The Spy who came into the Cold

First, the Cold.

We received an invitation from an Egyptian residing in Shenyang to travel to Cairo for a week before the opening of the university spring semester, and the prospect of writing a reflection from Tahrir Square was too much to pass up. The colleague flew MIGs for Abdul Nasser, Mirages for Anwar Sadat, and F-16s for Hosni Mubarak, now consulting with one of China’s Curtain Wall corporations (a product, then Nest Egg at the Beijing Olympics) so the prospect of joining his company made us forego our planned three more weeks of Aloha sun. Unfortunately, (or, perhaps, fortunately, given the recent street activities in Cairo), his schedule changed.

Spring is now official in China’s calendar though Muqin (mother) has yet to concur. I remember the days when we furiously fanned as we pined for the cold Siberian winds to reach hot and humid October days on Saipan. The Siberian winds this time came with a vengeance, mixing with the humidity from Bei Hai (east sea), dumping four inches of snow overnight on our footsteps.

We already purchased a train ticket to spend the weekend in neighboring Yingkou. So we huffed it on the snow-blanketed street early before the crack of dawn. We trudged on the pristine snow that was really sludge underneath making the effort a slip-slush-sliding away affair!

Our bus to the Underground stalled, a rare occurrence, and just when most of the passengers were poised to give it a shove, the bus engine sparked. At least that woke up the adrenaline into flowing. Shenyang No. 2 Metro Line opened this year but we are still five stops before it reaches the university. Every downtown pencil pusher and shop attendant was up and about, not bothering to queue in their haste to get to their destination, overcrowding the Metro cabs.

It is the first day students were trekking back to school so pandemonium ruled at the train station as well; some of the male of the specie acted like Texas frat boys still inebriated from spring break while the ladies dragged their bulging luggage up the rampless stairs to the train platforms, all looking like they just walked off the pages of Vogue.

We were only 130 miles away from our train stop, in the last cabin hastily added with the increase in traffic. But once we located our berth and got going, the white puffs hanging on the leaves of drooping evergreens in the countryside brought us back to memories of winter wonderland. With a thermos cup of steaming coffee in hand, we smiled with the rising sun.

Now, the Spy.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) by British David Moore Cornwall writing as John le Carré, is a Cold War spy novel famous for depicting Western espionage methods as morally inconsistent with Western democratic values. Our presence in China is not that morally convoluted nor literarily romantic, though speculation on my real intent being here is as wide as Mongolia’s open skies.

Being a member of the global staff of the Institute of Cultural Affairs in the Philippines during the Marcos years, I was once engaged in a paid consultancy by a ranking public official on the mistaken notion that I must report to the company. When Marcos failed to cling on to office after the People Power incident, the chagrined official said: “You guys failed to make good on your promise!” Running around with gringos and marmalades, it was understandable that we were identified with the company and the circus.

I give a smart reply when U.S. airport officials ask the standard question of whether I was carrying $10,000-plus worth of currency or financial instruments and my pat answer is: “I wish.” An official at the Detroit airport once physically barred me from moving further until I answered “Yes” or “No”! MI being an oxymoron, I am more vehement in negating any intimations that, perhaps, my movements are of interest to intelligence nets. The notion feeds on my megalomania, but alas, t’is worth nothing more!

Not so with some close associates. A Honolulu colleague is convinced that I must be a highly paid double agent. Maybe, triple!

I decried in a previous article the high level of suspicion that seems attendant to our post-9/11 Amerika, particularly toward aliens, foreigners, or those who do not fit the standard profile, not only in Homeland Security posts, but even in neighborhood homes in suburbia. Ironically, China that is currently the object of blame for the maladies and miseries of the land of the free and the home of the brave produces all the security equipment and systems marketed to allay our beleaguered insecurity.

We belabor this Spy-in-the-Cold narrative to call attention to our lives these days, lived not on fact but on the fanciful universes of our imagination. This would not be such a bother were we confined to just the interesting aspect of personal psychology but when it spills over to public policy, foreign affairs relations, government budget, and public expenditure, then the line between fact and fiction is dangerously blurred.

On the other hand, since Tom Clancy seems familiar with the Marianas, might we interest him on an American resident of Saipan, a former Methodist cleric and public school teacher, of Philippine descent, teaching in China in an aerospace university?

Jaime R. Vergara (jrvergarajr2031@aol.com) is a former PSS teacher and is currently writing from the campus of Shenyang Aerospace University in China.