“You will find that the government here has ample manners and good attention to protocol, but little in the way of sincerity” Yu said, in English, with a very strange accent.
“You are originally from…?”
“I was born in Taipei. As a youth, I traveled to America for my education. I first attended the University of Oklahoma, but the call came, and I transferred to Oral Roberts University in the same state. There I got my first degree— in electrical engineering— and went on for my doctor of divinity and my ordination,” he explained.
“Indeed, and how did you come to be in the People’s Republic?”
“Back in the 1970s, the government of Chairman Mao was ever so pleased to have Taiwanese come here to live— rejecting capitalism and coming to Marxism, you see,” he added with a twinkling eye. “It was hard on my parents, but they came to understand. I started my congregation soon after I arrived. That was troublesome for the Ministry of State Security, but I also worked as an engineer, and at the time the state needed that particular skill. It is remarkable what the State will accept if you have something it needs, and back then their need for people with my degree was quite desperate. But now I am a minister on a full-time basis.” With the announcement of his triumph, Yu lifted his own teacup for a sip.
“So, what can you tell us about the local environment?” Renato asked.
“The government is truly communist. It trusts and tolerates no loyalty to anything except itself. Even the Falun Gong, which was not truly a religion— that is, not really a belief system as you or I would understand the term— has been brutally suppressed, and my own congregation has been persecuted. It is a rare Sunday on which more than a quarter of my congregation comes to attend services. I must spend much of my time traveling from home to home to bring the gospel to my flock.”
“How do you support yourself?” the Cardinal asked.
Yu smiled serenely. “That is the least of my problems. American Baptists support me most generously. There is a group of churches in Mississippi that is particularly generous— many are black churches, as it turns out. I just received some letters from them yesterday. One of my classmates at Oral Roberts University has a large congregation near Jackson, Mississippi. His name is Gerry Patterson. We were good friends then, and he remains a friend in Christ. His congregation is large and prosperous, and he still looks after me.” Yu almost added that he had far more money than he knew how to spend. In America, such prosperity would have translated into a Cadillac and a fine parsonage. In Beijing, it meant a nice bicycle and gifts to the needy of his flock.
“Where do you live, my friend?” the Cardinal asked.
The Reverend Yu fished in his pocket for a business card and handed it over. Like many such Chinese cards, it had a sketch-map on the back. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to join my wife and myself for dinner. Both of you, of course,” he added.
“We should be delighted. Do you have children?”
“Two,” Yu replied. “Both born in America, and so exempt from the bestial laws the communists have in place here.”
“I know of these laws,” DiMilo assured his visitor. “Before we can make them change, we need more Christians here. I pray on this subject daily.”
“As do I, Eminence. As do I. I presume you know that your dwelling here is, well…”
Schepke tapped his ear and pointed his finger around the room. “Yes, we know”
“You have a driver assigned to you?”
“Yes, that was very kind of the ministry,” Schepke noted. “He’s a Catholic. Isn’t that remarkable?”
“Is that a fact?” Yu asked rhetorically, while his head shook emphatically from side to side. “Well, I am sure he’s loyal to his country as well.”
“But of course,” DiMilo observed. It wasn’t much of a surprise. The Cardinal had been in the Vatican’s diplomatic service a long time, and he’d seen most of the tricks at least once. Clever though the Chinese communists were, the Catholic Church had been around a lot longer, loath though the local government might be to admit that fact.
The chitchat went on for another thirty minutes before the Reverend Yu took his leave, with another warm handshake to send him on his way.
“So, Franz?” DiMilo asked outside, where a blowing breeze would impede any microphones installed outside the dwelling itself.
“First time I’ve seen the man. I’ve heard his name since I arrived here. The PRC government has indeed given him a bad time, and more than once, but he is a man of strong faith and no small courage. I hadn’t known of his educational background. We could check on this.”
“Not a bad idea,” the Papal Nuncio said. It wasn’t that he distrusted or disbelieved Yu, just that it was good to be sure of things. Even the name of a classmate, now an ordained minister, Gerry Patterson. Somewhere in Mississippi, USA. That would make it easy. The message to Rome went out an hour later, over the Internet, a method of communication that lent itself so readily to intelligence operations.
In this case, the time differences worked for them, as sometimes happened when the inquiries went west instead of east. In a few hours, the dispatch was received, decrypted, and forwarded to the proper desk. From there, a new dispatch, also encrypted, made its way to New York, where Timothy Cardinal McCarthy, Archbishop of New York and the chief of the Vatican’s intelligence operations in the United States of America, received his copy immediately after breakfast. From there, it was even easier. The FBI remained a bastion of Irish-Catholic America, though not so much as in the 1930s, with a few Italians and Poles tossed in. The world was an imperfect place, but when the Church needed information, and as long as the information was not compromising to American national security, it was gotten, usually very quickly.
In this case, particularly so. Oral Roberts University was a very conservative institution, and therefore ready to cooperate with the FBI’s inquiries, official or not. A clerk there didn’t even consult her supervisor, so innocuous was the phoned inquiry from Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jim Brennan of the FBI’s Oklahoma City office. It was quickly established via computer records that one Yu Fa An had graduated the university, first with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering, and then spent an additional three years in the university for his doctor of divinity, both degrees attained “with distinction,” the clerk told Brennan, meaning nothing lower than a B+. The alumni office added that the Reverend Yu’s current address was in Beijing, China, where he evidently preached the gospel courageously in the land of the pagans. Brennan thanked the clerk, made his notes, and replied to the e-mail inquiry from New York, then went off to his morning meeting with the SAC to review the Field Division’s activities in enforcing federal law in the Sooner State.
It was a little different in Jackson, Mississippi. There it was the SAC— Special Agent in Charge— himself who made the call on Reverend Gerry Patterson’s First Baptist Church, located in an upscale suburb of the Mississippi state capital. The church was three-quarters of the way into its second century, and among the most prosperous of such congregations in the region. The Reverend Patterson could scarcely have been more impressive, impeccably turned out in a white button-down shirt and a striped blue tie. His dark suit coat was hung in a corner in deference to the local temperature. He greeted the visiting FBI official with regal manners, conducted him to his plush office, and asked how he could be of service. On hearing the first question, he replied, “Yu! Yes, a fine man, and a good friend from school. We used to call him Skip— Fa sounded too much like something from The Sound of Music, you know? A good guy, and a fine minister of the gospel. He could give lessons in faith to Jerry Falwell. Correspond with him? You bet I do! We send him something like twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Want to see a picture? We have it in the church itself. We were both a lot younger then,” Patterson added with a smile. “Skip’s got real guts. It can’t be much fun to be a Christian minister in China, you know? But he never complains. His letters are always upbeat. We could use a thousand more men like him in the clergy.”
“So, you are that impressed with him?” SAC Mike Leary asked.
“He was a good kid in college, and he’s a good man today, and a fine minister of the gospel who does his work in a very adverse environment. Skip is a hero to me, Mr. Leary.” Which was very powerful testimony indeed from so important a member of the community. First Baptist Church hadn’t had a mortgage in living memory, despite its impressive physical plant and amply cushioned pews.