Chinese Puzzle

By DAVID AIKMAN

THE CONSPIRACY AND DEATH OF LIN BIAO

by Yao Ming-Le

Knopf; 231 pages; $13.95

Lin Biao was not merely China's Defense Minister, he was Mao's officially designated political heir. But in mid-September 1971, Lin suddenly disappeared. Peking first ignored the matter publicly, later claiming that Lin, his wife Ye Qun and his son Lin Liguo had died in an airplane crash in the Mongolian People's Republic. They had, the Chinese asserted, been fleeing to the Soviet Union when their British-built Trident ran out of fuel.

Gradually, more official details emerged. Lin had masterminded an assassination scheme against Mao. The plot involved an attempt to blow up a train in which the Chairman was returning to Peking from a trip to the south. But plans went awry, and Lin had fled in panic.

So much for the public account. Enter Yao Ming-Le, the mysterious author of this book's version of events. Drawing on an impressive familiarity with the intimate workings of China's armed forces and security services, Yao offers a tale of conspiracy and bungled planning: Lin never died in the plane crash in Mongolia. He and his wife were murdered on Mao's orders. The executions took place, in Yao's version, after a dinner of sea cucumbers and tiger's tendons at a secret military hideout reserved for China's top leaders outside Peking. Mao knew about Lin's plot almost from the beginning, and, with the help of Premier Chou Enlai, deliberately chose to kill Lin at the very spot Lin had selected for his own coup.

All very engrossing, but is it true? The reader is unfortunately told nothing about the pseudonymous Yao except that he is "a citizen of the People's Republic of China." Much of his account, moreover, rests on purported access to the memoirs of an official, top-secret investigator of the real events, who is also conveniently dead. The photographs in the book, taken from the official, secret Chinese investigation, are certainly authentic, but copies of them are also probably in the hands of half a dozen of the world's intelligence organizations.

Moreover, Yao's tale raises even more questions than it answers. Could Lin, one of China's greatest generals, really have been as reckless and incompetent, just at the point of starting the coup, as he appears in this book? What plausibility is there in the statement that Lin Liguo planned to blow up Mao's train, traveling at 70 m.p.h., with ground-to-ground missiles guided from more than 90 miles away? Even less credible is Yao's theory that the Trident, with Lin Liguo aboard, was hit by missiles while still in Chinese airspace and somehow managed to fly on for a hundred miles more or so before crashing.

In Peking, Chinese officials privately describe Yao's book as "silly." In the U.S., Chinese embassy officials have gone even further, denouncing the account as "more ridiculous than Hitler's diaries." Curiously, Peking's diplomatic community has shied away from discussions of the book even in private. But the credibility of conspiracy theories cuts two ways: until Peking produces a more satisfactory account of the affair than it has so far offered, accounts like Yao Ming-Le's will continue to draw speculators.

--By David Aikman This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.