China Wife by Hedley Harrison

quarrel with any of the arrangements that he made or the efficiency with which he had made them. She had become used to such service back home in China and, however much she disliked the man as an individual, she knew that she would be helpless and at risk without him. She also knew that her husband had no love for her; he merely wanted to secure an heir and the reach into the world outside China that was denied to him at the present time but not to her. That he had his heir pleased him; using the child to ensure his wife’s loyalty was common sense to Mr Shi.
    And all the time his wife’s activities were being monitored, even facilitated, by the UK authorities.
    The minder would remain in Britain. Another minder would meet her at Hong Kong, but this one she was familiar with and she knew his vulnerabilities. And on her own ground Linda had become very good at exploiting people’s vulnerabilities.
    The company of two young women on the way back to China would ease her journey but she still had to be on her guard with them.
    While the official policy of the Chinese Government was to invest wisely and profitably in countries like Britain, the legion of corrupt businessmen and officials who were siphoning off much of the profits produced were making investments of their own. Getting illicit money out of China was by no means easy; the pervading state security controls were steadily making electronic management of funds too cumbersome for safe use, so many innovative ways of laundering money were being developed.
    â€˜Electronic means are suspect and must be used with care.’
    Mr Shi was used to parroting this to his wife as he explained his latest scheme to her. His sideline of selling his expertise in cheating the authorities to his associates and fellow corrupt businessmen had the prospect of being a huge earner even after expenses had been deducted. Based on a reversion to human rather than electronic activities, his schemes were labour intensive but generally reliant on wives with more freedom of movement than the Chinese Government was prepared to allow to the businessmen themselves. Wives were traditionally obedient and generally subservient to their husband’s interests, although Mr Shi was well aware that his own wife had a streak of independence in her that he was sensible enough to try to harness rather than suppress.
    Linda Shen’s role as a courier was becoming increasingly complex and her trips to Britain and the US more convoluted, as electronic means of money movement were augmented and partially replaced by this human activity.
    Linda hated the trips. They took her away from her son, the only thing in her life that mattered to her, but the rewards were beginning to build up. Her husband had hardly expected that the expertise that she was developing on his behalf wouldn’t be put to use on her own account. What he didn’t realise was that his pretty and, to him, seemingly scatty wife had as good a financial brain as he had, if not better. Untutored, she was taking time to understand what was possible for her and shewas building funds in various locations in Britain. Neither greedy nor impatient, as was her husband, she knew that keeping below his radar was the key to success.
    As she shepherded the two young women on to the Qantas flight to Hong Kong and said a relieved farewell to her minder, what Linda didn’t know was that events in Canada and Australia were being shared around the world and the interest being taken by a range of police, immigration and intelligence services in the movement of intelligent and displaced Chinese women was intensifying.
    Storing the two new cherished British passports alongside her own in her copious designer handbag, she felt satisfied that she had fulfilled her husband’s plans, advanced her own and taken another small step towards safeguarding her child’s independent future.

8
    â€˜Good heavens!’
    David Hutchinson’s