The meeting requested by the U.S. ambassador in Beijing had begun at 10:00 a.m. precisely, being late for an appointment being considered a grave insult to the Chinese. The white lace antimacassars draped over the arms and headrests of the old-fashioned maroon velvet lounge chair struck the American ambassador as typically Chinese, at once quaint and sensible, like the covered teacups on the table between him and the Mao-suited chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. The ambassador noticed that there was a new spittoon, this one a lighter gray than the last, which sat at the chairman’s feet, looking for all the world like a child’s potty. The lounge chair was so comfortable, it made it difficult for the American ambassador, for anyone, to make a strong point, for in order to drive home the argument, most people found it necessary to first do battle with the chair that enfolded them, yet sitting on the very edge of the chair gave one the undignified attitude of an eager schoolboy in front of the chairman, a position contrary to the dignified pose striven for by the representative of one of the two most powerful nations on earth. President Mayne’s instructions had been clear: to assure the Chinese that the presence of the American carrier Salt Lake City in the Sea of Japan was not meant in any way as a threat to the People’s Republic but was there merely to assist American action in South Korea — as it was permitted to do under the terms of the UN Charter, of which the People’s Republic was a member.
The Chinese chairman was smoking as he spoke to the interpreter, a thin, young man in rimless glasses who, even as he was receiving his instructions, was looking at the American.
“The chairman understands, Mr. Ambassador, but there must be no interference north of the thirty-eighth parallel. On this matter we are resolved.”
The American ambassador acknowledged the point but did remind the chairman that it was not South Korea that had “initiated engagement” and that the U.S. government might find it necessary to operate above the thirty-eighth parallel if it involved securing the safety of South Korean and/or United States citizens.
“The chairman disputes your claim insofar as it was clearly the repeated provocations and aggression of the Seoul government which precipitated hostilities. As a good neighbor of the Democratic Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China may have no alternative but to aid the Koreans in freeing their country of hostile and antidemocratic elements.”
“But not in the South?” asked the ambassador. The chairman began the long warm-up preparatory to spitting, sounding as if he were in the grip of a severe case of catarrh. The chairman spat at the spittoon, the ambassador’s eyes scrupulously avoiding witness of the act by watching the interpreter, who was busy informing him at the chairman’s request that the Chinese People’s Republic did not recognize such designations as “North” or “South” Korea, that there was only one country and this was the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Seoul “gangsters” were merely usurpers, in Beijing’s view. The Chinese People’s Republic had no quarrel with the United States and wished friendly relations with Washington, but the chairman, on behalf of the Politburo, would reserve China’s historical right to intervene should the integrity of the People’s Republic be threatened. Which meant that, as in 1950, Beijing would not tolerate any American action north of the Yalu along the Manchurian-Soviet-North Korean border.
As the ambassador left the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square was bathed in pale sunlight, the soft and dirty haze over the city pierced here and there by high-rises, but in the main Beijing remained a flat city on the North China Plain, its pace still remarkably unhurried compared to Western cities. The endless rivers of bicycles, “Flying Pigeons” jostling with less expensive models for position, never ceased to entertain the ambassador as it was here that the ingenuity of the Chinese was so everywhere apparent, their ability to use bicycles to haul everything from sofas to enormously high stacks of crated chickens, and even twenty-foot-long heavy steel rods for concrete reinforcing — as impressive an example as you could find of a people anywhere in the world coping with day-to-day problems that were all but inconceivable in the West.
As the Cadillac drew up outside the Great Hall, the ambassador saw construction workers walking by with woven cane safety helmets. They were not a people to go to war with.
When the chauffeur opened the back door of the black Cadillac that to passersby looked remarkably like any other limousine except for the thickness of the bullet-proof windows, what they could not see was the heavy armor plate between door panels, beneath the chassis, and sandwiched in along the roof interior. With all the added weight it meant that the car could get only ten miles to the gallon, but the ambassador didn’t give a damn about the cost, for he knew that if push came to shove, the car he was in might be the only thing capable of getting him to Beijing Airport in a hurry and alive.
As usual, scores of Chinese stopped what they were doing and stared at the “Big Nose.” Beyond the stone flag and heroically cast soldiers that celebrated the revolution, the lines passing through Mao’s mausoleum were ushered through with an efficiency one normally didn’t see in China. It was just as well, for the vast crowds would have led to chaos if they had been left on their own to visit the mausoleum and to see Mao under glass. The ambassador sometimes wondered whether Mao’s head, the only part of him visible, was a wax fake. Whatever, he was still venerated by most of the Chinese despite the killing and madness of what was euphemistically called the “Cultural Revolution,” when the Red Guards had run amuck, putting people to death arbitrarily, sending intellectuals to work as peasants, and putting the country twenty years further behind the West. Someone at the embassy had worked it out that with China’s population of over a billion and the line outside the mausoleum the usual four abreast, the line would never end. Their sheer numbers and the fact they had the A-bomb made them a formidable force, and the American ambassador recalled the chilling words of General Lin Biao so many years ago when MacArthur had threatened to cross the North Korean border with China and drop nuclear bombs on the staging areas in Manchuria. Upon hearing this, Lin Biao shrugged. “So we lose a million or two.”
Next into the lounge chair was the Russian ambassador, Leonid Guzenko, conveying cordial greetings from Moscow and reassuring the chairman that Premier Suzlov wished Beijing to know that the dispatch of the Soviet Far Eastern Fleet from Vladivostok had been effected solely in order to send a “clear” message to Washington that interference in Northeast Asia would not be tolerated.
The Chinese premier spat again and said that “no foreign navy” was welcome off the Chinese mainland. Which, the Russian ambassador replied, was precisely why Admiral Golchin had been given explicit orders to keep not only outside China’s twelve-mile territorial sea zone but beyond the two-hundred-mile extended economic zone as well.
The chairman spoke quickly to his interpreter and then began clearing his throat again.
“The chairman says that it is his understanding that Soviet aircraft are capable of flying more than two hundred miles from the Minsk.”
Guzenko fell silent for a moment. To answer yes might be interpreted as lending credence to the traditional Chinese mistrust of the Soviet Union. To answer no, however, would be absurd, for quite clearly the Chinese knew Soviet aircraft had a strike range well beyond two hundred miles. He remained silent.
The premier spat, then turned rather stiffly, the ambassador noticed, to his left to take the lid off his teacup, disturbing the antimacassar. The Russian followed suit; it was a pleasant, mellow-tasting Long Jing green tea from the hills of Hangzhou. A Chinese aide entered and spoke softly to the interpreter. The premier listened while offering the ambassador more tea. The Russian accepted. He had been in China for five years, and it was as if he had just arrived. You were never sure how to read the signs, but you always knew that beneath the surface current there was a subcurrent and beneath that a contrary current and beneath that… They thought themselves better than everyone else.
The premier was staring ahead, smoking, asking about the response East Germany had received, as Moscow’s proxy, to the call for an international Communist volunteer force to aid China’s “friend and ally,” the Democratic Republic of North Korea.
“It has been excellent, Comrade Chairman,” Guzenko replied truthfully. “In fact, we had to discourage the Cubans.” He smiled. “They wanted to send three regiments.” The premier nodded, seemingly approving both sides of the argument. “Your restraint,” he said wheezily, “is proper.” It was said in the tone of a headmaster addressing one of his junior staff. “There is no point in pulling the tiger by the tail.”
The Russian seemed pleased and he added jokingly, “Even if it is a paper tiger, Premier.” The chairman showed no emotion as he spoke, but his interpreter nodded sharply.
“Many mistakes,” began the interpreter, “have been made. The tiger has claws. And in the desert.”
The Russian turned to his own interpreter now, not knowing what to make of it. The Russian interpreter was also unsure of the chairman’s phrasing but hazarded a guess. “I think, Mr. Ambassador, the chairman is referring to our intervention in Afghanistan — the rebels backed by the Americans.”
The ambassador was sitting forward on the lounge chair looking distinctly uncomfortable, as if he had gas. “The chairman is quite correct. I think we have all learned our lesson about ‘adventurism.’ “
The Chinese interpreter wasn’t sure but informed the chairman this might be a reference to China’s Vietnamese war about the same time as the Russians were in Afghanistan.
“We are concerned,” the interpreter abruptly told Guzenko, “about the Kuomintang.”
“I am sure they will behave themselves,” said the Russian in the spirit of family members talking hopefully about a deviant relative.
“And if they do not?”
“Moscow’s position on this has long been clear,” answered the ambassador. “If the Taiwanese stick their nose in where it is not wanted, we would insist that they withdraw immediately.”
“What would you insist with, Comrade?”
Guzenko was surprised at the sudden shift. Why were they talking about a policy mutually agreed upon long ago by the two Communist giants? Taiwan was an “outlaw,” as much a nuisance to Washington as any wayward republic in the USSR, as Tibet was to the Chinese People’s Republic. There was only one way to deal with them.
“We would insist by force of arms,” said the Russian ambassador. It was the one thing the Russian could state unequivocally without any clearance from Moscow.
The chairman rose. “Then we can rely on you?”
“Certainly.”
“I wish to release this pledge of support publicly,” said the chairman.
“Yes,” Guzenko answered. There was no problem in this. Standard party policy. Taiwan had no legitimacy at all either here in Beijing, Moscow, or anywhere else. It had long been relegated to the backwater of history — ejected even by the UN years ago.
“Thank you,” said the chairman, nodding his head and extending his hand. The Russian struggled awkwardly from the lounge chair, making a mess of the lace antimacassar. “Will Beijing contribute to the volunteer force?” he asked quickly.
“We will see,” said the chairman through his interpreter.
Satisfied the Chinese didn’t suspect that Moscow had dispatched the Far Eastern Fleet to remind the Chinese who was boss in Northeast Asia, the Soviet ambassador nevertheless left the Great Hall of the People dissatisfied with the meeting. Everything had been going fairly well, he thought, until Taiwan.
The orange light on the Zil’s phone console was blinking relentlessly. “Yes?”
“Mr. Ambassador?” It was his military attaché, a bright young man but with a high, piercing voice that irritated the ambassador.
“Yes?”
“The Kuomintang navy with transports is entering the Taiwan Strait on the Chinese side.”
The ambassador issued an oath for which he used to be soundly whipped as a boy. “Their course?” he demanded.
“Looks like Weitou.”
The ambassador repeated the oath. Weitou was on the Chinese mainland at the mouth of the Jinlong Jiang and within the range of the two offshore islands of Jinmen and Xiamen, formerly called Quemoy and Amoy. Both islands were heavily fortified and belonged to Taiwan. The ambassador felt ill. Soon as word got out, and the chairman would make sure it did, that through its ambassador Moscow had promised military intervention should the KMT attack the People’s Republic, the Soviet Politburo would be furious. He thumped the armrest. Damn the Chinese! They must have known the KMT were in the Taiwan Strait as they were talking to him. A trap, and he’d fallen for it. But who would have thought Taipei would—
“And sir—?” came the military attaché’s piercing voice.
“Yes, yes,” snapped Guzenko. “Go on.”
“Ah — Mrs. Guzenko would like some Lucky Strikes.”
The ambassador slumped back into the plush leather. “Friendship Store,” he ordered the driver, who was beaming broadly — it was a chance to stock up on Western goods with foreigners’ exchange yuan.
The ambassador knew that no promise with China would be honored unless the USSR was directly threatened — Moscow had enough problems of her own. But if the Kuomintang attacked Quemoy or one of the other offshore islands and Moscow didn’t supply military support, the ambassador’s career would be over. The driver was beeping the horn constantly and the Chinese moved — when they were ready.