The Chinese Assassin Read online

  When a Trident airliner crashes in Mongolia, the Chinese government keeps suspiciously quiet about who and what was onboard. Yet a year later they claim that one of the nine charred victims was Lin Piao, China’s Defence Minister, fleeing to Russia after an abortive attempt to assassinate Mao Tse-tung and seize power.

  Five years pass and a Chinese defector named Yang suddenly appears, claiming to be a survivor of the air disaster – and produces some astonishing new evidence.

  How did Lin Piao really die – was it an accident or was he murdered? Who is Yang? And what is the truth behind one of the most mysterious plane crashes in modern times?

  As the secret services of Russia, China, America and Britain clash in their attempts to seize Yang, the most destructive earthquake since the fifteenth century rocks China – and the dying Mao comes face to face with a deadly assassin.

  Anthony Grey’s books and short stories have been translated into some fifteen languages worldwide. His enduring epics Saigon and Peking are critically acclaimed bestsellers in Europe, the Far East, South Africa, Australasia and the Americas. A former foreign correspondent with Reuters in Eastern Europe and China, he has written eight novels to date. His first book was an autobiographical account of the two years that he was held hostage by Red Guards during China’s Cultural Revolution. His most recent novel, Tokyo Bay, is the first volume of a trilogy illuminating one hundred and fifty years of tortured rivalry between Japan and the West.

  Anthony Grey makes documentary films for British television, broadcasts internationally on the BBC World Service, and lives at present in London.

  Also by Anthony Grey

  Autobiography

  HOSTAGE IN PEKING

  Short Stories

  A MAN ALONE

  Non-Fiction

  THE PRIME MINISTER WAS A SPY

  Novels

  THE GERMAN STRATAGEM

  THE BULGARIAN EXCLUSIVE

  SAIGON

  PEKING

  THE BANGKOK SECRET

  THE NAKED ANGELS

  TOKYO BAY

  ANTHONY GREY

  THE

  CHINESE

  ASSASSIN

  PAN BOOKS

  First published 1978 by Michael Joseph

  This edition published 1985 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd

  25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NP

  and Basingstoke

  Associated companies throughout the world

  ISBN 0 330 28636 6

  Copyright C Anthony Grey Productions Ltd 1978

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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  photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written

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  prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  98

  A CIP catalogue record for this hook is available from

  the British Library

  Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent

  This hook is sold subject m the condition that it shall nor,

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  For Clarissa Jane and Shirley

  the inspiration and the reward

  First in China comes Mao Tse-tung.

  Then comes Mao Tse-tung again.

  Next comes Mao Tse-tung once more.

  Then there is a lot of nothing.

  And then, and only then come all the others –

  with Lin Piao leading the procession.

  Peking colloquialism 1970

  PART ONE

  The Death of Lin Piao

  folio number one

  A train of fifty camels was passing that night, black shapes swaying through the wind, darker than the distant mountains. The pale northern light that glimmers all through the sleeping hours in summer and early autumn on those steppes was already brightening the bottom of the sky across the Soviet border to the north.

  Old Tsereng Toktokho, wrapped against the cold lash of the night wind in his peaked hat of fur and the heavy sheepskin coat that was almost as old as he was, sat astride his restless horse watching the camels go. His eyes never scanned his herds directly as they shifted around him. His gaze, even in darkness, seemed always to sweep the deep distances of the harsh and endless tundra that he loved. His face was like the saddle on which he sat, creased and tanned almost black by years of merciless beating from wind and sun. But though old, he was stubborn and still brave. That’s how he came to be among the last arats in Mongolia living outside the communal co-operatives. And that’s how he came to save my life.

  He had just tipped a long draught of kumiss into his great throat from the leather bottle that always hung at his belt, when he heard the first sound of our Trident far away down the sky to the south. There was nothing like kumiss for keeping out the chill Mongolian wind, he told me many times in the months he hid me and sheltered me from death. But although I helped him with the milking of the mares in June and drank it to please him, I never learned to love kumiss like old Tsereng. Although it resembled strong beer, it was too fizzy for me. It had a sour caste that reminded me of burned almonds and to my nostrils it always reeked unpleasantly of the stables.

  His horse had picked up the unfamiliar sound of the jet engines first. It was the twitching of the animal’s ears and his sudden stamping that alerted the old man. Immediately he loosened the ear flaps of his fur hat to hear better. I know all this because he told me every detail a thousand times during the long winter night as we lay on the piled furs in his yurt warmed by the pungent breath and body heat of the sheep, goats and yaks crowded in all around us, some pregnant, some already with their bleating young. I always concentrated on every word he said, even when I’d heard it all before. I had to, to prevent my eyes wandering to the stocky bodies of his wife and daughter, who invariably threw off all their clothes and sprawled naked on their furs among the animals in the stifling heat. Only when the wind really howled through the seams in the felt walls did they wrap themselves in their fur coats for the night.

  The Trident had been specially equipped with military radar when it was in service ‘with the Pakistan Air Force and that enabled us to fly at a very low level under the Soviet detection scanners. We roared over the Kerulen River, flying at little more than two hundred feet, heading north-west. The border of our beloved People’s Republic of China was 400 miles behind us and we had crossed it just before two o’clock in the morning, at an even lower altitude.

  It was almost three o’clock when Toktokho detected the first sounds of our approach. He was deeply mystified, because the few scheduled air services from Peking to Ulan Bator never passed that far to the east. Our track, although most of us inside the aircraft were then ignorant of the fact, was taking us directly from Peitaiho on the coast near Peking to Irkutsk on the far shore of Lake Baikal in the Soviet Union. Toktokho strained his eyes into the darkened sky as the roar of our jet engines, grew louder, scattering his terrified herds in all directions around him. The arats of Khentiiaimat are simple nomads, little touched by the passage of time. They are deeply fearful of the great
extremes of the elements in one of the remotest regions of the vast bowl of Central Asia. Many of the elderly among them still even worship secretly at the ancient shrine on Delger Haan, in defiance of the principles of Marxism-Leninism under which the revisionist puppet state of the People’s Republic of Mongolia is supposedly governed.

  So the terrible roar of our low passage through the silence of that night stampeded not only the herds of sheep, yak and cattle beneath our track. The arats, blind with panic too, were also put to headlong flight, the fear of an unknown death riding close at their backs. Only old Tsereng Toktokho was different. He wrestled his horse to a standstill and stood up high in his stirrups, staring into the black heavens as our Trident passed low overhead. The great din of its engines faded gradually into the night. But it was not long before he heard them beginning to grow loud again. He was not to know then that we had just uncovered the treacherous plot and had forced the pilot at gunpoint to turn towards the south once more.

  Until then, because we were flying without navigation lights, he had only heard, not seen, our coming. But then an explosion from the darkness above his head suddenly produced a mighty burgeoning fist of orange flame. It grew quickly bigger as we swung down towards him through the black sky. By its fierce light he saw for the first time the wings and fuselage of our crippled Trident as it slid helplessly towards the earth. When the aircraft struck the ground a half mile from him, a second and more terrible explosion sent Toktokho’s terrified horse bolting into a headlong gallop that, great horseman in the tradition of his ancestors though he was, he couldn’t turn for two miles.

  By the time he had pacified the fear-crazed animal and walked it back in the direction of the crash, the flames were burning with great intensity. Their heat halted him a hundred yards from the blaze and he reined in his mount and sat watching the terrible inferno that was by then lighting up the whole plain. His horse shied again and almost threw him off when I crawled blindly out of the scorched grass underneath its very hooves.

  But Toktokho stayed in the saddle long enough to soothe the horse. Then he leapt down to beat out my smouldering clothes with his bare hands. Close to death, I lapsed into unconsciousness while still on the ground and he had to pick me up bodily and sling me across the neck of his horse. I remembered nothing of the jolting journey to his family yurt that was pitched then near the spring at Jibhalantayn Bulag.

  ULAN BATOR, Wednesday—During the night of September 13 a jet aircraft belonging to the Chinese Peoples’ Republic violated the airspace of the Mongolian Peoples’ Republic and, continuing its flight towards the interior of the territory; crashed in the Hinteyn region. The semi-carbonised bodies of nine persons, firearms, documents and equipment proving that the aircraft belonged to the Chinese Air Force were found on the scene of the catastrophe.

  MONTSAME, the Mongolian News Agency, 30 September 1971

  1

  When the ancient, rickety lift finally ceased its anguished groaning and shuddered to a halt at the fourth floor, Richard Scholefield heard that the bell of the telephone was already jangling behind the locked door of his flat. It was still ringing a minute and a half later when, drenched with perspiration, he finally extricated himself; his suitcase his hand luggage, his portable typewriter and his plastic carrier bag of duty-free liquor from the clutches of the two spring-loaded latticed-iron gates that daily threatened the life and limb of all the tenants in the block.

  The bulb on the windowless landing was out again and Scholefield stumbled in the darkness over a loose stair rod on the two steps leading up to his door. He was cursing softly to himself when he felt a hand on his arm. He started back in alarm. ‘It’s been ringing for a week. It’s never stopped.’

  Scholefield, still cursing, bent to fumble on the floor in the darkness for the plastic bag of duty-frees he’d dropped in the confusion. The stifling heat lent a sharp edge of irritation to his voice. ‘Moynahan, if you spent your time fixing the stair rods and the light bulbs around here instead of listening through a keyhole to my bloody telephone ringing—.’

  The new Irish porter suddenly leaned closer in the darkness and Scholefield recoiled as he inhaled the pungent whisky fumes on his breath. ‘I mean it literally, Mr. Scholefield. I’m not employin’ the words to mean that your telephone has been ringin’ all week in the sense that it’s just been quite bury. I really mean that it’s never stopped. Not for a moment. Not once.’

  Scholefield stood still and listened in the darkness. The telephone was still ringing inside the flat.

  ‘Eight days it’s been goin’. Just like that. Eight days—without a moment’s cease.’

  Scholefield put down his cases slowly and fumbled in his pockets for keys.

  ‘I first noticed last Thursday morning, Mr. Scholefield. When I was doin’ my rounds.’ He stopped and peered closely at the luminous dial of his wristwatch, holding it against the end of his nose. ‘It’s the twenty-second, today, right? So Thursday July the fifteenth, it was, okay?’

  Scholefield tried to elbow his way past him but the porter lurched sideways knocking him against the wall. Terribly sorry, Mr. Scholefield—you all right?—by Sunday old Mrs. Thompson upstairs was complainin’ that it was keepin’ her awake nights. It’s rung right through the nights y’ see. I told her there was nothin’ I could do. We porters aren’t allowed to enter flats when the tenants are away, I says. Did you have a good trip to Ottawa, Mr. Scholefield? You and your China-watchin’ colleagues got the yellow peril under control at last, have you?’

  ‘Good night, Moynahan.’ Scholefield edged slowly round the porter, speaking with exaggerated patience and inserted his Yale key in the lock. Behind the door the telephone continued its relentless clamour.

  ‘Who do you think it could be callin’ you all this time, Mr. Scholefield?’

  ‘If it’s Her Majesty, the Prime Minister, or the Secretary General of the United Nations, Moynahan. I promise to let you know.’ He opened the door and carried his luggage into the darkened hallway.

  ‘More likely that actress lady friend of yours. Desperate to see you the first minute you’re back, eh?’ The reek of whiskied breath assailed Scholefield’s nostrils again and the porter laughed coarsely dose behind him in the darkness. ‘How d’yer like this heat, Mr. Scholefield? Hottest summer in London since records were kept, eh? Did ya know that? The summer of’76 will be one to remember, eh?’

  ‘Forgive me, Moynahan, I’m jetlagged.’ Scholefield switched on the light in the hall and closed the door quickly in the porter’s leering face. He stood looking down at the telephone on the hall table. Its ringing echoed loudly through the empty rooms jarring his sleep-starved nerves. The heat inside the airless flat was stifling and he felt the sweat running in rivulets down the sides of his face. He stared at the telephone for a moment then turned away deliberately and picked up his typewriter and briefcase and carried them through to the desk in his study. He returned and took the two duty-free bottles of Polish Vodka front the plastic carrier bag and stood them on the hall table beside the ringing telephone. Then he took of his jacket, hung it up, and carried his suitcase into the bedroom at the far end of the hall The extension telephone on the bedside table was ringing there too.

  Scholefield took the used underclothes from his suitcase and threw them into a linen basket, then hung up his suits. He opened several windows but the air outside seemed equally fetid. He took off his tie, and the shirt that was sticking to his back, undressed, and went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stood motionless under the cold water jet for several minutes with his eyes dosed, listening absently to the shrill of the telephone. Then he towelled himself vigorously, threw the towel aside and went back to the bedroom.

  He hesitated by the bedside table for a moment before lifting the receiver. When he did the abrupt return of quiet to the flat was startling. He held the instrument to his ear and listened without speaking. There was a long moment of silence. Then a diffident, barely audible foreign voice came on the line
.

  ‘Mr. Richard Scholefield?’

  The blurred consonants and the inability to pronounce the ’R’ sound of his first name betrayed a Chinese speaking English.

  ‘Yes, this is Scholefield.’

  There was another silence, then the sound of a long breath being drawn. When the voice spoke again, it had switched to Chinese.

  ‘Mr. Scholefield, you don’t know me. But I must see you very urgently.’

  Almost as a reflex Scholefield found himself mentally categorizing the speaker’s nasal accent. Before he spoke again he’d placed it, in one of the Yangtze provinces of central China, probably Hupeh or East Szechuan. ‘Who are you? ‘What do you want to see me about?’

  ‘It is not possible for me to say on the telephone. But I have something to tell you that would be of great significance for your work.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Yang. But I am not important. What I have to reveal could be a matter of life and death for somebody much more important than me.’ The man paused and drew another long breath. ‘In China’

  Scholefield frowned irritably into the receiver. ‘I’ve just this minute come off a plane from Canada—’ Then he stopped. ‘Mr. Yang, have you been telephoning day and night for the past eight days?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice of the Chinese was right with tension. ‘May I come this evening?’

  Scholefield rubbed a hand wearily across his eyes. ‘All right Do you know where I live?’

  ‘Yes!’ The answer was a shout of relief: ‘I will be there in half an hour.’

  The line went dead immediately, Scholefield shrugged, put on a fresh shirt and a pair of tennis shorts and wandered barefoot into the hall, wiping fresh perspiration from his brow. He picked up a bottle of vodka, broke the seal and was on the way to the study where he kept a cabinet of glasses when the telephone began ringing again. He pushed a pile of last year’s Peking Review irritably onto the floor to make room for the bottle and glass on his desk, then went back to answer it. He lost the battle to stifle an enormous yawn as he picked up the receiver.