China Wife

by Hedley Harrison

  The man looked at his watch. Another gaggle of people went by; an incoming flight from Melbourne had disembarked its load, temporarily adding to the throng in the terminal building.

  A loudly chattering Qantas crew surged into the plaza area intent on taking over one of the parked aircraft. A chauffeur joined the man outside the Gucci shop. And in the opposite direction a pair of women in cabin attendant uniforms approached assisting a young woman who appeared to be ill. A medical bag was slung over the shoulder of one of the cabin attendants.

  Another pantomime started as the Chinese man and his chauffeur greeted the trio, play-acting anxiety over the ailing young woman. It was clearly a pre-arranged meeting and unrelated to any desire to spend money on goods in the Gucci shop.

  ‘Jesus!’

  There was now no doubt where the casually dressed couple, whose exclamation caught the attention of the bulk of the time-filling passengers in the plaza area, came from. Americans, nervous about being in China anyway. The woman’s voice was at once strident and anxious.

  A cloud of dark green descended on the group of five people. The two cabin attendants, more alert than the man they were meeting, immediately turned and set off back along an access way heading for the exit.

  The sharp cry in Chinese was followed by an explosive roar as the police opened fire at the running figures. Both women were hit and collapsed and slithered in their momentum along the access way until they cannoned into the wall. Neither moved once their motion had been arrested.

  ‘Go, go!’

  The Chinese police didn’t really need to speak to indicate what the shocked passengers should do. They were shepherded quickly from the plaza area, the shops were closed and a security blanket came firmly down.

  The observer from the coffee lounge above was nowhere to be seen.

  People’s National Daily

  English-language Hong Kong Edition – Tuesday, 22 June 2010

  INCIDENT AT HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIR PORT

  The police arrested a Hong Kong banker yesterday afternoon at the airport on suspicion of importing an illegal immigrant following a brief incident in which two women suspects were killed.

  In an operation in coordination with the police forces of Australia, Great Britain and Canada, the People’s Police made the arrest based on information received in this instance from the Australian Federal Police that a young woman would be on a flight from Melbourne yesterday and that this young woman was being brought to the People’s Republic against her will and against the immigration protocols agreed between the People’s Republic of China and the Commonwealth of Australia.

  The names being used by the two women accompanying the enforced illegal immigrant had been passed to the People’s Police, and surveillance established at the airport to intercept them if and when they arrived from Australia. Until the trio arrived, the police had no idea that the immigrant would be met by the banker.

  The young woman taken into custody was in a distressed state having been both drugged and restrained during the flight from Melbourne. The police wouldn’t elaborate on what exactly had occurred on the flight.

  The People’s Police is being unusually forthcoming about the incident, in the hope that the people of Hong Kong will be vigilant against a possible rise in the illegal traffic of young women into China.

  The police made no comment on the role of the banker in the incident other than to confirm that he was there to meet the women. All that is known about him is that he is wealthy, has several houses in PRC and abroad, and he is single. The police are currently investigating his contacts and associates, particularly in the three countries with whom the PRC is cooperating.

  10

  Teasingly, Susie refused to disclose the purpose of the meeting that she had invited David Hutchinson to.

  With more than half the whisky gone, both she and David were sufficiently relaxed and psyched up for him to take this refusal as a challenge, and as they headed to their bedroom it was obvious that Susie was going to enjoy the process of resisting him further.

  ‘It’s holiday; it’s holiday!’ she chided him playfully.

  Visions of the O2 Arena and their first encounter were at the forefront of both of their minds. Their trip to the Arena had been characterised by studied indifference from David and a patronising aloofness by Susie. Yet inside she was seething with a confusion of emotions that she had struggled to understand ever since. Aristocratic and privileged as she was, her only contact with people of David’s working-class background had been with family servants, yet this man, against all of her perceived stereotypes, had thrived at university in a way that she could only envy. Yet it had only been when she saw him in the street and impulsively forced him into conversation that she had realised that David had got inside her head at Oxford and had never been out of it.

  The pop star that David had been going to interview and photograph had been totally unknown to Susie. Her claimed passion for him had provided the excuse she needed to force herself on David, impulsive and irrational though it might be. Infatuated in the moment she gave no thought to what might happen when they got to the O2 Arena. The pop star’s no-show had solved the problem and provided Susie with an unexpected opportunity to be alone in private with David.

  Backstage she had simply grabbed at him and began kissing him with a passion that he later admitted both took him by surprise and released his own pent-up feelings at being in the company of someone he saw as spoiled, toffee-nosed and arrogant.

  Scrabbling at his trousers and sinuously dropping her skin-tight jeans, she forced David inside her before he could draw breath. After that it was pure passion. It was the first of many snatched moments of meals and sex in unlikely places until David suggested that they put the relationship on a more stable basis by taking a holiday together. Susie, a very different Susie from their university days, had been very positively enthusiastic about the idea.

  Now well into the holiday, despite unforeseen distractions, well fed and well watered with expensive whisky, Susie was out of her miniskirt and pants before he had got more than a couple of buttons undone.

  ‘Come on then!’

  As they were both finally naked, Susie moved away from him but beckoned him on to her.

  ‘Jesus, Susie, talk about high-class tart!’

  But he was ready for her now and as they entangled on the bed he could smell her expensive perfume and she the stale soapy smell of him that had driven her wild at the O2 Arena. She relaxed against him and went with his motion. As usual, David was surprised and delighted by the vigour of her response.

  After Seaton, they skipped the rest of Devon, neither Exeter nor Plymouth holding any potential interest for them. A big city was a big city and they had both seen plenty of those. In line with the ‘country pub’ philosophy, they weren’t interested in the corporate or big time, but much more in the simpler things of life.

  The humid warmth of the Tropical Dome at the Eden Project seemed oppressive against the drier warmth of a Cornish afternoon, but neither Susie nor David took much notice.

  ‘A bit like Port Harcourt when I was last there,’ said David.

  His piece on the Nigerian Government’s efforts to defeat the Ogoni rebels in the Niger Delta had been much praised. At least, by everybody but the local Rivers Province administration, which were less than impressed by the evidence of the combination of collusion and bribery that kept the rebels quiescent during an expansion of the Shell oil company’s pipeline system. The subsequent sanctions imposed by the federal government on the Rivers Province Government ensured that David was never likely to travel in that part of Africa again.

  The meeting room at the Millbank Tower was windowless and featureless. David was surprised by the large cast that had gathered. He had no idea why the meeting would require twelve people present and he never found out who all of the twelve people were.

  ‘There’s always the note-takers,’ Susie said afterwards.

  ‘Four?’
<
br />   ‘That just says that there were four departments present.’

  ‘Shit, Susie, why don’t they just share the meeting notes?’

  ‘No, no, you don’t understand,’ she said with a grin. ‘The notes aren’t just recording what was said and agreed at the meeting. That’s too simple a view. They’re about the people who will read the notes and assuring them that the department’s view point was accurately portrayed.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  The light-hearted jocular tone of the conversation reflected David’s relief that the meeting was over and that it hadn’t proved anything like as demanding as he had expected. Nonetheless, a meeting chaired by a woman that he regularly had sex with was always going to have an element of challenge in it.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘I got myself a job.’

  ‘And, you can be sure that you’ll get paid for it!’

  But it had taken two hours for them to get to this point of satisfaction.

  Susie had started the meeting off by introducing only some of the people present. Of those she did introduce David learned that there were representatives from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Work and Pensions, and the Home Office.

  It soon became clear that the various attendees didn’t sit together by department. Whether this was by design or simply a reflection of the arrival times of the participants of the meeting David never had any idea. But it did make following the flow of the meeting more difficult and at times confusing. It didn’t, however, take long for the various departmental agendas to become apparent.

  The most difficult part for David was that those present had either been well briefed or were so actively involved in the issues under discussion that no background was ever offered. But it was very clear what the underlying topic for the meeting was.

  ‘The illegal immigrant routings are getting more sophisticated. From contacts in Canada and Australia we’ve learned that the source of immigrants has been expanded, to South America – to Brazil, to be precise. A large-scale operation has been discovered by the Canadians that has allowed a whole stream of migrants to get under the American radar. The US is so fixated on Mexico and stopping both the illegals and the violence crossing the border that it has become much easier for people-trafficking routes from further south to be built up and to bypass the US control system. They aren’t looking for them so they don’t find them. The key point is that they don’t stay in the States; they move on to Canada and into the labour force there. From what we are discovering, the movement is very specific and very well resourced.’

  David wasn’t clear whether the speaker was Work and Pensions or from the Security Service.

  ‘Two other trends are emerging. One, many of the illegals are Asian, mainly Chinese, with the odd Japanese. Two, among the general run of illegals of all social categories simply out to make a better life there is evidence of a small number of middle-class/professional class women being trafficked. They are thought to be second-generation immigrants to Brazil, maybe Argentina, facing prejudice, hoping to move out and on to a better life in Canada and beyond.’

  ‘Beyond,’ said David without thinking.

  ‘There’s evidence that some high-value illegals are being seized in Canada and moved on – we suspect, to Australia.’

  It was a switch of departmental spokesperson. It was obvious that this aspect of what was being described was either new or unusual, but David got a sense that many of those present didn’t rate it as important as the larger-scale activities. The term ‘high-value illegals’ grated with David.

  ‘Identities are being established in Canada, even if the jobs that the illegals are doing don’t live up to their homeland qualifications, and then they are being selectively snatched and they are disappearing from Canada.’

  The Home Office speaker didn’t provide any more details. But, since the number of these women was tiny, the interest wasn’t actually in them; it was more the men who were getting past the system. These men formed two categories: IT and computer specialists, and general and semi-skilled workers. The belief was that the specialists moved on to Britain and Europe – Russia too – while the others were dispersed in a fairly obvious fashion around Canada. Easily picked up and deported, the Canadian authorities saw these men as a smoke-screen or cover for the more valuable workers.

  The problem of the trafficked educated women formed no further part of the meeting. David thought this surprising; Susie, for whom this was a major issue, was furious, but the agenda that she was having to work to was not hers but came from on high.

  There was detail here. There was reference to documents held, and court cases pending, but the consensus was that these were only scratching the surface.

  It was also apparent that much of what needed to be done to shut down the trafficking operations, which were undoubtedly continuing, was outside the borders of the UK and outside of the control of the British Government. The suspicion was clearly there, however, that at least some major areas of the activities, even if they were worldwide, were being managed from inside the UK. This made it a British responsibility, even if the overall controlling function might not be in the UK. Such intelligence that was emerging about this controlling function always seemed to point to mainland China.

  But the meeting was drifting and Susie reasserted her control.

  ‘Everybody knows what’s going on,’ she said. ‘Our people in Brazil tell us that it appears to be mainly the Chinese who are leaving, both legally where they can and illegally when they can’t. The Government doesn’t want them to go. Too many of them are educated and professional and so represent a significant drain of resources.

  ‘But – and there’s always a “but” – they are not indigenous. Indigenous being descendants of the early Portuguese and Spanish settlers. According to the Government, they are not discriminated against but nonetheless they seem to be resented by the increasingly vocal and active indigenous people. And, as Brazil gets more prosperous, which it is doing at a pretty smart pace, the resentment is increasing as these incomers are perceived to be taking an unfair share of the growing wealth.

  ‘That said, our sources in Brazil also suggest that this perception is far from universal. But there is a degree of mainland Chinese interference going on both in resource exportation and in other less official areas of activity. It is also increasingly this that is causing the resentment and the backlash against the local and settled Chinese.’

  David began to think he could see where this was going.

  The UK was building strong commercial links with Brazil and there was no way that anything was going to be allowed to interfere with that. Yet haemorrhaging professionals and the like was a problem. Britain could not be seen to be in any way involved in this, however remotely. Whatever needed to be done was going to have to been done very carefully and initially probably outside of the formal inter-country links.

  ‘Our problem,’ Susie continued, ‘is that we don’t really know enough about what is going on beyond half stories and vague suppositions. The linkages to the UK, and within the UK, are convoluted, and are seemingly mixed up in the rivalries between the long-standing trafficking groups and intruding Chinese gangs. One thing is clear; to protect our Brazilian interests we have to unravel what is going on in the UK before we can move on to the international ramifications.’

  David knew exactly where the meeting was going!

  ‘And an independent investigation would both give credi bility to the problem but also avoid any suggestion of British Government interference.’

  It was the first significant thing that David had said, but it justified his being there, and even if it sounded like he was writing his own terms of reference Susie gave him an amused but grateful look. Being the good Foreign Office girl that she was she was always looking for the win-win situation, and getting David to make the investigation, something that he was well capable of doing, was in her view the way to achieve that end.

  And, muc
h to David’s amusement, Susie installed herself as the link to the investigation.

  11

  David Hutchinson had had no idea about Susie Peveral’s role in coordinating diplomatic and intelligence services. Their relationship hadn’t developed sufficiently for her to share government secrets with him.

  People trafficking was as old as time and, despite its evolution from the traditional slave trade to its modern variations developed by the sex industry, there was still a huge base load of people movements that were fundamentally economic.

  People had always wanted to move to a better life and there were always people ready and willing to help them and to exploit them; this, too, was as old as time. The only things that had changed with the evolution of modern society were the ever-increasing range of countries from where the desperate economic migrants originated and the sophistication, reach, and commercial and technical knowhow of the organisations that trafficked them. Basically people trafficking was big business and it was Susie’s firm conviction that its control was in the hands of large criminal syndicates that operated as much out of the importing nations as the exporting ones.

  Susie knew all of this and more in great depth. Combating the traffickers was also big business and it was Ms Peveral’s role in life to see that British knowledge and expertise were shared and used to maximum effect. Her seniority allowed her considerable freedom of action; this, coupled with a flexibility of mind that David readily recognised, also allowed her to step outside the more traditional Foreign Office modes of thinking. This wasn’t always popular but it was the basis of her accelerated rise up the Civil Service ladder.

  The combined use of both diplomatic and intelligence sources, something that it had been hard for Susie to get acknowledged and established outside of the normal historic run of the Cold War, the War on Terror and other such openly international challenges, had achieved some notable successes. These successes were not so much in the head count of illegal immigrants captured and returned to their source countries – that was a sad business that nobody took much pleasure in – it was more in the mapping of the traffickers’ organisations and geographical activities. The complexities of the immigrant pathways and the complexities of the money-laundering routes that Susie Peveral and her cohorts had discovered forced a new awareness of the problems on to the world’s political leaders.