Two Peasants and a President (32 page)

“My son, I learned, belonged to a group of dissidents at the University.  The members of the group came from all over, professors, workers, scientists, even the government and police.  Their goal was to expose the corruption, theft and even murder that they had discovered through their jobs.  One of them was a computer expert who understood how to share what they had found with others using the internet.  He could, with some difficulty, even communicate with those outside of China.”

“Of course, it was very dangerous.  Many dissidents from all over the country had been arrested and imprisoned.  The government employed pe
o
ple whose sole job it was to find and arrest them.  When my friends had shared this with me, they asked if I would be willing to help.  I was very surprised since I couldn’t imagine what someone old like me could possibly do to help.”

“They looked at each other for a moment before beginning to speak.  Then they told me what was happening on the upper floors of the hospital, that it was no longer just convicted criminals they brought there, that some people came to buy life while others unwillingly gave it.  I was shocked.  I didn’t believe such a thing could be possible!  My mind was churning with conf
u
sion when a most terrible thought rose up inside me.  They could see that my eyes asked a question that my lips could not.  They rose from their chairs and came to me as one, surrounding me with their arms.  As the tears fell onto my cheeks, I saw that they too wept.  In that moment, for the sake of Huang, I became a spy.”

Ping looked over at Holly, the corners of her mouth turning up into the tinniest of smiles, and said: 

“And saving you, pretty lady, has made it all worthwhile.” 

A shout startled them as one of the crewmen rushed out of the whee
l
house and yelled to everyone to get inside.  He told them to stay below the railings where they could not be seen.  The small group of fugitives crawled or crab-walked their way to the wheelhouse door, disappearing inside.  Captain Davis, coming down the narrow steps from the bridge, met them.

“Chinese patrol boat,” he said as a crewman hurried them toward a passageway that led below decks.

The Type 218 Chinese Coast Guard Cutter had been easy to spot from a  distance, its white hull glinting in the morning sun.  With twin heavy m
a
chine guns and a top speed of more than 29 mph, it was more than enough to intimidate any fisherman, but with so many fishing boats at sea, Zhou thought it likely that it would continue on its way. 

That was when he could still see the full silhouette of its port side.  Now, with only the bow visible, the possibility of an encounter became very real.  The Americans would fit in a space concealed between the fish hold and the engine room.  It had been skillfully constructed and would not be easily discovered.  But the
re was scarcely room for three –
shoulder to shoulder. 

The Chinese passengers had been given spare fisherman clothing to wear and their own clothes had been sunk with weights.  There were still two 9mm automatic pistols and magazines.  However no one even briefly ente
r
tained the idea of taking on the Coast Guard boat, which had a crew of 23, not to mention
the
machine guns. 

With the Americans well concealed, his Chinese passengers were his primary concern.  They had been instructed to pretend to be sleeping in the crew quarters except for Ping, who could pass for a member of the family.  But in spite of their fishermen’s clothing, they did not look like fishermen.  For one thing, aside from Ping, their hands were almost devoid of call
us
es.  And if they were awakened and spoken to, they would most assuredly not talk like fishermen.  Zhou told himself that while it was possible
their papers could be checked,
it was unlikely they would be
searched.  There was no reason –
unless the alarm had been sounded.  If the authorities suspected that those they were seeking had fled by sea, the officers on the patrol boat would demand to see everyone’s papers and his day would end badly. 

The
Dawn Flower
continued on as if heading towards its fishing grounds while the Coast Guard cutter maintained a heading that would soon intersect with it.  Zhou could see that the cutter was now only a half mile away which clearly meant that it intended to interact in some way with his boat.  This was confirmed minutes later when he was hailed and ordered to heave to. 

The stench of diesel fuel and dead fish which had earlier made them so ill was even more pronounced in the cramped and airless space where the Americans now waited.  That and fresh memories of their last sea born horror had both Holly and Ray struggling to remain calm.  When the coast guard boat came alongside, causing the
Dawn Flower
to
lurch sideways, Holly almost cried out.  Then she felt the reassuring hand of her grandfather on hers which gently reminded her that she must somehow keep it together.

Clad in a crisply pressed uniform, a coast guard lieutenant jumped onto the deck of the
Dawn Flower
followed by a sailor with a Kalashnikov.  Waiting for neither acknowledgement nor invitation, he entered the whee
l
house and mounted the steps to the bridge, leaving the sailor standing guard in the doorway below.  From the bridge, Zhou could see a sailor manning the
machine gun on the bow of the cutter, but he was at ease and the gun pointed skyward, a good sign.  Without so much as a greeting, the lieutenant d
e
manded to see the fishing license and paperwork for the vessel, which Zhou provided.  After examining it carefully, he said:

“Where are you fishing today, Captain?”

“We intend to start about one hundred miles or so further east,” Zhou replied, “The stocks are too depleted here.”

The young lieutenant knew this to be true, which was one of the reasons for his country’s bellicose stance regarding the rights of its fisherman to fish in what had heretofore been considered foreign waters.  China’s coastal waters had been over-fished for decades and now offered little to keep its fishing fleet alive.  If they did not seek waters where the fish were more abundant, they would perish. 

The eyes of the sailor standing just inside the door to the wheelhouse slowly traversed the room as he waited for his lieutenant.  A small nook for cooking and a well worn table occupied one corner.  Around the perimeter were several other small areas, more cubbyholes than rooms, where he could see rumpled bedding and filthy pillows.  The heads of sleeping fisherman protruded from beneath the covers.  Two old women, one of them ancient were preparing something in the tiny kitchen. 

“How many aboard, Captain?” the lieutenant asked Zhou, noting that counting the two youngsters and the elderly man in the wheelhouse with the captain, there were four.  It was not a question Zhou had anticipated.

After a moment’s hesitation he answered “Thirteen,” wondering if the lieutenant had noted the delay.  The officer looked at him for a moment and then moved toward the door leading below.

“Get me a count of those on board,” he shouted to the sailor below.  “A rather large crew, don’t you think, Captain?” the lieutenant said.  Zhou r
e
sponded carefully:

“I have a large family that needs to make a living; here aboard they can always be useful.”

The seaman stuck his head into each cubbyhole, added the women to his count and started down the ladder to the engine room where he found one man.  Then he made his way to the stern where he found two others mending nets. 

In the concealed space, muffled conversation, like that emanating from a confessional, was all the Americans could hear.  It seemed too long for a routine boarding.  They were struggling to get enough oxygen in the e
n
closed space and knew they needed fresh air soon.  Holly thought she might throw up. 

The seamen shouted ‘seven’ up to the lieutenant in the wheelhouse.  Then he noticed something unusual.  The hand holding a blanket over a sleeping man in one of the cubbyholes had a ring on it.  It was not a wedding ring, but had it been, it would still have been unusual because fishermen never wear rings due to the danger of snagging them on machinery or nets.   Likewise, coast guardsmen are forbidden to wear rings while on duty. 

The seaman approached the sleeping man and was about to lift the blanket off with the barrel of his Kalashnikov when he heard footsteps d
e
scending the wooden stairs behind him.  He turned to see his lieutenant beckoning him to return to the cutter.  He thought briefly about bringing what had caught his eye to the attention of the lieutenant, but the heat and stench of dead fish along with the likely trivial matter of a ring made the choice of fresh air too appealing.  He turned and followed the lieutenant out onto the deck.

When the cutter had pulled away, the Americans were freed from their fetid and airless prison.  Told to remain on the starboard side where they couldn’t be seen from the cutter, they ducked out the door and sat against the railing, gulping drafts of fresh air.  Holly was feeling seasick again and began to vomit. 

******

As the giant red orb was slowly extinguished by a vast ocean, the passengers gathered on the deck to watch.  To the Americans, it represented the closing of the most horrific chapter of their lives, or so they hoped.  For the Chinese sitting together on the deck, a door had closed on their lives too, behind it their friends, their memories, their heritage, everything they knew, including many things they dearly loved.  They would never be able to return but, unlike the Americans, their way forward was unclear.

South Korea is not a terribly welcoming place for Chinese; it has its own problems, economic and otherwise and Beijing’s belligerent stance of late had endeared it to few in Asia.  The new refugees could not even be certain that the Korean government would not simply return them to China where they would likely find themselves back at the very
hospital they had just escaped –
a horror beyond imagining.  Captain Davis had assured them he would do everything in his power to help them emigrate to the US and they did not doubt his word.  But what exactly did ‘everything in his power’ mean?  The reality of the decision they had made now hung heavily in the air.

Furthermore, though they had passed
Dalian
to the north and were now beyond the
Liaodong
Peninsula, they were not yet past the Shantung Peni
n
sula which protrudes like a giant maw into the Yellow Sea to their south.  So
they were, by anyone’s definition, still well within Chinese territorial waters.  Zhou had been monitoring the radio but didn’t really expect to hear anything about their escape.  After all, China couldn’t exactly announce publicly that they were looking for escaped American prisoners from the hospital. 

By dawn, Zhou said that they would be in open ocean, well beyond the coast, but beyond the coast did not mean beyond China’s grasp.  Given China’s bellicosity and the potential ramifications of their escape, it was not inconceivable that a Chinese warship might pursue them to the very shores of South Korea.  In spite of a magnificent sunset, they were all on edge, occ
a
sionally lifting an ear as if hearing somewhere in the darkness the sound of a distant motor.  Each tried to reassure himself that, as Zhou had pointed out, there are hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure craft, tankers and freighters of all descriptions plying the seas around them and, as far as Chinese authorities knew, they could be on any one or none of them. 

Holly was starting to feel better and sat quietly next to Ping, thinking about what this amazing lady next to her had been through.  Other than her grandmother, Holly had yet to lose a close family member and the thought of losing not only Ray but a child they did not yet have was unimaginable.  By contrast, Ping seemed so placid now; it was as if, having done her part, she had committed herself to fate.  Holly knew one thing: she would never abandon this woman; she would fight to her dying breath to give her what she had earned and so richly deserved. 

******

It had now been more than twenty-four hours since the first officials learned that something had happened at Tianjin Cent
ral Hospital #77
.  Given the shee
r numbers and resources devoted to the task, it was not surprising that the pieces were starting to fall into place. 

The guard outside Holly’s room had unwittingly led them to the handful of others in the police department who knew what was going on.  Judicious pressure or electricity applied to certain areas of the human body generally provides results rather quickly and this had been no exception.  They had learned the names of those in Hong Kong who had ties to the o
r
ganization and through them had discovered the names of both Holly and her husband as well as Maggie and Brett, though Maggie had already been r
e
leased from the Hong Kong jail and flown home.

They now had photographs of Ray and Holly from their entry doc
u
ments but had thus far failed to make good use of them.  No one, as far as they knew, had seen them and the authorities could not televise the manhunt
without revealing to the American Embassy what was afoot.  Because of the precautions the Americans had taken, the authorities had not yet learned of Captain Davis’ involvement or, for that matter, even his existence.  In fact, at that point, Chinese authorities were of the opinion that he might be CIA, which in their minds would explain how the two young Americans had a
p
parently evaporated into thin air.