The Chinese Assassin Read online

  The street photographer got two last shots of Yang going through the door that led to a tiny cinema, and a few moments later he recorded two back views of Scholefield as he followed him in. In both shots he had included the anonymous-looking car in which the two Russians were concealed. Behind the Mini’s smoked windows Razduhev looked at his watch and smiled grimly. ‘Twelve forty-seven, Boris. He’s keeping admirable time. I think the Chinese outdo even the Germans when it comes to obeying orders.’ He lifted a hand briefly in the direction of the Chinese propaganda kiosk and when he saw Tan Sui-ling nod, he gave the order to Bogdarin to move off

  When he stepped into the air-conditioned gloom of the cinema the wall of cold air struck Scholefield’s hot face with a pleasant sense of shock. At the same instant a hand grabbed his sleeve. Because of the sudden darkness he stumbled and almost tell. But Yang steadied him and led the way clumsily towards two seats at the end of the back row. Because of its air conditioning the cinema was almost full. Posters in the foyer had announced a double bill of Hong Kong-made films, Behind the Lines and Massage Girls, and on the screen two shrieking queens of kung fu were already kicking and chopping their way along the roof of a speeding train aswarm with enemy soldiers. A steady hubbub of Chinese conversation rose above the frantic clamour of the film’s vernacular sound track as traders and businessmen closed deals and exchanged gossip in the coolest lunchtime spot in Gerrard Street.

  Yang dumped his greengrocery on the floor and lowered himself into the end seat with a grunt. He removed his dark glasses and stretched his deformed leg stiffly into the aisle, then leaned towards Scholefield, speaking softly in Chinese. ‘You have decided to offer your help, Mr. Scholefield, I presume.’

  In the faint light from the screen Scholefield saw that Yang’s eyes were closed in concentration as he waited attentively for an answer. ‘I take it we’re no longer talking about homosexual acupuncture students defecting to Cuba? I’ve checked with the Foreign Office. There’s no clinic at Oxford and no acupuncture students from Peking in England at present.’

  Yang smiled with his mouth without opening his eyes and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, before I forget, Mr. Scholefield, your Ming scroll is a fake—a Ch’ing reproduction. Check the signature sometime if I don’t have a chance to show you myself:

  As for last night’s subterfuge, I apologise. I could not be sure your apartment was not monitored. Nor could I be sure that you would be sympathetic.’

  ‘What makes you so sure I’m sympathetic now?’

  Yang cocked his head to one side as though straining to isolate some important detail from the confused babble of conversation around him. ‘I think you have tasted the chocolates I left for you by now, yes?’

  Scholefield looked quickly along the row of heads in front of them, but none had turned in their direction. The Chinese waited for his reply with his eyes still closed. ‘Mr. Yang, correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be claiming that you’re the sole survivor of the Li. Piao crash. Is that right?’

  The sarcasm was evident in Scholefield’s voice and Yang leaned forward suddenly on the arm-rest separating their seats, his eyes dilating in anger. ‘Marshall Lin was murdered! Lao Kao was murdered! Look if you don’t believe!’ He ripped open his raincoat, unbuttoned his shirt and turned round, tugging it back off his shoulders Even in the half-light the twisted skeins of livid white scar tissue were clearly visible spreading in an angry torrents across his shoulders and down his back He swung round again on Scholefield and refastened his shirt, his eyes blazing. ‘Do you still doubt that I have suffered?’

  Scholefield looked away and didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you still doubt that I want to avenge myself on those animals who are even now plotting to murder Chairman Mao himself?’

  Scholefield took a deep breath and turned back to the Chinese. ‘You acted the part of a homosexual PLA hero last night. Perhaps you’re acting another role now.’

  ‘I want only to save the Chairman and save my country from these monsters!’ Yang was forcing the words out between his clenched teeth. ‘Why should I want to act?’ He turned away and gazed furiously at the screen. One of the lissom kung flu queens had been captured and was about to be tortured in a cellar by enemy troops for what she knew. Yang continued watching as the face of her determined colleague appeared behind an iron grille in the ceiling.

  ‘There are a hundred or so questions I’d like answered before I could begin to believe your story.’ Scholefield leaned closer. ‘Like how did you get to London? Who’s helping you here? And who exactly “killed” Lin and why?’

  The ceiling grille crashed inwards in a shower of dust and a female screaming fury hunched herself down onto the unsuspecting heads of the torturers with arms and legs flailing.

  ‘You already have some of the answers to those questions in your possession.

  Scholefield stared at him, puzzled. Then, remembering, he glanced down at the Chinese book in the paper bag in his lap. When he looked up again Yang was still staring unblinking at the gaudy kaleidoscopic image of the film. ‘Yes, Folio Seven and Folio Bight,’ he said quietly.

  A long burst of gunfire and mingled screams of simulated Asiatic death rang out. ‘In return for those folios, Mr. Scholefield, I want you to do something for me.’ The noise from the soundtrack grew deafening and Scholefield had to lean closer to catch Yang’s words. ‘I have conclusive evidence that Marshall Lin was murdered. I wish to make this evidence available to experts in the study of China in Britain and, with the added authority of their approval, to the world at large.’ He turned in his seat to face Scholefield. His features, lit only by the glow from the screen, were expressionless. ‘I wish to reveal this to those who can influence high-level policy here in London and in other major Western capitals. I wish this to be done very urgently. And you will assist met’

  Scholefield’s expression hardened. He stared into Yang’s face but the Chinese did not shift his gaze this time. ‘That sounds suspiciously like an imperative.’

  Yang nodded once, almost absently. ‘The East Asia Study Group of the British World Affairs Institute of which you are chairman is a very influential body. I know that leading China academics, Foreign Office and Cabinet Office experts and specialist journalists are all represented on it. Convene an urgent meeting of the Group for five thirty this afternoon.’

  Scholefield smiled humourlessly. ‘Mr. Yang, your naivety is touching. Members of that group, as you say, are all prominent men in their fields. They can’t be produced at a moment’s notice like rabbits out of a hat. They aren’t your subjugated luminaries from the Academy of Sciences in Peking—or Moscow—who have to come running without a pressing reason when the party crooks its little finger.’

  A whole battalion of troops fired blindly into the darkness into which the kung fu maidens, dressed now in black silk pyjamas, had disappeared. Failure to wing them seemed to convince the superstitious pre-Marxist Chinese soldiery that they had encountered supernatural avenging angels and they flung their rifles aside and ran screaming into the darkness where they were methodically cut down by more lightning kicks and chops from svelte female limbs. Yang watched all this then turned slowly back to Scholefield. ‘You do have a very pressing reason for summoning an emergency meeting.’ The face of the Chinese creased in a sudden glittering smile.

  Scholefield frowned. ‘Are you making some kind of threat?’

  Yang relaxed suddenly in his seat and returned his attention to the film that was now moving towards a noisy climax ‘I have simply taken some small precautions to ensure that you comply with my wishes.’

  Scholefield grabbed Yang’s left arm and swung him round in the seat. On the screen the nimble kung flu girls were now charging the enemy’s munitions depot, holding flaming explosive charges aloft in their tiny fists. ‘What precautions have you taken?’

  Yang didn’t flinch. He glanced calmly down at the watch on his free wrist. ‘Telephone your wife. She will give you the details.’

&nb
sp; The first small ammunition dump exploded in a sheet of flame. Scholefield grabbed Yang with his other hand and shook him bodily in his seat. ‘That wasn’t my wife last night.’

  Yang freed himself and slowly straightened his coat. ‘I am not talking about the actress. Telephone your wife. Ask her about Matthew.’

  Scholefield’s eyes widened in disbelief as another roar of flame lit the faces of the audience with a fiery glow. ‘If you want to see Matthew again, simply convene the meeting. I shall be at the Institute at five twenty-five. Your members will be addressed by the man now sitting beside you on your left.’

  Scholefield swung round in his seat as the main arsenal went up and the bright orange glare from the explosion illuminated the man hunched in the seat on the other side of him. Thin, narrow- shouldered and English-looking, he had a big shock of white hair and a straggling moustache’ stained blonde at the fringes with nicotine. He wore thick spectacles and in the flaring light from the screen Scholefield saw that although the cigarette between his lips had almost burned away the dead ash still hung from it in a long, bent spike.

  ‘Dr. Vincent Stillman, one of the world’s leading aircraft accident investigators.’ Yang’s sibilant introduction carried over Scholefield’s shoulder during a lull in the expanding series of screen explosions. The little man glanced up uncertainly at Scholefield as though embarrassed. Then he nodded diffidently and turned away.

  Scholefield swung back to find Yang regarding him calmly. ‘Your son will be returned unharmed to his home after the meeting—but only if we are not put under surveillance.’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘If you reveal any of this to your security people, you will never see your son again—alive.’

  A great surge of music welled up as the delicate female gladiators skipped triumphantly away from the monstrous conflagration they had created. Scholefield leapt to his feet and ran out to the public telephone box in the foyer. When his wife answered he tried to make his voice sound casual. ‘I’m just phoning to see how Matthew is.’

  ‘How he is? What do you mean how he is?’ Her voice as usual was cold and hostile. ‘I should have thought that you could see that for yourself:’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He should be with you by now. He left here with his nanny nearly half an hour ago.’

  Scholefield gripped the receiver tightly and took a deep breath. ‘Who picked them up?’

  She made a loud noise of exasperation. ‘What on earth’s wrong with you? The mini-cab, you sent of course. The Chinese driver said you’d arranged a special showing of that Dragon Boat Festival film for them at the institute this afternoon. Isn’t that right?’

  The heat in the enclosed telephone booth was suffocating and sweat was running suddenly down his forehead into his eyes. ‘Of course, of course, that’s right. How long ago did they leave, did you say?’

  ‘I’ve told you once, about half an hour ago.’ The brittle irritation changed abruptly to alarm. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  He swallowed hard. ‘No, the traffic’s terrible in town today, that’s all! I’m just checking they were picked up all right. I’ll try to have him back by six thirty.’

  Scholefield dropped the receiver and ran back into the cinema. The lights had come on and the audience was already streaming out He shouldered his way rapidly through the crowd until he reached the auditorium Then he stopped, staring in dismay. The back row of seats, like all the others, was now empty.

  The three bomb-shaped lettuce plants were still lying in the aisle but there was no sign of Yang, or the little hunched man with the shock of white hair. The Lu Hsun book in its brown paper bag was propped up on the arm of the seat where he had been sitting. He picked it up and pulled the book out of the bag. Between the pages he found the two folded sheets of pink paper headed ‘Folio Seven’ and ‘Folio Eight’.

  Folio number seven

  Trickery was used to force Marshall Lin Piao to board the Trident aircraft for that fateful journey on the night of 12 September 1971. Deception of the vilest kind was employed, worthy of any of the murderous intrigues perpetrated in the secret precincts of the imperial courts of China in ancient times. They used his daughter Tou-tou to bait the trap and didn’t hesitate to cause her physical suffering so as to add realism to their plot. It was typical of their character that afterwards in their faked documents they told the people of China and the world that it was she who had reported her father to the authorities and so ensured the failure of his ‘plot’ to murder Chairman Mao and seize power.

  But it was almost as if by then Marshall Lin was anticipating treachery and did not seek to avoid its snare. He seemed in the end to welcome it passively as though he desired nothing more than the cold embrace of death. Ever since the Lushan meeting he had remained sunk in a deep and unprecedented melancholia, listless and apathetic, he became a complete recluse in his study, hiding more than ever behind his shaming ailment, and building an impassable battier between himself and the outside world.

  The inevitable process of clothing, vicious and petty personal feuds in high-sounding political and philosophical arguments, so little understood by the outside world, began immediately after we came down from Lushan. On the day after his thunderous attack, Chairman Mao resorted to his classic and well-tried tactic of self-effacement. He circulated one of his imperial-style edicts to all who had attended the meeting, professing a humility which he knew would be totally disregarded.

  ‘Those opinions of mine were given only as personal views,’ he said, in a note reproduced in the calligraphy of his own hand— a device which he also knew would help imbue the words with a mystical quality. ‘They were only casual remarks. Don’t draw any hasty conclusions. Let the Central Committee do it gradually.’ The insidious political manoeuvres and the indirect public pillorying in the party press that this was designed to spark off unfolded relentlessly under the Chairman’s famous but grossly hypocritical exhortation: ‘Learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones, and cure the sickness to save the patient.’ But Marshall Lin, true to his vow by the window in Lushan, made no effort whatsoever to engage his enemies.

  His son Lin Li-kuo and his wife Yeh Chun worked frantically with his supporters and drew up plan after plan for him to defend himself: But he kept his mind resolutely closed to them. He scarcely read the documents they placed before him. He spoke little, retreated deep into his inner self and never for one moment countenanced any of the suggestions. Later, after his death, snatches of these disregarded proposals were falsified and enlarged on, then embodied in wholly fabricated documents circulated throughout China as proof of Marshall Lin’s ‘guilt’ in planning a coup d’état.

  I realised his will had finally broken when he made no attempt to resist the vital reorganisation in January of the Peking Military Region that placed less loyal commanders in key positions in the capital around him. He seemed unperturbed and carried out all his routine duties perfunctorily in the seclusion of his study as though he had ceased to live in the real world beyond its walls,

  On many occasions in the early months I entered his room to find him fumbling on his desk-top with his divining stalks. But after a while I ceased to ask what the hexagrams foretold. Always the omens were ill. He had succumbed completely, and I’m sure the emanations of despair from his mind and body ensured in turn that no matter how often he consulted the River Map and laid out the stalks they would only ever produce forebodings of calamity.

  Only once did he seem to rouse himself from this moribund mental torpor—after the American Kissinger had come secretly to Peking from Pakistan in mid-summer. It was as though sudden fear, for the very survival of the China he had fought to build, revived him. He was deeply apprehensive that the sudden and public offering of China’s hand in friendship to the greatest enemy of the Soviet Union would increase the danger of a sudden attack by Soviet forces across our northern- borders. His conviction was profound and the fear galvanised him back to life.

  For two days he worked fra
ntically and without pause, compiling a detailed draft of his views. The document he produced was a forceful and brilliantly argued exposition of both our nuclear and conventional strengths—or rather weaknesses— compared with the Russians. He rushed copies to the Chairman and Premier Chou En-lai and I was ready to rejoice that this outside threat of danger had brought the Marshall Lin I loved back to life from the brink of the grave.

  But many years had passed since our leadership had debated their opinions openly and honestly without fear of recrimination. The poison from a once-mighty mind turned sick had spread its suspicions and jealousies too deep in the Chung Nan Hai. The memorandum was seized by the plotters, distorted and added as fuel to the flames they were already stoking like demons to incinerate Marshall Lin. Within two days he had sunk back deeper than ever before into his terrible apathy.

  Even the horrifying reports that were secured by our own military intelligence agents in early September failed to arouse him. They discovered that the left-wing plotters had maliciously passed false ‘proof’ to the American Central Intelligence Agency via Israeli agents in Moscow that Marshall Lin was planning to murder Chairman Mao. The American spies, although they could not know whether the information was true or false, unscrupulously relayed the information back to Chairman Mao as if it were true. Their aim was to win his gratitude and so persuade Chairman Mao to welcome their head of state, Nixon, with open arms, because lie needed the accolade of a successful visit to China to increase his prestige and ensure victory in the coming presidential election.

  This was the plotters’ master stroke! They knew that no matter how much evidence was produced internally about the suspected treachery of his opponents, nothing would explode with more devastating impact in the persecution-crazed brain of Chairman Mao than a report from the enemy’s espionage apparatus of an internal Chinese plot to kill him.