Charlie’s Apprentice (30 page)

‘Have you seen the
People’s Daily
’? greeted Father Robertson. ‘The dissident arrests have started in Beijing.’

Snow took the offered newspaper, at first not properly concentrating. And then he did. There was a photograph of three manacled men being led from a police van. One of them was Zhang Su Lin, his underground information source and English-language student until a year ago.

For the first time Snow felt a bubble of genuine uncertainty. It became difficult for him to breathe properly, although not bad enough for any medication.

Thirty

‘You could have done something with yourself, you could. Been a doctor. Went to grammar school, didn’t you!’

‘Yes, mum.’ Charlie was surprised how well she was holding on to reality today. And had been, for weeks now.

‘What
do
you do? I forget.’

‘Clerk, in a government office.’

‘Girl’s job,’ dismissed the woman, scornfully. The rear of the bed had been cranked up, to put her in a sitting position. She wore the knitted bedcoat Charlie had bought the previous Christmas over her nightdress, and one of the nurses had carefully crimped and prepared her hair she way she liked it done. She smelled of lavender, her favourite. He’d have to remember that, next Christmas.

‘Get a lot of holidays,’ said Charlie, letting the conversation run, most of his mind elsewhere, conducting the private debate about his Regent’s Park discovery.

‘No money, though, is there?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘That’s why you’re a bloody tramp!’ she said, triumphantly.

‘Yes, mum.’ It was an accusation made on average at least once during every visit. His mother had always been extremely clothes-conscious. Ironically, considering his constant concern for his painful feet, her particular delight had been shoes: he could vaguely remember the floor of a bedroom closet completely covered with pairs that overflowed from a shoe-rack. He hadn’t expected Julia to notice the effort he’d made, with new shoes. They were settling in now but they really had hurt like hell at first.

‘No wonder you never got married.’

‘No, mum.’ She’d forgotten Edith and there seemed no purpose in reminding her. Charlie wondered what Julia was preparing for that evening: she’d invited him to eat in her house for the first time.

‘Your dad was a smart man.’

‘I’m sure he was.’

‘Give me my handbag! There! Under the cabinet.’

Charlie did as he was told, watching her fumble with veined hands through a bag crammed with long-ago letters, most still in their tattered envelopes.

‘There!’ she said, in further triumph. ‘There’s your dad. Officer in the navy: lieutenant or something. Always smart, he was.’

Charlie took the picture. It had to be the sixth she had produced of a man she claimed to be his father. He had not seen this one before. It was of a stiffly upright, unsmiling officer in an army uniform. He wondered where she got them all from: he supposed they had all been men whom he’d been told to call uncle when he was young. He definitely couldn’t remember this one. ‘Good-looking man,’ he agreed.

‘Name was George. He could have got you into the navy, if you’d wanted. Had a lot of influence. Knew admirals.’

It was almost time to go. ‘Everything all right? Nothing you want?’

‘They’ve stopped my Guinness,’ complained the old woman. ‘Won’t let me have any now. Used to, but not any longer.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t like me.’

‘I’ll fix it,’ promised Charlie.

‘It’s the matron: she’s the one.’

‘I’ll talk to her. I have to go now.’

She hardly seemed to notice when Charlie kissed her goodbye. He stopped at the matron’s office on the way out, gently asking if there was a problem over Guinness, and was told by Mrs Hewlett that the nightly allowance for those who wanted it was two bottles but his mother was demanding more, which they didn’t think was good for her. Charlie said he was sure they knew best.

He was glad to get back into the hire car, with the prospect of a two-hour, solitary journey ahead of him in which to think. But think about what, any differently or any better than he’d already examined the question from each and every side? There was not the slightest doubt that his only course was to report the hostile Regent’s Park surveillance upon the Director-General and Patricia Elder. It was his duty, in fact, enshrined in all the regulations and conditions under which he was supposed to work.

Which would destroy them both. There’d be an internal investigation, admissions demanded, discreet and accepted resignations hurried through, damage limitation at its very British best.

But what damage limitation was there for Charles Edward Muffin? None, he acknowledged, miserably. As there never seemed to be. If he did what he should do and alerted internal security and counter-intelligence and Christ knows who else that Peter Miller and Patricia Elder were being targeted, the first and most obvious demand would be how the hell he knew. And to answer that honestly – to say that for weeks he had been unofficially and privately targeting them himself – would bring in roughly three seconds the most inglorious end it was possible to imagine to an inglorious career. In fact his ever-painful feet – or his ass – wouldn’t even touch the ground on his way out.

So what was more important, the security of a service to which he remained genuinely dedicated? Or the security of his ass, to which he was equally if not more devoted? An impossible dilemma, decided Charlie. Which was what he’d decided every time he’d thought about it since watching the silly buggers parade for the benefit of a Russian camera with a long-focus lens.

They
were
silly buggers, Charlie determined, contemptuous at them and himself and at everything. Deserved whatever happened to them. Which was not really the consideration. What happened to them was immaterial. It was the blackmail danger that existed to the organization they jointly controlled.

The fast dual carriageway from Stockbridge joins the motorway at Basingstoke, and Charlie picked up the dark grey Ford behind him about a mile from the junction, automatically connecting the vehicle with that in which the two Russians had sat that day, taking their photographs. Black then though, not grey. He slowed, concentrating. The following car dropped back, keeping the same distance behind him, about fifty yards, with two other vehicles, a red van and an open sports car, in between. Had the Ford been behind him since he’d left the nursing home? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure. No cause for an over-reaction, simply because his mind was locked on surveillance conducted from the same make of car. He kept to the inside lane to join the motorway. So did the other vehicle and the intervening van; the sports car burst by in a blast of exhaust noise. Charlie ignored the first turn-off but took the second, without any indication, stopping unnecessarily at the roundabout below. Nothing followed him. He still made the full circle, very slowly, before going back up the link to rejoin the motorway. Far better to have been safe than sorry, he reassured himself.

Would Miller and the woman be destroyed if he reported what he’d seen? Not necessarily: there was an escape. He knew, because he’d seen it. But what
proof
did he have, of anything; of hanky-panky in a millionaire penthouse or that it was known about by a foreign country whose operatives still appeared to wear the black hats supposedly no longer in fashion? None, he recognized: not a fucking thing. So if they didn’t admit an affair – and Charlie was prepared to bet a pound to a pitch of shit they wouldn’t admit
anything –
where was he? Figuratively twisting in the wind with piano wire around a very tender part of his anatomy, displayed for the crows to feast, a disgruntled, cast-aside officer making entirely unfounded and libellous accusations about superiors against whom he had a grudge for prematurely ending his career. Justifiably ending his career, if he was prepared to make unsupportable accusations like that.

Not an immediate decision to agonize over any longer, although he knew he would. There was nothing he
could
do, in any practical sense.

There was another Ford behind him. Grey, like the last one. Or was it the
same
one? He’d been passing the Fleet service station, concentration on two levels, and become instantly aware of it emerging from the filter road to come in behind him. Had it been waiting? It looked the same as the first car. But then any grey Ford would look the same as the first car, sitting as it was still fifty yards behind him. He should have pulled into a layby before the earlier avoidance, to get the registration number as it went by. Still time. He saw the emergency telephone that would provide the excuse well over two hundred yards in front. He slowed, getting closer, but without using the brakes that would have flared the stop-lights. He only did that at the very last moment, uncaring of the blast of protest from the immediately following car, remembering how it had happened to Gower. There was only one man in the Ford that passed: he was balding and wore a sports shirt and went by apparently quite unaware of Charlie, who had the pencil and paper below the window level to note the number.

He stopped after counting ten grey, black or brown Ford cars on the rest of the journey, although he allowed every one to go by him. Charlie snake-looped into London, turning off at Acton, going sideways to Hammersmith and on into Fulham before switching northwards again, but going right through the centre of London, where the traffic was heaviest and most concealing and where he was able to judge his crossing of two intersections on amber, so all the following traffic had to stop at red. The hire car return was in Wandsworth: Charlie changed subway trains three times to reach his station. He had the Duty Room at Westminster Bridge Road run a trace on the Ford number: it was registered against the car pool of a fish processing plant in Hull. They confirmed the Hull outlet genuinely existed, although an examination of the British Company Register revealed it to be a subsidiary of a Belgian conglomerate headquartered in Bruges. Charlie thanked the Duty Officer and said he didn’t want them to go to the trouble of taking it any further, in Belgium.

Julia cooked pheasant. Charlie was glad he’d taken Margaux. Quite soon into the meal, she said: ‘Whatever it was, I’m glad it’s over.’

‘What?’ frowned Charlie.

‘You’re like your old self tonight. The last couple of times you haven’t been altogether with me, have you?’

‘Something on my mind,’ admitted Charlie.

‘Anything you can talk about?’

It would have been interesting to discuss it with Julia. Except that it would have disclosed how he had used her, in the very beginning. And might do again in the future: forever trapped by his own double standards. ‘Over, like you said.’

‘How was your mother?’

‘Bright enough.’ He smiled. ‘Told me I’d never get a girl-friend.’

‘Won’t you?’ she asked, not smiling.

Charlie was uncomfortable at the seriousness with which she was looking directly across the table at him. Quickly he said: ‘I’m thinking of asking for an interview with the deputy Director.’

She looked away, breaking the awkwardness. ‘Why?’

‘About time I was assigned someone else, don’t you think?’

She turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘I never got the impression they were going to come through on a conveyor belt.’

Charlie was suddenly struck by a thought quite apart but at the same time closely connected with his uncertainty over the past few days. ‘If there was any change at the office … if Miller and Elder left or were transferred … would you expect your rather special situation to stay as it is there?’

Julia frowned. ‘I wouldn’t think so. Why do you ask?’

A further reason for doing nothing, Charlie accepted. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

Her frown deepened. ‘What
is
going on?’

‘Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Honestly.’

Patricia Elder had moved her clothes out gradually as their time together came to an end, so there were only her washing things and make-up left by the last day. At breakfast Miller suggested he go on ahead, leaving her to check everything as she normally did at the end of any period they spent together at the penthouse.

Patricia went through the sprawling apartment room by room, although knowing it wasn’t necessary because she’d removed the traces of her having been there as carefully as she’d removed her clothes, over the preceding days.

She went through the master bedroom last. All Lady Ann’s cosmetics were arranged on the expansive dressing-table, laid out with the precision of instruments upon a surgeon’s operating tray: Miller’s wife was an extraordinarily neat and tidy person, as he was.

The Jean Patou
Joy
, the perfume Lady Ann always wore, was in the middle of the line, its accustomed place. Patricia preferred Chanel, which was not so heavy. She slotted her bottle in alongside the other perfume: it seemed perfectly to fit the symmetry of the orderly arrangement in which Lady Ann delighted.

‘Everything OK?’ asked Miller, when she got to the office.

‘All fixed,’ said Patricia.

The Russian
rezidentura
at the London embassy justifiably considered it had achieved a remarkable success with its discovery and proof of a relationship between the head of British external intelligence and his deputy, although accepting with some regret that it would not now be considered so usefully important as it once might have been, in the old days of the KGB.

The
rezidentura
hoped that success would balance the partial failure with the man named as Charles Edward Muffin, the lead to whom had come
from
Moscow, which might have indicated particular interest.

The apologetic account to Moscow acknowledged that the guidance of a famous salmon river and a unique fishing club had successfully led to a nursing home in the small Hampshire town of Stockbridge in which an elderly woman with the same name as the man they had to trace was a permanent resident. They had been fortunate locating and so quickly identifying him from the Moscow-supplied photograph. They could offer no reasonable explanation for his having turned so unexpectedly off a motorway on the return journey to London, although later, when the observation was resumed, he had stopped by an emergency telephone, so there might have been problems with the car, which had been hired and not in the name they knew to be his. Against the possibility of the observation having been suspected, the pursuit had been abandoned at that point.