Chou En-lai had, however, won the Politburo’s approval for a final test of the diplomatic option even before he sent James Sekloong to Hong Kong to face Spencer Taylor Smith. The astute Chou En-lai had noted Washington’s conciliatory signals—most obviously the gradual dismantling of American restrictions on trade and travel between the two countries. If the United States were seriously prepared to discuss improving relations with the People’s Republic, he could still avert the assault. Lin Piao was, however, calculatedly impatient—committed by temperament and self-interest to the military solution, whatever the cost. He argued that the resolution of the United States, the power that must finally defend Taiwan, had been broken by American inability to bring the horrifying war in Vietnam to a victorious conclusion.
“There will never be a better opportunity, never,” Lin Piao told Chou En-lai by telephone at 12:46 A.M. “It’s Sunday, and Taiwan is disrupted by the typhoon. We’ll bypass Quemoy to hit Taiwan directly. The bombers of the 6121st Air Division are arming, and the Navy is embarking the assault force. The Chairman himself has authorized the assault.”
“Of course, Comrade Deputy Chairman.” The Premier did not allude to their common knowledge that the enfeebled Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who was virtually sequestered by Lin Piao, almost invariably agreed with the last person who spoke to him. “If the American spy-planes and satellites saw no movement, the threat wouldn’t be credible. The Chairman, as always, sees further than you or I—toward a diplomatic solution.”
“Only if the Americans give way,” Lin Piao concluded. “The Occidental Mind understands only one thing—force.”
In the air-conditioned situation room in the basement of the White House, junior officers were transferring the latest intelligence reports of the Liberation Army’s deployments against Taiwan to the talc overlays on maps of East China that had preempted the slots normally occupied by large-scale maps of Vietnam. The time was 12:52 P.M. on June 27, 1970, since Washington was thirteen hours behind Hong Kong and twelve hours behind Peking. The junior officers suppressed their annoyance at being deprived of a relaxed Saturday afternoon in deference to the President and his Assistant for National Security Affairs. The two men who controlled the world’s most powerful military machine were attended by a constellation of generals and admirals. The officers’ stars and ribbons were gaudily theatrical beside the seersucker jackets of the sandy-haired Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East and the tall, dark Asian specialist of the National Security Council. The Americans had not anticipated the triangular crisis quite so soon, though they knew Lin Piao and Chou En-lai were contending for power—and they had prepared detailed military and political plans to meet a Communist threat to Taiwan.
“The damned Chinese are screwing us up.” The President was aggrieved. “Here we’ve been signaling we were ready to talk turkey—and suddenly they put a gun at our heads. And those shit-assed students’ve got me in a bind. It’s too soon after the raid into Cambodia. I’d hate to tangle with Peking right now. The agitators’d make life hell.”
“We must help Chou En-lai, Mr. President,” the Security Adviser observed. “If we are not firm, Lin Piao will strike, I believe.”
“But it’s my frigging decision, mine, not yours.” The President irritably emphasized his responsibility. “And how much do we really know?”
“Dick?” The Security Adviser nodded to the young professor. “What’s your appreciation?”
“Everything indicates it’s a bluff—as far as Chou is concerned.” The Security Council’s Asian specialist measured his words. “But Lin Piao’s going for broke. If we stand up to them, they should back down. If we don’t, they’ll certainly go all the way.”
“Marshall?” the Security Adviser asked.
“I believe, Mr. President,” the Assistant Secretary added, “that a diplomatic solution is still possible. But we’ve got to give Chou En-lai something concrete, a real prospect of our disengaging from Taiwan and relaxing Sino-American tension. Chou needs a victory—or Lin Piao and his hawks take over.”
The President brooded darkly, his prognathous jaws clenched.
“We retain many military options, Mr. President,” the Security Adviser counseled. “A range of responses from local defensive action to conventional bombing of Chinese staging points—escalating to industrial facilities and Peking itself. The Soviet dilemma is worse than our own. Which side to help?”
“The Sovs,” interposed the Chief of Naval Operations, “have no significant forces in the area—and their bases are too far from Taiwan. I’d say they’d sit this one out.”
“I believe Chou En-lai understands the nuances within our common conceptual framework,” the Security Adviser continued. “He knows we can’t give Taiwan away overnight. He must also know we can’t cling forever to a spent force like the Nationalists. To me, the Foreign Ministry’s message relayed by General Shih Ai-kuo is basically conciliatory.”
“But Chou En-lai’s not running the show?” the President asked. “That’s the problem?”
“Yes, Sir,” the Asian specialist agreed. “And Lin Piao hasn’t got the smarts. He thinks a spectacular victory’d really fix him up—all power for life. His threat’s for real. The guns are moving, and he’s playing for keeps—not bluffing.”
“We’ve already told Spence Smith to feed them the usual crap—we’d view gravely any provocative action, all that crap?” the President asked.
“Yes, Sir,” the Security Adviser confirmed. “And more: the United States cannot countenance the flagrant use of force against a friendly nation that has itself categorically renounced use of force against the Chinese mainland. We’ve also told Smith to request highly specific clarification of General Shih’s offer to negotiate.”
The President withdrew into himself, isolated by invisible but almost palpable walls from the ordered bustle in the situation room. He communed with his inner Furies for three minutes before announcing his decision.
“All right then. Move major Seventh Fleet units toward Taiwan and the China Coast. Yellow alert for SAC. Get some big bombers into the air and crank the missiles up. That’ll warn the Russians off.”
The generals and admirals hurried to the telephones that would set the American war-machine in motion half a world away. The four civilians were isolated, and the President wondered if he had already yielded too much authority to the men in uniform.
“The diplomatic option is still open.” The National Security Adviser sensed his chief’s misgivings. “We’ve already determined how far we can go—and how fast.”
“Assuming,” the President said, “we’re dealing with Chou En-lai.”
“That’s the $64,000 question,” agreed the Security Adviser. “Can we make it so?”
While the civilians pondered, the military of both sides moved. Teletypes chattered in Omaha, the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. Ninety seconds later, B-52s carrying nuclear and conventional bombs climbed into orbit over Okinawa. Jet-engines whined on airfields in China’s Fukien Province as pilots tested their llyushin-28 bombers. Five minutes later, combat-armed Marines filed into C-141s bound from Okinawa to Taiwan, and Chinese infantrymen carrying AK-47 assault rifles braced themselves as their east-bound landing-craft rolled in the billows of the Taiwan Straits. Spraddle-legged on the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser Long Beach, the vice-admiral commanding the U.S. Seventh Fleet squinted into the windy night and spoke quietly. Two minutes later, the aircraft-carrier Enterprise on Yankee Station off North Vietnam altered course, and her four nuclear-powered engines drove her northeast through the long swells of the South China Sea at thirty-eight knots. At the same moment, the carrier Oriskany pointed her gray bow toward the Taiwan Straits, trailing a light cruiser and four destroyers through the ten-foot waves of Typhoon Linda’s wake in the East China Sea. The first Chinese convoy, carrying 9,000 men and shepherded by high-speed patrol-boats, was already sixteen miles from the Fukien coast, pounding due east to cover the ninety-four miles that sepa
rated it from Taiwan.
The quiet eye of the storm of Chinese and American military movements was The Castle in Sekloong Manor. The interface (as the new technology called the point of contact) between those two great forces was two men actually facing each other on either side of the azalea-banked fireplace of the study. Neither Spencer Taylor Smith nor James Sekloong rejoiced at having suddenly attained the pinnacle of power toward which he had clambered all his life. Each was awed by the terrifying responsibility he discerned from his new eminence. The domestic setting intensified the negotiators’ unease. Neither could concentrate properly upon the hazardous confrontation while the unruly family milled about him. Even Lady Mary had yielded to the temptation to draw her son aside and offer unsought counsel.
“James, this is your opportunity,” she had said. “You know I haven’t always approved of your deeds or your associates. Too much killing. You can either crown your life by this night’s work—or loose greater bloodshed and devastation. Incidentally, Charlotte tells me Avram Barakian is in touch with the Americans. They are interested in providing China with technology to develop offshore oil. It’s your only hope, you know.”
“At a great profit, no doubt,” her son replied. “Always the greedy capitalists.”
James’s snap rejoinder masked his perturbation. He was dismayed by the outside world’s knowledge of both China’s vast offshore oil reserves and Peking’s hope that their exploitation would resolve the nation’s great economic and strategic problems. The Premier’s “practical production faction” and the Deputy Chairman’s “struggle faction,” which were contending for supreme power, disagreed strongly on the development of those petroleum deposits. The Premier believed that foreign, particularly American, technological expertise under Chinese control was essential to their development. The Deputy Chairman argued that China would sacrifice both her Socialist purity and her freedom of action by utilizing foreign technicians and foreign equipment.
James’s own loyalties were divided. As a soldier, he was directly subordinate to Lin Piao, who had been his first commander. As a Chinese and a Communist, he owed equal loyalty to his first teacher of Marxism, Chou En-lai. He would normally have supported the Premier’s more rational policies regarding both national development and “liberating” Taiwan. But he was disturbed by the Premier’s apparent acquiescence in the degradation of his wife Lu Ping. Besides, his military instinct preferred the hard line—a quick, overwhelming attack while the enemy was in disarray. But, remembering his son dead in Korea and his daughter maimed by Lin Piao’s Cultural Revolution, he shrank from further bloodshed.
Though Spencer Taylor Smith’s loyalties were not divided, he too resented the family’s pressure. Lady Mary had approached the Under Secretary too.
“Spencer,” she had said, her hand resting on the bannister of the great Y-shaped staircase, “you must be patient with the Chinese. They are difficult. No one knows that better than I.”
“Of course, Lady Mary,” Spencer Taylor Smith answered impatiently.
“But they are too important to your country to overlook,” she continued calmly. “I’ve found they are sometimes so much more intelligent—or more stupid—than others. They are very, shall I say, vital—and they overdo things, go to excess. They’re all extremists, even James. Be patient, Spencer—and be careful.”
The Under Secretary was still pondering that enigmatic advice when his wife’s Uncle Thomas approached him.
“Remember Quemoy, Spencer,” the Nationalist General said. “We Nationalists don’t give up easily. We just don’t give up at all. You can block whatever treachery Washington and Peking are planning. Your hand is on the lever. And remember Quemoy!”
“The situation’s not really analogous, Tom.”
“Look, Spencer, we’ll survive—no matter what dirty deals you make. We’ll survive even if the Communists strike tomorrow morning.”
“They’re not likely,” the American parried, “to do that.”
“Spencer, don’t take me for a fool. We have our sources, and we know what the game is tonight. We’ll survive—even if we have to fight alone. Maybe the Russians’ll help us. You don’t know what agreements we’ve made with them. And don’t think you can force us to march into a grave you dig for us.”
Thomas turned away contemptuously. His hauteur gave way to haste when he saw his niece Blanche Taylor descending the staircase, and he withdrew.
“What did that little creep want, Spence?” she asked. “He’s a horror. Don’t believe a word he says. Aunt Charlotte says so—and she’s his own sister.”
“That’ll do, Blanche!” Taylor Smith snapped at the one person to whom he need never pretend diplomatic courtesy. “I’ve had about enough. I’m engaged in grave negotiations—and you pass on messages from your dizzy Aunt Charlotte. This isn’t a family matter.”
“Don’t be too sure, Spence.” Blanche gathered her green-brocade skirt and swept away. “It’s a big family.”
The Under Secretary’s black shoes scuffed against the polished teak treads as he climbed the Y-shaped staircase. The fatigue induced by tension was, he realized, compounded by his irritation at his wife’s intrusive family. Thank God, he thought, the younger generation had not weighed in, particularly the unbearable Chappie Parker. As he reached the top of the staircase he smiled in grim derision of his own optimism. Little Lady Mary and her brother Jonathan were bearing down on him along the broad corridor.
Spencer Taylor Smith reflected that he was to be spared no conceivable annoyance during the hours that tested to the utmost all his diplomatic skills forged by the experience of a lifetime. His young cousins were the outward semblance of propriety: she in an ankle-length orange-silk dress with a cowl neckline and long sleeves, he in a tailcoat cut to understated perfection by Henry Poole of Cork Street. But their way of life and, he feared, their political views belied their appearance.
Still at Cambridge, Jonathan rode his father’s horses in steeplechases and drove his Maserati on the Grand Prix circuit with the same wild zest. Little Lady Mary, who possessed the best mind of the fourth generation, was studying physics at Oxford, and Spencer Taylor Smith had heard her exclaim in exasperation to her great-grandmother: “No, Granny, generating electricity by fusion, not fission—implosion, not explosion.” She was, however, known among her contemporaries not as a “brain,” but for her amours; and she had been hounded by the press only six months earlier for “having driven to suicide” the abstract-impressionist poet Alvin Gutmacher.
The American diplomat consoled himself that the passage of time would undoubtedly win the brother and sister to the solid bourgeois virtues he himself exemplified. But, remembering their arrest in London in 1967 and subsequent incidents, he turned away in haste.
“They probably want to tell me to give away not only Taiwan, but Hawaii and Catalina too,” he muttered to himself.
His escape was blocked by two male figures: Jonathan and Little Lady Mary’s father, brevet Brigadier Sir Henry Sekloong, dashing in the dark-blue dress uniform of the 17/21 Lancers; and George Chapman Parker, Jr., imposing in the light-blue of a United States Air Force major general. The two soldiers, above all the others, should know better than to interfere, and the diplomat was in no mood to talk with them. From earlier conversations, he assumed they would urge him to fire atomic missiles at Peking. Gratefully, he opened the door of the study and slipped into that sanctuary.
Those encounters distracted Spencer Taylor Smith as he watched James Sekloong settle into the worn, red-leather chair Dr. Sun Yat-sen had occupied in December 1911 shortly after the Republican Revolution. James, too, was distracted. He knew he must unavoidably “lean to one side,” in the Chairman’s phrase, by serving either the Premier or the Deputy Chairman. The direction in which he leaned could mean peace or war, as well as his own survival or eclipse.
“Mr. Smith,” he said, “we’ve heard all these threats before. The United States cannot countenance the flagrant use of force, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera. We’ve heard it all before.”
“And we’ve acted before, General Shih. I urge you to advise your principals not to be hasty. The United States is no paper tiger.”
“No paper tiger? You’ve been bogged down in Vietnam for five years, Mr. Smith.”
“We’re not talking about guerrillas, General, or limited war. The Seventh Fleet is moving aircraft-carriers into the Taiwan area. Nuclear-armed bombers are in the air, and our missiles are in the firing position. Be careful how you loose the holocaust.”
“You wouldn’t dare. We, too, possess nuclear weapons. The American people are firmly opposed to your aggression in Vietnam. The entire world is angry at American arrogance.”
“General Shih, my President is a great man, a daring man, no more to be judged by ordinary standards than your Chairman Mao. Neither you nor I can predict how he will react. We can obliterate your industry and your cities in ten minutes—and you have no allies. But we are willing to talk. Just what do you have in mind when you speak of negotiations that contain hope of successful compromise?”
“Mr. Smith, China’s leaders do not always agree, as you may know. But all are determined to liberate Taiwan. The only question is how. Peacefully or by force—the choice is yours.”
“General Shih, could you clarify that remark?” The Under Secretary of State was unaware that the Deputy Political Commissar of the People’s Liberation Army was being forced toward a perilous personal choice. “I find your rhetoric obscure.”
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