The blacktop square outside the monumental Edwardian building constructed of red-brick by the Japanese when they ruled Taiwan echoed staccato commands. The “President’s March” skirled over the stamping of the Honor Guard’s boots. Thomas looked out the window to see the seventy-year-old Generalissimo striding jauntily between silver-helmeted soldiers toward his green Cadillac. Chiang Kai-shek acknowledged the Honor Guard’s salute with a jerky wave of his hand. Thomas smiled fondly, for affection tinged his awe of his chief.
White-sun flag flapping on its fender staff, the green Cadillac drew into the mist hanging between the low, tile-roofed buildings of Taipei. Smoke from thousands of wood fires mingled with the chill fog that pervaded the dingy city. Thomas wished himself back in Nanking, where the weather was little better, but somehow seemed much better. He suppressed the thought. The overwhelming longing for China that rose unbidden in his own and his colleagues’ minds several times each day was potentially dangerous. While sustaining their resolve to reconquer the mainland, it could inspire overoptimistic judgments that might be as fatal as despair. Thomas reminded himself to press General Cheng Kai-ming for substantiation of his Assessment.
Looking down on the gray, featureless city, Thomas Sekloong shivered involuntarily. Despite the Nationalists’ efforts to create a simulacrum of Shanghai or Nanking, Taipei remained a dull provincial city shaped by fifty years of Japanese occupation. He was eager to leave for his small house on Grass Mountain, where the air was cleaner.
A black Cadillac ascended the ramp to the Ministry. The American flag fluttering from its fender staff reminded Thomas that his day’s work was not over after all. He had forgotten his appointment with the American Ambassador and his niece Blanche’s husband, Spencer Taylor Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East. He grimaced and pressed a bell to summon his orderly. Lavish quantities of scotch and ice were essential when receiving Americans.
He might not, he mused, have forgotten the appointment if he had felt either personal fondness or professional regard for the smug, handsome career diplomat who had married Guinevere’s daughter five years earlier. At least the food would be good at the Shin Yi, Taipei’s best Szechwan restaurant. He was, Thomas remembered, giving a dinner for Spencer Taylor Smith, the Ambassador, and a number of Chinese and American officers, including the Major General commanding the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group. The Ambassador was bluntly amusing, while he had not seen his Whampoa classmate, the deputy commander of the Quemoy Garrison, for several months.
Struck by a vagrant thought, Thomas stared through his orderly, who stood patiently at attention. Yes, it could be useful, very useful—if he could persuade Spencer Taylor Smith.
Two mornings later, General Thomas Sekloong shivered on the canvas bucket seat in the unheated cabin of a camouflaged C-46 Commando. His nephew-in-law the Deputy Assistant Secretary was sleepily withdrawn in starch-new green fatigues and an outsized field jacket. The roar of the Pratt-Whitney engines in the uninsulated fuselage made coherent conversation impossible, but at 5:00 A.M. neither was inclined to chat.
Rising behind Taiwan’s central mountain spine, the false dawn gilded the aircraft’s wings and suffused the fog that cloaked the peaks. They had arrived at Sungshan Airport at 3:00 A.M. for a 3:30 A.M. takeoff, and the Air Force had finally gotten the C-46 off the ground at 4:00 A.M. All military pilots apparently suffered from the same constitutional inability to take off on time, just as they all drove their aircraft hard once in the air. But there was reason for haste if the Commando were to deposit them on Quemoy and take off again before dawn. The Nationalist Air Force could not leave a transport on the ground just a mile from Communist artillery batteries.
The Commando banked hard right, and Thomas’s ears popped as they lost altitude. He smiled at Spencer Taylor Smith, and his hands mimed the aircraft’s motion. He had explained before take-off that they would cover two hundred fifty miles, though the direct route southwest from Taipei to Quemoy was no more than one hundred eighty miles. After flying due south to Taichung on Taiwan’s coast, the Commando was turning west while descending to pass over the Pescadores Islets and the Taiwan Straits at two hundred feet. The Nationalist Air Force was contemptuous of the Communists’ radar, and faster DC-6s flew agent-drops deep into China, some penetrating as far as Sinkiang Province 2,500 miles away. Prudence nonetheless dictated the cautious predawn approach under the radar screen of the heavily fortified port of Amoy.
“Like a dog’s jaws grasping a bone, Amoy surrounds Quemoy,” Thomas had concluded his briefing with the obligatory jest. “But the Communists can’t swallow it. Quemoy is really a bone in their throat.”
The Commando raced the dawn across the Taiwan Straits. The vertical pink rays of the morning sun caught the tail plane’s splotched-camouflage paint just as Quemoy shone bleached dun on the green sea ahead. The island was a low splotch against the jagged gray hills of Fukien Province, nowhere higher than one hundred sixty feet, except for the pinnacle of Taiwushan thrusting its bare granite eight hundred forty feet above the narrow plain.
The Commando dropped so low on final approach that Spencer Taylor Smith, peering through the circular porthole, saw whitecaps clawing for the fuselage. The plane rose to clear the ridge behind the beach and dropped onto a tar-surfaced airstrip strippled with shallow shellholes. The wheels bounced twice before gripping the runway. Smith waited for the plane to halt. But Thomas bustled him toward the door, where the crew chief’s blue coveralls were an incongruous blotch of color against the aircraft’s battered aluminum shell.
The crew chief threw the door open as the tail wheel settled to earth. His upraised palm signaled them to wait. When the speed dropped to five knots, he motioned them forward. Ten seconds later, he swept his hand toward the door.
“Jump!” Thomas shouted. “Jump and roll!”
The portly diplomat obeyed, though Thomas’s preflight briefing had intentionally omitted the exit procedure. Smith landed heavily, his legs churning automatically. He stumbled and rolled on his shoulder as Thomas’s compact body flashed by.
The door slammed shut, the engines revved, and the propellers flashed in the bright dawn. The pilot wheeled the transport around and began his take-off run. Ninety seconds after its wheels had touched the strip, the Commando was again airborne. As it cleared the ridge, four shell-bursts threw up fountains of sand beside the strip.
“They’re firing for effect—psychological effect,” Thomas reassured his nephew-in-law. “Primarily to keep us on edge.”
Spencer Taylor Smith was shaken and indignant—as his uncle-by-marriage had intended. Though an infantry captain during World War II, he had never encountered the simultaneous hazards of artillery fire and a heavy transport’s landing on a short, improvised airstrip. Though his self-esteem was more badly bruised than his shoulder, he concealed his annoyance. Treating the dramatic landing as anything but a slight variation from the normal would place him at a disadvantage. He sensed that Thomas Sekloong was skilfully playing on his nerves, presumably to gain some specific advantage.
Spencer Taylor Smith had welcomed Thomas’s suggestion that he visit Quemoy. A deputy assistant secretary could allow himself an escapade that would have been unthinkable if he stood a single step higher in the State Department’s hierarchy. It would be useful to have seen Quemoy if, as Thomas predicted, the island became the center of an international storm. He had not felt it necessary to tell Thomas that Washington’s intelligence reports also forecast “increased pressure” on Quemoy.
“A bit hairy, that landing, General,” the American joked. “What do you lay on for really important visitors?”
“Fairly routine, Spencer,” Thomas replied. “And do call me Tom. General is too formal, and Uncle Thomas would make me feel too old.”
The riposte pierced the American’s guard. We Nationalists, Thomas had implied, are inured to danger, for we face the enemy in the front lines while you sit safe in Washington, juggling with our fate. He
had also recalled their family relationship by implicitly claiming and explicitly disclaiming the deference due to his seniority. Thomas had further reminded Smith that the younger man was, at forty-one, precisely midway between the ages of his fifty-three-year-old uncle and his twenty-nine-year-old wife.
Thomas Sekloong was a formidable antagonist, Spencer Taylor Smith concluded with wry admiration as they clambered into a jeep. He had, however, shown one of his cards. The American diplomat knew the Nationalist General wanted to dicker. But he too could play a waiting game.
Although he had been warned that the Nationalists would make his “unofficial” visit a formal occasion, the American stiffened indignantly when he saw the silver-helmeted Honor Guard waiting before the green-camouflaged entrance to Quemoy Garrison Headquarters. Bugles blared and drums rolled as the Commanding General saluted them.
“You must forgive these poor fellows, Spencer,” Thomas murmured. “They’re terribly isolated, just can’t help making a fuss over their rare visitors. And they admire anyone who ventures into the tiger’s mouth when he doesn’t have to.”
“I appreciate that, Tom. But you will remember, won’t you? No publicity.”
“Of course, Spencer, of course.” Thomas was pleased, since his nephew’s appeal revealed that he was disconcerted. “As far as the press knows, you’re in consultation with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister all day.”
The briefing in the underground auditorium that seated three hundred was smoothly professional, for the Nationalists had learned the theatrical technique from their American advisors. Even the accent of the trim young major wielding the pointer before the large-scale map was American. Major Liu, Thomas whispered, was a graduate of the General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
“… took refuge on Quemoy …” Spencer Taylor Smith, drowsy after his early rising and the exhausting flight, heard scattered phrases of the major’s briefing. “… we crossed in sampans and on rafts. By the time the Communists were ready to attack … all boats destroyed … tried row across on doors and logs. We beat off attack.… Almost ten years now … harassed us … but unable take Quemoy. Reveals their weakness … nearest Communist position is … outpost less than a quarter of a mile away.… Quemoy now impregnable. Garrison of fifty thousand … in caves and bunkers.… Relatively prosperous farmers ignore intermittent shelling.… One chief problem … supply lines to Taiwan not wholly secure … but garrison will fight to death.”
The American automatically sifted the kernels of significance from the chaff of rhetoric, but felt uneasily that he had overlooked some vital point. He culled his memory during the long luncheon while responding to toasts in fiery pai-kar, the colorless, 120-proof spirits distilled from Quemoy’s sorghum. He had not recalled the revealing remark when they left the headquarters bunker to inspect the island.
Quemoy’s defenses were as impressive as any American command’s. The camouflage nets were skilfully draped to blend with the island’s sandy soil and green vegetation. Their jeep was only fifty feet away when Smith saw that a cleft in the sandy hills concealed a battery of 105-howitzers. Armed sentries popped out of the ground like jacks-in-the-box, and entire infantry battalions were alert in deep caves.
Taylor Smith counted no more than four Communist shells an hour, but each shot was unnerving. The Communist batteries were less than a mile distant, while the island was so silent between explosions that he could hear the sweet song of the larks in the young pine groves. He had known fear under the unheralded explosion of incoming artillery shells. Never before that day had he heard an enemy gun fire, listened to the express-train tumble of the projectile, and then heard the crump of the impact. He flinched at each discharge, feeling as if every shell were aimed directly at himself.
“Now I know,” he told Thomas, “what it’s like to be a tin duck in a shooting gallery.”
“A quiet day despite the build-up,” the General answered. “The Communists are husbanding their ammunition.”
Ascending Taiwushan, Quemoy’s sole height, they paused before an obelisk that praised the garrison in the Generalissimo’s own calligraphy. From the observation platform, Thomas pointed out the Communist positions with a proprietorial air. Through powerful tripod-mounted binoculars Taylor Smith saw Communist gunners lounging beside their revetments on the Amoy Peninsula that sheltered the largest port between Shanghai and Hong Kong.
“There seems,” he baited Thomas, “to be a lot of peaceful coexistence.”
“On both sides,” the Nationalist General rejoined. “Our artillery could close Amoy to all shipping. But we, too, are restrained.”
“Somehow, I don’t get the feeling of an impending crisis,” the American persisted.
In reply, Thomas beckoned to a staff officer who carried a plastic-encased map on which red-crayoned boxes marked the Communist artillery positions. The staff officer swiveled the binoculars so that the American could see the reality of gun-metal tubes each symbol represented.
“Every one of the batteries you’re now seeing has been emplaced during the past three weeks,” Thomas said. “They’re constantly bringing up ammunition and reinforcements. Aerial observation and agent reports confirm the build-up.”
“Then you’d say the present quiet’s an illusion?”
“Calm before the storm,” Thomas replied. “And we’re already outgunned. That’s worrying.”
“Worrying? I thought you were confident.”
“We are confident—except for one factor.”
The Deputy Assistant Secretary waited in silence for the General to reveal why he had been enticed to Quemoy.
“This island can hold out indefinitely, even against air attack,” Thomas said. “Our Air Force controls the skies. But our Navy’s small and, between us, not really first-class. I’m not confident we can maintain adequate resupply of ammunition and food.”
“Therefore?”
“We need an understanding that the U.S. Navy will insure resupply.”
“And risk war with Peking? Hardly likely, Tom.”
“Spencer, suppose Quemoy falls into the hands of Peiping.” Thomas stressed the Nationalists’ old name for Peking, the Communists’ renamed capital. “It would be a major American political defeat, in the States as well as abroad. If American promises were shown up, all Asians would lose heart. And many Americans would object strenuously.”
“I see your point, but I’m not concerned with domestic politics.”
“You can’t ignore politics, can you?” Thomas pressed. “Eisenhower would look a proper fool if the Communists took Quemoy because he failed a sworn ally, reneged on promises.”
“You know very well that Quemoy is specifically excluded from the Taiwan area whose defense we’ve guaranteed.”
“And would that fine distinction preserve American credibility or American interests? More like Korea. Dean Acheson had specifically excluded Korea from your defense perimeter, and look what happened.”
“It’s not that simple, though I follow your reasoning.” The Deputy Assistant Secretary sacrificed the point like a chess master. “Speaking hypothetically … you understand I have no authority to make commitments, even to discuss eventualities officially. But, hypothetically, what would you need?”
“No more than an understanding, shall we say, that we’d receive American naval support for resupply. Only if absolutely necessary, of course.”
“It might be possible,” Taylor Smith conceded. “But public opinion cuts two ways in the States. Lots of Americans would scream bloody murder if our Navy actively supported your operations, even if we didn’t fire a shot.”
“American ships wouldn’t have to shoot,” Thomas replied. “The Communists wouldn’t dare challenge them at this stage. They’re not yet ready to take on the U.S. again.”
“That’s your assessment of enemy intentions. It’s not hard intelligence, just a self-serving guess.”
“Perhaps, but you’ve undoubtedly made your own assessment and …”
>
“I’ll be frank, Tom. Our assessment isn’t as optimistic as yours. We think the Communists might not react against our ships. But the risk’s too high.”
“Speaking hypothetically, though, you might risk it? Is my understanding correct?”
“You’ve boxed me in,” Taylor Smith laughed. “Quite unofficially, that could be Washington’s view, if our people agreed that your losing Quemoy would hurt us badly. But we’d need something to placate your opposition at home, the very vocal group of Americans who oppose any aid to your government.”
“What’s the quid pro quo you want from us?”
“A firm commitment, a public declaration that your government renounces the use of force to retake the mainland.”
Thomas winced. The American had caught him in his own trap.
“That’s impossible,” he protested automatically. “You’re asking us to renounce our national purpose. We’d rather take our chances.”
“If Quemoy falls, your national purpose, reconquering the mainland, would look damned hollow. Anyway, I said renounce force. Political means could still be used. You could restate your determination to free the Chinese mainland by political means.”
“Power grows from the barrel of the gun,” Thomas bitterly quoted Mao Tse-tung.
“No gun, then no power,” Smith replied. “No gun emplacements on Quemoy and no power to retake the mainland. It cuts both ways. Look, Tom, we’re trying to do the best we can. We’re not pressing for withdrawal from Quemoy, but only …”
“Impossible, absolutely impossible,” Thomas interjected. “We’ve already withdrawn from too many offshore islands. We can’t …”
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