Night Heron (5 page)

So, the contents of the bag. Cigarettes. A smart lighter. A diary—business meetings, something to do with property, phone numbers. And a black wallet. Within its folds five hundred and thirty-two yuan in a variety of notes, and the s
henfenzheng
, the
laminated identity card. Its photograph showed the man aged about ten years younger, with a face less lined and less ample than the one that had crumpled before Peanut’s fist. There was a likeness, perhaps, if you screwed up your eyes and hoped. Song Ping was the name, from Lanzhou.

So that’s who he’d be. For now.

Peanut stood, opened the stall door and walked to the sinks. He washed his hands with soap, scrubbing with his nails at the engine oil and blood. When he looked into the mirror, he wondered at what he saw. The skin was dark from the sun of the high desert, the hair short and bristled. In the eyes, something flickering between desperation and intention. He rolled his big shoulders, breathed.

The money and the identity card were in his pocket. He buried the clutch bag in a bin, walked out of the toilet, keeping to the wall, and pushed into the line for the long-distance ticket booth.

Where, to his horror, a policeman was checking documents. And another was standing back, just watching. Peanut looked down, patted his pockets, as if he had forgotten something, then stepped out of the line and walked quickly towards a fruit stall. He purchased a bag of oranges and without looking back walked out of the terminal to a stand of local buses. He chose one at random, boarded and paid full fare. He took a seat and looked back at the terminal. Four, no, five police cars had drawn up, and officers were moving through the long-distance terminal, trawling the crowd. For him? He sank low in the seat. The bus, half-empty, pulled out.

The bus was slow and anonymous. It took him south-east from Xining, meandering through grimy, dead towns.

Stillness is the enemy.

He savored a dawn meal—dumplings of pork gristle and coriander, sluiced in black vinegar!—at a truck stop under a canvas
tarpaulin in the rain. He took another bus, and then another, heading east. He spent a night in a scabrous hostel, one storey of crumbling concrete so filthy that, for an instant, he longed for the cleanliness of the prison. He spoke to no one, and moved, slowly, in the direction of Beijing.

Beijing

Harvey and Mangan cut the story the next morning. Beijing was gray with cold autumn rain. Harvey sat at the laptop, stringing together sequences. Ting, in a pink waterproof, brought coffee. She peered at the screen, at the
wujing
leaping from trucks.

“Bastards,” she said.

Harvey looked up.

“Temper,” he said.

She waved a hand. “Really. They’re thugs. We don’t deserve them.”

Mangan, still in pajamas, fought bravely with the script. London wanted the piece in at under three minutes, today. The state news agency, Xinhua, had run a terse five-line account of the mass arrests at Jinyi and the international wires were sniffing at it, so Mangan had to move fast. Harvey logged the pictures and built more sequences. Ting worked through the interviews, looking for the right grab, giving them options. But how to convey a sense of who the Followers
were
? A cult? A religion? Or vulnerable people so disoriented by life in modern China
that a levitating folk healer in Arizona looked like a hopeful prospect?

By mid-morning he was still struggling.

“They claim to be the denizens of a new order,” he told the microphone. “An order based on ancient Chinese myth, remade in a bid to change China.” This over a mysterious, beautiful shot of the Followers’ hands weaving in the air. A pause.

“But the Communist Party sees only the threat of rebellion.”

Harvey said, “What is a denizen, for Pete’s sake?”

“Look it up,” said Mangan.

“Shall we tell the viewers to do the same? And you said
in a bid.
”

Ting had the bureau dictionary. “A denizen is an… inhabitant,” she said brightly.

Harvey folded his arms, downing tools. “It’s crap, Philip. It’s clinical and full of cliché.” He swept his arm towards the screen. “Just look at the pictures. Tell the story.”

Mangan sighed and deleted. Harvey was a ruthless picture editor—a side of him that Mangan at once valued and loathed.

Ting stood behind Mangan and gave his wide bony shoulders a mock massage.

“Come on, Philip.
Jia you
. Did you know the Master believes homosexuals are made of antimatter? Really, it’s on his website.”

The streets from Liuliqiao long-distance bus station lead east towards the sacred center of Beijing. On these streets it is common to see migrants from north-west China who have just alighted from their buses—here a Muslim man in a white skullcap and a stringy beard, there a young woman in a headscarf from the tiny villages of yellow dust on the Loess Plateau. They stand in the middle of the pavement, looking up at the silvered skyscrapers for the first time. They often look ill at ease, their
poorly fitting clothes in brown and blue, their calloused hands, their dark skin. The pale
Beijing ren
sweep by the migrants on the street.

On this particular autumn morning, just after dawn, the casual observer might have noticed just such a migrant, a large man, with an ample midriff, make his way at moderate pace away from the bus station. He wore a blue tracksuit top and stained green trousers and a pair of newly purchased running shoes. A plastic carrier bag dangled at his side. He, too, seemed surprised by the power and scale of Beijing’s new prosperity. He stopped and leaned back, admiring the sunrise reflected in the shimmering frontage of a bank. He looked this way and that, turning to appreciate some new perspective, some striking confluence of light and architecture. Now and again he stopped, turned about, sat for a moment.

Once, a security guard in a white belt strode out from behind hissing smoked glass doors and ordered him away. The rotund man bent at the waist, looked submissive, raised a hand.

“Sorry, Officer, at once, Officer,” he said, and continued on his way. At one point he ducked into a coffee shop only to emerge immediately. The casual observer might have seen a confused middle-aged migrant, his passage ponderous, a naif come to the brave new capital of China.

But a trained observer might have seen something different, a measure of watchfulness and purpose beneath the ponderousness. The trained observer might conclude that this bristle-haired fleshy character, in his stopping and starting and turning about and his smiling, quick-eyed appreciation of his new surroundings, was, in fact, conducting counter-surveillance. Rudimentary and unpracticed, for sure, but counter-surveillance nonetheless. The tradecraft of those who live parallel, hidden lives. And such an observer might further conclude that this man was living such a life. Or perhaps practicing to do so, or reminding himself how.

By early afternoon Mangan had coaxed a script into being, Harvey had laid the closing pictures, and they’d sent it. It was strong, but Mangan was not satisfied, picking over it in his mind. The duty editor in London had sent back a
Thanks. Good work.
Which meant nothing.

The piece would run in an hour or two, perhaps even attract some attention. The agency supplied networks in odd places—South Africa, Lithuania. Often, carefully constructed stories were never heard of again. This time, though, the pictures were exclusive. Reuters had a story on the wire.
Baton-wielding paramilitary police detained hundreds of protesters in south China Wednesday, as a nationwide crackdown on religious sects continued.
The European and American networks would want to pick up the story. They’d pay the agency for Harvey’s pictures, fillet them and revoice them using their own correspondent, who had neither been there to witness the brutality, nor spent the night in a State Security lockup, Mangan reflected. He sat at his desk, tried to turn his mind to a piece for the paper.

Ting was in the kitchen, spooning rice soup into a bowl, sprinkling it with spring onions. Mangan could see her silhouette against the window, watched her. She turned, holding the bowl gingerly, then caught his eye and gave him a questioning look.

“Anything I can do?”

“Write two thousand words for me,” he said.

“
Zuo meng, ni
.” You’re dreaming.

“Where’s Harv?”

“He said his work here was done and he was taking a long lunch.”

“I think I might join him.”

She placed the spoon carefully in the bowl and pointed sternly at his laptop.

“Write! Soon you won’t be able to afford me.”

“Oh, no. What will you do?”

“Find a richer, less feckless western journalist and entrap him in marriage. Maybe a diplomat.”

He smiled. Ting’s allegiances, he knew, were complex, stretched between her wealthy, storied Party family, numerous suitors, and this dingy excuse for a bureau, with its pathetic salary and Mangan’s quixotic journalism. Why did she stay? She looked at him.

“Tell me if you need anything. More quotes, anything,” she said.

“Oh, I will.”

He dropped his eyes to the blinking cursor. Exclusive from our China Correspondent. Should he write up his own arrest? The paper loved all that.
A tense night in the cells! Deep in the belly of China’s security state!
Well, no. It would just bring more grief from the authorities. He rested his elbows on the desk. It was Ting’s turn to watch him now, as she sat on the sofa, cross-legged, lithe, managing to eat hungrily but delicately at the same time. It was quiet but for the chink of spoon against bowl.

Mangan wrote, and by early evening the thing was done. A workable piece and not much more, but done. Ting was in the bathroom with unguents and lipstick. Harvey had reappeared in a rather sharp black suit, with a bottle of wine. Mangan wore a jacket in green tweed once raucous, now faded. He stood, rumpled, holding out a glass in a spidery hand. Harvey regarded him with mock distaste, and poured. They eyed each other and drank fast. Harvey walked over and tapped on the bathroom door.

“Come on, empress. It’s the embassy. Mustn’t be late.”

The door opened and she did a fake sashay out. Crimson silk tonight. Very short, again. Harvey handed her a glass and they
all drank. Mangan pointed to the door. Forward! And, tipsy, they ran across the clattering landing to the lift.

It was the ambassador’s residence, a mansion on Guanghua Lu reeking of austere colonial purpose. From the windows, pools of golden light spilled into the smoky autumn evening.

At the wrought iron gates the three of them presented invitations through the bars to a smiling retainer, an elderly Chinese man in a bow tie. A British heavy in a blazer gave them the once-over, and they were buzzed in. Ting, excited, was up the steps to the front door, where more retainers fussed. Harvey took her arm, and she looked over her shoulder for Mangan and then the two of them glided into the reception, Mangan shambling in their wake.

The room glittered. Conversation clattered off walls hung with yellow silk and lustered oil paintings. A table of deep, glowing walnut bore silver chafing dishes. Here, a group of parliamentarians in from London, suited and bellowing. There, military attachés in tan serge, medal ribbons and braid. The Chinese guests—Party and National People’s Congress, Mangan guessed—stood stolidly polite, as the diplomats worked them. Ting was deep in conversation with the press attaché, a freckled Welshman named Partridge who gazed at her. Harvey had found some Australians. A waiter in a white coat passed carrying a tray of drinks, and Mangan lunged for a gin and tonic, which, he found, was sparkling water. In his ear a sardonic voice.

“Don’t look so mournful, Philip. It’s only us.” Mangan turned to find Charteris, the political officer, his best—only—embassy contact.

“I thought this might be gin.” Mangan stared into his glass. “What’s this all in aid of, anyway?”

“Fifteen Labour and six Tories. All talking to each other in
the corner. We get all these Party dignitaries to come to our reception and so far only the Honourable Member for Whitstable has had the manners to go and say hello.”

Charteris wore a navy blue suit and a signet ring. “Saw your Jinyi piece,” he said.

Mangan looked up.

“Jiangxi provincial government is furious,” Charteris said. “They’ve complained to
us.
The nerve. We pretended not to know you.”

“They’ve complained already?”

“Letter faxed to the press section.” Charteris sipped champagne, holding his glass by the stem, languid. He regarded Mangan. “They’re jolly angry. What did you do?”

“Got busted. Didn’t give them the footage.”

Charteris smiled. “You’re more resourceful than you look, Philip Mangan. You deceive us all.”

Mangan shifted under the younger man’s gaze. “God almighty, that was quick. The complaint, I mean,” he said. “Should I do anything?”

“Wait and see if they raise it with the Foreign Ministry, but I wouldn’t worry. Don’t go back to Jiangxi, perhaps.” Charteris watched the French ambassador and his retinue sidle up to an iron-faced member of the Central Committee. He turned back to Mangan.

“Any idea how many were arrested?”

Mangan thought. “A hundred. More.” He thought of the young men, cuffed, in the parking lot. “And they seemed to be separating out the boys, afterwards, taking them off in trucks.”

Charteris looked at him. Then paused, as if calculating whether he should say what he was going to say. “Not from me, okay?”

“Of course.”

Charteris leaned in. “You see, that’s very interesting. Because
we heard they were planning some sort of new program aimed at the men. It’s supposed to disrupt the leadership of the movement. Most of the Followers are still going into
laojiao
.” Re-education, the big detention camps for a year or two, no trial required. “But we heard last month they were starting to corral the men and send them away somewhere. We’re not quite sure what it’s all about. But it’s different.”

Mangan raised his eyebrows. “You heard where?”

“That I cannot share. But you might try some of the families, no?”

Charteris downed the rest of his champagne. He has perennially golden skin, Mangan thought. He belongs on a yacht.

And now he was readying to move. “Better go. The Central Committee seems plagued by frogs.” He turned away and then hesitated. “Philip, it was a very good story. I’m glad someone’s paying attention.” And with a mock-stern glance, Charteris eased away into the crowd.

Mangan knew the compliment for what it was—the polished work of a diplomat. But he enjoyed it, anyway.