Terrorist Cove

Chapter 1

Li Ping’s life was shaped forever by the massacre of the students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. He was eight years old at the time-

Ping’s father, Li Zilin, was a clever, cautious and far-seeing man. Born in 1941 in the village of Paoting, near Beijing, his parents were peasant farmers. It quickly became apparent that Zilin had mechanical aptitude and he was sent to live with relatives in Beijing while he attended technical college.

His whole clan basked in glory when Zilin graduated in 1961, for education is deeply revered in China and Zilin was the first member to attend a higher school. A marriage was arranged by the families to a Paoting girl named Demei, five years younger, whom he never loved.

In Beijing, Zilin built a lean-to against his relatives’ apartment and opened a repair shop. He and Demei lived with his relatives in a very crowded suite. Zilin could fix anything from a toaster to a motorcycle. He quickly built up a good reputation although business was slow at first as Beijing residents had few household appliances. However, by 1966 he had rented a small shop and obtained a one-room apartment for himself and Demei, with the toilet down the hall and water outside.

Then Mao Zedong introduced the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This was portrayed as a revolution of the intellectuals but, in fact, it was just the reverse. It was a revolution of the illiterates and semi-illiterates against anyone deemed to be educated. It was led by the ferocious Red Guards.

Zilin watched carefully as doctors, lawyers, professors, anyone with a higher education, was either murdered or sent away to a ‘re-education camp’ to be followed by working in the fields with the peasants. While Zilin didn’t consider himself an intellectual, having been only to technical college, he was nevertheless worried. When a friend of his, who had a shoe store on the next street, was arrested for being a ‘stinking capitalist roader’, Zilin made his move. He closed the repair shop and moved back to the lean-to where he kept a very low profile. He knew that the madness had to end sometime, although he didn’t expect it to last for ten years.

Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution the government introduced the ‘Great Leap Forward’, which only made matters worse. This raised production levels in both industry and agriculture to completely unrealistic levels. Between 20 and 43 million people are estimated to have starved to death. In Beijing the Li family fared better than their relatives in Paoting. Food was rationed but there was enough to live on.

Not until 1976 did the Communist Party decree that the Cultural Revolution was ‘responsible for the most serious cutbacks and heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the State and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic.’

In 1977, sensing that conditions were easing for business, Zilin re-opened his repair shop.

In 1981 Li Ping was born. His parents and relatives were delighted that Demei had a boy. In the country the one-child policy was often not followed too closely and a second child was born if the first was a girl. But in the cities the street committees kept track of all children and a woman had to acquire a ‘baby permit’ to be admitted to a maternity hospital. Abortion was easy to obtain and no stigma was attached to it since the Chinese believe that a fetus is not a human being before leaving the mother’s womb.

The 1980s were good to Li Zilin. In addition to repairs he expanded his store and sold new appliances. Not satisfied with the quality of the Chinese goods he arranged, through the U.S. Embassy, to be the sold distributor in Beijing for two prominent U.S. companies; this paid handsome dividends in the future. He moved the family to a large two-bedroom apartment, with facilities, on Xisibia Street near Tiananmen Square. The apartment was the envy of all neighbors because in addition to the standard appliances it had a washer, dryer and television.

His son, Ping, was a precocious child, ahead of his years in school, forthright and inquisitive. Demei, not overly intelligent, was a wife of the old school who obeyed her husband in all things, kept the apartment neat and was a reasonable cook. But there was no love, and little rapport, between them and sex once a week was quick and sterile.

On 27th April, 1989, Li Ping was on his way home from school when he was astounded to see a parade of about 100,000 students marching from the university to Tiananmen Square. He followed them. The mood was carnival and they carried streamers and shouted slogans about the need for democracy. In the square, a student stood on a box and castigated the government: ‘ … our country has no hope … the Communist Party has no hope!’

Li Ping was not sure what it all meant but he was quite sure that he was watching something important. Every day he went to Tiananmen Square to see what was happening.

About 200 students went on a hunger strike. Supported by several thousand more, they all camped out in the square. Ping ran home to tell his parents about it. ‘What will happen?’ he asked.

‘No good will come of this, my son,’ Zilin replied. ‘Eventually the government will take action.’

‘What will they do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Zilin sighed ‘But I think that you should not spend so much time in Tiananmen Square.’

‘Yes, father.’

On his way home from school on 4th May, Ping was amazed to hear the rumble of tanks and the marching feet of soldiers. A barricade had been erected by the people at the junction of Xisibia Street and Fuxingmenwai Avenue which led to Tiananmen Square. Ping ducked into a doorway. A tank easily rolled over the flimsy barricade and crushed an elderly man with its treads.

Soldiers behind the tanks fired into the crowd. These were not students but mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, even grandmothers and grandfathers who were trying to stop the onslaught of soldiers heading for the Square.

Ping ran to Tiananmen Square, where all was chaos. He watched as the soldiers with AK-47 machine guns mowed down the students, killing without pause. A bullet twanged over Ping’s head and he fell to the ground, terrified, rolling into a fetal position and placing his hands over his ears to cut out the cries of the wounded. Over 2,000 were murdered that night.

When Ping finally arrived home to his worried parents, dirty, dishevelled and crying, he asked his father: ‘Why did they kill all the students and other people?’

‘It was a bad thing to do,’ Zilin replied, ‘and the Party will have to pay for it Our country is ruled by a bunch of old men from another generation who believe that killing solves their problems.’ He sighed. ‘Now, Ping, have a bath and go to bed.’

‘Yes, father.’ But Ping’s nightmares woke his parents and continued for many weeks. On that night was born Ping’s hatred for the Communist Party. He was eight years old.

While the 80s were good to Li Zilin, the 90s made him wealthy. In 1993, when he was 52 years old, the Party brought in the ‘Open Door Policy’ and the Beijing economy began to soar. Li opened a second appliance store and then a third and still could not keep up to the demand. Ping had a new bicycle and an allowance. Demei had a maid that she didn’t know what to do with. Zilin had a new car with a personalized licence ‘888’ which cost him several thousand yuan; eight was a lucky number.

But success changed Zilin and not for the better. He grew fat and had a large belly. His face was as round as a full moon; with a flat nose, small eyes and ears, and receding hair, he looked like a drawing by a three-year old child. He kept a mistress in an apartment near his own. He also developed a dual personality. To his staff and family he was arrogant and demanding. But to government officials, where corruption was rampant and a bribe was required for the least permit or favour, he was fawning and entertained widely. He envied the new elite, not all Party members, who lived behind high walls in traditional houses built around courtyards, with many servants.

Since Ping’s school marks were always at the top of his class, it was taken for granted that he would enter Beijing University, This he did in 1999 at the age of eighteen. He chose political science and continued with the English language which he had taken before. He was a serious young man not given to humour. Of average height, Ping was slim with a narrow face, dark hair, black eyes and wore glasses when reading. He did not drink, smoke or take drugs, although Pot was prevalent in the university.

A passionate advocate of democracy, one of Ping’s first acts was to form a group called ‘Students for Democracy’. He refused to join the Communist Party in spite of the well-known fact that it was mandatory for anyone wishing to advance in almost any field. Ping harped on the fact that the elderly rulers of China would soon be dead and must be replaced by younger people who wanted a democratic system, as did most of the people.

By the spring of 2001 the Group counted about 400 members and had taken part in several demonstrations. One of these was in support of the ‘Falun Group’. They had been declared illegal in spite of the fact that they were peaceful and promoted health by exercise and good citizenship. Many of their followers had either been killed or sent to prison camps. Ping’s protests did, however, result in the release of Zhang Kunlun, a Chinese-Canadian, two months into a three-year sentence in a prison camp.,

There was an underground system at the university for smuggling in books that were forbidden by the regime. It was not large, perhaps one book a month, but one of these made a lasting impression on Ping. It concerned the Chinese invasion of Tibet and was written by a Tibetan monk named Palden Gyatso who escaped to India in 1992.

In the history books that Ping had used in school it was stated that Tibet had been liberated from imperialism and feudal serfdom and finally united with the Motherland-China. It was China’s right to do so because Tibet was an integral part of China. Ping remembered a picture that showed PLA soldiers mingling gaily with Tibetan peasants and a soldier in a field wiping sweat from his brow after harvesting for an old ‘serf.

From Gyatso’s book, Ping learned that this was all a lie. The Tibetan people hated the Chinese. After the brutal invasion in 1950, hundreds of monasteries were razed to the ground and monks and nuns sent to labour camps to learn how to become a ‘productive force’.

Palden Gyatso would not conform and was sent to a prison camp at Drapchi which held more than 6,000 people. Conditions were harsh and they were fed the Chinese propaganda line: ‘The old feudal society is dead-you must abandon the four ‘olds’-old culture, customs, habits and thoughts.’ Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ was mandatory reading and questions about it were asked at the ‘education session’.

When Gyatso escaped to India he brought with him, as evidence of his torture in prison: handcuffs, thumbcuffs, serrated and hooked knives, an electric cattle prod and a shock gun with a capacity of 70,000 volts.

Li Ping was very moved by Gyatso’s ‘Poem of Dedication’, and memorized the second verse:

‘The red hordes of Chinese, evil incarnate,

Swamped and swallowed the Land of the Snows, trampling even international law.

Unchecked and uncensured, they assaulted our very being-our bodies, our minds and our spirits.

Is there any match for the suffering, the losses we felt, the cries we made, even in the eighteenth layer of hell?’

But Li Ping’s group was now watched closely by the police and he had been picked up once for questioning. Also, the police had an informer in the group.

Li Zilin’s major contact in the government was the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade-a Mr. Wang Gege. He was a long-time bureaucrat, slow to make a decision unless his palm was crossed, and Zilin had paid him many yuan over the years. Their usual meeting place was a seedy club, frequented by prostitutes, and the time late in the evening. So Zilin was not surprised, one day in mid-May, 2001, to have Gege ask for a meeting.

They chose a table in a corner where they would not be overheard and each asked the waiter for a single-malt Scotch. Like Zilin, Gege showed signs of high living-overweight, a blush of red veins on his round face.

‘How are your family?’ Gege enquired, politely.

‘They are well. And yours?’

‘Fine except for my mother who is now of ninety years.’

‘Is she in a hospital?’

‘No-my father is dead and I prefer to take care of her myself.’

‘It is wise to do so,’ Zilin said, reverently.

‘Yes.’ Wang got down to business. ‘I have approved your latest shipment from Kelvinator in the United States.’

‘Thank you.’ Li patted his breast pocket. ‘I have a suitable gift for you.’

‘However,’ Gege’s face grew solemn, ‘I need to talk to you about your son, Ping.’

‘What about him?’ Zilin’s eyes narrowed.

‘I’m sure you know of his actions with that group called ‘Students for Democracy’?’

‘I am aware,’ Zilin replied, carefully.

‘Since we are friends,’ Gege said, meaning that he didn’t want to slow down the bribes, ‘I am about to risk breaking government confidentiality to tell you that your son is about to be arrested.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Zilin, ‘when and what for?’

‘In three days and the charge will be ‘Instigation to Subvert State Power’. The term of imprisonment could be as long as ten years.’

‘Ayi!’ Zilin put his hand to his face. ‘What am I to do?’

‘Your son should leave the country. Does he have a passport?’

‘No.’

‘Well, there isn’t time to get one and it would tip off the police, anyway. I have a possible solution,’ Gege continued. ‘I know of an illegal boat leaving from a nearby port for Canada. Ping could be put on board.’

‘If you know of an illegal boat, why don’t you arrest it?’

‘Those who are leaving are ones we want to get rid of, anyway,’ Gege replied. He didn’t mention that he got a pay-off here, too.

‘How much