“Do you believe him?”
“I checked him out. He’s not with the PLA, even though he wears the uniform. He says to tell you that this is his seventh life. He said you would know what that means.”
I nodded. “Where do I meet him?”
“Tonight, Beihei, 2 a.m.”
“If I don’t contact you in twelve hours,” I replied, “you’re to pull out of the city.”
He nodded briskly. “Good luck,” he hissed and, with a single shake of my hand, slipped back into the darkness.
Beihei Park. In spring you can barely move for the throngs of people come to enjoy the fresh flowers and leaves on the trees. In summer the surface of the lake thickens with water lilies, and in winter the white stupa is disguised behind the frost in the trees.
At 2 a.m. in 1958 it is a good place to get into trouble.
I waited by the westernmost entrance to the park and monitored the progress of the rain as it seeped through my socks. I regretted that I had not seen Beihei in happier times and resolved that, should I live to the early 1990s, I would come back here as a tourist and do the things that tourists do, perhaps choosing an affably harmless passport to travel on, such as Norwegian or Danish. Surely even the most vehement of ideologues couldn’t find anything wrong with Norway?
A car came up the empty street towards me, and of course the car was for me. There were few enough cars on the streets of Beijing, and I felt no great surprise when it came to a stop directly in front of me, the door was pushed open, and a voice called out in clear, crisp Russian, “Please get in.”
I got in.
The interior of the car stank of cheap cigarettes. There was a driver in front, and another man in the passenger seat, a military cap pulled down across his forehead. I turned to the third man, who’d pushed open the rear door for me to get in. He was small, silver-haired, dressed in a neat grey tunic and trousers. He had a gun in one hand, and a sack, also smelling of cigarette smoke, in the other. “Please forgive this,” he said as he pulled the sack over my head.
An uncomfortable journey.
The roads weren’t much to speak of, and the car’s suspension had been welded in by a stonemason resentful of his change in career. Whenever we neared a crowded area, I was politely asked to put my head down beneath the front seats, an action which required considerable shuffling of knees as the front seats were a bare breath away to begin with. I sensed the move into countryside by the swelling of the engine as we reached open roads, and was politely informed I could sit up and relax but, please, not to remove the bag from my head.
As we travelled, the radio played recordings of traditional music and selected highlights from Mao’s greatest speeches. My companions, if I can call them that, were silent. I didn’t know how long the drive took, but by the time we came to a stop I could hear the first trillings of the dawn chorus. There were leaves rustling against each other in the damp morning breeze and thick mud underfoot as I was guided, still blindly, out of the car. A step up to a wooden porch, the swish of a door sliding sideways, and just on the inside of the porch the same polite voice of the man with the gun asking if I minded them removing my shoes. I did not. I was patted down briskly, professionally, and led through to another room by the arm. The room smelled ever so slightly of smoked fish, and as I was guided awkwardly into a low wooden chair, a source of warmth off to my right, another odour–green tea–was added to the medley.
The bag was removed, at last, from my head, and looking around I found myself in a square rush-floored room of eminently traditional design. There were no ornaments save for a low wooden table and two chairs, one of which I sat in, but a great window looked out in front of me on to a small green pond, over whose surface the morning insects were beginning to flick with the approach of dawn. A woman came in, a pot of tea balanced expertly on a tray, and carefully laying out two china cups, she poured me some of the brew. The other cup was filled and set opposite me, though there was as yet no one to drink it. I smiled, thanked her and drank my cup down whole.
Waiting.
I waited, I estimate, fifteen minutes, alone with the pot of green tea and a cooling cup.