Typhoon (8 page)

“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 postgraduate 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.”

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 the opportunity to check his reflection in a nearby mirror. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead, then ducked his nose into his armpits to check for BO. He saw me looking at him and we exchanged a nod as I passed.

“Mr. Coolidge?”

“Still here.”

“We’re not getting anything from the computer, but Sarah says somebody’s using Yuk Choi Road.”

“The safe house?”

“Looks that way.”

“Who’s in there?”

“Hold on.”

Another lengthy delay. Miles had another look in the mirror.

“Mr. Coolidge?”

“Yup.”

“From the audio it sounds like just Joe and one other guy.”

“British or Chinese?”

“Chinese. But they’re speaking English. You know anything about this?”

“No,” Miles said. “But I know somebody who will.”

The Uighur, Ablimit
Celil, drove the maintenance truck though the gates of the People’s Liberation Army barracks at Turpan at approximately 6:15 a.m. A soldier, not much older than nineteen or twenty, stepped out of his hutch and waved the truck to a stop.

“What is your business?”

“To clean,” Celil replied. He did not make eye contact with the soldier. The uniform was the embodiment of Han oppression and control and Celil always tried to maintain his dignity when confronted by it. “Please direct me to the kitchens.”

Asleep on the seats beside him were two other Uighur men, both well-known faces around the barracks. The young soldier shone a torch into their eyes.

“Wake up!”

The order was a shrill, authoritarian bark. The men stirred, shielding their faces from the light. It was a cold morning in eastern Xinjiang and the open window of the truck had quickly robbed the cabin of heat and comfort. The soldier appeared to recognize both men before returning his gaze to Celil.

“Who are you?” he said. He shone the torch into Celil’s face, then down into his lap.

“He’s the new cleaner,” one of the men replied. Celil had been pestering them for months to find him a job. “It’s all been cleared with your superiors.”

“
Shen fen zheng
!”

Another barked command, this time a request for identification. There was distrust and mutual suspicion in almost every encounter between the PLA and members of the local Uighur population who worked on the barracks. Celil reached into the back pocket of his trousers and produced the fake ID prepared for him in the back streets of Hami. There followed the obligatory ten-minute delay while the soldier returned to his hutch to record the details of the s
hen fen zheng
in a logbook. He then walked back to the truck, returned the papers to Celil and instructed one of his comrades, who operated the security barrier separating the barracks from the main road, to allow the vehicle to pass. A minute later, Celil had parked the truck beneath the first-floor window of the catering block.

For the rest of the day, the three men went about their business. They cleaned toilets, urinals, ovens. They polished floors, windows, pictures. The soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army ignored them as they went about their business.

Celil, a more devout Muslim than the two men with whom he had travelled to work, was prevented from praying during the day. There was, of course, no mosque at the barracks, nor any area set aside for the
salaah
. For half an hour at lunch the three men were allowed to return to their truck, where they ate bread and sheep’s cheese, washed down with tea kindly provided by a Han woman who prepared soup in the kitchens.

At approximately 1:30 p.m., when his Uighur colleagues had returned to work in the dormitory building on the western edge of the barracks, Celil opened the rear doors of the truck and stepped inside. He picked up a large cardboard box and carried it into the kitchens. Bottles of sprays and cream cleaners protruded from the top; old rags, stained and torn, had been wedged between them. Nobody paid any attention as he walked into the hall which separated the kitchens from the main dining area and walked downstairs towards the basement. The floors still smelled of cleaning fluid; he had washed them just an hour earlier.

Celil knew that there was a store cupboard located on the landing between the basement and the ground floor. It contained overalls, brooms and various cleaning products. He unlocked the door, placed the cardboard box at the back of the cupboard and concealed it with a screen of buckets and mops. The timer had been set for 8 p.m. He then switched off the light, locked the door behind him and returned to the second floor, where he spent the next three hours cleaning windows.

Ablimit Celil’s first and last day at the barracks ended at dusk. He had wanted to check the device at least once to ensure that the timer was running, but could not risk being seen by a passing soldier. Instead he climbed into the truck with his colleagues at seven o’clock and drove towards the gates.

There were two new soldiers on duty at the barrier. As Celil approached, the Uighurs beside him said that they had not seen either man before.

“
Shen fen zheng
!”

“We are going home,” Celil replied. “Your colleague checked our IDs this morning.”

“
Shen fen zheng
!”

It was part of the game. Wearily the three men produced their papers and passed them through the open window. The soldier, more experienced and intelligent than the colleague who had allowed them through at dawn, flicked through the documents with a lazy ruthlessness.

“Name?” he said to Celil. He was looking directly into his eyes.

“Tunyaz,” Celil replied. It was the fake name on the
shen fen zheng
.

“Where were you born?”

“Qorak.”

Very slowly, he turned his gaze to the two men beside Celil and asked them the same questions. Name? Where were you born? He asked to be shown into the rear of the truck, with the clear implication that the men might have stolen items from the barracks. Celil duly stepped down and opened the rear door of the vehicle. The soldier stepped inside. The truck was full of boxes, blankets, empty plastic bottles and discarded packets of cigarettes. It was soon twenty-past seven. No other vehicles had pulled up behind the truck, so there was no need for the soldier to hurry.

Just after half-past seven, a blacked-out Oldsmobile, driven by a uniformed chauffeur, was waved through the barrier ahead of them. The soldier went into his hutch. Celil knew now that he should have set the timer for half-past eight or even nine o’clock. He had learned, by listening carefully to the conversations of his friends, that dinner was served in the catering block at precisely eight o’clock. He had wanted to ensure maximum carnage in the dining area, but now he feared that the truck would still be parked outside at the gate when the bomb exploded.

Finally, with only fifteen minutes remaining, the soldier emerged from the hutch and opened the barrier. Celil had switched off the engine, and he waited to be instructed to turn it back on. You could never be too careful. The game was humiliation. The game was threat and this might be a trap. The soldier was just waiting for him to make the wrong move. Finally, a gesture towards the road. They were waved through.

“Have a good night,” Celil told him as he pulled out into the evening traffic. “See you again in the morning.”

The bomb tore through the thin prefabricated walls of the storeroom, the force of the detonation driven upwards and collapsing a large central section of the catering building. Eight Han soldiers and four staff —among them a young Uighur woman—were killed instantly by the blast. Dozens more were injured and several nearby buildings wrecked.