As the ambassador left the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square was bathed in pale sunlight, the soft and dirty haze over the city pierced here and there by high-rises, but in the main Beijing remained a flat city on the North China Plain, its pace still remarkably unhurried compared to Western cities. The endless rivers of bicycles, “Flying Pigeons” jostling with less expensive models for position, never ceased to entertain the ambassador as it was here that the ingenuity of the Chinese was so everywhere apparent, their ability to use bicycles to haul everything from sofas to enormously high stacks of crated chickens, and even twenty-foot-long heavy steel rods for concrete reinforcing — as impressive an example as you could find of a people anywhere in the world coping with day-to-day problems that were all but inconceivable in the West.
As the Cadillac drew up outside the Great Hall, the ambassador saw construction workers walking by with woven cane safety helmets. They were not a people to go to war with.
When the chauffeur opened the back door of the black Cadillac that to passersby looked remarkably like any other limousine except for the thickness of the bullet-proof windows, what they could not see was the heavy armor plate between door panels, beneath the chassis, and sandwiched in along the roof interior. With all the added weight it meant that the car could get only ten miles to the gallon, but the ambassador didn’t give a damn about the cost, for he knew that if push came to shove, the car he was in might be the only thing capable of getting him to Beijing Airport in a hurry and alive.
As usual, scores of Chinese stopped what they were doing and stared at the “Big Nose.” Beyond the stone flag and heroically cast soldiers that celebrated the revolution, the lines passing through Mao’s mausoleum were ushered through with an efficiency one normally didn’t see in China. It was just as well, for the vast crowds would have led to chaos if they had been left on their own to visit the mausoleum and to see Mao under glass. The ambassador sometimes wondered whether Mao’s head, the only part of him visible, was a wax fake. Whatever, he was still venerated by most of the Chinese despite the killing and madness of what was euphemistically called the “Cultural Revolution,” when the Red Guards had run amuck, putting people to death arbitrarily, sending intellectuals to work as peasants, and putting the country twenty years further behind the West. Someone at the embassy had worked it out that with China’s population of over a billion and the line outside the mausoleum the usual four abreast, the line would never end. Their sheer numbers and the fact they had the A-bomb made them a formidable force, and the American ambassador recalled the chilling words of General Lin Biao so many years ago when MacArthur had threatened to cross the North Korean border with China and drop nuclear bombs on the staging areas in Manchuria. Upon hearing this, Lin Biao shrugged. “So we lose a million or two.”
Next into the lounge chair was the Russian ambassador, Leonid Guzenko, conveying cordial greetings from Moscow and reassuring the chairman that Premier Suzlov wished Beijing to know that the dispatch of the Soviet Far Eastern Fleet from Vladivostok had been effected solely in order to send a “clear” message to Washington that interference in Northeast Asia would not be tolerated.
The Chinese premier spat again and said that “no foreign navy” was welcome off the Chinese mainland. Which, the Russian ambassador replied, was precisely why Admiral Golchin had been given explicit orders to keep not only outside China’s twelve-mile territorial sea zone but beyond the two-hundred-mile extended economic zone as well.
The chairman spoke quickly to his interpreter and then began clearing his throat again.
“The chairman says that it is his understanding that Soviet aircraft are capable of flying more than two hundred miles from the Minsk.”
Guzenko fell silent for a moment. To answer yes might be interpreted as lending credence to the traditional Chinese mistrust of the Soviet Union. To answer no, however, would be absurd, for quite clearly the Chinese knew Soviet aircraft had a strike range well beyond two hundred miles. He remained silent.
The premier spat, then turned rather stiffly, the ambassador noticed, to his left to take the lid off his teacup, disturbing the antimacassar. The Russian followed suit; it was a pleasant, mellow-tasting Long Jing green tea from the hills of Hangzhou. A Chinese aide entered and spoke softly to the interpreter. The premier listened while offering the ambassador more tea. The Russian accepted. He had been in China for five years, and it was as if he had just arrived. You were never sure how to read the signs, but you always knew that beneath the surface current there was a subcurrent and beneath that a contrary current and beneath that… They thought themselves better than everyone else.
The premier was staring ahead, smoking, asking about the response East Germany had received, as Moscow’s proxy, to the call for an international Communist volunteer force to aid China’s “friend and ally,” the Democratic Republic of North Korea.
“It has been excellent, Comrade Chairman,” Guzenko replied truthfully. “In fact, we had to discourage the Cubans.” He smiled. “They wanted to send three regiments.” The premier nodded, seemingly approving both sides of the argument. “Your restraint,” he said wheezily, “is proper.” It was said in the tone of a headmaster addressing one of his junior staff. “There is no point in pulling the tiger by the tail.”
The Russian seemed pleased and he added jokingly, “Even if it is a paper tiger, Premier.” The chairman showed no emotion as he spoke, but his interpreter nodded sharply.
“Many mistakes,” began the interpreter, “have been made. The tiger has claws. And in the desert.”
The Russian turned to his own interpreter now, not knowing what to make of it. The Russian interpreter was also unsure of the chairman’s phrasing but hazarded a guess. “I think, Mr. Ambassador, the chairman is referring to our intervention in Afghanistan — the rebels backed by the Americans.”
The ambassador was sitting forward on the lounge chair looking distinctly uncomfortable, as if he had gas. “The chairman is quite correct. I think we have all learned our lesson about ‘adventurism.’ “
The Chinese interpreter wasn’t sure but informed the chairman this might be a reference to China’s Vietnamese war about the same time as the Russians were in Afghanistan.
“We are concerned,” the interpreter abruptly told Guzenko, “about the Kuomintang.”
“I am sure they will behave themselves,” said the Russian in the spirit of family members talking hopefully about a deviant relative.
“And if they do not?”
“Moscow’s position on this has long been clear,” answered the ambassador. “If the Taiwanese stick their nose in where it is not wanted, we would insist that they withdraw immediately.”
“What would you insist with, Comrade?”
Guzenko was surprised at the sudden shift. Why were they talking about a policy mutually agreed upon long ago by the two Communist giants? Taiwan was an “outlaw,” as much a nuisance to Washington as any wayward republic in the USSR, as Tibet was to the Chinese People’s Republic. There was only one way to deal with them.
“We would insist by force of arms,” said the Russian ambassador. It was the one thing the Russian could state unequivocally without any clearance from Moscow.
The chairman rose. “Then we can rely on you?”
“Certainly.”
“I wish to release this pledge of support publicly,” said the chairman.