by Anthony Grey
The President sat with his back to the reinforced window and the two distant red eyes in the top of the pointed stone hood of the Washington Monument winked alternately over his shoulder at the men facing him. The President nodded at Ketterman and turned the palm of his right hand upward, inviting him to begin. Ketterman glanced round at each of the four faces watching him in turn, trying to gauge their mood from their expressions. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Mr. President, gentlemen, you are already familiar with the contents of the eight folios that the man known as Yang presented to Richard Scholefield m London as a true account of the Lin Piao incident’ He nodded to the translations of the folios which were lying open on the table in front of the President and the Secretary of State. ‘And you are also aware, I think, of the existence of the “Ninth Folio” which I prepared, to counteract them in case the Soviets pressed their efforts to get the original eight disseminated publicly. Well, as you know, I have just completed an interrogation of the man calling himself Yang who says he is a survivor of the Trident crash. He’s told me what he claims is the full story of the incident. He also gave me his interpretation of why Moscow has now decided to try and disseminate these lies, some of which he helped cook up.’
Ketterman paused and looked slowly round the table once more. ‘The upshot of his information is, gentlemen, that there is a Russian plot to kill Chairman Mao Tse-tung in Peking.
What’s more it’s been timed to coincide with the breaking of his false story from London.’
The President who had been watching Ketterman with his chin resting on one hand straightened in his chair. The owlish eyes of the Secretary of State blinked quickly behind his heavy hornrims, but nobody attempted to interrupt.
‘The first thing you will want to hear from me, gentlemen, I’m sure, is my assessment of the reliability of Yang’s “testimony”. Well, in answer to that I can only say that although his version of the Lin Piao incident is more fantastic than anything yet suggested, it does check out fully with the information we gathered at the time by electronic surveillance methods.’ Ketterman paused and drew a long breath. ‘The layers of deception in this whole affair have sometimes seemed endless, Mr. President. But my guess is that, at last, through Comrade Yang we’ve finally hit bedrock.’
‘What does your friend say the Soviet motive is in attempting to assassinate Mao?’ The Secretary of State put the question in a matter-of-fact voice, while subjecting the fingernails of his right hand to a minute scrutiny.
‘He claims the cost of keeping a million and a half troops, who can’t be used anywhere else, on the Chinese border, is proving an intolerable strain on the weak Soviet economy. Yet another failure of their agriculture has sharpened the problem—in addition to which they’re not too keen on the prospect of China’s constantly improving rocketry being able to take out Moscow with increasing accuracy as time goes by. For these reasons they’ve decided to make a big throw for a rapprochement with their Communist brothers now. With a change of regime due any moment with Mao sinking fast, they see the chance receding rapidly if they don’t grab it now. They want to prevent the anti- Moscow supporters of Mao—the radicals led by his wife Chiang Ching—from taking over at all costs. Hence, the plot to kill Mao and the elaborate ploy built around “Yang”, the ace they’ve been holding quietly for four years, to blame it all on Mao’s radical supporters.’
The NSC China specialist, a distinguished Harvard academic who had the bull-like shoulders of a college football player and cropped steel-grey hair that looked like wire wool, nodded several times and looked at the President over the top of his glasses. ‘That’s a totally logical prognosis, Mr. President.’
‘How, precisely, do the Soviets plan to carry through the assassination?’ The CI Director put the question in a dispassionate voice, but even so it failed to conceal his burning curiosity about the practical planning, of such an operation.
‘Yang said he knew no details of the actual assassination plan, beyond the fact that they have the capability to place an unsuspected Chinese assassin in Peking.’ Ketterman touched the bruise on his cheek absent-mindedly with the fingertips of his right hand and stared over the President’s shoulder at the burning eyes of the Monument. ‘Yang is a very tough customer indeed and has been playing a deep game. I believe he managed to hold them off for four years in Moscow without telling them what had really gone on with that Trident. I think he agreed to help them in this plan or maybe even suggested it, for two reasons. First their aims to bring down the radicals probably coincided with those of his old boss and himself—and second it was his one sure escape route out of Moscow. He seems to think he was going to get political asylum in Britain. He didn’t see that they would never allow him to live once he’d done their dirty work. I don’t think he realises how lucky he is to be alive.’
‘What does he Say really happened on that Trident, Mr. Ketterman?’ It was the first time the President had spoken since Ketterman entered the room. His tone was unnecessarily formal, as if he was nervous of having his office and his person involved closely with matters of low intrigue so soon after Watergate and so close to the election.
‘A lot of stuff in those folios is probably true. Yang’s line is that Lin was depressive and apathetic. His son contacted Moscow, Yang says, as a last resort to ask them if they would provide sanctuary if Mao moved against his father. Somebody among Lin’s enemies did discover the plan to flee to Moscow and they did infiltrate the Trident ground staff at Peitaiho to plant a bomb. Now whether it was the “radical” group as we know it today, or Mao himself or Chou En-lai’s moderates or simply Wang Tung-hsing’s secret police, it’s impossible to say. Alliances in the Forbidden City form and reform like cloud in a windy sky with everybody jumping hastily on the “antis” bandwaggon when someone is obviously heading for the chop ...‘
‘But what, where’s the “but”?’ The Secretary of State’s quick interjection betrayed his irritation, as if he thought Ketterman was taking too long to get to the point.
‘But,’ said Ketterman slowly, refusing to be hurried, ‘what Yang didn’t tell anybody until now, not even the Russians, is that the Lin Piao group discovered the bomb plot against them long before it was executed.’ Ketterman looked round the table again. All eyes were attentively on him. ‘And decided to try to turn it to their own advantage. They went ahead and prepared a defection party to fly out to the Soviet Union—but Lin Piao himself wasn’t in it.’ He paused again, noting the attentive silence with satisfaction. ‘They substituted a “look alike” and such embellishments as his silver pistol anticipating that the radicals would denounce Lin as a traitor and a defector after his fake death when he could offer no defence. Lin Piao was kept in hiding hi China with the intention of bringing him out when the denunciations had been completed. Then, his supporters hoped, shocked out. of his apathy, he would create an enormous stir, denouncing the plotters in his turn, rally army support and claw his way back to the top of the pile.’
‘But the Russians had ways of identifying even the charred corpse of Lin,’ the Director of the CIA protested. ‘They had dental casts of his mouth from the time he was treated in Moscow during the war.’
‘No, it was all successfully faked up. The look-alike’s fingerprints were surgically removed. His dental history was fabricated. Unless the Russians had a whole-head X-ray of his jaw they couldn’t run a reliable check. And it’s highly unlikely they would have taken whole-head X-rays during the last war in Moscow.’
‘Doesn’t all this sound a little—’ The NSC China-watcher searched for an apposite word. ‘—far-fetched, over-fantasized?’
‘There are precedents,’ said Ketterman evenly. ‘Remember the corpse of the pilot with the false D-Day landing plans the Brits dumped in the Channel so that it was washed ashore in France. Fingerprints removed, teeth fixed, and so on.’ Ketterman paused but nobody challenged him in the silence he offered. ‘It was a ruthless plan admittedly. The “look-alike” had to be put aboard comatose not
knowing what fate awaited him. They couldn’t put him on board dead because the time of death had to coincide with the bomb going off. The rest of the doomed party on the plane, with the exception of Yang, didn’t know what was going on. They were sacrificial lambs to Lin Piao’s future survival. It was only when one of them stumbled on Yang getting into his parachute ready to desert the about-to-explode ship that the gun-battle broke out—that’s why the bodies had bullet holes when the Russians found them.’
‘Parachute?’ The Secretary of State’s eyebrows threatened to disappear in his hairline. ‘So Yang jumped before the bomb went off?’
Ketterman nodded. “That’s what he told me. He jumped and broke his hip. He did as he says in the folios, run into old Tsereng Toktokho on the ground, who took pity on him and took him under his wing. All that’s true—except he was found by the Russians who shot up the yurt and burned it—not the guards from the Chung Nan Hai.’
‘The KGB disinformation department must have enjoyed writing that into the scenario,’ murmured the CIA chief.
‘How did Yang explain the bullets in the corpses to the Russians? Presumably he didn’t admit to baling out.’ The NSC man leaned forward eagerly on the table.
‘He told them at the last minute some of the party funked it and wanted to turn back. He and the KGB together concocted the rabies fable to hide Moscow’s involvement in Lin’s plot.’
‘So why did it all fail to work?’ Again the President’s tone implied a distaste for the subject. He asked the question as if forced.
‘Lin’s hideaway in China was discovered. He was taken by his opponents and held under strict house arrest outside Peking. Yang says he died in the spring of 1972 of what are termed natural causes while under arrest. His chronic ill-health was probably worsened by his depression and dejection. That’s why it took the Chinese a year to come out with the official story of Lin’s death while defecting. It took them that long to establish that there had been a plot within a plot. By then however they felt that if there had been enough faked evidence for them to believe for a time, after sending men to the spot, that he really was on board, there was enough for the rest of the world to be told that same story. And it had the double advantage that it was more damaging to Lin—and covered up the treachery of those who tried to kill him.’
There was a long silence in which all the men round the table sat looking wonderingly at each other. The Secretary of State shook his head slowly, a faint smile of incredulity twisting the corners of his mouth downward. ‘It all sounds incredible—but it would all fit.’
‘The thing we’ve got to decide,’ said the President brusquely, ‘is whether to tell Peking about the new death plot and what do we do about Yang?’
‘That’s one curious thing I’ve not mentioned, Sir,’ said Ketterman quickly. ‘We know lie’s not Yang Tsai-chien. At least the Chinese insist that the man of that name was positively identified by them at the crash site by his finger prints. Yang consistently refuses to divulge who he is. We know he was on that Trident but his identity remains a mystery.’
‘It’s not really important, is it?’ said the President irritably. ‘More important is, do we tell the Chinese we believe the Russians are planning to kill Mao on the strength of these claims?’
‘It’s not entirely against our interests to have a regime in Peking that hates the Muscovite guts of Brezhnev and his friends.’ The NSC man smiled as he spoke to emphasise his heavy irony. ‘If they ever do roll back into the arms of the Russians we’ll have to rethink a lot of our current precepts.’
The President nodded frowning. ‘It’s not our damned job anymore to try to decide which governments should be in power in foreign countries. We’ve gotta do our best to rub along with whichever of those that come out on top.’
‘Mr. President, I have decided to recommend,’ said Ketterman slowly, ‘that we ought to hand Yang back to the Russians once we had extracted the truth from him. There is a certain amount of continuing interface between us at the intelligence level, the detail of which needn’t bother you. Now we’ve stymied their plans with the Ninth Folio they’re pretty damned anxious to get him back, I can tell you. And they’re making unmistakable threats about what might happen if they don’t.’
‘What threats exactly, Mr. Ketterman?’ The President’s voice was coldly hostile now.
‘The Soviet ramrod handling this is a guy named Razduhev, KGB head of station in London. He’s very senior and he says the Politburo is going to put pressure on all round if we don’t hand Yang back. They’re ready to push the Cuban troops now in Angola into Rhodesia, they’re making dark hints about stepping up their activity in the Horn of Africa to turn Ethiopia and Somalia to the hammer and sickle. They might refuse to co-operate over any force reductions at all in Eastern Europe, work to rule on the SALT agreements. He implied there’s hardly a damned thing they won’t do if we hang on to Yang.’
‘If we grant Yang asylum we offend not only the Russians, we offend the Chinese too.’ The Secretary of State directed his words idly towards the ceiling as if musing aloud ‘They’ll claim he should be returned to them to be dealt with in their own way.’
‘If we return him to the Russians the Chinese will take considerable umbrage, you can be sure of that, Mr. President,’ said the NSC man earnestly. ‘We’re suppressing the Folios to save Peking the international humiliation of being made to look like liars over the original Lin Piao affair. Shouldn’t we be consistent and follow through in Peking’s favour?’
‘At my level, Mr. President, a certain amount of even-handedness is essential,’ Ketterman insisted. ‘The Soviets saw us lean very definitely towards Peking in seventy-one when we tipped Mao off about the Lin Piao plot that we heard of out of Moscow, If we appear to be throwing our lot too far in with the Chinese again over intelligence and security the Russians could begin to feel dangerously isolated.’
There was silence in the room for a moment.
‘I’m meeting Razduhev at the Lincoln Memorial at midnight,’ continued Ketterman, lifting his wristwatch into view from beneath the table. ‘He’s expecting to hear what arrangement will be made to return Yang to them.’
The President jerked forward in his seat suddenly and leaned his forearms on the table, looking directly across at Ketterman.
A pugnacious glint came into his eyes. ‘The information we gave Peking in 1971, Mr. Ketterman, was to say the least unsubstantiated by any incontrovertible evidence. If we tip the Chinese about another death plot against Mao, we could make fools of ourselves again—and give them a basis on which to build more lying propaganda. We can kill two birds ‘with one stone here. We don’t really know beyond any shadow of doubt the truth behind it all, despite what you’ve told us, and we don’t want to grant Yang asylum.’ He paused and glowered round the table. ‘So let them make up their minds for themselves about history.’
The President stood up suddenly and looked round in turn once again at the NSC man, the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA. Each returned his gaze without sign of dissent and he ignored Ketterman. ‘Okay,’ said the President turning rapidly on his heel and heading for the door. ‘Ship Yang back to Peking—but quick.’
PEKING, Wednesday—Teng Ying-chao, the wife of Chou En-lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, disclosed here yesterday that the American Central Intelligence Agency got to know of the death of Lin Piao, Chairman Mao’s heir apparent, even before the Russians. But she did not disclose how the CIA got to know so quickly.
The Daily Telegraph, 19 June 1973
20
The hand-written poster nailed to the trunk of a tree at the corner of Ashmede and 20th Street on the edge of Washington’s diplomatic quarter was headed ‘Dog Lost’. Its message scrawled in orange and blue crayon said: ‘Small, black, shaggy poodle (female) wearing pink and red coat and bright orange collar lost around 10 p.m. on 25th July, 1976. Finder please call urgently. She is under medication. Thank you.’
Harvey Ketterman read it a second
time, dosed his eyes briefly to test his memory of the telephone number added at the bottom, then returned to his car. He drove slowly back to Connecticut Avenue, glancing s he passed at the windows of the former 300-bedroom Windsor Park hotel which Peking had bought in its entirety in 1972 after the diplomatic thaw brought on by Richard Nixon’s visit. It had been converted now into an urban fortress named ‘The Liaison, Office of The Chinese People’s Republic.’ The ground floor windows had been reinforced with heavy concrete frames and thick black-painted steel bars protected the glass. Above the double doors of the old hotel a light illuminated the circular red and gold symbol of Communist China—five stars floating above the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Only a few slivers of light showed dimly through closed curtains on the upper floors of the squat eight-storey building that served as home, office, and recreation area to its Chinese diplomats. The floodlights however had been left lit on the empty basketball and badminton courts enclosed behind stout black iron railings at the rear.
Ketterman stopped his car at a telephone booth higher up the Avenue and got out and dialled the number on the porter. The voice that answered spoke English with a heavy Chinese accent. ‘I think I’ve found your missing pet,’ said Ketterman slowly. ‘It answers to the name of “Yang” and is still under medication. How would you like me to return it?’
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. In the office of the Central External Liaison Department’s head of Washington station on the fifth floor of the old Windsor Park Hotel a Chinese in a high buttoned cadre’s uniform put his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and turned to shoot a stream excited Mandarin at Tan Sui.-ling, who was sitting quietly reading a copy of Time magazine on a sofa on the other side of the room. She got up quickly and took the receiver from the man. ‘What is your name please?’ she asked in English.