Surviving Spies (Irving Waters, Spy Fiction Series)

by Irving Waters

  “We are here to help you in whatever way we can,” said Matt. “We must keep anything we do for you just between the four of us and the Master. It’s best for everybody if we stay out of the spotlight. I can give you some pointers on how to spot a tail, or lose one if you need to. They will probably have you followed at some point.”

  Sun Yi, frowning, turned to Casey. “The Police Chief knows that we are friends now. He might already suspect you.”

  Casey had been lightly drumming her fingertips on the table intermittently, listening to how Matt was approaching the delicate situation.

  “Matt and I have both noticed that The Chief seems to be emotionally driven. From what the Master told us, his behavior is quite predictable. We know him to be a bully. We also know that he holds a grudge. One can assume that he will work against you behind the scenes.”

  Wu Feng nodded.

  Casey continued, “I think Sun Yi does have a good point. When the Communist Party violates human rights, they tend to monitor foreign guests. They may not be watching us aggressively at the moment, but if we call attention to ourselves, we will no longer be of use to your people or to ours.”

  A long silence at the table revealed that Lu Lei was still awake, quietly talking to her Barbie doll in her bedroom.

  Matt took over, “We need to meet and talk in person if there’s anything important. Otherwise, on the phone, keep it to ‘the weather’ and ‘what Lu Lei is up to’, stuff like that. As far as the Falun Gong’s fearless leader, Li Hongzhi, is concerned, I think we’ll keep our distance. I’m sure he has his own contacts to help him get out of the country, if that’s what he decides to do. We hope to remain welcome in China for a few more years.”

  Wu Feng had been nodding and taking it all in. “What do I do when I’m being followed?”

  Matt answered, “First of all, do not try to get away. You have nothing to hide, most of the time. Just slow it down. Enjoy yourself. Let them get used to a slower pace. Teach them to relax and be lazy. If you absolutely need to get rid of a tail, it will be easier to escape them if you have put them at ease, especially if you are on foot or on a bicycle. That’s your car out front?”

  “Yes,” answered Wu Feng, “but we only use it on the weekends to get out of town.”

  “In that car, being small and slow, it’s best not to even attempt to escape.”

  Everybody laughed, though Matt seemed regretful that he may have insulted them.

  “Also, when on foot, carry a hat in your pocket. Changing your appearance works surprisingly well. Take off your jacket when you are out of sight. Anyway, the bicycle makes it hard to follow you if you want to lose someone. It’s best if they are not aware that you are trying to lose them. Be prepared with a pre-arranged meeting place if you need to talk to Li. Plan your route. You should almost never use speed to lose them; use corners and crowds. The truth is that if they want to get you, they will. They can get to your family. They know where you work and where you live.”

  “Barbie wanted to say good night.” Lu Lei had appeared in the kitchen’s doorway, looking tired, holding her doll. They all snapped out of their serious mood. Sun Yi picked Lu Lei up and held her close, cuddling her.

  “Back to bed with you. You have school tomorrow,” Sun Yi said, standing up with Lu Lei in her arms. “Say goodnight again.”

  Lu Lei looked around the room sleepily. They were all smiling at her.

  “Good night, Lu Lei. Good night, Barbie,” echoed the muddled response. Sun Yi took Lu Lei back to her bed.

  Matt looked at Casey. “Shall we call it a night, then?” he asked, swiveling his torso from side to side in the chair, wincing.

  “Sure, honey. Did that tai chi class wear you out?”

  They all stood up and started collecting themselves to say goodbye.

  Sun Yi shut Lu Lei’s door and returned to see her guests out.

  Matt offered, “If you’re both free, would you join us for dinner soon? I’ll cook a roast chicken, American style.”

  “Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much.”

  Casey added, “You could put Lu Lei to bed in our guest room when it gets to be her bedtime.”

  Sun Yi replied, “Wonderful. We’ll look forward to it.”

  The next morning, after dropping Lu Lei at school, Wu Feng walked into a teahouse. He had followed Matt’s timely advice, and had ridden slowly without being obvious when checking behind him. He was certain that a man on a bicycle was following him. He had plans this morning that were best kept secret, so he'd parked his bicycle and walked all the way through to the back door of the teahouse, where he paused and put on the old blue hat from his pocket and took his jacket off, turning it inside out. He put it back on, now with the red lining on the outside, labels showing.

  Stepping over the bags of garbage, he made his way out to the alley and headed around the corner to the next block where there was another teahouse.

  The meeting he’d arranged with the Master was in five minutes. It was possible that Li and the old man had also picked up a tail who might follow them all the way to the meeting, but the Master was often underestimated by people. Li Hongzhi was probably also adept at hiding in plain sight, but Wu Feng’s knowledge of him was based on hearsay. Everybody knew that Li had been trained in advanced forms of martial arts, from a very young age, by four powerful Taoist and Buddhist masters. He was rumored to be able to make himself invisible–even levitate–but Wu Feng chalked the rumors up to the nature of followers and their silly gossip.

  Dark clouds filled the sky. He walked away from the first teahouse. The air has suddenly cooled. Wu Feng paused outside the back door of the second teahouse, turning to scan the small street he’d come down. A beggar was shuffling around the corner, bent over, leaning on a long bamboo cane. Wu Feng laughed to himself because he could see the beggar’s bearded face under the hood of his cloak.

  Inside the teahouse, Li sat at one of the old wooden tables. Wu Feng joined him.

  “Good morning Li.”

  “Good morning, Wu Feng. The Master should be on his way.”

  “Yes. I just saw him.” Wu Feng laughed.

  Li leaned in. “Someone was following me, but somehow he lost sight of me in the morning street crowd.”

  “Mine is outside the other teahouse,” Wu Feng replied, just as the Master appeared behind Wu Feng, shedding his old cloak and leaning his bamboo cane against the wall, all the while looking very entertained by the situation, and a little bit smug.

  “Your jacket is inside out,” the Master said, “but I like the hat. It’s missing the red star.”

  Wu Feng laughed. The Master was right; it was his father’s old communist hat, from which the little red metal star had fallen years ago. It had been part of the people’s blue uniform which everyone had worn back in the days of Chairman Mao and the cultural revolution, when creative thought was discouraged.

  Wu Feng said, “My government friend will be waiting for me outside the other teahouse, so I have a half hour to get back there before he starts to wonder.”

  Li answered, “Good. Let us start with my news from yesterday’s meeting. I had three appointments with different officials, but only one showed up. Not a good sign. The one meeting that I did have lasted only five minutes. He told me that if we agree to cooperate with the Communist Party and establish official ties to the State, things will go more smoothly. Meanwhile, demonstrations would be dealt with in the ‘usual way’.”

  The Master’s disappointment and concern showed. Wu Feng and the Master both knew that some of their students would be undeterred.

  The Master sighed. “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”

  He looked at Wu Feng and asked, “Do you know who said that?”

  “I believe that it was Gandhi, Master,” answered Wu Feng, smirking a little.

  “You are correct.”

  Li wanted to say something but was waiting for the moment between master and student to
pass.

  Wu Feng spoke next. “There will be a demonstration tonight against the arrest and imprisonment of our student. A small one beginning at eight o’clock in front of the newspaper building. It is being organized and led by his wife.”

  The men were silent. Wu Feng felt torn by the woman’s decision. It seemed to him that she was becoming part of a defining moment in history while he stood safely in the shadows. His mind shifted to Sun Yi, who was presently shopping in the market. She would never approve of him joining the fight against the government. “What about your daughter?” she would ask him. “Is she supposed to grow up without a father? She needs you.”

  Li finally decided to speak. “The wife will be taken too.”

  Wu Feng looked at Li, waiting for him to continue. Sun Yi often said things about the future in a similarly matter-of-fact way, so Li’s statement didn’t seem strange. He was talking about the student’s wife, who would be front and centre at the demonstration.

  Li continued, “The woman’s actions will cause the smallest of ripples on the water, which will grow larger. Things would go less violently without the demonstrations, but a rough road may take us to a more beautiful destination. Any of us who speak up will be silenced, but in that silence will live the loudest voice of all.”

  A heavy rain began to fall, and the smell of wet bitumen drifted into the teahouse. To Wu Feng, the sound of the rain was comforting.

  The waitress brought tea, but Wu Feng declined, feeling that it was time to leave. “I must get going. Master, should I expect you at tomorrow night’s class? Tonight’s class has been cancelled because most of the students are going to the demonstration.”

  “Yes. Let us talk then and see how things have developed. Good luck with your new friend,” said the Master, referring to Wu Feng’s government tail, who was hopefully still waiting outside in the pouring rain for Wu Feng to emerge from the other teahouse.

  Five minutes later, Wu Feng was soaked. He re-entered the back door of the first teahouse. He took his hat off and turned his drenched jacket back the right way before walking out the front door to his bike. The man across the road was huddled under a restaurant awning, managing to stay dry. Wu Feng was acutely aware that his jacket had wet patches on the shoulders and back. He met eyes with the man for a second before he began writing on a notepad, frowning.

  Not far from the Forbidden City in Beijing’s Dongcheng district, a group of fifty protesters had arrived outside the building that housed the Beijing Daily Newspaper. It was five o’clock, and the streets bustled with commuters. A police officer used his radio to report the demonstration.

  The 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration was still fresh in everyone’s memory. It had only been a few years since 300,000 of the People’s Liberation Army troops were sent to Beijing, resulting in thousands of deaths. The troops used expanding bullet ammunition, meant for war, designed to inflict maximum internal damage. The people resorted to throwing petrol bombs at army vehicles, and beating soldiers to death. It was a nightmare for both sides.

  Almost all of Wu Feng and Sun Yi’s students decided to support their missing colleague and his wife. They had made yellow placards with red characters, using the words ‘persecution’ and ‘justice’. They had all agreed to be passive once they were seated outside the Newspaper Building. No megaphones, no speeches, no marching around in a circle or harassing journalists. They would just sit and meditate. Demonstration by example.

  Thirty minutes elapsed before the report was relayed to the Ministry of Public Security. The head of the People’s Armed Police gave the order to send a division with riot gear into central Beijing. Within twenty minutes, four vehicles each carrying ten men were on route. The men were mostly calm. They knew that the Falun Gong people were peaceful. More experienced were their unit leaders, each of whom knew the ease and speed with which things could spiral out of control. Orders often came down from the top that made no sense. Politicians’ motives were unfathomable. Following orders was a given, but soldiers had feelings. The Tiananmen uprising had severely shaken the resolve of most of the men, and adjustments had been made on all of China’s military bases. Punishments for failure to follow orders were brutal and happened behind closed doors.

  The demonstrators finished greeting each other and sat in neat rows of ten, cross-legged in lotus position with signs propped up against their shoulders. The streets were clean and dry. After the morning’s heavy rainfall, the sun had finally come out. The group grew to over a hundred, bolstered by the mid-level classes taught by Wu Feng and Sun Yi’s students. The demonstrators fell still and began their meditation. Passers-by slowed, curious but respectful. Workers from the newspaper paused briefly at the front of the building, surprised by the spectacle, before moving on.

  Fifteen minutes into the meditation, the four green canvas-covered personnel trucks pulled up, blowing the smell of diesel into the air, brakes hissing. Onlookers moved off immediately. The streets were now blocked by the local police, only allowing people to leave the area. The four squads exited the trucks and formed a loose circle around the protesters, resting their shields on the ground. The four squad leaders took their places behind their men while their commanding officer stood by the first truck using the radio.

  A short distance away, the Master stood on the street corner dressed like a beggar. He had convinced Wu Feng to stay home. They would see each other in the evening when Lu Lei arrived for tai chi class. Li was nowhere to be seen.

  The Master kept his eye on a pair of men in plain clothes standing half a block to the left of the demonstration. It was clear to him that they were government men. One touched his ear. He seemed to listen for a moment before looking at his partner. They walked past the demonstrators to the truck, and spoke to the commanding officer, showing him what the Master presumed was a government identification card. The officer spoke into the truck’s radio. All three men stood around the radio, listening; heads bent forward, looking at the ground. Abruptly, they all looked up and nodded at each other. The officer escorted them over to one of the squad leaders. After a few words, the squad leader ordered three of his men to stand aside and let the agents through.

  The Master felt a sadness that was more acute than he had expected.

  The agents walked briskly through the demonstrators, stopping along-side the leader, the wife of the missing student. Each took an arm, and she smiled peacefully as they pulled her to her feet. The Master closed his eyes for a moment, suddenly conscious that he was holding his breath. When he opened his eyes, the riot police had moved in and were handcuffing protesters where they sat. He could see the two plainclothes agents marching their female prisoner away from the scene while the riot police positioned their handcuffed demonstrators face-down on the ground. Some police placed their boots on the back of their prisoner’s necks. Some of the younger demonstrators struggled, but most remained passive.

  More trucks arrived to cart off the demonstrators. The Master’s thoughts drifted to Wu Feng. This new development would have a profound effect on him, on Sun Yi, and on Lu Lei.

  5

  The Bell Tolls

  Lu Lei wished her mother would peddle faster. She was feeling frustrated and upset and had not spoken even once during the bicycle trip home, despite Sun Yi’s motherly questions.

  “How was school?”

  “Did you make any new friends today?”

  She hardly noticed the street stalls go by while she sat on the handlebars in silence, arms crossed. She just wanted to be in her bedroom, far from the mean school boys. This morning, the policeman’s son Wei Bao was calling her “Tai Chi” instead of her proper name, and now the other boys were doing it too. The teachers had said nice things to her about her reading and writing—especially about her calligraphy. The other students teased her about that too. They could hardly even write one character yet.

  This morning, each of them stood in front of the class to talk about one thing that they enjoyed. Lu Lei described her tai chi cla
ss and the beautiful movements she was learning to make. The teacher summoned Wei Bao last. He talked about his father who, having told him that he must learn to be a man, had enrolled him in a Kung Fu class. Wei Bao punched the air, loudly shouting some new word he must have learned. Everybody laughed, and he ran back to his seat and bowed his head , his mouth forming that funny downward shape.

  At lunch the girls were all talking about their different dolls at home. None of them had ever heard of Barbie. Lu Lei described her long legs, light skin and blue eyes “Just like my friend Casey who looks exactly like Barbie and can beat up men whenever she wants to.”

  The group of girls went quiet. They just stared back at her, dumbfounded. A loud girl took over, talking about the stupid pink ribbons her mother had made for her. Lu Lei had felt angry, and turned away from the group, clenching her fists. She knew she was supposed to breathe deeply, but she wanted to put the girl with the ribbons on the floor just as she had done to Wei Bao at the party.

  Tomorrow, she would sneak Barbie into her schoolbag and bring her to show the girls.

  After arriving home, she rested in her bedroom while her mother and father talked in hushed tones in the kitchen.

  “Lu Lei is in one of her moods. Is her class on for tonight?” asked Sun Yi.

  “Yes. The Master is teaching. By the way, he was followed today. We all were. The man who followed me knows that I avoided him for half an hour today. I did not consider the rain...”

  “You were followed?” she blurted. “We have to be careful. No more meetings with Li Hongzhi. He appears in my dreams now. Two nights in a row. Like warnings. Both times he was rolling yellow barrels off a cliff. They just disappeared off the edge.”

  Wu Feng looked thoughtful. “Yes, I feel that he is not opposed to allowing the practitioners to go to jail in the name of freedom. I understand why he might adopt this stance. The government long ago crushed its citizens, and everyone’s will has evaporated. The people of China have become like sheep. It may have fallen to us, the Falun Gong, to alter the course, and to accept the consequences.”