Chinese Puzzle

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the long march, there had been nothing like it. In the days of hiding in the caves of Yenan there had been nothing like it. And there was no answer in the thoughts of Mao tse Tung. Even in the spirit of Mao, there was no answer.

General Liu forced himself to accept with politeness the news from the messenger. In the decadent monarchist regimes of the past, the evil of the news would have fallen on the head of its bearer. But this was a new age, and General Liu simply said: "You may go and thank you, comrade."

There had been nothing like it before. He watched the messenger salute and depart, shutting the door behind him, leaving General Liu in the windowless room which smelled of oil on metal and had but one chair and a bed, and very poor ventilation.

Other generals might live in splendor, but a people's general could never aggrandize himself. Other generals might live in palace houses like warlords, but not him. Not a real people's general who had buried his brothers in mountains and left a sister in a winter's snow, who had at 13 been requisitioned for service in the Mandarin's fields, just as his sister had been requisitioned for service in the Mandarin's bed.

General Liu was a great general of the people, not in his pride but in his experience. He could smell the quality of a division 10 miles away. He had seen armies rape and pillage, and he had seen armies build towns and school-houses. He had seen a lone man annihilate a platoon. But he had never seen what he was seeing now. And in comfort-loving America, of all places.

He looked down again at the note in his hands, and as he had looked at other notes during the three days he had been in hiding.

First, there were the hired gangsters in Puerto Rico. Not revolutionaries, but competent. And they had failed.

Then there was Ricardo de Estrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner, of personal experience a man who had never failed. And he had failed.

And there was the Wah Ching street gang. And it had failed.

And when guns and gangs had failed, there were the great hands of the karate black belt.

He looked down at the note in his hands. And now that too had failed. They had all failed in both their missions: to eliminate those who were trying to find the general and to bring to him his bride of only one year.

And if General Liu and his men continued to fail, his people would cast themselves at the feet of the peacemakers in Peking, ready to forget the years of hardship and to end the revolution before it was complete.

Did they not know that Mao was just a man? A great man, but just a man and men grow old and weary and wish to die in peace?

Did they not see that this step backwards, making peace with imperialism, was a retreat, just when the battle was being won? With victory in then- mouths, would they now succumb to the son of a mandarin, the premier, and sit at the same table with the dying beast of capitalism?

Not if General Liu could stop it. General Liu would not have peace. The premier had misjudged his cunning, misjudged even his motives.

He had been careful not to let himself be seen in China as a leader of the war faction. He was just a people's general, until chosen by the premier to arrange safe journey for his trip to see the swine American President. He had quietly arranged for the deaths on the transport plane, and when that did not halt plans fot the premier's visit, he volunteered to go to America himself. And then after changing to western garb, he had shot his own guards and slipped alone, unnoticed onto the train which had brought Mm here.

It should have been easy to stay hidden during the seven days of grace the premier had given the Americans. But this impossible American could not be denied, and even now was probably closing in on General Liu. When his followers heard of the escape from the karate dojo, they would lose heart. They must be firmed up.

General Liu sat down on his hard cot. He would go through his plans three times, thinking over the details from three angles. Then he would speak to his people.

And then, when he was ready, he would act with thoroughness, and when the plan proved successful, he would hold in his arms once more, Mei Soong, the beautiful flower, the only pleasure of his life outside duty.

This plan must not fail. Not even before this impossible American who had once again revived the ancient fairy tales of an ancient China. Yes. He must first discredit the fairy tales.

General Liu rose from his cot and banged on the heavy steel door. A man in drab army type clothing opened it. "I will meet with the leaders immediately," General Liu said. Then he shut the door with a clang and heard the lock fall into place.

Within minutes, all had gathered, standing in the little airless room. The early arrivals were fidgeting for want of fresh air. Some perspired and General Liu noticed how fat some faces were, how flaccid, how pale. They were not like the people of the long march. They were like the people of Chiang Kai Shek and his soft running dogs.

Well, General Liu had often led unfit men into combat. He talked now to them… of the long struggle and of the dark hours and how these had been overcome. He talked of hunger and cold and how these had been overcome. He spoke to the pride in the hearts of the people before him and when they no longer suffered from the heat or the air but were overcome by revolutionary fervor, he hit his target where he wished to hit his target.

"Comrades," he said in the outlawed Cantonese dialect, looking around the room and meeting their eyes, "we who have accomplished so much, how can we now fall prey to a child's fairy tale? Was not the winter in the caves of Yenan fiercer than a fairy tale? Were not the armies of Chiang and his running dogs fiercer than a fairy tale? Are not the armaments of modern times fiercer than a fairy tale?"

"Yes, yes," came the voices. "True. How true."

"Then why," asked General Liu, "should we fear the fairy tales of Sitianju?"

One young man said triumphantly: "Never fear suffering. Never fear death. Never fear, least of all, fairy tales."

But an old man, in what were once the clothes of the mainland, said: "He kills like the night tigers of Sinanju. This he does."

"I fear this man," General Liu said, stunning his audience. "But I fear him as a man, not as a fairy tale. He is a formidable man, but we have defeated formidable men before. But he is no night tiger from Sinanju, because there is no such thing. It is just a village in the People's Republic of Korea. You, comrade Chen. You have been there. Tell us of Sinanju."

A middle aged man in a dark, single breasted business suit, with a face of steel and a haircut that looked an accident of shrub shears, came forward to stand by General Liu. He faced the men crowded into the stuffy room.

"I have been to Sinanju. I have spoken to the people of Sinanju. They were poor and exploited before the glorious revolution. Now they are beginning to enjoy the fruits of freedom and…"

"The legend," interrupted General Liu. "Tell them CL the legend."

"Yes," said the man. "I sought out the Master of Sinanju. What master, the people asked me. The master of the night tigers, I said to them. There is no such thing, they said. If there were, would we be so poor? And I left. And even the Spaniard who once worked for us said he could not find the Master of Sinanju. So why should we believe there is such a one?"

"Did you put money in the pockets of the people of Sinanju?" asked the old man who had spoken before.

"I did not," the man responded angrily. "I represented the revolution, not the New York Stock Exchange."

"The people of Sinanju are money worshippers," the old man said. "If you had offered money and they had still said no, I would be more heartened."

General Liu spoke up. "The American we are talking about is a man whose face is pale as dough. Would the master of Sinanju make of a pale face a night tiger? Even in the legend, only people of the village of Sinanju become night tigers."

"You are wrong, Comrade general. The legend says that there will someday be a master so enamored of money that for great wealth he will teach a pale face who has died all the secrets of Sinanju. He will make of him a night tiger, but the most awesome of night tigers. He will make Mm kin to the gods of India, kin to Shiva, the destroyer."

There was silence in the room. And no one moved.

"And within an hour," said General Liu, "this Destroyer, this dead man, will be lying on this cot. And I will give you the privilege of executing his legendary body. Unless, of course, our revolution must be cancelled because of a fairy tale."

This broke the tension, and everyone laughed. Everyone but the old man.

He said, "The white man has been seen with an elderly Korean."

"His interpreter."

"He could be the Master of Sinanju."

"Nonsense," General Liu said. "He is a frail flower ready for interment." To save the old man the great hurt of losing face, General Liu bowed to him in the old way. "Come, comrade. You have done too much for the revolution, not to join with us now in our moment of glory." He signalled for the man to stay. The others chattered with confidence as they filed through the narrow steel door. They were a unit again.

General Liu went to the door and closed it and motioned the old man to sit on his cot. He placed himself on the single chair in the room and said: "This Sinanju. I have heard the legend too, but I do not believe it."

The old man nodded. His eyes were old as shale, his face as stiffening leather.

"But I have been confronted by other things I find hard to believe," Liu continued. "Supposing this fairy tale, this Shiva the Destroyer, exists. Does the legend tell of a weakness?"

"Yes," said the old man. "He is influenced by the moon of justice."

Liu lashed his anger to the controlling rod, withholding the storm inside him. How often he had been forced to deal gently with the archaic poetry of thought that chained his people to poverty and superstition. He forced himself to speak gently.

"Are there any other weaknesses?"

"Yes."

"How can he be overcome?"

The old man said quickly and simply, "Poison." But he added cautiously: "One must not trust poison. His body is strange and may recover from the poison in time. Poison to weaken him, and then a knife or gun."

"Poison, you say?"

"Yes."

"Then, poison it shall be."

"You have a way to deliver this poison to his system?"

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. A messenger entered and handed Liu a note.

He read it and beamed expansively at the old man: "Yes, comrade. A lovely, charming delicate way to deliver this poison. She has just arrived upstairs."