Typhoon. Charles Cumming

a hundred flowers bloom,’ Joe said, trying to sound clever, but Wang produced a look of reproach which corrected him.

      ‘That came later.’ There was an edge of disappointment in the professor’s voice, as if a favourite student had let him down. ‘Of course, when my family had been living in Kashgar for two or three years, they became aware of the policy that we now know as the hundred flowers bloom. The Party’s seemingly admirable desire to listen to the opinions of its people, of Party members, in this case the Uighur population. But Mao did not like what he heard. He did not like it, for example, that Turkic Muslims resented the presence of millions of Han in their country. He did not like it that Uighurs complained that they were given only nominal positions of power, while their Han deputies were the ones who were trusted and rewarded by Beijing. In short, the people demanded independence from communist China. They demanded the creation of an Eastern Turkestan.’

      ‘So what happened?’

      ‘What happened is what always happens in China when the people confront the government. What happened was a purge.’ Wang helped himself to another glass of water. Joe had the feeling that the story had been told many times before, and that it was perhaps best to avoid any further interruptions. ‘A Party conference was called in Urumqi, but rather than listen to their complaints, the provincial government took the opportunity to arrest hundreds of Uighur officials. Fifty were executed. Without trial, of course. Trials do not exist in my country. This is what became of the flowers that bloomed, this is what became of Mao’s promise to create an independent Uighur republic. Instead, Xinjiang became an ‘‘autonomous region’’, which it remains to this day, much as Tibet is ‘‘autonomous’’, and I surely do not need to educate you about that.’

      ‘We are aware of the parallels with Tibet,’ Joe said, a statement as empty, as devoid of meaning, as any he had uttered all night. What did he mean by ‘we’? In three years as an SIS officer he had heard Xinjiang mentioned – what? – two or three times at official level, and then only in connection to oil supplies or gas fields. Xinjiang was just too far away. Xinjiang was somebody else’s problem. Xinjiang was one of those places, like Somalia or Rwanda, where it was better that you just didn’t get involved.

      ‘Let me continue my little history lesson,’ Wang suggested, ‘because it is important in the context of what I will tell you later. In 1962, driven by hunger and loss of their land and property, many Uighur families crossed the border into the Soviet Union, into areas that we now know as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This was a shaming moment for Beijing, a terrible loss of face in the eyes of their sworn enemy in Moscow, and it created problems for any Uighur family who remained in Xinjiang with relatives in the Soviet Union. In the madness of the Cultural Revolution, for example, a man could be imprisoned simply for having a brother living in Alma-Ata. I was by now a teenager, a diligent student, and it was in this period that I began to understand something of these historical injustices and to see my father for the man he was. You see, it is difficult to be brave in China, Mr Richards. It is difficult to speak out, to have what you in the West would call ‘‘principles’’. To do these things is to risk annihilation.’ Wang rolled his neck theatrically. ‘But my father believed in small gestures. It is these gestures which kept him sane. When he saw examples of disrespect, for example of racism, of the typical Han contempt for Uighur or Kazakh people, he would admonish the guilty, in the street if necessary. I once witnessed my father punch a man who had insulted a Uighur woman as she queued to buy bread. He made presents of food and clothing for impoverished native families, he listened to their ills. All of these things were dangerous at that time. All of these things could have led to my father’s imprisonment, to a life in the gulag for our family. But he taught me the most valuable lesson of my life, Mr Richards. Respect for your fellow man.’

      ‘That is a valuable lesson,’ Joe said, and the remark again sounded like a platitude, although in his defence he was growing restless. In Chinese storytelling there is a tradition of long-windedness of which Wang was taking full advantage.

      ‘But gradually things improved after the death of Mao. When I was a student, studying at the university in Urumqi, it seemed that the Party developed a more sympathetic attitude to the native peoples. During the previous decade, mosques had been shut down or converted into barracks, even into stables for pigs and cattle. Mullahs had been tortured, some ordered to clean the streets and the sewers. Loyalty to a communist system was demanded of these men of God. But the bad times briefly passed. For once I was not ashamed to be Han, and it was a source of deep regret to me that my parents had not lived to see this period for themselves. For the first time under communism, China officially acknowledged that the Uighurs of Xinjiang were a Turkic people. Nomads who had roamed the region for centuries were allowed to continue their traditional way of life as the Marxist ideologues realized that these men of the land would never be loyal state workers, could never alter their lives to suit a political system. At the same time, the Arabic language was restored to the Uighurs, their history once again studied in schools. Koranic literature was circulated without fear of arrest or punishment and many of those who had had land or property confiscated by the state were compensated. It was a better time, Mr Richards. A better time.’

      Joe was conflicted. As a student of China, a Sinophile, to hear the history of the region related so intimately by one who had lived through it was a rare and valuable experience: the scholar in him was enthralled. The spy, on the other hand, was frustrated: RUN was failing in his Lenan appointed task to squeeze the truth out of a man who had risked his life in the waters of Dapeng Bay to bear a potentially priceless secret into the arms of British intelligence. But Wang seemed no closer to revealing it.

      ‘And what was your role at this time?’ he asked, in an attempt to push the conversation along.

      ‘I was in my thirties. I was teaching and lecturing at the university. I had completed post-graduate work at Fudan University and was determined only to succeed in my career as an academic. In other words, I was a moral coward. I did nothing for the separatist movement, even as Uighur students protested the barbarism of nuclear testing, even as they took to the streets to demand the reinstatement of the Uighur governor of Xinjiang who had been forcibly and unfairly removed from power.’

      ‘And then came Tiananmen Square. Is that what changed you?’

      The question had been no more than an instinctive lunge for information, but Wang reacted as though Joe had unlocked a code. ‘Yes, Mr Richards,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘You are correct.’ He looked almost startled. As Wang cast his mind back to the events of 1989, recalling all of the horror and the shock of that fateful summer, his face assumed a dark, contemplative mask of grief. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The massacre in Tiananmen changed everything.’

       9

       Club 64

      By coincidence, Miles, Isabella and I were drinking at Club 64 in Wing Wah Lane, a Hong Kong institution named after the date of the Tiananmen massacre, which took place on the fourth day of the sixth month of 1989. Shortly after midnight, in the middle of a conversation about Isabella’s new job – she was working for a French television company in the run-up to the handover – Miles excused himself from our table and went downstairs to make a phone call.

      On the consulate recording of the conversation, the official who picks up sounds startled and sleepy.

      ‘I wake you?’

      ‘Hey, Mr Coolidge. What’s happening?’

      Miles was using the bar landline, feeding coins into the slot. ‘Just a question. You guys have any idea where Joe Lennox went tonight? He got a call at dinner and took off pretty quick.’

      ‘Heppner Joe?’

      ‘That’s him.’

      ‘Let me check.’

      There was a long pause. I walked downstairs on my way to the gents just as Miles was taking