Two Peasants and a President (29 page)

The first test of their theory was just ahead. 

A police car was sitting on the shoulder, its radar gun poking out the side.  Everyone held his breath.  The front compartment of the ambulance where the driver and doctor were sitting was well lit, and the police officer simply waved back when the clearly identifiable doctor waved to him.  But
they had been seen and once the alarm was raised, they would be reme
m
bered.  Ten minutes later they turned off the expressway and the flashing lights.  From now on they would travel as low profile as an ambulance can travel late at night. 

They followed a series of side streets for some time, seeing little other traffic.  Finally they spotted a lit sign ahead that said hospital.  They pulled into the parking lot and over to a small van.  The parking lot of the children’s hospital was the perfect place to hide an ambulance.  They parked, piled into the van and resumed their journey to the port.  Now free of the ambulance, they were beginning to feel more confident that in their new conveyance, they might be able to move unnoticed through the city. 

Meanwhile
Jun’s
taxi had made a brief stop
.  Ping sat quietly in the back, looking out the window.  She looked so placid, sitting there like she was on her way to visit a friend.  She had sacrificed much for the movement and now it was time to repay her.  Jun dared not speed, but he would do everything in his power to make sure she got her reward.  To fail would mean her death
–
and quite possibly his.

******

When a lone police car responding to the nurse’s call pulled up to the entrance of Tianjin Cen
tral Hospital #77
, the offic
ers were shocked to see a
group of patients milling about outside, some fully clothed and holding sui
t
cases, a few shivering in their hospital gowns.  The officers were accustomed to being obeyed, so they w
ere surprised when their order
to go back inside was met with nothing more than angry stares.  Some patients had their cell phones out and were attempting to call a cab.  Others were calling their consulates.  One had succee
ded in reaching the night desk
of her consulate and was screaming hysterically that they were being kidnapped out
side Tianjin Central Hospital #77
.

The two officers called for back up and then headed inside.  When the elevator door opened on the 7
th
floor, they encountered two more fleeing p
a
tients hauling suitcases.  When ordered to go back to their rooms, the patients simply refused.  The officers grabbed the suitcase handles and a tug of war ensued.  When the other elevator door opened suddenly, the patients abruptly turned loose of their suitcases, sending the hapless officers backward onto their butts.  Before they could get up, the elevator door had closed and the two patients were on their way down to join the growing mob outside. 

At the same time, unbeknownst to anyone, one patient had learned that there were other foreigners on four and had snuck down there.  He was going
room to room, much as the captain had, raising the alarm.  The result was as predictable as it had been on seven; soon virtually the entire hospital was e
i
ther aware of the mutiny or actively engaged in it.  Yelling about organ stealing in a hospital, it turned out, was every bit as effective as screaming fire in a movie theatre.

Outside, two more police cars had arrived at the shocking scene.  Since they were still far from possessing overwhelming force, two of the o
f
ficers decided to go inside to investigate further, leaving the other two to await reinforcements.  A lone cab pulled up to the entrance and the mob surged forward.  Unlike the foreigners, the cab driver had a healthy respect for the policeman who ordered him not to pick anyone up.  He tried to pull away from the curb, but people were already diving into the backseat.  All he succeeded in doing was moving a few yards.

The two police officers who reached the 7
th
floor found the head nurse peering over the top of the nurses station.  Seeing them, she began to regain her composure and her courage.  She started at the beginning, which was in this case the young American’s room.  By this time the officer in the closet had regained consciousness and was kicking at the closet door, all the while attempting to expel Kleenex from his mouth, his hands still cuffed behind him.  Once they had un-cuffed him, he rushed into the bathroom and with the help of moistened fingers, pried the remaining chunks of tissue out of his mouth. 

It did not take long for the officers to start to assemble a picture.  They radioed headquarters, notifying them that a prisoner had escaped, an Amer
i
can prisoner, and that she was likely accompanied by a tall American male.  They would only discover much later when they searched the basement that there were actually two American males. 

A discovery of another sort was proceeding along parallel lines but more slowly.  As captain Davis had always suspected, the kidnapping of foreigners for their valuable organs was being perpetrated by a relatively small group of miscreant police officers along with a handful of bureaucrats and hospital personnel.  Until now it had been easy to mask their activities because of the thousands of transplants going on in several Tianjin hospitals and because the use of Chinese convicts as donors was well known.  Fo
r
eigners were assumed to be recipients, not donors.

Now questions were being raised, questions for which there were no good answers.  American prisoners?  A revolt involving foreigners at one of the largest and best known hospitals in China?  China’s government had spent countless centuries perfecting the art of the cover-up, as evidenced by the ongoing slaughter in Tibet and elsewhere, but until the morning dawned,
few in the bureaucracy realized they soon would be engaged in one of the most daunting cover-ups of all.  

Until then, those who knew very well why the escaped American prisoners had to be apprehended were forced to explain to those who didn’t, without implicating themselves.  Inevitably, there were some who balked and a few who simply fled.  Clearly, control of the operation and a chain of command had to be established.  It was not until dawn before that began to happen. 

The mayor of Tianjin and the area commander for the Ministry of State Security were both awakened at 5:00 by upper-level police officials who were not entirely clear why they needed to rouse these powerful bureaucrats.  What they did know was that there had been an inciden
t at Tianjin Central Hospital #77
and a dragnet was being formed for the purpose of capturing some important escapees.  Escapees?  From a hospital?
Something was already starting to stink, and the sooner they were able to drop it in someone else’s lap, the better.  

It was at this point that things started to get sticky.   Chinese high o
f
ficials, especially those in Tianjin are quite persuasive when it comes to cu
t
ting through fog.  In this city, the desire to stay out of the clutches of the law is especially strong, for obvious reasons.  Once the officials were fully awake and functioning, it did not take long for them to ascertain two things: First, there would soon be a fresh batch
of available transplant donors;
Second, the Americans had to be captured before they could leave the country or China would have a disaster on its hands the likes of which had not been seen since Tiananmen Square.

The Americans had a good head start.  Their adversaries did not yet know even their identities much less their avenue of escape, but the enormous military and police apparatus of one of the most powerful nations on Earth was about to be set to the task. 

50

For the six fleeing souls in the van, the ride southeast toward the port had been a series of heart rates spikes, every set of approaching headlights a possible police car.  When a Ministry of State Security car suddenly turned in behind them as they passed an intersection, Holly started to shake unco
n
trollably, her ordeal still fresh in her mind.  The policeman
h
ad his automatic in his lap, the captain held the
gun of the
officer
who had been guarding Holly’s room
, ten rounds
in its magazine.  It had been decided that if a police car attempted to detain them, they would kill the officers inside and continue on, since arrest meant certain death anyway.

The Ministry of State Security car remained behind them, the fugitives wondering if it was waiting for backup to arrive.  They would not act as long as they were still moving toward their goal.  When the car abruptly turned around and headed back west, the relief in the van was indescribable.

Even at 2:00 am, the port was brightly lit and swarming with activity.  The port of Tianjin is the largest in northern China, covering 66 square miles.  Wharves of all types line 19 miles of the coast, and enormous gantries load and unload container ships around the clock.  Skirting the security zones protecting critical areas of the port, the van slowly wound its way around boat repair yards, fish warehouses and storage buildings to an area where small and medium sized fishing boats are berthed.  There are more than one million fishing boats of all sizes in China, and seeing row after row of them gave those sitting in the van a ray of hope that perhaps they could become lost among them. 

Twenty minutes later the van came to a stop in a crumbling asphalt parking area.  Before them was a well-worn timber pier perched upon ma
s
sive, weathered pilings.  From one of the aging wooden boats docked there; a sailor beckoned.  It was Zhou.  Six frightened souls climbed out, three wishing to leave China in all haste and three whose fear was mixed with nostalgia for a country they would never see again. 

There seemed to be little activity on the nearby boats as the small band boarded the
Dawn Flower,
an 82 foot wooden boat with a two story supe
r
structure resembling a small, rundown apar
tment building.  Square windows lined
uppermost perimeter
of the wheelhouse
and overlooked a large open hold in the bow.  The boat had once been painted turquoise but sun and sea
had scoured and peeled the paint, leaving the weathered old lady looking forlorn and neglected.

Zhou quickly ushered them aboard
and through a doorway,
where they could not be seen.  In
side, several openings
revealed tiny rooms for the crew, tawdry and littered with piles of clothing and
soiled
blankets.  The stink of fuel and fish hung heavy in the
air.  Zhou mounted
the narrow staircase to the upper level
of the wheelhouse, beckoning them to follow
, staying low
.  There they met his mother, father, brother and a tiny wrinkled woman, Zhou’s grandmother, along with two youngsters.  With a toothless smile,
the old woman
nodded her head in obvious welcome.
There was only tension on
the faces of the others, knowing that the moment the Americans came aboard, their fates became
one. 

Zhou peered out of the wheelhouse
window
s
nervously.  His father said something to him in Chinese, sounds tha
t scarcely needed translation,
convey
ing
a message of urgency.   Zhou ans
wered sharply, as if to silence, while the fugitives sat quietly against a wall, well away from the windows. 

  T
hey were waiting for
Jun’s
taxi.  H
e should have been here by now.  Then Zhou saw a small
boxy
vehicle pull slowly into the lot, its side embl
a
zoned with ‘Harbor Police
.
’  The officer inside shone his light out of the rolled down window.  Its beam moved slowly
from
side to side, illuminating the bows of several of the moored b
oats before the officer turned the motor
off and got out
.  He lit a cigarette and started walking.  Zhou signaled silence with his hand, the Americans sitting on the floor in the wheelhouse, having no way of knowing what was happening outside
,
stayed absolutely still, fear creeping ice-like through their veins.  

The officer walked along the wharf, pausing at each boat.  Zhou
watched him carefully from the window
, wondering what he was up to.  Then the officer approached the
Dawn Flower
,
walking
her entire l
ength along the pier,
e
xamining
her.  Zhou could no long
er see him, but knew that h
e must be near the stern now.  But d
oing what?  Finally, the officer emerged from the shadows and walked back into the parking area.