The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (11 page)

Lately, though, things had changed. Tang did not go into detail in his letters, but Ting-lo managed to speak with him several times on the phone. He believed he was being followed. Two of his friends had been arrested and shipped off to a re-education camp. He was not able to contact them, though he had tried several times. He feared the worst.

In the end, Ting-lo was no longer able to reach her brother. Tang seemed to have moved again, and she did not know his phone number or address. On Sunday mornings he would call her, each time from a different phone. His stories became increasingly worrisome.

When Tang’s wife was beaten and taken to an unknown location a few months earlier, extensive inquiries into her whereabouts had left him frustrated. Finally a trusted friend convinced him Gui-Jing was probably dead. Tang understood his own days were numbered. Desperate, he fled to the nearest city and went underground.

Ting-lo had to save her brother. She contacted a well-known rights activist in Toronto’s Chinatown. He helped her to procure false travel documents and a Canadian passport for Tang.

The plan was simple — get Tang to Canada as quickly as possible. Once in Toronto he would seek asylum. From there, they would have to pray things would work out.

Their re-union the previous evening was a shock for Ting-lo. She had no idea her brother had become so heavily involved with Falun Gong. He was painfully thin, as if he seldom ate, yet he did not seem interested in the food she had brought him from the hotel restaurant. The whole time Ting-lo and Adrian were in his room, meditation music continued to play in the background. Tang seemed to be spiritually removed from them, lost and floating somewhere in the cosmos.

His conversation made little sense to her. Yet Tang believed every word he spoke. Ting-lo was hesitant to translate his allegations for Adrian, leaving out large portions of what Tang said. The truth was, she was beginning to think her brother had lost his mind, and she was more than a little embarrassed.

Tang spoke of midnight arrests, police raiding the homes of believers and non-believers alike and dragging entire families from their beds. He told tales of beatings, imprisonment without trial, and most horribly of all, the brutal removal of body parts from live ‘donors’. Kidneys, corneas, and even livers would be offered for sale en masse to International patients who could afford to travel to China for surgery.

It was alleged that, once the organ removal was complete, the ‘donors’ would be killed and cremated to eliminate evidence of the transaction.

Ting-lo’s interest in Falun Gong was limited to her brother’s involvement. When Tang first spoke to her of the movement, she began to worry for his safety. She’d read stories in the Chinese newspapers in Toronto about zealots hanging themselves or setting themselves on fire in support of their master, Li Hongzhi. Of course, the Chinese community in Toronto was known for making a general nuisance of itself by demonstrating daily outside of the Chinese consulate in support of Falun Gong.

In fact, when Ting-lo and Adrian had visited the consulate building to pick up their travel visas, they were shocked at the stories and photos that lined the walls. There were thousands of accounts of Falun Gong members who had allowed their families to starve, who had lost their minds completely, or who had even taken their own lives in their religious zeal.

Ting-lo was not naïve. It was not hard for her to believe that a number of the so-called ‘suicides’ were probably assisted by government officials, who saw any form of religion as a threat to Communism.

But organ theft? Murder, torture, and rape on a grand scale? These things were hard to swallow, even for someone with as little regard for the Communist regime as Ting-lo had. She wanted Tang to be mentally healthy, but at the same time she hoped he was delusional.

Despite all of these worries, Tang was her only living relative. She was not with him when he buried their parents. Their father had died in a freak accident on their family farm. Two years later, their mother developed pneumonia — government sources assured the public there were no cases of tuberculosis in China, and doctors would not discuss the possibility she had contracted S.A.R.S., Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, while visiting relatives in Beijing. She was dead within days of entering the state-run hospital.

Tang was left completely alone. No wonder he had jumped at the chance to marry Gui-Jing, a pretty young girl who lived nearby. Gui-Jing was a spiritual person. She believed immersion in the ancient arts of T’Ai Chi and Qi Gong would cleanse the soul and keep the body and mind in optimum health.

Gui-Jing was a ready student when Master Li Hongzhi came on the scene, recruiting hungry souls with promises of spiritual freedom. Still grieving the loss of his parents, Tang was ripe for conversion. After all, atheism was cold comfort in comparison with the joy of a shared meditation experience.

Since leaving China, Ting-lo had led a comfortable life. She was the top buyer for a chain of women’s clothing stores. The hours could be difficult, but the work paid well.

Ting-lo considered herself to be a fashion connoisseur. Adrian could not believe his good fortune in landing such an exotic and exciting wife. In addition to being a rare beauty, Ting-lo was also generous and loyal, the kind of partner men dream of spending their lives with.

The only blight on their relationship was their inability to conceive a child. Both spouses had undergone medical testing, and both had been found to have healthy reproductive systems. Fed up with fertility pills and disappointment, Ting-lo suggested they look into adoption. Adrian agreed.

They never could have foreseen that this trip to adopt Anna would double as a rescue operation to smuggle Tang out of China!

Even now, after listening to his bizarre stories, Ting-lo still believed there was hope for Tang. He was only thirty-five. He would grieve for Gui-Jing in a safe environment, in the company of a sister who loved him, and in time he would regain his desire to live.

Once Tang was settled in Canada and free to express himself openly, religion might become a less prominent factor in his life. He might gain some perspective. It was possible he would fall in love and marry again, maybe even have children of his own.

In the enormous cocoon of love and optimism that Ting-lo shared with Adrian, all things seemed possible.

Best of all, little Anna would have an uncle. How could that be a bad thing?

In the fourth floor room next to Ting-Lo and Adrian Harlan, Eloise Golluck listened to her husband Joseph snoring. Normally it wouldn’t keep her awake, but it was the middle of the afternoon in Canada. Although she’d slept for less than three hours, she was fully alert.

She glanced at the bedside clock. Three-thirty. The hotel restaurant wouldn’t open for breakfast till six-thirty. What was she going to do with herself for three hours?

She got up quietly and lifted her bag onto the dressing table, turning the lamp on low.

From inside the bag Eloise removed a large package. The group’s documents were to be safeguarded by one person who would make sure each couple had the necessary paperwork on hand when officials requested it. Eloise was that person.

She slid the forms from the package and spread them on the table, mentally performing a roll call to ensure nothing was missing.

She compared them to each other, checking that each question had been completed correctly. Then she returned them to the package and tucked them back into her bag.

Next she counted the cash Joseph had been carrying. . Each couple was responsible for safeguarding their own cash. The required donation for the orphanage was $3,500. US per child in clean, crisp bills. Eloise had made a special appointment with her bank manager to procure the bills, emphasising they must be in excellent condition. Chinese officials had been known to reject bills that were torn, dirty or rumpled.

The operation took all of ten minutes. Eloise still had three hours to kill before she could wander downstairs to the restaurant.

Sighing, she lifted a book from her bag and tried to read.

**

The line up at the airport was long. Junior Agent Ho Lon-Yi fidgeted, playing the scene over in his mind. It was unfair. On the one hand, his uncle insisted he needed to show initiative, but when it came down to brass tacks, the only thing the old bastard really wanted was control.

If he’d listened … but there was no point beating himself up. His plan should have worked, far better than his uncle’s would have. These Falun Gong fools were always torching themselves to make a statement, as if the government gave a pig’s tail what happened to one more flaming Fong. Most likely the local cops would put it down to ‘suicide by inferno’ and leave it at that.

If he had followed Uncle Lon-shi’s advice, Tang could just as easily have died anyway, and there would have been no hope of passing it off as suicide. His uncle was partial to using water torture to get answers. The interrogator would place a plastic bag over the suspect’s face and force his head under a water faucet. It was known as ‘dry drowning’, and it was effective.

The problem was it was also messy, and in a one-on-one situation, there was no guarantee the suspect could be overpowered. Some of these religious nuts could get pretty feisty, especially if they were scared. Yi had once seen a man so wired up on
nirvana
it took five guys to bring him in. Once they had him in custody, it took four of them to help him hang himself in honour of his Master Li Hongzhi. Three of the four had bruises on their faces for weeks afterwards.

No matter what the old man said, that wasn’t Yi’s idea of a good time.

The hotel bar was closed, but Cheng knew a place where he and Wang could order a shot of excellent Russian vodka at four in the morning.

Wang Yong-qi hesitated at the door, peering into the darkness. He might have known when he suggested a drink that his partner would drag him to a place like this. His nose twitched.

Cheng smiled at his discomfort and led the way to a table in the middle of the room.

“
You wanted a drink,” Cheng said.

Wang Yong-qi followed him, resisting the urge to wipe the chair and look under the table.

“
What do you think of our Chen Sui Ming?” Wang said, labelling the suicide victim with the Cantonese equivalent of ‘John Doe’.

“
I think,” Cheng said, waving at a young girl who was far too pretty to be working in such a dump, “if our dear Ming had made the acquaintance of his next door neighbour, he might still be alive. At least she would give him a reason to face another day.”

Cheng laughed at his own joke, until his laughter degenerated into a phlegmy coughing fit. He suffered from chronic respiratory problems, which were exacerbated by the summer’s humidity and pollution. He grabbed a paper napkin from a dispenser on the table.

“
She seems to have brightened up your day, Minsheng,” Wang said. He seldom used Cheng’s given name, which meant ‘voice of the people’. He knew Cheng was embarrassed by its grandeur, preferring his family name, which meant ‘sincerity’.

“
Oh, yes, don’t worry.” Cheng laughed again. “There are no thoughts of suicide here.”

Wang hoped Cheng would not break into another choking spell, but he only chuckled and waved one more time at the waitress, holding up two fingers to indicate he wanted two of ‘the usual’. The girl smiled at Cheng with the warmth reserved for a regular customer.

“
However,” said Wang Yong-qi, “here is the question… did our Ming really suffer from thoughts of suicide?”

Cheng’s face darkened. “If it appears to be a suicide,” he said, “then who are we to think differently?”

“
We are detectives,” Wang said.

“
Lately I wonder — are we detectives, or are we spin masters? Is it our job to learn the truth, or to invent it?” Cheng turned his eyes to Yong-qi, looking for an answer to a question that was bound to frustrate both of them.

Wang thanked the waitress and peered into his vodka, marvelling that a joint like this could serve such crystal clear liquor. He touched the glass, enjoying its chilled surface. Yong-qi did not care much for vodka, but he always drank it when he was with Cheng. Cheng considered beer to be a peasant drink, a connection to his roots he would rather not acknowledge.

Wang Yong-qi, who was raised in Shanghai as the son of well-to-do intellectuals, had no concerns over being mistaken for a farmer. When he wanted beer, he drank it without reservation. Just the same, he was sensitive to his friend’s quirky preferences. Cheng’s eccentricities, like the way he daintily savoured the expensive vodka, holding the frosty glass in a hand that had not been washed that day, were rooted in unfathomable depths of psychological quicksand.

Despite his talent for understanding human motivation, Wang had long since given up trying to define what drove his partner. On the one hand, Cheng despised all signs of weakness and fussiness. On the other, it was critical to his self-image that people understand he was rough ‘by choice’, and his education and natural intelligence gave him a licence to scorn his betters.

Wang knew this was true. Cheng’s mind was superior to those possessed by many men of higher rank. Still, the telltale signs that have always separated the poorer classes from the wealthy existed in spades between Cheng and Wang, and both men were painfully aware of those differences. Wang, who held Cheng in the deepest of admiration, was disposed to allow the big man whatever pretences he felt comfortable with.