by Anthony Grey
The next guard point was two hundred yards further on and although the curve of the tunnel hid him from his pursuers, as he ran he heard the shouts of the guards growing louder behind him. Then a volley of shots rang Out and die whine of bullets ricochetting along the smooth walls filled the tunnel There had been enough time for a warning to be telephoned ahead to the next checkpoint and when Scholefield rounded the last bend in the tunnel he found four armed guards confronting him before the barrier. He ran straight at them and leapt feet first in another side-jumping kick, striking out simultaneously right and left with the flattened blades of both hands. One man went down under the onslaught but the other three used their rifle butts to block the blows and crowded him quickly to the ground.
HONG KONG, Wednesday—A total of 655,237 people were killed and another 779,000 injured in a devastating earthquake which hit north-east China last July, according to a highly classified Chinese document just obtained by a Hong Kong newspaper.
London Evening News, 5 January 1977
30
‘Your death by violence is necessary to return China to the path of sanity.’ Tan Sui-ling whispered the words as she unfastened the top button of her jacket. ‘A few minutes from now the Englishman will be brought here to look upon your lifeless body. He will be given evidence that you were murdered by your own supporters—and he will take that evidence to the outside world.’ -
The dying face collapsed suddenly inwards on itself: Toothless gums gleamed wetly in the sunken cavern of his mouth and his jaw sagged in a mute shout of horror. She saw an enfeebled hand begin to grope ineffectually towards the revolver under the coverlet and leaned quickly over him and wrenched it from his limp fingers. She slid it away across the desk top then turned back to look at him. Her face clenched suddenly into a glittering smile of hatred and without taking her eyes from his face she ripped off her jacket and laid it aside. A sharp inhalation of breath made her small, pouting breasts rise suddenly as she stepped closer to the couch. Half turning her shoulders, she leaned backwards from the waist towards Yang, offering the small of her back to his shackled hands.
She watched his eyes bulge from their sockets as he gazed up in terror at her naked body. Yang’s hands eased the long-bladed knife slowly from its sheath between her shoulder blades and she saw his gaze following it hypnotically as it rose slowly into view behind her. She stepped quickly-aside as Yang lifted his arms high above his head.
‘Sha! Sha!’ She breathed the order to kill in an urgent whisper and turned back to watch the face of their victim.
Yang’s ankle chains clanked noisily as he took two quick steps to the couch side. He stretched his arms upward until they were straight above his head, holding the long dagger tight in both fists. An unarticulated moan of emotion escaped his lips and he swayed slightly on his feet. He hesitated for a moment then suddenly his arms bent at the elbows and he leaned backwards, beginning the convulsive downward thrust he had rehearsed beside the bench an hour earlier in the prison cellar. Tan Sui-ling watched the bulging eyes of the man on the couch flinch and close in anticipation of death.
At that moment the upturned bottle on the table in the Great Hall of the People began to rock very gently from side to side. The five members of the Standing Committee of the Party Politburo looked round at it in alarm. It settled again for a moment and they sat staring at it in an electric silence. Then, without further warning, it toppled and rolled slowly across the table. The explosive sound of it smashing to pieces on the marble floor rang through the silent room like a pistol shot. Immediately the four men and one woman rose to their feet and rushed from the room.
At the instant the bottle broke Wang Tung-hsing was halfway down the steps beneath the twelve entry columns of the Great Hall. The first sensation he noticed was a shifting unsteadiness in the steps beneath his feet. He stopped running immediately and stood still. The steps seemed toil and roll very gently first in one direction, then the other, like the deck of a ship answering the groundswell before a storm’ at sea. In the sky he heard a distant muffled sound that resembled the gently subdued roar of surf on a remote beach. It grew gradually louder like a slow- rising wind. But the dank, stagnant air of the night hung as heavy and still over the capital as ever.
* * *
The general on duty outside the leaden door in the maximum security tunnel below the Forbidden City heard the shouts of the four guards on duty beyond the arch moments before the tremor began. He drew his revolver from its holster and stepped warily into the passageway. He saw the soldier stunned by a blow on the side of the neck rise slowly to his feet, shaking his head, then begin advancing menacingly towards Scholefield who was being restrained in a double arm-lock by the other three guards. He was aiming a kick in the direction of Scholefield’s groin when the general fired. In any other place he would have raised the gun above his head but the low roof at that point was only three feet above him. So he aimed high along the tunnel and the bullet grooved the walls and ceiling as it shrieked along an erratic trajectory, before fattening itself against the impenetrable concrete of the end wall.
The guards and Scholefield gaped round at the general as the roar of the shot died away. He was standing in the middle of the tunnel, feet astride, fanning the gun in a threatening arc over the whole group. Scholefield was the first to recover from the shock of the explosion in the confined space.
‘Yang is an assassin
He yelled the words over and over, struggling wildly, and succeeded in his frenzy in freeing one arm. The four guards cursed loudly as they fought to restrain him. The general was still shouting at the top of his voice to snake himself heard when the floor of the tunnel began to tilt sharply beneath their feet.
In the silent room on the other side of the leaden door, Yang stood frozen in a moment of indecision. He gazed down at his victim, a demented snarl distorting his features. His knees were bent, his shoulders hunched forward and be held, the knife suspended in the air above his head. The floor of the chamber seemed to quiver slightly and Tan Sui-ling looked up at him sharply. But Yang was oblivious.
The face beneath him had dissolved into liquid lines of fear, misshapen already beyond recognition by the primal, animalistic horror of death. Slowly but with great deliberation Yang brought the knife down in front of him with both hands until its needle- sharp point rested against the base of the scraggy throat. His breath came unevenly now in sobbing gasps and his hands shook slightly.
‘Never before have I seen such naked terror in the eyes of a man!’ The sobbing grew louder on every indrawn breath. But suddenly he stopped and his eyes widened. ‘Marshall Lin will be better avenged by allowing you to live out the short hours and days left to you with this fear!’ He nodded his head frantically now, the tears streaming from his eyes mixing with the rush of perspiration down his cheeks. ‘Fear of death will be a greater punishment for you than death itself—for every tortured second that you live on!’
The concrete floor shook itself suddenly like an angry snake and a deep rumbling sound rose from beneath their feet Yang closed his eyes for a moment. Then he lifted the knife quickly, and holding it in front of him in both hands, turned and shuffled rapidly away from the couch. He hobbled as fast as the length of his shackles allowed, moving straight towards the blank wall between the bookshelves. He lifted his arms stiffly in front of him as he neared the wall, as if to fend it off. But he did not check his momentum. Instead be turned the knife and lodged the base of its handle against the concrete, so that its blade jutted out and upward like a climbing spike. He made no sound as lie hurled himself forward like a sprinter lunging in despair for the final tape.
For an instant his whole body stiffened in spasm. Then he relaxed and fell to embrace the wall limply. He slid slowly down, face forward, into a crumpled kneeling position at its foot. Above him on the grey concrete a broad smear of blood marked the passage of his body.
Tan Sui-ling’s scream of anguish rose above the rumbling of the earthquake as the do
or from the darkened vestibule burst open. She snatched up the revolver from the desk and swung round, levelling it at the couch. The general yelled frantically from the doorway and dropped to one knee, at the same time raising his own pistol to fire.
As Wang Tung-hsing’s Hung Chi raced across the deserted Square of Heavenly Peace the roar of the earthquake reached a crescendo and a great blaze of white light lit Peking and the surrounding countryside as brightly as the sun at midday. The ground shook constantly and the darkness that followed this first elemental release of energy was deeper than before because no electricity installations survived the shock.
A moment later a second incandescent glare illuminated the capital and in the suburbs terrified people began running into the streets, screaming that the Russians had launched their long- feared hydrogen bomb attack. Buildings swayed and cracked and in the densely populated mining towns of Hopei, a hundred miles to the south east, entire streets of buildings were crumbling like playing card houses. Hospitals and high apartment blocks fell into the earth up to roof level and were crushed to rubble as the cracks closed. In the underground coal seams many thousands of miners were dying as the earth settled itself afresh, filling instantly the puny underground holes driven by man-made machinery. Great tracts of farmland were becoming inundated, with sand and foul liquids that gushed up out of the fractured earth. Nearer the capital an entire train bound for Peking toppled into a vast black ravine as the earth gaped open suddenly in front of it, then snapped its jaws closed once more.
As Wang’s Hung CM limousine dashed along the shores of the Chung Nanhai in Peking, the waters of the lakes that had earlier lain stagnant under the heavy pall of saturated air were aboil with turbulence. At the very moment the car screeched to a halt outside the yellow-roofed pavilion, the black heavens broke and a great deluge of water began flooding down onto the trembling city.
A hundred feet under Chung Nanhai the cosmic roar of the earth’s movement drowned the sound of the general’s gun exploding and Scholefield, crowding into the chamber behind him with the four terrified guards, saw the slender figure of Tan Sui-ling spin rapidly round like a pirouetting ballet dancer. She flung out her right arm and fired a single shot in the direction of the couch before tossing the black revolver high into the shadows. The lead slug from the general’s pistol had taken her in the right shoulder and the force of it lifted her bodily backwards across the room.
A wide crack opened up suddenly in the wall above where Yang lay huddled and the shock of the tremor knocked Scholefield off his feet. The air was filled suddenly with a choking yellow dust. Through the foggy gloom Scholefield saw the general lifting the head and shoulders of the shrunken figure on the couch. He waved his free arm and screamed for the four soldiers to come to his assistance. The floor heaved again and two long bookcases pitched forward from the walls, hurling their contents about the room. Scholefield scrambled to his feet as the general and the soldiers rushed past him towards the door, bearing the couch and its helpless occupant between them. He staggered across the chamber to where Tan Sui-ling lay face down. She was half covered with books that had spilled from the bookcases and she lay perfectly still. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her over. A large bloodstain covered the front of her jacket. Her eyes opened as he looked down at her and her lips moved. But he was unable to hear her words above the growing roar of the earthquake.
Thick dust clogged his throat and eyes as he bent to pick her up and he began coughing and retching as he staggered across the chamber towards the door. Outside in the tunnel there was no light at all. The dust was thicker there and he scrambled blindly on, over piles of rubble and fallen blocks of concrete that he could only feel in the total darkness. By instinct he was making for the upward slope, carrying the now unconscious Chinese woman in his arms. As he went the crack and roar of the tunnel works splitting open around him in the pitch blackness added their awful clamour to the deeper rumble of the moving earth.
PEKING, Thursday—Chairman Mao Tse-tung, 82-year old leader of 800 million Communists, is dead. Radio Peking gave no indication of the cause of Mao’s death but it was widely believed he had suffered a series of strokes in recent years and was a victim of Parkinson’s disease.
London Evening News, 9 September 1976
31
The antiquated lift cage groaned and creaked as its worn, nineteenth-century pulley-system cranked it ponderously up to the fourth floor. The bulb on the landing was still not lit and Moynahan hung back in the shadows, peering expectantly between the lattice-work of the spring-loaded gates as the head and shoulders of the man inside rose slowly into view. His face was hidden by an open copy of the Evening Standard he was reading and in the dim glow of the lift’s interior light Moynahan watched the massive, two-word headline stretched across the front page in heavy black type shifting steadily up towards his eye-level.
The greased bicycle-style chain rattled noisily in its pipe and the light inside went our abruptly as the lift stopped and the gates opened. A muffled curse accompanied the crash of the gates slamming shut again in the darkness and Moynahan darted forward and bent down to free the trapped trouser leg.
‘All right, all right Moynahan! I can manage, thank you.’
‘Sorry sir.’ Moynahan’s voice was crisply respectful and he stood up quickly when he saw his help wasn’t needed. ‘Surprised r see you here, sir.’
‘I’d like to have a look in the flat for myself Moynahan.’
‘Right sir, of course.’ He pulled outhit key and inserted it in the lock. ‘I thought for a moment, sir,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘it was Mr. Scholefield himself coming back.’ He swung the door open and reached inside to switch on the light.
Percy Crowdleigh stepped past the Irishman into the lighted hall without answering and stood staring irritably down for a moment at the torn cuff of his dark striped trousers. He made a loud clicking noise with his tongue for several seconds then slowly folded the paper he was holding and laid it on the hall table. He waited until Moynahan had followed him inside and closed the door before speaking.
‘He’s dead.’
‘I know, sir. I heard it on the news.’ Moynahan grinned suddenly and nodded down at the big headline on the evening paper. ‘Still, he had a good run. Eighty-two’s not a bad age for a guerrilla revolutionary, is it?’
‘I’m not talking about Mao Tse-tung!’ Crowdleigh’s voice was still testy. ‘Your assignment here is finished.’ He waved a hand vaguely towards the paper. ‘Page seven, two paragraphs from Singapore, refers.’
Moynahan picked up the paper and opened it. He read the brief agency item at the bottom of the foreign news page under its Singapore dateline, then looked up at Crowdleigh questioningly. ‘September the eighth? Yesterday—and nobody in the whole world of journalism wondering why a British sinologist should be the victim of a hit-and-run accident in the Singapore bar district at three o’clock in the morning.’ Moynahan’s accent had suddenly become less pronounced. He stared at the Cabinet Office man a moment longer.
‘The post mortem showed his lungs were clogged with dust,’ said Crowdleigh dryly. He considered Moynahan with a. bored expression on his face. ‘Some time we may assign you, Moynahan, to break into the crystal casket in which they will no doubt enshrine the Chairman’s remains, and bring back samples of the contents of his lungs too.’
Moynahan gazed back at his superior uncomprehendingly. Then he laughed uncertainly at what he assumed was another of his over-elaborate jests. ‘For myself I can’t say I’m sorry to be moving on to something else, sir. The last six or seven weeks since Scholefield left have been as quiet as the bloody grave here, sir, if you’ll pardon the—’ Crowdleigh interrupted him with a peremptory gesture.
Did you get his papers?’
‘Yes sir.’ Moynahan reached inside the black jacket of his porter’s uniform and pulled out a long buff envelope. ‘His bank manager was very reluctant. Refused point blank even to consider opening the strong box just on t
he strength of a Special Branch card. We wouldn’t have them now if I hadn’t told him to ring you—and he wants them back by quarter to three.’
Crowdleigh took the papers from him and walked into the study. He paused in the middle of the room for a moment, looking round. The half empty vodka bottle and two unwashed glasses still stood on the desk. He walked over to the Chinese scroll on the wall and raised his spectacles to his forehead to peer closely at the double signature at the foot of the inscription. He drummed his fingers absently on the envelope hi his hands as he leaned closer. ‘Take a couple of shots of this, please,’ he said quietly over his shoulder then went quickly across to the desk.
While Moynahan was photographing the signatures with the miniature camera he had taken from his pocket, Crowdleigh prised open the envelope and shook the papers inside onto the blotter. He pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead again and peered at the photostat of the poem in Chinese calligraphy. Behind blur the clicking ceased and Moynahan put the camera back in his pocket and stood waiting beside the desk. ‘Was anything found on the body that would give a due as to what happened?’
Crowdleigh continued gazing at the convoluted Chinese characters for a long time before he looked up. Then he stared absently at Moynahan as though lie had forgotten who he was. ‘There was a notebook in his pocket with a lot of detailed notes in it, yes, and a few other papers. We’re doing our best to check them out’ He reached up to his forehead and readjusted the spectacles on the bridge of his bony nose. ‘Do a couple of pictures of all the papers in that envelope, then get ‘em back to the bank fast’