Quiller Bamboo

Chapter 9: Chengdu

'Have you been there before?'

'Where?'

'To Lhasa?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Why did you go?'

'To meditate.'

'Ah. I saw the Dalai Lama, once.'

I didn't say anything.

'He is beatific. Beatific.'

The wheels went down with a thump and the cabin shuddered.

'He radiates good. You can see it, like an aura.'

I think the Hong Kong Chinese chew more gum than the Americans. Everyone, I'm sure you've noticed, does more American things than the Americans do.

'He personifies the second coming of Christ, I truly believe.'

Or he would, I suppose, if he weren't a Buddhist. I saw Xingyu scratching at his face again. He was sitting five rows back from the flight deck. I was in a rear seat, from which I could watch everyone.

'You don't talk much.'

'I've got toothache,' I said.

'Ah. You should suck cloves.'

The aircraft settled into the approach. Buildings below us now, a waste ground of buildings, block after block of apartment houses, factories, their smoke clouding like stirred mud across the bare winter trees of the apple orchards to the west.

Chengdu.

I had expected trouble going through Hong Kong airport, because that had been where the objective for Bamboo was to have been completed: to get Dr Xingyu Baibing out of Hong Kong. There was a new objective now: to get him into Tibet and under cover and protect him until he was needed in Beijing. But I'd still expected trouble going through the airport, because the mask might not have been good enough, or my own blue woollen cap and glasses might not have been enough to change my image. That image hadn't been in view for more than a minute outside the terminal where I'd made the snatch on Xingyu, but someone might have remembered it.

But there had been no trouble in Hong Kong.

The Chinese stewardess came down the aisle checking seat belts, her face lit with a china-doll smile.

The trouble came in Chengdu.

'You may find itching,' Koichi had said, Koichi the Japanese. 'Sometimes find itching, under mask. But do not scratch. Must think of something else.' Huge grin. 'Think of very fine Chinese dinner, very good sizzling rice and everything.'

There was no grass down there below us, no trees, nothing but stones, asphalt, bricks, rooftops, with a tangled web of electric cables spread across the streets to power the trams.

I would have liked to go forward and tell Xingyu not to scratch, to think of very good sizzling rice. In a few minutes we'd be going through immigration and customs checks, and the mask had to go on looking perfect. But I couldn't leave my seat now.

It was going to be more difficult, of course, to get through Chengdu than out of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong there'd been a strong cadre of KCCPC agents on the watch; in Chengdu there would be more, simply because this was a major Chinese airport and passengers from Hong Kong would be coming, in effect, from the West.

'Do you speak Chinese?'

'Not very much.'

'Then I will try to buy some cloves for you.'

Scratching again, Xingyu. He must be mad.

The cabin levelled off and we bumped three times and then the brakes came on and there was some Chinese coming from the speakers and then some English.

All passengers must remain in their seats with their seat belts fastened until the aircraft comes to a stop. For your information, CAAC Flight 304 will depart from Chengdu at 12:25 p.m. in thirty-five minutes from now. Your guide will escort you to the gate.

I got into the aisle without wasting any time and reached the queue at the immigration desk with Xingyu ahead of me in plain sight. The terminal was huge, bleak, echoing, built on Soviet lines, and there were upward of a hundred people here in uniform with peaked caps, most of them standing at the line of desks and farther out near the walls and the exit doors; they formed what amounted to a living barricade, a potential trap, and it was now that I looked at Xingyu standing there under the immigration sign and thought for the first time that there wasn't a hope in hell of getting him through this massive array of police and onto the flight for Tibet, not a hope in hell.

He'd blow it, the whole thing. He wasn't an experienced agent, not even an agent at all; he might know the chemical composition of Jupiter but he wouldn't know what to say when they asked him what his reason was for going to Tibet. He'd remember what we'd told him to say, of course, that he wanted to study the language, but it wouldn't be the truth, and he'd been used to shouting the truth from the rooftops all his life, it was in his character, in his bones, and he was going to tell these peak-capped robots his precise reasons for going to Tibet, he was going there to implement the overthrow of the Communist Party in Beijing and let freedom ring throughout the land, so forth, while I stood here listening to the orders for the police to close in and take him away, milling around him like a pack of starving dogs that had found a bone.

Nothing you can do now, it's too late. Just stand here and wait for it, stand here and wait.

Sound of Bedlam, like bloody Bedlam in this place because there was no carpeting, no acoustic ceiling, only the peeling paint of the walls and the scarred concrete floor and the vast dirt-filmed windows throwing the echoes across and across the hall, with somewhere the tinny sound of music from the loudspeaker system or someone's radio, a Chinese singing a Bing Crosby song, 'I'm in the Mood for Love,' a hilarious thought, a hilarious thought, my good friend, in a place where any kind of love had long since fled, or died, like a butterfly caught in a machine.

'George, are you going on with the rest of us?'

'Look, for God's sake don't give them any lip, you'll drop us all in the shit.'

'Where's Jimmy, then? He said he'd be here.' The United Kingdom contingent, not from Hong Kong, doing the Tibet trip, a change of pace from Majorca.

'Show them everything, mate, don't try any tricks.'

'Everything all right?' A face close to mine suddenly, the voice very quiet, the eyes looking nowhere.

'Tell him,' I said, 'to stop scratching his face.'

He turned away and wandered about again, passing close to Xingyu ahead of me in the queue and then moving away, standing at a distance, looking around him for some lost sheep according to his cover, Aurora Travel on the red plastic disk pinned to his lapel, the man from the Bureau, sent here to signal London that he'd seen the shadow executive and the subject land safely at Chengdu and present themselves to immigration, or of course to report that the subject had in point of fact been smothered suddenly in a scrum of policemen and hustled into a van outside, it would depend, wouldn't it, on what the most wanted man in the People's Republic of China said to the smartly uniformed officer behind the desk, on how he said it, and on whether he was going to stop scratching his face until he tore a hole in the mask and finis, all fall down, he must be out of his mind.

'Marjorie's not coming.' Scared blue eyes.

'But she was on the plane.'

'She's not coming with us. She wants to go back to Hong Kong.'

The queue shuffled forward again. Dr Xingyu Baibing was the next in line at the desk. Not, perhaps, out of his mind, no, in the sense that he didn't realize the danger, just being driven out of his mind by the itching under the mask, itching can do that, yes.

'What on earth for?'

'She says she can't get her mind off what they did that time in Tianen — Tia — you know, that square.'

'God, that was ages ago. Tell her — '

'She says she's frightened of them. She's never been in China before.'

'Tell her she's all right with us. I can't leave — '

'She's being sick in the lavatory.'

'Then for God's sake go and help her. Tell her the plane goes in ten minutes.'

Shuffled forward again, and Xingyu got his papers out, clumsily, dropping one of them, picking it up — would they notice the blood hadn't gone to his face after he'd bent down like that? — showing them the papers now while the man over there with the Aurora Travel badge swept his eyes across the crowd and didn't let them stop at Xingyu. One of the policemen took a step forward, a step toward the desk, stretching his legs, perhaps, but his eyes were watching the desk, watching the little man there from the shadow under the peak of his cap, the shadow thrown by the bleak neon lights that hung from the iron rods under the ceiling while the noise went on, the din of so many voices, of so many people trapped in here like cattle in a slaughterhouse but we must not, must we, let our imagination get out of hand, we must not be sick in the lavatory.

'Joyce, who's going to take her back to Hong Kong, then, if we can't stop her going?'

'Could ask Harry.'

'God, not Harry.'

'She's not in the mood for anything like that.'

'Harry wouldn't care.'

Presenting his papers, our little messiah, the only hope for a billion people out there in the rice fields and the factories and the universities, living their daily lives in the shadow of the tanks. The only hope.

Shepley must have had a brainstorm when he'd set this thing up, instructing us to take a man like Xingyu through three airports, Hong Kong and Chengdu and Gonggar, under the eyes of the Kuo Chi Ching Pao Chu, gone clean out of his mind, and not much better ourselves, Pepperidge and I, we should have rehearsed this poor little bugger, told him what it was going to be like when he landed back inside his beloved country, what they would ask him at the immigration desk, what he should tell them, rehearsed him until he could have gone through this checkpoint word-perfect, but in fact we couldn't, I suppose, have done that to him, he would have told us we were playing spies, being melodramatic, knew his galaxies, didn't know his codes, no go, my good friend, it's going to be no go, because the officer at the desk is beckoning the man over there, the plainclothes supervisor, and he is going over to the desk, his steps measured.

'What's holding us up?'

'I don't know.'

'Look, go and help Kate with Majorie. I'll keep your place.'

'You can't do that here. You — '

'Wait a minute. Excuse me, but do you mind if my friend just went to the toilet?'

'Shen me shi?'

'My friend here, oh God, he doesn't — '

'Let me help. Zheiwei nushi xiang qu cheshuo, ramhou huidao queue.'

'Xing.'

'Oh, I'm much obliged. Go on, Doris, get her back here so I can talk to her, for God's sake. We're going to miss that plane.'

The air cold in in here, with the harsh reek of the factory smoke creeping in under the doors, the lights clouded, some of the tubes flickering, some of them dark, they don't run a good ship here, my friend, they do not run a good ship, their methods are crude and their thinking is proscribed, conditioned, and they will throw him into the van like a common criminal while I go on shuffling forward like a puppet, not daring to leave the queue and follow him, follow them, hoping to do something miraculous and get him away, get him to ground, not daring to do anything except shuffle forward and go through the charade and get out of here, because this was no place for miracles.

Get out of here and signal London, let the hand pick up the piece of chalk and change the board. Executive reports subject lost to KCCPC, Chengdu airport, 12:16 l.t.

The man from the Bureau was watching the desk, his dead stare fixed now. I couldn't see much of Xingyu because he was shorter than the three girls in front of me and they were moving around, anxious for Marjorie.

I watched the man over there instead: we had, in this instant, established signals. He would swing his head and look at me when anything important happened there under the immigration board, under the flickering lights, would let a smile touch his mouth if all were well, or leave his stare on me and move his head to and fro by the smallest degree if all were not well, if the trap slammed shut, finito.

'She's got no need to be frightened of them, for God's sake, they're only people. It's just the air trip getting to her stomach, that's all.'

'This is all we needed.'

'It's what we've got. We'll muddle through somehow, we're British.'

The stink of the smoke in here was enough to make anyone sick, it wasn't the air trip, but you're wrong, my little love, you're wrong, you know, there is every need to be frightened of these people, there is every need. They are the people with the tanks.

Movement suddenly at the desk as the officer got to his feet and another one came up and the plainclothes supervisor nodded and turned away and the man from the Bureau swung his head and looked at me with his mouth relaxed and I saw Dr Xingyu Baibing leave the desk and pick up his bag and walk slowly away, folding his papers and putting them into the pocket of his sheepskin coat. I went forward and passed through the checkpoint and then customs and joined our charter group.

'How is your toothache?'

'Much better.'

But he was reading a newspaper.

CAAC Charter Flight No. 4401 to Gonggar will depart from Gate 6 at 12:15. All passengers must report to Gate 6 for embarkation.

They were already lined up, windbreakers and sheepskin jackets and woollen hats and skiing gloves or red hands rubbing together, heavy boots, combat boots, a whole line of boots with the people tethered by them to the littered concrete, swaying in the stream of cold filthy air from the ventilators, all of them except Xingyu Baibing.

He was reading a newspaper, standing near the poster on the wall, Mitsubishi, holding the paper quite still and concentrating on a certain page, a certain column, and as I walked over to him I knew I'd blown Bamboo.

I shouldn't have let him buy a paper.

They hadn't set a trap for him here in Chengdu, specifically. They'd set a trap for him everywhere, wherever he might go, once he'd got out of Hong Kong. They'd been prepared even for the impossible, that somehow, despite their agents there, he'd get clear of Hong Kong, and they'd set a supertrap that couldn't fail.

He was in it now and it had sprung.

'We're boarding,' I said, as if nothing had changed, as if by one chance in a thousand I was wrong.

He looked at me, his eyes smouldering, the newspaper trembling between his hands.

Passengers for Flight No. 4401 for Gonggar are now boarding. All passengers for Gonggar must report immediately to Gate 6 for departure.

Xingyu pushed the newspaper towards me.

'Dead.'

Top of page two.

WIFE OF DISSIDENT IN PRISON. Dr Xingyu Chen, wife of the exiled scientist Xingyu Baibing, who left the People's Republic yesterday in disgrace, was arrested late last night in their apartment in Beijing and taken to Bambu Qiao Prison, where she is now undergoing intensive interrogation, in the hope that she can be persuaded to inform the authorities on the whereabouts of certain friends and colleagues also wanted for questioning, and to offer information particularly on her husband's subversive activities at the university.

Though nothing official has been announced, a source requesting anonymity has declared that if the exiled dissident Xingyu Baibing were to return voluntarily to Beijing for interrogation, his wife would in all likelihood be released immediately.

I folded the paper.

'Hey, come on! You're with our lot, aren't you?'

Xingyu stood facing me.

'I must go to Beijing.'

'No,' I said, 'you can't do that.'

'You cannot stop me.'