Dynasty

by Elegant, Robert;

  Nonetheless, Lin Piao’s eyebrows knotted above his deep-sunk eyes. He was tensely uncomfortable in the scroll-hung dining room of the landlord whom he knew to be his true enemy. But the other young officers appeared relaxed, and pewter teapots poured out Shaohsing rice wine to stimulate their gaiety. They fell upon the lavish cold hors d’oeuvres with gusto: thousand-year-old eggs, their gleaming jade centers nested in translucent green and garnished with shaved red peppers; thin-sliced pork doused in a garlic-pepper-soy-and-coriander sauce after the manner of Chengtu; shredded chicken breasts in sesame paste and vinegar; tiny fresh-water shrimp in wine; pickled goose; and cubes of subtly seasoned Shanghai-style ham. The servants obsequiously placed the next courses on the round briar-wood table: a tureen of costly sharks’ fins and crab; tender minced squab accompanied by tissue-thin wheaten pancakes; plump frogs’ legs crisp-fried in a delicate batter; and eel seethed with garlic.

  To James’s pampered taste the food was no more than passable. But he indignantly contrasted Squire Lee’s fare with the few shreds of wild greens made palatable by coarse salt that accompanied the minuscule bowls of broken rice the poor farmers had shared with his platoon that morning. He tossed down successive thimble-cups of warm yellow rice wine, fueling his morose anger. His fellow officers, he noted scornfully, refuted like trained parrots their host’s obligatory disparagement of the elaborate courses.

  While lean watch-dogs snapped at the discarded scraps, the servants bore in the next round of dishes: birds’ nest soup from Borneo with quail eggs; tidbits of tenderloin simmered with lotus stalks; mushrooms stuffed with spiced pork; scallops and fresh abalone blended with pungent vegetables; the honey-braised ham of neighboring Hunan Province in steamed white buns; whole chickens wrapped in lotus leaves before they were baked in the fragrant sediment from wine jars; ducks smoked over tea-leaf and camphorwood fires; and the great Golden Fish from the Tungting Lake steamed whole in wine.

  “It is nothing!” Squire Lee expressed the false humility required by traditional Chinese courtesy. “I apologize deeply for these badly prepared scraps. They are unfit for the Young Lords who honor my poor hovel with their bright presence.”

  “You do us too much honor, Sir,” Thomas responded automatically. “Your banquet is superb. Far beyond our poor merits, it is so abundant it dazzles us.”

  “And besots us,” James muttered. “We gorge like landlord exploiters, we soldiers of the people.”

  Thomas was alarmed by the dark flush that suffused his brother’s face, and Lin Piao glanced sharply at his subordinate. If Squire Lee, sweating as he shoveled his food into his greasy mouth with ivory chopsticks, had heard James’s surly comment, he gave no sign.

  “I am particularly honored that I may claim connections with two of the Young Lords.” His smile was unctuous. “The Shell sign at the entrance to my hovel shows I am the unworthy agent of the princely merchant Mr. Sek Howan, the great Sekloong.”

  Even Thomas winced at the abject flattery, and James flushed crimson when he heard the word kwan-hsi, connections. Half China’s sorrows arose from kwan-hsi, the personal connections that dominated all other social, economic, and moral forces. His political instructors had taught him that kwan-hsi was a web of corrupt privilege sustaining the evil, exploitive, old society.

  “Kwan-hsi,” he growled. “You mother-raper. Bugger your kwan-hsi. I have no connection with bloodsuckers.”

  The officers’ laughter ceased abruptly. Captain Lin Piao hastened to repair the social lapse, though he agreed with James. The son of the impoverished bourgeoisie had been drilled in the elaborate traditional courtesies before breaking with his family at the age of fifteen to join the Young Socialist League. Besides, the Communist Party had instructed him to placate the “national bourgeoisie”—until the time came for their liquidation.

  “We do not, Elder Brother Lee, talk of kwan-hsi,” Lin Piao explained. “We are concerned with justice, not connections, justice for all the people of China.”

  “I am old, too old and too ignorant.” Apologies cascaded from Squire Lee’s flaccid lips. “I do not know the proper new forms. I beg you to pardon me, Young Lords.”

  “How much do you pay for a catty of fire-oil, Mr. Lee?” James tossed back his twenty-second cup of yellow rice wine. “And how much do you charge?”

  “It is difficult to calculate, honored Lieutenant,” Squire Lee evaded the question. “Many factors contribute to the cost—overhead, shipping, insurance, transportation. When your noble National Revolutionary Army creates a new government, I will sell fire-oil for their lamps much cheaper to the noble farmers.”

  James knew that Squire Lee had never before that instant spoken of “noble farmers.” Kwei nung-min, noble farmers, his mother’s! Fat Squire Lee would normally call peasants yung-jen, “serfs.”

  “I’ll tell you then,” James said. “After all expenses, you make three hundred percent clear profit.”

  “I assure you, young sir, your figures err.”

  “You lie,” James spat. “You’re not only a bloodsucker, but a liar without shame or honor.”

  “And your noble house?” The merchant’s normally autocratic temper asserted itself. “Your own so noble house? What profit do you make? Twice mine—and grind me if I’m a week late in settling. You’re the bloodsuckers masquerading as the masses’ saving stars. You Sekloongs are the running-dogs of the foreign devils. You’ve only joined ranks with the National Army to protect your own damned connections, your own kwan-hsi!”

  James swept the dishes to the floor. He leaped onto the table, his mud-spattered boots grinding broken porcelain into the polished briar-wood. One hand gripped Squire Lee’s throat; the other groped for his sheathed bayonet. He shook off his slighter brother’s restraining grip, and his bayonet flashed free.

  Squire Lee’s face was sickly puce, and his soft hands clawed at the fingers gripping his throat. James’s bayonet transfixed the merchant’s plump thigh. Lin Piao snapped an order, and his lieutenants pulled the two apart. The Captain bent solicitously over the writhing merchant to search for the femoral artery amid the spurting blood. But a sour half-smile twisted the red lips shadowed by the heavy stubble on his sallow cheeks. He could, he knew, be reasonably certain of the loyalty of at least one member of his clandestine Communist cell. Lin Piao drew James Sekloong aside after shepherding his abashed subalterns from the landlord’s house.

  “That turtle’s egg doesn’t matter much,” he said mildly. “An enemy anyway, he’s now a confirmed enemy. This night’s work could restore our name with the peasants. They wonder why we promise to liberate them—and then swill wine with their oppressors.”

  “Sir,” James said earnestly, “I regret that …”

  “Oh, you’ll regret it. No doubt about it. You’ll be publicly reprimanded for violence to a civilian.”

  “I deserve that.” The chastened James wiped his bayonet. “I won’t break discipline again.”

  “You certainly won’t. But your real punishment’s up to the Party Committee. You’ll probably lose your candidate membership—at the least.”

  “But, Company Commander,” James objected. “Squire Lee is the enemy, the class enemy we fight. How could the Party Committee …”

  “Because, Platoon Commander, you disobeyed orders, barefacedly broke discipline. The Party’s collective wisdom is greater than yours or mine, greater even than the Secretary-General’s. If the Party commanded us to march on Peking to restore Pu Yi, the so-called Emperor Hsüan Tung, to his throne, we would march.”

  “But, Company Commander, I …”

  “No arguments, Platoon Commander. Without discipline, we matter no more than the senile brigands of the Secret Societies. A good Communist must surrender his will to the Party, surrender his personal feelings—and his family pride. Above all, a good Communist obeys. Otherwise, he’s as much use to the revolution as a heap of dog turds.”

  James withdrew into silence while his self-esteem recovered from the humiliating public
reprimand and he awaited the decision of the Party Committee. His brother officers were inconsequentially gay as strolling players in the glorious October sunshine until they came to Nanchang. The city’s high walls had dominated mountainous northern Kiangsi for centuries, commanding the age-old invasion route to the central Yangtze Valley and the North—the road to Shanghai, Nanking, and the old Imperial Capital of Peking. Warlord Sun Chuan-fang was, therefore, as determined to hold strategic Nanchang as the Revolutionary Army was to take the city. The National Revolutionary Army met a resolute enemy in a set-piece, conventional battle for the first time—and recoiled. Political warfare was unavailing against troops unmoved by nationalistic propaganda. Sun Chuan-fang hurled more than 150,000 men into the battle, and the Whampoa officers learned for the first time that war was cruel.

  Captain Lin Piao had won the honor of serving as the point company, and the unit’s losses were heavy. The young officers were shaken by their discovery that “national revolutionary warfare” was not always a triumphant parade in the sunlight. Thomas Sekloong admitted only to himself that he was frightened by the enemy’s artillery and appalled by the hand-to-hand skirmishes. James could not admit even to himself that he was afraid, for he was determined to repair his breach of discipline by his courage. He led his platoon in a frontal charge against the twenty-two tile-roofed houses of the village that blocked their road to Nanchang.

  The mud walls exploded with machine-gun and mortar fire that struck down eighteen of his forty men. James did not take cover, but ordered his dazed survivors forward. The astonished defenders broke and ran before troops who would neither fall nor go to the ground. The Nationalists slaughtered their dazed enemies with bayonets and half-moon-shaped machetes. Delighting in his victory, James did not count his own losses or see the gory shambles of the village. His own bayonet dripped red, and gray brain-tissue clung to the butt of his Mauser pistol. His eyes exultantly blood-shot, he rejoiced at having redeemed himself when Lin Piao led up the main body. He had been ordered to take the village, and he had obeyed.

  Captain Lin surveyed the village square, where twenty-three gray-uniformed warlord soldiers lay contorted in death. The dogs were already tearing at the corpses, ripping away their cotton jackets to get at the sweet flesh underneath.

  “You obeyed orders, Platoon Commander,” Lin Piao observed. “Obeyed to a fault. Wouldn’t it have been better to go around and take them on the flank? The point is to kill the enemy—not your own men.”

  “I’ll remember, Comrade … ah … Company Commander.” James did not resent the gentle reprimand. “It seems I learn the hard way.”

  “As long as you learn, Comrade,” Lin Piao said softly. “That’s the important thing.”

  The generals learned more slowly than did Lieutenant James Sekloong, though their normal failing was not rashness, but excessive caution. Cock-a-hoop over the cheap victories preceding the battle of Nanchang and mesmerized by the doctrine of “total political warfare” preached by Mikhail Borodin, Chou En-lai, and General Gehlen, the divisional commander ignored the injunction of Sun Tze, China’s master strategist of the fifth century B.C.: “Always allow the enemy a way out! Always leave him an avenue of escape.” The enveloping advance of the Nationalist Revolutionary Army left General Sun Chuan-fang no way out—and he fought desperately for Nanchang.

  The warlord’s soldiers ignored the appeals that had induced other warlord units to desert: “Come join us, fellow Chinese patriots, in unifying the country!” Companies and battalions would have deserted to the Revolutionary Army en masse if they had been offered gold. But the revolutionaries’ coffers were empty, unlike those of General Sun, who understood that mercenaries must be paid. Having taken Sun Chuan-fang’s gold, his troops fought with a ferocity that astonished the Political Commissars.

  Nonetheless, the Revolutionary Army’s noose of men and steel tightened around Nanchang. The climactic battle began on November 1, 1927, and the city fell just a week later. His power smashed, Sun Chuan-fang fled northward with his gold and his concubines, abandoning the soldiers who had refused to desert him. When they counted the losses, the Nationalist commanders were shaken. The warlord forces had suffered more than 90,000 dead and wounded. The generals did not reveal their own losses, but every man had seen his comrades fall in ranks around him. Some of his fellow officers nodded subdued agreement when Thomas Sekloong said quietly: “Our purpose, I thought, was to unify China—not to kill Chinese.”

  Many of the ardent young officers, however, shared James Sekloong’s exultation in victory, though not all agreed with his retort: “We’ll kill many more Chinese. We must so that the people can take power.”

  If Commander-in-Chief Chiang Kai-shek shared his subordinates’ dismay, he displayed no outward sign of regret at the slaughter. His purpose, too, was fixed—to unify China under the rule of the enlightened bourgeoisie, the modern, responsible men of property James despised. Chiang appeared close to his goal in early 1927 after the fall of Nanchang gave him military control of the Yangtze Valley and the entire South, more than half China. But he was hampered by political conflicts within the Nationalist Party that were even more disruptive of his purpose than the increasing tension between the Nationalists and the Communists.

  Though President Wang Ching-wei was still abroad, the Nationalist Government moved to Wuhan, the industrial heart of China, in January 1927. It was dominated by the left wing of the Kuomintang, which included many overtly pro-Soviet figures, and its éminence grise was Mikhail Borodin, the Communist International’s delegate to China. The left wing airily dismissed the threat of Russian domination Sir Jonathan Sekloong had warned against three years earlier.

  But Chiang Kai-shek flatly rejected Borodin’s advice that, instead of advancing, he consolidate the areas already under Nationalist control with Communist assistance. As the warlords retreated north in disarray, the Revolutionary Army took Nanking. Chiang’s exultant troops looted the riverside city’s foreign concessions and set fire to the oil tanks of the Esso Petroleum Company. Panic-driven foreigners scrambled over the walls of their compounds to seek refuge on the gunboats of the U.S. and Royal Navies that lay at anchor in the Yangtze.

  The looting ceased when those gunboats shelled the Nationalist troops. But General Chiang had taken Nanking, and he meant to keep Nanking, the ancient Southern Capital, the symbol of legitimate rule second only to Peking, the Northern Capital. He had simultaneously acquired a name in the foreign press as a “blood-thirsty Bolshevik”—at just the moment he was rapidly moving toward a decisive break with his Communist allies in Shanghai, the actual wellspring of power in modern China.

  The great port, which Chou En-lai’s Workers’ Militia had seized on March 22, 1927, two days before Nanking fell, was central to Chiang Kai-shek’s strategy. He who controlled Shanghai controlled the economy and communications of the Yangtze Basin, which dominated all Central China. The city could also provide financial support for the right-wing Nationalists, who distrusted Moscow’s largesse. Chiang’s resolve to exploit those alternate sources of power was hardened by a warlord police raid on the Soviet Consulate in Peking on April 6. Seized documents outlined Moscow’s plans to destroy the Kuomintang after the joint Nationalist-Communist victory and take all power over China through the Chinese Communist Party. Chiang Kai-shek made his final plans as his army marked time outside Shanghai and the Sekloong brothers said their boisterous farewells.

  Jonnie Sekloong would have recognized the reptilian head and obsidian eyes of the sleek figure who slipped from his Packard into General Chiang Kai-shek’s headquarters through the evening of April 11, 1927. But Thomas Sekloong, completing his first full week as aide-decamp to the Commander-in-Chief, saw just another of the Shanghai men with whom his chief had been conferring. Some he had known by reputation, while others had greeted him warmly. Judah Haleevie had called twice, and General Chiang had glowed with satisfaction after their protracted talks. The visitors included foreign businessmen and foreign official
s of the Shanghai Municipal Council; Chinese bankers and merchants; and the Japanese Consul-General. But Thomas could not place the man who called himself Mr. Wong, and he was alarmed by the visitor’s four bodyguards in blue workers’ clothing. The Green Dragon, Tu Yueh-shen, magnate of the opium traffic and commander of ten thousand Secret Society Braves, was conferring with his sworn blood-brother Chiang Kai-shek.

  Thomas glanced surreptitiously at his shoulder straps, where the three gold bars of a captain shone. A shower of promotions had fallen on their unit. Lin Piao, promoted to major, commanded the battalion, while the newly minted Captain James Sekloong took over the company. General Chiang Kai-shek had chosen Thomas as aide-de-camp not only to strengthen his ties with the Sekloong empire, but to provide himself with a wholly trustworthy emissary who had entrée to both foreign and Chinese commercial circles. The General, who had watched his cadets with obsessive care, felt that Thomas Sekloong was his man to the death. He repaid that devotion with confidence as complete as his innate suspiciousness permitted.

  From his desk in the anteroom of the General’s office, Thomas’s dark eyes unwaveringly watched Mr. Wong’s four bodyguards, who slurped their tea and spat out sunflower-seed shells. Thomas sat erect, his hand near the buzzer-button that would summon the ready squad of the General’s elite guard that was always within earshot. It was his function to be always alert, though Mr. Wong and General Chiang were obviously close friends. The reserved General had actually clasped his visitor’s hand with both his own. The allies apparently trusted each other, but “not too much,” as the strategist Sun Tze had advised.

  When a bell summoned him, Thomas took up his notebook and knocked quietly. Wall maps studded with colored pins had replaced the scrolls that had marked the faded blue walls with darker strips; two green-cased field telephones, their thick cables trailing across the stained carpet and out the shuttered windows, stood on the ebony writing table instead of the classical scholar’s paraphernalia of inkstones and brushes. The study was a microcosm of changing China: the ugly, utilitarian appurtenances of modern warfare had replaced the artifacts of the ancient civilization. Only one scroll remained: a crimson magnificence of peonies in the foreground framed a shadowed hillside where a tiger, half-hidden in the deep grass, stalked a pair of browsing stags.