The Concubine's Secret by Kate Furnivall Read Free Book Online

but one end of his intestines had slipped from his grasp and trailed behind him. It was unwinding as the young Communist pulled him free, yet the Nationalist captain didn’t scream.
    ‘You,’ Chang said again. ‘Stop that. You know the orders.’
    The young soldier nodded. He looked as if he would vomit.
    ‘Only those who can walk will travel with us. The rest…’
    In a slow, reluctant movement, while Chang stood over him, the young soldier slung the rifle off his back. Despite the ice in the air, sweat formed on his brow. He had the heavy features and broad hands of a farmer’s son, a peasant away from home for the first time in his life. And now this.
    Chang recalled his own first killing, seared into his soul.
    The soldier nestled the rifle to his shoulder exactly as he’d been taught, but his hands were shaking uncontrollably. The man on the ground didn’t beg, just closed his eyes and listened to the wind and to what he knew would be the last beats of his heart. Abruptly Chang drew his own pistol, leaned down to the captain, placed the muzzle at his temple and pulled the trigger. The body jerked. Chang bowed his head for a split second and commended the man’s spirit to his ancestors.
    Death. It seemed to stalk him.
     
    The train’s massive steam engine had bucked off the damaged track and plunged nose first down the bank, but just managed to stay upright. Behind it lurched the baggage wagon at an odd angle, but the only baggage it was carrying came in twenty long wooden boxes, four of which had splintered open in the crash. Chang’s heart raced at the sight of them. He leapt inside the wagon, feet braced against the buckled slope of the floor, and rested a hand possessively on one of the open boxes.
    ‘Luo,’ he called.
    Luo Wen-cai, the young commander of the small assault force, clambered up awkwardly after him. A slow-healing bullet wound in his thigh hampered his usual quick movements, but nothing hampered the grin that shot across his broad face.
    ‘Chang, my friend, what treasure you have found for us!’
    ‘Tokarev rifles,’ Chang murmured.
    This was even better than he’d expected. This haul would please Chou En-lai at Party Headquarters down south in Shanghai, and put rifles where they were needed – in the military training camps; in the fists of the eager young men who came to fight for the Communist cause. Chou En-lai would preen himself, and sharpen his tiger claws as if he’d hunted them down himself. This success would gain him even greater support from the mao-zi, the Hairy Ones.
    The mao-zi . The words stuck in Chang’s throat. They were the European Communists, the ones who held the purse strings of the Chinese Communist Party. They were represented by a German called Gerhart Eisler and a Pole known as Rylsky, but both were mere mouthpieces for Moscow. That’s where the funds sprang from and where the real power lay.
    Yet here was a train carrying troops and arms from Russia to Chiang Kai-shek’s overstretched Nationalist Army, who were sworn enemies of the Chinese Communists. It didn’t make sense, whichever way Chang turned it. Like a dog humping a goose, it wouldn’t fit together. He frowned, feeling a sudden unease, but nothing could dampen his companion’s delight.
    ‘Rifles,’ Luo crowed. He scooped one out of a box and ran a hand down its length, lovingly, the way he would a woman’s thigh. ‘Beautiful well-oiled little whores. Hundreds of them.’
    ‘This winter,’ Chang said with a grin for his friend, ‘the training camps in Hunan Province will be stocked as tight as rice in a tu-hao’s belly.’
    ‘Chou En-lai will be more than satisfied. It’ll do us no harm either to be the ones to bring him such a harvest.’
    Chang nodded, but his thoughts were chasing each other.
    ‘Chou En-lai is a genius,’ Luo added loyally. ‘He organises our Red Army with an inspired mind.’ He lifted the rifle and sighted down its barrel. ‘You’ve met him, haven’t you,