Typhoon. Charles Cumming

by Sadha’s substantial girth. Wang was watching him all the time, trying to assess the hierarchical importance of his interlocutor and wondering whether to reveal something of his terrible secret to a probable agent of the British SIS.

      ‘And you, Professor Wang? What’s your story? Why does a highly educated Chinese intellectual with a position at a prestigious university wish to flee his homeland? Why didn’t you go through the normal channels? Why not just apply for a visa? Surely you have friends in Hong Kong, family you could visit? Why risk your life swimming across Starling Inlet?’

      ‘Because I had no choice.’

      ‘No choice?’

      ‘This was no longer an option for a man like me. I had lost my job. I was no longer permitted to leave China.’

      ‘You’ve lost your job? That’s not what you told Major Barber.’

      Wang tilted his head to one side and the poor light in the room momentarily lent his face the granite stillness of a sculpture. ‘I was concerned that the British army would not take my situation seriously. I had already been very lucky to be captured by a soldier with the Black Watch. I lied in order to increase my chances of remaining in Hong Kong. For this I apologize.’

      ‘Well at least you’re honest,’ Joe said, with more candour than he had intended. He felt an odd, almost filial sympathy for Wang, and found his position of power over him oddly disconcerting. ‘Tell me, why are you no longer permitted to leave China?’

      ‘Because I am regarded as a political undesirable, a threat to the Motherland. My actions as an academic drew me to the attention of the authorities in Xinjiang, who jailed me along with many of my students.’

      ‘What kind of actions?’ Joe remembered the line in Barber’s letter – Has the scars to prove it – and wondered why a man like Wang would be tipping the British off about a high-level defection. From the start he had doubted this element of the professor’s story: ten-to-one it was just another ruse to win his way past Anderson. More likely, the professor was simply a radicalized intellectual who had fostered anti-Beijing sentiment on campus. That was the sort of thing for which you were flung in jail in China. It happened all the time. ‘Why was it necessary for you to leave China?’ he asked.

      ‘As I have told you and your colleagues many times, I am holding information for the British government which will be of vital importance to the relationship between our two countries. That is why I have to see Governor Patten immediately.’

      Joe smiled. He knew now that he was being lied to, in the way that you know when a person is bored by your company. ‘And where do you want to meet him?’ he asked. ‘Surely not in Government House? Aren’t the Chinese disdainful of our feng shui?’

      This was intended as a joke, but Wang did not find it funny. Speaking in Mandarin for the first time, he said, ‘Do not make fun of me, young man.’

      ‘Then tell me the truth.’ Joe wasn’t about to be patronized and snapped back his response. He was struck by the sudden fierceness in Wang’s gaze, not because it unsettled him, but because for the first time he could see the force of the professor’s will.

      ‘I am telling you the truth.’

      ‘Well, then I’m sorry to have to inform you that a meeting of that kind is highly unlikely. I am as close to Governor Patten as you are likely to get. And unless I leave here tonight with some firm answers, the Black Watch are under instructions to return you to China without delay. Your presence here contravenes political understandings between our two countries.’

      Wang breathed very deeply so that his chin lifted to the ceiling. Joe’s sudden shift in mood had forced his hand and he was now at the edge of his luck. He would have to confide in this Mr John Richards, whoever he was, and run the risk that his revelation would simply be ignored by an indifferent British spy.

      ‘Why don’t…’

      Both men had started speaking at the same time. Joe said, ‘Go ahead.’

      ‘You first, please.’

      ‘Fine.’ Joe wanted to light a cigarette but decided against it. The air in the tiny room was already stale and unpleasant enough. ‘When you were first interrogated by Lance Corporal Anderson, you mentioned an apartment here in Kowloon.’ He thought back to Barber’s report and recalled the address from memory. ‘Number 19, 71 Hoi Wang Road. What was the significance of that?’

      ‘There was no significance. I made it up.’

      ‘Just like that?’

      Wang did not understand the idiom and asked for a translation in Mandarin. Joe provided it and the conversation briefly continued in Chinese.

      ‘So Hoi Wang Road is not the address of someone you know here in Hong Kong? It’s not an apartment at which you have stayed on any previous visit to the colony?’

      ‘I have never been to Hong Kong before.’

      Joe made a mental note to have the address investigated before reverting to English. ‘And why now?’ he said. ‘Why do you have to see Governor Patten in person?’

      Wang stood up. When he turned towards the window and leaned against the curtains, Joe had a sudden mental image of the popular professor organizing his notes in a packed Urumqi lecture hall, preparing to address a room full of eager students. ‘Because he is the only man in any Western government who has demonstrated an interest in the preservation of our basic human rights. Because he is the only man who might have the power to do something about this.’

      ‘About what? We’re talking about human rights now? I thought you wanted to talk about a defection?’

      Wang turned round and stepped closer to Joe. He looked angry now, as if finally exasperated by a long day of pressure and lies. ‘Mr Richards, you are clearly an intelligent man. You know as well as I do that I know nothing about any plans for any member of the Chinese state apparatus to defect. You know as well as I do that this was a story I invented to assist my journey to Hong Kong.’

      ‘So what do you know?’ Joe wasn’t surprised by the sudden confession. It had been coming for some time. ‘What is this pressing story you want to share with us? What makes you think that the British government is in any sort of position to grant political asylum to a man like you? What makes Professor Wang Kaixuan so special?’

      And Wang fixed him hard in the eyes and said, ‘I will tell you.’

       8

       Xinjiang

      ‘My father’s name was Wang Jin Song.’ On the surveillance recording you can hear an eerie silence in that cramped, air-starved safe house, as if all of Hong Kong were suddenly listening in. ‘He was born in Shanghai and worked as a schoolteacher in the Luwan district, close to People’s Square. He married my mother, Liu Dong Mei, in 1948. She was the daughter of a Kuomintang soldier killed during the Japanese invasion. I was born in 1949, Mr Richards, so at least I share a birthday with the People’s Republic of China, if nothing else. When I was five years old, my parents were obliged to relocate to Xinjiang province as part of Mao’s policy of mass Han immigration. Perhaps you have heard of this? Perhaps it was mentioned in one of your lectures at Oxford? Sinicization, I think they call it in English. I apologize if I am not correct in my pronunciation. Based on a Soviet model, the Stalinist idea of diluting a native people with the dominant imperial race, so that this native population is gradually destroyed. My parents were two of perhaps half a million Han who settled in Xinjiang during this period. My father was given a job as a schoolteacher in Kashgar and we lived in a house that had been owned by a Uighur landowner whom my father believed had been executed by the communists. This was part of Mao’s gradual purging of the Muslim elite, the execution of imams and noblemen,