China Hand, page 18
I braked hard as soon as we arrived at the canal, spotting steps leading to the footpath. “You go first,” I said to Lily, who hopped off and scampered down. I picked up the heavy bike and carried it with me, breathing hard. The beams of moonlight that had alternately helped and hindered us vanished as we stepped into the dark shadows under the bridge.
We dug out a flashlight and the map, which noted the safe house.
“You know the way?” I asked Lily.
“Give me a second.” She peered at the map.
“I want to get off this main road.”
She nodded, still studying the possible routes. “Okay, I know this area. Let’s get back on the road, then you’ll take the next left.”
The most direct route would have followed busy Chang’an Avenue, but Lily led us into a dimly-lit hutong, a traditional Beijing neighborhood with narrow roads and two- and three-story buildings with flat exteriors that extended almost to the pavement. Our zigzagging progress on these tight, roughly paved streets was slower but seemed safer.
I wanted to ask Lily so many questions—Are you scared? Happy to be going to America? Worried about your parents?—but all I could manage as I rode over a pothole that bounced me off my seat was, “You all right back there?”
She tightened her grip around my waist. “I’m okay.”
I pedaled on, north of the Palace Museum toward Dongzhimen and the Beijing Fight Club.
“Turn right at this one,” she said.
I did, but our circuitous path was now leading us near the American Embassy and the site of the protests. I gripped the handlebars tightly as the distinctive rumble of large troop transport trucks grew louder. They sounded just a few blocks away. So did the shouts of an angry crowd spewing ugly anti-American slogans.
I slowed down, unsure if we should go farther. Before I could speak, Lily jumped off and rubbed her bottom.
“This way seems risky. They’re so close we can hear them,” I said.
“The protestors?”
“The army trucks, too. If anyone looks closely, we’re in trouble.”
“You did bomb our embassy. People have a right to be angry.”
“Jesus, stop,” I said, louder than I should have. “I didn’t bomb anything. I’m here with you, trying to get you out of the country.” I lowered my voice. “Is there another way to get to that safe house without going past that mess over there?” I looked toward the sound of the chanting and saw red lights reflecting off low-hanging clouds.
To my relief, she dropped the embassy bombing debate. “We could go farther east, across the Second Ring Road,” one of Beijing’s most distinctive thoroughfares. “Then we could head south. We can’t avoid Jianguomen Wai, which is always busy, but there will still be fewer people than up ahead.”
“Do you think it’ll be barricaded?”
“I don’t know, but we should be able to see from a block away at least.”
Warily, I pedaled on. Lily was right—we spotted the well-lit thoroughfare from what I hoped was a safe distance. Soldiers were stationed every twenty or thirty feet along the sidewalk, but traffic was passing through without being stopped. If we’d had a car, we could have driven right through, too. On a bike, I had my doubts, which I shared with Lily.
She asked me to stop, climbed off, and looked me over closely. She reached for my face, flattening my dyed bangs before shaking her head. “You’re right, this isn’t going to work.”
I was relieved. The prospect of trying to cross a line of armed soldiers on a well-lit road horrified me, though I didn’t know what else we could do.
She did. “If we go a little farther, past Guomao,” where White and McInerney’s office was located, “it shouldn’t be so busy. It’ll take longer but—”
“That’s okay.”
As Lily predicted, we didn’t encounter soldiers and were finally able to veer west toward Qianmen. I was riding so intently, head down, that Lily startled me when she said, “There it is.”
The safe house. A six-floor walkup, like the Foreign Experts Building, but considerably older and more run down. After the challenge of getting there, it looked like a citadel to me.
We parked the bike among similar models on the street, then made our way up to the fourth floor, encountering no one.
I knocked eight times on apartment 412, then repeated after a soft voice asked who was there.
A small, wizened woman opened the door. You could tell at a glance that she’d lived through the Civil War, Mao, the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, Tiananmen Square, and now this. She studied me, then pulled me in with shockingly strong bony arms, snapping at Lily in Mandarin to close the door.
We dropped our backpacks in the entryway, drained by nerves and exertion. The woman led us to a small living room, where she chatted quietly with Lily. Then, as I settled on the couch, I remembered that I was supposed to call the number Tom had given me.
Lily looked over as I got back up and retrieved the mobile phone. I dialed the number and heard someone pick up. Then I waited out the ten seconds of silence to signal that we were in the safe house. The empty line felt haunting.
I hung up and looked at Lily.
“What’s next?” she asked.
“Sleep, I guess.” I called to the old woman, who was in the kitchen, “Where should we sleep?” I asked in Mandarin.
“No sleep.” She walked in with a tray. “Black tea. Stay awake. Wait.” She returned to the kitchen.
Lily fell asleep anyway, with her head on my shoulder as I sipped tea, wondering nervously what came next.
About fifteen minutes later there were eight knocks on the door. “Who’s there?” the old woman asked again without getting out of her chair. Another eight knocks. She pointed to the door, as much as saying, “Answer it.”
Lily blinked awake when I eased from her side and stood up. She sat forward on the couch, looking petrified.
I held my hand against the door as I unbolted it, prepared to slam it shut again if needed. I opened it just a crack and peeked out.
“How ya doin’, brother?”
I would have known that Carolina lilt anywhere. I threw open the door. “You?”
“The one and only,” Will said. “And I brought company.” He stepped aside so I could see the diminutive woman behind him.
“Mama!” Lily exclaimed as she ran up and hugged her mother. I could see her shoulders shaking as she began to cry.
I was surprised but not shocked that Will was involved. More than once I’d been tempted to fish around in our conversations to see if he’d bite. But then there had been other times, like that first movie night, when he’d seemed utterly clueless in calling Lily over to sit with us. All part of the performance, I guessed.
With his duffel bag in hand, Will herded the women into the apartment, where Lily re-introduced me to her mother.
She bowed her head slightly, then looked in my eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Callahan, for bringing me my daughter.” She sounded as formal as she had at the dinner for her husband back in the fall.
“It’s my honor,” I replied, wanting to say, You might want to save it till we get you two out of here.
“And you?” Lily said to Will.
“You just can’t get rid of me.”
“I’m glad.” She looked at me. “For both of you.”
“It’s one thirty,” Will said, glancing around. “That leaves us only a few more hours of mostly empty streets.”
“Aren’t we taking the train?” My schedule said the first train wasn’t until 7:00 a.m.
“Definitely not,” Will replied. “We can’t go to the station with this chaos. There’s a car downstairs. Shall we get moving?”
With General Jiang’s wife and daughter in our care, that wasn’t really a question—not with the threat of a bullet in the head or a noose around our necks.
CHAPTER 32
We bade goodbye to the old woman and followed Will down to the street, where he waved at a “bread loaf” car—a microvan—idling about fifty feet away. As the vehicle rolled slowly toward us, Will turned to me. “The driver’s an old friend of mine and one of your new ones.”
“Who?”
“Wu from the Fight Club. He’s driven for us before.”
Yet another of Will’s secrets. “You sure that’s a good idea? Does he know what we’re doing?”
“The only thing he knows is he needs to drive. He’s smart enough not to ask questions. We pay him good cash money, and he needs it to take care of his sick pop. Besides, he’s the only guy I could get on short notice with the city going haywire.”
So much for our perfect plan.
“You take the front seat, Mrs. Jiang—it’s more comfortable,” Will said, as bull-necked Wu jumped out and walked around the car to greet us.
“Andrew! I didn’t recognize you in that Chinese army jacket and those glasses!” He gave me a thumbs-up. “He beat me up the last time we boxed—that’s why it was the last time.” He laughed as we all piled in. Lily took a lone seat protruding from the side wall, while Will and I shared the rear bench.
“So where are we headed?” I asked Will as Wu walked around the front of the van.
“Shijiazhuang.”
“What? Tom said Yantai, and Shijiazhuang’s west.”
“Right, but all the roads heading east either have armed checkpoints or they will shortly.”
I leaned closer as Wu opened the driver’s door. “Two hundred miles in the wrong direction?”
“Right now, we just need to get the fuck out of Dodge.” He said to Wu. “Zou ba.” Let’s go.
As Wu put the rickety old vehicle in gear, Will turned back to me. “Shijiazhuang’s a transit hub—we can keep our options open from there.”
“He doesn’t seem to know who they are,” I whispered, glancing at Lily and her mom, both of whom were quietly gazing out the window.
“I doubt he does,” Will replied. “They don’t exactly travel in the same social circles.”
I mentioned Tom’s warning about the car radio.
“With Wu, the biggest danger is having to put up with Leon Lai on a loop,” Will said, referring to the Chinese pop singer.
“But don’t you think with everything going on, he’d at least want to turn on the news?”
“If he does, I’ll tell him he really doesn’t want to listen. Or I’ll pay him more.”
As we approached Jianguomen Wai from the south, I remembered Tom’s phone, which he’d said to ditch. I asked Wu to stop momentarily and tossed it down a storm drain. Climbing back into the car, I heard the roar of diesel engines, then saw a column of military vehicles pass in front of us, heading east toward the US Embassy. The lead car was an open-air jeep filled with soldiers, antennae sprouting from the hood, giving it an insectoid appearance. Canvas-covered troop transports followed closely behind. Through the open backs, I saw more soldiers with rifles. A pair of armored personnel carriers brought up the rear, making me worry about manned checkpoints.
Will and I exchanged looks. He appeared as uneasy as I felt. Lily grabbed her mom’s shoulder in reassurance.
“Shouldn’t we stay off Jianguomen Wai?” I asked as we turned onto it.
“It’s the fastest way onto the Second Ring Road and out of town,” Will said.
I could do nothing but trust his judgment. I lowered my voice. “So, how long have you been involved?”
“I can’t tell you everything, and it’s better you don’t know, but I’ve been part of this operation for over a year.” Then he whispered in my ear, “I couldn’t believe how well things worked out between you and Lily.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Keeping his eye on the road ahead, Will continued quietly, “A certain somebody asked me what I thought of you. I said—”
“What somebody? Ed Lee?”
Will smiled. “It’s on a ‘need to know’ basis. We keep information compartmentalized—just in case. But I can tell you that I said you seemed to have potential.” His devilish grin took over his face. “I guess you can blame me for nudging you along, and you can blame love for the rest.” He nodded at Lily, who was still vigilantly looking out the vehicle. “Why do you think I’ve been training you so hard? For barfights?” He glanced at Wu. “I needed to teach you to take care of yourself. That was an order from on high.”
“I gotta know something. Did Wu take a dive when he ended up on his knees in the ring? Was that part of my training, or was that legit?”
Will laughed. “Totally legit. He told me later he was getting too old to take on guys like you.”
“How did you manage to get Lily’s mother?”
“Yesterday, we had our regular dance class—”
“Dance class?”
“I’m her instructor. I had to put my skills to some good use. Last year, she started taking dancing lessons, so I applied for a part-time job and next thing you know, I’m guiding her around a ballroom.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. Unbelievable. “Another tile in the mosaic?”
“Exactly.” Will winked. “Anyway, yesterday, I showed her a letter from her husband that explained part of the plan, then I filled her in on the rest. She stared at it and said, ‘He’s really doing it.’ So she must have known something. More than I did until a couple of days ago.”
“Lily’s reaction was kind of like her mom’s.”
“Mrs. Jiang wanted to call her husband, but I told her it was too dangerous. So she went home right after class to get ready. I swung by with Wu about an hour before I met you at the safe house. That was the diciest part of this evening. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to drive away from there with her.”
“Have you—”
“Checkpoint!” Lily said sharply. It was three long blocks away.
“Turn right,” Will ordered.
Wu complied, but not without throwing a concerned look back at Will, who then directed, “Take the on-ramp from Beijing Station Road.”
No one said a word for several minutes, until we were safely on the 2nd Ring Road.
I nudged Will. “So now picking up Lily’s mom was the second diciest part of your evening?”
“Things certainly would’ve gotten interesting if we’d driven straight into that roadblock. I think it’s fair to assume, now, that they’re looking for these two.” His eyes were back on Lily and her mom, both of whom appeared fully alert. “Probably us, as well.”
We soon reached Changxindian, past the 5th Ring Road, and Will leaned back. “Should be smooth sailing from here.”
Lily, her mom, and I settled back, too. I felt like a deflated balloon. That image was my last thought before I nodded off.
I awoke, suddenly, to the sound of the radio—a news broadcast, no less, about 50,000 protestors who’d descended on the American Embassy in Beijing. It was light outside.
How long has that radio been on?
I looked at Will, Lily, and her mom, all still sleeping. At that moment—with the news blaring—I wished I could have said the same about Wu at the wheel, irrational as that was. The next bulletin might report the missing wife and daughter of the great General Jiang—along with two American instructors from the IAU.
“Could you please shut that off?” I asked Wu.
He replied by shaking his big round head. I noted his thick neck again, remembering how I might have to “take care of the problem,” as Tom had so delicately put it. But this was Wu, not some stranger.
“Big news. I must listen,” Wu said, interrupting my thoughts of choking the life out of him, which had been so vivid that I was appalled with myself. “You people bombed my embassy.”
Not that again.
“Will and I didn’t bomb your embassy,” I said.
“Americans are always bombing everyone—Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Serbia, and now China!”
“Wu, we’re friends, and I’m tired. We need to sleep. I promise I won’t bomb you. Please turn it off.” I slipped him a hundred renminbi note, which had the desired effect. Silence wasn’t golden—but it did have a price.
I soon passed out again.
I came back to consciousness about an hour later. We must be getting close. I saw two military transport trucks whiz by in the opposite lane—toward the capital.
Will stirred and looked out the window. “Shijiazhuang has a big army base.”
I closed my eyes and started laughing. This all felt like the worst possible joke.
“I know it’s not perfect,” Will admitted, “but we didn’t have much choice, with Beijing on the verge of lockdown and rumors of checkpoints on major roads to the coast. You do notice that all these trucks—”
Another military truck sped by, as though cued.
“—are leaving the base. Hold on.”
He reached forward and tapped Wu on the shoulder, asking him to turn on some music. “No news, just music.”
Wu nodded and turned on the radio. Cover for our conversation, which Wu undoubtedly understood. Lily and her mother were still asleep, resting their heads on their jackets, bunched up against the windows.
Will went on. “We should figure out our next move. Given this is a major train junction, we should have a lot of options.”
I reached into my pack and pulled out a train schedule along with my Lonely Planet. “Let’s see.”
Will and I studied the timetable. “We could either head south, farther into the center of China,” he started. “Or go back up through Dezhou or Beijing on our way to Yantai, where we could catch a ferry as planned.”
“Beijing? Are you kidding?”
“It would be relatively safe if we’re already on a train.”
That seemed like pushing our luck. I had no idea what Dezhou would be like.
“Why can’t we just fly?” I asked. “As long as we’re flying domestic, there shouldn’t be any customs agents, right? And they’d never expect us to be flying around within China. They’d be worried about the opposite.”
“Maybe,” Will replied, sounding uneasy at the prospect of air travel.
I found a spiderweb map of domestic flights in the Lonely Planet. “According to this, we could fly from Shijiazhuang to Dalian. That might work.” It was in northeast China and relatively close to South Korea.
