Last Princess of Manchuria Read online

  Last Princess of Manchuria

  Lilian Lee

  Prologue

  Peking. Late autumn. Ten muscular strangers appeared at the main gate of number 34, Tung-ssu Lane Nine, in the district of Pei Chih-tzu.

  All around was deathly silence. Even the men's breathing was soundless.

  The autumn wind blew sadly, insistently.

  Every trace of summer had long since vanished. Gone were the clamoring cicadas. Gone, too, were the Japanese invaders. They had all been scattered to the winds. Nothing remained— only the ghosts of the dead season's crickets, singing their mournful songs beneath the steps.

  In the dark night, the grand old mansion appeared all the more vast and imposing. It was like a dense forest, with its red pillars and doors and blue and green painted eaves. The past lay over the mansion like a heavy cloak, cutting it off from the outside world. Those who lived within its walls were sealed in a suffocating isolation.

  A high threshold supported two massive doors. These were painted red and fitted with golden rings. One of the men knocked on the door.

  They waited a long time. Finally, someone came. The door opened only a crack, but the men pushed their way in without a sound, pinning the old servant against the wall. Two of the men quickly chloroformed a pair of sleeping wolfhounds. Within moments, the "visitors" had the situation well in hand.

  The old servant could only gape, wide-eyed, .lot daring to make a sound. All at once, his legs gave way underneath him, and he collapsed to his knees.

  There were three entrances to the house. The ten-man squad hurried to the garden in back. Hearing the swift clip of fleeing footsteps, two of the men went off quickly in pursuit. No sooner had they raised their pistols than the man, a Japanese, surrendered, his head hanging dejectedly.

  One of the big men asked with his eyes, Where is she?

  The old servant silently led them to the back entrance and pointed to a room on the left. They all understood—the woman they had come for was inside.

  The members of this "Special Operations Team" were well aware of the dangers and difficulties of their mission. When they received their high-level orders, they had gone to work right away. They set up thorough surveillance and carefully laid their plans. They had learned all that there was to know about their quarry; by now each knew her as well as he knew the palm of own hand.

  They were all hungry for this task. Was it because of the mystery and legend that lay at its center?

  They had reached the final juncture. What if, at the last moment, something completely unexpected were to happen?

  What if they were to fail, just within sight of their goal? The men were confident in their training and abilities. Yet they were suddenly hit by a burst of uncertainty.

  A wind bearing the hint of impending rain from the hills blew through the building.

  One of the men gently pushed open the door to the room. Inside, everything was pitch-black.

  They traded glances. Then, as swift as lightning, four of them rushed to the corners of the room. In the feeble light that came from outside, they could barely make out, in the center of the room, an unusually large brass bed. A canopy of mosquito netting spilled down around it. The canopy was topped with red silk gauze and hung from golden hooks. There were vague and shadowy outlines on the bed. Was she on the bed? Was that her?

  They had heard so many stories about her—her exploits had shocked China and Japan. She was as beautiful and charming as an angel, but as cruel and poisonous as a witch. The men gripped their pistols tightly and broke into a cold sweat.

  Their leader stepped forward softly and parted the netting, while behind him one of the others flicked on the light switch. Suddenly, something round and fuzzy came hurtling out from behind the canopy, screeching loudly.

  The men had been so tense that they all gave a start. There was the crack of a gunshot.

  As the sound of the shot faded away, the furry thing bared its teeth in a miserable grimace and made an odd squealing noise.

  Lying there in a pool of blood was a little monkey. It twitched violently as it died. With half-open, almost human eyes, it glared at the uninvited guests.

  There was a slight shaking motion behind the netting. A woman cried out in shock:

  "Ah-fu!"

  She had called out as if she were dreaming. It had all been very quick, and the woman wasn't fully awake yet. The light pierced her tightly shut eyes. Half rising from the bed, she rubbed her eyes with a hand.

  "Who the hell are you?" she demanded. "What are you doing here?"

  The canopy parted a crack. A strange odor came welling out from the narrow opening. It was like a breath of poison, or the stench of an animal nursing a wound. It wasn't a human odor. Both rotten and raw, it was the smell of despair.

  The men all fought back the urge to vomit. Gathering their wits, they waited for their "hostess" to make her entrance.

  The first thing she presented was a hand. It had long, thin fingers and knobby bones. Through long neglect, it had taken on the greenish-yellow cast of a bird's claw. The crack in the gauze was opened a little wider, and half a face appeared.

  The face belonged to a woman in her forties.

  Thin and bony as kindling, with high cheekbones and short, unkempt hair, she looked haggard. She reminded them of a withered and crumpled flower. Had they found the wrong woman?

  All the men looked stunned. For a moment, they were completely at a loss.

  Was this really her?

  The leader of the "Special Operations Team" ventured uncertainly, "You are . . . ?"

  "Who are you looking for?" she countered.

  The leader glanced at one of his comrades, and the other three quietly withdrew. The one the leader had singled out came forward, pointed a pistol at the woman, and ordered:

  "Turn around, and take off your clothes!"

  The woman looked up. It was then that she saw that this "man" was in fact a woman. Raising her head, she peered intently at this other woman.

  She knew what this was for. Even if they didn't know her by her face, there was a feature on her body that she couldn't get rid of or hide. Her opponents had been thorough—in every way prepared to take her on. They even knew about the tiny red mole on her left breast!

  To think that they had the gall to send a woman disguised as a man! Ha! What were they trying to prove? Putting on this pathetic show for her benefit?

  Take off her clothes? Never!

  She had always had a clear purpose in mind when she bared her flesh. She had always had her reasons. Her petite, exquisite body; her graceful, enticing breasts, with that one minute red spot, like a teardrop the color of blood—it had such an inutterable power to fascinate. Men's admiring tongues had teased at it, tickling her. In the past.

  She wasn't about to bare herself only to be humiliated.

  There was no escaping, anyway. If she was to make the best of an awkward position, there was no point in dwelling on the past. She gritted her teeth, but it was the eyes in her tired and defeated face that gave the clearest account of her. Infinite dignity seemed to spring from them.

  "There is no need for further discussion," she said. "I am Commander Chin Pi-hui, Yoshiko Kawashima!"

  A black cloth sack was slipped over her proud head.

  All she saw was blackness.

  1

  Yoshiko Kawashima had once wielded great power; but those glorious days were just memories now. In her heyday, she had cut quite a figure. She had strutted proudly in the crisp uniform and leather boots of a military officer. She had dressed herself in brocade dresses and thick fur coats. But all of that was gone. At the time of her arrest, she was wearing nothing but a very thin, faded blue nightshirt.
r />   After the Japanese surrender, everything she owned had been confiscated, piece by piece. She could not believe that her protectors had been defeated until September of 1945, when she heard the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, declare the surrender. He had never spoken to his people before. With millions of others, she had listened to his dispirited announcement over the shortwave radio. It was then that she had realized that her days were numbered. Her sun had set.

  She had immediately thrown all of her important papers into the fire. One of the few things that she spared from the flames was a finely wrought jewelry box. Its contents were priceless. Every piece of jewelry inside it was dazzlingly beautiful. There were pearls, diamonds, agates, jade, amber, other precious stones, all magnificent. She took out one of the necklaces and held it under the lamp. It was shaped like a phoenix and set with some thousand diamonds that sparkled and danced in the lamplight. The wings seemed to quiver as though the phoenix were about to take flight.

  She also saved a photograph of herself, one that had formerly graced the front page of the newspaper. The photo showed a young woman with startlingly white skin and penetrating yet alluring eyes. She had been very beautiful. She had signed and dated this photo, as was her habit. Her writing was small and precise, with each character finely formed. The neat, controlled writing bore little resemblance to the woman who had written it. The inscription read:

  Yoshiko Kawashima, 1934.

  1934. The twenty-third year of the new Republic of China. Her beauty and powers had been at their peak, and the phoenix necklace she wore in the photo had been a perfect complement to her cheongsam, the traditional Chinese dress. The nation of Manchukuo had just been founded in Manchuria, her homeland, and she had been a part of it all.

  Now, once again, this picture would appear on the front page of the paper; but this time it was not such a glorious occasion for her.

  * * *

  In an old neighborhood of Peking, a paperboy was carting around a huge stack of special-edition newspapers.

  "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" he yelled over and over, at the top of his lungs. "Traitor on trial! Yoshiko Kawashima on trial tomorrow!"

  The front page article announced that the High Court of Hopei Province was set to open Yoshiko Kawashima's trial on the following day. There was also a list of the charges against her. Altogether, there were eight separate counts in the indictment; but they all amounted to the same thing: treason.

  The paperboy was very young. Carried on his shrill and excited cries, the news penetrated every lane and alley of the neighborhood. As he made his rounds, he trampled a Japanese flag that had been thrown to the ground. Those who saw this felt their anger toward their old enemy reignited. Several passersby went out of their way to spit on this fallen symbol. It seemed as though their hatred for their former invaders would never be quenched.

  A half-crazy middle-aged man came hobbling up. He was missing a leg and an eye, and he stumbled straight into the boy. Seeing what a pathetic state this old veteran was in, nobody could be angry with him.

  "Peace has come! We've won! We really sent those Japanese devils packing!" The madman laughed with bizarre delight.

  Schoolchildren had been given the day off, and everybody turned out to watch the parades. They lined the streets, waving little Chinese flags emblazoned with a white sun on a field of deep blue sky. Strings of firecrackers went off all around, and scraps of paper from the exploded fireworks lay thickly on the ground. A pile of these tatters had drifted over a discarded copy of the special-edition newspaper, burying Yoshiko's beautiful face.

  Yoshiko had been abandoned by her former protectors. She had become like the rest of the useless articles the Japanese had left behind in their flight. Kimonos, fans, jewelry boxes, fancy brocade sandals, and the elaborate wigs so popular with young Japanese women at the turn of the century were all that remained of the occupation. From Tung Tan to Pei Hsin-chiao, streetside stalls were piled high with such things. The vendors were selling them off at cut-rate prices, trying to get rid of them as fast as they could. Thus was marked the passing of an era.

  Chinese and American soldiers and steel-helmeted Chinese military police now stood where the bullying Japanese military police had once held sway. The day that the long-suffering people of China had yearned for had finally arrived. They had been liberated from a cruel occupation. They could enjoy a brief respite; although in truth their trials were far from over.

  In the lull that followed Japan's defeat, the sensational "Traitor's Trial" brought an air of festivity to China's capital. It had been a year since her arrest, and the people of Peking looked forward to the trial with eager anticipation, as though it were a festival like the Chinese New Year. At the same time, they had been under the Japanese boot for so long that they were still filled with hatred and anger. Anti-Japanese sentiments still ran high, and former collaborators were often savagely pelted with bricks and stones by irate citizens.

  Everybody was talking about Yoshiko:

  "I hear she's a real looker!"

  "Sure, but she also murdered lots of Chinese people!"

  "She's just a woman—and such a tiny thing, too. How could she possibly be as tough as they say?"

  "Let's get some more bricks!"

  "Down with traitors and collaborators!"

  The people's pent-up anger suddenly boiled over. But then, in the next instant, they were all whooping with joy. There, at the street corner, they had caught sight of a group of men doing the lion dance. It was just like a New Year's Day parade!

  The war was over, but life in Peking still hadn't settled down. Not a day went by without some disruption or civil unrest. Prices were soaring. Paper money was worthless. And as for the newly printed Nationalist currency, well, nobody in his right mind had any faith in that! The only thing that had any value anymore was silver dollars.

  Everybody had to struggle to keep afloat. And, as if their financial worries weren't bad enough, people kept hearing disturbing rumors that the Communists were about to march on Peking. The city was on edge.

  So why shouldn't the public indulge in a little rowdy diversion? The spectacle of a spy trial was the perfect escape.

  At 2:00 p.m. on the appointed day, some five thousand spectators crowded into the rear courtyard of the courthouse, which had been transformed into a temporary observation gallery. They had pushed their way in, hoping to catch a glimpse of the star of the show, the infamous Yoshiko Kawashima. The authorities were unable to maintain order, and everything in the courtyard was trampled, while many windows were smashed.

  The authorities had arranged this drama with the intention of making it a cautionary tale. They were to make an example of the defendant, an example that would awe the public into submission. But the plan backfired, as the excited crowd quickly got out of control. Amid much commotion and scuffling in the audience, a recess was announced. The court had been in session for less than thirty minutes.

  The din grew into an even louder uproar as the crowd roared its disappointment. They had come all this way just to get a peek at the beautiful and notorious Yoshiko. But now they were being packed off, and the great doors of the courthouse were being shut in their faces. Some hurled bricks at the courthouse out of frustration before quickly running away.

  Eventually, the crowd broke up and everybody went home. Everybody, that is, but the star of the show. She was escorted to her new "home"—Municipal Prison Number One.

  Three days later, the trial officially began.

  On the first day, Yoshiko Kawashima appeared in court wearing a white sweater and green Western-style trousers. Her short hair was combed, but she was as thin and bony as she had been at her arrest. She had spent an agonizingly long year in custody, being carted from detention center to detention center. Now, at last, she had been brought to the defendant's box.

  The magistrate gravely read out the charges against her:

  "You are charged with the crime of treason against China. More specifically, you are
charged with having aided and abetted Japan on Chinese soil, having collaborated with Japan, and having betrayed the interests of your native land. These are all treasonable acts of the basest sort.

  "If you are found guilty of the crime of treason, you shall be punished either by death or by life imprisonment, in accordance with the punishments set down by the legislature."

  Yoshiko listened to the magistrate's pronouncements with a dismissive air. Really, he hardly merited her attention at all. She waited until he had finished reading the charges. Then, without warning, she poked her face right into his. He was visibly startled.

  "Your Honor," she said coolly, "may I have a cigarette?"

  The judge nodded his assent, and the bailiff handed her a cigarette. Yoshiko placed it in her mouth and fixed her eye on the judge, waiting. Somewhat reluctantly, he gave her a light.