Chapter 21 Four, broken halberd sinks into the sand

The ancient capital in early autumn is refreshing and pleasant. Zhou Enlai, who was "sitting in charge" in Beijing, was still leading the preparations for the Fourth National People's Congress in an orderly manner as usual.Since September 6, he has hosted discussions on the draft of the "Government Work Report" in the Great Hall of the People every day. On the 10th, after personally revising the draft report, Zhou Enlai sent a letter to Mao Zedong, telling him that the first draft had been written, and it was planned that starting from the 11th, several members of the Politburo would be determined to improve it and submit it for review within 10 days.The letter also asked for instructions on holding the Third Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee before the National Day and by-election of several members of the Central Committee.After reading it, Mao Zedong commented: "All agree. There will be by-elections for the Standing Committee."

Obviously, Mao Zedong had already considered the personnel adjustment of the central government. The picturesque land in the south of the Yangtze River exudes a murderous aura. At noon on the 10th, Mao Zedong, who was on tour in the south and was already alert to Lin Biao and his gang, ordered a special train to go to Shanghai.Immediately afterwards, the special train departed from Shanghai to the north and headed straight to Beijing without stopping. On the afternoon of the 12th, the special train arrived in Beijing.Mao Zedong, who was tired from the journey, returned to Zhongnanhai to rest.When Wang Dongxing reported the news of Mao Zedong's return to Beijing to Zhou Enlai, due to the sudden incident, Zhou Enlai asked Wang in puzzlement: "Why did you come back so quietly, even I didn't know? Why didn't you stop on the road? That's not the plan!" Wang Dongxing later made a detailed report to Zhou Enlai.

Mao Zedong's safe return to Beijing completely bankrupted the murder plan of Lin Liguo and others, and disrupted the deployment of Lin Biao's gang of counter-revolutionary coups.For this reason, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo in Beidaihe urgently planned to flee south to Guangzhou in an attempt to establish another central government and split the country.According to this plan, they arranged several planes to fly to Guangzhou. One of them, No. 256 "Trident", was Lin Biao's special plane, which was secretly transferred to Shanhaiguan Airport on the evening of the 12th for the use of Lin Biao's family.

That night, Zhou Enlai presided over the discussion of the draft "Government Work Report" in the Great Hall of the People as usual. In the brightly lit Fujian Hall of the Great Hall of the People, the glass windows around were closed tightly and dark curtains were drawn.Next to the windows facing east towards the square, there is a row of rectangular conference tables covered with white tablecloths.With his back turned towards the square, Zhou Enlai was engrossed in the discussion at the venue.At this time, people from all walks of life in the capital who were rehearsing for the National Day parade in Tiananmen Square had not yet dispersed, and the music played by the tweeters could be faintly heard.

At about 22:00, the staff asked Zhou Enlai to answer the phone.About half an hour later, Zhou Enlai returned to the venue, and the discussion continued.After a while, Zhou Enlai went out to answer the phone again. This time, he didn't come back for a long time. The first call Zhou Enlai answered was from Wang Dongxing.Wang reported: The Central Security Force stationed in Beidaihe learned that Lin Biao and others planned to leave Beidaihe, and their whereabouts were unknown.This is based on the report of Lin Liheng, the daughter of Lin Biao.Zhou Enlai immediately instructed the guards to continue to observe and report at any time.

From the second phone call, Zhou Enlai learned that a special plane was waiting at Shanhaiguan Airport, which caught his attention.He immediately called Wu Faxian who participated in the discussion on the draft of the "Government Work Report" and asked him to immediately find out the situation of the Shanhaiguan plane. Zhou Enlai was in a room in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People, dealing with questions from Beidaihe.At this time, the meeting in the Fujian Hall has actually been suspended.Judging from Zhou Enlai's hasty steps and unusually serious expression, the participants in the discussion all faintly felt that an "urgent major event" had occurred.

After confirming that there was indeed a special plane at Shanhaiguan Airport, Zhou Enlai called Ye Qun himself to inquire about the situation of the plane, and proposed to go to Beidaihe to meet Lin Biao in person.It was already 23:30 in the middle of the night. Ye Qun, with a guilty conscience, was perfunctory about the matter of the plane, and at the same time tried his best to prevent Zhou Enlai from coming to Beidaihe.Because Zhou Enlai tracked down the plane that stopped at Shanhaiguan through several channels, Lin Biao and his gang felt that the conspiracy had been exposed and that the plan to flee south to Guangzhou would be difficult to realize, so they made a desperate decision to betray the country in the north.

At 23:40, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Lin Liguo, Liu Peifeng and others got into a "Red Flag" high-end bulletproof car in a panic, rushed past the guards to stop them, and drove to Shanhaiguan Airport at a speed of more than 100 kilometers per hour.After arriving at the airport, Lin Biao and his gang boarded the plane in a hurry, and when the co-pilot, navigator, and radio operator were not on board, they ordered the plane to take off in total darkness. At this time, it was 0:32 on September 13. Zhou Enlai received the report shortly after the "Trident" took off.Prior to this, he tried to prevent the plane from taking off by ordering that Zhou Enlai, Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, and Li Zuopeng "four people must give orders together to fly".But it failed because Li Zuopeng deliberately tampered with the order.

The intention of Lin Biao and others to take the opportunity to leave suddenly is still unknown for the time being.For this reason, Zhou Enlai ordered Li Desheng to sit at the Air Force Headquarters to monitor the movement of the aircraft; sent Yang Dezhong to accompany Wu Faxian to the western suburbs airport, and sent Ji Dengkui to the Beijing Air Force Headquarters to grasp the situation from all aspects.Subsequently, he issued a no-air order to the whole country: all airports were closed, all aircraft were grounded, and all radars were activated to monitor the sky.Zhou Enlai also asked the dispatcher to call aircraft 256 by radio, asking Lin Biao and others to fly back, and told: "No matter where the plane lands, I, Zhou Enlai, will pick it up at the airport." But Lin Biao's plane did not answer.

Li Desheng, who was at the Air Force Command, kept reporting the position, altitude, and direction of Lin Biao's plane to Zhou Enlai through a dedicated telephone line.When the plane flew over the border between China and Mongolia, Li Desheng asked Zhou Enlai for instructions on how to deal with it.Zhou Enlai told Li: Chairman Mao had been consulted, and the chairman said, "It's going to rain, mother is going to get married, let him go!" At 1:50 in the morning, Lin Biao's plane flew over the border between China and Mongolia.The betrayal of the party and the country by this group of conspirators was finally exposed.

The only vice-chairman of the CCP, Mao Zedong's "close comrade-in-arms and successor" has defected! ——What an incredible thing.However, it is actually happening in front of your eyes after all. The betrayal of Lin Biao and others made Zhou Enlai furious.He pressed the microphone in his hand hard, and angrily burst out two words: "Traitor!" Faced with such a thrilling and major change, Zhou Enlai was very clear about his responsibilities.With the support of Mao Zedong, he resolutely took on the important task of leading the whole party and the whole army to fight against the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary clique. First, according to Mao Zedong's instructions, Zhou Enlai convened an emergency meeting of members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in Beijing in the Great Hall of the People to announce Lin Biao's defection and study and deploy contingency measures for various situations. Immediately afterwards, from the early morning of the 13th to the afternoon of the same day, Zhou Enlai personally called the main responsible persons of 11 major military regions and 29 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions to report Lin Biao's escape.On the phone, he used special words that he had considered, and made things clear and subtle: "The person who spoke first at the first plenary session of the Lushan Conference fled to Mongolia by plane with his wife and son. The direction of the People's Republic is going! You must obey the command of the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao. From now on, immediately enter emergency preparations. …” At the same time, Zhou Enlai also sent Li Xiannian and Hua Guofeng to the Jingxi Hotel, the Navy Command and the General Logistics Department respectively to take charge of the work, so as to grasp and report the situation at any time. In particular, he instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pay close attention to foreign news reports, and promptly study and put forward the necessary countermeasures for foreign negotiations caused by the Lin Biao incident. Zhou Enlai also worked with other members of the Politburo and the head of the General Staff to formulate and issue emergency combat readiness instructions for the entire army, and made arrangements for the deployment of troops in the Beijing area, military control of airports in the suburbs of Beijing, and mobile force arrangements. On the morning of the 13th, under the direct command of Zhou Enlai, the Air Force of the Beijing area forced to land a helicopter hijacked by Lin Biao’s henchmen Zhou Yuchi and Yu Xinye in Huairou County on the outskirts of Beijing. Finding out Lin Biao's counter-revolutionary coup plan provided extremely important clues. By the afternoon of September 14, Zhou Enlai had worked continuously for more than 50 hours in the Great Hall of the People after all the necessary work was deployed.Zhou Enlai, who was extremely exhausted, had just rested for a while, when he received an urgent report from the Chinese Embassy in the People's Republic of Mongolia, from which he learned the exact news that Lin Biao and his gang had crashed and died. The unusual excitement drove away Zhou Enlai's sleepiness.He said repeatedly: "I fell to my death! I fell to my death!" After finishing speaking, he immediately reported the news to Mao Zedong in person. Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Lin Liguo and others were indeed dead.When the No. 256 plane flew to Undur Khan in Mongolia, due to insufficient fuel, the plane made an emergency landing, and then the fuselage caught fire, and all the people on board fell out and burned to death. On September 24, with the approval of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai presided over a meeting in the Fujian Hall of the Great Hall of the People and announced that Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo, who had been refusing to confess their problems for 10 days, would be quarantined for inspection.Around this time, key members of Lin Liguo's "United Fleet" in various places were also arrested and brought to justice. Soon, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's "Notice on Lin Biao's Treason and Fleeing" was conveyed to the whole party and the whole country step by step, officially announcing: "Lin Biao fled in a hurry on September 13, 1971. The "September 13th" incident was like a bolt from the blue, which shocked China and the world. The Lin Biao Group conspired to seize supreme power and instigated a counter-revolutionary armed coup, which was the result of the "Cultural Revolution" overthrowing a series of basic principles of the party, and objectively declared the failure of the theory and practice of the "Cultural Revolution".After the Lin Biao incident, Zhou Enlai presided over the daily work of the Party Central Committee with the support of Mao Zedong.In the process of exposing and criticizing the crimes of Lin Biao and his gang, Zhou Enlai proposed and led the struggle to criticize the ultra-left ideological trend, which made a turning point in the work of the party and the country in all aspects.