The Best of (14 page)

"All the same, I don't see—" George began again.

"It is not necessary for you to see. All you have to do is to deliver the plans and say how difficult they were to obtain. A really heavy expense account should prove most convincing.' "All right. But I have your word, Li, that these are the genuine thing?"

"You have." He handed across the little box of film and watched George put it away carefully in an inside pocket.

"This," said the latter, as he rose to go, "is one of the most remarkable things which has ever happened to me. I wish I could see what's behind it."

Pang Li smiled.

"While you were on this job, George, you have also heard a rumour which should be of some interest to the barbarian Japanese. It is that the Chinese are building some very longrange bombers. They hope to have at least a hundred ready by the end of the summer or the beginning of the autumn.' "Indeed. Capable of carrying out raids on Osaka or even Tokyo, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Li.

George extended his hand and wished his friend goodbye.

"I don't know what your scheme is, but I wish you luck. It is time the deadlock was broken."

"We shall break it," Pang Li said with conviction. "The stars in their courses fight for China."

It was midAugust 1965 when the untidy and still slightly bewildered Mr. George White reappeared in KweiChow. It was understood that in the six months of his absence he had covered HuPeh pretty thoroughly from the medical missionary angle and had selected several sites where a representative of the Charleston and Savannah Oriental Endeavour League might give valuable service. He had come to discuss their possible establishment with the military governor and the civil authorities.

Pang Li greeted him warmly.

"They tell me you are in high favour at Shanghai Military Headquarters," he observed.

"Thanks to you, Li," George grinned, "I have a reputation second practically to none there at present. I understand that I have been commended to the Emperor himself in dispatches, by number if not by name. Everyone was pretty keen to know how it was done, but I was subtly reticent about that, and hinted that the sources must be kept secret for future use. That tip about the new bombers helped, too. It was confirmed soon afterwards from other sources."

"I had an idea it would be," Pang Li said softly.

"All the same," George went on, "I'm hanged if I see what your game is. You got my message that they already had thousands of the generators under construction?' The Chinese nodded. He could have added that he knew that they were going to be put into use in the Japanese lines on the 22nd of August. The plan, he understood, was to use them in large numbers and disorganize the Chinese forces completely. The value of surprise was not to be thrown away as it had so often been before by inadequate supplies of a new weapon. But he did not mention it now. Pang Li seldom gave information without a purpose.

"And it doesn't worry you, Li? I still can't see what you are getting at."

The other spoke reflectively: "It takes a long silk and much patience to embroider a dragon," he said.

"All right, I suppose that is as polite a way of saying 'mind your own business' as any other."

"Can you give me figures of the production?" Pang Li asked.

George shook his head.

"I tried hard to get reliable figures, but those I got were wildly different. Guesses, I should say.

However, you can take it that it is on a pretty big scale."

"All types?"

"Yes. The small and the large. I understand that large ones are to be mounted and are already mounted outside the principal harbours as protection against submarines. The idea is either to drag them ashore or to immobilize them between two beams and shell them."

"And for aerial defence?"

"They are putting up immense generators at a distance from the cities. I gather that they see the danger that they might bring planes and bombs down on the generators themselves, so they have adopted a different principle. A very narrow, but intensely powerful beam is generated and is made to swing back and forth across the sky. It is far stronger than would be necessary to bring down any plane. The scheme in this case is that the beam passing over the machine will exert a sudden pull which will either wrench the engine and other metal parts free or break off the wings by the pull on the body. By the time it begins to fall the beam will have swung on so that the plane and bombs will drop vertically and not along the path of the beam.' Pang Li heard him out patiently.

"They are great imitators, like monkeys. They do not originate. That is the method designed by Ho Tanghsi."

"It sounds pretty good to me," George said. "With a few dozen of those sweeping the sky you'd not have a hope in hell of getting past, not even in the stratosphere."

"Not even well beyond the stratosphere, if they are using the power Ho Tanghsi advocated," Pang Li ammended placidly.

George scratched his head.

"Well, it beats me."

Half an hour later, as the Englishman was leaving, the Chinese suggested: "It is perhaps not wise for you to come here too often, but I should esteem it an honour if you would call and take tea with me at four o'clock on the afternoon of the 21st."

There was a note in his voice which caught George's attention, and told him that it was no casual invitation.

"I will come, Li," he assured him.

"Taking tea" it appeared was a euphemism, or at least a screen for when the delicatelyflavoured, strawcoloured drink had been finished George found himself following his host out of the house. A small yellow aeroplane with official ideographs on the underside of its wings waited in a field nearby. Its engine was already turning over. The two climbed aboard. The plane took off and turned to the west.

After less than an hour's flight they descended a few miles behind the lines and transferred to a waiting car. At a regimental headquarters, Li excused himself, leaving his friend for entertainment by the Chinese officers. Three hours elapsed and it was already dark before Pang Li returned with apologies for the delay. George noticed that he had exchanged his silk robe for a more practical khaki uniform.

"Perhaps I can, in part, make up for my neglect of you by showing you something of interest," he said.

A car with an official flag carried them towards the lines. Progress was slow on account of laden lorries going up and empties returning. The terminus for road travel lay in a wood. They got out and the car turned round and went back. In the dim light, George could make out several lorries unloading and their cargoes being transferred to the backs of donkeys and mules. In company with a string of the pack animals, he and Pang Li went forward on foot.

In temporarilyroofed sections of the support trenches were scenes of great activity. Cases were being broken open and their contents deftly handled. George stared at the operations with great bewilderment.

He watched a man take a long slim cylinder and attach across it at right angles a frame of split bamboo covered with cotton. A couple of flynuts, rapidly spun on, fastened it securely and he passed it on to the next man. Farther on, there were men attaching larger frameworks to heavier cylinders.

"What's it all about? Building model aeroplanes?" George asked, for the completed assemblies suggested nothing more than that.

"In a way, yes," said Pang Li. "But they are venomous little things. That, for instance," he pointed to one of the heavier type, "is filled with highexplosive."

"Oh, is it?" said George, eyeing the cylinder with increased respect. "And these?" he pointed to the lighter kind.

"Lewisite," said Pang Li.

"I see. I thought you disagreed with the use of gas?" he added.

"I do," Pang Li told him. "But then I also disagree with the use of war. We are a civilized people, we do not honour the military man, for us he is little better than a butcher. But unfortunately war is thrust upon us by barbarous militarists—the words are synonymous—and we must temporarily sink ourselves to their level for our defence. That applies also to the use of gas. It was foolish of them to use it. They did so, of course, under the impression that we had no factories which could produce it."

George bent down and tested the weight of one of the cylinders. He looked up.

"The wing area is very small for that," he said. "Besides, how are you going to drive them?" To himself he went further and characterized the devices as childish.

"We are not," said Pang Li gently. "They are." And he pointed towards the east.

They made their way up a communication trench where a chain of men were passing the completed winged cylinders from hand to hand. In the front line they encountered an officer directing the distribution. Pang Li stopped to exchange a few words with him and then led on. Against the parapet side of the trench the winged cylinders were upended in a row.

"There'd be a pretty sort of mess in here if a shell came over," George suggested.

Pang Li shrugged. "One must run risks, even in war," he observed.

They fed in a spacious dugout. A bunk was afterwards found for George and he turned in. An hour before dawn an orderly roused him and he hurried out to find Pang Li waiting.

The Chinese greeted him and they drank tea.

"For a man whose business in life is the gratification of curiosity, you have been very patient," Pang Li said with a smile. "I am now at liberty to end what for you must have been a most trying period."

"Somewhat baffling," George agreed. "For one thing I have not the least idea why I am here at all."

"It is because, my dear George, today the deadlock is to be broken, and you are in a great degree responsible for its breakage."

"Interesting, though hardly illuminating," George returned.

"Come. I will explain."

Pang Li led the way into the frontline trench. George noticed that the winged cylinders which had been so noticeable the night before had now vanished.

"Where are they?" he asked.

Pang Li pointed to the parapet.

"Over there. The Japanese barbarians plan to attack half an hour after dawn—that is 5.30," he said.

Their tactic is first to turn on magnetic beams all along the front. When this has disorganized us they will put up a barrage and advance behind it. Their men will be equipped with nonferrous weapons—a kind of short sword of hardened bronze, I am told—which they will be able to wield freely while the magnetic beam makes our steel weapons unmanageable. Thus they plan to break the deadlock at last."

"And I am responsible, so far as I helped them to get the plans of the beam generators?"

"Exactly."

"Now suppose you tell me what is really going to happen."

"No, I'll let you see that for yourself." He looked at his watch. "It is after five already. Time we were going."

As they left, noncommissioned officers were inspecting their men and giving orders. Helmets, rifles and all other articles of steel or iron were being placed on the parapet side of the duckboards which floored the trench. The men were laying them down obediently, but with a puzzled look on their faces.

Pang Li led the way by a series of twisting trenches to a wellmasked concrete pillbox. The frontal embrasure was clear, for the two machineguns had been dismounted and laid against the foot of the front wall. George, looking out, had his first comprehensive view of the scene. An early mist hung over the featureless noman'sland, still masking the Japanese lines. Closer, he could see the Chinese front trench. It had an odd appearance now.

A slightlyinclined bank had been thrown up beyond the parapet and along this on the inner side so that it must be invisible from the east was a narrow strip of greywhite running parallel with the trench as far as he could see. Until he turned fieldglasses on it he did not realize that it was made by the wings of thousands of the cylinders he had seen the night before. Through the glasses he could see, too, that the barbed wire beyond had been flattened down.

Pang Li looked at his watch. It was 5.20. Then he glanced up at the clouds, noticing their slow movement towards the other side with satisfaction.

"Light southwesterly wind," he murmured.

"You're in luck," George said.

"It prevails at this time. The chances were fifty to one that any wind there was would be southwest or west." Li told him.

The world seemed strangely quiet. Somewhere just behind them a lark rose with a song. An air of serenity held the scarred land in front.

"5.25," said Pang Li.

He took off his steel helmet and laid it carefully on the floor. Then he settled himself at the embrasure with George beside him.

"Now watch," he said. "In a few minutes our Trojan horse will give its first kick."

They looked out in a tense silence.

There was no warning. The whole thing happened at once. In the pillbox Pang Li's steel helmet slid across the floor, one of the dismounted machineguns twisted and thudded against the wall. George, scarcely daring to blink, was watching the greywhite line. It jerked suddenly and slid forward, the miniature planes scraped and then rose a few feet as they streaked forward.

For some moments they were to be seen like a swarm of great locusts on a raid then, with the long slender gas cylinders pulling ahead of the others, they were gone into the mist. Behind them the loosened wire turned over and began to roll to the east, a barbed and murderous moving hedge.

It was a matter of seconds, but seconds which hung suspended, while the watchers held their breath.

Abruptly the machinegun on the floor twisted again and thudded once more.

Then the peace of the new day was shattered. First came a few faint booms, then a roar of detonation which made the ground tremble and surged back in waves with crashing concussion out of the hanging mist.

A stir ran through the Chinese trenches. Men were picking up their helmets and rifles and fixing their gasmasks. Two minutes later they were over the top and running forward into noman'sland with bayonets ready. Behind, the Chinese artillery thundered into action.