tent, a sleeping bag, a small stove, dehydrated food, and so on. He rode around quite freely, chatting with people, asking questions.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Strange ones. He seemed to be looking for his mother. Thiswas odd behavior for a man his age. I’m afraid we concluded that he was not quite right in his mind.”
“But you let him ride around asking questions?”
“They were harmless questions.”
Zhang let me know by a small gesture and a change in tone of voice that he had answered enough questions, harmless or not. I asked another one anyway.
“When he was in prison, the political officer in charge of his re-education, the man who questioned him every day for ten years, was a party official known to Christopher as Ze Keli. Have you any idea if Christopher contacted this man, or attempted to contact him?”
“No,” Zhang said. “And now, Mister Hubbard, I have these for you.”
Squinting through the smoke of his cigarette, he opened a drawer and removed a package wrapped in cloth. He undid it and placed before me, one by one, Paul Christopher’s passport and wallet, along with the Rolex watch he had been wearing since the 1950s. He had been wearing it when he was captured by the Chinese. They had given it back to him when he was released. It was a self-winding watch. I shook it and it immediately began to run. I wondered if Paul had done the same after all those years in prison where he had no means of measuring time.
5
The story Captain Zhang had told me was almost certainly hokum. At the same time, the delivery of Paul’s personal effects was disturbing. On the face of it, they were evidence that my cousin was either dead or in Chinese custody. How else could Zhang be in possession of his watch, his passport, his wallet, his money—the entire contents of his pockets? But this was a hoary trick. By laying these familiar objects before me, Zhang wanted me to abandon hope and believe his story. Therefore I took it with a grain of salt.
“Christopher could have ditched his identity,” David said.
This was possible. A switch of this kind was difficult for a white man to make while swimming in a sea of Han, but in his time Paul had done even more improbable things and gotten away with them.
Reading my thoughts—after all we had both breathed the same paranoid air of tradecraft for half a lifetime—David said, “He couldn’t change names and nationalities while he was still in Xinjiang and under surveillance. But if he crossed a frontier…”
“What frontier?”
“Take your pick. But if his destination really was the forbidden zone, he could have crossed into Tajikistan, taken a train to Kazakhstan, and come back into Xinjiang over the Horgas Pass.”
“Despitedire warnings that he was almost certain to be discovered and arrested.”
“Correct,” David said. “And looking on the dark side, if in fact Christopher was captured, that would explain how Zhang happened to have his personal belongings in his desk drawer.”
Yes, it would. It could also mean that Paul was back in a Chinese prison. If that was the case, no one would ever see him again and it would be a far better thing for the Chinese if the family believed that he was dead.
This conversation took place on the bus to Ulugqat. Captain Zhang’s men were waiting for us at the bus station. They made no effort to be discreet. They wanted us to know that they would be part of our lives as long as we were in China. This was fine by us; we were here for the honest purposes already stated, to find out whatever we could about my cousin and his death. After checking into a hotel, we began asking questions. We never asked about anything but Paul. Evidently Paul had made his usual good impression because people usually smiled when they heard his Mandarin name. A surprising number of people had seen Paul and remembered him, but none had anything interesting to tell us. He had come on a motorcycle, he liked their food.
“What sort of questions?”
“Strange ones. He seemed to be looking for his mother. Thiswas odd behavior for a man his age. I’m afraid we concluded that he was not quite right in his mind.”
“But you let him ride around asking questions?”
“They were harmless questions.”
Zhang let me know by a small gesture and a change in tone of voice that he had answered enough questions, harmless or not. I asked another one anyway.
“When he was in prison, the political officer in charge of his re-education, the man who questioned him every day for ten years, was a party official known to Christopher as Ze Keli. Have you any idea if Christopher contacted this man, or attempted to contact him?”
“No,” Zhang said. “And now, Mister Hubbard, I have these for you.”
Squinting through the smoke of his cigarette, he opened a drawer and removed a package wrapped in cloth. He undid it and placed before me, one by one, Paul Christopher’s passport and wallet, along with the Rolex watch he had been wearing since the 1950s. He had been wearing it when he was captured by the Chinese. They had given it back to him when he was released. It was a self-winding watch. I shook it and it immediately began to run. I wondered if Paul had done the same after all those years in prison where he had no means of measuring time.
5
The story Captain Zhang had told me was almost certainly hokum. At the same time, the delivery of Paul’s personal effects was disturbing. On the face of it, they were evidence that my cousin was either dead or in Chinese custody. How else could Zhang be in possession of his watch, his passport, his wallet, his money—the entire contents of his pockets? But this was a hoary trick. By laying these familiar objects before me, Zhang wanted me to abandon hope and believe his story. Therefore I took it with a grain of salt.
“Christopher could have ditched his identity,” David said.
This was possible. A switch of this kind was difficult for a white man to make while swimming in a sea of Han, but in his time Paul had done even more improbable things and gotten away with them.
Reading my thoughts—after all we had both breathed the same paranoid air of tradecraft for half a lifetime—David said, “He couldn’t change names and nationalities while he was still in Xinjiang and under surveillance. But if he crossed a frontier…”
“What frontier?”
“Take your pick. But if his destination really was the forbidden zone, he could have crossed into Tajikistan, taken a train to Kazakhstan, and come back into Xinjiang over the Horgas Pass.”
“Despitedire warnings that he was almost certain to be discovered and arrested.”
“Correct,” David said. “And looking on the dark side, if in fact Christopher was captured, that would explain how Zhang happened to have his personal belongings in his desk drawer.”
Yes, it would. It could also mean that Paul was back in a Chinese prison. If that was the case, no one would ever see him again and it would be a far better thing for the Chinese if the family believed that he was dead.
This conversation took place on the bus to Ulugqat. Captain Zhang’s men were waiting for us at the bus station. They made no effort to be discreet. They wanted us to know that they would be part of our lives as long as we were in China. This was fine by us; we were here for the honest purposes already stated, to find out whatever we could about my cousin and his death. After checking into a hotel, we began asking questions. We never asked about anything but Paul. Evidently Paul had made his usual good impression because people usually smiled when they heard his Mandarin name. A surprising number of people had seen Paul and remembered him, but none had anything interesting to tell us. He had come on a motorcycle, he liked their food.
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