China Wife (25 page)

38

David Hutchinson had been in firefights many times before. However, without the flak jacket and helmet, with ‘PRESS' emblazoned all over them, he felt vulnerable. But this was exactly the situation that he was being paid handsomely to report on. He was there to witness and tell the world how the Chinese authorities dealt with both the criminal gangs who were behind the people trafficking and also those members of their establishment who had strayed into the orbit of the criminals. And the deal implied that it would be a favourable report. Nonetheless, a firefight wasn't something that he was expecting, nor was it something that he had been warned of, either by Janice or Susie Peveral.

But as Susie had told David previously when she called him from Hong Kong, the Chinese always took too straightforward a view of things. For a Communist dictatorship, solutions could always be simpler than in a democracy with an independent judiciary. The outcome of the raid on Hu Hengsen's country house was preordained and designed only to give credit and credibility to the Chinese authorities. This was a certainty that made David uncomfortable. And, equally, over the ensuing days it became obvious that people trafficking was only a pretext for addressing a whole range of criminal and corrupt activities that were becoming increasingly politically embarrassing to the Chinese Government.

The outcome that the Communist leadership was seeking was a clear external and international recognition that corruption
had been firmly and finally purged from Chinese society.

Only time would tell how successful the authorities would be in achieving their objective.

But in the marriage marquee in the seclusion of the grounds of Mr Hu's house, as the sound of the burst of gunfire died away, no one among the guests could have had any idea what was happening and what was about to happen. David's experience kicked in and he prepared himself for the unexpected. At least everybody's attention was focused.

Except for Janice Liang, none of the guests would have had any reason to expect violence. It was a private wedding arranged by a powerful and influential man; why would there be any violence? Most of those present to varying degrees could rely on some part of officialdom to either protect them or at least to look the other way at the appropriate moment. Even Janice had only been told what would happen in order that she could make sure that David both witnessed the effects of the official intervention but was kept safe from any risk if any interactive violence occurred. The first of these two requirements seemed easy enough, although it did carry the risk of him seeing too much; the second was much more difficult to be certain of.

‘The bloody endgame at last,' muttered David, more in recognition of the fact that something had clearly started than in any expectation of carnage.

The tiny Japanese camcorder that he had been given by the Chinese Interior Ministry PR office was surprisingly difficult to operate and he couldn't be sure as he scanned the background behind the bridal group that the soldiers in their camouflage fatigues would show up enough as they cautiously emerged from the trees.

In the event, it didn't matter – the presence of the troops would dominate much of the subsequent filming.

The soldiers quickly formed an arc around the marquee on the open lawn. There was a wary silence broken only by the
nervous coughs that covered the anxious eye contact among the officials and politicians. Discomfort levels among these worthies were rising towards panic. The other guests were uncertain and intimidated but as yet not fearful of the soldiers. David was quick to focus on and record the reactions of some of the more agitated individuals as they were pointed out by Janice. His muttered comments into the camcorder would later provide the sort of background colour that the authorities wanted. The fact that there were no names didn't bother the Chinese authorities; they knew who these corrupt officials and politicians were. Generally, the other guests didn't interest them.

Then there was action!

Even through the canvas wall separating the seated area from the dining space, the intensity of the flash and the detonation of the stun-grenade was enough to disorient and render the bulk of the guests momentarily incapable of thought or action. David's filming wobbled until he could get his own startled reaction under control. Unseen, the terrified catering staff streamed out of the marquee and were corralled at gunpoint by the troops.

‘Jesus,' muttered David, ‘they're not taking any chances!'

The noise faded and the acrid smoke was dispersed by the gentle breeze that had been providing some relief from the stifling temperature in the marquee.

As the minutes passed and the soldiers moved into close range, the shock diminished and the guests began to coalesce into clear and separate groups. Three began to be identifiable.

In a swirl of movement, four bodyguards surrounded Mr Hu. But where were they to shepherd him to? The only way out of the marquee was into the arms of the waiting soldiers! The wedding planners hadn't thought to provide a secure escape route.

‘Alice.'

Janice's exclamation was more to direct David's filming to
the bride-to-be than to attract her attention.

Led by Mr Xu's new chief of staff, another and different group of bodyguards – who had quietly infiltrated the wedding ceremony as attention began to be focused on Mr Hu – surrounded Alice. Viciously back-elbowing Julie Li from the young woman's side, and acting with more purpose than Mr Hu's men, the bodyguards inserted themselves into the mass of people now milling fearfully around. Xu at least seemed to have thought of having a contingency plan.

But even as the bodyguards forced Alice into the unintended protection of the disoriented and anxious general run of guests, the dozen or so associates, and payroll officials and politicians of Hu Hengsen, began to separate themselves and to put distance between them and Xu's men and Alice. This third group split into two parties one each side of the central aisle. For them, there was much to be fearful of.

‘Clever!' David observed.

Observing this three-way breakup of the guests, David quickly recognised what the Xu party's tactics were. Embedding Alice in the fifteen or twenty guests who were anxiously beginning to chatter together as they were backed against the marquee's side wall meant that the soldiers would have to shoot their way to the young woman to rescue her.

Simple and clear as it was as a tactic, David began to look for a different vantage point. Staying at the edge of the seating area as required by Janice, he had a good view, but he was now between some of the soldiers and Alice and was inadvertently providing her with an additional shield. He needed to move about.

It was a new situation for David. He had reported on many things in many circumstances but he had always been a bystander. Here, although he wasn't strictly a part of the action, he was certainly more in the middle of it than he had ever been before, and he had never been the sole witness to the events that he had had to report on. But there were overtones
of some of his past assignments, and as the seeming stalemate developed his mind transmuted the marquee into a tent on the edge of an obscure village in Sangin in Afghanistan. There he had witnessed a meeting between the Taliban, tribal elders and US Marines. Treachery had been expected and a bunch of trigger-happy US Special Forces first surrounded and then shot down the Taliban representatives. It was unprovoked in the sense that the Taliban had, in fact, no offensive intent, although his American press colleagues present refused to subscribe to this view. The firing started as a result of an inadvertent movement by one man whose lack of English caused him to react when reaction was not necessary.

His greatest fear now was a similar misinterpretation of a movement or action.

It was the first time that David had seen the formidable Chinese Special Forces and he hoped, even prayed, that they would be less precipitous in their actions than their American counterparts.

So far they had been.

With the arrival of more troops, the arc of soldiers tightened. Escape was impossible. But David knew that some kind of action to rescue Alice was bound to happen. For the Chinese PR exercise to be a success, this was the first priority. Arresting the officials and politicians was secondary in time but nonetheless as important.

As David focused his attention on the young officer now standing beside the quaking priest in front of the disorganised rows of chairs, he wondered whether the soldier had been told that the whole proceedings were to be filmed. With the officer's automatic weapon trained on Mr Hu and his bodyguards, David was forced back again into memories of another standoff.

The pictures that he was taking of the shattered remains of a Beirut suburb as the Israeli Air Force tried to eliminate a senior Hezbollah figure were already on their way to his
newspaper via email. But the fact that he had taken pictures at all was not acceptable to the townsfolk who owned the rubble that used to be their homes. The squad of Hezbollah gunmen who appeared to express the citizens' anger were confronted by a small group of Lebanese police; outnumbered and outgunned but nonetheless confident of their authority, guns were cocked and pointed, with David between the battery of weapons.

‘Press!'

The contempt of the Hezbollah leader was manifest but so also was a grudging respect.

Unshipping his camera, David had handed it to a small boy drawn to the scene by foolhardy curiosity, and turned away. He had lost control of his bowels for days – it was the closest David had come to giving up his job.

‘Until now,' he muttered.

The priest had turned to the officer and was obviously pleading for no violence. There was no sign that his plea was having any effect.

David's experience told him that stalemates didn't last.

‘Where's Alice?'

It was only when Julie Li spoke to Janice that David realised that Alice's bridesmaid-cum-minder had joined them.

Julie was clearly on edge. She gestured at the group of people being herded by the Xu party along the wall that separated the seated area from the dining area. With Alice in their midst they were nearly at the end and out into the open at the edge of the marquee. The soldiers watched and waited. Since there was no way through the cordon, there was bound to be a confrontation. The officer realised that the people being used as shields were not among those that the authorities would have preferred to capture alive. He made a cold calculation.

Julie felt confused. With Alice snatched from her by people she didn't know, she had been completely wrong-footed. She knew that the Chinese authorities were planning some action
but she hadn't expected it to be as public or as dangerous as what was now happening. Nor had she expected such determined action to ensure that Alice didn't fall into the hands of the authorities.

Suddenly a surge of bodies separated from the Xu party. Whatever the loyalties of these particular guests might have been, they were all now only interested in distancing themselves from both Mr Hu and the Xu party. Unlike the more obviously compromised officials and politicians, they were mostly family or small-time business associates of Mr Hu and his cousin brought in to provide a neutral but acceptable congregation for his wedding. None of them was especially beholden to the Hu business empires.

As David filmed and stored the details of the unfolding events on his camcorder, groups of the neutral guests were allowed to leave the seating area to be detained briefly by the police. The officials and politicians who were scheduled to be arrested were funnelled towards Mr Hu's house and the awaiting police vans. As the numbers dwindled, the two groups tightened around Mr Hu and around Mr Xu's chief of staff and Alice.

Something had to happen.

With a barely perceptible nod from the officer, David, followed by Julie and Janice, moved to join the priest at the front of the seating area. The remaining area was going to be cleared.

Something definitely was going to happen.

Through a gap in the wall of bodies surrounding her, the sound of Alice's tortured sobs could be clearly heard.

‘Wait!' said Julie to Janice.

But the military, having organised the groups, were clearly following their priorities. For practical reasons, it was apparent that the Xu party was now being left until last. Mr Hu and his party were to be dealt with first.

What triggered the exchange of fire neither David nor the
Army officer clearly saw. Mr Hu was gestured to leave the marquee with his bodyguards. With the soldiers partially distracted, there was a surge of movement around Alice. The only clear images were of Mr Xu's chief of staff raising his weapon to fire and the sergeant standing next to the officer opening fire with an automatic weapon.

Janice's urgent cry told David that his worst fears had materialised.

‘Wait!'

Julie was quick to respond to David's shout. Janice started moving towards the mess of dead and injured bodyguards writhing on the ground. Fearful that she might get shot in the still-prevailing uncertainty, Julie moved to hold her back.

When they were eventually able to approach, Alice lay in a twisted heap against the wall of the marquee, a small slick of blood surrounding the neat hole in her forehead.

The silence and stillness that followed the shooting lasted for several minutes as the officer and sergeant checked the casualties and the soldiers prepared to remove the bodies. In addition to Alice, three bodyguards and Mr Xu's chief of staff had been killed; two soldiers and two bodyguards had been wounded.

This was not quite the result that the Chinese authorities had wanted. David's filming would show the carnage, but an explanation of what had caused the shootout, or whether it could have been avoided, would be more difficult.

‘At least the Army didn't start it,' David said bitterly.

Among Shanghai's officialdom, it was later considered that the decision to confront Mr Hu and his associates at the wedding ceremony was wrong and a PR disaster. This was not a view that was made public, however. With so many key players removed from the scene, the people trafficking – the official pretext for the intervention – would be suppressed, though no one doubted that it would start again. A whole echelon of corrupt officials and politicians would be punished, but again, with so much money slopping around in the
economy, David, and the more realistic of the reputable Chinese elite, had no doubt that it would be only a temporary victory. And, as with his report on trafficking in Britain, precious little of what David recorded would see the light of day. However, it would be extensively studied in the secret depths of the Communist bureaucracy; the lessons learned would probably not be the ones that might have been learned in Whitehall. At least, that was David supposed at the time.