The Chinese Assassin (50 page)

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
cl
osely 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
Su
i
-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 Su
i
-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
h
is
revolver
and
be stood clenching and
un
clenching 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 mana
cle
d 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.

27

‘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.

Scholef
i
el
d
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
o
ff inva
sions
of
ghosts.’

The
silence
that followed
lasted a
fu
ll
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 ti
m
e 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 Ku
e
i’s by tens of
millions.
But I was never a god. I
was
made one against my will.’ His tongue f
l
ickered 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
f
in
ger. 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
s
ide. ‘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 co
mm
ittee 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
l
i.
I was haughty
in appearance and attitude. But always secretly
I
h
ad 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.’

Schole
f
ield
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 dif
fe
rent parties in
the world
calling themselves “
Com
m
unist
”. 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
cl
osed 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
ch
anged. And
the
changes themselves are as lasting
as
the brush
o
f
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
f
r
om
her
place in
the
shadow by the desk.
He
glanced
over his
shoulder
but there was no movement in the darkness
and
no
f
u
rther
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.’