The Chinese Assassin (13 page)

Marshall
Li
n Piao suffered from a
chronic affliction in
adult
life which, because it was a severe embarrassment
to him,
was. a
cl
os
el
y-kept secret
known
only to
those
few of us who were
dose and trusted comrades. This affliction often
prevented him from carrying out
official
public duties and from
making
long public
speeches
or even
attending such functions as dinner
parties outside his
own
home. Along
with
the mental
tension it induced, this disability was also an
additional
handicap in his personal relations with
his fellow leaders. It
helped cause much confusion too in
the minds of the
Chinese
people
and
among outside
interpreters
of
Chinese
affairs because his erratic
pattern
of public
appearances,
which seemed so baffling politically,
was
almost solely attributable to
it. The truth is, Marshall Li
n
suffered
from acute amoebic
dysentery
and because of his
sensitive nature
this caused him
great
shame. Also he knew that
the shrunken
physical appearance of his wasted body and his
unsightly baldness which
forced him to wear a
cap
at all times, even indoors, made him an
unattractive
figure.
Because
I loved him
and
worked
closely with
him over many
years
I knew he could be
courteous
and considerate. But with those
outside his circle,
of close confidants he was sharp
and difficult because
of his deep inner unease.

But why
should
I now be prepared to reveal such
intimate details
of Marshall Li
n
’s
personal health
after he is long dead? The answer is that
a
close
knowledge
of his
character and
his
person is necessary
to
understand
why, and how, he
was
murdered by
the
treacherous left-wing clique now
plotting
to seize supreme power
in
China. For his
death was
only
the first
part of
their plans
soon to
be
brought to
fruition.

By nature
Marshall
Li
n
was
neurotic
and highly strung.
He
had
suffered more
than
one nervous
breakdown
in his life. He was, for instance, a compulsive eater of fried beans. He
carried
them
with
hi
m
everywhere in
his pockets
and consumed
them
constantly.
Like
many men
of great
physical
courage forced by age towards
i
naction
he lived increasingly
through
the written word.
All day
long he would
sit
at
his desk reading party and army documents, writing memoranda and brooding—and all the time tossing the beans repeatedly into his mouth.

Many times I remonstrated with him about this habit. ‘They are nutritious, yes, Marshall Li
n
,’ I would agree, ‘but extremely difficult to digest They do your body more harm than good.’ But he would always wave
me
impatiently away. Other people smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol or chewed gum, he would reply
sharply—and he
did
none of
those things.

This bizarre compulsion
to
bean-eating was
only one
outward
sign of the great internal
stresses
that
knotted
his
intestines with anxiety
throughout his waking hours. He suf
fe
red insomnia too,
and
he developed ulcers to add to the
burden
of
residual pain
from his
war wounds.
But
these growing bodily hardships
only
seemed
to temper
further
the
fierce steely spirit
at the very core of him— the spirit
which
had won him the battle
nickname
of ‘Tiger Cat’ during the
years of his great
generalship. Once I
entered
his study with the translation of a
weste
rn
press
profile
that wondered at his
magnificent
military record of victory
in
a hundred
campaigns
against the Japanese and
Chiang
Kai-shek’s armies. As he leafed
through
it I asked him how he would
explain
his
miraculous
successes to the world
if
a
western
newspaperman were sitting before
him
then.

He raised his pale, gaunt face from his
papers and in the greying
of his
skin
I could detect
the pain
he
was suffering
that day. But he smiled his curiously apologetic, vulnerable
smile.
‘It is
quite
simple,
Comrade Yang,’ he said. ‘Only ever engage the enemy
when you can
be
certain of
victory.
Make that a
rule
of your life.’

I have never
forgotten
that moment. Are those the words of a
man
who would
make
three
clu
m
sy and unsuccessful
attempts on
the life
of the leader he
had
loyally supported
and
fought for
unhesitatingly during
fo
rty years?
Are those the
guiding
thoughts of a man who would
fail in any task
he chose
to
carry out,
then
flee
across
the enemy’s borders in shame?

Marshall
Li
n
uttered
those uncompromising words of advice to me
in
the late
summer
of 1970. It was
just a week before
the
fateful
August
meeting
of the
party Central Committee in
the
mountains
at
Lushan.
It
was
there we discovered beyond
any
doubt
that those evil forces
cl
osing around Chairman Mao
Tse-tung
had
at
last managed
to
poison his mind
against Marshall
Li
n

On
the final day
the Chairman himself, who
had made
no formal speech even at a dosed
party meeting,
for several years, astounded everybody by
rising
to
launch a bitter personal attack on us. His intervention was astonishing because
he had been unwell for some time
and
we sat
staring in disbelief
as he
reared
up, swaying
unsteadily,
before the microphone. The
nurse
at his side
was
so
concerned
that she was holding his sleeve, ready to
leap
to
her
feet
and
support him if he should
falter.

Despite the large doses of levodopa medication he was
receiving
for his worsening Parkinson’s disease, his palsied left
arm was trembling
uncontrollably. He stared slowly round the ha
l
l and finally his
g
aze came to rest with
obvious
deliberation on the places in which we were
seated.
His face had
grown
dark
with
anger
and
a tense hush fell in
the
ha
l
l. Suddenly be shouted into
the
microphone at the top of his voice.

‘I have never
been
a genius!’

The effort racked his whole body
and
the
entire
gathering stared at
him
open-mouthed
with
amazement. He glowered round
the ha
l
l again, gathering his
strength. Then his voice
dropped
and we barely heard his
next
words. ‘I read
Confucius
for six years
and
capitalist literature for seven years. I began
studying Marxism-Leninism only in
1918
! How can
I be a genius?’

He lurched
against the podium and it seemed
he would
fall.
But he recovered. Swaying
unsteadily
on his
feet,
he glared slowly round the ha
l
l, again
seeming,
as he had always done, to
search
the soul of every one of us for some
terrible
hidden sign of guilt. Though sick at
heart, I took jotted notes
of all he said. I glanced quickly along
the
row at Marshall
Lin
. His face
was
white
and he was
pushing
beans
distractedly into his mouth in his
agitation.
The face of his wi
fe
, Yeh Chun,
was drained
of colour too. Everybody in the
ha
l
l knew that Chairman
Mao, quite out of
the
blue,
was
attacking Lin’s
own
loyal description of
him
given the previous
day
in a short speech. He had praised
the
historic ingenuity of Mao’s
political
thought
and
proposed that in
recognition
of this he
should become both
head of
state and
head of
the party
now that the
Cultural Revolution was over.

I looked across at those
sitting on the other side of Chairman Mao. I saw that the features of his wife Chiang
Ching were set impassively although many
others
in the ha
l
l were obviously distressed that
the
Chairman
might be
on
the
verge of some
kind
of collapse. No public
audience
had ever seen him so enfeebled, so manic
and
uncontrolle
d