On 19 August, a Russian plane left for Yenan to collect Wang Ming, and An-ying was supposed to be on it. But that day he was called in to see Dimitrov. When the plane arrived in Yenan, there was no An-ying on board. This was Moscow saying to Mao that it wanted Wang Ming first before releasing his son.
But Mao held on to Wang Ming. Vladimirov recorded: “doctors were … told to say Wang Ming … couldn’t stand the strain of the flight … [The] crew kept delaying the flight as long as they could, but [Mao] got his way.”
Another Soviet plane came on 20 October and stayed four days, before leaving with some Russian intelligence men — but again not Wang Ming. “On seeing [Dr Orlov],” Vladimirov recorded, “Wang Ming burst into tears … he is … still unable to walk … [his] friends have abandoned him … He is all alone in the full sense of the word …” It was two years now since his health crisis had begun, and a good nineteen months since the start of the poisoning. In those long and agonizing days, his wife looked after him devotedly, presenting a strong calm face to him. But occasionally she would lock the door and try to release her anguish. Her son told us that as a young boy he once caught her rolling and kicking on the earthen floor, muffling her sobbing and screaming with a towel. The son was too young to comprehend, but the traumatic scene was etched into his memory.
In Yenan, Dr. Y said, “many people knew that Wang Ming had been poisoned by mercury, and that someone was trying to murder him … Word got around.” And not only among senior officials, but also among ordinary Party members who had connections to medical staff. So many people suspected the truth that Mao felt he had to flush out the undercurrent of suspicion and kill it off. That meant getting the Wang Mings to make a public denial.
On 1 November, a week after the second Russian plane had left, Mao convened a large meeting for senior officials. He himself sat on the platform. Wang Ming was kept away. The star witness was a veteran commander who was trotted out, from detention, to say that over a year before, Mrs. Wang Ming had told him her husband was being poisoned — and had strongly hinted that Mao was responsible. Mrs. Wang Ming then made a vehement denial onstage. On 15 November she wrote to Mao and the Politburo, vowing that she and her husband had not even harbored such a thought, and felt nothing but gratitude to Mao. The poisoning case was formally closed.
MAO HAD DEFIED Stalin’s will to an astonishing degree, as Moscow would not send a plane all the way to Yenan for nothing. Furthermore, strange things happened to the Russians in Yenan around now. Their radio station was wrecked, apparently sabotaged. Their dogs, which they had brought to provide security and an alarm system — as well as protection against wolves — were shot. Mao dared to do all this because he knew he was the victor, and that Stalin needed him and was committed to him. It was during this same period that Stalin told the Americans, on 30 October 1943, he would eventually enter the war against Japan. Russian arms supplies to Mao were greatly stepped up.
When Dimitrov cabled Mao again on 17 November about getting Wang Ming to Russia, Mao did not respond. And when Dimitrov wrote to Wang Ming on 13 December it was in an unmistakably sad tone. After saying that Wang Ming’s daughter, whom the Dimitrovs had adopted, was well, Dimitrov went on resignedly: “As regards your Party matters, try to settle them yourselves. It is not expedient to intervene from here for now.”
But Stalin clearly decided that Mao should be served a warning. Shortly afterwards, on 22 December, he authorized Dimitrov to send a most unusual telegram, in which he told Mao:
Needless to say, after the disbanding of the Comintern, its leaders … can no longer intervene in the internal affairs of the CCP. But … I cannot help offering a few words about my worries caused by the situation in the CCP … I think the policy of curtailing the struggle against the foreign occupiers is politically wrong, and the current action to depart from the national united front is also wrong …
Saying that he had “suspicions” about Mao’s intelligence chief, Kang Sheng, whom he described as “helping the enemy,” Dimitrov told Mao that “the campaign conducted to incriminate” Wang Ming (and Chou En-lai) was “wrong.”
Dimitrov opened the telegram with a very pointed passage about An-ying:
Regarding your son. I have arranged for him to be enrolled in the Military-Political Academy … He is a talented young man, so I have no doubt that you will find in him a reliable and good assistant. He sends his regards.
Dimitrov did not say a word about An-ying’s long-overdue return to China. And mentioning him in one breath with Wang Ming was the clearest possible way of saying to Mao that his own son was a hostage, just as Chiang Kai-shek’s had been.
