by Anthony Grey
A light went on behind its grimy windows the moment Tan Sui-ling rapped on the door. It was opened by a bent, ‘wizened Chinese who didn’t look at them but kept his eyes averted, staring deliberately towards the floor. In the dim light from a single bulb above a cluttered workbench, all that Scholefield saw of him was the top of a hairless head, wrinkled and furrowed like the shell of a walnut. He wore a leather apron over a black tunic and trousers and he handed Tan Sui-ling a torch after dosing the door behind them. Once they were inside, lie turned and pretended to busy himself with a wristwatch on the bench, peering closely at its workings through the jeweller’s glass screwed into his eye.
Tan Sui-ling led the way quickly to the rear of the shop without addressing the watchmaker and pulled a lever outwards from the wall. A section of the floor slid silently open and she stepped down immediately onto a flight of steps that was revealed. The hollow-cheated cadre had stayed in the car outside and Scholefield heard it move off as he followed her down through the trapdoor into an unlit tunnel below. The light in the shop above them was immediately extinguished.
She switched on the torch and led the way into the darkness. The tunnel was about eight feet high and five feet wide and the roof was coated with thick white plaster which deadened the sound of their footsteps. Air-scrubbing ducts snaked along the roof and telephone points had been fitted at regular intervals. He followed her and they walked for five minutes in silence before coming to another door. ‘This door is air-tight and blast-proof,’ she said over her shoulder as she fitted the key in the lock. ‘We are entering now the labyrinth of tunnels that lead us under the Chung Nan Hai. If any of Wang Tung-hsing’s guards should challenge the validity of the pass I have given you, produce your letter. You understand?’ He nodded and she opened the door and motioned him through.
The passageway on the other side of the door was wide enough for them to walk side by side. She left the torch in a niche beside the door and soon they began passing labelled side- tunnels leading off’ at intervals to storerooms and generating plants. Scholefield began to recognise street name plates on the tunnels corresponding to streets above ground level. At major junctions in the tunnels, clusters of signs pointed the way to hospitals and canteens, assembly rooms, ammunition dumps, armouries and grain stores. Machine gun emplacements had been built at all strategic points with firing slits covering all approaches.
‘A whole alternative city underground, no less,’ said Scholefield quietly, looking around in wonderment
She nodded. ‘You are fifty feet underground here. These tunnel networks have taken us eight years to build. But now four million people, the population of the entire city, can go underground in six minutes. An underground road system which we are now completing ensures that they can be evacuated to the western hills ten miles outside Peking without coming to the surface.’
Scholefield shook his head as he stared round at the brick walls and concrete floors of the tunnels as though he still didn’t believe the evidence of his eyes. ‘They’re an impressive manifestation of Chairman Mao’s paranoia, if nothing else,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s certainly communicated his fear of war with the Soviet Union to his people.’
‘War is only inevitable while no effort is made to ward it off.’ The sudden vehemence of her reply took him by surprise. ‘Somebody must act to prevent these tunnels being used for their terrible purpose. He turned sharply to look at her but found her staring expressionlessly ahead. They had reached the bottom of a long, sloping ramp and at that moment they came in sight of the first guard post.
Scholefield’s pass provoked no questions, but the fresh-faced peasant soldiers stared hard at his Caucasian features under the Public Security Bureau cap before waving them through. As they walked on, Scholefield heard them whispering animatedly to each other. Then a telephone receiver was lifted. When they had passed out of earshot round a bend in the now steeply sloping tunnel she shot him a warning glance. ‘You will need to show the letter too at the next checkpoint. We are descending into the maximum security area a hundred feet beneath Chung Nanhai.’
At the next guard post Scholefield produced his pass and the letter. The guards read and re-read them several times, but finally waved him through without comment. They passed a third checkpoint without incident and no body search was demanded until they reached the four guards standing by the archway where she had been checked through earlier with Wang Tung-hsing. The same guards were on duty and they searched only Scholefield. His letter of safe conduct produced a marked lessening of hostility and when the search was over they directed him politely into the carpeted antechamber beyond the archway.
But there the general, beside the leaden door, greeted them with a hostile stare. He barked an order to them to stand with their backs against the wall and called in two of the guards from outside. He watched closely while Scholefield was searched again. They removed his shoes and inspected the lining of his cap, then one guard worked carefully inch by inch up. both legs, after checking all his pockets and both sleeves. Finally he felt inside his jacket under each armpit. When he had finished the general nodded sourly towards Tan Sui-ling. ‘Nu-jen!’ be snapped—now the woman!
She glared back at him and the younger guard hesitated. The general returned her stare with equal hostility arid nodded peremptorily for the guard to start at her feet. Without taking her eyes from the general’s face, Tan Sui-ling took a step back and kicked off both her slippers. When he was satisfied with his inspection of them the guard pressed his hands inch by inch against her legs moving upward from her ankles. She continued staring at the general, her face contorted in fury. ‘I will report your actions in full when I am inside. Your attempt to humiliate a trusted comrade of the Chairman will not go unrewarded!’
A shadow of doubt puckered the general’s brow and she saw it. When the guard had reached her thighs Tan Sui-ling suddenly unfastened the buttons of her jacket and ripped it off ‘Perhaps this is what you really wish to see! You sexual pervert!’ She shouted loud enough for the guards outside to hear and there was a stir of consternation from their direction.
‘Come on.’ She backed against the wall and tossed her head scornfully at the general in invitation. ‘Search my body personally with your own filthy hands if it will satisfy your twisted mind.’
The young guard, crouching in front of her at her feet stared up at her open-mouthed. The general, thoroughly disconcerted by the sight of her naked breasts shouted an order for her to replace her jacket immediately and turned away. He waved the two guards off to join their comrades then swung back and stood glowering at Tan Sui-ling. In his confusion, his right hand had fallen from the butt of his revolver and be stood clenching and unclenching his lists spasmodically at his sides. He waited until she had refastened the jacket then turned scowling and unlocked the lead-covered door. Without looking at her directly he stood back and angrily waved them inside.
At that moment the Warszawa cruised to a halt in the narrow deserted hurting outside the Peking No. 3 Watchmaker’s Shop for the second time in half an hour. The hollow-chested cadre got out, followed by two other guards from the Grass’ Mist Lane Prison. They pushed and dragged the manacled figure of Yang across the pavement and when the wizened watchmaker opened the door, they propelled him quickly inside. The cadre took the proffered torch and hurried to slide back the door to the tunnel. A minute later the light went out in the shop and the manacled figure of the lone survivor of the Trident crash in Mongolia began clanking slowly and painfully along the darkened underground passageway following the light of the torch towards his appointment with the Chairman of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.
PEKING, Wednesday—Heavy damage was reported in the wake of two major earthquakes that struck the heavily populated Peking-Tientsin area of north-east China early today. The first shock was the most powerful anywhere in the world for twelve years;
International Herald Tribune, 28 July 1976
27
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�If you have studied the Chinese classics you will know of Chung Kuei!’ His head had fallen slackly to one side on the snowy-white pillow and his clouded eyes seemed to roam the thickly packed bookshelves in the shadows on one side of the subterranean library, as though vaguely seeking a confirmatory reference for his statement.
Scholefield found he had to strain to catch the meaning of the slurred Hunanese tones. He moved a pace nearer the couch and glanced up at Tan Sui-ling, standing on the other side by the cluttered desk. ‘Chung Kuei was a legendary scholar of the seventh century whom the emperor Hsuan Tsung met in a dream.’ Scholefield spoke slowly and quietly, exaggerating his enunciation of the Chinese words for the sake of clarity. ‘Cluing told the emperor he possessed the power to repel ghosts and evil spirits. When the emperor awoke he described him to the court painter and the likeness of the scholar he sketched became a symbol that was hung above the door throughout China at New Year to ward off invasions of ghosts.’
The silence that followed lasted a full minute. The head on the pillow didn’t move. Scholefield was about to repeat his reply when the eyes in the sunken face swivelled suddenly to look at him for the first time through their veil of pain.
‘The Kremlin revisionists chose well. Your knowledge of China is not insignificant.’ He paused considering Scholefield intently. ‘I was transformed into Chung Kuei by my enemies in the Party. My images had outnumbered Chung Kuei’s by tens of millions. But I was never a god. I was made one against my will.’ His tongue flickered out to moisten bloodless lips and his voice rose suddenly to a thrill note of complaint. ‘The higher a thing is blown, the greater the destruction at its fall. It is impossible for the people of China to cast aside the emperor-worshipping habits of three thousand years in a single generation. My enemies have constantly used this stratagem in their efforts to isolate me, to break me to pieces. I have always been the target of everybody, always standing alone—tell that!’
He lifted his left arm suddenly from under the coverlet and pointed into the shadows. Scholefield turned to follow the direction indicated by the trembling finger. In the gloom above the door through which they had entered he could see a framed portrait. He walked over to it and looked up at the likeness of a pigtailed Chinese scholar, capped and gowned in loose-sleeved court robes. He studied it for a moment then walked back to the couch side. ‘You bear no noticeable facial resemblance to Chung Kuei,’ he said softly.
‘Nor was I able to repel the spirits of demons.’ His arm fell back onto the coverlet and his voice shook suddenly. ‘But even if the entire politburo and central committee are against me, the earth will go on rotating. The truth is always on the side of the minority.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘But I am fearful now that even the power of Chung Kuei is no longer sufficient for my protection.’
Another long silence settled over the room, broken only by the steady rasp of his breath. ‘I once said when I was a young man I believed I could live two hundred years and sweep three thousand li. I was haughty in appearance and attitude. But always secretly I had doubts. For instance I lack education, I speak no foreign languages—’ He raised his eyes slowly to look at Scholefield.. ‘It is well known that when tigers are absent from the mountain, the monkey professes himself king. It was just such a king that I became.’
Scholefield looked up from the notebook be had been writing in. ‘Insincere humility was one of the great deceits of old China.
But perhaps it was that appearance of unshakeable arrogance, not genuinely felt, that incited the advanced western “barbarians” to the merciless plunder of your country. Perhaps that same false arrogance now inflames Russian sensibilities too, with such dangerous consequences for yourself and China—and for the whole world.’
The fearful eyes closed wearily in their sunken sockets. ‘I am old and exhausted with illness. My best strength was spent fighting twenty years of war with Chiang Kai-Shek and. the Japanese. I wish above all to have it known that I have been treated by others as a god. In my mind I have been first conscious of my mortal shortcomings. Tell, too, that the supreme irony of the greatest power is that at its end wait only the greatest feebleness and fear—tell that!’
His head sank back deeper into the pillows, and it was a long time before he opened his eyes again. ‘There are more than a hundred different parties in the world calling themselves “Communist”. But few any longer believe in Marxism. Some people say my brain is made of granite and therefore cannot change... I agree with them. But even Marx and Lenin themselves have been smashed apart. Why shouldn’t I face their fate too? My body will be whipped even after I am dead.’ His eyes closed once more and he grimaced as though in sudden pain.
‘You have presided over a great historic change in China,’ said Scholefield quietly. ‘Nothing, not even the hatred of your enemies, will alter that.’
His shoulders shook suddenly and his breath rattled dryly in his throat ‘little has changed. And the changes themselves are as lasting as the brush of rouge upon a young girl’s cheek.’ His eyes grew hazy again and he stared into the shadows beyond the ring of light cast by the lamp.. ‘Eighty per cent of all China’s people live in the countryside. They revere only sun and wind, storm and flood. They endure and accept the government that rules them as they endure and accept the calamities visited on them by the great forces of nature. A great many are still illiterate, or in only the first stages of literacy. They still hide their savings in a sock under the mattress. . . Their rulers are as remote from their daily lives as the forces that explode thunder and lightning from the heavens.’
The soft dick of the door opening beyond the shadow of the entrance arch reached Scholefield’s ears and he looked up quickly at Tan Sui-ling. She met his gaze without moving from her place in the shadow by the desk. He glanced over his shoulder but there was no movement in the darkness and no further sound.
‘Yes, their strength can be harnessed for great works, they change the course of rivers—the muscle power of eight hundred million human work-horses is truly great. But their passivity of mind makes the Chinese people the most compliant on earth. So even today the ambitious few who fight to high places of power still pursue their petty intrigues on the head of a pin in these imperial precincts.’ There was a note of bitter despair in his voice and one wasted hand began clenching and unclenching convulsively on the edge of the coverlet. ‘Despite Marx and Lenin, intrigue remains an endemic disease in the Chinese brain. In three thousand years nothing in China has really changed.’
As Scholefield’s pen raced across his notebook, a soft footfall behind him made him turn suddenly. In the darkness the indistinct outline of a woman was visible standing motionless beneath the archway. Scholefield turned back to the couch to find the eyes in the sunken face staring intently in the same direction. ‘Several years ago the Americans warned me of the treacherous assassination plot formulated by Lin Piao.’ He spoke in a rising tone, as though suddenly he was making a public speech. ‘Now the Russians say that my own closest supporters intrigue against me.’ He paused gathering his strength, and his voice fell to a whisper. ‘They say that even my wife is involved in the plotting.’
His breathing had become fast and shallow and he raised his head and shoulders suddenly from the pillow with a visible effort ‘The burden of leadership in China has always been too weighty for a single mind to bear! I said many times I have felt like a man attending his own funeral—enduring veiled glances, the whispers behind a hundred hands!’ His rheumy eyes widened and he stared up slack-mouthed towards the blank ceiling. ‘Now I know the feelings of a man dying in the sands of the Gobi! Watching the vultures swing down out of the burning vault of heaven, their open throats stretching for his Living flesh!’
Twin circles of reflected light flashed on her spectacles as the woman stepped forward out- of the shadows. She stopped at the foot of the couch and stood looking down without speaking, her face a mask of fury. She drew breath quickly as though preparing to speak—then stepped back with a cry
of surprise as the dark coverlet was suddenly flung aside. Scholefield found himself staring at the black revolver clutched in a claw-like hand. The muzzle of the weapon was pointed directly at her throat.
‘To be rid of the gun, you must take up the gun!’ He uttered the words in a rasping whisper, holding the revolver steadily in his right hand, his arm at full stretch. His eyes burned again with the sudden unnatural brightness. ‘If I had to obliterate all the truths I have written, save one—I would choose to preserve those few characters.’
The double gleam of the lamp mirrored in both lenses of her wire-rimmed spectacles bid her eyes as she stared transfixed into the mouth of the gun barrel. The fleshless finger began to tighten on the trigger and she opened her mouth to scream. But no sound came out. Then abruptly the hand began to tremble and the long black barrel wavered. With a great effort he steadied his aim and brought the muzzle to bear again. But the moment the talon-like finger in the trigger guard contracted a second time, the hand shook wildly once more. And this time the trembling became uncontrollable. The revolver swung erratically from side to side for a moment then slipped slowly from the palsied fingers and clattered to the floor.
He moaned and his chest heaved as he struggled for breath. His feverish gaze remained riveted for a moment on the motionless figure at the foot of the couch. Then his eyelids fell and his head sank forward onto his chest.
A band touched Scholefield’s arm and he looked up to find Tan Sui-ling motioning him silently to leave. He turned to find the door already open. The vestibule under the archway was empty. The shadowy figure of the woman had departed as silently as it had come.
PEKING, Wednesday—A strong earthquake occurred in the Tangshau-Fengnan area in east Hopei province, north China at 0342 hours on July 28th. Comparatively strong shocks were felt in Peking and Tientsin. Damage of varying degrees was reported in the epicentral region.