Jake Maroc - Shan Part 45

Her fingers stole along the inside of his wrist until they wrapped themselves around his forearm. "But no more." Her voice was only a whisper. "No more." "What?"

Her face was very close to his. He could smell the sweet scent of her, like jasmine and honey. "You have da-hei now. We have da-hei now. The great dark."

"What are you saying, that it is possible to see the future there?" "Perhaps, yes," she said, softly echoing him. He gave a little laugh. "Then surely da-hei has foretold that you must bring me your husband's new silver cigarette case." "Yes," she said seriously, "it has." "That is preposterous, Senlin."

Suddenly her grip upon him tightened. "Listen to me." Her low voice was urgent. "I ask you not to do this. I plead with you not to ask me."

"I don't see why. You can always refuse." "I cannot."

He contrived to laugh again. "You can resist me nothing?" But it had a hollow ring to it.

"Only partly," she said. She pressed herself against him so that he could feel the triphammer beating of her heart. Instinctively, he put his arms around her as if to protect her. From what? "You seek the truth," she said in his ear. "I must bring it to you." "And if you do?"

"It would be betterfar, far betterif you would leave the truth unearthed this time."

"Why? What do you know about that case?" "Nothing," she cried suddenly, and clung to him. "I see." "What?" he said. "What do you see?"

She was weeping openly now, her tiny white teeth biting into the flesh of his shoulder.

"Senlin," he said, "what is it you see?"

She gave a great shudder and said, "The end."

But, true to her word, she obeyed him. And once again betrayed Huaishan Han. She brought Zilin the cigarette case.

"There is little time," she said, as she hurried up to where he was waiting within the bower of bamboo. "Huaishan Han has just returned from Buddha only knows where. He sleeps now before dinner. But soon he will awake." By her tone as well as her words she made Zilin feel that he was enmeshed in a children's fairy tale. He could remember such an American story he had read in English cla.s.s at the university in Shanghai. "Jack and the Beanstalk." Hadn't there been a character in the tale like Huaishan Han? The ogre.

Zilin took the case from her, looked at it carefully. Its chased silver filigree caught the watery light of the waning day. It was familiar, he was certain. But why?

He turned it over, saw the silversmith's frankings, saw that it was made in the United States. Ripple of shock, like ice water in his face. He had suspected it of being English.

Turned it back right side up and opened it. A tiny worked-silver spring lever kept Huaishan Han's vile black Russian cigarettes in place. Something on the inside of the lid caught Zilin's eye and he angled the case away from him to pick up what light was left in the umber sky.

Saw initials carved into the silver in masculine serifed English letters: R.M.D.

Andperhaps it was da-heiknew it all: why Huaishan Han had lied to him from the first about his mission, why he had refused to answer Zilin's question about where he had gotten the cigarette case. Most terrifying of all, he knew who Huaishan Han had brought home, trussed like a pig to the slaughter, the mastermind behind the plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Mao.

Zilin felt the pain in his heart and slowly, slowly, brought his forehead down until it touched the shining, chased top of the cigarette case of Western manufacture.

In the streets of Peking, Shanghai, the communities of Canton and Hunan, in the endless paddy fields, bamboo forests, along the banks of the twisting Yangtsethroughout all of Chinathe tramp of uniformed, booted feet could be heard.

The nights became a time for listening. For the sc.r.a.pe of the metaled heel on hallway boards, the sharp rap on the front door, the shoutedcommands. Confusion and the trickle of fear as one's neighbors were pulled from their beds and without explanation were spirited away into the heavy mist, the rumble of the engines fading slowly, held in the air by the fog.

Without its inhabitants ever having felt the transition, China had become a land of repression in which a reign of terror swept across its length and breadth in an all-encompa.s.sing net.

In every city, Huaishan Han had devised the creation of urban residence committees, consisting of groups of perhaps one hundred households. The same was true in the countryside, where each hsiang or agrarian administrative committee oversaw the daily control of paddies and farms.

These units, Huaishan Han argued, were essential for controlling the vast population. Further, they were easily infiltrated by members of the State Security Forces apparatus. Thus, in every level of Chinese society dwelled spies for the Ministry of Public Security. And, thus the tramp of the booted foot at night, the sharp orders, the unexplained disappearances.

"We have only to look at the French Revolution," Mao said to Zilin. "Or, if your prefer, a more Eastern reference, the Marxist Revolution in Russia, to find your historical antecedents.

"We are in a period of infancy. We have torn down the old, the corrupt, the degenerated. In its place we are building a new country from the roots up. Our first order is to build the power of the state machine because it is the engine without which China will lie dormant.

"The traditional enemies of the forces of restoration are historically civil war from within and foreign invasion from without. It is the Americans we have to fear the most, Shi tong zhi. It is the Americans who we oppose in Korea, the Americans who continue to pour money and war materiel into Nationalist coffers, the Americans who have made a protectorate of Taiwan.

"They do all this, Shi tong zhi, because they fear me. And because they know that their protectionism binds the Nationalists to them. Without American aid, the Nationalists are nothing. Yet they fail to see that, either way, they are nothing. For now, with the American aid, they are merely capitalist puppets. They do the American president's bidding in every way or they are threatened with a cessation of aid."

Mao paced the small room like a caged tiger. "The counterrevolutionary foment has already begun, fueled by the Nationalists andthe Americans. If the Americans can invade Korea, the next step could very well be China. This we must ensure never happens."

"And repression is the only way?" Zilin asked.

"Read your history, Shi tong zhi," Mao said shortly. "It is the only sure way." He grunted. "No one takes kindly to reeducation. People often do not know what is best for them. That is for leaders to decide."

"It is for leaders to impose."

"Yes, indeed," Mao agreed, apparently oblivious to the sarcasm in his adviser's voice.

Zilin called for tea to be brought in and, when it had been served, sipped at it meditatively. "What is being done with the prisoner Huaishan Han brought back from Hong Kong?"

"What?" For a moment, Mao appeared confused. To cover, he made an elaborate show of pouring himself tea, staring into the swirl of tiny leaves at the cup's bottom. "Uh, oh. Yes. I forgot for a moment that you and Huaishan Han were so close. Yes, well." He downed some tea, frowned as if he did not care for the taste. Nevertheless he poured himself some more. "Nothing has been officially decided as yet. I am considering how besta to use the spy. We must make an example of him, of course."

What was most odd, Zilin thought, was not so much Mao's uncharacteristic beating around the bush, but that his eyes had not lifted to meet Zilin's once since the topic had begun. Mao, who had a most direct manner about him, who used his piercing gaze as a weapon to disarm those who sought to oppose him even in the most incidental of matters.

"Why are you so interested in this man?" Mao asked.

"I want to interview him."

"I don't think that would be wise," Mao said. Something in his cup had his undivided attention. "He is the property of the State Security Forces. This is not your province."

"It would be if you gave the order."

"That would not make Lo Jin-ch'ing happy. It would, further, come under review by K'ang Sheng." Mao was speaking of the Chinese Communist Party's chief of secret police. "How would I explain such a thing to them?"

"Since when did these people wield such power?" Zilin felt anger rising within him. "I am your personal adviser. I have always gone where I wanted, when I wanted."

"Times have changed, my friend," Mao said. "Then I, too, am under scrutiny."

Mao shrugged, acceding the point.

Zilin was appalled. Times have changed, my friend. How had they changed so far, so fast without him being aware? Then, with a great sadness, he understood that none of these changes had happened without his being aware of them. They had been incremental, yes, but he had been there at their inception. He could have opened his mouth to protest; could even have insisted that there was another way besides the inst.i.tution of the vast network of informers, harsh-minded policemen who ventured out at night like spirit demons to pull in unsuspecting citizens because they were too well educated or had the wrong family name or perhaps spent one solitary hour beyond the prying eyes of the Ministry of Public Security.

Zilin was all too familiar with Beria and the NKVD. He abhorred the Russian's devotion to iron discipline and repression, an apparatus that went beyond interfering with one's choice of religion, way of life to the very thoughts one had locked inside oneself.

He was to blame for this fully as much as Mao or Lo or Huaishan Han. So much suffering for a people who had suffered for so many years, first at the hands of its own emperors, then its secret societies, and lastly, the long invasion by the foreign devil. By now one would think that the people of China were well used to being exploited. Perhaps it was their joss.

No! No! How could he think such a thing. But the future was bleak, indeed. He felt as if he were on a vast mountainside, struggling up its face in the cold and the dark. It seemed that he no longer could remember what lay for him upon its snow-rimmed summit.

"I must interview the prisoner," he said.

"Why are you insistent on wanting something that I cannot grant?" Mao wanted to know. He looked wounded.

"I ask out of our long-standing friendship," Zilin said. "I do not ask that you remember what I have sacrificed for China or, even, how I have helped you over the years. This is not a matter of politics or of power. I stand before you only as your friend. In this light I beseech you to allow me one hour with the prisoner."

Mao turned away and, as he went across the room, Zilin noticed for the first time how bowed his shoulders had become. Mao stood looking out at Tienanmen Square, where the machines of war sat idling, prepared for the dreaded counterrevolution that rode above all their heads like a barbarian's sword.

"Soon," Mao said, "it will rain." He watched the fat black clouds scrolling across the low sky, and closed the window a little even throughthe heat. "Tonight," he said, "the sky will open." And then, without a change in tone, "You'll have half that time."

"They picked me up in the mountains," Ross Davies said, "a tiny encampment on a plateau a mile-and-a-half up in the Shan States." The Shan States. Burma, Not Hong Kong, as Huaishan Han had said.

"I had been there six months or more. It was the poppy fields that made us think of it."

"Us?"

Davies's cracked lips split in a smile. "You don't expect me to tell you that, do you, old friend?"

"Why not?" Zilin said. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

They both laughed at that, remembering the lengths all of them Davies, Huaishan Han and Zilinhad gone to ensure Shi's "death" would be convincing to Chiang and his lieutenants.

Inwardly, Zilin was appalled. When the pa.s.s that Mao had written out for him had let him into the State Security Forces prison, he had been expecting to find his old friendR.M.D.: Ross Marion Davies with his long shock of curly reddish-gold hair, bright blue eyes, boyish face, What he confronted was, instead, a thin, lanky, leather-faced man with eyes so bloodshot and swollen Zilin could see only the barest sliver of washed-out blue in their midst. Gone entirely was the open boyish grin, and the nose that had been patrician straight was chopped and bruised, so swollen it covered fully a quarter of his face.

"I was in the Shan States because of the poppy fields." When he spoke, Zilin could see how many teeth he was missing. "The thought was to infiltrate and to gain control."

"Of the refining."

""V "

Yes.

"What would that bring you?"

"Money, for one thing," Davies said. "Great gobs of money," He sat on a rude wooden stool that was bolted to the floor. He gripped the bars that rose between them with fingers swollen by disease or torture, it was impossible to say which. "For another, we felt that eventually it would give us control of the entire area as well as a way to infiltrate further afield."

"To a.s.sa.s.sinate Mao."

"What?"

Zilin watched Davies's face very carefully. Without being fully conscious of what he was doing, he dissolved a portion of himself intoda-hei. In that night-black s.p.a.ce, he found that he could distinguish truth from the lies. There were "colors" attached to both, separate and distinct colors that he could see.

"That is what I have been told. By Huaishan Han. That you were preparing a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Mao."

"That's not true."

Davies was telling the truth. Zilin nodded, took out a pack of cigarettes, pa.s.sed them through. He lit one for his friend, watched as his face relaxed as he puffed.

"Christ, I haven't had a decent one of these since Hector was a pup."

"I am sorry they're not the brand you are used to."

Davies waved away the apology. The smoke drifted through his scabbed lips, seeping through the bars, seeming to dissolve them in undifferentiated grayness.

"I was there a long time," Davies went on as if they had not gotten off the topic. "A lifetime." He exhaled slowly, luxuriating in the tobacco. "Got to know the local honchos real well. Well enough to know that we'd never be able to take control."

"The Shan hate the Americans, the Russians as well."

Davies looked at Zilin oddly. "Let's cut the c.r.a.p, okay?" he said suddenly. He dropped the b.u.t.t, ground it out under his h.o.r.n.y heel. He had to slip off the paper slippers he had been issued to do it. "We both know why it's impossible for the Americansor anyone else for that matterto get a toehold up there in the mountains."

"Tell me," Zilin said.

"Don't insult my intelligence," Davies said disgustedly. "I thought that you, at least, I could trust."

"Then humor me." They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. "Please."

"Because, old friend, you control it all: growing, harvesting, refining, distribution."

"Me?" Zilin was startled, and showed it despite himself.

"You, Mao, Huaishan Han. You G.o.dd.a.m.ned Chinese."

"That is idiotic!" Zilin said, stunned. "I don't believe you." But of course he did. He had to. In da-hei he saw the color of truth. Then, concern wrinkling his face, "I know nothing about this."

Davies watched his face as before Zilin had studied his. "Yeah, well." He turned, put the pack of cigarettes carefully away beneath the corner of his bare straw mattress. "You mean you don't know which one is behind it? It's not Mao?"

"I do not know," Zilin said. But he was hearing Mao telling him, We must make an example of him, of course. That would be Huaishan Han talking. His power was growing daily with that of Lo Jui-ch'ing and K'ang Sheng. Was this the source of their power? Or was it Mao's? Buddha! "Tell me," he said now, "were you able to find out the name of the man who runs the poppy fields in the Shan States?"

"He calls himself the Naga, you know, the Burmese mythological serpent. His organization is known as the diqui. The rest, I'm afraid, you'll have to divine for yourself." He gave a little rueful smile and a hint of his former self shone through the blackened skin of his recenttravail.

Zilin heard a rustling behind him. The guards were coming, his time was up. He began to rise and Davies reached out a hand. There was some fear in the American's eyes as if he felt that with Shi beside him nothing untoward could befall him.

"What will become of me?" he asked.

"I do not know, my friend," Zilin replied. But he did know. We must make an example of him, of course.

"Will I see you again?"

Zilin looked down at Davies, who was still seated on the wooden stool. He seemed not to have strength left to get up and Zilin thought, What are they doing to him here? He remembered what the Communists had done to Senlin and wondered whether these people, those under Huaishan Han's command, were any different.

"Tell me," he said, "were you with the American Secret Service years ago, when we first met?"

Davies put his head against the bars and Zilin could see the patches of bald, discolored scalp, as if in these places his thick, richly colored hair had been burned away. "Does it matter?"

Zilin shook his head. "No," he said truthfully. "Not at all."

"He knows!"

She was like a frightened doe, trembling in fear.

"It is important that you be clear about this. Does your husband know or does he suspect?"