With Mao behind them, the student rebels were unleashed to move from their schools to the streets, and the house searches of those suspected of “bourgeois” tendencies began. When the Red Guards began breaking into private homes to question the occupants and search for evidence of their antipathy toward socialism, the tranquility of my life at Gongxian Lane was shattered.

From the beginning, the elitism of the country's health-care system was a major target of the Cultural Revolution, and the leaders of the Ministry of Public Health were under continual attack. Three of the vice-ministers lived in my compound. After the house searches began, both Red Guards and staff members of Jiang Qing's Central Cultural Revolution Small Group disguising themselves as Red Guards began invading my compound, hauling out the vice-ministers and searching their homes. I was not meant to be a target, but with so much chaos—adolescents on the march, false accusations flying, and everyone under suspicion—I lived in terror of being called out for interrogation. Lillian urged me not to come home but to seek refuge in Zhongnanhai. So long as I was with Mao, the students could not drag me out.

Mao agreed. He gave me a special assignment. He wanted me and head nurse Wu Xujun to read the reports that were pouring in from all over the country, screen them, and pass the most interesting or important articles on to him. With the burst of political activity everywhere in the country, a great surge of documents was coming in, too, and Mao's regular staff could not possibly read them all.

I enjoyed my new assignment. All sorts of new information was turning up, much of which had previously been secret. Even documents and minutes from the central authority were suddenly being published by student Red Guards, and so were the records of the struggle sessions against the leaders who were coming under attack.

Reading the reports kept me informed about the movement without having to be involved. Living at Zhongnanhai and rarely returning home, I managed, temporarily, to stay safe. I felt sad that the serenity and beauty of Gongxian Lane had been so rudely shattered but was grateful for the protection of Zhongnanhai.

Then even Zhongnanhai was no longer safe. Everyone who worked there came under suspicion. Even Zhou Enlai was a target, accused by Jiang Qing and her friends of being a turncoat. The evidence came from an independent newspaper, Shen Bao, published in the 1930s in Shanghai, which contained a signed article by a man named Wu Hao, Zhou's underground pseudonym at the time, announcing that he had left the Communist party. I was at the indoor swimming pool when Zhou came to discuss the problem with Mao, a library copy of the original newspaper under his arm. The article was a forgery by enemies in the Guomindang, Zhou said, pointing out that he had already left Shanghai at the time of the alleged announcement and could not possibly have written it himself. Mao himself never talked to me about the incident, although I know it bothered Zhou until he died. But Mao was satisfied with Zhou's report and furious about the irresponsible behavior of his wife's colleagues Wang Li and Guan Feng.

The case of Tian Jiaying was also unsettled. He had been liked and respected by many in Zhongnanhai, and they were both grieved and shaken by his suicide. But Tian Jiaying had been branded a traitor, and all of us who had been associated with him were therefore under suspicion. Zhou Enlai, still loyal to Mao and worried that other traitors lurked even within Zhongnanhai, fearful even that some among the staff might want to do away with the Chairman, ordered Wang Dongxing to increase security and undertake new investigations to ensure the reliability of us all. Wang put one of his subordinates from the General Office, a good and reasonable man named Yu Gang, in charge. The suspects were taken away to a “study class,” and the Zhongnanhai staff members were called upon to evaluate their own political conduct and to report on anyone who might have opposed Chairman Mao, the party, or socialism. Friends and colleagues of Tian Jiaying were particularly suspect.

Within weeks, I was accused by Tian Jiaying's widow, Dong Bian. As Tian Jiaying's wife, her own loyalty to Mao and the party was automatically suspect, and she was a member of the “study class.” She wanted to “draw a clear line of demarcation” between herself and her traitor of a husband, to demonstrate her loyalty to the party beyond any shadow of a doubt. Unless she could prove her loyalty, she would be forever branded the wife of a traitor. Accusing me was a way of redeeming herself and proving her devotion to the party.

Dong Bian was strong on logic but weak in evidence. She pointed out that Tian Jiaying and I had been good friends and that we often confided in each other. She had no concrete examples of my anti-party behavior, but if Tian was an anti-party element, then I, as his friend, must be too.

Another suspect, Tian Jiaying's secretary, Pang Xianzhi, also accused me, and he had real evidence. He reported on a conversation between me, Wang Dongxing, and Mao's former secretary Lin Ke one day in 1963, traveling on Mao's special train, when I had criticized Mao's policy of class struggle. I did not like his new “socialist education campaign,” Pang Xianzhi said, and he quoted me as having complained that “the Chairman does not want the people to have a single moment of peace. Just as we're starting to produce enough food to feed the people, he wants to stir things up again.” He also accused me of having impugned Mao's character, saying that the Chairman was a philanderer who took advantage of young women.

Pang Xianzhi had never heard me say such things. But his report was accurate. Lin Ke had reported the conversation to Tian Jiaying and Pang Xianzhi. In the witch-hunting atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution, my remarks were nothing short of counterrevolutionary. If Jiang Qing or her cronies in the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group were to find out, my arrest would be certain.

But Wang Dongxing protected me. He had no choice. Wang was already under scrutiny, his every action observed by rebels within the Central Bureau of Guards, and I was the first link in a chain that led directly to him. He had recommended me as Mao's personal physician, and if I should turn out to be a counterrevolutionary, then Wang would be a counterrevolutionary too. Moreover, Wang was present when I made my counterrevolutionary remarks, and he had not reported them, a sign that he agreed and another reason to label him counterrevolutionary. And if I were arrested and forced to confess to my crimes and report my conversations with the Chairman's staff, I would naturally implicate others. I could easily implicate Wang Dongxing. He, too, had made plenty of incriminating remarks, especially about the Chairman's private life.

Wang was cavalier. “At worst, we'll go to jail together,” he said. “In prison, we can eat and live for free, and we wouldn't have to work. What's there to be afraid of?”

But Wang's power over me was now great. The two letters of accusation were in his possession, and if he turned against me and released them to Jiang Qing or her allies, I would go to jail.

Wang could not burn the letters. He was too closely watched, and burning evidence was yet another sign that one had something to hide. He kept the letters in safekeeping in his own apartment and instructed Lin Ke, then at the New China News Agency, to keep my indiscretion secret. He ordered Yu Gang, who was directing the investigations within Zhongnanhai, to warn Pang Xianzhi to stop his accusations. When May 7 Cadre Schools were established in 1967 and millions of party cadres were exiled to hard labor in rural areas, Wang sent all the remaining suspects from the “study class,” including Pang Xianzhi, to Wang's native Jiangxi, where Wang and I both had our own experience in exile. Pang stayed for more than a decade, until 1978.

But only months after the accusations against me, the rebels in Wang Dongxing's own Central Bureau of Guards turned viciously against him. Posters, written by his subordinates, began appearing in Zhongnanhai saying that Wang Dongxing should be burned alive, roasted to death. The unit from which Mao's driver, Zhang Zhengji, had been drawn was particularly rebellious. Wang's house was no longer safe. The rebels might search it. He had to get rid of the documents.

Wang Dongxing took the accusatory letters to Zhou Enlai, the next link in the chain, and asked him to keep them safe. Zhou was nervous. Taking the letters was like holding burning coals in his hands, he said. He, too, was under suspicion, but he needed Wang Dongxing's protection and support. So he took the letters and locked them in his safe. They stayed there until Zhou's death in January 1976. Only then did Wang Dongxing retrieve and burn them.

The attacks against Wang Dongxing did not last for long. Mao stopped them. “The public-security system cannot be disrupted,” Mao told me. Mao gave the orders to Zhou Enlai, and Zhou, in turn, ordered that none of the people working closely around Mao were to participate in revolutionary rebel activities. Mao told his driver, Zhang Zhengji, to remember that Wang's position was sacrosanct and no harm was to come to the man charged with protecting the Chairman. “Tell others what I have told you,” Mao ordered. Mao's own safety was at stake, after all, and in the turmoil that he had unleashed Mao wanted to be sure that he would be protected.

Wang took the opportunity of Mao's directive to further consolidate his own power, launching a counterattack against the revolutionary rebels within the Central Bureau of Guards and sending them, too, to the May 7 Cadre School in Jiangxi. His organization must have been the only one in China both to survive the Cultural Revolution intact and to become stronger still. The party organization was such a shambles that even the politburo had ceased to function. Party leaders at every level were under attack. Many had been overthrown. Most were unable to function. The bureaucracy under the State Council, directed by Zhou Enlai, was also in chaos. With the politburo incapacitated, an ad hoc policy committee had to be formed. It consisted of the members of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group plus Premier Zhou Enlai, minister of public security Xie Fuzhi, Lin Biao's wife, Ye Qun, and Wang Dongxing.