God's Double Agent (42 page)

I smiled. No matter how much I was fighting for the persecuted church, I was still a husband with a “honey-do” list. I also needed to mow the lawn. Just then, my cell phone rang.

“The United Nations rejected refugee protection for the Guo family,” I was told.

When I got off the phone, I looked at my family. They were all tucked safely in our blue van, thankfully oblivious to the terrible circumstances of believers on the other side of the world. However, they’d paid a price for my advocacy. For my children’s entire lives, I’d been fighting for human rights, traveling to rescue the persecuted, and speaking out on behalf of the voiceless. In other words, I’d been busy. In America, this was parental taboo. “It’s both quality and quantity,” I heard pastors say from the pulpit to an auditorium full of parents trying to make the most of their family life. In fact, Pastor Kevin York became a wonderful counselor to Heidi and me once we moved to Midland. At first, he correctly encouraged me to find a good work/family balance. In Philadelphia especially, I didn’t say no to even the most obscure speaking engagement. This left Heidi alone with the children weekend after weekend, an unsustainable situation for everyone.

“Pastor Kevin,” I remember saying, “imagine this scenario. I’m sleeping, when one of my seven phones rings in the middle of the night because of the time difference from China. It’s a woman screaming, because agents are in her house beating her children. She needs legal help, so she calls me. What do I do?” I asked. It was a real question. In American Christianity, a “good
parent” is the one who attends every violin recital and volleyball practice. “Her phone call means that I need to get out of bed and make sure she gets a lawyer immediately. I need to find out the details of the case and write a press release—in English and in Chinese—to send to the senators and the congressmen who care about human rights. And that’s just the beginning.”

Kevin had looked at me with tears in his eyes. He’d been a pastor for several years and had encouraged men to be more “available” to their families. “Put career second,” he had told them. “Just turn the phone off.”

“Or recently,” I added, “a pastor in Guangxi Province called me, right after his wife had been dragged to the hospital by agents to be forced to have an abortion. She was seven months pregnant. When they got there, they found eighty mothers being forced to abort within the next forty-eight hours. So I called NPR and other reporters, trying to shed light on this incident. But by the time the reporters got there, the agents had already poisoned her and the baby was dead.” I held up my phone. “It’s no exaggeration to say every time this thing rings, it could be a matter of life and death.”

Kevin looked at me. “I don’t know what to advise,” he said. “I’ve used up all of my American put-your-family-before-work counseling techniques, and I’ve got nothing left. But the one thing I know is that you simply can’t turn off your phone, and we’ll try to make sure you get the help you need to make it as easy as possible on your family.”

I remember that conversation well, because my family has had to eat many meals alone, celebrate birthdays without me, and frequently fear for my safety. God asks us to pick up our cross and follow Him . . . even parents. That means one father might follow Him to the school Christmas play and another might follow Him into a war zone, making him miss all the soccer games. Following God looks different for every family, and there was no easy answer to how I could enjoy my family as much as I
wanted while also fighting for the persecuted. Midland made it easier, but there were some moments—like when we were driving home from a family vacation—when it hurt to do the right thing.

“Guo’s family needs help,” I sighed. Heidi knew Guo, since we had hosted him in Midland in May 2006 and attended meetings with him at the Hudson Institute and in Washington.

Heidi smiled a weary smile. The kids were still sleeping. “What happened?”

“The United Nations told them to go back to China. They said Guo’s political activity was his problem, not the family’s. They said China might sentence them to a few years in prison, anyway,” I said, incredulous. “Not because they’re political prisoners, but because they illegally crossed the border.”

Heidi looked at me. “I assume you have to get there?”

We drove straight to the airport in Dallas, where Heidi dropped me off and continued home without me. As I walked through the airport, lugging my suitcase to the international departure gate, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was at least partially responsible for Guo’s arrest. Had I not disinvited him from the White House event, surely China would not have brazenly trumped up false charges and imprisoned him. I resolved to do all I could to help his family.

Little did I know this promise would lead me to commit a felony.

__________________

[
¹
]Michael J. Gerson,
Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals
(New York: HarperOne, 2008), 97.

[
²
]Ibid., 98.

28

I walked around the corner of a hotel in Bangkok and stopped when I came face-to-face with two men. They had closely cropped black hair and, I detected, bad breath. Though they had on street clothes, I could tell instantly I was inches away from colliding with two members of China’s secret police.

“Excuse me,” I said, looking down at my feet and walking through the hallway of the hotel, directly passing my destination, room 610. Without a sideways glance, I walked back to the elevator and out the lobby.

Had we been compromised? Chinese secret police scour the streets of Bangkok looking for dissidents. They’ve been known to kidnap people—even those granted US asylum—transport them back to China, accuse them of breaking the law, and make them disappear forever into the prison system. I was taking a huge risk helping Guo Feixiong’s family, and I wanted to make sure I could get back to my own.

Guo’s wife was a lady named Zhang Qing. She, along with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Sara, and her six-year-old son, Peter, were hidden in room 610, assisted by some believers from Thailand and a missionary from Britain named Catherine. It was ironic to me that their room number was 610, because the “610 Office” is a Chinese security agency that persecutes the
Falun Gong. It was named because it was created on June 10, 1999, but I tried not to take the hotel number coincidence as a bad omen for our mission.

After all, they wouldn’t be there long. Every three days, the family walked out of their hotel room without any bags and checked into another hotel across town. At night, Catherine would go to their old room, get their luggage, and carry it to their new location. Though the mother already had a visa, the two children didn’t. This meant they needed to hide from the Thai police as well as the Chinese.

After walking around the hotel, I determined my run-in with the secret police agents was coincidental. Had they known who I was, I’d certainly be in the back of their van on my way back to prison. Slowly, I ambled back to the hotel and knocked on the door of the family’s room.

“It’s me!” Guo’s family was sitting in the small room, wondering why it had taken me so long to arrive. “We have to get you all out of here.”

I told them about the security agents who might be on their tail. Qing told me about a suspicious incident they’d had recently when they went out in public.

“After we were rejected by the UN, Catherine and I were in a cab when another car slammed right into us,” she said. “I knew we had to get out before the police showed up. I don’t think it was really an accident.”

I’d already consulted with one of Britain’s Christian refugee lawyers, who’d flown to Bangkok from London to meet with me. We interviewed Qing multiple times and went without much sleep for several days and nights. Then, we met with a high-ranking official from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at the UN compound to talk about appealing their rejection.

“We never know if an appeal will be successful, or how long it will take,” the official told us in a monotonous voice.

“But we have a family in terrible danger,” I said. “We need to get them to safety as soon as possible.”

“It might take months, it might take years,” she said, and then she looked up at us as if to say,
Is there anything else
?

“Two of them are children!” I said. “Please!”

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

Because we knew it would take a long time to process, we didn’t even file the appeal. The family didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the appeals process, because every day presented new chances of arrest. Plus, I’d already been gone a week and needed to travel back to America to keep ChinaAid running, to tend to my family, and to make my scheduled appointments. If Guo’s family was going to be stuck there for years, there’s no way I could live in Thailand until their release. I extended my trip for a few more days, but eventually my time ran out.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the family, standing in their hotel room with my suitcase. “I want to get you guys out of here, but we’ve exhausted every option and I have to leave.” Immediately, Sara’s eyes seemed full of fear. Even Catherine didn’t make eye contact with me. I didn’t blame them. We’d lost.

“They’ll capture us!” Qing said.

Peter, though he was only six, had stopped banging on the floor with a stick long enough to look up sadly. I felt like I was abandoning my own family. After all, I had a wife, a daughter, and a son. If I were in Guo’s shoes, to what extent would I want someone to fight for my family? How long would I want them to stay? How far would I want them to go?

Then, it hit me. Right before Heidi dropped me off at the airport, she’d reminded me I needed to get the kids visas for an upcoming trip. I hadn’t run that errand yet, so I had all my family’s passports in my suitcase. Right there, as I stood in a hotel room with this family and the British missionary staring at me, I had a moment of conscience. My limited knowledge of US refugee law told me that if a person could set foot on American
soil, they could be considered eligible for political asylum. The asylum officer should not care about how that person arrived. What if I gave my kids’ passports to Guo’s kids and tried to pass them off as my own? If the security agents at the airport bought the ruse, we’d be in America the next day.

When I presented my idea privately to Qing and Catherine, they were hesitant.

“How old is your daughter?” Qing said, examining my daughter Tracy’s passport.

“She’s ten.”

“Sara’s thirteen. Do you think she’ll pass for such a young child?”

I reached into my suitcase and pulled out Daniel’s passport. He was twelve already, which was a much larger age gap to overcome since Peter was only six.

“I’m not saying this is a good option,” I admitted. “I’m saying this is our only option.”

We sat in sober silence. “Using another person’s passport is a serious crime,” Catherine said.

“God,” I prayed. “What is the moral thing to do in this circumstance?”

If the Guo family were caught, they’d certainly be taken back to China and put in prison. If I were caught, there’s no telling what China would do to me. After all, I’d so publicly revealed their state secrets. I’d never see my family again. However, there was no way I was going to abandon this family.

I sat down with the children and taught them my family background: my father’s name, my mother’s name, my hometown province, where I went to school, where I’d been employed. Since Catherine and Qing both had legal passports, they’d travel together as vacationers to the United States. I’d be a father traveling with my two children back to our American home.

“Quick,” I said to Sara. “What was your grandfather’s name?”

“Fu Yubo?”

“Perfect!” Then, I got down on the floor where Peter was still holding his stick. “Listen,” I said to him very gently. “You must not speak. Just pretend that you don’t know English and don’t say anything no matter what they ask you. Pretend to be shy.”

“How on earth will they believe Peter is twelve?” Catherine asked. “He barely comes up to my waist!” She bit her lip in thought, then said, “I have an idea! Let’s put him in a wheelchair. We can pretend he’s disabled, and they won’t be able to tell how short he is.”

The next morning, we wrapped his legs with bandages and I prepared to take the biggest gamble of my life.