Sandalwood Death (32 page)

Guarding the work under way was a squad of German marines, a mere dozen men. The earsplitting shouts interrupted their breakfast, and bad news greeted the squad leader when he stepped outside to see what was happening. He rushed back inside and ordered his men to grab their rifles. By the time General Yue and his men were ten or fifteen meters from the shed, the armed Germans were already outside with their rifles.

General Yue saw puffs of white smoke emerge from several of the German rifles and heard the crack of gunfire. Someone screamed behind him, but he had the time neither to turn back to look nor to think. He envisioned himself as a piece of driftwood propelled by surging waves as he virtually flew into the German devils’ shed, in the center of which stood a large table with a pot of stewed pork and some shiny silverware. The meaty smell filled his nostrils. The top half of a German marine had made it under the table; his long legs had not. Zhu Bajie’s rake quickly made its mark on the man’s legs, producing a long and loud shriek. The words sounded like gibberish, but the meaning was clear—he was crying out for his mother and father. General Yue ran out of the shed to lead the pursuit of the fleeing German marines. Most were headed for the sub-grade of the tracks, trying to escape the mob of shouting men behind them.

One of the marines was running in the opposite direction. General Yue and Ai Hu went after him. The man did not seem to be running all-out, and the distance between them shrank rapidly. General Yue watched in fascination as the man stumbled along stiff-legged, as if he had sticks for legs. It was almost comical. Then, without warning, the German dove into a ditch, out of which a puff of green smoke rose almost immediately. An instant later, Ai Hu, who was running ahead of the General, jerked upward before tumbling headlong to the ground. At first he thought the youngster had gotten his legs tangled up, but only until he saw fresh blood seeping from a hole in his forehead. Ai Hu, he knew for certain, had been hit by a bullet from the German’s gun, and he was grief-stricken. He charged the enemy marine, swinging his club over his head, and was nearly brought down by a bullet that whizzed past his ear. But in no time he was upon the German, who came out to meet him, a bayonet attached to his rifle. One swing of his club knocked the rifle out of the man’s hands; with a fearful shout, he turned and ran down the ditch, with General Yue hot on his heels. The German’s high-topped boots slurped in the mud with every step, as if he were dragging mud buckets behind him. General Yue swung his club again, this time connecting with the nape of the man’s neck. A strange bleat burst from the man’s lips, whose body released a muttony odor, and the General’s immediate thought was that the man’s mother might have been a ewe.

The German tripped and fell, burying his face in the mud, and he no sooner realized what had happened than General Yue’s club had flattened his tall helmet. The General was about to keep clubbing him when he saw that the man’s blue eyes were like those of the lamb they’d sacrificed earlier—sad eyes, blinking pitifully, and the General’s wrist failed him. This time the club hit the German marine not on the head but on the shoulder.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Razor-tipped knife in hand, Zhao Jia stood in the center of the parade ground, a bowlegged young apprentice at his side, facing a tall pine post to which the failed assassin of Yuan Shikai was bound, awaiting execution by the slicing death of five hundred cuts. Arrayed behind him were dozens of high-ranking officers of the New Army, seated on fine horses, while behind the execution post, five thousand foot soldiers stood in tight formation, looking from a distance like a forest, and up close like marionettes. Dry early winter winds swept powdery alkaline dirt into the soldiers’ faces. All those gazes made Zhao Jia, who had carried out hundreds of executions, slightly nervous, and somewhat self-conscious. By force of will he suppressed these feelings, which could only have a negative impact on his work, and focused on the condemned man before him, refusing to look at either the mounted officers or the formation of soldiers.

Something his shifu, Grandma Yu, had told him was on his mind: A model executioner does not see a living being as he prepares to carry out his task. Before him is nothing but strips of muscle and flesh, discrete internal organs, and a skeleton. After forty years in the trade, Zhao Jia had attained that degree of perfection. But for some reason, on this day he was on edge. After plying his trade for decades, during which he had ended the lives of nearly a thousand people, before him now was the finest specimen of the male body he had ever seen: a proud nose and capacious mouth, slanting eyebrows and starry eyes, his naked body a scene of perfection, with chiseled chest muscles and a flat, taut abdomen, all covered with glossy bronze skin. What truly caught his attention, however, was the ubiquitous taunting smile on the face of the young man, who was returning Zhao Jia’s scrutiny. A sense of shame engulfed Zhao in much the same way that a misbehaving child cannot bear to look his father in the eye.

Three steel cannons stood on the edge of the parade ground, busily attended by a squad of a dozen soldiers. Three rapid explosions startled Zhao Jia and made his ears ring. For a moment that was all he could hear. The acrid smell of gunpowder nearly choked him. The condemned man nodded in the direction of the cannons, as if in praise of the artillerymen’s skill. Zhao Jia, who was badly shaken, saw flames spew from the mouths of the cannons, followed immediately by another series of explosions. He watched as the bright, golden-hued shell casings flew behind the big guns, so hot they seared the patches of grass they landed on, marked by puffs of white smoke. Then three more explosions, after which the artillerymen stepped behind their guns and stood at attention, a sign that the fusillade was over, although the echoes hung in the air.

“Present—arms!” came a shouted command.

Five thousand soldiers raised Steyr rifles over their heads, forming a forest of long guns, a vast expanse of glossy blue steel to the rear of the execution post. Zhao Jia stared tongue-tied at this demonstration of military might. He had observed many martial drills by the Imperial Guard during his years in the capital, but nothing he had seen could compare with what he was witnessing today. The effect on him was apprehension and a powerful sense of unease. His self-confidence was shaken, his self-possessed demeanor, which had never wavered on the capital’s marketplace execution ground, now gone.

The foot soldiers and mounted officials remained at respectful attention for the arrival of their commander, which was heralded by the blare of trumpets and a clash of cymbals. A palanquin, covered in dark green wool and carried by eight bearers, emerged from a path through a grove of white poplars like a multi-decked ship riding the waves, crossed the parade ground, and settled gently earthward in front of the execution post. A young recruit ran up with a stepping stool, which he placed on the ground before reaching up to pull back the curtain. Out stepped a hulking figure, a red-capped official with big ears, a square face, and a prominent moustache. Zhao Jia recognized him immediately, an acquaintance from twenty-three years earlier, when he was still the young scion of an official family; now he was Commander of the New Army, His Excellency Yuan Shikai, who, in a break from the usual protocol, had summoned him from the capital to Tianjin to carry out the execution.

Dressed in full uniform under a fox fur cape, he cut an impressive figure. With a wave to the military complement assembled on the parade ground, he sat in a chair draped with a tiger skin. The commanding officer of the mounted troops shouted:

“Parade rest—!”

The soldiers shouldered their rifles on command, sending a deafening shock wave across the field. A young officer with a ruddy complexion and yellowed teeth, a sheet of paper in his hand, bent low to whisper something in Excellency Yuan’s ear. With a frown, Yuan turned his head away, as if to avoid the young officer’s bad breath. But “yellow teeth” would not let the distance between his mouth and Yuan’s ear increase. Zhao Jia could not have known, and never would learn, that the dark, gaunt young man with the yellow teeth would one day be known throughout the land as the Imperial Restorationist General Zhang Xun. Zhao Jia actually felt sorry for Yuan Shikai, being subjected to the stench from Zhang Xun’s mouth. Once Zhang had finished what he had to say, Yuan Shikai nodded and straightened up in his chair, while Zhang Xun stood on a bench and read what was on the paper in a voice loud enough for all to hear:

“The condemned, twenty-eight-year-old Qian Xiongfei, known also as Pengju, is from the city of Yiyang in Hunan Province. In the twenty-first year of the Guangxu reign, Qian took up studies at a military school in Japan, where he cut off his queue and joined an outlaw gang of conspirators. Upon his return to China, he joined forces with the Kang Youwei–Liang Qichao rebel clique. Under instructions from Kang and Liang, he assumed the role of a loyalist and infiltrated the Imperial Guard, where he operated as a planted agent for the rebels. When the Wuxu rebels were executed in the capital, like the fox that mourns the death of the hare, the frenzied Qian made an attempt on the life of our commander on the eleventh day of the tenth month. Heaven interceded to spare the life of Excellency Yuan. The criminal Qian was thwarted from carrying out this sinister and unpardonable act. In accordance with the laws of the Great Qing Empire, anyone found guilty of an assassination attempt on a representative of the Court is to suffer the slicing death of five hundred cuts. The sentence, approved by the Board of Punishments, will be carried out by an executioner brought from the capital to Tianjin . . .”

Zhao Jia felt the eyes of the assembled witnesses on him. Sending an executioner from the capital to the provinces was unprecedented, not just during the Qing Dynasty, but throughout the country’s history. The enormity of his responsibility put him in a state approaching alarm.

Now that the death warrant had been read, Yuan Shikai removed his fox fur cape and stood up, his eyes sweeping the formation of five thousand soldiers before he began to speak. Blessed with powerful lungs, he began, his words ringing out with great sonority:

“Men, I have been a military commander for many years and love my troops as if you were my own sons. If a mosquito bites you, my heart aches. This you already know. The idea that Qian Xiongfei, whom I had regarded with such favor, could one day turn his deadly rage on his own commander was alien to me. This act came as not only a horrible shock, but an even greater disappointment.”

“Men,” Qian Xiongfei shouted from the execution post to which he was bound, “the treacherous Yuan Shikai has betrayed friends and allies in order to seek Imperial favor, crimes for which death is too good for him. Do not be taken in by his fine-sounding words!”

Zhang Xun, who saw Yuan Shikai’s face redden, ran up to the execution post and punched Qian Xiongfei in the face.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut and die with a little class!”

Qian spat a mouthful of bloody saliva in Zhang Xun’s face.

With a wave of his hand, Yuan Shikai stopped Zhang Xun, who was about to hit Qian a second time.

“Qian Xiongfei, you were a wizard with a gun and smarter than most people. That was why I gave you a pair of gold-handled pistols and granted you special responsibilities as a trusted confidant. My benevolence not only went unappreciated, but actually led you to make an attempt on my life. If that can be tolerated, what then cannot? Even though I nearly died at your hands, I grieve over the loss of your talent and cannot bear the thought of your punishment. But the law can show no favoritism, and military law is unimpeachable. I am powerless to save you from it.”

“If you’re going to kill me, do it, but spare me the sermon!”

“Now that things have reached this point, I can only take a lesson from Marquis Zhuge Liang, who ‘wept as he beheaded Ma Su.’”

“Excellency Yuan, drop the act!”

Yuan Shikai shook his head and sighed.

“Since you insist on being stubborn and stupid, there is nothing I can do for you.”

“I am prepared to die, and have been for some time. Do what you must, Excellency Yuan!”

“For you I have done everything humanity and duty call for. Tell me of your last wishes, and I shall see that they are carried out.”

“Excellency Yuan, though Qian Ding, the Gaomi County Magistrate, is my brother, I disavowed our kinship long ago. I ask that he not be implicated in my activities.”

“You may rest easy on that score.”

“I thank Your Excellency for that,” Qian said, “but that you would send someone to remove the bullets from my guns to ensure my defeat when victory was within reach was unimaginable. Pity, what a pity!”

“No one removed your bullets,” Yuan said with a laugh. “It was heaven’s intervention.”

“If heaven decided to spare the life of Yuan Shikai,” he said with a sigh, “then you win, Excellency.”

Yuan Shikai cleared his throat and declared:

“Men, your commander’s heart is breaking over the need to subject Qian Xiongfei to the slicing death, for he was once an officer with a bright future. I had great expectations for him, but he cast his lot with those rebelling against the Throne and committed a heinous, unpardonable act. It is not I who am putting him to death, nor the Throne. No, this is an act of suicide. I would have been willing to grant him a simple execution, keeping his body intact, but the national penal code is involved, and I dare not bend the law for one of my own. In my desire to allow him a dignified death, I made a point of asking the Board of Punishments to send us its finest executioner. Qian Xiongfei, that is my final gift to you, and I hope you calmly accept your punishment as an example for the soldiers of our New Army. Listen to me, men. You have been brought here to witness this execution in order, as the adage goes, to scare the monkeys by killing the chicken. It is my hope that you will take away with you a lesson learned on the body of Qian Xiongfei, one of fealty and good faith, caution and prudence, fidelity to the Throne and obedience to your superiors. If you act in accordance with my guidance, I can guarantee you a bright future.”