These people are barbarians, Wise thought, knowing he couldn’t say such a thing in front of the camera, and angry for that reason, but his profession had rules and he didn’t break them. But he did have a camera, and the camera showed things that mere words could not convey.
Unknown to the news crew, Atlanta had put their feed on live, with voice-over commentary from CNN headquarters because they hadn’t managed to get Barry Wise’s attention on the side-band audio circuit. The signal went up to the satellite, then down to Atlanta, and back up to a total of four orbiting birds, then it came down all over the world, and one of the places it came to was Beijing.
The members of the Chinese Politburo all had televisions in their offices, and all of them had access to the American CNN, which was for them a prime source of political intelligence. It came down also to the various hotels in the city, crowded as they were with businessmen and other visitors, and even some Chinese citizens had access to it, especially business people who conducted their affairs both within and without the People’s Republic and needed to know what was happening in the outside world.
In his office, Fang Gan looked up from his desk to the TV that was always kept on while he was there. He lifted the controller to get the sound, and heard English, with some Chinese language in the background that he could not quite understand. His English wasn’t very good, and he called Ming into his office to translate.
“Minister, this is coverage of something right here in Beijing,” she told him first of all.
“I can see that, girl!” he snapped back at her. “What is being said?”
“Ah, yes. It is associates of the man Yu who was shot by the police two days ago … also his widow . . . this is evidently a funeral ceremony of some sort—oh, they say that Yu’s body was cremated and scattered, and so his widow has nothing to bury, and that explains her added grief, they say.”
“What lunatic did that?” Fang wondered aloud. He was not by nature a very compassionate man, but a wise man did not go out of his way to be cruel, either. “Go on, girl!”
“They are reading from the Christian Bible, I can’t make out the words, the English speaker is blanking them out . . . the narrator is mainly repeating himself, saying … ah, yes, saying they are trying to establish contact with their reporter Wise here in Beijing but they are having technical difficulties . . . just repeating what he has already said, a memorial ceremony for the man Yu, friends . . . no, members of his worship group, and that is all, really. They are now repeating what happened before at the Longfu hospital, commenting also on the Italian churchman whose body will soon arrive back in Italy.”
Fang grumbled and lifted his phone, calling for the Interior Minister.
“Turn on your TV!” he told his Politburo colleague at once. “You need to get control of this situation, but do so intelligently! This could be ruinous for us, the worst since those foolish students at Tiananmen Square.”
Ming saw her boss grimace before setting the phone down and mutter, “Fool!” after he did so, then shake his head with a mixture of anger and sorrow.
“That will be all, Ming,” he told her, after another minute.
His secretary went back to her desk and computer, wondering what was happening with the aftermath of the man Yu’s death. Certainly it had seemed sad at the time, a singularly pointless pair of deaths which had upset and offended her minister for their stupidity. He’d even advocated punishing the trigger-happy policemen, but that suggestion had come to nothing, for fear of losing face for their country. With that thought, she shrugged and went back to her daily work.
The word from the Interior Minister went out fast, but Barry Wise couldn’t see that. It took another minute for him to hear the voices from Atlanta on his IFB earphone. Immediately thereafter, he went live on audio and started again to do his own on-the-scene commentary for a global audience. He kept turning his head while Pete Nichols centered the video on this rump religious meeting in a narrow, dirty street. Wise saw the police lieutenant talk into his portable radio—it looked like a Motorola, just like American cops used. He talked, listened, talked again, then got something confirmed. With that, he holstered the radio and came walking directly to the CNN reporter. There was determination on his face, a look Wise didn’t welcome, all the more so that on the way over, this Lieutenant Rong spoke discreetly with his men, who turned in the same direction, staying still but with a similar look of determination on their faces as they flexed their muscles in preparation for something.
“You must turn camera off,” Rong told Wise.
“Excuse me?”
“Camera, turn off,” the police lieutenant repeated.
“Why?” Wise asked, his mind going immediately into race mode.
“Orders,” Rong explained tersely.
“What orders?”
“Orders from police headquarter,” Rong said further.
“Oh, okay,” Wise replied. Then he held out his hand.
“Turn off camera now!” Lieutenant Rong insisted, wondering what the extended hand was all about.
“Where is the order?”
“What?”
“I cannot turn my camera off without a written order. It is a rule for my company. Do you have a written order?”
“No,” Rong said, suddenly nonplussed.
“And the order must be signed by a captain. A major would be better, but it must be a captain at least to sign the order,” Wise went on. “It is a rule of my company.”
“Ah,” Rong managed to say next. It was as if he’d walked headfirst into an invisible wall. He shook his head, as though to shake off the force of a physical impact, and walked five meters away, pulling out his radio again to report to someone elsewhere. The exchange took about a minute, then Rong came back. “Order come soon,” the lieutenant informed the American.
“Thank you,” Wise responded, with a polite smile and half bow.
Lieutenant Rong went off again, looking somewhat confused until he grouped his men together. He had instructions to carry out now, and they were instructions he and they understood, which was usually a good feeling for citizens of the PRC, especially those in uniform.
“Trouble, Barry,” Nichols said, turning the camera toward the cops. He’d caught the discussion of the written order, and managed to keep his face straight only by biting his tongue hard. Barry had a way of confounding people. He’d even done it to presidents more than once.
“I see it. Keep rolling,” Wise replied off-mike. Then to Atlanta: “Something’s going to happen here, and I don’t like the looks of it. The police appear to have gotten an order from someone. As you just heard, they asked us to turn our camera off and we managed to refuse the request until we get a written order from a superior police official, in keeping with CNN policy,” Wise went on, knowing that someone in Beijing was watching this. The thing about communists, he knew, was that they were maniacally organized, and found a request in writing to be completely reasonable, however crazy it might appear to an outsider. The only question now, he knew, was whether they’d follow their verbal radioed order before the draft for the CNN crew came. Which priority came first…?
The immediate priority, of course, was maintaining order in their own city. The cops took out their batons and started heading toward the Baptists.
“Where do I stand, Barry?” Pete Nichols asked.
“Not too close. Make sure you can sweep the whole playing field,” Wise ordered.
“Gotcha,” the cameraman responded.
They tracked Lieutenant Rong right up to Wen Zhong, where a verbal order was given, and just as quickly rejected. The order was given again. The shotgun mike on the camera just barely caught the reply for the third iteration:
“Diao ren, chou ni ma di be!” the overweight Chinese shouted into the face of the police official. Whatever the imprecation meant, it made a few eyes go wide among the worshippers. It also earned Wen a smashed cheekbone from Rong’s personal baton. He fell to his knees, blood already streaming from the ripped skin, but then Wen struggled back to his feet, turned his back on the cop, and turned to yet another page in his Bible. Nichols changed position so that he could zoom in on the testament, and the blood dripping onto the pages.
Having the man turn his back to him only enraged Lieutenant Rong more. His next swing came down on the back of Wen’s head. That one buckled his knees, but amazingly failed to drop him. This time, Rong grabbed his shoulder with his left hand and spun him about, and the third blow from the baton rammed directly into the man’s solar plexus. That sort of blow will fell a professional boxer, and it did so to this restaurateur. A blink later, he was on his knees, one hand holding his Bible, the other grasping at his upper abdomen.