The Chinese Assassin (15 page)

We left the ha
l
l with as much dignity as we could muster and walked out into the cool mountain air of Lushan, the jeers ringing in our ears. The delights of that high resort, made famous by Chinese poets of the Middle Ages, its shady paths, the rapid streams among groves of cedar and bamboo, the magnificent vista of the Yangtze flowing into Poyang Lake far beneath, all suddenly seemed sour in our sight. We could not speak among ourselves but hurried away immediately to our separate villas. In a mood close to despair I paced up and down my room reading and re-reading my notes of what the Chairman had said at the Plenum.

Could
it
really have happened at last? Marshall Li
n
in one of his blackest moods of depression had once long ago confided to me his fear that the full fury of the Chairman’s psychotic paranoia— diagnosed in
1960
by a doctor who disappeared without trace the very next day—might one day be turned against us too.

But even during the five years of the Cultural Revolution, as the sick brain of our once great leader spread turmoil across the land exhausting the minds and bodies of the people, Marshall Li
n
had on more than one occasion been at pains to console me—and perhaps himself too. ‘Unless he descends into the depths of a raving madness,’ be had said, ‘he will not forget the bedrock of his philosophy—that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. While there’s reason left in him he will never dare to destroy those of his comrades who command the loyalties of the great armies which brought us to power.’

We had watched him smash the whole party to eradicate men like Liu Shao-chi, of whom he had an utterly irrational fear as a successor. And only when the Red Guard youth and workers armed with stolen weapons were fighting pitched battles in every province of the country and the death toll was rising alarmingly did his insatiable appetite for rebe
ll
ion at last become blunted. Then and only then was the army ordered to exercise the full weight of its power and restore peace.

But now, after only a year or so of calm, had he finally descended into the depths of madness? Why else should he attack the
man he himself had nominated as his
successor,
one of the greatest generals in China’s
history,
who
could tear
the
heart
from the
country if
he chose to deploy
forces loyal to him in the
struggle for survival?

Either it
was madness—or
the coterie of evil courtiers who
supervised his every
move
behind
an impenetrable
screen
of
guards within the walls
of the
Forbidden
City had succeeded
in poisoning his fevered mind against us,
succeeded in
manipulating his nightmare fears of betrayal in order to remove the last obstacles from their own path to ultimate power after his death!

The Central Committee had dearly been bewildered by his tirade. But that was not important.
The
power-hungry group of extremists behind
it
knew that soon more voices would be raised in a growing chorus against us—when
it
appeared
for the
many to
be
the
only
safe
road
to
personal
survival
.
As
I
paced
back
and
forth
in
that
Lushan
room my
mind was engulfed with a great
sadness. How little
China had
changed! A
great
revolution
had
swept
the
land, a
great
new
leader
had
emerged
embracing a world-shaking
modem creed—but its tenets
were still being
misused as scurrilously as
the
classical sophistries
of the feudal past. The
modem scientific truths
of Marxism had
become
the same empty
symbol
to
be hoisted aloft in
the
same vicious and unpr
in
cipled personal intrigues that bad racked the imperial courts. Groups of jealous antagonists still grappled blindly for supreme power because they detested
or
loved
the
slant of
another’s
eyes! Much had changed for the better in
the
lives of the ordinary people.
But it was a
precarious change.
The
great unknowing masses
were
still helpless
prey to
the caprices
of the secret court of the
modem Son
of Heaven, Mao Tse-tung.

These desolate thoughts
whirled
in my head
like
a
thousand blind
bats,
driving
me towards a black
brink
of
hopelessness.
But the realisation that perhaps
Marshall
Lin might be
suffering
a worse brainstorm of
despair sent
me
dashing
suddenly
from
my room to
the house
where he
was quartered.

Yeh Chun attempted to prevent me entering. She
said
he had retired to a darkened room in seclusion
and had
given strict
instructions
to allow
entry
to no one. In my panic I forced my way roughly past her
and
broke down
the
door of his retreat.

The curtains bad been drawn across the windows and the room was in darkness. In the gloom I saw
Marshall
Lin slumped
over his desk
with
metal
spikes jutting from his head. I ran
forward
with a cry.
He
had already taken his life with
the
aid
of
some
terrible
crown
of torture1 I
was
convinced. But as I approached he
raised
his head slowly
and stared
at me.

He had tied a cloth band tightly round his forehead from which several thin spikes of
wood and metal protruded. With
a flood of
relief
I recognised the ancient
brain-strengthening
device of old
China
which I
had
seen him use only once before at a period of great
stress
during
the Korean
War. In his
despair
he had
fallen
back on his
traditional belief
that wood, metal
and
cloth, applied to
the head under pressure, can have a curative effect.
I reached
out and gripped his thin shoulder in a gesture
of
encouragement.
But he didn’t move or
respond.
Then I
saw
the revolver lying on
the
desk beside
him—that
same
silver
gun given to him by
Stalin.
He
continued
to stare blankly in front of him
and
I picked up the weapon
quickly an
d
locked
it away in. a drawer. I
closed
the door,
then returned
to sit down by the
desk in
the
semi-darkness.
For a long
time
we
sat
together in silence.

When
finally
he spoke, his voice
was
hollow
and
lifeless. ‘The enemy have opened
their
mouth. Either they
swallow
us up, or we
swallow
them. There is no other way.’

I placed my hands on his
arm, cautioning him to silence. ‘The room will almost
certainly be
monitored,’
I whispered.

He didn’t
seem
to hear me. In
the
pale light filtering
through
the curtains I could see
the wood and
metal
spikes still sticking
out all around
the
crown of his
h
ead. ‘This is a life
and
death struggle now. He’s
using
his old
tactics
of
winning
over one group
and
striking at another. Today he woos A
and strikes
at B. Tomorrow he will
woo B and
strike at A. Today he talks sweetly to those whom
h
e wishes to win over, but tomorrow he charges them with non
-
existent offences
and
condemns them to death. A
man can be his
guest one
day
but his prisoner the
next.’

His voice
trailed off and
I put my
fingers
to my lips and motioned him again to silence. But be
ignored
me,
still
staring
wide-eyed into
the empty
darkness.
‘Has anyone promoted by him
escaped
a political death sentence later?
Has any political
force
been
able to
co-operate with
him from
beginning
to end?’

He
paused
and
I
could
see
him
shaking
his
head
mutely
in
answer to his own questions. ‘We’ve all closed our eyes so long to the truth, but his secretaries have all been arrested or committed suicide. All his confidants have been sent to prison.’ His voice broke with bitterness. ‘Even a son begotten by him was driven insane,’

I rose from my chair and began pacing back and forth across the room in my anxiety that he should say nothing more that could later be used against us. But Marshall Lin seemed oblivious to good sense and his voice ram
bl
ed on. ‘He takes a strange delight in
m
altreating others, doesn’t he? His philosophy is extremism. Once he thinks someone is his enemy he will blame all evil deeds on him.’ He stopped and drew a long despairing breath. ‘All those who have been dropped by him one after another, as if from a merry-go-round, are actually his substitutes who’ve been punished for the crimes
committed by him.’

In
my alarm I
ran
to the
window
and
threw
back
the curtain.
The sunlight of
the August
evening
streamed
in. Seeing him sitting
hunched and bewildered
at his
desk,
a flail, pathetic
figure wearing that bizarre
spiked headband,
wrung
my
heart.
He blinked
quickly
in the light
and
rose
unsteadily
to his
feet.
He removed the band,
dropped
it on the desk,
then walked slowly to the
window and looked out at
the
haze gathering round the
high mountain
peaks.

It
was only
then
that
I saw the dried
grass stalks
on the other side of his desk. I knew there would be forty-nine
strands—I
had burst in on him whilst he
was
consulting
the ancient oracle of
the
I Ch
in
g,
the
Book of
Changes.