Charlie’s Apprentice (3 page)

‘Well?’ demanded Miller. He reached out, brushing her hand, wanting the brief physical contact.

Patricia Elder shifted more fully to face the man, offering her hand to answer the touch, always pleased with intimate gestures like that. ‘It’s difficult to believe he’s been responsible for all that I’ve read in his files.’

Miller continued to frown, hoping the woman was not being over-cautious. ‘I’m not sure appearance has got anything to do with it …’

‘… I am,’ she interrupted, confident of their relationship. ‘I think everything about Charlie Muffin is calculated to mislead. And most certainly his appearance.’

‘I thought you might have told him just now, in front of me. Make it clear that it is with my authority.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s important he realizes from the beginning there’s no longer any special relationships: most definitely not with the Director-General. From now on he’s simply an ordinary officer who’s got to take orders, as and when they’re given.
My
orders. We’ll keep your authority for when he challenges me.’

‘Have you chosen someone?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘John Gower. University entrant. Incredibly keen. Scored the highest for interrogation resistance.’

‘When are you going to brief Muffin?’

She smiled. ‘When there’s a benefit to be gained. Which isn’t yet.’

Four floors below, Charlie Muffin was thinking: attempting a very personal – and therefore vitally important – assessment of where he stood. If he stood anywhere at all. A woman! He was to be ordered about by a woman! Why not? Why the automatic sexism? Because it had never happened before, that was why not. He’d never had to work this way. Nothing to do with her sex: it was to do with too many dismissive changes. He had no chauvinistic difficulty about the fact that Patricia Elder
was
a woman. Or that he was expected to do what she told him to do, when she told him to do it. He just hoped she was properly professional, that’s all. Which
was
male chauvinism.

She’d worked hard during their brief meeting, to make it clear how much she was the superior and he was the subordinate. Why? The peremptory manner could indicate nervousness, a bravado effort to intimidate him. Or, on the other hand, to show a self-assured confidence and convey that from now on he
was
very much the subordinate. What about Patricia Elder herself? No wedding ring, which had to be kept in mind. No discernible accent, but obviously well educated private school delivery. No bust to get excited about but the suit jacket was high buttoned and might have hidden a surprise. Nice legs, crossed without embarrassment at his quick examination: strong-featured, the nose almost too big and not helped by the shortness with which she wore her slightly greying hair. Better to have grown it longer. Interesting, full-lipped mouth and unusual eyes, which were probably cosmetically described as brown but which he thought closer to black. She’d used them very directly, too, staring at him when she spoke, not dropping her gaze when he’d stared just as fixedly back, curious if he could face her down. But always an uncertainty. Charlie couldn’t understand that inference: couldn’t understand it at all.

What else?

Possibly that Peter Miller was a sneaky bastard. And that Julia Robb might not be the robotic ball-breaker she’d appeared. Charlie was sure Miller hadn’t used any foot button to activate the intercom. So it could have been on and relaying his arrival conversation with the girl. So she could have been protecting him, against betraying himself as … Charlie stopped, seeking the word, grinning when it came. Against betraying himself as a sneaky bastard, he supposed. Whatever, he’d have to be careful around Miller’s suite if he were ever allowed entry from now on, until he discovered if the Director-General did play eavesdropping tricks.

What about the meeting itself? Confusing, Charlie judged. There hadn’t been any real purpose in it: at least not one that he could find. It hadn’t needed a personal encounter for Miller to announce how he intended running the organization in the future. Or for the introduction to Patricia Elder to be made personally, either.

There had been no mention of anything positive for him to do. Despite the self-admonishment against expecting things in advance he
had
anticipated being given something today: something that would have broken this stultifying, paper-dart-throwing inactivity.

Analysed completely, what had taken place today was nothing more than his being summoned for examination, like a museum exhibit or maybe a laboratory specimen, to see how he would jump when the acid dripped on the nerve ends. Which had they considered him to be?

The musing began idly, his mind drifting, but abruptly Charlie began to concentrate. Couldn’t that be
precisely
the purpose: for them to study him, for some reason? It certainly hadn’t appeared an intense examination, from the quickness of the meeting, and the short conversation hadn’t given any indication, but it was the reason that made the most sense. Charlie liked things to make sense.

Examined for what? An impossible question, at this stage. Maybe not even a question. Maybe he was again mistakenly anticipating things, when there was nothing to anticipate. All he could do was wait. As he had been waiting, for far too long.

In Beijing, the
People’s Daily
carried a lengthy diatribe warning of foreign reactionaries encouraging counterrevolution within the country, pledging that any such activity would be sought out and crushed, with its perpetrators put on trial.

Three

Jeremy Snow never expected the length or the intensity of Father Robertson’s lecture upon every possible pitfall and disaster after the favourable reaction to his travel application. More specifically than ever before, the old man talked of the prisons and even the two re-education installations in which he had been incarcerated, regimes of rifle-butt discipline and brainwashing propaganda.

Always, however, Father Robertson declared personal suffering unimportant. The need, always, was to retain a mission in a country where Jesuits had lived and worked for hundreds of years. Throughout Snow gave repeated assurances that he would do nothing to jeopardize their tenuous position. On this occasion the man quoted from the Epistle of James:
Ye have heard of the patience of Job
.

Snow would have welcomed more the chance of a proper briefing with Foster: he’d suggested it, in the letter drop through which their communication was imposed and limited by the liaison officer, when he’d learned he was getting his travel permission. But Foster had predictably refused, arguing there were no embassy or other convenient gatherings of Westerners to disguise an encounter.

Snow had become increasingly frustrated in the nine months he’d worked under Walter Foster. The red-haired, freckle-faced man looked and behaved like a timid clerk: even when there was virtually no risk at embassy gatherings of diplomats or Western enclave people, Foster was always twitching over his shoulder, inviting the attention they forever sought to avoid. So very different from the others. Bowley had always managed personal meetings in the early, first-arrival days. And George Street, too, using the flamboyant eccentricity of handlebar moustaches and floral waistcoats and an imported Rolls Royce to hide behind, deflecting any official interest by drawing it upon himself.

After three and a half years Snow didn’t have to be told to get everything, which was what Foster had said. He
always
got everything. Photographs, whenever possible. Any scrap of conversation, no matter how inconsequential. Twice he’d even supplied names of men at the time unrecognized at the middle level of the government both of whom subsequently achieved influential appointments, marking them as people to watch and monitor. And from Zhang Su Lin, when he’d had the man as an informant, he’d provided the virtual framework of the dissident movement that survived Tiananmen.

Fleetingly Snow regretted not being able to complain about Foster: get something done to improve the communication through the embassy. Was it so unchristian to think as he was thinking? Maybe, if any complaint affected the man’s career. But didn’t it go beyond Foster’s career, to his own personal safety? He was taking all the risks. Foster had the protection of diplomatic cover. Snow accepted he had nothing. Not true, Snow decided, in immediate contradiction. Didn’t he have the protection of God? Spiritual protection, unquestionably: just as his spiritual conviction was unquestionable. But this was temporal. Still not a difficulty. After three and a half years he was sure he had completely assimilated into a Chinese way of life, far more adjusted temporally than in any other way.

Snow planned his itinerary with infinite care. Every route he suggested took him into closed areas – because obviously these were the cities and places of interest – and he discerned from beginning negotiations at the Foreign Ministry that to press for the north might lead to a straightforward refusal. He instantly switched the persuasion to a southerly route.

It took a lot of discussion to finalize a route. It allowed him as far south as Chongqin, to return eastwards through Wuhan up to Shanghai before going more directly north, back to Beijing. It put him close to at least five restricted areas and maybe six closed cities. It would have been naïve to hope to get into all, but if he penetrated just one or two the trip could be more than worthwhile. An additional benefit was that for the first few days he could travel alone without any official supervision.

It was not until Zhengzhou, on the sixth day, that he was scheduled to meet an escort to take him through the restricted areas. The guardian’s name was Li Dong Ming. His photograph showed a bland-faced, bespectacled man with rather large ears. Snow guessed him to be about thirty years old. If he was, they would be exactly the same age.

Natalia Nikandrova Fedova accepted that professionally she had been extremely fortunate.

She had been exonerated from any responsibility for the ultimately failed operation in England, which, incredibly, had turned out to be a personal affair for the ego-inflated satisfaction of the Directorate head, Alexei Berenkov. And then escaped completely the KGB reorganizational purges after the failed coup of 1991. Not just escaped: positively and materially benefited, when the KGB had been transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation, still headquartered in Moscow, but renamed as an internal security agency now. There had, of course, been the advantage in those early days of her being an officer in the external First Chief Directorate, not attached to any internal part of the oppressive apparatus which deservedly bore the brunt of the mass sackings, blood-lettings and even elimination of entire departments.

Natalia supposed there was a supreme irony that with her elevated rank of Major-General she now occupied the position once held – and finally abused – by Alexei Berenkov, who had been prepared to sacrifice her in his personal vendetta against Charlie Muffin, an adversary for whom one-time admiration became unreasoning competitiveness. Now Berenkov was disgraced, dismissed and stripped of all rank and privilege. And Charlie, who’d beaten Berenkov first with a phoney defection to Moscow and then again by refusing to fall into the London trap as a supposed Russian agent, was … was where? She wished, how very much she wished, that she knew. Whatever and wherever, he would still be in intelligence. He was too good to dump.

Natalia slowed the car at the traffic intersection at what she still thought of as Marx Prospekt, despite the Communist-cleansing name change which had altered the street maps of Moscow. She turned almost instinctively at the pause, looking into the rear of the car, annoyed with herself for forgetting to leave the bag with the clothes change and fresh nappies at the crèche: she knew there would be spare things available at the nursery but she’d still telephone as soon as she got to the office.

Was it allowing too much self-pity for her to think she
had
been sacrificed, personally? Yes, she decided at once. Charlie had acted the only way possible – the only way he knew – as a professional intelligence officer. The setup was wrong and they’d both known it. She’d decided to take the chance. He hadn’t. And in the event she’d managed to rejoin the Soviet visiting group from which she had been prepared to defect without being missed, so there had been no inquiry or punishment.

The traffic began to move and Natalia looked away from the back of the car. Sasha couldn’t be considered a factor: neither had known then. Would it have made a difference, if Charlie
had
known? Perhaps. She liked to think it would. But she could never be sure. Determinedly Natalia rejected another reflection, this one probably more pointless than the rest. Whatever there might have been – could have been – for her and Charlie Muffin had ended: closed off forever, with no possibility of ever being opened or restored.

She had a baby whom she adored. A privileged life, despite the democratization which was supposed to have swept privilege away. And a high executive position, providing everything she could conceivably need, in addition to privilege. She was a lucky woman.

But not complacent. She could not afford to be, with Fyodor Tudin at her back. She’d made a mistake, agreeing to Tudin remaining as her immediate deputy. He was an old-timer, a relic of as far back as the Brezhnev era. Natalia knew she would always have to be wary of the depths of Tudin’s resentment of her being the Directorate chairman, rather than him.

As Natalia edged off the ring road at Yasenevo, into the skyscraper block of the original and still retained First Chief Directorate, she wondered if Charlie was as fortunate. She hope so.

Just over fifteen hundred miles away, Charlie Muffin stared down at the summons that had finally arrived from the deputy Director-General and hoped exactly the same thing.

Four

Patricia Elder’s suite came off the second arm of the new triangular ninth-floor layout at the centre of which reigned the starchily formal Julia Robb.

But the deputy Director’s room had none of the sterility of Miller’s. There were two flower arrangements, one on a small, elaborately carved cabinet of a sort that Charlie had never seen before in a government office. There was a display of art deco figures on the same cabinet and on a mantelpiece in the centre of which was a gold filigree and ormolu clock. There were screening curtains of festooned lace at the window, which had a partial view of the Big Ben clock and the crenellated roofing of the Parliament buildings. The deputy Director sat in front of the window, at a proper wooden and leather desk, not something fashioned from metal and plastic which looked as if it had popped out of a middle-price Christmas cracker. The only similarity Charlie could find with Miller’s quarters was the complete absence of any personal photographs. There would have hardly been room on the desk anyway: there were two red box containers and a string-secured manila folder Charlie recognized from the three – or was it four? – disciplinary hearings he’d endured over the years.