The Chinese Assassin (53 page)

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
f
a
ce 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 f
a
ce 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
couc
h
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-
li
ng 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
alar
m
. 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 g
r
oundswell before a storm’ at sea. In the
sky
he heard a
distant muffled sound that
resembled
the gen
tl
y 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
e
x
plosion in the
confined
space.

‘Yang is an
assassin

He yelled the
words
o
ver
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 bas
e
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
Li
n
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 t
u
rned
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 door
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-h
s
ing’s Hung
C
h
i
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 mid
d
ay. 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 Nan
h
ai 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
di
r
ection
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 tre
m
or 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.