“Commander-in-Chief!” Thomas saluted before expressing his concern. “I have discourteously left Mr. Wong’s associates alone in the anteroom.”
“Don’t worry, Captain.” His infrequent smile warmed the General’s spare features. “Mr. Wong and I are old friends. His … ah … associates will not be offended.”
The sleek adder’s head nodded to acknowledge the compliment. Relaxed in the ebony chair, Mr. Wong was as self-assured as the General himself.
“Tom, wo peng-yu.” The affectionate diminutive in English was as incongruous amid the General’s accented Mandarin as his calling his youngest aide “my friend.” “You speak Cantonese, of course?”
“Yes, Sir! I await your orders.”
“And you comprehend the barbarous Kwangsi tongue? It is similar? Most of our allies of the Eighteenth Division speak no other.”
“Yes, Sir!” Thomas was uncertain whether he was confirming his ability to speak the Cantonese-derived dialect of the troops from Kwangtung’s neighboring province or agreeing that is was a barbarous tongue.
“Hao! Hao!” The General beamed. “Fine! Fine! You’re appointed liaison officer between my old friend here and General Pai Tsung-hsi of the Eighteenth Division. My friend’s name is not Wong. He is Tu Yueh-shen, a great patriot and my blood-brother.”
Thomas bit back his surprise. He knew that the opium smuggler Tu Yueh-shen, master of the Secret Societies that were the extra-legal government of Shanghai, was the emperor of the underworld of the world’s most blatantly wicked city. What business could there be between China’s most rapacious gangster and his austere Commander-in-Chief, who hated opium and frowned upon both tobacco and wine?
“Your young friend is startled, Chung-cheng.” The Green Dragon casually used the General’s familiar name.
“Perhaps I should explain.” Chiang Kai-shek looked quizzically at Thomas.
“I await your orders, Commander-in-Chief,” Thomas repeated the formula.
“My old friend is a much maligned man, Tom.” Again that English diminutive. “He and I have striven together in secret to advance the revolution, but he is denounced as a brigand. He is actually a great patriot. Has not his Green League resisted both the Manchus and the foreigners for decades? He is now convinced, as I am, that we must crush the Communists before they destroy the national revolution.”
The reserve impressed upon Chiang Kai-shek’s personality by his Confucian training made him appear withdrawn and arbitrary in public meetings. But his low-keyed, laconic style was persuasive when his audience was small and his normal stiff authority yielded to relaxed paternalism.
“The greatest menace in the world today is not imperialism.” General Chiang’s voice rose in pitch as he heated his anger over the fire of his indignation. “It is Communism—an international conspiracy determined to rule the entire world. Our own … the Chinese Communists are only tools of that conspiracy. Communism is far more dangerous than imperialism, already in its dying throes.”
Chiang used the anti-imperialist rhetoric of his enemies, the Communists, without embarrassment. The Marxist-Leninist concepts were fundamentally altered as they passed through the filter of his mind. His Confucian mentality, lightly overlaid with Western ideas, spontaneously transformed the Communist cant into his own original concepts.
“We must, therefore, purify both the Kuomintang and the Revolutionary Army. We must purge ourselves of the Communist virus and those infected by that virus, the so-called left wing of the Kuomintang. A monolithic party like ours cannot tolerate contending factions. The glory of China is the unity of the Chinese people and their leaders. As it has always been, so must it be today.”
Grown wealthy and powerful by exploiting the same Chinese people, Tu Yueh-shen nodded his complacent agreement. Behind the façade of the model staff officer, Captain Thomas Sekloong experienced a moment of doubt. The chronicles of China, as he knew them, were a record of disunity: constant power struggles, unremitting intrigues, and wily stratagems on the part of princes and generals who totally disregarded the interests of the common people. But the flow of his commander’s words, so logically marshaled, swept away his momentary disbelief. The General, after all, knew more of China than he himself could ever know.
“We have,” Chiang Kai-shek went on, his voice dropping confidentially, “organized a Settlement Committee. Its responsibility is to sweep the Communists from the Party, the Army, and the Government. Our first task is to cleanse Shanghai. Until I hold Shanghai, I shall possess no base from which to complete the revolution, as Dr. Sun Yat-sen commanded in his last testament. Blood-brother Tu’s loyal Braves will make the initial move—and the Eighteenth Division will mop up. For the moment we make common cause with the foreigners of the imperialist commercial community, since our common enemy is the Communists. The foreigners have promised the financial support I require. In our own time, we shall deal with the imperialists and sweep foreign rule from China.”
Buoyed by the torrent of his own rhetoric, the General was apparently prepared to continue indefinitely. Tu Yueh-shen glanced at his watch.
“It is eleven o’clock, Chung-cheng,” he said.
“Ah, yes! Well, another time … but you must understand my thinking totally, Tom, my friend. Another time I shall tell you of my plans to fulfill China’s destiny.”
“Orders, Sir?” Thomas asked.
“You will convey my instructions to General Pai Tsung-hsi. The Eighteenth Division is ready to move. Then you will place yourself at the disposal of Blood-brother Tu. His men will strike first.”
Thomas Sekloong shivered in the predawn chill of April 12, 1927. It was just past 4:00 A.M., and all the General’s dispositions were complete. Wearing a civilian raincoat over his uniform, his peaked garrison cap concealed, the Captain waited for the action to begin. He and his orderly, who was similarly attired, were hidden in an alley between a noodle shop and a shoe store. In silence they watched the pale dawn creep across the dingy brick building of the Shanghai General Federation of Trades Unions, which a hand-lettered banner identified as: HEADQUARTERS OF THE SHANGHAI WORKERS’ MILITIA FORCE. The assertion was uncharacteristically modest. At that moment, the nondescript structure was the seat of the provisional government of the largest city in the Orient. Under General Chou En-lai’s direction, the Communist unions ruled the Chinese quarters of the city they had seized from the warlords three weeks earlier. The authority of their patrols was unchallenged, though the irregulars in worn civilian clothing displayed only two symbols of authority: brassards inscribed with the characters Kung-jen Min-Ping, “Workers’ Militia,” and rifles so old and so diverse they might have been looted from a military museum.
A weary four-man detail was entering the Headquarters. The militiamen did not look into the shadows beside the building, which sheltered men dressed like themselves in blue workclothes. Feet dragging, they were returning from patrol at the loneliest hour when the darkness of the night begins to give way to the light of day, the moment when men’s spirits and vitality are at their lowest. Their thoughts were fixed on the hard comfort of their wooden pallets within the sanctuary of their headquarters. The split-paneled door began opening to receive them.
The hollow hour was shattered by a submachine gun’s hoarse chatter. Bullets flung the leading militiaman against the wooden door, and a chorus of submachine guns chanted his dirge. The other militiamen fell, blasted by new volleys. One crawled toward the door, but died under the heavy boots of the Green Dragon’s Braves. Other Secret Society gunmen poured from the surrounding alleys, ignoring the first sporadic shots from the startled Militia Headquarters.
Two blue-clad gangsters pushed through the half-open door before it swung shut. Crammed under the stone lintel, their fellows hammered on the wooden panels with rifle butts. The militiamen were finally alerted, and shots cut down four of the assailants. The gangsters’ withdrawal to the cover of surrounding buildings was hastened by ragged volleys. The surprise attack had failed after ninety s
econds.
Thomas nodded to his orderly. Ears ringing from the shots and eyes watering from the sting of acrid cordite, they darted to the far end of the alley before discarding their raincoats and donning their peaked garrison caps to insure that they would not be attacked by either gangsters or troops. The initial assault having failed, the regulars were moving in.
The Kwangsi men of the Eighteenth Division were already in position, the vanguard disguised in blue workclothes like their allies. A corner militia post was under attack by a Kwangsi platoon. The workers fired their rifles through the crevices between the sandbags that barricaded the isolated rice shop. Machine-gun fire ripped through their flimsy protection, and the regulars swarmed over the sandbags. Bayonets flashed in the half-light, and despairing shrieks afrighted the pale dawn.
The Kwangsi troops’ orders were clear: “Exterminate the enemy!” And they were carrying out their orders with relish. The illiterate farmers of the Eighteenth Division hated the Shanghai workingmen who jeered at their accents and their ignorance. The mystic unity between the “two oppressed classes,” the peasants and the workers, discerned by Communist theorists proved illusory when it confronted the realities of instinctive antagonism between city and countryside and ancient hostility between North and South.
Though Militia Headquarters held out stubbornly, the dawn attack swept all else before it. As Thomas returned to General Chiang’s command post, he passed struggling knots of militiamen and gangsters. The rattle of their shots was echoed by distant volleys elsewhere. The regulars swore in high good humor as they methodically hunted the Workers’ Militiamen through the crooked alleys.
An unarmed militiaman, red brassard on his arm, scurried toward the two soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army. His broad face split by a shriek, he threw himself at their feet.
“Chiu Ming! Chiu Ming!” he pleaded. “Help me! Save me!”
A young, fox-faced lieutenant of the Eighteenth panted at the worker’s heels, his Mauser pistol smoking.
“Seize him,” Thomas commanded, and his orderly gripped the worker’s arm.
“Wo-ti pu-lo, Chung wei,” Thomas snapped. “My prisoner, Lieutenant.”
The Kwangsi man stared at Thomas dully. Steadying the heavy Mauser with both hands, he deliberately raised the weapon to shoulder height. His finger squeezed the trigger, and a red cavity opened in the militiaman’s temple. The angry orderly unholstered his pistol. Thomas hesitated as his subordinate raised the weapon, but finally knocked the pistol down and turned his back on the lieutenant. Unspeaking, he strode away while the Kwangsi officer ground his boot-heel into the militiaman’s sightless eyes.
At the General’s command post, messengers were coming and going in an atmosphere of controlled hysteria. After reporting to the Chief-of-Staff, Thomas slipped back into his proper role with conscious relief. Collating the couriers’ dispatches and telephoned reports, he crossed one red-ringed militia strongpoint after another off the detailed wall map of Shanghai with black strokes. He consciously suppressed his revulsion, though the half-formulated thought persisted beneath the surface of his awareness: “Not only are Chinese killing Chinese! The National Revolutionary Army is slaughtering its own allies!” He reassured himself that the General knew far better than he what measures were necessary for the nation’s good. But he realized that, no matter how long he soldiered, he would never become inured to the violent death that was the relentless counterpoint of his chosen career. Yet he had chosen freely, just as he had freely given his loyalty to his General. He would, he affirmed to himself, never waver.
By late afternoon, Thomas Sekloong was numb with exhaustion. Though he had not slept for thirty-eight hours, he would not leave his post until Militia Headquarters capitulated. Chiang Kai-shek had rejected his staff-colonels’ advice to bring up artillery or, at least, trench-mortars. It was not his purpose, he declared, to raze Shanghai, but only to destroy the Communist virus that infected the city. Thomas’s admiration for Chiang Kai-shek renewed itself. No more than himself did his General delight in slaughter; he was merely executing an essential task with the minimum force necessary.
At 5:34 P.M. the field telephone’s irregular, hand-cranked ringing irritably demanded attention, and Thomas automatically lifted the receiver.
“Wai! Wai! Tsung-ssu-ling-yüan ti pan-kung-shih,” he shouted. “Hello! Hello! Commander-in-Chief’s office.”
“Wai! Wai!” The clacking Kwangsi accent was further distorted by the telephone’s static. “Major Lee … Major Lee, Eighteenth Division. I have … honor to … to report … Communist bandits’ headquarters … fallen. Two hundred … dead … fifty captives including …”
The line crackled, and Thomas shouted: “Say again. Say again. You … are … not … clear. Say again last sentence.”
“Wai! Wai!” The handset reported. “Two hundred dead … fifty, I say again, fifty bandit captives. We have captured … leader of … Chou En-lai. I say again, Chou En-lai.”
When Thomas reported the Commissar’s capture, the General’s deep-set eyes glowed. The battle was over and the chief enemy secured; the revolution could resume its proper course. The General also felt justified personal gratification. He was not excessively fond of the twenty-nine-year-old Communist who had infringed upon his authority at the Whampoa Academy.
“Have Comrade Chou,” the General directed with heavy irony, “brought here immediately.”
Thomas nodded when Chiang Kai-shek added: “Now, old Tom, will you sleep a little? You should be satisfied.”
Two hours later, a heavy hand shook Thomas and his canvas cot trembled.
“Shang-wei Hsien-sheng …” his orderly said. “Captain, Sir, the General wants you.”
A pale major wearing the insignia of the Eighteenth Division stood at attention before the General’s desk, surrounded by staff officers. Chiang Kai-shek’s bony features were drawn tight, and he spoke with slow fury.
“Where, I ask again, is the bandit chieftain Chou En-lai?”
The major’s lips were white with fear, and his heavy Kwangsi brogue was barely intelligible. Thomas concentrated intensely in order to interpret his reply.
“We were proceeding with the captive as ordered. I was hailed by a captain wearing General Headquarters’ insignia. He led a full platoon, and I had under my command only a six-man escort. He came, he said, from His Excellency the General to take possession of the captive Chou En-lai. I told him I’d been ordered to deliver the captive to Headquarters. New orders, the captain said. The General was impatient … must see the captive immediately. I protested again, and his men unslung their rifles. Since he wore the proper Headquarters insignia, I yielded the captive.”
“No further reports of Comrade Chou?” the General asked.
The staff officers’ silence was eloquent.
“The worst of the lot’s escaped,” the General snapped. “There’ll be evil consequences from that few minutes’ work.”
Chiang Kai-shek’s wiry hands snapped a writing brush. His face unmoving, he methodically shredded the bamboo cylinder before looking up again.
“Describe the captain!” he commanded.
“A tall man with curly hair and strange, light eyes that seemed green when he argued with me. He looked something like a foreigner, but he spoke perfect Cantonese. I regret, General …”
Chiang glanced up from the debris on his desk and ordered softly: “Take this fool outside and shoot him. His story’s either a deliberate lie—or he’s too stupid to serve me.”
Queasy with apprehension, Thomas summoned the ready squad. He sighed in relief when he heard two shots a few minutes after the soldiers had half-carried the terrified Kwangsi man away. The major was obviously an incompetent who deserved his fate—and he could never repeat his damning tale.
Not until the next evening could Thomas leave his post to look for his brother James’s unit. He found them packing their equipment.
“We’re moving out again,” James explained. “Special d
uty in Nanchang.”
His tone neutrally flat, Thomas repeated the major’s description of the captain who had seized Chou En-lai.
“A strange tale,” James commented casually. “Damned fool of a major, but what can you expect of a Kwangsi man?”
“And the captain,” Thomas mused. “I wonder who he could be.”
“Likely some Communist in disguise. Don’t ask me. We were on alert right here all day. Battalion Commander Lin Piao four times requested permission to enter the city and assist in the extermination. But Division Headquarters refused. I seem to have missed all the action.”
Thomas had no further opportunity to question his brother. James’s company vanished with Lin Piao’s battalion into the maelstrom set whirling by Chiang Kai-shek’s decision to purge the Communists. The bloody “liquidation” of the Communists proceeded systematically, not only in Shanghai, but in such widely separated centers as Nanking, Hangchow, Foochow, and Canton. Nationalist troops and police, guided by universally hated teh-wu, “special duty” secret agents, broke up Communist cells, shot down suspects, disarmed Workers’ Militiamen, and closed down Communist-controlled trade unions. Blood and fire were destroying the “Red infestation.”
Resistance was negligible and ineffective, for the purblind Chinese Communist Party sought still to obey Joseph Stalin’s orders to cooperate with the Nationalists. Delighting in the two-fold irony, Chiang Kai-shek, himself still an honorary member of the Central Committee of the Communist International, insisted that he had no quarrel with Stalin, with the Comintern, or with the Soviet Union. His sole purpose was to prevent China’s Communists from sabotaging the national revolution.
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