The ship she had traveled on from the Chinese port of Qingdao across the Pacific looked to all appearances like a typical cruise ship. Named the Indigo Star, her hull was painted white from waterline to the funnel. Comparable in size to most smaller cruise ships that carried between one hundred and one hundred fifty passengers in luxurious comfort, the Indigo Star crammed nearly twelve hundred illegal Chinese immigrants into huge open bays within the hull and superstructure. She was a facade, innocent on the outside, a human hellhole on the inside.
Ling T'ai could not have envisioned the insufferable conditions that she and over a thousand others had to endure. The food was minimal and hardly enough to exist on. Sanitary conditions were nonexistent and toilet facilities deplorable. Some had died, mostly young children and the elderly, their bodies removed and never seen again. It seemed likely to Ling T'ai that they were simply thrown into the sea as if they were garbage.
The day before the Indigo Star was scheduled to reach the northeastern coast of the United States, a team of sadistic guards called enforcers, who maintained a climate of fear and intimidation on board the ship, had rounded up thirty or forty passengers and forced them to undergo an unexplained interrogation. When her turn finally came, she was ushered into a small, dark compartment and commanded to sit in a chair in front of four enforcers of the smuggling operation who were seated behind a table. Ling was then asked a series of questions.
"Your name!" demanded a thin man neatly attired in a gray pinstripe business suit. His smooth, brown face was intelligent but expressionless. The other three enforcers sat silently and glared malevolently. To the initiated, it was a classic act of interrogative coercion.
"My name is Ling T'ai."
"What province were you born?"
"Jiangsu."
"You lived there?" asked the thin man.
"Until I was twenty and finished my studies. Then I went to Canton, where I became a schoolteacher."
The questions came dispassionately and devoid of inflection. "Why do you want to go to the United States?"
"I knew the voyage would be extremely hazardous, but the promise of opportunity and a better life was too great," answered Ling T'ai. "I decided to leave my family and become an American."
"Where did you obtain the money for your passage?"
"I saved most of it from my teacher's pay over ten years. The rest I borrowed from my father."
"What is his occupation?"
"He is a professor of chemistry at the university in Beijing."
"Do you have friends or family in the United States?"
She shook her head. "I have no one."
The thin man looked at her in long, slow speculation, then pointed his finger at her. "You are a spy, sent to report on our smuggling operation."
The accusation came so abruptly, she sat frozen for a few moments before stammering. "I do not know what you mean. I am a school-teacher. Why do you call me a spy?"
"You do not have the appearance of one born in China."
"Not true!" she cried in panic. "My mother and father are Chinese. So were my grandparents."
"Then explain why your height is as least four inches above average for a Chinese woman and your facial features have the faint touch of European ancestry."
"Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you so cruel?"
"Not that it matters, my name is Ki Wong. I am the chief enforcer for the Indigo Star. Now please answer my last question."
Acting frightened, Ling explained that her great-grandfather had been a Dutch missionary who headed up a mission in the city of Longyan. He took a local peasant girl as a wife. "That is the only Western blood in me, I swear."
The inquisitors acted as if they did not credit her story. "You are lying."
"Please, you must believe me!"
"Do you speak English?"
"I know only a few words and phrases."
Then Wong got down to the real issue. "According to our records, you did not pay enough for your passage. You owe us another ten thousand dollars American."