China Hand, page 20
My eyes settled on the stewardess, Will’s on the Ferrari, until the Jiangs made it to the elevator.
We got our rooms without incident, despite the unflinching stare of the receptionist, Miss Zhang. She’s just not accustomed to seeing Westerners here, I tried to tell myself, before suggesting to Will that I could go buy our train tickets before the Public Security Bureau widened its search and posted our faces in interior cities like Shenyang.
“Good idea.”
After calling the hotel operator and tracking down Lily and her mother for their passports, I hiked over to the massive train station. The ticket booths were on the third floor. Four escalators marched side by side up from the broad lobby, but only one was working. I rode it while gazing at the glass roof, which revealed only Shenyang’s dismal gray sky.
I walked to the closest booth and asked for four tickets. The sales agent’s eyes widened when he saw me. Or was that my nerves? He glanced to his left.
My eyes followed his to the wall nearest him. I swore furiously to myself. Our four faces jumped out at me from a board full of black-and-white headshots. My dyed hair wouldn’t have fooled anyone, surely not the sales agent, whose gaze shifted from the wall to me as though to further verify my identity. Beside each photo was our name and physical description. Under Will’s and my photos, large, black letters all but blared:
WANTED!
It was written in English and Mandarin, and accompanied by the Chinese characters “通缉令”, order for arrest, and “Reward: RMB100,000.”
Oh fuck….
“I need all four passports.” The agent tapped the counter with his index finger. “Do you understand?”
Did I ever. I imagined him pressing an emergency call button, like bank tellers use on bandits.
“I’m so sorry. I only have mine. I’ll be right back.”
By the time I began to retreat from the booth, two other sales agents were also gaping at me.
I felt dizzy from fright, like I’d just taken a knockout punch and was melting onto the mat, down for a ten-count. The ref was staring at me, like those sales agents. Like the whole goddamn country now.
Ten…nine…eight…
CHAPTER 35
Reeling, I fixated on the nearest escalator, resisting the impulse to race away. The ticket agent must have recognized me. He could have been watching a ping-pong championship the way his eyes bounced back and forth between that poster and me.
Our pictures must be everywhere.
I had no idea how we could survive this exposure. I headed for the exit as calmly as I could, then broke into a jog the instant I stepped outside. Head down, I entered the Postal Hotel, passing the front desk and Miss Zhang, who looked as severe as a prison guard as she eyed her screen.
I hoped she kept her focus as I made my way onto the elevator and punched floor seven. I took a deep breath as the doors started to shut—but then a hand reached in and stopped them.
“Sorry,” an Asian man said in lightly accented English when he noticed me.
“No problem,” I answered in Mandarin.
I should have stuck to my native tongue. He did a double-take. “Yi ge hui shuo Zhongwen de laowai!” A Chinese speaking foreigner! He continued in his own language. “You should meet my son. He’d get a kick out of you!”
“I’m sorry, I really don’t have time.”
“Speaking Chinese, you must have many opportunities to make money here.” He smiled and pushed the button for the fourth floor then switched back to Mandarin. “Meiguo ren?” American?
“Canadian.”
He studied me with open curiosity as we started to ascend. He will definitely recognize me when he gets to his room, turns on the TV, and my mug flashes in front of him.
“Have a nice day!” he chirped as he got off.
“You as well.”
As soon as the elevator opened on seven, I ran down the hall and pounded on our door.
“Shei a?” Will asked, seemingly unperturbed. Who is it?
“It’s me. Hurry the fu—,” He pulled it open. I brushed past him. “They know. They know everything.”
“What’re you talking about? Who knows what?” He shut the door.
“Our faces are on posters—all four of us.” I told him about the encounter with the ticket agent.
“Wanted posters?”
“Yes. With a one hundred thousand kuai reward.”
“Are you shitting—”
“No—I wish like hell I was.”
Will turned pale. I’d never see him do that. It scared me.
“Where’s Lily and her mom?” I asked.
“They said they’d go grab some toiletries.”
“Christ, I hope they haven’t left their rooms yet.” I could feel myself freaking out. “We’ve got to get out of here. I’ll—”
Someone knocked on the door.
I froze—Will too. We looked at each other.
Whoever it was knocked more firmly a second time.
“Na wei?” I asked.
“Fuwuyuan,” said a female voice. “I’ve got your hot water bottle.” In mid-grade hotels, maids periodically stopped by to refill a room’s hot water thermos.
“Answer it,” Will said in a hushed voice.
I stepped toward the door. My hand shook as I turned the handle. A squad of police officers could be waiting to charge past the maid, who could be a ruse.
“Hot water?” She stood next to her cart.
“No thanks.” We’re already in it.
I locked the door and turned back to Will, who’d already started repacking some of his things. “I’m calling Lily.” I picked up the phone. God, I hoped they were still in their room.
Will grabbed the receiver from my hand and cradled it. “The hotel could be monitoring calls by now. I’ll go right now and tell them in person.”
“What about your shirt and pants?” I pointed them out, draped over a chair.
He was already opening the door. “I’m leaving that stuff and toothpaste here on purpose. It’ll make it look like we’re coming back—and it’ll lighten my load. You should do the same.” He started out again, then stopped. “Give me the flight schedule.”
I dug it out and handed it over. He underlined a flight departing later that evening for Chongqing and set it on the nightstand, adding to the false trail, then left to warn Lily and Mrs. Jiang.
I collected my own things and tossed some funky underwear, pants, and a Chicago Cubs T-shirt into the staged disarray, the whole time hoping Lily and Mrs. Jiang hadn’t left the hotel. They could have been picked up by the police by now.
After ten minutes of waiting and pacing, I was sure Will and the Jiangs had been apprehended. I cracked the door and peered down the hall. The three were rushing toward me. Lily looked petrified. I stepped aside to let them in.
“They’re looking for us?” Lily asked as I deadbolted the door. “You saw posters?”
“Big ones. Right by the ticket booths. No way we can take a train out of here. Where were you guys?”
“Downstairs, picking up some stuff.”
“We need you two to find an unmarked cab now,” Will said to Lily and her mother.
They nodded. Illegal taxis were usually parked by exit ramps at train stations and airports.
“We may be the only two white guys in Shenyang,” Will continued, “so we can’t move around out there together. Even with our black hair.” He ran his hand through his mop.
“Meiyou wenti,” Mrs. Jiang said. No problem.
“Don’t worry about the cost.” I handed her 2,000 RMB. “We need to get to Dalian.” I also handed back their fake passports. “Take these.”
“Get a car with tinted windows if you can,” Will added.
“Should we come back and pick you up here?” Lily asked.
“No, not here,” Will said. “If they’ve got our photos posted, someone may have already put two and two together, meaning you two and us. They could be coming for us already. I noticed a school that we passed on the way here. Did you see it?”
“Yes, there’s an alley next to it, right?” Mrs. Jiang replied.
“Yes, that’s it. Let’s meet there in twenty minutes,” Will said. “Andrew and I will leave separately and split up—we won’t be such easy prey that way. Now let’s keep our heads down and not panic.”
Lily took my hand, her first sign of affection in front of her mother. Then she kissed me.
She touched my cheek in parting and ushered Mrs. Jiang out the door. “Be careful,” I said as they left. I threw the lock, wondering if I’d see Lily again. I didn’t even know if I’d live to see the sun go down.
Will had no time for sentimentality. “I need my passport back.” I gave him the forged document. “I’ll head out first,” he continued. “There’s a row of shops down the main street about a hundred feet toward the station. I’ll wait in a seedy-looking tea house I saw on our way here and keep a lookout. Give me a two-minute head start.”
“You want me to follow you toward the station and away from the school?”
“Yes. A little misdirection in case anyone’s tailing you. Don’t rush. Just walk past that tea house and casually look in. If there’s anything suspicious—if I see someone tailing you, or if someone’s onto me—I’ll have my hands on my temples, like I have a big fucking headache. If I do that, just keep walking straight, away from the school to protect Lily and her mom. Don’t circle back until you know you’ve lost any tail and are in the clear. But if I don’t give that signal,” he continued, “double back toward the alley next to the school.” He handed me a pack of cigarettes. Another prop, I presumed. “Light up when you get there so you’ll look like someone taking a break from one of the nearby businesses.”
“Maybe from a hundred feet away.”
“Sometimes that’s all the margin you need. And I’ll follow a little behind to keep an eye out.”
“OK. You take care of yourself,” I said. Each of these partings felt painfully permanent.
“You, too, brother. You’re ready for this, and from what I just saw with Lily, you’ve got a lot to live for.”
Then Will slipped away, duffel in hand.
I double-locked the door behind him, wishing I could do the same to all my fears and misgivings. The two people I cared about most in this country had just stepped into unknown and terrifying territory.
And I was about to follow.
CHAPTER 36
I sat on the edge of the bed, foot jiggling, and waited for the two minutes to pass. Our scattered clothes and the conspicuous flight schedule might trick security forces into believing the room was still occupied, if they didn’t look too closely—and if they hadn’t already rounded up Will, Lily, and Mrs. Jiang and were coming for me right then.
After forcing myself to hang tight, I cracked the door. The hallway was empty, though that did little to ease my fears. The Korean coastline I’d dreamed about on the flight felt as distant as Mars.
I rushed to the elevator, listening intently as it came alive. My groin tightened as the door creaked open—a sound straight out of a horror film.
No one was inside. Thank God.
As I started down, I pictured sharpshooters waiting in the lobby, hands on triggers, eyes on the lights that tracked my movement from floor to floor: 7, 6, 5…
Another killer countdown.
The narrow elevator felt like a casket sinking into darkened earth, shuddering as it came to an abrupt halt, hopefully at the ground floor. But they could have thrown a switch and left me dangling like some animal in a snare, ready to be seized by armed men rappelling down the shaft.
I was still looking up when the door creaked open again.
The lobby. Thank God.
It looked empty—as if they’d cleared it.
I forced myself forward, the area silent except for the tinkle of Chinese music. Even slimmed down, my backpack felt enormous, blatantly compromising. We’d just checked in—and now I was obviously leaving.
Looking left, I was relieved to see Miss Zhang on the phone, listening, her eyes glued to her screen, maintaining the same stern, mannequin-like expression.
But now as she turned away from her computer and toward me, I ducked behind a garish replica of the famous Greek sculpture of a baby in the arms of a woman, hiding my legs behind the blanket falling from the infant, my body behind his mother.
I pulled out my Lonely Planet so anyone seeing me from a different angle might take me for a befuddled tourist. When I looked up, as if considering a choice of destinations, I saw a cubicle in the corner with a sign showing an image of a computer. I glanced at my watch. Time was precious, but we needed any intel we could get—what was being said about us, where they were looking.
I checked on Zhang. She was shaking her head. She looked agitated. She was typing on her keyboard with the phone snugged under her jaw.
Go! I strode across to the cubicle.
Whatever composure I’d mustered was fleeting. When I sat at the computer my fingers shook so badly that I couldn’t string together a simple web address.
Frustrated, I resorted to hunt-and-peck, finally managing to access The Washington Post. I raced through every bulletin about China. The bombing and subsequent protests still dominated coverage. Nothing, thankfully, about us.
A news brief reported that China had started to fund Al Qaeda. The account came from the Post’s Pentagon sources, who said the White House was concerned about China’s increasing influence in the Middle East and its ties to the terrorists responsible for the bombings of US Embassies in Africa that had killed more than two hundred people, including a dozen Americans.
It sounded remarkably similar to what Ed had told me. It was only a matter of time before those same sources could be talking about us. I needed to keep checking.
I’d been warned by Will that using any suspicious keywords in China was dangerous, but that was then and this was now—we needed to know if our names were out there. I started with a few variations on the obvious: “American spies.”
I worked my way through the list and didn’t see anything about us.
I went to Sina.net, an internet portal, scanning the main page’s headlines in Chinese. Nothing there, either. I searched General Jiang Guangkai’s name in characters—江光凯. Thousands of entries appeared, but nothing from the past few days. Pushing all my chips to the center of the table, I entered “Andrew Callahan” into the search bar, then my own Chinese name—高安祝.
Fuck!
Blazoned on the screen were my passport photo and stills that appeared to be lifted from security cams that had caught Will and me in the jackets we had on now—the same ones we were wearing on the wanted posters. In my panic at the ticket booth, the clothing hadn’t registered. Christ, it did now.
You moron. I took off my jacket and shoved it into my bag.
Not that hiding it solved much. We were still conspicuous Westerners in northern China.
I turned off the computer without reading any further. We needed to get out of the country and every second counted. But first I had to make it out of the Postal Hotel.
I peered over the top of the partition. No sign of Miss Zhang.
Did she go get help? I wasn’t about to wait for the answer.
With my pack firmly in hand, I made a beeline for the front door. I put my shoulder to the glass and slammed against it with a thud.
They’ve locked me in.
“Zenme hui shi?” Miss Zhang shouted as she rose from behind the counter, glaring at me. What’s going on?
I answered by trying a second time to shove the door open.
“Youbian!” The other side.
I pushed the door to the right and it opened.
Heading out, the large clock on the railway station tower told me that barely an hour had passed since we’d first checked in—and we were already late to meet Lily and her mom.
I anxiously looked for Will’s signal as I approached the row of small shops, but he gave me only a scowl from inside the tea house. I doubled back toward the school. “You’re late,” he said, bursting out of the door and falling in step behind me.
“That’s the least of it,” I muttered over my shoulder. “We’re on the internet. There’s a photo of you in that jacket.”
He yanked it off and bundled it into his backpack.
We walked in line toward the agreed rendezvous point. Lily and her mother were nowhere in sight.
After a few more steps, we spotted a black Volkswagen Santana with tinted windows in the narrow, lightly concealed alley beside the school. A hand emerged from the rear window, frantically waving us over.
“You think it’s them?” I asked Will.
“Gotta be.”
We veered toward them and broke into a trot.
Then we heard a gunshot behind us.
I turned around instinctively and saw a policeman beside the road with his pistol pointed to the sky. A warning shot.
The only one we’re gonna get.
Will froze. I did too.
“Zhanzhu!” the man with the gun shouted in a harsh voice. Don’t move!
“Stay where you are!” ordered a second officer beside him, in Mandarin.
“We will shoot!” a third officer yelled in Chinese, though the threat would have been clear in any language.
Oh my God. I couldn’t breathe.
The three Public Security officers raced toward us. Two had their semi-automatics drawn. The third, trailing slightly behind, was speaking into his walkie-talkie. The VW with what we hoped were the Jiangs was only a hundred feet away, but we’d never make it—and we’d jeopardize their lives if we tried.
Will grabbed me and we sprinted toward the main square, darting past an open-air police stand before we realized it was even there. A young officer looked up, wild-eyed, fumbling to draw his gun as we bolted by.
