Mao: The Unknown Story

AT THE TIME Mao and his entourage went to bed, the Lins were getting ready to decamp. Tiger had reached Beidaihe about 9:00 PM, and went over plans with his parents. The staff were told that the Lins were leaving at 6:00 AM for Dalian, a nearby port city, which was an old haunt of Lin’s, so this did not arouse suspicion. Then, fatally, Tiger asked his sister Dodo to be ready to leave in the morning.

Two years older than Tiger, Dodo was a very brainwashed young woman. Her parents had not wanted to let her in on their escape plans, in case she might turn them in. But Tiger was worried about what might happen to his sister after they fled, and had disclosed part of the plans to her a few days before. As their parents had foreseen, she got scared. Unlike her brother, Dodo was a product of the fear and twisted logic of Mao’s China. For her, attempting to flee abroad was defection, and therefore treason, even though she knew that her sick father, whom she loved, was not likely to survive long in prison under Mao. When Tiger told her they were leaving the following morning, she reported the news to the Praetorian Guards who were stationed in a separate building at the bottom of the drive. This action doomed her family.

The Guards phoned Chou En-lai, and he began to check on the movements of planes, particularly the Trident, which was Lin’s plane. Tiger’s friends immediately let him know that Chou was asking questions, and Lin Biao decided to leave at once rather than wait till morning. He also decided to fly not to Canton, but to their fallback destination, Russia, via Outer Mongolia, as this route would mean much less time in Chinese airspace, just over an hour.

Tiger rang his friends about the change of route, and phoned the captain of the Trident to get the plane ready. Unaware that Chou’s enquiry had been triggered by his sister’s betrayal, Tiger told Dodo they were taking off right away. She went straight back to the Praetorian Guards and stayed at their post.

Around 11:50 PM, Lin Biao, Mme Lin and Tiger, plus a friend of Tiger’s, sped off for the airport, accompanied by Lin’s butler. As the car raced out of the estate, the Praetorian Guards tried to stop it. At this point Lin’s butler surmised that they were going to flee the country. Thinking of the fate that awaited his family if he became a defector, he shouted “Stop the car!” and jumped out. Gunshots followed, one hitting his arm. The shot came from Tiger, the butler said; some suggest that it was self-inflicted, to protect himself.

The Praetorian Guards set off in hot pursuit, in several vehicles. About half an hour later the Lins’ car screeched to a halt beside the Trident at Shanhaiguan airport, with one pursuing jeep only 200 meters behind. Mrs. Lin hit the tarmac screaming that Lin was in danger, shouting: “We are leaving!” Tiger had a pistol in his hand. The group clambered frantically up the small ladder to the pilot’s cabin.

The Trident took off in a rush at 12:32 AM, carrying the three Lins, plus Tiger’s friend and Lin’s driver. Out of the full nine-man crew, only four, the captain and three mechanics, had had time to get on board. The mechanics had just readied the plane for departure, and were only beginning to refuel it when the Lins arrived and Mrs. Lin yelled for the fuel tanker to be moved away. As a result, the plane had only 12.5 tons of fuel on board, enough for between two and three hours in the air, depending on altitude and speed.

They had to fly low for most of the time to dodge radar, and this used up more fuel. Two hours later, over the Mongolian grassland, they would have had only about 2.5 tons of fuel left — at which point the fuel gauge would have been flashing for some time. At 2:30 AM on 13 September 1971, the plane crash-landed in a flat basin and exploded on impact, killing all nine people on board.

A HEAVILY SEDATED Mao had been woken up by Chou soon after Lin’s plane took off. Mao stayed in his bedroom, which was one of the former changing-rooms of the swimming pool in Zhongnanhai. The nearest telephone was in a room at the other end of the 50-meter pool. When the people monitoring Lin’s plane rang, the head of the Guard, Wang Dong-xing (whom Mao had forgiven for supporting Lin at Lushan a year before), would rush to the phone, then back to Mao, then to the phone again. The plane did not cross the border into Mongolia until 1:50 AM, so Mao had about an hour to act.