stop jabbering.

  Ten minutes into the film, I felt my whole body stiffen. I understood that the severity with which we had been instructed to conceal this information was far from just talk. The movie we were being shown was one whose contents should absolutely never be revealed—a "Zero Film."

  CHAPTER 3

  The Zero Film

  Zero Film was a code name born in the winter of 1959 at the Harbin Film Studio. They were producing a movie documenting the early exploration of the Daqing oil field: its location, development, the infrastructure and manpower assembled for the project. The film was shown only to the highest echelon of Chinese Communist Party
Central Committee members. From then on, the term Zero Film came to denote a movie that could be shown only to the top brass. No one knows what happened to all the Zero Films. An old prospector once told me the films were most likely destroyed. Just one more of the countless incomprehensible acts committed during the Cultural Revolution.

  The clip we watched appeared to be a portion of a longer movie. The events unfolded slowly—government movies of the time were always preoccupied with every minute bureaucratic step—but as the grainy images flickered against the curtains, the purpose of our transfer to this remote place became clear.

  In the winter of 1959, while fighting a forest fire in the southern foothills of the Greater Khingan range, a lumberjack discovered the wreckage of a Japanese transport plane sunk in a muddy bog. The heat from the fire had already evaporated much of the water. As the bog shriveled, the snapped wing of an aircraft was revealed. The lumberjacks on the scene climbed into the wreckage and began pulling out spare parts and components. The parts passed through many hands, from the cadre leader at the local lumber mill, to an associate of his at the county level, until finally, they were seen by a retired military officer. He immediately reported up the chain of command and news of the incident reached the highest levels.

  In those days, Party leaders took discoveries of leftover weapons and military equipment very seriously. They were useful for research, and a plane like that would probably still contain some antipersonnel bombs. The Central Committee immediately dispatched a team to investigate the wreck. After digging the plane out of the pit, the team searched the still-intact cabin. They were shocked to discover the plane had been transporting only one thing: Japanese army documents regarding the geological exploration of Manchuria and Mongolia.

  It's common knowledge that after occupying the Northeast, Japan expended a great deal of effort searching for mineral deposits, the most pressing being oil. However—and it's not clear why exactly this was—the Japanese did not drill very deeply. So no matter how much they searched, they failed to find even the hint of a deposit. Japanese prospecting teams even explored just above the ore beds in Daqing. Japan thus decided that China was an oilpoor country, and it wasn't until Huang Jiqing discovered the oil reserves at Daqing that this opinion was reversed. (In fact, prior to the Japanese occupation, prospectors from the United States also searched for and failed to find oil in China. That so many capable countries were unable to find China's oil, one can't help but find a little strange.)

  Nonetheless, the foundational prospecting work that Japan did in the Northeast was exceedingly precise. When the Soviet Union's Red Army attacked the Japanese, our spies went to any lengths to locate the information the Japanese had compiled. We failed. The documents had vanished without a trace. We Chinese believed they'd been seized by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union believed the Japanese had burned them. The Japanese believed surrendered Japanese soldiers had disclosed the information to their Chinese captors. No one could have guessed that they'd been lying at the bottom of a swamp for almost twenty years.

  This was precious data and was later used as essential reference material for large-scale, low-depth mineral-prospecting work at several locations across Inner Mongolia. The documents showed how scrupulously the Japanese had handled their affairs: all the materials were immaculate—hand copied with no errors—and divided into various leather chests, with different types of information placed into different-colored containers. Later, after being delivered to the classified-information branch of the Beijing Archives, the documents were rigorously analyzed and sorted. Because all the documents were in Japanese and included a great deal of numerical data, teasing out their secrets required translators and prospectors to work together. The process of arranging this information was slow and arduous, but in the middle of it, a peculiar outlier was uncovered. An archivist discovered a locked black steel case at the bottom of one of the leather chests.

  This little steel case was totally inconspicuous—seemingly left by accident at the bottom of the chest—but it was sealed with a code lock of great precision. Obviously it had been designed for military secrets. What could be inside? Its existence aroused great interest in the Party leaders. Experts were consulted and tremendous effort was expended before locksmiths finally broke through the lock. Inside was what appeared to be another geological-exploration document, but one written entirely in code.

  Those present at the time were all bewildered by this discovery. Why had this document in particular been specially coded and concealed? The Central Committee suspected it contained clues to the oil fields the Japanese had been searching for, but the Japanese were highly skilled code writers and, at the time, there was no way to decipher the document's meaning. The United States had information on Japanese codes, but the Korean War had only ended a few years previously. You couldn't just call up the Americans and ask to borrow their books for a quick look-see. All we could figure out was the location and scope of the prospecting area that the document seemed to refer to.

  The 723 Project and the special organization in charge here were created on the basis of this information. Three prospecting teams were selected and sent into the thick forests of Inner Mongolia to hunt for clues to the document's meaning. The discovery of this temporary Japanese base hidden deep among the trees confirmed everyone's suspicions, but the camp was already long abandoned and everything burned away. Not even a single scrap of paper remained. It was only through locating traces of former activity in the surrounding area that we could tell the Japanese did in fact have a prospecting team here, and that they had engaged in comprehensive carpet-style prospecting on 80 percent of the nearby forest and mountain regions. Our teams began a general survey of the vicinity, but to no effect—nothing could be discerned from looking at the earth's surface. Shallow excavations were then made, but again there was nothing to find. The area was completely lacking in any of the characteristics that normally merit geological exploration.

  The extreme importance attached to this area by the Japanese and the total lack of any discovery by our troops confounded us, but our leaders had faith in the accuracy of the Japanese data and knew that oil reserves are often found deep underground. They commissioned the use of seismic exploration equipment obtained from the Soviet Union. Seismic prospecting was fairly advanced for the time. Basically you fire a seismic wave from the surface into the ground. If it encounters rock layers with different physical qualities, the wave will be reflected and refracted. This reaction is then identified by a wave-detecting device located on the surface or in a well. By recording and analyzing these seismic waves, the quality and form of underground rock layers can be inferred. Detailed seismic exploration of the layers of stratification, together with precise prospecting work, is superior to all other methods of geophysical investigation. The depth of seismic exploration can range from dozens to tens of thousands of feet underground.

  China began importing this kind of equipment in 1951, and by the time of the 723 Project it had already been successfully operated in a number of real-world trials. Such equipment was generally used in the exploration of very deep mineral beds, and the technology had developed to the point where the feedback data could be presented three-dimensionally. This was a pretty damn spectacular development, but to the average person the data was just a terribly confusing mass of jumbled lines and shapes. Even ground-level tech specialists in the military like us have trouble with such abstract data. Through the use of geological-dataimaging equipment, however, this jumbled mess can be converted into a fairly comprehensible black-and-white filmstrip.

  The seismic exploration work continued for about five months, and when the contents of the find were revealed, it was enough to leave people speechless. According to the data, an abnormal seismic reflection had been recorded thirty-six hundred feet below the surface of the region. On the filmstrip, this reflection appeared as an extremely prominent, irregular white shadow. It was shaped like a cross and shocking in its precision and exactitude
: 147 feet long and 102 feet wide, it seemed to be a great piece of metal embedded in the shell rock thirty-six hundred feet underground. Seeing this image projected onto the curtain, we all began to talk excitedly. It just seemed too inconceivable to be real, but when the technical personnel enlarged the shot the whole tent went silent. The geometrical contours of its exterior were clearly visible and all of us immediately recognized it: a plane! Somehow, embedded in the shell rock thirty-six hundred feet below the surface, our team had discovered a bomber!

  CHAPTER 4

  The Shinzan

  At this point, a lot of you probably think this is all nonsense. I mean, really, this was just strange beyond measure. We'd received thoroughly practical educations, and materialism was the dominant philosophy of the time. Anything extraordinary had to be explained on the basis of what we could see and touch, no matter how forced and far-fetched the explanations sometimes became. This seemed unexplainable. My first reaction was to call it bullshit. It just wasn't plausible. But when you know something is true, when it's staring you in the face, all that remains is explaining how it happened.

  The Zero Film ended here. I was in shock and barely noticed the movie was over. Later I learned that there was a lot more that wasn't shown to us. At the time I was indignant and wanted to know why this content had been kept from us, but when I was older and had been put in charge of my own unit, I finally understood what our leaders had been thinking. Maturity always comes at a price. I realize now that every time I have reached a new level of understanding, it has almost without exception been accompanied by lies and sacrifice. There's no way of avoiding this.

  The colonel asked if we had any questions. Many believed the cross was purely coincidental, that during some natural catastrophe underground iron had coagulated into this shape by chance. But the colonel told us that based on a detailed analysis of the object's exterior it fit the description of a Shinzan, a highly uncommon Japanese bomber. Used mainly as a troop-transport plane, it was introduced at the end of World War II and there were very few in number. The likelihood that this was all just a coincidence was extremely slim.