by Anthony Grey
At the bottom an iron door blocked the staircase. The officer produced another key and opened this. The steps continued on the other side but the passage was narrower and Scholefield’s shoulders began to brush the walls on either side. Behind him all he heard was the soft rustle of the guards’ rubber-soled slippers on the brick steps.
At the bottom there was a short stretch of airless passageway leading to a wooden door reinforced with heavy iron cross members. Suddenly the air became unnaturally hot. Scholefield stopped but the officer forced him forward again until he was almost touching the door. Then he drew. a whistle from his pocket and blew a piercing blast.
The door, opened soundlessly from inside, flew back suddenly on its binges. Scholefield saw a final flight of half a dozen steps leading steeply down through a narrow opening. The officer and the guards propelled him through it and he stumbled forward and halted, staring.
The confined space was lit by an orange glow from the coal brazier in one corner. The heat from this and the glowing red hot chains suspended above it was intense. A hinged and jointed torture bench with leather straps for wrists and ankles stood along one wall and on a table beside it were laid out metal thumbscrews, mallets, bamboo splinters, jugs of water and sodden towels that steamed slowly in the heat. As Sholefield’s eyes adjusted to the glare of the fire he noticed for the first time a hunched figure manacled by the wrists into a heavy wooden chair in one corner. The man’s head was sunk on his chest and his features were indistinguishable in the gloom.
‘The bench was used to start with. It was a toss-up whether the hips or the vertebrae of the spine splintered before other bones in the body.’ The officer spoke quietly in Chinese, his voice cold and matter-of-fact.
Scholefield dragged his eyes away from the torture instruments to look at him. He was standing by the fire, stirring the coals idly with a pair of iron tongs. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a sneering smile. ‘The infamous water torture you are no doubt familiar with, Mr. Scholefield.’ He pointed to the towels and the jugs. ‘The towels were pressed over the prisoner’s face and the water poured on little by little. He had three choices: suffocate, drown—or talk.’ He paused and lifted a few links of red hot chain from the hooks above the brazier. ‘What do you think the prisoner did, Mr. Scholefield?’
The officer’s face shimmered with perspiration. In the flickering light from the fire his features seemed constantly to liquefy and merge, then reform again. ‘In the People’s Republic of China, we have found there are two basic types of human reaction under interrogation—those of the toothpaste tube and the water faucet.’ A short laugh escaped his lips. ‘The “Faucet” needs only to be twisted sharply at the beginning for everything to gush forth. But the “Tube” must be squeezed frequently to get at what’s inside. And every time you squeeze, a little more of what you want comes out.’ He gazed down reflectively at the red hot chains for a moment before replacing them carefully on their hook. Then he turned and signalled to one of the guards standing quietly by the foot of the narrow flight of steps. ‘You will no doubt be interested to know Mr. Scholefield that the man we have brought you to see turned out to be a Water Faucet.’
The guard holding the torch switched it on and swung the beam into, the corner. It illuminated the bent head and shoulders of the man manacled to the chair by his wrists. As Scholefield watched, the other guard stepped forward and grabbed him by his dose-cropped hair. The head was jerked back and Scholefield found himself staring into the round, pock-marked face of the man he knew as Yang.
WASHINGTON, Tuesday—U.S. News and World Report said Monday that U.S. Intelligence believes Chairman Mao Tse-tung of China is fading fast— but groups contending for power are determined to avoid civil war.
Associated Press, 21 July 1976
24
The Warszawa was flagged down twice at the road blocks set up along the northern boundary of the Square of Heavenly Peace. But Tan Sui-ling held her pass out at the window and when the soldiers and Public Security Bureau cadres manning the barricades saw the tiny photograph of Wang Tung-hsing in the bottom left hand corner they hurriedly waved the car through.
Before it had halted at the rear of -the long column of shiny black official Hung Chi limousines parked in front of the Great Hall of the People, Tan Sui-ling had jumped out and was running up the steps towards the vast twelve-columned entrance to the megalith. She stopped however when she caught sight of the rotund figure of the man whose face decorated her pass, hurrying down towards his car. She waited until he had reached the lower tier of the steps just above her before calling his name.
‘Comrade Wang!’
He halted and waited impatiently for her to approach. The drivers and guards standing beside the cars stiffened rigidly to attention as one man when they saw him. She ran across the steps and put a hand breathlessly on his arm.
‘Has the Standing Committee meeting finished so soon?’
‘It has been adjourned - there is an emergency!’ He spoke in a fierce whisper and nodded towards his bulky briefcase. ‘Reports of natural phenomena coming in from all over the north east are disturbing. Well levels have fallen up to two feet on twenty different communes in Hopei alone in the past hour. Other reports are still coming in from the peasants’ observation and prediction groups. I’m on my way to see the Chairman urgently.’ His beetle brows knitted in a grimace of exasperation. ‘Nobody dares risk panicking a hundred million people with emergency measures without his authority.’
He turned as if to continue his rapid descent of the steps, but she caught his arm again and looked directly into his face ‘He called me personally to his bedside at three a.m. this morning for a verbal report on the Soviet smear campaign in London. He looked very ill’
Wang Tung-hsing shook his head. ‘He sleeps rarely, if at all. There is great deterioration. Look!’ He opened his briefcase and she caught a glimpse of the dark outline of a revolver on top of the white papers.
‘His paranoia is reaching a crisis. He demanded that I bring him a gun for his personal use tonight—I, who have guarded him faithfully for forty-two years. He distrusts even his own shadow now.’
She turned and moved down the steps alongside him, smiling sympathetically. ‘He asked me to report to him again tonight. I was coming to clear the visit with you. Would I be intruding if I were to accompany you now?’
‘Of course not, Comrade Tan. Your visits, I know, are among the few things that have pleased him recently.’ He smiled back at her revealing his uneven teeth and put his right hand solicitously under her elbow. She leaned very slightly against him as she allowed him to guide her down the steps and into his car.
Inside the curtained, air-conditioned Hung Chi he removed his cap and used it to mop away the perspiration that was streaming down his heavy-jowled face. Tan Sui-ling unfastened the top two or three buttons of her tunic and fanned herself with one hand, turning at the same time so that he could see she wore no blouse beneath. ‘If only this terrible storm would break. I am suffocating.’
As the car shot away across the square towards the Tien An Men he leaned towards her and let one hand rest on her thigh for a moment. ‘The storm and the beat are both unnatural. And there are other bad omens, not just the wells—a plague of rats has been
reported in one suburb of Tangshan.’ He shook his head. ‘Pray the storm doesn’t break, but passes over us here in Peking!’
The driver sent the Hung-Chi careering across the broad expanse of the Boulevard of Eternal Peace at more than sixty miles an hour and screeched to a’ halt at the New Gate entrance to the walled compound of Chung Nan Hai. Wang wound his window down and started to show a plastic covered pass. But when the young sentry saw his commander’s face he waved the car on without further checking. Wang immediately stopped the car and leaped out, yelling at the top of his voice.
‘Check all passes, you vile turtle’s egg! Leave nobody out. Search every single car—there can be no exceptions! The life of China’s grea
test hero in all history is in your careless hands!’
The other guards grouped beside the gate shrank back under the lash of his tongue. ‘What kind of fighter would I be,’ the youth protested, ‘if I could not recognise the man who personally guarded Chairman Mao in the caves of Yenan?’
Wang’s voice sank to a menacing growl. Don’t give me my life biography, you filthy toad! Give me a security check. Quickly.’ The soldier made a frantic body search of Wang where he stood while his comrades hurriedly went over the car, and the driver. Then they checked Tan Sui-ling’s pass and searched her gingerly for weapons. As the car roared away, brushing beneath the hanging willows that marked the margins of the palace lakes, the soldier Wang had abused drew a deep breath of relief He looked around red-faced at his fellows. ‘The “Devil’s Clutch” is living up to his name tonight.’
Inside the car Wang sank back into the cushions of his seat and mopped his brow again. He stared -out over the dead, viscous waters of the lakes searching the ornamental terraces and pavilions beyond with screwed up eyes. ‘Perhaps his paranoia is contagious.’ He turned and smiled another broken-toothed smile at Tan Sui-ling. ‘I, too, think I see shadows moving on every balustrade.’
The car skidded to a halt outside a single-storied pavilion with a golden-tiled roof. It was one of a group of dwellings built originally to house an emperor’s mandarins which since 1949 had served as the official living quarters of the Party Politburo. Wang clambered out with his bulky briefcase and hurried up the steps past four more guards to the front door. Inside, his face darkened when he saw only one soldier standing outside the study. ‘Where are your three comrades?’ he thundered.
The guard flew to attention and shouldered his rifle. ‘Chairman Mao Tse-tung is not here, Commander Wang!’
‘Not here?’ The veins on his temple bulged in his fury. ‘Where is he?’
‘He descended to his retreat in the tunnels—an hour ago. He ordered the deputy commander and a detachment of men to move him. They are down there with him now.’
Wang swung on his heel and hurried along the corridor to the lift. He pressed the call button and when the door opened he stepped inside, followed by Tan Sui-ling.
The doors closed noiselessly and the lift descended for a half a minute. When they opened again Wang dashed out into the brightly-lit concrete tunnel that was broad enough to allow the passage of a jeep. He muttered angrily over his shoulder as he lumbered along at a half trot. ‘Why must he choose tonight of all nights to bury himself a hundred feet under Peking? And without consulting me!’
He ignored the sentries as they slapped their rifles and came to attention at the guard points set at regular intervals along the passageway. The floor of the tunnel sloped steeply downward for fifty yards and finally entered a broad arch guarded by four more soldiers. Wang insisted irritably that they inspect his pass and Tan Sui-ling’s and search them both, before moving through into a carpeted antechamber which had empty chairs placed around the walls. Tan Sui-ling hung back as Wang exchanged greetings with a general of the Unit 8341 who stood alone beside a heavy leaded door. The officer, she noticed, never removed his right hand from the butt of the holstered revolver at his waist. As they moved forward she smiled at him, but he did not return the greeting. He unlocked the door with a large key which was chained to the wrist of his other hand and stood back, his face impassive. Wang turned and beckoned to Tan Sui-ling then hurried through the door which the officer immediately locked behind them. As their footsteps died away inside he picked a telephone receiver from its hook on the wall and spoke their names softly into it.
Most of the room inside was in shadow. Book-shelves crammed with pale-spined books and bound files, many of them flagged with reference tags, glimmered faintly in the gloom. The shelves lined three of the four walls from floor to ceiling and other books and papers were piled in haphazard working disarray on low tables and chairs. A high-backed leather couch raised high off the floor had been placed with its head against a fourth wall. A single lamp on a cluttered desk beside it focused a bright pool of light onto the sunken features of the dying man propped up on two large white pillows.
On the other side a medical trolley supported an array of bottles, pill-boxes, trays and surgical instruments laid out in neat rows. The bead lay on its pillows at an awkward angle, its features collapsed in concentric lines about the sagging, half-open mouth. The one sound in the room was of faintly laboured breathing. Only the darkly glittering eyes, watching intently through half-closed lids, still burned with the angry spark of life, following their progress watchfully every step of the way to the couch side. A gnarled hand from which the flesh had retreated clutched a black-covered volume anonymously downward on the covering rug.
‘Ni hao, Tung-chih.’ Wang spoke softly, at the same time bending and laying his hands briefly on both the older man’s bony shoulders.
Tan Sui-ling waited a moment then stepped forward into the circle of light and removed her cap. She reached out, lifted one bony claw from the rug and held it tightly for a moment. The watchful eyes widened into the beginnings of a crumpled smile, looking down wistfully at the firm round hand of the young woman. ‘The fire in the flesh has already died.’ He stopped and lifted his head to look up at her. ‘But the hand of a pretty woman still warms an old man’s heart.’
He spoke in a sibilant whisper and she had to strain to catch the sense of his nasal Hunanese. For a moment she covered the palsied hand with both hers then let go and stepped back.
‘Comrade Chairman.’ Wang paused and snapped open his briefcase. His raised voice bad taken on an urgent, formal note. ‘Reports of traditional phenomena from all over the north eastern provinces are giving great cause for alarm. Indications have reached me from twenty-one separate communes in Hopei alone that well-levels have fallen two feet in the past-hour.’
He pulled a bulky manila file from his briefcase, tapped it quickly and laid it on the desk beside the couch. ‘Seven reports of pigs consuming their young on different communes. Twenty- nine reports throughout the north east military region, of cockerels flying to roost in trees. A plague of thousands of rats has appeared in a suburb of Tangshan, the heartland of our coal industry—’ He broke off and looked at his watch. ‘And the night shifts have been underground for two hours already.’
The eyes in the emaciated face bad turned inward. With an effort he pushed his shoulders backward against the pillows and sat up. He wore a grey tunic buttoned close beneath his scraggy chin and he fumbled now in one of the breast pockets. He drew out a crumpled packet and placed a cigarette rolled in dark paper between his lips. Wang lit it with matches from the desk and listened to the smack of his lips as he sucked the smoke into his lungs. ‘What reports do you have from the Peking region?’ He asked the question slowly in a quavering voice without looking up.
‘None of significance. On a map the majority of critical criteria are clustered to the south-east halfway between here and the coast.’
They watched him sink thoughtfully back into the pillows, holding the cigarette between his lips with his left hand. ‘To put all your trust in ancient superstitions and omens is not good.’ His voice bad sunk to a half whisper again.
Wang tapped his file again more urgently. ‘There are reports too, of bees swarming in great numbers and stinging livestock to death. Bats are gathering in great flocks also—they are sensitive to ultra-sonic vibrations, changes in the electrical fields of earth and atmosphere. There is a clear scientific base to these ancient signs...
The grey jowls of the man on the couch shuddered in a sudden fit of rage. When he turned his head to look up at him his eyes were ablaze. ‘Enough of this talk! Are even you turning against me too? Where is the weapon I commanded you to bring?’
Wang bent hurriedly and picked up his briefcase. He tugged out the heavy revolver and, after a moment’s hesitation, laid it beyond his immediate reach on the desk.
‘Is it fully armed?’
Wang hesitated. �
��No.’ He reached into his briefcase and drew out a box of ammunition.’ I thought it better that—’
Again the jowls quivered, the incandescent anger flashed. ‘Arm it immediately—and place it within my grasp!’ The effort of shouting wracked the wasted body.
Wang hurriedly broke the gun and dropped shells into all six chambers. When he had finished, he applied the safety catch. The black-backed book slipped to the floor as the gnarled hand that had been holding it reached towards him. ‘Give it to me!’
Wang held the revolver by its barrel and guided the butt into the trembling, crooked fingers. The hand fell back clutching the gun on top of the coverlet where the book had lain before. He continued holding the cigarette to his mouth with the other hand, screwing up his rheumy eyes against die curl of the smoke.
‘In view of the reports I would urge you, Comrade Chairman, to return to your quarters above ground immediately! You are in danger here!’ Wang leaned earnestly towards the couch, trying to penetrate the trance-like detachment of the dying man.
‘I will remain here!’ His eyes shone suddenly. ‘Let those who wish to flee, like lesser vermin before the omens of pigs and rats, do so. I shall continue to lodge here in the ancient heart of China.’ He raised his head imperiously. ‘Leave us now!’
Wang took a step nearer as though to speak again. But the eyes of the old man stared deliberately unseeing at the air above his head, indicating that he had already been dismissed. Wang bent to pick up his briefcase and hurried out. One claw-like hand reached out and depressed a push-button on the edge of the desk and the red-lacquered door swung closed behind him.
After a long silence he beckoned Tan Sui-ling nearer. She approached and leaned over him until her ear was close to his mouth. ‘What new intelligence of the Russians do you bring?’