‘Chou En-lai informs me,’ Mao said with a guttural emphasis on the word me, ‘that our bearded neighbours, the Russians, are playing both hands still, one against the other. That is foolish of them.’
‘Yes, as our young comrade across the room discovered,’ said a sharp-faced Party official whom Chang did not recognise. But with Mao, people fell in and out of favour with a speed that set a man’s head spinning.
Mao had listened with close attention to Chang’s account of the train raid and the acquisition of the Russian Tokarev rifles. He’d clearly relished the details of the discovery of papers that revealed the secret Russian orders to Chiang Kai-shek. In exchange for the weaponry and the gold, the Chinese Nationalist leader was supposed to lay siege to a list of towns and strong-holds, and even give his whole-hearted support to Russia’s invasion of Manchuria.
‘Tell me, young comrade,’ Mao asked now, ‘how you knew the contents of that train were destined for the hairless hyena, Chiang Kai-shek?’
‘From my intelligence sources.’
‘And what sources are these?’
Chang drew a slow breath. ‘My humble apologies, but it’s not possible for me to reveal them, Honoured Leader.’ He looked directly into Mao’s dark gaze. It was like looking into the eyes of a snow leopard he had once stumbled across up in the mountains – insatiably greedy, unwilling to let any prey pass without leaving claw marks on its back. ‘There are too many loose tongues in a place like this.’ Chang gestured round the room. ‘Not these honourable men, but the ears that listen outside and the unseen eyes that are fixed to spyholes. The invisible traitors who take Chiang Kai-shek’s silver.’
Mao’s expression hardened and he nodded, satisfied. ‘You are wiser than your years, comrade. For you are right. It is the same wherever I go, always surrounded by those I cannot trust.’
He turned away, fingering the huge pile of books that lay spread out on one side of the bed as if he had dismissed further discussion, but Chang felt the vibrations soft as drumbeats in the room. He knew it wasn’t over.
‘When we catch them,’ Mao said quietly, so quietly two of the older men had to lean forward to hear, ‘we deal with these traitors. Is that not so, Han-tu?’
Han-tu smiled as if his lips had been oiled. He wore a military uniform and nodded his head sharply in salute. He didn’t speak.
‘Tell him, Han-tu. Tell our fresh-faced comrade what we do, so that he can tell others.’
‘The punishment is severe: death by a thousand cuts.’
‘Tell him more.’
Han-tu didn’t look at Chang, just at the Buddha figure in the bed. He spoke as though describing how to take apart a piece of machinery. ‘The traitor is stripped naked. His wrists and ankles are tethered to stakes, so that he is upright but immobile. He cannot fall to the ground or turn in any direction.’
‘And then?’ Mao urged.
‘A knife is wielded by an expert butcher. One thousand cuts into his flesh. It is a slow and painful death. By the time the treacherous snake loses consciousness he will have told all he knows, who he works for, who he has betrayed and what secrets he is hiding.’
Still Mao wasn’t satisfied. ‘Tell him of the warning of the lizard skin.’
‘Ah, Comrade Commander, the lizard skin is a specialist art.’ Han-tu puffed out his chest like a pigeon. ‘Few can perform it well.’
A sad-faced elderly man was seated on the opposite side of the room. He had a throaty smoker’s cough and his flesh bore the telltale yellow tinge of opium, but his fierce eyes were glaring at Chang, his papery skin creased in lines of disapproval. Chang had been ushered into this inner sanctum an hour after the meeting had started and he knew it would drone on long after he left. He had not been told the names of the other men but felt the hostility in many of the looks cast in his direction, sharp as wasp stings on his face. He was young. He had Mao’s ear. He was a threat.
Mao smoothed a hand over his large square forehead, as though feeling the shape of the thoughts inside his skull. The hands of a girl, Chang noted, soft and milk-fed.
‘How is it performed, this lizard skin?’ Mao demanded of Han-tu.
As if he didn’t know.
‘The blade is sharpened to the width of a hair,’ Han-tu explained in the same flat voice, ‘and sliced under the skin on face and body in a thousand shallow, round cuts, so that when it heals it has the appearance of a reptile’s scales. It is a sign to others. A blood warning that…’
Mao licked his lips, his tongue quicker than a snake’s. Chang blocked Han-tu’s words from his ears and breathed out slowly to flush the images from his mind. Addicted. That was the rumour. It was whispered in dark corners of Communist hideouts and in the sultry air of interrogation huts. Mao was addicted to violence. Even between his sheets with the young maidens who were lined up for his bed at night when his fragrant wife, Gui-yuan, was not at his side. None of his wives had yet lasted long, despite producing a clutch of sons for him.
What kind of ruler would this man make when he finally held the whole of China in his grip? Because Chang had no doubt that the Communists would oust the Nationalists and send Chiang Kai-shek fleeing like a whipped cur into the sea, tail between his legs. Not this year, maybe not even next year. But eventually it would happen. Chang believed it passionately with his heart and soul, but would Mao bring to China the justice and equality it craved? The peasants in the fields yearned for freedom from the yoke of feudal landlords, and this was what the Communists promised them.
But would Mao Tse Tung deliver it? He was an intelligent man, well-read, sharp-eyed, a bed full of books beside him, but…
‘Chang An Lo, are you no longer with us?’
Chang bowed his head low and cursed his foolishness. ‘Forgive my distraction, Honoured Leader. I am overawed in the presence of such company.’
Mao snorted and Chang knew he must tread with infinite care.
‘But my mind is still chasing in and out of the Russian maze, seeking the twisting path of their reasoning.’
‘And what conclusion did you reach, young comrade?’
‘That either the Russians are trying to destroy China by prolonging the civil war, providing finance to both sides so that the Soviet army will be free to invade not only Manchuria but also other northern provinces of our country. While we busy ourselves with snapping at each other’s tails here in the south.’
‘Or?’
‘Or there is a traitor at the heart of the Politburo in Moscow.’
A hiss and an intake of breath trickled round the room. Han-tu thumped the palm of his hand on his knee with a loud slap. ‘Our last delegation to Moscow reported that it found Stalin eager to commit greater resources to our struggle against the Nationalist despot. I cannot believe that they would betray us to-’
Mao sat up abruptly. Han-tu fell silent.
‘The Russian bear has always been a dangerous and unreliable ally.’ Mao’s moon face was stern. ‘I remind you all that at one time it had such control over our Chinese Communist Party that it tried to force us to merge with Chiang Kai-shek’s treacherous Nationalists. Stalin believed we were too weak to seize control of China but…’ a cold smile tilted his lips and he smoothed the red sheet in front of him with his small hands, ‘the Vozhd of Soviet Russia was wrong.’