by Xu, Lei
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER 1 The View from the Plane
CHAPTER 2 The Secret Footage
CHAPTER 3 Filming the Void
CHAPTER 4 The Figure in the Mist
CHAPTER 5 Trapped
CHAPTER 6 The Way Out
CHAPTER 7 The Sealed Room
CHAPTER 8 Sounds of the Tomb
CHAPTER 9 The Madman
CHAPTER 10 The Unknown Threat
CHAPTER 11 Ghosts in the Shadows
CHAPTER 12 Strange Shadows
CHAPTER 13 Last Breath
CHAPTER 14 Dead Man's Walk
CHAPTER 15 Safe Room
CHAPTER 16 Close Quarters
CHAPTER 17 The Spy
CHAPTER 18 Death bound
CHAPTER 19 Risking It
CHAPTER 20 Change of Plans
CHAPTER 21 Only the Beginning
CHAPTER 22 The Plot Thickens
CHAPTER 23 The Report
CHAPTER 24 Transferred
CHAPTER 25 The Meeting
CHAPTER 26 Longing
CHAPTER 27 The Steel Cable
CHAPTER 28 Incomprehensible
CHAPTER 29 The Secret of the Stone
CHAPTER 30 Ivan
CHAPTER 31 Battle of Wits
CHAPTER 32 Face to Face
CHAPTER 33 Into the Abyss
CHAPTER 34 Falling
CHAPTER 35 On the Edge
CHAPTER 36 The Big Secret
CHAPTER 37 The Extra Man
CHAPTER 38 Behind the Curtain
CHAPTER 39 Take off
CHAPTER 40 Flight Record
CHAPTER 41 The Bottom of the Abyss
CHAPTER 42 Seeing Double
CHAPTER 43 The Immelman Turn
CHAPTER 44 The Figure
CHAPTER 45 Pei Qing
CHAPTER 46 Silent Welcome
CHAPTER 47 Nightmare
CHAPTER 48 The Human World
CHAPTER 49 Strange Happenings
CHAPTER 50 Guests of the Forest
CHAPTER 51 Small Talk
CHAPTER 52 The Best Possible Past
CHAPTER 53 The Plan
CHAPTER 54 Things Fall Apart
CHAPTER 55 The Hand of Fate
CHAPTER 56 The Rescue
CHAPTER 57 Futility
CHAPTER 58 What Will Be Will Be
CHAPTER 59 The Final Journey
CHAPTER 60 Ghosts of the Past
CHAPTER 61 Forced Confession
CHAPTER 62 Pity
CHAPTER 63 180-Degree Turnaround
CHAPTER 64 Me, Myself, and I
CHAPTER 65 The Wandering Years
Epilogue
Postscript
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dark Prospects 2
Into the Abyss
Author: Xu Lei
Translator: Gaines Post
Editor: Kim Fout, Verbena C.W., Judy Ye
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2012 by Xu Lei.
The English edition copyright © 2013 by Beijing Guomi Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Beijing Guomi Digital Technology Co., Ltd. is a young and vigorous publisher based in China, whose goal is to bring the best Chinese books to global readers.
Website: www.hotinchina.net
Contact: [email protected]
CHAPTER
1
The View from the Plane
No one who lived through the bitter winter of 1962 could ever forget those stormbound months. They were the postscript to the three years of natural disasters that had just wracked the nation. But now the so-called Great Leap Forward was quietly concluding; the border war between China and India was dying down and many believed that the country's chaotic early stages were behind it. They hoped calmer days lay ahead. While everyone's attention was captured by these great events, my comrades and I were deep beneath China's northern borderlands, facing a critical decision.
We – Wang Sichuan, Ma Zaihai and me, Wu – were at the end of an underground river, 3,600 feet underground, in a base constructed more than 20 years ago by the Japanese. Their sole reason for building it: the limitless abyss into which the river fell. They wanted to fly a plane into the void we had found, and they had done so. Now we had in our hands the secret recording of that flight, but once we delivered it to our superiors our involvement in the affair would be over. We could kiss goodbye any hope of ever discovering what the Japanese had seen. It was at least 10 hours of hard trek to the nearest sunlight. On the other hand, there was a film projector only a short distance behind us on the lower level of the dam we had been crawling around beneath for days. If we headed there now, our journey would only be delayed a couple of hours and at long last we would find out what the Japanese had been after. We might even learn what secrets were hidden inside the abyss.
To stay or to go?
For us, the children of rural peasants who had never before been given an opportunity like this – and likely never would again – the decision was easy.
Thinking back on it now, I realize what a big risk we were taking. There was an enemy spy lurking down there, lying in wait. The longer we lingered, the more likely he would reappear and cause us trouble. Unfortunately, at the time we didn't give the matter much thought. Who could have known that this single oversight would be the turning point of the whole affair?
***
Once the decision to stay was made, we headed back towards the dam, keeping one eye over our shoulders the whole time. We were soon back inside. We knew the way by now and before long we'd reached the projection room. We inspected the place much more thoroughly than we had the last time. The room was considerably larger than I had thought. It seemed small only because it was crammed with long tables and chairs. A thick layer of dust coated everything. I worried the projector might no longer work.
The projector was about the size of a box of ammunition. Two revolving wheels, used for spooling the film, were attached to its side. Fearing a sneak attack from the spy who had followed us, Wang Sichuan hefted an iron club and went to guard the door. I began nervously looking the projector over. Having never operated one before, I feared one wrong move and I might break it. Really, all I needed to do was thread the film into the dual wheels. Perhaps it was nerves, perhaps something else, but my hands were slick with sweat. I fiddled with the projector for some time and made not the slightest bit of progress. At last Ma Zaihai came over to help. As an engineering soldier, he knew his way around all sorts of machines. After taking one look at it, he loaded the film and started the thing up.
A flickering black pattern appeared on the dust-covered cloth screen before us. Aerial recording technology was still very basic in the 1940s and the image was too shaky to be made out. Ma Zaihai then cranked the lever attached to the side of the projector. I leaned forward in anticipation as the image on the screen began to move.
Why had the Japanese built this dam? What had they seen in the abyss? The answers to these questions were only moments away. The image changed. Black spots now covered the white screen. This was merely waste film, deliberately unused, much as the beginning of a roll of photographic film is always black. The black spots started to move, but after about a minute the image remained nearly unchanged. I began to feel nervous. Why didn't Ma Zaihai go faster? Or was the projector simply broken? Just as I was starting to fear the worst, a line of text suddenly flashed across the screen. Ma Zaihai stopped the film and rewound until the text was centered.
The words were Japanese, but scribbled so hastily that they barely qualified as such. Although I couldn’t be sure what the message was saying, I could tell it was a warning of the sterne
st kind.
CHAPTER
2
The Secret Footage
At the bottom of the screen, scrawled in black ink, were the words: "Extra-Normal Event 07—Classified Fortification Engineering Corps."
Seeing the words "Engineering Corps" gave me a queer feeling, as if our own military had been behind this but, of course, Japanese and Chinese writing shared many characters. In Chinese, we generally referred to ourselves as the "Construction Corps" or the "Inner Mongolian Engineering Corps." "Fortification Engineering Corps" sounded extremely odd. This title screen was obviously handwritten. It was as if it had been hastily jotted down right after filming was completed. I suspected it said something like, "This film is classified. Only those with the very highest security clearance are permitted to watch," though it probably said something more specific than that. Otherwise, why would they have felt the need to write it with such urgency? As I read the word “classified” the breath caught in my throat. I thought of the oath we had sworn before descending into the cave. The text appeared onscreen for only a few seconds, just long enough to warn away anyone lacking the necessary credentials. I signaled to Ma Zaihai.
He nodded and began once more cranking the lever. An image appeared. We held our breaths.
The film totaled no more than an hour and was divided into a number of scenes. It could be roughly split into two. The first 10 minutes consisted of several loosely connected scenes leading to the second portion, the flight into the abyss. The quality of the footage was poor. Prior to the Liberation, most aerial reconnaissance was conducted using photography rather than film. The footage obtained from airborne film recordings was extremely shaky—just think of the black-and-white clip of the destruction of Nagasaki and you'll know what I mean. Luckily the film reel was still in good enough condition to tell what was going on. The biggest strike against it was that it had no sound. Perhaps it had always been silent or perhaps the projection room simply lacked a speaker system. Quiet, disconnected, jumpy scenes skittered along, one to the next. In one sense you could say it contained little new information, but in another it was absolutely mind-blowing. The Japanese had seemingly made no attempt to capture everything that happened, but rather focused on recording a few pieces of pertinent information. Almost all of the scenes were very short, and though some seemed superfluous, they each contained particular telling details. When it ended, none of us moved. The screen was blank and the projector remained on, but we did nothing about either. We just sat there in silence, our hearts seized by an indescribable fear.
The movie opened with a black and white airfield filmed from ground level. It was daytime, the sky clear and bright. We'd spent the last several days in the recesses of a pitch-black river cave. When we raised our heads we saw only rugged cliff rock. The moment I glimpsed this pale gray sky on the screen, I was filled with a longing for the surface.
Several planes were parked on the airfield. Pilots and various other Jap devils hurried from all directions, each of them hefting supplies for transport. Suddenly the camera turned to focus on a man wearing an officer's uniform, but before I could get a good look at him, the film jumped to the next scene. Two Japanese pilots now stood talking beneath the wing of a plane. They patted the landing gear as they spoke, appearing to roar with laughter. I could only imagine what these scenes were supposed to mean. A moment later, the image changed once more. Now the camera was being aimed through the side window of a plane, filming the ground below. I saw villages, forests, rivers. The plane was obviously flying through the sky—not down here, above the underground river. This had to be in the early stages of their journey. The camera turned to the plane's interior. It was a cargo plane. Inside were row upon row of squatting Jap soldiers and neatly stacked supplies. The devils were all silent, their heads lowered, rocking with the movement of the plane. They looked exhausted, much as we had when we’d bounced through the forests of Inner Mongolia in the back of that truck.
These scenes might sound rather insignificant, but they conveyed two important pieces of information. First, I could tell the situation must have been extremely urgent, because during the War of Resistance troops were transported by plane in only the most time-pressed of operations. And second, from the fact that the cameraman had filmed these several rather aimless scenes, I suspected he hadn’t yet been informed of the true nature of his mission; otherwise I doubt he would have felt so carefree.
A moment later they were deep in the forest. Wooden barracks appeared amid the trees. They’d already rotted through by the time I’d gotten to them, but in the film they appeared brand new. The Japanese officer appeared once more. The black and white film made his skin look pale white as he gazed over the bustling camp, his face emotionless. This time the camera stopped long enough for me to get a good look at him. I felt a kind of nervous curiosity as I studied his features. Japanese soldiers were always depicted as buffoons in our movies. Onstage only the most clownish actors were chosen to play them. But these soldiers were the real thing and there was nothing funny about them. I looked closer. A strange energy seemed concealed beneath his face. No fictional villain could ever have been this frightening. Although I was alive during only the final decade or so of the War of Resistance, I nonetheless heard countless stories about the horrors committed by the Japanese. The region where I grew up saw no combat, so I never actually encountered one in real life, but in my imagination they were the most ferocious of monsters. As I grew older, my concept of the Japanese was formed entirely from our movies, the stories from my elders, and the performances put on by the propaganda teams. Only now, in this decades-old dam beneath the earth, did I learn what they really looked like. It was not what I expected. They were neither ugly nor monstrous. They looked just like us, but for some reason this only made things worse.
The camera remained on the officer for a long time. At first I assumed this was a sign of respect, but then a woman entered the frame. She strode over to the officer and the two began to converse. The camera now focused on the woman. Realizing that she was being filmed, she turned and looked at the cameraman. She didn't seem to mind, though. A moment later she turned back to the officer and continued to speak. Her body was long and spindly and clothed in military attire. She was far from beautiful. The camera zoomed in on her face. Seeing her features up-close—her expression, the look in her eyes—I suddenly felt as if I’d seen her before, but just as I was trying to remember where, the woman and the officer disappeared. Several shots of the wooden barracks flashed before my eyes, then the entire screen went black.
I was about to tell Ma Zaihai to rewind the film when the screen lit up and something very strange appeared. At once my curiosity about the woman was gone. Onscreen was a ball of light, about the size of a washbasin. Something seemed to be churning inside of it. What is that? I wondered. The moon?
But that was impossible; the light was much too round. Even the mid-autumn moon wasn't this round. Had they already reached the abyss? If so, then what was this thing? My heart shivered. How could there be a ball of light like a little moon in the midst of an underground abyss?
CHAPTER
3
Filming the Void
What was going on here? Why had the film jumped right to this footage? There should at least have been a scene of the plane taking off into the void.
Then the ball of light began to move. It flew from the screen's center to its very top, paused for a moment, then zoomed back down to the center. After pausing again, it shot to the bottom. A few seconds later it vanished and the screen went black. But only a moment later the ball quickly reappeared and began to move once more, repeating the same pattern over and over again. The movements were jerky and abrupt. There was something distinctly abnormal about it, but what was really strange was that the longer I watched, the more familiar the light began to seem. I racked my brain for where I’d seen it. Suddenly, it occurred to me: the searchlight! I remembered how it had looked as it strafed the ceiling of the cave. This m
ust be the illuminated circle of the searchlight beam. Still I was baffled. Why was the cameraman recording the searchlight? Had he noticed something odd about it? I looked closer but could find nothing amiss.
"What the hell is that?" asked Wang Sichuan.
I told him.
Ma Zaihai nodded. "Engineer Wu is correct. That's the searchlight. They must be adjusting the beam."
"Adjusting the beam?" I asked. "Adjusting it for what?"
"I would imagine they’re synchronizing the movements of the searchlight with the focal point of the camera," he said. "Once, while watching an anti-aircraft exercise, I saw the cannon and searchlight operators coordinate their aim in much the same way. When setting up broadcasting stations, we perform similar adjustments—sending out a few transmissions, receiving a few, then checking the results." Ma Zaihai took care in how he worded this. He knew that us two engineers were completely ignorant about such matters and was afraid of making us lose face by saying too much.
Looking back at the light, I realized the churning at its center was the quickly flowing underground river. The plane must already have been parked atop the iron railway on the inner side of the dam with the camera fixed to its exterior and aiming downward. The searchlight was thus aimed at the river and the camera was aimed at the searchlight. Ma Zaihai sped up the film. The scene changed once more and the screen went black. Ever so slightly, I felt my body begin to shake. At last we had reached the heart of the matter.
