Charlie’s Apprentice (47 page)

‘Like Father Robertson was an emergency?’

‘Snow thought so.’

‘Father Snow was ill: a chronic asthma sufferer. He told me, although he didn’t really have to.’

‘Yes?’ Pickering was shifting, irritably, a busy man whose time was being too much imposed upon.

‘Why didn’t you prescribe his medication? He needed inhalers all the time but told me he didn’t come to the embassy to collect them: to collect anything. It all had to come from Rome. I don’t understand that.’ It would, thought Charlie again, have given Snow a perfectly acceptable reason – and contact opportunity – to come to the embassy as frequently as he’d wanted.

Up and down went the shoulders. ‘Never arose,’ said Pickering. ‘Everything for the mission was simply channelled through here for convenience. I inherited the system when I arrived. Told Snow early on, of course, that if there was ever a problem he should call me. He never did: never had any reason. He was young, after all. Asthma is a condition its sufferers live with.’

Charlie had the briefest of mental images of the tall, ungainly priest clutching himself against the agony as he stumbled beside the moving train beneath which he’d fallen. ‘Maybe that was a mistake.’

Pickering frowned. ‘What you mean by that?’

The doctor wouldn’t have understood, conceded Charlie, breaking away from the reflection fully to concentrate. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘I’m worried about this man Gower,’ said Pickering.

‘So am I.’

‘I can’t guess how he’ll have been treated, but I don’t expect it to have been very good.’

‘They’ve got to grant access soon.’

‘One would have thought so. After living in China, I’m not so sure. There’s no logic here: no Western sort of logic, that is.’

‘I wish there were: it would be easier.’

‘What
are
you going to do?’

‘Leave, I suppose.’

‘When?’

‘I’ve already had the lecture from Peter Samuels.’

Surprisingly Pickering smiled. ‘It’s pretty easy to become paranoid in a society like this.’

‘I’m coming to realize that.’

‘We’re all very nervous. None of us have known anything like all this recent pressure and accusation. It’s pretty frightening if you’ve got to live here all the time.’

‘I guess it must be,’ allowed Charlie.

Back at his hotel, Charlie conceded there was little purpose in his remaining any longer in the Chinese capital. He had never imagined escorting Gower home. And Snow, his reason for being there in the first place, was dead. But still Charlie was reluctant to leave. It was instinctive in a situation which still troubled him for Charlie to pick and probe and turn stones over even when he didn’t know what he was looking for beneath them. And Charlie always followed instinct.

He stayed away from the embassy for several days. Experimentally he embarked, almost immediately sore-footed, on a strictly limited tourist trail, ending the painful test reasonably sure he was not under surveillance and therefore in no immediate danger, although yet again acknowledging the difficulty of being as convinced as he would have been in a Western environment, and yet again thinking how inadequately Gower had been prepared for the situation into which he had been pitched.

Eventually, inevitably, Charlie was drawn to the district in which the mission was located. He went without any positive intention of meeting Father Robertson, which might have been dangerous. He was glad he chose the time to match that of his first visit and followed the same, most obvious route, although Charlie was unhappy having to use the same silk shop for concealment because it was repetitive and therefore not good tradecraft. It was a passing uncertainty, instantly replaced by another far greater curiosity at something immediately obvious to Charlie’s trained eye and which, like so much else, didn’t make sense.

He confirmed his impression, to be quite sure, from the more open park in which there was sufficient protective, personal cover. It was from there that Charlie saw Father Robertson, thinking at once that he could confront the man now. He didn’t attempt to. The priest was still careworn but slightly less stooped than when Charlie had unobtrusively watched his arrival and departure from the embassy. That day there seemed more spring in his step, too: Dr Pickering would be pleased at the advancing recovery. It was even better the following day. And the third, when Father Robertson positively bustled up the road, exactly on schedule. A man of regular pattern, Charlie recognized, glad of the park concealment and deciding that he wouldn’t try to talk to the mission chief after all. Charlie liked patterns that fitted, although always with others, never himself. Sometimes it was really surprising what lurked under overturned stones.

Samuels greeted Charlie furiously when he reappeared at the embassy. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Staying away, like you wanted.’

‘God knows what’s going on in London. They’re frantic about you …’ He offered a sheaf of cables. ‘A lot have been duplicated, to me. They want to know why you didn’t rebase days ago, as you were ordered.’

‘Didn’t feel it was right, not then.’ Another question to be resolved, he thought, remembering an earlier conversation. ‘Why didn’t you call the hotel? You knew where I was.’

‘I didn’t want it to appear the embassy were chasing you,’ said Samuels. ‘I wouldn’t like to be you, when you get back!’

‘I’m not looking forward to it myself,’ admitted Charlie, sincerely. He still had to
get
back.

They sat facing each other in Samuels’ office for several moments, with no conversation. Then Samuels said: ‘I am authorized by the ambassador – and empowered by the Foreign Office – positively to
order
you out of this embassy and out of the country. On the next plane to London. Which leaves tomorrow morning, at ten.
I’ll
make the reservation.’

‘That would be good of you,’ smiled Charlie. ‘Actually, I’d already decided to leave. So we’re both going to be happy, aren’t we?’

‘I don’t think you’re going to survive this.’

‘I was supposed to teach Gower that,’ said Charlie. ‘How to survive.’

‘You didn’t do very well, did you?’

‘That’s what other people have said.’

‘We’re being given access, at last. No definite day, yet. But there’s been a formal agreement. And without the ambassador having to be recalled, in protest.’

Charlie came forward in his chair. ‘No charge or accusation?’

‘No.’

‘So he held out?’

‘It looks like it. That’s why there was so much panic about you in London. You were the last loose end.’

It really was time to go home, Charlie decided. He supposed it probably was an accurate enough description of him, a worrying loose end. ‘It’s good, about Gower. A relief.’ How long would a proper recovery take?

‘Don’t forget,’ cautioned Samuels. ‘Tomorrow morning: ten o’clock.’

‘I won’t,’ promised Charlie.

He did leave the following morning, although not on the London plane. Charlie took an earlier, internal flight to Canton and from there caught a train further south. As he crossed by road into Hong Kong Charlie thought that Samuels would get an awful bollocking for not personally ensuring he was on the London flight.

At Chung Horn Kok, in the very centre of Hong Kong island, there is an installation known as the Composite Signals Station. It is an electronic intelligence-gathering facility run by Britain in conjunction with its other world-spanning eavesdropping centre, the Government Communication Headquarters at Cheltenham, in the English county of Gloucestershire. Although the Composite Signals Station is much smaller than the facility in England – and is in the process of being dismantled prior to the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997 – there is still at Chung Horn Kok equipment sufficiently powerful to listen to radio and telephone communications as far north as Beijing and to both the Russian naval headquarters at Vladivostok and their rocket complex on Sakhalin Island.

Charlie’s security clearance was high enough for him to be given all the cooperation he sought: his requests were quite specific and therefore easily traced. He only needed to spend four hours there, so he was able to catch the night flight back to England, via Italy.

He boarded the plane a depressed and coldly furious man, believing he knew enough to be able to guess other things. Charlie didn’t sleep and he didn’t drink: booze never helped at the deep-thinking, final working out stage. Halfway through the second leg of the flight, from Rome, he decided he might not have reached that final stage after all, so did not return to Westminster Bridge Road immediately after reaching London.

Instead, he took a train north to the national registration centre for births, deaths and marriages at Southport, near Liverpool. Again he knew exactly what he was looking for, even though he had to go between two different departments, so he wasn’t able, more depressed than ever, to catch the afternoon train back to London.

There, the following day, he went to the Records Office at Kew for back editions of the Diplomatic Lists, which led him to the directory of the General Medical Council. He was lucky. The men he was looking for had both retired, but to Sussex, so he only had an hour to travel. It wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with either.

Charlie expected his internal telephone to be ringing when he entered his office at Westminster Bridge Road, because it had been obvious from ground-floor security that his arrival was flagged for instant notification.

It was ringing, stridently. Julia said: ‘For Christ’s sake, Charlie, where the hell have you been?’

‘Here and there.’

‘They want you!’

‘I thought they might,’ said Charlie.

John Gower was never to know how close he was to giving up. Didn’t want to know. Ever. But later – much later – he openly admitted during his debriefing that he wasn’t far off. A day maybe. He was badly dehydrated by then, constantly hallucinating, and the dysentery had become so bad he wasn’t able to keep himself clean any more. He was too far gone to be personally disgusted.

So far gone, in fact, that he failed to realize the awakening sounds, even the spy-hole scraping, had ceased. It was the chance to get clean that told him he had won.

He shuffled dutifully to his feet when the escorts entered the cell, needing their support either side initially to move. He’d started to turn automatically to the left down the corridor, towards the interview room and the persistent Mr Chen, but they steered him in the opposite direction. He did not realize it was a shower stall until he was standing before it and they were helping him out of his stinking, encrusted uniform.

The awareness came as he stood under the needle-stinging spray, drawing up the last reserve of adrenalin. Won! he thought: beaten them! I’ve beaten them! He risked letting the water from the shower into his parched, cracked mouth, although he held on to the presence of mind not to gulp too much, further to upset his stomach.

There was a razor and soap with which to shave when he stepped out, and the clean uniform waiting for him wasn’t stiff as the other had been, from previous unwashed use. He wasn’t taken back to the cell but to a ground-floor room where the toilet closet was partitioned off from a proper bed, with a mattress and a pillow and clean sheets.

A doctor came in what he gauged to be the afternoon to examine the lip sores, producing a salve which he had to administer himself, every three hours, over the course of two days. The food that was delivered wasn’t bad any more. The water came in a covered tin mug.

On the fourth day of his release from the cell, he was taken to meet a Chinese who gave no name. ‘You are seeing people from your embassy tomorrow,’ announced the man.

‘Where’s Mr Chen?’

The man ignored the question.

When the moment came, Natalia couldn’t bring herself to do what she had so carefully planned. For several days she kept the necessary files in her personal office safe, taking them out and replacing them, telling herself that so many things might have changed. Charlie could have married. Found somebody else at least. So for her to do what she intended had no point or purpose. There had been, after all, two opportunities for Charlie to be with her and he’d turned his back on both. Going beyond any professional reasoning, it had to mean he didn’t love her enough: if he’d loved her enough, he would have found a way. Any way. And if he didn’t love her enough what interest would he have in Sasha? How, sensibly and logically, could they do anything about it in any case, even if he
were
interested? They were separated – and always would be – by far more than miles.

Then she told herself that he deserved to know: had the right. What might – or might not – have existed between her and Charlie shouldn’t come into her thinking. The only consideration was Sasha. So Sasha’s father had to know.

Know more, in fact. Not just that she herself had survived the London episode but that she had maintained a position – risen in rank, even – and that therefore Sasha would always be cared for and protected.

She didn’t want to write. Not more than she had already decided to do. Apart from the obvious danger, minimal though it might be after the destruction of Fyodor Tudin, for her to write might make it seem that she was asking for something, and she wasn’t. All she was doing was telling Charlie what he should know. Nothing else.

Gazing down at the London file she had ordered assembled, Natalia suddenly smiled when the way occurred to her, carefully extracting one photograph. She took another, from her handbag this time. It was on this one that she wrote, very briefly.

That night, packing in the bedroom of the Leninskaya apartment, the baby awake in the cot beside her, Natalia said: ‘We’re going on holiday, darling. Germany is a beautiful country.’

It was a further and obvious precaution for Natalia to go outside of Russia, which it was now very easy to do under the new freedoms. She supposed she could have even gone to England. She wouldn’t, though: determined as she was – having tried as hard as she had – she could only go so far. But no further. Not to England.