It sailed through the air as if it didn’t know how to stop. Lydia’s eyes didn’t leave it, her hopes all tied up inside the knotted scarf. It flew up and over the rocks until it finally hung in the air and curved gracefully down to earth. It didn’t even bounce, just landed flat right in the middle of an expanse of gleaming white snow. Lydia could have kissed the soldier.
‘Spasibo,’ she offered instead. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’
She gave him a grateful smile. He blushed and sat down. Cheers rose from a few of his comrades and one crowed like a cockerel. The man in the flat cap scowled but had enough sense to say no more, while the suit stood up and yanked the window shut, ignoring the boisterous laughter with a degree of dignity.
It was done.
Lydia’s heart was beating fast. As the wheels turned and the prisoners were left far behind in the freezing wind, she let her thoughts race over the words crouched inside the scarlet bundles: I am the daughter of Jens Friis. If he is here, tell him I’ve come. I need a sign.
Inside each one lay five shiny silver coins.
15
Chang An Lo moved through the darkness like the breath of a shadow. Unseen, unheard. The air was moist in his lungs, while the call of frogs vibrated the night the way a concubine’s fingers vibrate the strings of a guqin.
The village of Zhumatong was alive with light and noise, spilling from the windows, out through the doors and into the streets. The Red Army had descended like flies. Soldiers lurched from one house to another, trying to remember where their billets were, a bottle in one hand, a girl on the other. The village councillors bowed politely, hands stiff together in front of them, but steered the crumpled uniforms into the drinking house and the gambling room, where they could be fleeced of the few yuan in their pockets.
Chang remained patiently under the black overhang of a rear wall and listened to the soldiers leaving a building decorated with delicate fretwork, lanterns swaying from the eaves. Their voices were thick with maotai and complained loudly at the speed with which they were back on the street without the mahjong tiles falling even once their way. One soldier with hair cropped brutally short and long spindly legs detached himself from a group and picked his way into a side street, where he opened his trousers and urinated against a wall with a contented sigh.
Chang allowed him to finish before he approached silently from behind and slipped an arm round his throat, a hand placed firmly over his mouth. The soldier grew rigid and tried to turn.
‘Quiet, Hu Biao, or you are in danger of snapping your worthless neck.’ Chang spoke the words softly in the young man’s ear, letting them sneak out under the night’s breeze. He released his grip.
The soldier spun round. ‘Chang An Lo, you scared the shit out of me.’
Chang tipped his head in a light-hearted bow. ‘Stop bellowing like a stuck pig, Biao. That’s why I put a hand over that ever-open mouth of yours, to silence it.’
Hu Biao thumped the side of his own head with his knuckles. ‘My apologies, brother of my heart.’ He leaned close, fumes of something more than just alcohol rising from his angular frame, and lowered his voice to a murmur. ‘What in the name of the gods are you doing here in this piss-hole village?’
‘Searching for you.’
‘Why me?’
‘I was told your unit was billeted here. I heard that the fighting was fierce in the valley, so I came to see if your miserable ears were still attached to your hide.’
Their enemies counted the dead by slicing off ears and threading them on to a wire.
‘They’re both still mine,’ Biao laughed and swung his head to display them, leaning back against the wall.
But Chang could hear the tension in it, the nerves that had to be deadened with a night of maotai and a whiff of the black paste before the next march into battle.
‘So you’ve done well, my friend.’
‘What are you doing all the way down here, Chang? I thought you were somewhere up north.’
‘I was, but I’ve been summoned to Guitan.’ Even in the shadows his sharp eyes took in the hollow cheeks and scarecrow limbs of Hu Biao, and he feared for Yi-ling’s son. ‘My escort troop sleeps even now the sleep of drunken monkeys, ten li away from here. Tomorrow I will arrive at Guitan to do Mao’s bidding.’
Biao pushed himself off the wall, suddenly sober, and gave a deep respectful bow. ‘I am honoured that one so distinguished chooses to spend time with an unworthy army dog like myself.’
Voices in the main street shouted out Biao’s name, searching for him. Chang took hold of his shoulder and led him further into the shadows, drawing away from the dancing lanterns.
‘Biao,’ he said urgently, ‘my time is short. I have to return to my escort before they wake.’
Biao nodded. ‘I’m listening.’
‘I’ve come to ask you to be my aide.’ His eyes scanned his friend for a reaction and he was satisfied by what he saw. A quick flicker of excitement. ‘Good. I shall order the escort to request your presence in the morning.’
Their eyes met and something in Biao’s changed. His exhausted gaze didn’t move from Chang’s face. ‘This is for Si-qi, isn’t it? Not for me. Did she ask you to do this?’
‘No. This has nothing to do with your sister.’ He smiled and treated Biao to another light-hearted bow. ‘Believe me, times are hard. I need a good man I can rely on at my back. You are that man.’
‘But it’s fortunate for me that I have a beautiful sister. She could steal any man’s soul, couldn’t she?’
‘As easily as a butterfly steals nectar from a blossom.’
Biao clapped Chang on the back and released a pungent belch. ‘She’ll love you for ever after this. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
Chang An Lo stepped back into deeper shadow and when Biao spoke again, he was gone.
Chang An Lo had not anticipated this. This decadence. Despite all the whispers that flitted through the sultry air, more numerous than bats’ wings on a summer’s evening, this was worse than he expected. His spirits sank as he contemplated the knowledge that the leader of China’s Communist movement was a man of such total self-indulgence.
Mao Tse Tung sprawled in a giant four-poster bed. His large round head, a receding hairline exaggerating its height, rested back on a tumble of pillows as if the thoughts inside were too weighty for his short, stubby neck. Elaborate silk canopies hung from above in vivid turquoise and magenta folds, while scarlet sheets flowed around him in the colour of the Communist flag, chosen to give the impression that this great leader had spilled his blood for the cause. But Chang knew differently. When Mao travelled with his armies he enjoyed a level of comfort and safety his soldiers could only dream about.
Mao lay on the sheets and conducted this meeting with his observant eyes narrowed, watching the individuals he had summoned to attend him in his bedroom. The immense bed was raised up on a double step so that his head remained higher than those of the nervous men in the seven chairs that encircled him. The chairs were elegant but deliberately hard, and were placed at least six feet from the silk coverlets so that the occupants had to strain to hear when Mao chose to lower his voice.
The atmosphere was tense. Chang was aware that the official next to him had a trickle of sweat running down his temple and he had no doubt that Mao’s quick eyes had spotted it too. Mao had seized leadership of the army from men like General Zhu, a sullen figure who sat silent in the room, by being both intelligent and bold. Men followed him because, despite being just a schoolteacher and adopting a peasant’s plain dress, he was astute at manipulating people and situations. And, above all, he knew how to win. Chang had to remind himself not to be fooled by the soft moon face and the rough rural dialect. This man was nobody’s fool. He had no problem with inflicting terror on his own people. ‘Power,’ he had stated, ‘comes out of the barrel of a gun.’ Chang even breathed carefully so as not to create a ripple in the flow of the great man’s thoughts.