God's Double Agent (32 page)

“So,” I asked, very hesitantly, “you had no trouble getting the passports?”

“The Sitong Corporation verified your employment, and you’re ready to go.”

I mumbled out a few pleasantries in my confusion, and hung up the phone. The Sitong Corporation was a privately owned computer company in Beijing known for helping with the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square. In fact, after the government crackdown, the People’s Liberation Army occupied their headquarters to investigate their involvement in the protests. Their leader fled China to live in the United States.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said to Heidi, who had been listening to my side of the conversation. “We got our passports.” I explained how the assistant broke several laws to help us secure them, even though he didn’t know us. In fact, we hadn’t even met his boss.

When the passports came, we were astonished to see a letter of employment, verified by the Communist Party committee associated with the Sitong Corporation, giving us permission to take an overseas vacation.

“After all the punishment they’ve undoubtedly endured, why would they be willing to take such a risk?” I asked. “Without us asking? Without even knowing us?”

“These are the types of questions we’ll sit around in heaven
and ask,” Heidi said. “In the meantime, let’s just be thankful for God’s provision and get out of here.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing the questions out of my mind to deal with the more pressing issues. “We’re going to be going with a travel group to Bangkok and then to Hong Kong.”

“Great,” she said. “This might work after all!”

“There’s just one problem,” I added, in the softest voice I could muster. “The travel group is leaving from Beijing.”

23

“Quit smiling so much,” Heidi suggested. “It draws attention.”

We were in the Beijing airport, even though we’d risked our lives to escape that city. I put on my most casual expression as I carried a small suitcase past security cameras, police officers, and customs agents. We found our travel group gathered around a grinning guide holding a Chinese flag, chatting excitedly about their vacation. I didn’t engage in any real conversation, so if the police later had to question them about us we wouldn’t have made an impression. My main goal was to blend into the group, make it through customs without arrest, and get safely in the air.

“Welcome, everyone,” the guide said. “I hope everyone is excited about your trip, which will begin in exotic Bangkok.”

He collected everyone’s customs declarations and passports as everyone got to know each other. Our group consisted of about eighteen people, and included a doctor, a lawyer, some retired educators, and some engineers. Cameras hung from every neck.

“Xiqiu Fu,” the man from the tour group said while clumsily handing me an armload of materials. “I’d like to appoint you the head of our group. Here’s your flag, your itinerary, and everyone’s custom clearance information,” he said.

“I’ve never even flown before!” I figured he wasn’t accompanying us simply to save money.

“I can tell you’re a natural-born leader.” He smiled, before adding, “Plus, you can speak English.” After thanking everyone for using their tour group, he left me standing there among the group of tourists, holding a red Chinese flag above my head. Heidi stood off to the side and gave me an exasperated look. In one glance, I knew what she was thinking.
And we’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves?

I grabbed her hand once we got into the airplane for the domestic leg of the trip. “Are you afraid of flying?”

“I’m afraid of staying,” she said as she gazed out the window and watched as Beijing shrank from view.

We touched down at Shenzhen airport, and I had to assist our entire group through customs.
Of all people, he selected the one who might actually be arrested to be their tour guide?
I wasn’t sure how sophisticated the national customs and border control computer systems were, so I just said a prayer and willed myself to approach the counter. Our passports were wildly inaccurate, but our names were real. If I didn’t make it through, Heidi was supposed to make a run for it.

“Passport?” the lady at the counter asked, taking it from my hand. She looked at my passport, then back up at me. Even though the photos certainly matched, I found I was unable to breathe. Thankfully, a couple traveling with an unruly small child was at the counter to my left, which provided a nice distraction. The baby repeatedly threw her pacifier on the floor and wailed. I pasted a look of impatience on my face and looked annoyed at how long the process was taking. The airport official flipped through my passport as if she was trying to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit. Was this taking longer than normal? I wiped the beads of perspiration from my upper lip as I bent over to pick up the pacifier the baby had mercifully flung at my feet.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, handing me my customs form, my passport, my visa, and my boarding pass. “Now the others?” I handed her the forms, which she glanced through. When she
handed me back all of the passports, I forced myself not to run away from the counter, casually strolling with my group to the security line. I was so nervous that I almost forgot how to walk normally. Miraculously, we managed to get through security without any problems. When the door shut and the plane lifted off the ground, I looked at my wife and smiled.

Suddenly, we were tourists. As far as anyone knew, Heidi wasn’t pregnant, we’d never been in jail, and we were not Christians on the run. In fact, I was a tour director who took my job seriously. I made sure everyone safely made it onto the bus in Bangkok and wore a pink floral lei to start the vacation right. I helped check our group into the hotel, informed everyone of our dining options, and passed out itineraries packed with tours of Buddhist temples, shopping, and elephant shows. Much to my dismay, I noticed one of our stops was to Bangkok’s cabaret shows featuring transvestites and transgendered performers. We’d heard that the shows exploit their performers, who were frequently treated as sexual slaves.

“Should we go?” I asked Heidi.

“What choice do we have?” she replied. “We’re supposed to be normal tourists, not Christians on the run. After all,
you’re
the tour guide.”

We sat in the audience watching the performers, some of whom were merely young girls, sing, dance, don sequined costumes, and sport gravity-defying hair.
Is this what religious dissidents should be watching?
Afterward, we overheard a member of our tour group trying to “rent” one of the young girls for the night. Both Heidi and I felt sick to our stomachs.

Bangkok was a city that specialized in sensory overload, which made it difficult for Heidi to secretly fight the symptoms of pregnancy. In spite of her extreme exhaustion, she joined in all of the group’s activities. After one of our long days, we got on the elevator with our group and so many shopping bags I doubted the doors would shut.

“Did everyone have a great time today?” I asked. Though I had so many other issues on my mind, I felt it was necessary to keep up the ruse. I pushed the button for the fourteenth floor and took a deep breath. The air was hot and thick with humidity, and our clothes hung on us heavily.

“We got good deals on crystal elephants,” a man celebrating his wedding anniversary responded. Just then, as we reached the eleventh floor, I felt Heidi slump against my shoulder. I turned to her, thinking she was resting her head, but I soon discovered she’d passed out.

“Help!” I said, causing all of my fellow tourists to drop their bags and try to lower Heidi gently on the floor when the elevator stopped. She’d bitten her tongue and blood was trickling out of her mouth.

“Lord, help her!” I yelled out in spite of myself. So much for trying to keep our faith under wraps. A Thai medical practitioner from the hotel passed some strong smelling substance under her nose, and she woke up with a start.

“You scared me!” I said later, when she was safely in our room. I dabbed her forehead with a wet cloth.

“I think I’m just exhausted,” she said. “Plus, God might be punishing us for sitting through that show last night.”

By the time we finally left Bangkok, we’d sampled Thai food, seen elephants do tricks, and had come to believe “forced tourist shopping” should be prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Hong Kong was our next destination.

“After you check into your hotel rooms we’ll meet downstairs for dinner in two hours,” I said to my group in my last instruction as their tour guide. I’d actually grown quite fond of some of them.

We had no intention of going to dinner. After we made a show of going to our room, we slipped out a back door and met Dragonfly, my co-worker who ran the university student ministry in Beijing and who had been on the run since our arrest.

“I wish I could see the faces of our tour group when they realize we totally disappeared!” I laughed.

Dragonfly took us to the apartment of Jonathan Chao, whose wife was mercifully letting us stay at their apartment even though Jonathan was out of town. Their generosity was a confirmation that they didn’t begrudge my forced confessions against them when I was in prison. Because we had no money, the free apartment was an amazing sign of God’s provision. Also, we met a missionary named Tim who had graduated from Westminster and was sent by CMI to work with Jonathan Chao’s organization. Tim was moved by our story and helped spread awareness of our situation. One Christian businessman from Philadelphia, named Charlie, vowed to send our family $100 per month for each family member. Not only did we not have to worry about lodging, we no longer had to worry about food! This was important to Heidi, of course, who needed sustenance for the baby. Every day, I bought fresh fish or chicken at the same market, watching my back as I went. Even though we’d never met the man from Philadelphia, the money arrived every month. It was a sign of God’s merciful provision.

And speaking of provision, the lady who’d left the three-thousand-dollar deposit for a large printing job was from Hong Kong, so we tried to find her while we were there. Sadly, we never could track her down.

“Let’s just ask Craig when we see him,” Heidi offered, referring to our Australian missionary friend. When she’d hired us to print the booklets, she had told us Craig had referred her to us for the job.

When we reached Hong Kong it was October 1996, and Hong Kong was nearing “the handover,” when the British would hand back the nation to become a Special Administrative Region of China. Many feared how the modern city of six million with
its free economy and press would fare under the heavy hand of the Chinese government. If we were there on “handover day,” we’d be right back where we started. Thankfully, the Hong Kong government created a special team to handle the cases of political dissidents. They warned us to stay indoors to avoid kidnapping.

Jonathan introduced us to a Christian reporter named Ron, who reported about Chinese house churches. Since he was familiar with our story and with the US Consulate, he was nice enough to write our story and submit an official request for refugee status. Though we thought we’d be accepted quickly for protection from the Chinese takeover, the United States gave precedence to political dissidents over religious dissidents.

“We need to get out of here or we’ll be thrown into prison,” I told the reporter.

“Sorry,” he said to me. “They don’t even understand what an underground house church is!”

I was astonished that the American government was unaware of the ever-growing underground church movement in China. Using Jonathan’s research, we tried to educate them about the movement, but they were not interested. It was as if they considered political refugees as courageous and religious refugees as zealots. From that moment on, our case was caught in a bureaucracy morass. Repeatedly, our case was tossed out: the US Consulate didn’t recognize religious refugees, didn’t understand house churches, and only accepted famous political refugees. As we filed and re-filed our case, and time passed, Heidi grew more impatient and frustrated.

“Look at it this way,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “We’re pioneers! We have the honor of being the first Chinese house church refugees.”

“But where will our baby be born?”

It was a question I’d never researched, since I assumed our child would be born in the land of freedom—America! After I
checked into hospitals in Hong Kong, I discovered that public hospitals offered labor and delivery for free if one of the parents was a resident. If not, they charged the equivalent of $20,000. Suddenly, we had another reason to get out of Hong Kong, and fast! We spread the word amongst our friends—some who were in America, some in China, some in the countryside churches—and asked for prayer.

As word of our situation spread, people showed great concern and tried to find ways to expedite our case with the United States. In fact, we got the attention of Dr. Carol Hamrin, a senior career China analyst with the US State Department who was also a Christian. Thankfully, she had heard of our plight from some Christian friends in Beijing and worked tirelessly on our behalf. Also, an American legislative assistant working for the Chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee and a member of the State Department flew to Hong Kong to put pressure on them to process our case.