“Apparently so,” Bentley said. “The captain says that at dawn we will be able to blend with the fishing boats leaving from a village to the north. If we tried to cross the Pearl River tonight, the PRC would pick us up on their radar. Since the locals don’t go out at night, we’d look pretty suspicious.”

“He could have told us,” Marissa complained.

“Can we talk to those blokes we picked up?” Tristan asked.

“I’ll ask the captain,” Bentley said. He went back to the poop.

“Sorry about this, luv,” Tristan said. “I didn’t know this was to be an all-night affair.”

Marissa shrugged. “It could be a lot worse,” she said.

Bentley came back quickly. “Captain says you can talk all you want, just not too loudly.”

As the crew reefed the sail, Marissa, Tristan, and Bentley went forward and sat down across from the two PRC refugees.

“First, let’s all introduce ourselves,” Tristan said to Bentley.

Marissa looked more closely at the two men as Bentley began speaking. Although it was difficult to judge, Marissa guessed that they were both approximately her age. Both wore their hair cut short. Both were clearly tense and edgy. Their eyes darted from person to person in the half-light.

“This is Chiang Lam,” Bentley said, pointing to the man with the slighter build. He bowed as Bentley said his name. “And this is Tse Wah.”

After the introductions, Tristan told Bentley that they wanted to know where the men were from and what they did for a living. He wanted Bentley to ask them why they were being smuggled out of the PRC.

While Bentley spoke to the Chinese, Marissa and Tristan conferred to try to organize their further questions. In the background the crew was preparing for a late meal. They were also preparing to bed down for the night.

When Bentley was finished speaking with the men, he turned to Marissa and Tristan and told them that both men had come from small towns in Guangdong Province. Chiang Lam was a monk from a Buddhist order that had managed to survive the Communist era. Tse Wah was a rural doctor, a contemporary version of the “barefoot doctor” of the Cultural Revolution. Bentley went on to say that the reason they had left the PRC was because they had been promised a lot of money. Both fully intended to return. However, neither one could say why he had been offered this opportunity.

“How did they happen to be chosen?” Marissa questioned.

Bentley asked the men, then said: “Chiang says that he was chosen because of his ability in martial arts. He says that there was a competition in his monastery. Tse says he was chosen because he is a doctor. He says that there was no competition, that people just came to him and made an offer he couldn’t resist. Tse has a family, a wife and a child, as well as parents and in-laws.”