China Wife

by Hedley Harrison

  Janice Liang, Julie Li and Linda Shen were each in their different ways incredulous but each set about picking up the threads of their lives.

  People’s National Daily

  Shanghai English-language Edition –

  Friday, 19 November 2010

  END OF PEOPLE TRAFFICKING INTO CHINA

  The Chief of Shanghai Police announced the deaths of Xu Xichen and Shi Xiulu, two successful prominent local businessmen who had betrayed the ideals and honest endeavours of the Chinese People. The Chief of Police gave no details of how the two men met their deaths.

  Following the arrest of several other prominent local Shanghai businessmen and the mayhem at the intended wedding of Hu Hengsen, the police are satisfied that the illegal trafficking of young women into China to provide trophy wives for these greedy parasites has been ended. It is believed that no more than twelve of these young women were introduced into China and married to corrupt businessmen with the intention of using their dual nationality to allow them to circumvent the PRC’s regulations on the export of private capital.

  Cooperation with the British City of London Police has determined that sums of money running into many millions of US dollars have been spirited out of the PRC and hidden in offshore accounts in various parts of the world. The Head of Major Fraud at the Ministry of Finance has been removed from his post for failing to adequately police the activities of these corrupt businessmen. The police in Beijing and Hong Kong continue to seek out and arrest corrupt officials and politicians.

  The People’s National understands that a number of the trophy wives have been arrested and will be deported to their countries of origin. These deportations are being confused by the fact that several of these wives have had children while resident in China who are Chinese citizens and who are being claimed by the families of the fathers. In several cases, the country of origin of these women is unclear as the women were trafficked twice to get them into China.

  The Foreign Ministry has expressed its appreciation to a Western journalist who was witness to many of the events involved in the closing-down of the trafficking activity. The People’s National understands that a report by this journalist will be submitted to the United Nations Committee on Human Trafficking.

  42

  ‘What the shit was that all about?’

  Back in Canberra, back in the same motel room, back in the same hot tub, David Hutchinson’s frustration, irritation and intense feeling of having been cynically and ruthlessly used boiled over. He was relaxed for the first time since leaving the UK and free to give rein to his more private thoughts and feelings.

  ‘David, it’s over. You did the job. You got paid. Now we’re going home.’

  Susie Peveral was just glad that they had got out of China unscathed, which in her case meant that her reputation and career were untarnished, if not actually enhanced.

  ‘Shit, Susie – people died!’

  ‘And people died when you were in Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Christ knows where else.’

  It was true.

  Running her hand over David’s weather-beaten face, she tried to soothe his outrage. Having missed his presence, she was for once determined not to be sidetracked until her more basic appetites had been appeased.

  The effect that her caresses had on both of them was slow to mature. Being more tired than he would have admitted to, David had spent some of the idle time while he awaited the outcome of the Chinese Security Service raid on Mr Xu’s apartment wondering why he still did what he did. These last two jobs had had none of the satisfaction that most of his other work had had. The reports that he had written were most unlikely to see the full light of day. He, at the time, had no idea that the Chinese Foreign Ministry was planning to pat itself on the back by sending his second report to the UN. What appeared to be lack of a tangible output from his work depressed him.

  And a persistent niggle kept pushing into his consciousness that he had been set up, and not just by the Chinese but by the British – that is, by Susie – as well. He still wasn’t sure why it had all happened; but his estimation of his journalism, and more particularly his integrity, was different from that of the Chinese authorities.

  But Susie was now ready and she pushed herself physically on to him hungrily and urgently. All other thoughts and feelings relegated for the time being, they made love gently but intensely, the warm bubbling water around them adding to the pleasurable sensations. With the familiarity of practice, they both came together, and then again, and then subsided into the depths of the hot tub and just held each other, all hunger satisfied.

  For David, they were the moments of almost stress-free tenderness that Susie was capable of when the mood took her. However, even relaxed and replete as he was, he knew her all too well.

  ‘There were upsides …’

  Susie’s public-service jargon as always pervaded even her most intimate moments. David waited for the gem of retrospection that he knew would follow.

  But soothed in her turn by David’s lazy trawling fingers ambling across her breasts, Susie lost the thread of her thoughts.

  The gurgling of the hot tub dominated for a timeless period during which neither thought, only felt. Then a different niggle that David knew had been buried for some time in his deepest brain pushed to the surface.

  There’s no future in this, he thought. The sex is unbelievable and exciting, and what I’ve just been through could never have happened without her. But it’s not a lifestyle. She’s all order and process; I’m more about chaos and uncertainty. It wouldn’t work! And she did set me up for this Chinese thing; the illegal immigrant nonsense in Britain was just to get me hooked.

  ‘So what about this Linda Shen then?’

  Susie was back into her Foreign Office persona again. Linda fascinated her.

  All David knew about Linda was what Julie had told him.

  ‘She’s one of the earlier “China Wives”,’ David said. ‘Kidnapped in Canada while on a business trip, shipped to Australia and then to China. Apparently, she was one of only three out of the twelve women Julie knew about who was not from South America.’

  ‘It was that simple.’

  ‘Susie, I only know what Julie told me and what she knows is what the Australian Security Service told her when she was set up as a member of the trafficking gang.’

  ‘Julie was set up by the Border Agency; Janice Liang was set up by the Chinese Security Service – so was Linda set up, too?’

  ‘She and Julie were colleagues at the Border Agency until she disappeared, Susie. I’m sure you know more than I do about what went on with that lot.’

  ‘Linda married this Shi guy, had his child. She helped him with his activities. Very successfully, it would seem. But she also signposted what she was doing in the UK, and in a way that those with detailed knowledge of Chinese criminal gangs and trafficking would recognise. Why did she do that, David?’

  ‘Hell, Susie, I don’t care. Your lot at the Foreign Office must know – ask them.’

  ‘I was only making the point that Linda Shen isn’t all that she seems.’

  ‘Well, she’s presumably on her way back to the UK with her son. According to Julie, the Chinese authorities made no objections and stamped on the Shi family when they demanded the child.’

  ‘As if that wasn’t suspicious.’

  ‘Susie!’

  Epilogue

  Linda Shen?’

  It was a smile of recognition! The immigration official had been alerted by the airline manifest as to when Linda would be landing at Heathrow and arrangements had been made to welcome her. It was a week after the other participants in the action had returned and faded back into normality; she had had some complex affairs in Shanghai to arrange. It wasn’t going to be quite the welcome that Linda would have preferred, but as a former UK Border Agency official herself she was well aware of the way that the Immigration Service went about its business.

  With her passport firmly in the hands of the immi
gration official and accompanied by a petite but tough-looking police-woman, Linda was led away to an office in the underbelly of Terminal 4. Oblivious to everything around him, her son slept peacefully in his buggy.

  ‘Linda.’

  Being confronted by a grinning Julie Kershawe, who had now reverted to her proper role, was the last thing that Linda had expected. She was pleased, wary and reassured all at once.

  The tall Afro-Caribbean woman standing next to Julie moved forward to take the baby from Linda. A look of fear followed by a look of anguish said that this was not something that she had expected to happen either.

  ‘Social Services,’ said Julie.

  As the social worker left the room and the policewoman took up a position by the door, Julie and the immigration official sat down, indicating that Linda should too.

  Linda knew that it was interrogation time. This was something that she had expected to happen.

  ‘David!’

  ‘Julie?’

  ‘I had no idea that you were likely to be in Aberdeen!’

  ‘Nor me, Julie, but a dramatic helicopter ditching in the sea … well, it’s a bit more like my normal fare.’

  ‘I just spent time in London being debriefed, for what that was worth, then I got sent straight up here.’

  ‘And you’re living in this hotel in luxury at taxpayers’ expense – not a bad life to come back to!’

  ‘I guess we won’t go there. How’s Susie, David? I didn’t really get to know her very well in Canberra.’

  ‘She’s back in China, Beijing. She got herself promoted to the overseas diplomatic staff. Her feet didn’t touch the ground before they were shunting her back out there. I guess they think that she’s a China expert after what happened, or, keeping her under the Chinese noses to reassure them, more like.’

  ‘Cynical bastard.’

  ‘So how is it with you?’

  ‘Got the promotion I was in line for earlier before my lords and masters connived at my transfer to the Australian Security Service. Big apology; if you’re cynical, you should try my departmental head.’

  ‘So what happened about Linda, Julie?’

  ‘Put her through the wringer the moment she got off the plane, like my lot do. Now she’s on leave to sort herself and her son out pending joining me here. Everybody’s trying to act as if nothing had happened.’

  The interrogation hadn’t lasted long. Fully briefed on Linda’s marriage and on her activities on behalf of her late husband and herself, Julie had been sympathetic to the idea of letting her return to the UK and restart her life. She had quickly recommended this to her bosses.

  Much of the interview conversation had been about confirming what the various UK and European authorities already knew about the export of private capital from China and the methods by which it was achieved. When it came down to it there was no evidence that Linda had broken any UK or European laws, whatever she might have done in China.

  The Chinese authorities demanded the return of the money. The subsequent intervention of Susie Peveral and the efforts of some Treasury whiz-kid in separating the accrued interest from the capital, and quietly funnelling this money into an account in the Isle of Man, at least meant that Linda would have a modest but useful nest egg as a legacy from her marriage and her experiences in China. There was again no evidence in the UK that the money that she had been working with wasn’t Mr Shi’s, and then hers on his death, despite the clamour from the Chinese Finance Ministry.

  The formalities complete, Linda and Julie re-established their former friendly relationship.

  ‘I never believed you did what the papers said you did.’

  ‘And I never believed that you went to China as willingly as we supposed,’ said Julie.

  ‘The bastard was great in bed,’ Linda responded with a grin, ‘but a shit!’

  ‘And you shouldn’t sleep with shits.’

  A fleeting vision of Tariq al Hussaini failed to establish itself in Julie’s mind.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Yang Xiaoxia and her husband, Mr David Smith, for their help with the Chinese names and insights into their usage. Any mistakes in the application of this knowledge are entirely down to me.