The Defector

Clambering into a fishing boat in Communist Amoy one December night in 1957, Chang Chun-sheng, a lieutenant colonel in the Red Chinese army, pointed a Mauser at the crew and ordered them to sail him the ten choppy miles to Nationalist Quemoy. There Chang, 39, a Red soldier for 20 years, who had fought in Korea as a "volunteer" in 1951-52, got a hero's welcome befitting the highest-ranking Red officer ever to defect to the Nationalists.

The Nationalists gave Chang a special $2,000 reward, commissioned him a full colonel in their own army, made him deputy chief of staff of an antiaircraft artillery command. After all, Chang had left behind on the mainland his parents, wife and five-year-old son, and their fate was not likely to be pleasant. Any doubts the Nationalists may have had about Chang's sincerity were easily outweighed by the propaganda value of his defection.

For more than a year all went well with Chang in his new life. Then last February Chang failed to show up for duty after the Chinese New Year's celebrations. Last week word leaked out of Formosa that Colonel Chang had been unmasked as a double-agent passing secrets to the mainland. And after being told to kneel and bend his head, he had received a single bullet in the base of his skull--the classic punishment for traitors.

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