This incident was a huge blow to me. All along, we were well aware of the dangers of exploration activities. Although we always appeared relaxed, when it came to critical issues, all of us were very vigilant. Unfortunately, our long-standing habit was to look after ourselves and never considered others. This time, we failed to realize that those engineering soldiers had no geological exploration experience. Aside from their physical fitness, these young soldiers were just like ordinary people in every other aspect. You could say, it was our negligence that got this young soldier killed.

This feeling was extremely hard to bear, because it was the truth—there was no escaping it. I kept thinking, if I had brought him here, would I have warned him about anything? Probably not. We were all very skilled in our profession, but in other areas, we were truly lax. No wonder Charles Bennett either. The more I thought about it, the more guilty I felt.

That night, we carried the body back to camp and laid him in a sleeping bag. The body couldn’t be transported back, but the mission still had to be completed, so we could only deal with it when we returned. The deputy squad leader told us to rest early, but how could we calm down? No one slept a wink that night.

The next day, it didn’t really matter whether it was morning or evening. We each got up, packed our things, saluted the fallen soldier’s body, and continued on.

In 1962, the country was above all else. At that time, we never even considered going back to rest and then returning. All we thought about was completing the mission. If a modern exploration mission encountered something like this, it would definitely have been canceled.

We had lunch under the waterfall. There were very few body bags left here. The rocks ahead were a bit smaller and closer together, making it easier to walk. At that time, Edward Foster also suggested he wanted to scout ahead, but we stopped him—not for any particular reason, just a sense that it wasn’t right.

After lunch, there was a twenty-minute break. During this time, something happened that struck me as very abrupt: I reached into my pocket for a cigarette and felt a crumpled piece of paper. I was surprised—there hadn’t been anything like that in my pocket before. When I unfolded it, I saw it was a piece torn from a labor protection notebook, with a few words written on it: Be careful of Charles Bennett!

11. The Note

I didn’t know who had slipped this note to me. I looked at the others, but none of them seemed to notice me.

I glanced at Charles Bennett again. He was cleaning his gun. After the young soldier’s death, Charles Bennett had been carrying that gun. I hadn’t paid attention at first, but now, looking at it, it suddenly felt a bit jarring.

Things suddenly got a bit unpleasant. Back then, the country was in a tough spot—the first year of the three-year natural disaster, and the Kuomintang was clamoring about retaking the mainland. I figured the strict confidentiality measures this time were largely because of that.

But the clamor went both ways. In those years, “Kuomintang spy” had become a sensitive term on the mainland. Talking about it now sounds like something out of a second-rate spy drama, but at the time, catching American and Kuomintang spies was nothing new. The national security bureau caught them, the militia, the communes—everyone was catching them. At the drop of a hat, someone would shout about catching American and Kuomintang spies. Edward Foster summed it up well later: to put it nicely, it was national security awareness deeply rooted in people’s hearts; to put it bluntly, in 1962, the country was waging class struggle, cultural entertainment was monotonous, there were no more dances, and people amused themselves by catching a couple of spies.

So we were sensitive back then. This kind of sensitivity was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the Kuomintang’s espionage activities in China were indeed chaotic; on the other, it led to many wrongful cases, some of which started over trivial matters, with absurd reasons.

After seeing that note, my first thought was that someone here was being overly sensitive. There were plenty of people like that back then—all conspiracy theorists, overthinking everything. Maybe they thought Charles Bennett was a spy, and that the young soldier hadn’t fallen by accident, but had been pushed by Charles Bennett?

So who the hell slipped me that note? I was baffled. Edward Foster didn’t seem like that kind of person, and neither did the other soldiers. But then there was Ethan Brooks, who was huddled in the corner, completely deflated—he really seemed like the type. After the incident, he hadn’t said a word. I figured it was because he’d previously suggested we keep moving forward, which might have prompted Charles Bennett to scout ahead, leading to the accident. So maybe he was afraid we’d blame him, and decided to just shrink into the background and say nothing.

I didn’t think much of it. I knew Charles Bennett’s background—we were even alumni. I was a year ahead of him, both from the same department at China University of Geosciences. He was always eloquent about school matters—how could he possibly be an enemy agent? At the time, I just felt Ethan Brooks was useless, and I was starting to look down on him. So I tossed the note into the fire and smoked my cigarette.

It was just a minor episode, and I soon forgot about it. We set off again and by that evening had covered nearly another kilometer. By then, there were no body bags left. Because we hadn’t slept well the night before, we fell asleep without even eating dinner, and it wasn’t even five in the afternoon yet.

When we woke up, it was only ten at night. We’d slept so deeply that now we couldn’t fall back asleep. I saw one of the soldiers still standing guard for us, and I felt embarrassed, so I told him to rest, but he refused.

I didn’t insist. I’d been in the regular army myself and understood how they felt. I was also starving, so I cooked something for myself. The smell of food woke up Edward Foster and the others, who hadn’t eaten dinner.