God's Double Agent (26 page)

This was life: meeting with believers, taking chances, and breaking laws.

Back in Beijing, our house church grew exponentially. Pretty soon, it had multiple fellowships in different locations. Heidi, who was a full-time student, studied long hours in the evenings and helped me as much as she could during the day.

One night, I fell asleep grading papers, and Heidi gently woke me to guide me to bed. When I looked at her, her brow furrowed and she bit her lip.

“You look pale,” she said. “Do you feel okay?” She placed her hand on my forehead and immediately recoiled. “You’re boiling!”

She called a cab and took me to the emergency room. The doctors took one look at me and hospitalized me, giving me several different medications to lower my temperature.

None of them worked.

I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could feel Heidi dabbing alcohol on me to cool me down. Later, Heidi told me I was murmuring and saying things that didn’t make sense.

“He could die if we can’t get this fever under control,” the doctors told her.

Heidi prayed, the doctors worked, and eventually the fever released its grip on me. Immediately, I went right back to work, training Communists during the day and conducting illegal house churches at night. The clock was ticking and I’d made a promise to God I fully intended to keep.

Our secret training center’s first class was an amazing success. After three months of intense training, we commissioned
them to go into China and preach the gospel. The day after graduation, however, we got unwelcome visitors.

“We’re in danger!” Dragonfly, one of my co-workers, yelled into a phone. I was home in Beijing, grading my students’ tests, when I got the call. Apparently, some men from the local business bureau showed up at the secret ministry center to “collect taxes.” Except for a few strays, the students had already gone home after graduation, and the teachers were preparing for the next class to arrive. The building was still relatively empty, with our lone computer surrounded by thirty Communist desks.

Of course, the center hadn’t paid any taxes because the center wasn’t actually a business. But the business bureau officials weren’t really there to collect taxes—they wanted bribes. At the end of the year, it was customary for companies to bribe officials. The business bureau would create trouble for any company that didn’t abide by these unwritten rules. Usually, they’d look around the businesses, searching for any possible violations to report to hold over the business’s head. Most of the time, the corrupt officials concocted false charges to use as leverage to receive even larger bribes.

“What did they say?” I asked, with a growing feeling of dread.

“They asked, ‘How is your business going?’” Dragonfly replied. “And then they asked, ‘Want to renew your license?’”

Of course, our entire organization was a violation of law. Dragonfly watched the officials as they walked through our building with puzzled faces. One of them stopped at the computer, looked at him, and said, “Your ‘high tech center’ is not so high tech.”

Almost nothing happens in China without bribery
, I thought as I heard the details of the story.
Should we have thought to send bribes to the officials so we could preach the gospel?
The whole thing seemed odd and wrong, but not as wrong as having officers walking through our top-secret evangelism school.

The officers had found a Chinese church history book that
had been hastily hidden under a pillow. It was written by a man whose name would pique the interest of any law enforcement officer.

Jonathan Chao.

“So they gathered up all of the evidence against us—armloads of biblical literature—and walked out the door,” Dragonfly told me.

As the gravity of the situation dawned on me, I called all of my friends over to our home for prayer.

We’d been compromised.

18

I snapped a pencil in half, set the two pieces on my desk, and asked my students, “What’s wrong with it?”

My lesson for the day was to make sure my students were able to describe items with proper English adjectives and past participles. I looked into their eyes, waiting to see if anyone could come up with the word
broken
.

“Dingbang?” I said to one of the two students who were perpetually asleep in the back of the class. He barely lifted his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“Feng?”

His friend looked up from doodling on the margins of his paper and said, in perfect Mandarin, “You broke it.”

“That would be great if I were trying to teach you Chinese,” I said, as both students continued to ignore me.

Then I called on another student sitting closer to the front.

“What’s wrong with the pencil?” I asked again. The student shuffled in her seat. It was May 9, 1996, and I couldn’t keep my mind on class either. While my students flipped through their books, I repeatedly glanced back at the door. It had already been one day since our training center was discovered, and I knew I was living on borrowed time.

After class, I went back to our apartment and found Heidi
preparing lunch. Her brother was visiting us after his college graduation and was out sightseeing. She expected him home soon.

“I made it back,” I said with a smile, sitting down at the table and accepting Heidi’s offer of tea.

“This time,” she said quietly. Silence filled the room. When the phone rang, both of us jumped. We looked at the phone and then at each other.

On the third ring, I reached for it.

“This is the Party School police station,” said the man on the other end of the line. “The Beijing police are here and want to speak with you.”

It had been three years since we first prayed God would give us time before we were arrested. Suddenly, I regretted selecting a specific, arbitrary number. Why did I ask God for three years and not, say, fifteen? However, we knew God was in control of all that was happening to us. In fact, God had been preparing us for this day in many ways. Even our personal Bible study had recently led us to 1 Peter.

“I’ll meet them at the office,” I said, before placing the phone back on its base.

“I think it’s time for prison theology,” I said to Heidi, and smiled. Before I left, we got down on our knees with our Bible, and I read aloud the passages we’d been studying that week:

“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet. 4:12–13).

Heidi folded her hands over her chest to stop them from shaking, and I continued reading. “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer,
or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters” (vv. 14–15).

A tear from my eye fell on the Bible, and Heidi joined me as I read the last sentence.

“Yet if any man suffer as a Christian,” we read together, “let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf” (v. 16).

Then we held hands and prayed.

“There’s one more thing,” I said, getting up, walking to the corner, and returning with the tiny little book in which I’d recorded all the contact information of the brothers and sisters who had become Christians over the past few years. I’d kept the little address book since 1992, when we were ministering at the university. I’d kept meticulous records because it was the only way to keep in touch. Plus, I wanted to document the growth of the underground church, in spite of what the official government numbers showed.

“Please,” I said to her, pressing the book into her hand. “Don’t let this fall into the wrong hands.”

I walked down the stairs on my way to the school office with my head swirling. What would become of Heidi? Would I ever see her again? How long would I be in prison? Would they torture me? But my reverie was cut short as a group of special agents cornered me just as I walked out of my building.

“Xiqiu Fu,” I heard as I turned the corner. The police, probably believing I would flee, had wanted the element of surprise. And they definitely had it. “You are under arrest for illegal religious activities. But before we take you to the station, let’s take a little trip back up to your apartment.”

My heart almost stopped. Only seconds ago, I’d placed the address book in Heidi’s hand. She had no way of knowing the police were on their way to her, so she wouldn’t have time to hide it. Plus, if they were going to search our apartment, no place would be safe. The officers ushered me up the stairs, their video cameras recording every moment of the encounter.

Knock, knock, knock.

When Heidi opened the door, her face was completely solemn. She didn’t look surprised or upset. She simply stepped aside and let them in. Her hand was down to her side, and she casually stood so that her arm hung on the other side of her body. I couldn’t tell if Heidi had the address book. However, I knew the officers were looking at me intently and could easily follow my gaze, so I hung my head.

“Search everything,” the head officer barked as he walked over to our television set. “Don’t leave any centimeter of this place untouch—”

He stopped, chuckled, and held up a stack of American dollars. “What do we have here, right out in the open?” He flipped through the stack like a casino operator in Vegas. “There must be a thousand dollars here.”

“That isn’t ours,” I said. Recently, a flood had devastated a nearby town, and a Taiwanese missionary sent money for disaster relief. We’d left the cash sitting out because we were just about to pass it along. “That’s money for the flood victims.”

“You really should keep your money more secure.” He laughed. “You know, for the sake of the flood victims.”

Heidi and I watched silently as officers opened our desk drawer and dumped its contents on the floor. They ran their hands through the papers, over a stapler, and through a small box of paperclips. I scanned the contents for the address book but didn’t see it. The officers stuffed anything that looked important into a satchel—our wedding videos, photographs, bank statements, posters we’d gotten during the Tiananmen Square protest—and I tried not to think of all of the memories they were stealing. The address book was compact, almost small enough to be hidden by Heidi’s hand. As the other officers were busy dumping out our belongings, I looked at Heidi, whose eyes were as hard as steel. She didn’t smile or blink. The only motion she made was to ever-so-slightly rotate her arm so I could see the edge of the book in her left hand.

I forced myself to look back down at the floor. I was thankful that she had it. They certainly would’ve come across it during the ransacking. But how long would it take before they noticed she was holding something?

An officer went over and flipped our bed, causing our pillows and blankets to fall into a heap on the floor. Within fifteen minutes, every nook had been searched and every item of interest had been stuffed into satchels.

“Okay,” the head officer said, gathering up their loot. “I guess we’re done here.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Had the officers found the address book, they would’ve had a blueprint for the underground church in that area, complete with names, phone numbers, and addresses. I looked at Heidi and was overwhelmed with love for her. After all, what other woman would be so brave and fearless as uniformed officers destroyed so many of her personal belongings before hauling her husband off to prison? However, God had prepared our hearts.

“Who’s got the money?” the head officer asked, just as they were gathering up our things. They looked in their satchels and found nothing. Somehow, in all of the ransacking, they’d lost the thousand dollars.

“You!” one of the officers yelled. He rushed to my side and grabbed my arm. “Where did you put it?”

“I haven’t moved from this spot,” I said, holding my hands up in the air with my palms out. The relief I’d felt was replaced by an acute dread as they searched me for the money.

“Empty your pockets,” he said, pointing to my pants. I slowly put my hands into my pockets, grabbed the inside cloth, and pulled it out so the officers could see that I hadn’t stolen the money. I wish I had. Heidi was standing right there among the officers, her hand behind her back. I moved as slowly as I could, hoping to give her more time to think and prepare. After seeing my empty pockets, however, they whipped around to Heidi.

Oh God
, I prayed.
Give her presence of mind.

“So it must’ve been you,” the officer said, getting to within two inches of Heidi’s face, studying it for traces of guilt. “You look like you’re hiding something.”

“Sir,” she said in a remarkably even tone of voice. “I wouldn’t steal money that wasn’t mine. Haven’t you noticed I haven’t moved from this spot either?”

“Empty your pockets!”

The entire world seemed to slow down as she took her left hand and slipped it into her pocket. In the distance, I heard a plane flying overhead. A clock on the wall ticked. The officers’ eyes were fixed on Heidi’s pocket, which now contained her hand and the book she was hiding.