Soon, such a scene would become unthinkable. It was a cold morning in early March 1946, a rocky airstrip laid along a broad, barren valley in China’s northwest, lined by mountains of tawny dust blown from the Gobi Desert. Six months earlier, one war, a world war, had ended. Six months later, a new war, a cold war, would be under way. Yet here stood General George C. Marshall and Chairman Mao Zedong, two of the great antagonists in the war to come, in intent conversation. Each wore the uniform of his army: the crisp khaki of a fivestar general, the plain tunic of a revolutionary. On this morning, they spoke of friendship and peace.