Brother Half Angel (A Brother Half Angel Thriller)

By Martin Roth

A military operation gone tragically wrong. An elite commando loses his forearm. The angel tattooed onto his arm is sliced in half. And the man acquires a new nickname.

Brother Half Angel is the leader of a secret new church military order, dedicated to helping Christians under attack around the world.

In this book he is dispatched urgently to China, where an underground seminary is under siege from fanatical sword-wielding members of a local cult who still pay homage to the bloodthirsty extremists who tried to expel all foreigners from China in the nineteenth century.

But at the same time the seminary has its own internal divisions. The director, Uncle Ling, a hero of the underground Chinese church, holds secrets that he cannot reveal.

And now the tensions are threatening the marriage of idealistic young American missionary Daniel Westloke and his wife Jenny.

This book also raises serious questions – how far can Christians go to defend themselves? When should they turn the other cheek? What happens when a Christian kills in self-defense? And should those who live by the sword really expect to die by the sword?

Praise for Martin Roth’s thriller “Prophets and Loss”:

“A thrilling ride that begins as a story of murder and revenge and ends as a reflection on loss and forgiveness....Fast-paced and edgy.” - SydneyAnglicans.net

“Wow!....When “Prophets and Loss” arrived...I certainly wasn’t expecting a meaty murder mystery cum terrorist plot. And when I realized that’s what it was, I certainly wasn’t then expecting Roth’s Johnny Ravine mystery to deliver such a fabulous gospel message....This is a great book for a Christian or as a starter for a non-Christian. A fabulous surprise.” - The Presbyterian Pulse

Praise for Martin Roth’s thriller “Hot Rock Dreaming” (Australian Christian Book of the Year finalist):

“Roth is a Christian author and, although spiritual warfare is crucial to the plot, this book is still a murder mystery...Thought-provoking and an enjoyable read.” – On Fire

“Highly readable...You will be both entertained and educated.” – Journey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Roth
• Release date: Dec 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465849410

Martin Roth

Martin Roth is a veteran journalist and foreign correspondent who lived in Tokyo for seventeen years and whose reports from throughout Asia have appeared in leading publications around the world. He now lives with his family in Melbourne, Australia, where he enjoys walking his black Sarplaninac mountain sheepdog and drinking coffee in the city’s many wonderful cafés.

Book preview

Prologue

Tai Yuen fu

China

April 28, 1900

My Dear Loved Ones,

They are here again today, the men with their swords - the Boxers, they are called - standing outside the walls of the compound, staring in as I sit writing you this letter. I sometimes feel like an antelope in a cage at the zoo, with lions roaming hither and yon, licking their lips and hoping perchance the zookeeper might one day forget to lock the cage gate.

We have been living like this for two months, myself and John and our two young children. And we have been joined by Harold and Eunice Panote and their three children. They have been working as missionaries in a village twenty miles from here. The mobs broke into their house and ransacked it three nights ago, and it was only through God’s magnificent grace that they could escape unharmed and make their way to our abode.

We continue to put our trust in God, yet we must endure many sleepless nights and often I find my heart trembling and my knees weak, and tears coming unbidden to my eyes.

What is God telling us? What does God have planned for us? I know I must have faith in Him. He is our great protector. And yet sometimes I cannot help but feel so scared.

I know that God brought us here to China. But for what purpose? Surely He did not bring us here to be killed in our beds. Even worse than death, we hear stories of how these men mutilate their victims. They like to cut off people’s arms. Usually while they are still alive. And sometimes they rape the women. It is difficult to write these things.

We have war and famine and drought and false teachers. Is this the coming of the last days that the Bible describes? I do not know.

We believe God has a plan and a purpose in all this, but sometimes I find myself praying that the end can come quickly, and that we can move to our heavenly home with the least possible violence. Though I do know that God has a plan for this country. Some day everyone here will bow their knees before Jesus.

It is only the local magistrate who has kept us safe from the howling mobs. He is a good man, but weak, and it seems only a matter of time before the tumult of the mob becomes so strong and inflamed that he is unable to stop their attacks. Word reaches us that this has been happening in many other regions of China, and already many great servants of Christ have met their deaths.

The worst is that we have a new governor of our province, and he supports the Boxers. We hear that he has convinced the Empress that the Boxers are patriots who want to rid the country of foreigners for the good of the country.

We hear of fellow missionaries whose homes have been ransacked by the heathen mobs. They have been forced to flee to the mountains, where they take refuge in caves, but are then hunted down by the armed hordes as if they were wild animals. Then, when they are caught, they are beaten, tied hand and foot and then dragged along the ground to the Boxer temples, so that the spirits might decide how and when they are to be slaughtered.

We hear many stories of foreigners being killed in other cities, often in the most brutal fashion. One house in a nearby town was ransacked by the mob and the inhabitants were indeed fortunate, through God’s grace, to escape with their lives.

I do not wish to alarm you unduly, but I must write about these matters. These men outside, they call themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, though we call them the Boxers, because they spend much of their time practicing an Oriental form of fighting apparently known as Plum Flower boxing.

We sometimes see them outside practicing. They punch the air with a fury, chanting their strange ritualistic cries and they wave their long curved swords, like scimitars from some fantasy tale from the Arabian lands. Some of them carry spears and we have heard stories that they use them. And they are a movement dedicated to the expulsion of foreigners. But in particular, their wrath is turned against the missionaries, whom they believe to be polluting their land with foreign religion. How little do they understand that our great Savior Christ Jesus died for all people, of every race.

It is amazing the superstitions that they display. They go to their temples and repeat mystic words and then bow in different directions, and then they fall back, apparently in some kind of trance. They stay down for a long time, and when they rise they believe that they are now endowed with magical powers. They believe they are invulnerable, that bullets and the sword cannot hurt them. Truly they are a superstitious people.

They make the most unbelievable accusations about us. We are suffering a drought, and they tell the people that this is caused by the missionaries. They say that we are able to wave fans so strongly that we can fan away the rain clouds. And they say that at night we stand outside doing this in the nude. And the people believe this. They say that we poison the wells. They say that we have supernatural powers that enable us to cut shapes from paper that resemble people, and that these shapes then come to life and travel to local villages to trouble the Chinese. They tell people that foreign ships are coming to China loaded with human eyes and blood.

Sometimes they refuse to allow Christians to be buried until more than three days have passed, because they believe Christians can rise from the dead within that time. Or they chop the body into many pieces and throw it all into the river, so the body cannot come back.

We seem to be trapped in our homes. The Boxers have destroyed all the railway lines. In any case, if we were to flee we would be deserting the native Christians, and we cannot do that. Fortunately we do not lack for supplies. We have Chinese Christians friends who bring food.

And I must speak of the many thousands of Chinese Christians. The Boxers call us the hairy ones, and they call the Chinese Christians the secondary hairy ones. It is impossible to sleep when we hear the stories of Chinese Christians who are buried alive, or who have oil poured over them and then set alight, or who are decapitated with those dreadful curved swords.

These Chinese Christians are under enormous pressure to renounce their faith, and it is sad to see many do so. Often it is after they have been beaten on the order of the magistrate. They are then taken to the temple where they solemnly pledge to leave the church and to stop meeting foreigners, and they receive a card to wear, to prove that they have renounced their religion. They are then safe from the marauding hordes. I can tell you that these actions cause us more pain that all the attacks of the Boxers.

We try not to talk of these things among ourselves, in order to keep our spirits up. But this probably makes it worse, because we keep hearing all the rumors.

We have sufficient supplies. We even have a couple of guns. And now we are arguing. This is what it has come to. We are fighting among ourselves. Truly, the evil men are outside the compound, but Satan is already within, sowing discord.

Some people say it is wrong in any circumstances to use our guns. That we must have faith in God for our protection. But others say we should use them now. Act first.

We have two revolvers. Harold says we should use them right away - break out of the house, shooting anyone who tries to stop us, then head for the mountains. But John says we must wait. He says the revolvers are only for self-defense. And even then he says he will only use them to save me or the children. He believes we must accept God’s will in these matters.

But then Harold argues that if we do not use our weapons right away the men outside will easily overpower us. And then they might kill the men and children, but keep alive the women, for their own evil purposes.

Sometimes I think John is right, and sometimes I think Harold is right. But can you not understand what is happening? Satan is destroying us from within. We are becoming utterly confused.

We do not wish to die, but that is what we now expect. We pray without ceasing that we shall be spared and that God will allow us to meet you all again on this earth. We pray that someone will come to rescue us. But if it is not to be, then we shall see you in our beautiful Home where there is no more sorrow.

Ever yours lovingly,

Martha Westloke

Chapter 1

Fulang, China

The Bond Street School of English lies at the end of a dirt road on the edge of Fulang city, in the heart of Shanxi province in China’s north. This place was once farmland, but, over the decades, as China industrialized, so Fulang has relentlessly expanded, and most of the school’s neighbors are now hurriedly erected workshops that machine-tool components for the city’s two massive petrochemical complexes.

On one side is the Goodluck China Bearings Company, where weary, cigarette-smoking men file in each morning to spend long hours grinding, shaping and polishing chunks of stainless steel into industrial bearings, on antique machinery that has been passed down through a succession of owners.

On the other side, slightly more modern, is the Fulang Precision Electronics and Power Components Corporation, a grand name for a tiny plant which manufactures resistors, filters, resonators, inductors and other specialized electrical parts for the power generators that keep the city’s heavy machinery operating.

A piggery over the road from the school serves as one of the few reminders of the area’s rural heritage, along with a nearby grove of peach trees, now in brilliant bloom, their rich springtime pink almost the only touch of color in a remorselessly bleak landscape.

Though opened just two months earlier, inauspiciously during winter, and with no fanfare, the Bond Street School of English is already the most exclusive of the numerous English cram schools that have sprung up to cater for the ambitious young mothers of Fulang.

At least, that is how it appears to the mothers themselves, who gather at the local schools each afternoon to pick up their children - exactly one child per mother - and who, while they wait, chat mainly about how to get their children into the best universities, and otherwise about which restaurants employ the best cooks.

That school only offers a single class a day, says one pretty young lady, dressed in jeans and a pale blue blouse. Why would they do that? It’s already full. That’s what I hear. I heard it was fully booked even before they opened. So why don’t they have lots of classes?

Someone said they’re planning to offer more classes later, answers her friend, who has tinted her long black hair a fiery red. When they’re more established.

But they have a foreign couple there. I hear they’re from America. They’re both young - about thirty. It means they can charge really high fees, with lots of classes. So why don’t they? But I hear that it is only the woman who teaches.

Well, that’s typical, isn’t it? Men in America are all hen-pecked. So she works, and he cooks the meals and cleans the house.

They all laugh.

Now one of the women lowers her voice. That school director. Li-Kui Ling. He’s a very old man. I heard that he has a shady past. Someone said he’d been in prison. For a long time. But not here in Shanxi province. Somewhere down south.

In prison?

For political crimes. Maybe religious crimes - against the state.

So how come he’s allowed to open an English school?

Maybe he’s not allowed. Maybe that school is illegal. That’s why they don’t advertise. Haven’t you noticed? They do no promotion at all.

So how do they find their students then…?

Now another lady speaks in a hushed tone. I heard that that man - Li-Kui Ling - I heard that he was once a leader of the Red Guards…

Suddenly the women become silent. When you live in China you know that certain topics are better not discussed. All these young women have grown up knowing not to ask their parents anything concerning their activities during the Cultural Revolution. This was the turbulent period in the 1960s and 1970s when - under the guidance of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong - workers attacked their bosses, students tortured and even executed their teachers and their professors, kids denounced their own parents, and pastors were beaten and often killed.

For a short while silence reigns, until one of the ladies changes the subject. I heard that a lot of the students at that school are older people. And they come from outside Fulang. Who are they? Why are they there?

Maybe that director is training a group of revolutionaries.

Really? English-speaking revolutionaries? Come on…

More laughing.

But this lady is not completely wrong.

For Li-Kui Ling is actually one of the heroes of the underground church in China. He spent many years in prison for his beliefs, before being exiled back to Fulang, his hometown.

And it is here in Fulang that he has set up the Bond Street School of English as a front for a clandestine Christian seminary, one of scores that have been established by the underground church around China to train pastors and missionaries.

Though right now the Bond Street School of English is in crisis.

Chapter 2

Fulang, China

And suddenly we have a new emergency in Corinth. False prophets have infiltrated the community. Daniel Westloke - one half of the American couple alluded to by the young Chinese mothers - was teaching the New Testament to a dozen of his advanced seminary students. It was testing his Mandarin Chinese language abilities to the limit.

So Paul affirms that he is a superior servant of Christ, because he has suffered greatly while fulfilling his role of apostle. In other words, he is affirming that the true power of an apostle is actually God’s power, revealed through human weakness.

Several of the students were taking notes. Others were listening intently. He knew that the moment he stopped talking he could expect a vigorous debate. Every single one of these students