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Nieh Ho-T’ing was normally perhaps the most self-contained man Liu Han knew. Today, though, he seemed as bouncy as a sixteen-year-old who imagined himself in love for the first time. “We have more weapons than we know what to do with,” he said jubilantly. “We have weapons from the Americans-thanks to you, Comrade.” He grinned at Liu Han. They weren’t lovers any more, but seeing that grin reminded her of why they had been.
“Thanks to the Americans, too, for trying till they got a ship-ment past the Japanese and the little scaly devils and their Chinese lackeys at the customs houses,” Liu Han said.
Nieh brushed that aside. His mind was on other things. “And we have weapons from our Socialist brethren in the Soviet Union,” he burbled. “Theirs got through, too”-which might have meant he’d been listening to her after all. “And with all these toys in our hands, we ought to find something worthwhile to do with them.”
“Something that will make the little scaly devils wish they’d never been hatched, you mean,” Liu Han said.
“Well, of course,” Nieh Ho-T’ing replied in some surprise. “What other worthwhile use for weapons is there?”
“The Kuomintang,” she said.
“They are a small enemy,” Nieh said with a scornful wave. “The scaly devils are the great enemy. So it was before the scaly devils came: the Japanese were the great enemy, the Kuomintang the small. They cannot destroy us. The scaly devils might, if they had the will and the skill.”
“Their will is considerable,” Liu Han said. “Never think too little of them.”
“They have not the dialectic, which means their will won’t endure,” Nieh said sharply. “And they have little in the way of skill.”
Liu Han could not disagree with that. Talking quietly over a couple of bowls of noodles in a neighborhood eatery on the west side of Peking, she and Nieh Ho-T’ing might have been deciding when to hold a party for a neighbor, not how best to visit death and destruction on the imperialist little devils. “What have you got in mind?” she asked.
He slurped up another mouthful of noodles with his chopsticks before answering, “The Forbidden City. I think we have a chance to take it, or at least to wreck it so the little scaly devils cannot use it any more.”
“Eee, wouldn’t that be something!” Liu Han exclaimed. “The Chinese Emperors kept the people out of it, and now the little devils do the same.” She’d seen some of the marvels at the heart of Peking when serving as an emissary to the little devils. Thinking of them in ruins hurt, but thinking of striking a blow against the little scaly devils made the hurt go away. She turned practical: “We should strike the little devils somewhere else first, so they will not be thinking about an assault on the Forbidden City.”
Nieh Ho-T’ing nodded respectfully. “That is part of the plan, yes. You see things the way a general would.” As he was a general himself, that was not the sort of compliment he gave lightly.
“Good.” Liu Han nodded, too. “Now, you have talked the Muslims into joining the first attack, the one that won’t go anywhere?”
This time, Nieh stopped with a load of noodles halfway to his mouth. “I’ve dealt with the Muslims of Peking every now and then-you know that,” he said slowly, and waited for Liu Han to nod. When she did, he went on, “Why would you want me-why would you want us-to involve them now?”
“Ah.” Liu Han smiled. She’d seen something he hadn’t-she’d seen something the rest of the Central Committee hadn’t. “Because the Muslims farther west are rebelling against the scaly devils. If we have an uprising here, why shouldn’t our Muslims get the blame, or part of it?”
Nieh stared at her. The noodles, forgotten on the chopsticks, dripped broth down onto the tabletop. After a moment, he shook his head and started to laugh. “Do you know what a terror you would have been if you’d stayed a peasant in a little village?” he said. “You would be running that village by now-no one would dare sell a duck, let alone a pig, without asking what you thought first. And if you had daughters-in-law… Eee, if you had daughters-in-law, they wouldn’t dare breathe without asking you first.”
Liu Han thought about it. After a moment, she laughed, too. “Maybe you’re right. That’s what mothers-in-law are for-making life miserable for daughters-in-law, I mean. Mine did. But it hasn’t got anything to do with anything now. Will you talk to the Muslims, or won’t you?”
“Oh, I will-you’ve convinced me,” Nieh said. “I wish I’d thought of it myself, as a matter of fact. It’s good to have you back in China.”
“It’s good to be back,” Liu Han said from the bottom of her heart. “If you know some of the things they eat in the United States… But never mind that. Why wasn’t I involved in planning the attack on the Forbidden City as soon as someone got the idea?”
Suddenly, Nieh Ho-T’ing looked uncomfortable. “Oh, you know how Mao is about these things,” he said at last.
“Ah.” Liu Han did indeed. “He thinks women are better in bed than at the council table. Hsia Shou-Tao thinks the same way. How much self-criticism has he had to give over the years because of it? Maybe Mao should criticize himself, too.”
“Maybe he should-but don’t hold your breath,” Nieh said. “Now you have shown you deserve to help plan the attack. Isn’t that enough?”
“It will do, for now.” Liu Han leaned forward. “Let’s talk.”
Theirs was not the only talk that went into the plan, of course. They met with leading officials from the Party and the People’s Liberation Army, hammering out what they wanted to do and also how to keep both the little scaly devils and the Kuomintang from getting wind of it before the attacks went on. Liu Han helped organize a disinformation campaign: not one that claimed there would be no attack, but one that said it was aimed at a different part of Peking a week later than the real assault would be launched.
Nieh Ho-T’ing went several times to the Muslim quarter in the southwestern part of the Chinese city of Peking. He came back from one trip laughing. “I met with a mutton merchant,” he told Liu Han. “Across the street, an ordinary Chinese has set up as a pig butcher. The fellow painted a tiger in the front window of his shop, to frighten the Muslim’s sheep. The Muslim put a mirror in front of his own place, to make the tiger turn on the pigs, which the Muslim cannot eat himself. I thought it was a good joke.”
“It is a good joke,” Liu Han agreed. “Now, will the Muslims make their diversion?”
“I think they will,” Nieh answered. “The scaly devils oppress them because Muslims cause so much trouble in the west-you had a good notion there. That pig butcher is an example of this oppression: pigs offend Muslims, but the little devils let him open his shop in that district even so.”
“If they are fools, they will pay for being fools,” Liu Han said. “A pity we have to give the Muslims weapons to help them rise up. The ones who live may end up turning some of those weapons against us.”
“It can’t be helped,” Nieh said.
“I suppose not,” Liu Han admitted. “I wish it could. But the Muslims are less dangerous to us than the Kuomintang, much less than the little scaly devils.”
The chosen day dawned clear and cold, with a strong wind blowing out of the west. The wind brought with it yellow dust from the Mongolian desert; a thin coating of dust got everywhere, including between Liu Han’s teeth. That gritty feeling in the mouth and in the eyes was part of living in Peking. Liu Han quickly got used to it again, though she hadn’t missed it when she and Liu Mei went to America.
She stayed in her roominghouse with her daughter, waiting for things to happen. In a way, she wished she were carrying an American tommy gun or a Russian PPSh submachine gun, but she wasn’t an ordinary soldier any more. She was of more use to the cause of popular revolution setting others in motion than moving herself.
Right at the appointed hour, gunfire broke out south of the roominghouse. “It begins,” Liu Mei said.
“Not yet, not for us,” Liu Han replied. “If the Muslims do not draw enough scaly dev
ils away from the Forbidden City, our fighters will sit on their hands and let the little devils crush this uprising. That will be hard on the Muslims, but it will save our men for another time when we can get better use from them.”
“We will give the Muslims to the Kuomintang if that happens,” Liu Mei said.
“Truth,” Liu Han answered in the scaly devils’ language. Returning to Chinese, she went on, “It cannot be helped, though. If we waste the substance of the People’s Liberation Army, we have nothing left.”
