Two Peasants and a President

by Frederick Aldrich

  23

  Holly slept fitfully, both anxiously awaiting and dreading the morning. When it finally came, she was exhausted and nervous. When her fruit arrived, she ate it unenthusiastically, thinking simply that she needed the vitamins. Then she sat on her cot, knees up to her chest, as if to protect herself from she knew not what. She had almost dozed off, chin resting on her knees when she heard the lock. It startled her and she jumped. The same man stepped inside the door and looked around as usual.

  What came next paralyzed her with fear. The familiar sound of the wheeled bucket rounding the corner was followed by. . . a different person! Holly panicked, her heart racing, knowing that the new cleaning lady would find the rolled paper in the drain. The man had sat down in his usual spot and was looking right at her. Her mind spun dizzily, grasping for a way out, something to stop the inevitable. She was certain the man could see her fear; she was shaking, she could feel it.

  The woman began her mopping on the side of the room opposite the sink. She was working her way across and would be by the sink in less than two minutes. Holly coughed, then coughed again, expectorating as though expelling phlegm. She jumped up and lunged toward the sink, pretending to spit something into it. Then she grabbed the toilet paper roll while stealing a glance at the cleaning lady who had looked up at her.

  When the cleaning lady looked down at the floor again, Holly leaned over, gurgling as if she was about to spit up more sputum. Placing her body between the sink and the cleaning lady, she palmed the rolled up paper and spat again into the sink. With her free hand, she ran water into the sink while the other hand slipped the paper under her waist band. She wiped her mouth and hands with toilet paper and turned around, certain the woman behind her had noticed something and would alert the man.

  The new cleaning lady had stopped mopping and was looking at her. Holly nearly peed as she slunk back to her cot. The woman’s face had a frown on it now. She cocked her head and looked suspiciously at the young American. The man sitting outside looked up. Then he said something gruff in Chinese and the woman started mopping again. When she was through, she washed out the sink and replaced the tattered towels and washcloth with another set, glancing one more time at Holly. Then she and the man were gone.

  When she had finally stopped trembling, Holly’s body seemed to slowly wither into a fetal position on the cot. She lay there for some time, staring at the wall, her spirits at lowest ebb since she’d been dragged away from her husband, her honeymoon, and her life. Her thoughts wandered to suicide, wondering how it would feel to bash her head against a concrete wall. Her eyelids crept slowly closed, finally releasing her to the dubious refuge of sleep.

  An hour later, robo-doc came in, startling her awake, plunging her back into the depths of fear and depression. She wanted to hit him with all her might as he went through the usual routine, not even bothering to speak. Briefly she wondered if life in a Communist country turned people into indifferent zombies like this man. She didn’t pause to dwell on it because she had a new and frightening problem to deal with. What had happened to her ‘angel’?

  The afternoon was excruciating. The questions, the numbing silence, the fear. She paced back and forth, not knowing what to think, not knowing what to do, wondering if the other cleaning lady had told anyone that the American was up to something. Had her friend been arrested? Had they discovered what she was attempting to do? Could that shot have been her angel crumpling to the ground in the courtyard? The mere thought chilled her deeply.

  But it was nothing compared with what would happen that evening.

  They’d brought her dinner, she guessed around six. For once it vaguely resembled food. What seemed like a half an hour later, she was lying on her back on the cot, head resting on her hands. She’d been staring at the ceiling for some time, thinking of her family and of Ray, trying not to think about what had happened to her angel, but fearing it might soon happen to her.

  The sound of the door at the end of the hall opening brought her upright. Seconds later she heard her own lock turn. No one had ever come after dinner and the sudden change in routine alarmed her. She drew her knees up to her chest in the now familiar response to fear. Two men in police-style uniforms came into the room. One of them motioned her to stand; he was holding handcuffs. The other man held what looked like a blindfold.

  Part of her wanted to bolt through the door and somehow escape. But it was futile; there were two men standing in her way, and she didn’t even know the layout of the building, much less the grounds around it. She stood submissively and turned around, cursing her weakness and the abject helplessness that had been her existence for she knew not how many days.

  Once again, she was being led down a long hall. She listened, hearing only Chinese voices in the distance. Then she was led into a room and pushed down into a chair. When her blindfold and handcuffs were removed, she found herself sitting at a table. Across from it was a large window in which she could see her reflection – another one-way mirror. Had she been brought here for interrogation? Would they ask her about the cleaning lady? The men turned and left, locking the door behind them. She could hear muffled voices on the other side of the mirror. Her knees had begun to tremble and she badly wanted to pee.

  For what seemed like hours, she heard nothing but the faint voices on the other side of the wall. Then abruptly the lock on the door was turned and the two uniformed men returned. Once again, she found herself being led cuffed and blindfolded back down the hall.

  Later, when they had turned out the light in her room, she lay in the darkness trying to make sense of what had just happened. Someone had looked at her through the one-way glass, that was obvious, but for what purpose? Dark imaginings returned. The hirsute, pot bellied Arab. A forced marriage somewhere deep in China to a hunchbacked dwarf farmer, a place where she would never be found. Medical experiments ala Dr. Mengele. She felt more dispirited than at any time during her captivity. The message from her angel had lifted her heart, giving her hope. Then the appearance of a new cleaning lady and the fear of discovery had crushed it all.

  ******

  Two days passed. The routine had been the same, save for the new cleaning lady who seemed sullen and uncaring. Robo-doc seldom spoke and each time examined her like a veterinarian might a goat. She had read a book, or perhaps it was a movie; she couldn’t remember, in which the prisoner had been slowly brainwashed until he became utterly submissive, without a will, without a personality, a person in name only.

  Holly told herself that she must not stop thinking rationally. To totally surrender was to die inside. Somehow she had to summon the will to continue fighting, to be stronger than they were.

  On the third day, after eating her fruit, she sat listlessly on her cot, staring at Uncle Tom’s Cabin lying on the floor. Again she heard the familiar sounds but scarcely looked up when the man and the cleaning lady arrived. With her head bowed, all she could see was their feet. Then her heart leaped as she saw that two of them were clad in pink canvas shoes. She looked up into a familiar, smiling face. Her heart leapt so high she thought she would float off the cot.

  Holly desperately wanted to hug this tiny woman who had been her only friend, the only person in this vile place who seemed to care about her. But she forced herself to stifle the smile that had begun to brighten her face. The man sitting across the hall was watching her again.

  As the cleaning lady mopped the floor, starting as always on the side opposite the sink, Holly got up and walked slowly to the sink. She grabbed the roll of toilet paper and pretended to blow her nose, while checking to see that the man could not see her from where he sat. Then she quickly retrieved the scrap of tightly rolled paper from her bra and carefully inserted it into one the small holes in the sink drain.

  She walked back to her cot, pretending to rub her nose with the back of her hand. As she sat down again, she glanced at the man in the hall. His expression had not changed; he was examining his fingernails. The cleaning lady worked her way ac
ross the room, Holly’s heart thumping louder and louder until she was certain it could be heard. When her angel finally reached the sink, she paused, but only briefly. Then she quickly palmed the message and continued her work. As she prepared to leave, she glanced over at Holly and smiled, not broadly but as a conspirator might, confirming what had taken place.

  24

  It seemed like the hiss of rushing air had been part of their lives for years. It hissed while they were eating, it hissed while they watched movies, it was hissing when they awoke from a nap. Hour after hour after hour, it never paused, never changed.

  Sally imagined it must be like that wearing an oxygen mask, listening to the tank sitting next to you providing every breath of air, hour after hour. Sally had flown before, they all had, but she’d never really noticed it that much before. Maybe it had been the conversation around her or the sound of the flight attendants rolling the drink tray down the aisle, over and over again.

  Seven hours into this flight and still only half way across the Pacific, the little things became magnified due to boredom and four hundred bodies crammed into a long, narrow tube. You got tired of watching movies, and you can only eat so much. And if you tried to sleep, a baby in the back, or a grumpy child somewhere up front always seemed to start to whine or scream bloody murder.

  Maggie and Brett were three rows up. Once in awhile Maggie would turn around and roll her eyes, like when is this going to end? Sally thought about the businessmen and women who do this all the time, wondering what they do to keep from going crazy. Maybe their doctors give them knockout drops or something. Jim was reading his second paperback, something named Absolute Zero; it sounded like she felt. Her father, several rows back, had somehow managed to fall asleep. Sally pushed the attendant button, thinking maybe another drink might help.

  ******

  When they finally landed, they looked and felt like zombies. Most of the other passengers looked like that too, like survivors of a plane crash, plucked out of the jungle somewhere and deposited at the end of a customs/immigration line, the final tribulation before they keeled over dead. But this was no vacation and they made an effort to be alert, focusing on looking like ordinary tourists.

  The formalities weren’t all that bad, really. A look at their passports, the usual questions and on to customs, where someone looked them over and then passed them through. They had decided that once they were on the ground in Hong Kong, they wouldn’t look at or speak to each other – two couples and a lone man traveling separately. It almost seemed silly with hundreds of other zombies moving through the airport at the same time, but better to be safe. China liked to project an image of peace, harmony and all that, but they were in the biggest police state on the planet. Best not to forget that.

  They found the taxi queues to their respective hotels and waited. Since their flight arrived late at night, they’d decided just to get some sleep and begin their tasks in the morning. Clean sheets, decent beds and no more hissing made that easy. It seemed like only three or four hours later when their wake up calls announced that their first day in Hong Kong was about to begin. But they were rested and starting to feel the nervous energy of their reason for being here.

  Jim and Sally’s assignment was to go to the place where the junk tours departed. It had been decided not to just go barging in and start asking questions. Instead they found a little restaurant, and had a leisurely lunch, all the while pretending to take snapshots of the harbor from the restaurant window. When they’d spent about as much time as they could at the restaurant without drawing attention, they moved to a spot that was out of sight from the restaurant. Sally sat on the bench taking a few pictures while Jim strolled around as a sightseer might.

  About a half and hour later, Maggie and Brett appeared across the street and strolled out onto the pier where a junk was moored. Their assignment was to pose as tourists thinking about a cruise and checking things out. They snapped a few shots of the junks and then spied what appeared to be a crewman. Brett walked up to him and asked if he worked there. He indicated he didn’t speak much English and pointed toward what looked like it might be the office for the cruise outfit.

  When they entered, an efficient looking Chinese woman in her forties looked up from a desk surrounded by travel posters and smiled: “May I help you,” she asked, with only a slight accent. They proceeded to tell her that they were thinking about a cruise, preferably a dinner cruise with a good view of the harbor. The lady was quite disarming and proceeded to ask where they were staying, perhaps to ascertain what they could afford to pay. When they demurred about naming their hotel, the lady went ahead and gave them the full rundown, even trying to close the sale on the spot. They thanked her and accepted the proffered brochures and turned to leave.

  From their perch on the bench, Sally snapped a shot of Brett and Maggie as they left the cruise office. From farther off, Richard was taking his own photos using a telephoto lens, his goal to ascertain if either couple seemed to have attracted any attention or was being followed.

  They had discussed this surveillance in depth before they left. The girls seemed to think it a bit excessive, but Richard reasoned that unless Holly and Ray’s disappearance was a random kidnapping, someone had done some planning. Richard said that anyone who planned such a crime would undoubtedly assume that the families might come looking for them.

  They’d debated who might carry out such a crime. It was generally felt that a criminal organization was a distinct possibility, but no one wanted to rule out completely the possibility of government involvement at some level. It was not inconceivable that a sophisticated ring of some sort was at work. If that were the case, it was also not inconceivable that they might have an ally in local government with access to lists of the names and addresses of travelers’ coming in from the US. Computers made the rest easy. What no one spoke about, at least not in front of Jim and Sally, was that this could be about white slavery. Many speculated that had been the fate of Natalie Holloway, the young American college girl who went missing in Aruba.

  Richard had not seen anyone following or watching any of his family. That seemed to bode well, at least for now. But it was not to say that the woman who booked the cruises didn’t have the photos of family members in her desk in case of just such a visit. Richard had chillingly reminded them before they left: “We already know first hand that people go missing in Hong Kong. We don’t yet know how, but we don’t want to find out by joining them.”

  The problem that had taken the longest to resolve was how to meet and compare notes. They had been required to list their hotels as part of the formalities to enter Hong Kong. That alone precluded meeting in one of their hotels. Since China is notorious for grabbing data from traveler’s electronic devices, I-Phones etc. were out. They’d finally settled on the Star Ferry, the ubiquitous green ferries that have crossed the harbor between Kowloon and Hong Kong island for decades. They reasoned that as long as each couple sat in rows toward the rear, but sat directly behind each other, they could appear to be talking to the person next to them, while the couple behind them could listen and comment while scanning the crowd seated forward. If someone insisted on sitting near them, they would simply wait, split up on the other side of the harbor, then reunite an hour later and try again on the return trip.

  Richard would remain the outlier, always apart, always where he could watch for watchers. Toward the end of each day, Brett inconspicuously passed a tiny cassette and a data card to him in a nearby crowded bar, which would vary from day to day. Later in his room, Richard would listen to the days notes and commentary and look over the data card photos in his camera window. Then, very early the next morning, he would take a brisk walk and, once he was sure he hadn’t been followed, would visit Brett and Maggie’s hotel and pass his own cassette and data card under their door. It wasn’t exactly CIA tradecraft, but it was the best they could come up with on short notice.

  The first day wasn’t particularly productive. The data cards fr
om the cameras didn’t have anything on them that jumped out, and the cassette pretty much just verbalized that they hadn’t seen anything that caught their attention. One thing did catch Richard’s eye, however. When Brett and Maggie had left the cruise office, the sailor they’d spoken with on the junk seemed to follow them with his eyes for a long time. At first Richard didn’t give it much thought; people stare at other people all the time, especially when they think no one’s watching. Then something clicked.

  Raymond is the spitting image of his dad, and vice versa.

  Richard would share that via his morning cassette. He also saved the sailor’s photo for future reference. Finally, he decided that Brett and Maggie should not go back to the pier. Later that night, as he lay in bed, another possibility occurred to him. What if Brett did go back to the pier alone, to take some pictures or ask some mundane questions about the junk? If the Chinese sailor’s look had been more than casual, he might be spooked into revealing something by his actions. Richard resolved to give that more consideration.

  The next morning the two couples went shopping like normal tourists in the world’s foremost shopping paradise. It would provide some props for future use and give Richard time to explore another avenue. He was at the door of the American consulate when it opened. When he got to the front desk, he asked the duty person if he could speak with the naval attaché. He wasn’t even sure if there was one in Hong Kong, but he’d decided he needed an ally and for him, the navy was the best place to start.

  The consular representative said: “What is the nature of your visit?”

  I was the captain of a United States warship, and I have a few questions I’d like to ask,” replied Richard.

  To his surprise, “Let me see if he’s in this morning,” came the answer. “Please have a seat over there.”