China Wife (4 page)

And, of course, both the interrogators, and now Julie, knew that her having met Alan was not a coincidence.

Again, reaching into her past experience she also knew that she had somehow to gain leverage in the conversation that was to follow since they clearly knew a great deal about her.

‘OK, so I know Alan. Perhaps you'd like to tell me why he was sent to spy on me before this interview?'

‘Perhaps we wouldn't!'

Beyond the initial courtesies it was the central figure's first
real entry into the interview. The response was curt but friendly enough to inhibit a protest from Julie.

‘You left the UK Border Agency because you were suspected of facilitating the entry into the UK of a number of people whose background was not well established and proved to be false, and the people in question have now all disappeared from the radar in the UK.'

It was another demonstration of their knowledge.

She clearly wasn't going to get much time to wonder who these people were or how they knew what they knew. Except that the thought quickly surfaced with her that they had to be something official. There was no way that her brief conversation with Alan could have yielded the level of knowledge that they were displaying.

‘OK, so you know all that. What are you asking me? The police were clear that they didn't have enough evidence to prove any case one way or another.'

‘Indeed not.'

‘What the hell does that mean?'

A dialogue developed with the man on the right. As the light changed marginally, Julie could see that he was about forty, dressed in the sort of tweed suit that her father used to wear and with the sort of face that you would probably have forgotten within half an hour of last seeing him. From her dealings with MI5 and on the odd occasion MI6, she knew this guy was Security Service.

But again, why he was there and why she was being interviewed by him, she had no time to think deeply about.

‘Why did you rob the convenience store in Cambridge and then give the money to student charities?'

‘Jesus,' Julie muttered, ‘where did that come from?'

‘Your friend Tariq set you up in that robbery. I guess it was a Rag Week prank to you, but he had your career and future in his hand nonetheless as a consequence.'

Julie had been here many times since had Tariq thrown her
over. Until now, her brain just hadn't let her accept that her relationship with him had been based on a simple piece of blackmail, simple and trivial, but she could see how Tariq had early on detected her sense of honour and loyalty to her father and mother and her desire not to let them down. In her straight-forward, schoolgirlish innocence, it had been a big deal and she had been easily manipulated. But now as the point was presented to her, dispassionately and openly, it all seemed rather silly; she suddenly had a sense of closure.

‘Yes, and the little shit exploited it whenever he wanted something and usually after sex.'

Julie heard herself say this with amazement. Closure was one thing, now she had made herself vulnerable in front of strangers.

The right-hand man didn't seem to see it like that nor did he seem to want to exploit this perceived vulnerability.

‘Tariq was double-crossing his masters as well as you.'

It was another quick-fire switch.

The man spoke the words in some distaste as if it were schoolboy language rather than a statement from a senior Security Service officer.

Julie was leaning forward in her chair towards the man.

Masters! What's he talking about?
Julie couldn't grasp the concept of Tariq having anyone he was subservient to; he was too confident in himself and too pleased with himself.

‘You let in a number of Arab men, said to be members of his family, and at least three Chinese girls. Am I right?'

‘It was only
two
Arab men,' Julie said.

The interrogator didn't pursue the point. The man appeared to have a different line of enquiry in mind. The body language and atmosphere intensified again and Julie sensed that they were now on to a subject where they were genuinely looking for new information. But Julie felt constrained to add more detail.

‘There were more than three Chinese women that I recall.
There were also four Chinese men. All of whom Tariq wanted me to reject for the effect.'

‘Thank you, Julie. Despite your rejection, it seems that the men in question actually reapplied for entry elsewhere. They were key figures – your Border Agency colleagues believe there's a labour importation scam and are still investigating.'

This wasn't a surprise to Julie.

‘And all of these Chinese people have disappeared?'

‘Only the women. The men are gang bosses, gangmasters, or whatever you call them in the UK. They aren't really our interest.'

A slight clattering and a cold draught made Julie pause and look around. The Chinese girl was arranging coffee on a discreetly lit table in a corner behind her.

Hell, now they're on to the blow cold, blow hot bit
, Julie thought.

Her past experience again made her familiar with interrogation techniques.

She was wrong.

As the three men questioning her emerged into the light, their whole attitude changed. It was if they'd decided to give her the job and she was now one of them. And as it transpired in the more informal conversation over coffee there really hadn't been any doubt about her being employed by the Australian Security Service on a short-term contract. Even if nobody had yet broached the subject of what she might be required to do.

‘Mark Hallingford arranged for you to come to Australia. We have been working with him for some time.'

Julie was astonished. Almost every opening gambit in the conversation had come from nowhere. At least now perhaps an explanation was beginning to appear from the murk. Mark Hallingford had been her boss in Edinburgh; he had been very supportive when he had discovered Tariq's manipulation and had indeed pointed her at Melbourne as a place to restart her
life, even encouraged the switch of location. Now Julie was being told that the whole thing had been arranged.

How long the Border Agency had known about Tariq al Hussaini and his activities Julie would never learn. This was of only passing interest to the Australians. That he was seen as a dangerous young man even back in Iraq, she would never be told. That he covered his activities by involvement with a number of entirely innocent organisations again was hidden from Julie. The corner-shop robbery had, however, eventually rung alarm bells in official circles in London when it was picked up from the police database and checked out and referred to Baghdad. A waiting game had been initiated. Again, she was never likely to be told, but much of what had happened to her once Tariq al Hussaini's activities had been identified had been engineered to keep him from suspecting that he was being watched. And as the authorities closed in on Tariq the situation had been ideal for inducing her to move to Australia. This was a piece of straight exploitation set up to meet an urgent need from the Australian Security Services. With her reputation and job prospects destroyed in the UK, her background and particular skills could then be used free of any official involvement.

Despite its limited interest to them, the three Australians, all of whom were privy to as much information as there was, acknowledged the cynical and cruel manipulation of Julie Kershawe, not only by Tariq al Hussaini, but also by the UK authorities. That was the business they were in, but it gave them just the operative that they needed.

‘It's disappearing Chinese women that we need your help with,' the centre man and chairman of the interview panel said.

‘People trafficking?'

Julie, of course, knew that this was happening; it was a major blight on modern society. One of her arguments of self-justification about letting the three Chinese women into Britain officially and openly had been that it would prevent
them being sucked into the vice trade and other exploitative activities. But what had this to do with Australia? That she would find out when she met up with the people that she would be working with.

For the time being she couldn't avoid a feeling of anticlimax.

The offer that was made to Julie was at once attractive and frightening. Julie was attracted and frightened.

Alan accompanied her to the lift and out of the building. It had been the weirdest interview that she had ever experienced and yet she had still come out of it with a contract with the Australian Government.

‘Maybe that's how things get done here!'

‘Pardon me?'

As they waited for a tram, Alan was still with her. Julie found that she rather liked that and looked forward hopefully to the rest of the afternoon and onwards.

7

While Julie Kershawe could neither remember the names of the three young Chinese women that she had let into Britain, nor feel any contrition for her actions, Linda Shen was fully aware of the names of two of them, even if they were different from those Julie couldn't have recalled. That there was a third she had no knowledge of. Uncooperative, resentful, this young woman had been introduced to the brutal sex trade of Warsaw and was the only one of the three who had initially truly disappeared from Britain.

Equipped with their new names, ground through a harsh finishing school located in a remote Skye farmhouse, the two Hong Kong eighteen-year-olds were now accomplished and marriageable young women. Whether they were ready for a return to mainland China and their life there Linda neither knew nor particularly cared. Her job was to take them back and deliver them, and their recently acquired British passports, to the men who had been chosen for them.

The fact that she had had an experience almost similar to theirs, except that she had escaped from a Manchester back-street and prospered by her own efforts, Linda kept stubbornly buried in her deep unconscious mind. Honest enough to recognise that, despite the deliberate cruelty of being separated from her child as an act of control, the life that she had been forced into, basically for access to her British passport and freedom of movement within the European Union, was infinitely preferable to that she had been snatched away from. With common
sense as well as intelligence, she found that luxury and unlimited funds and an increasingly manageable relationship developing with Shi Xiulu, her enforced husband, were almost a fair exchange. Whether the two young women in her care would come to take a similar view, again, she neither knew nor cared.

‘You know what to do?'

Linda's minder did.

Relations with the man had improved over the week that she had been in Britain. Forced into partnership and not too subtly reminded of his dependence on her husband she had come to a working arrangement with him. The minder accommodated his patroness with as much good grace as he could muster and she had used him to advantage. The trip to Skye was the only part of the week when the two of them had been thrown together so closely that she had had virtually no privacy. She had no quarrel with any of the arrangements that he made or the efficiency with which he had made them. She had become used to such service back home in China and, however much she disliked the man as an individual, she knew that she would be helpless and at risk without him. She also knew that her husband had no love for her; he merely wanted to secure an heir and the reach into the world outside China that was denied to him at the present time but not to her. That he had his heir pleased him; using the child to ensure his wife's loyalty was common sense to Mr Shi.

And all the time his wife's activities were being monitored, even facilitated, by the UK authorities.

The minder would remain in Britain. Another minder would meet her at Hong Kong, but this one she was familiar with and she knew his vulnerabilities. And on her own ground Linda had become very good at exploiting people's vulnerabilities.

The company of two young women on the way back to China would ease her journey but she still had to be on her guard with them.

While the official policy of the Chinese Government was to invest wisely and profitably in countries like Britain, the legion of corrupt businessmen and officials who were siphoning off much of the profits produced were making investments of their own. Getting illicit money out of China was by no means easy; the pervading state security controls were steadily making electronic management of funds too cumbersome for safe use, so many innovative ways of laundering money were being developed.

‘Electronic means are suspect and must be used with care.'

Mr Shi was used to parroting this to his wife as he explained his latest scheme to her. His sideline of selling his expertise in cheating the authorities to his associates and fellow corrupt businessmen had the prospect of being a huge earner even after expenses had been deducted. Based on a reversion to human rather than electronic activities, his schemes were labour intensive but generally reliant on wives with more freedom of movement than the Chinese Government was prepared to allow to the businessmen themselves. Wives were traditionally obedient and generally subservient to their husband's interests, although Mr Shi was well aware that his own wife had a streak of independence in her that he was sensible enough to try to harness rather than suppress.

Linda Shen's role as a courier was becoming increasingly complex and her trips to Britain and the US more convoluted, as electronic means of money movement were augmented and partially replaced by this human activity.

Linda hated the trips. They took her away from her son, the only thing in her life that mattered to her, but the rewards were beginning to build up. Her husband had hardly expected that the expertise that she was developing on his behalf wouldn't be put to use on her own account. What he didn't realise was that his pretty and, to him, seemingly scatty wife had as good a financial brain as he had, if not better. Untutored, she was taking time to understand what was possible for her and she
was building funds in various locations in Britain. Neither greedy nor impatient, as was her husband, she knew that keeping below his radar was the key to success.

As she shepherded the two young women on to the Qantas flight to Hong Kong and said a relieved farewell to her minder, what Linda didn't know was that events in Canada and Australia were being shared around the world and the interest being taken by a range of police, immigration and intelligence services in the movement of intelligent and displaced Chinese women was intensifying.

Storing the two new cherished British passports alongside her own in her copious designer handbag, she felt satisfied that she had fulfilled her husband's plans, advanced her own and taken another small step towards safeguarding her child's independent future.