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Wang Dongxing made an urgent phone call to Zhou Enlai.
Zhou left his meeting at the Great Hall of the People and went immediately to Zhongnanhai, arriving around eleven. Mao had not been told. I was there when Zhou broke the news and listened as he delivered the report.
Zhou Enlai told Mao that Lin's daughter, Lin Doudou, had phoned Zhang Hong in Beidaihe to say that her mother, Ye Qun, and her brother, Lin Liguo, had kidnapped Lin Biao and forced him into a limousine. Ye Qun, in the meantime, had called Zhou directly to say that Lin Biao needed a plane but that none was available. Zhou knew that an air force Trident was parked at the Shanhaiguan airport just outside Beidaihe, at the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, and suspected that Ye Qun's call was a ruse to cover up their impending flight. The situation was critical.
Mao's face collapsed when Zhou Enlai told him that Lin Biao had fled. But he quickly regained his composure and listened silently, his face now impassive as Zhou continued to talk. If Mao feared for his own safety, he never let it show.
Zhou suggested that Mao move immediately to the Great Hall of the People. Lin Biao's intentions were still unclear, but he had many military supporters in Beijing. If they were planning a coup, an armed attack might be imminent. The Great Hall of the People was safer and easier to protect.
Wang Dongxing arranged for a car to take Mao and Zhou to the Great Hall of the People, and he ordered an extra battalion of soldiers from the Central Garrison Corps to stand watch there, dispersing them throughout the massive building as sentries and mobile patrols. The entire 8341 Corps was called to active duty, and all contact with the outside was shut off.
Mao and his personal entourage—Zhang Yufeng, head nurse Wu Xujun, his personal attendant Zhou Fuming, his personal secretary Xu Yefu, and I—arrived in Room 118 shortly before midnight. Wang Dongxing and Zhang Yaoci set up a command post in the adjacent room. I went back and forth between the two places as Wang Dongxing waited for the reports coming in from Beidaihe. Zhou Enlai stayed with Mao, who passed the time reading a Chinese history book, joined by the female attendants of Room 118.
At about twelve-fifty in the morning of September 13, 1971, less than an hour after we had arrived, deputy commander Zhang Hong called. Zhang and his aides had pursued Lin Biao's Red Flag limousine to the Shanhaiguan airport. They had opened fire on the armored limousine, but to no effect. The back window was bulletproof. On the way, the limousine had halted briefly, and Lin Biao's secretary, Li Wenpu, was shoved to the ground and fired upon by someone inside the limousine. Li Wenpu was later sent to the 305 Hospital with a bullet wound in his right arm, but Wang Dongxing ordered him isolated and later moved him to an unknown place.
The limousine carrying Lin Biao was too fast for their military jeep. Zhang's forces arrived at the airport just as the plane was taxiing down the runway.
Zhou Enlai suggested to Mao that they order a missile attack against the plane.
Mao refused. “Rain will fall from the skies. Widows will remarry. What can we do? Lin Biao wants to flee. Let him. Don't shoot,” he said.
We waited.
There was no need to shoot. We soon learned that the plane had taken off in such haste that it had not been properly fueled. Carrying at most one ton of gasoline, the plane could not go far. Moreover, the plane had struck a fuel truck taking off, and the right landing gear had fallen off. The plane would have difficulty landing. And there was no co-pilot, navigator, or radio operator on board.
Chinese radar was tracking the plane's route, and reports on its location continued to come in to Wang Dongxing and Zhou Enlai. It was heading northwest, in the direction of the Soviet Union. Later, the official documents describing Lin's flight said that Lin's original intention was to fly south to Guangzhou to set up a separate government there. I never heard that on the morning of September 13.
At about 2:00 A.M., word came that Lin Biao's plane had left China and entered Outer Mongolian airspace. The plane had disappeared from Chinese radar. Zhou Enlai reported this to Mao.
“So we've got one more traitor,” Mao said, “just like Zhang Guotao and Wang Ming.”
The next big news came that afternoon, when Zhou Enlai received a message from Xu Wenyi, the Chinese ambassador to Outer Mongolia. A Chinese aircraft with nine persons on board—one woman and eight men—had crashed in the Undur Khan area of Outer Mongolia. Everyone on board had been killed.
Three days later, on September 16, the ambassador informed Zhou Enlai that dental records had positively identified Lin Biao as one of the dead. “That's what you get for running away,” Mao said when he received the news.
Wang Dongxing was ecstatic over Lin Biao's death. “Si de hao, si de hao,” he kept repeating. “It's good that they're dead. Otherwise there would have been trouble.”
Zhou Enlai was also pleased. “It's best that it ended this way,” he said to me. “A major problem has been settled.”
Zhou Enlai was in charge of the investigation that followed. With the revelations of Lin's conspiracy, those who had once been close to him maneuvered to distance themselves from their relationship. No one wanted to be accused of having sided with Lin Biao or been part of his plot.
Zhou Enlai had been closer to Lin than he wanted now to admit. Scrupulous about organizational hierarchy, Zhou had continued reporting directly to Lin Biao even as the strains between Mao and Lin had grown, and on matters that Mao had specifically asked to be kept secret. I knew this from my own experience. In 1970, Mao had asked me to organize some medical research into a cure for the bronchitis that was still his major health problem. Implementation of the proposal required Zhou's cooperation, but Mao did not want Lin to know. In fact, he did not want Lin to know anything about his health. He still thought that his earlier bout with pneumonia had been some sort of plot by Lin Biao and was convinced that Lin wanted him dead. He was afraid Lin Biao would try to poison him. Mao ordered me to tell Zhou not to mention the project to Lin.
When I explained this to Zhou, emphasizing how wary Mao was of Lin Biao, Zhou hesitated at first. But he agreed.
Barely a week later, Ye Qun called me, inquiring about the Chairman's health and assuring me that her husband welcomed a major nationwide research project on a cure for bronchitis. Zhou Enlai was the only person I had told, and he had obviously talked.
I went immediately to confront him. My own loyalty to Mao was at stake. If the Chairman found out that Ye Qun knew of the project, he would accuse me of telling Lin Biao and his wife.
“Yes, I reported the matter to Vice-Chairman Lin,” Zhou said. “You know, everyone here belongs to an organization and works under the supervision of a superior. Vice-Chairman Lin is my superior. How could I not report this to him?”
The night of September 12, as we were waiting in the Great Hall of the People, Zhou came to me privately, claiming that he had never told Lin Biao about Mao's health. “I was alert enough not to do that,” he said. It was a warning to me that when the investigations began, I was not to mention the incident to Mao. If I did and Zhou Enlai were challenged, it would be Zhou's word against mine. I would surely lose.
But if Zhou Enlai had gone out of his way to report to Lin Biao on such a trivial matter, what other secrets of Mao's had he revealed to Lin? Wang Dongxing made certain that Mao never knew. Wang and the 8341 Corps were responsible for searching Lin Biao's residence in Maojiawan after his death. They found many photographs of Zhou Enlai and his wife, Deng Yingchao, with Lin Biao and Ye Qun. The photographs could be used by Zhou's enemies to criticize him for his relationship with Lin. Wang personally delivered the pictures and other potentially damaging documents to Zhou's wife, who remained forever in his debt.
Wang also found many pictures of Jiang Qing with Lin Biao and his wife. He handed them over directly to Jiang Qing, who ordered them burned. No one was admitting to having had close relations with the man who had become a traitor.
Mao stayed hidden in the Great Hall of the People for more than a week, protected by Wang Dongxing's forces. Zhou and Wang wanted to make certain that the potential military coup had been quashed and all of Lin Biao's closest associates were arrested before Mao returned to Zhongnanhai. That Lin Biao had been part of a conspiracy against Mao was clear. The content and extent of the plot were not.
The Lin Biao affair came to be known as the 9–13 incident, after the date in September when he died, and months went by before Zhou's investigation was complete. According to the report, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and their son, Lin Liguo, had begun planning a coup as early as March 1971, calling it the “5–7–1 project.” In Chinese, “armed uprising” is pronounced the same as “5–7–1.” Their goal was to apprehend, and possibly to assassinate, Mao and to seize power themselves.
The Chairman had long been suspicious of Lin Biao, and he had been warned of a conspiracy. He thought Lin wanted him dead and was afraid he might try to poison him. But I do not think Mao ever believed that Lin Biao might be plotting to assassinate him and seize power himself.
Mao's trip south to meet with regional political and military leaders was part of his political strategy, intended to solidify his own position and to gain regional support. According to the official report, Mao's talks with the military commanders were a signal to Lin that time was running out and served as the final catalyst to his plans. The talks were supposed to be secret, but the political commissar of the Wuhan Military Region, Liu Feng, had leaked their contents to the political commissar of the navy, Li Zuopeng, a leading supporter of Lin's. Li Zuopeng in turn had alerted chief of the general staff Huang Yongsheng, another of Lin's close associates. Huang Yongsheng reported the content of Mao's August talks to Lin Biao and Ye Qun, then summering in Beidaihe. They immediately began plotting Mao's assassination.
They had several plans. The air force's Fifth Armed Forces Corps could bomb Mao's special train. Commander Wang Weiguo of the air force's Fourth Armed Forces Corps could shoot Mao. Or they could blow up the oil storage facilities near the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai, where Mao's special train was expected to stop. Finally, there was a plan to plant a bomb under a railroad bridge in Shuofang, near Suzhou, and set it off just as Mao's train crossed the bridge.
I do not know whether the report detailing Lin Biao's conspiracy was accurate. Zhou Enlai, after all, had a personal stake in the outcome. I can only say what I saw when I was with Mao when the first reports came in and during the time we spent in the Great Hall of the People thereafter.
I do know that assassinating Mao was never going to be easy. Wang Dongxing and his security personnel had seen to that. So had Mao. His plans were always secret, and changed so quickly and often that even his closest security personnel were kept off guard. Lin Biao's plans never stood a chance. When Mao returned safely to Beijing, Lin Biao knew that he had lost his war with Mao. He had to take flight. He knew the fate of others whose challenges to Mao had been less direct. I did not know then—but surely Lin Biao did—that Liu Shaoqi had died in prison, from physical abuse, illness, and medical neglect. So had many other former high-ranking leaders. Lin Biao's own death, once his plot against Mao had failed, was certain. In the end, Lin Biao ran out of time.
Lin Doudou's report that Lin Biao had been kidnapped was false. Doudou was so devoted to her father that in her eyes he could do no wrong, but her relationship with Ye Qun was so strained that she was convinced Ye was not her natural mother. The victim of her own self-delusions, Lin Doudou convinced herself that her father had been kidnapped. She could not admit that he had plotted a coup and was fleeing.
In late 1971, when the Lin Biao affair was made public, the whole country was shocked. People within the highest reaches of the party were stunned. I was. I had known of Mao's reservations about the man everyone called the Chairman's closest comrade in arms and had been aware of an intense struggle between the two men since the Lushan conference in 1970, when Lin maneuvered to try to have himself declared chairman of the republic. The Cultural Revolution was vicious and vindictive, and many people had died. But nothing had prepared me for the extent of Lin Biao's perfidy or the drama of his final flight. Friends asked me later if I had feared for my life in August and September 1971 as I traveled with Mao while Lin was plotting his death. They wondered what it was like hiding with him in the Great Hall of the People, waiting until Lin Biao was dead and the arrests had been made. I was never afraid. I did not know enough to be afraid. I was aware only of power struggles, not of attempts against Mao's life.