The Chinese Assassin (7 page)

That night they took the bodies away was the first time I ever saw old Tsereng’s face. He was one of those Mongols with a high, hooked eagle’s nose who look so much like the American Red Indian. The light of the fire in the open hearth on the floor of the yurt danced on the silver ornaments of his belt as he carried the evening bow
l
of
kumiss
to where I lay half-paralysed on my pile of furs. The fever and delirium were at last dying down and I saw and heard dearly for the very first time the tinkling of the tiny silver bell on its chain.

Old Tsereng must have
n
oticed my vision had
cl
eared for suddenly the belt and its ornaments disappeared from my view to be replaced a moment later by his pitted, lined face. The narrow, dark eyes stared at me in silence for a long time as he squatted beside me. ‘When he spoke, his voice was soft. ‘Who are you, Han? Why do your people seek to hunt you down like an animal?’

In my fear I tried to rise up, but he restrained me with both hands. When he had calmed me he made me drink the life-giving mare’s milk. Then he told me everything he had seen since he had plucked me out of the burning grass four long nights before. He understood more Chinese than he spoke. He had learned
it
fifty years earlier in the southern part of the Mongol lands when rapacious capitalist Chinese traders feasted off Inner Mongolia by buying cheap from the nomads and se
ll
ing dear. He had his people’s ingrained historical suspicion of the ‘great nation of China’. These horsemen of the grasslands, so different from my own people, had since time began been either defending themselves against China or attacking her. By comparison the small wandering tribes of Siberia to the north had caused them no trouble, had been of little historical account. That was why the tutelage of the Russians had been so easily accepted by the Mongols and that was why that night old Tsereng committed his life loyally and willingly to my protection and survival—to keep me from the
cl
utches of those predators from Peking he had seen set up a hue and cry upon the finding of my shoe.

‘But why, Han? Why do they want to hunt your He always called me ‘Han’, the name of my race, and never once asked me my personal name. In his question he had used his native Mongol words
soron
molj
ikh,
which are very powerful, meaning ‘to draw towards themselves and gnaw like a bone’.
As
he waited for my reply, the lines gouged into his face by time and the fierce wind of the steppes deepened with concern.

Although weakened and in pain, I tried to explain. I told him of the great coincidence that had made him pitch his yurt on the night of
12
September
on
that point of the world’s surface
that
was identified on maps
by
the geographic co-ordinates
111.15
East and
47.42
North. This part
of
his beloved steppe land, I explained, was one
of
the remotest regions of the populated world. In China all maps of this region were forty years out of date. This fact
had encouraged those in Peking who had plotted Marshall
L
in’s death to print false charts indicating that a large military airfield had been built
on
the empty desolate spot where
I
now lay
in
his yurt

As
the
yak-dung
fire
spluttered
low
in
the
open
hearth
and
t
h
e wind moaned round the felt walls of the tent I explained how tin Piao and his wife were
put
aboard secretly
in
a closed co
m
partment, unconscious, if not already dead, and
bow
a handful of
others had been duped into flying with him
in the
doomed airliner.

I explained
how power-mad
and
ruthless plotters had
cunningly
involved other
countries—America,
Israel and
Russia—in their violent
intrigues
and
that since I
had miraculously survived
and was alive to tell of this
great treachery I was a danger to
the success
of their plans.
It was for this reason they would not sleep
easily until
my life
was
terminated and their terrible secret
m
ade completely safe.

Perhaps fortunately I did not know then
what
I know today. This
awful
knowledge
that
I have would perhaps have undermined my
very
will to
recover
and
survive.
But I
could
not know then that in 1976 these
same vicious
demons would be plotting a greater and more
terrible crime—the
killing of our
great leader Chairman Mao Ts
e
-tung
himself!

On that bleak and windswept night on the Mongolian steppes in the
autumn of
1971
,
however old Tsereng in the
warmth of his tent listened to my words in silence,
nodding his hoary old head from time to time. He lit and
re
l
it his slender pipe while I
talked, puffing the
smoke towards the fire, but never speaking a word. He sat without moving until long
after the animals had
quietened
and his wife and
daughter had
begun snoring
on th
eir
beds of
fur.

Then he bent over me to
make
me
comfortable
for
the
night
and
spoke in a
whisper
in my ear. ‘Soon horsemen will come
riding
up from the south. They will be
looking
for you.
They
can travel here from China overland in a
three-day
journey.’ He
rested
a gnarled
hand gently
on my shoulder in a gesture f
reassurance and
grinned a sudden, toothless grin. ‘But they shall not
fi
nd you. We shall move on—and keep moving.’ Without another word he
stretched himself
out
then
on the
ground beside the fire and
went to sleep.

When I
woke at the
next dawn
he
was
gone. He
didn’t return until the sun
was
high in the
middle
of the
day and then
he reported that he
had again been secretly observing the activity
around the crashed
Trident.
At first light he
had
seen a new group of hig
h
ranking
Russian officers
arrive.
They
brought
with
them a
strange man,
he said, in
crumpled civilian clothes whom
he
had not seen
before.
He
was a
white-skinned European, but he did not have the tense severity of demeanour of the Russian comrades. He was a small, thin, hunched man with a shock of white hair, a shaggy white moustache and thick spectacles. His face was deeply lined and very pale and Tsereng guessed he was almost as old as himself:

Old Tsereng had watched him
cl
osely through his binoculars. Immediately on his arrival
he
had waved his arms and shouted, dismissing all the Russian officers and
ordering them to retreat several
hundred yards. Then he had wandered
very slowly among
the wreckage on
his
own
for
two
hours
staring intently
at
the
ground, shaking his head
and
muttering to
himself.
All the
time
he kept his hands
in
his pockets, touching nothing. He chain smoked, but never removed
the cigarettes
from his mouth. From
time
to
time this white-haired man drew
a
flask
from
his hip
pocket
and drank
from it—old Tsereng
again
reported
this
gleefully
because
it was silver
and flashed
in the sun. When he
had made a thorough inspection of the whole area the man began taking
photographs with a tiny
camera he carried
in
his pocket. About this
time
a convoy of articulated
lorries and cranes appeared, rumbling across the plain
from
the direction
of Ulan Bator. They drew up
and waited
until the
white-haired man had
completed his
inspection. Then
he gave a signal
and began supervising
the removal of the
wreckage
from the scene. First
wooden
boxes were brought by the soldiers
and he directed
them to collect together
small fragments
of
bla
ck
en
e
d metal and ashes
from
different
parts of the s
it
e. Then he motioned the
cranes
forward
and directed
them with
great care as
they
hoisted
what
wa
s left of the
main sections
of the
dismembered aircraft—the two wings,
the fuselage
and
the tail section—onto the
lorries.
When this
was
done he gave more orders to the
soldiers, and several
hundred
brushes
were issued to them.
They lined
up in long files
across
the flat
grassland
and began moving back
and
forth
sweeping the
tiniest shreds of wreckage together
and packing
them away in
canvas
sacks.

Finally this
white-haired
man got back
in
his
car with
the officers
and led
the convoy of low
-l
oaders
and
cranes slowly away
across
the steppes to the West When old
Tsereng left
his hiding place for the
last
time, only the long lines of Russian
soldiers were
left still, slowly sweeping the
grassland with
their brushes
and carefully filling
up
their little canvas sacks with
what was
left of
the black
dust
from the Trident

The rest of that
day before dark was
spent in
making
preparations for
our
departure. The long
strips
of
cheese and
solid cream laid out on the roof of the yurt to
lose
moisture were removed
and
stored.
Belongings
were baled
and
when night fell the yurt
was
taken down. Other
chattels
were folded
and
loaded onto two-humped
camels and
a litter of tent poles was built for me
and
attached to
an aging and
gentle horse. Old Tsereng’s
two
sons,
themselves
no longer young,
also
struck
their
tents, prepared their families
and
bunched their herds ready for the
journey.