: He remembered standing in Tiananmen Square. The electric roar of the crowd as Mao proclaimed that the Chinese people had finally stood up. The end of centuries of foreign humiliation. Hope was a physical thing then, thick in the air.

: He remembered the frantic, exhausting energy of the Great Leap Forward. Villagers melting down their cooking pots in backyard furnaces to make steel. Then came the silence. The terrible, hollow silence of the famine years that followed.

The heavy curtains in the Beijing study were drawn tight against the biting autumn wind of 1976. On the massive mahogany desk sat a single porcelain cup of green tea, long gone cold.

Chen knew the struggle for the soul of the party was already beginning in the corridors outside. Men like Deng Xiaoping were waiting in the wings, eager to turn the country toward the outside world and repair the broken economy. The era of perpetual revolution was ending, and the era of pragmatism was about to begin. The Final Stroke

He did not write of absolute victory, nor did he write of absolute ruin. He simply recorded the dates, the titles, and the official mourning periods. The real story of the legacy, Chen realized, would not be written by clerks in quiet rooms. It would be written by the billion people outside, deciding which parts of the Chairman's shadow to keep, and which parts to finally step out of.

: He remembered the sea of Red Guards. Young boys and girls waving the Little Red Book, screaming slogans. Chen had hidden his ancient poetry books under the floorboards to save them from the flames of the Cultural Revolution. He had watched his own brother, a quiet schoolteacher, being dragged away to a re-education camp. The Unending Echo Chen opened his eyes. The room was deathly silent.

Old Chen, a veteran clerk of the Central Committee, stared at the blank sheet of paper before him. His brush, heavy with rich red ink, hovered in the air. Outside, the nation was holding its breath. The "Great Helmsman," Chairman Mao, was dead.