China Wife (22 page)

Alice and Julie re-embarked after an otherwise trouble-free stopover.

David was seated well to the front of the aircraft. Janice Liang, who this time made every effort not to be seen by him, was sitting about halfway back. She had a few moments of anxiety during the boarding process, Chinese passengers were nothing like as well behaved as their British or Australian counterparts, and she had been forced into Alice's and Julie's range of vision.

‘Shit,' said Julie, almost out loud, ‘what's she doing here?'

Julie hadn't seen Janice since they were parted in Queensland. Seeing her boarding the aircraft openly and freely was a bit of shock, although Julie wasn't quite sure why she was shocked; she had come to expect the unusual from Janice. With Alice flagging and increasingly dragging on her arm, she had plenty enough to do without worrying about this other young woman. Alice's and her progress was nonetheless reported and received with some relief in Melbourne as well as Beijing.

It would be some time before Julie got to understand Janice's role in the people smuggling saga.

‘Sir, welcome to Shanghai.'

As David walked into the foyer of the Renaissance Shanghai Yu Garden Hotel, the last thing that he had expected to see was the young woman from the flight to Hong Kong.

‘It's my job to ensure that your stay in Shanghai is as pleasant as possible.'

And perhaps not
, David said to himself.
It's your job to see that I see what I'm supposed to see and to do what I'm supposed to do.

Recalling what Susie Peveral had told him and her amused comments about honey traps, David made up his mind to be very wary of this young woman. There were too many coincidences stacking up. He had no doubt at all that the woman's presence on the flight from Australia had been deliberately set
up. He assumed that she was his minder, but whether that was all that she was, the jury was out for him.

‘My name is Janice Liang.'

33

For transit passengers, passport inspection on arrival had been cursory. On departure, it had been more thorough and Julie and Alice as well David Hutchinson were duly registered with the Chinese Security Services as being on their way to Shanghai.

Between times and unaware of the distraction created for them, cramped together with Alice in the concourse toilet, Julie had quickly shrugged herself out of her burka and rolled it up into a tight ball.

‘Alice, for God's sake!'

Paralysed by being in an almost permanent state of terror, Alice stood rigidly in front of Julie, not understanding that she, too, had to remove her own burka. Julie almost ripped it off in her frustration and anxiety. Stuffing the two garments behind the toilet bowl, Julie gave Alice a quick hug and then a drink from a small bottle that she carried in her rather copious handbag.

Totally unfamiliar with Chinese medicine, Julie had been most reluctant to feed Alice with the drugs that Mr Kim gave her, but having seen Kim's clumsy and brutal technique for administering them she was forced to take on the job herself. Alice still walked a little stiff-necked from having had her head forced back and the bottle of medicine jammed into her mouth from Kim's ministrations.

Equally, having seen the effect of the drugs – they might have turned Alice into a partial zombie but at least she was a
biddable zombie – Julie had overcome some of her reservations. However, she couldn't overcome Alice's terrors or her own horror at them.

Alice took the dose of drugs that she had been offered. No longer capable of resistance, she seemed to recognise that they would do her no harm but calm her down to some extent; an extent that would allow Julie to walk her to the departure gate for Shanghai.

Divested of the burka, Julie was back in jeans and boots mode with a tight sweater and fleece; clothes that were appropriate for Melbourne but which she knew would be too much for the summer temperatures of Shanghai. She would at least be noticed, and, as it later turned out, admired by the younger generation of fashion-conscious Chinese nouveaux riches, for whom any Western costume was desirable. Alice's more modest trouser suit, as intended, attracted nothing like the same sort of attention.

Any connection between the two young women finally being funnelled into the bowels of the Air China aircraft and the two Muslim women who had landed from Australia totally escaped the other reboarding passengers.

Briefed by the police, two discarded burkas were spirited away by the Hong Kong Airport Security staff.

When the purser announced the journey time, Julie groaned inwardly. It was almost as if time had gone into slow motion. The closer she got to the end point of her journey, the longer it seemed to be taking.

Yet Julie was happy enough that whatever was going to happen it was going to take her to a conclusion that would at least hopefully save Alice from her fate. Not that she, as the aircraft reached its cruising height, would have been inclined to risk any money on what that conclusion might be.

But the thought that regularly invaded her nightmares – had she been set up as expendable and thus end up in some remote
Chinese jail for the rest of her life rather than back in Melbourne, let alone Britain? – was still there.

Again, she need not have worried. Pawn she most certainly was, expendable she also most certainly was to the Chinese, but not to the Australians. And the Chinese now owed too many favours to the Australians and had too much ‘face' to maintain.

God, if I get out of this alive
… she thought wearily.

As always, she couldn't articulate what she would do and as always she admonished herself for being so negative.

In a situation that was now moving from the weird to the bizarre on the way to the totally unbelievable, Julie was also a pawn in a game that she couldn't even have had any intimation of. Hu Hengsen was using her safe return to Australia as a marker of good faith for the payment of the final instalment of funds for the purchase of Alice.

Julie knew that she was taking Alice to be sold to a mysterious Chinese businessman; that was what the whole of Mr Xu's activities were about as far as she knew. What gave Alice value, beyond the rather simplistic explanation given by Mr Kim of her being a virgin, Julie couldn't imagine. Of course, she knew that there was a massive preponderance of males in China as a result of the one-child policy, and the rich, as always, would be able to buy their way out of the problem for their marriageable sons. But kidnapping and forcible delivery of the victim to the businessman seemed to be way too over the top.

Why, why, why?

As she looked at the gentle face of Alice whose almost unseeing eyes followed her every movement, she was ever more perplexed. She was suddenly afflicted by a momentary panic.

Jesus, Alice. If you really are a lesbian!

The image of Janice Liang flashed into her mind. A confident Janice Liang who was somewhere in the aeroplane, she supposed. The brief time that she had seen Alice and her
together they had clearly been on good terms. Julie had no way of knowing what Alice's feelings truly were towards Janice, let alone what Janice's feelings about Alice might be, but the idea of offering a young woman with no taste for men to a ruthless businessman who had shelled out God knows how much money for her seemed to Julie to be a real cause for panic, even if it was a panic based on ignorance.

Being obliged to focus on getting Alice to Shanghai and to the businessman in the secret but full knowledge of the Security Services of China, Australia and Britain was challenge enough for Julie. To understand the Chinese authorities' need to both eradicate the criminal practices that were represented by the trafficking and the corrupt business activities that stood behind it, as well as demonstrate to the UK, the US, Australia and others that they were successfully achieving that eradication, was beyond Julie's opportunities for comprehension.

What threat can poor little Alice pose?

As an individual maybe none, so the logical Western mind might think. But Alice was just that, a Western mind, in the eyes of the Chinese authorities. A Western mind founded in Chinese culture; the worst possible import into a country where imports of people were very carefully controlled.

Of course, if Julie had known that fewer than a dozen Westernised Chinese women had been imported and married into the independent but corrupted non-political Chinese elite she might have been even more surprised.

But the Chinese authorities were nothing if not paranoid.

And Alice, like the other trafficked high-value women, had a Western passport that would allow her free movement in the West! The opportunities that this represented to the complex, corrupt and self-seeking networks that underpinned some sections of Chinese society were inevitably anathema to the Communist authorities, yet their ability to counteract the exploitation of these opportunities was often strangely inhibited.

But then some sections of Chinese officialdom were nothing if not corrupt.

Alice dozed and Julie tried to relax. Having now spent so much time on aircraft, Julie was feeling frustrated, jaded and angry all at once. Relaxation was probably beyond her.

If she was going to have to be reliant on her own resources anywhere, it was going to be in Shanghai. It was this thought that was driving so much of her thought processes.

They were to be met at the airport. As she rehearsed her instructions for the hundredth time, Julie's anxiety began to emerge again. She was aware that Alice had been hijacked from another group of Chinese criminals by Mr Xu and Kim. She was also aware that the original group had twice tried to recapture Alice – once at Lake Mulwala and then again in Queensland. In the backyard of the Chinese criminal fraternity she had no idea what might happen, and she cursed the premonition that told her something would.

And these shitty Chinese security people still want me to deliver poor Alice to her businessman!

34

‘Listen carefully, Miss Li. Do exactly what you are told and no harm will come to you.'

‘No, no, no!'

Alice's voice rose to a scream.

In the crowded area of the baggage reclaim the commotion around Julie and Alice passed almost unnoticed; but not quite. The plain-clothed policeman scanning the mass of people from the supervisor's window high above the reclaim area picked up the movement, recognised Julie as the person he was looking for, and called for help.

Much busier than the reclaim area at Hong Kong, the Shanghai equivalent was seething with passengers when Julie and Alice arrived. Backed against a solid mass of people all waiting impatiently for their belongings to emerge from the depths of the airport system, the man addressing Julie stood behind her but was pressed against her.

Julie couldn't see this man or get a measure of his size. But she could see that another man, much shorter than the one behind her appeared to be, had grasped Alice by the left arm and was attempting to steer her away from Julie and into the crowd.

‘Never mind about your bag; you won't be needing it. Just move towards the exit sign.'

‘Sod this,' Julie muttered to herself – although still not sure who was supposed to make contact with her, she was clear that it wasn't these men.

She didn't move.

However, she did know who the men were. It didn't need much imagination to work it out. And they weren't Mr Xu's men. Mr Xu's men would have watched and waited all the time that Julie was following her orders. And they wouldn't know that she wasn't until she failed to meet them at the agreed location. The Chinese police or whoever else it was who was tracking her equally wouldn't know that things were not going to plan – how could they?

Shit. It's the bastards who attacked us at the lake!

‘Move!'

The man sounded nervous. Alice was beginning to resist the second man and to cry. Things were not going well for the two men.

‘Move!'

The sharp pain at the base of her left ribcage told Julie that what she was being threatened with was a knife and not a gun. And she knew that she had to act.

A sudden thunderous roar beside them announced that the adjacent baggage carousel was starting up. A swirling surge of people pressed around them as the waiting crowd moved forward to recover their luggage. People pushed and shoved at each other and Julie realised that the short man had disappeared with Alice.

‘Move!'

The man really was nervous. With the swirling and often aggressive mass of passengers intent on reaching the carousel and seizing their suitcases, he wasn't in control of the situation, even if it provided perfect cover for what he was trying to do.

The chaos for Julie, however, was an opportunity.

Realising in the scrambling mass of people that her assailant had no leverage to strike at her, Julie smashed her heel down on the man's foot as hard as she could and wrenched herself from his grasp pivoting to face him. Pitched forward by a middle-aged man thrusting his newly retrieved suitcase into the
small of his back, the man now presented a realistic target for Julie.

‘Sorry, mate,' she said in sudden and unconscious imitation of her ex-boyfriend.

Bringing her right knee sharply upwards, she crashed it into his crotch. She almost heard the squelching sound as his genitals were jammed back into his body. The man dropped to his knees dropping his knife which was immediately kicked away by a scurrying foot and wordlessly looked up at Julie as he collapsed on to his forearms.

Unconscious of the drama happening in their midst, the milling crowd still scrabbled for their suitcases and clawed their way away from the carousel. Inadvertently clubbed on the side of the head with a suitcase by a retreating businessman as he fell forward, Julie's attacker subsided among the feet of the now diminishing crowd.

‘Alice?'

Julie was unaware that her call was uttered at such high volume. She couldn't see Alice anywhere, even as the mass of passengers rapidly dispersed to the various exits from the baggage hall.

Then she realised that she could hear her.

Alice's hysterical screams of ‘No, no, no!' served only to energise the thug trying to drag her to the exit and out of the terminal building. Not understanding English, he nonetheless knew that the anguished tone of her screams was dangerous as it would attract attention; violently silencing her, however, would have had a similar effect.

As they were in the Domestic Terminal, the man's route seemed straightforward enough. There should be no more officialdom for him to get past.

‘Alice!'

The baggage hall was suddenly empty. The two remaining suitcases circling the carousel, one of which was Julie's and Alice's, were pulled off by a porter.

The thug turned to see who was calling out to his prisoner. He saw Julie but the sudden look of panic on his face told Julie that he had seen something else as well. And, in the moment of inattention, when he turned back to continue his escape, he found himself confronting a policeman pointing his handgun at him in a two-handed stance.

Julie edged forward. The policeman took aim at the thug's lower body.

Julie didn't at first realise that it wasn't this policeman who fired.

A sharp intake of breath followed by a curse that Julie didn't understand signified that behind her someone had been shot. A massive reverberation of firepower rattled around the baggage reclaim area as several handguns were discharged.

The thug at the exit thrust Alice away from him and dropped to his knees, arms raised. It was a motion of surrender; he hadn't been hit.

‘Alice, Alice?'

Julie reached the shaking young woman in very few strides and folded her into her arms. It was only when she looked back over Alice's shoulder that she was able to see what had happened behind her.

‘Jesus Christ!' she said.

There were four men. One, a uniformed policeman, was standing over a body on the floor slumped up against the side of the baggage carousel. A second man, sitting on Julie's suitcase, was nursing his upper arm; the blood seeping through his jacket sleeve suggesting that he was the man who had been shot and who had uttered the curse. The fourth person, who appeared to have just arrived at the scene immediately took charge.

As more police and medics materialised, this fourth man picked up the now-abandoned suitcase and handed it to Julie as she came forward dragging a ‘living dead' Alice behind her.

As the surviving thug was led away, the man who had
retrieved the suitcase gestured for the two women to leave the reclaim area.

‘Thank you,' said Julie automatically.

A look of mixed surprise and contempt crept across the man's face.

Snotty bastard!
Julie said to herself, the nameless man's body language and facial expressions telling her that he was probably someone high up in the Chinese Security Service who had suddenly got drawn into something rather distasteful.

If she had ever got to talking to Susie Peveral, temporarily of Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, she would have found that her analysis was accurate. The use of David Hutchinson as a monitor to reassure the outside world that China was dealing with the people trafficking business vigorously and ruthlessly was one side of a coin. The other was to put their best brains to work at sorting out the complex of activities and interactions behind the scenes that they didn't want David to see. Julie's role, to the Chinese, this sour official included, was a part of this other side.

The black 4x4 BMW was parked in the pick-up area exactly where Julie had been told to expect it. The back windows were tinted, though in this instance with the intention of preventing the occupants from seeing out rather than the more usual intention of preventing the curious from looking in.

Julie had no idea where they had been taken to. It wasn't a hotel; it had an internal basement garage and was, as far as Julie could determine, a very luxurious apartment block. The apartment that she and Alice were taken to had no staff, but the bodyguard in the vestibule was clearly there to prevent them leaving. It was getting late and, again according to her instructions, all that she and Alice had to do was to settle in and wait.

Julie found the sudden return to the normal processes of living unreal. It was if all that had happened to them in the
last few days had been in her imagination.

It was dark outside. On Julie's urging, Alice took a shower and then she showered herself before they prepared themselves for bed; there really wasn't anything else for them to do. Belatedly, Julie realised that the apartment had no television set. As instructed, Julie didn't give Alice any further medication. Alice without medication was a situation that she knew that she would have to face. By the next morning Alice would be free of the drugs and her reactions were likely to be as unpredictable as they had ever been.

‘Mr Hutchinson.'

As Julie and Alice slept in, Janice Liang joined the journalist at breakfast at the Yu Garden Hotel.

David noted the coldness and the careful way that Janice held herself back when the conversation got under way. He assumed that she had been told to be businesslike and not too friendly.

‘I'm informed that the young woman we are interested in has arrived in Shanghai. There was an incident at the airport but that has been dealt with. Surveillance of the various parties has been stepped up. We understand that the final meeting will take place in two days.'

Janice had briefed David as far as she was allowed to the previous evening. He knew that he was being used, with the connivance of his government, and that what he would be shown and told would be selective. David's briefings from Susie Peveral, his work on people trafficking in the UK and the information that Janice had given him meant that he was very clear about what was about to happen and what he was to verify as having happened. Anything else was supposed to be unseen by him.

An old
Goon Show
quote shot through David's mind – ‘dashed cunning these Chinese'.

Janice also shared some further information that suggested
that the Chinese authorities were taking the opportunity presented by the exposure of some of the corrupt businessmen, and the government officials who were protecting them, to close down a whole range of illegal activities. And being China there was also an element of political manipulation going on.

People's National Daily
Shanghai English-language Edition –
Monday, 20 September 2010
CORRUPTION REACHES DEEP INTO GOVERNMENT

The arrest of businessman Hu Ziyang on charges of theft, misappropriation of government funds and property has caused consternation among both government and business circles. Police with officials of the Internal Revenue department and the Shanghai Communist Party raided Mr Hu's house on the edge of the Changning District and his city offices. A large quantity of papers was seized at both locations.

Mr Hu is known to have extensive contacts in the finance, business and governmental worlds. Starting life as a government accountant, he became a banker and most recently a bond trader on the US, UK and European markets. The source of the funds that Mr Hu traded in these external markets is reported to be a major area of investigation.

Mr Hu's wife, Rose Zhu, originally a UK citizen, has also been detained by the police and her movements between China and the UK investigated. The British City of London Police has been asked to provide information on her trips to London, including any of her travelling companions. The suspicion that her visits were used as a vehicle to transfer significant funds out of China was not denied by the head of the international branch of the Ministry of Finance.

Several business associates of Mr Hu and key family members are being interviewed by police; others remain at liberty for the present. At a press conference the Head of the Major Fraud Department of the Ministry of Finance confirmed that there was evidence that Mr Hu had extensive contacts in the criminal world, but the suspicion that he had been funding the trafficking of illegal workers into both Australia and the UK was categorised as speculation, though not denied.

At least three government officials in Beijing and an unspecified number in Hong Kong have also been arrested on
charges of corruption. While the extradition status of Chinese citizens in the UK is uncertain, the British police have nonetheless been asked to arrest two bankers in London, one of whom is a relative of Mr Hu. The suicide of one of Mr Hu's cousins in Houston, Texas, in the USA was confirmed by police as being related.