Charlie’s Apprentice (31 page)

The
rezidentura
sought further instructions about maintaining surveillance upon the nursing home, for a subsequent visit, although pointing out that the demands of the operation were stretching the London resources to the absolute maximum.

From Moscow Natalia ordered no further time or effort to be expended on this one man: the tracing operation had to concentrate on others.

For the moment – perhaps for a very long time – telling Charlie about his daughter had to wait. She still had to evolve a foolproof way to deal with the problem of Eduard.

Thirty-one

John Gower was sure there was no significance in his waking virtually in the middle of the night, long before dawn: certainly it wasn’t nerves. Very little to be nervous about. Probably still hadn’t recovered from jetlag as well as he’d hoped. Definitely not unsettled by it. The opposite. Gave him a lot of time to think things through, go over what he had to do that day. Scarcely needed a lot of time. All very simple; very straightforward. Everything already sorted out in his mind. Didn’t need what was in the security vault, not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. Which would mean what London regarded as sensitive being here, in his rooms. No problem. He was positive his rooms hadn’t been searched. Every trap he’d set had remained in place, unsprung. Damned good room-boy. Everything clean as a new pin, laundry perfect and nothing touched. No need to study special maps, for reminders of the drops: he’d already decided where to leave his summons. Only the temple still to find that morning. Just needed the photographs, for when the priest responded. They’d be meaningless, if the room-boy
did
see them. After today he wouldn’t be going outside the compound, not until the moment he finally left for the airport. And he would have handed them over to Snow long before then.

Everything fitting properly into place, all in the right sequence. Easy. Pity he couldn’t make any recommendations towards the improvements necessary here, when he got back to London. People had trusted him. Didn’t like deceiving them, after they’d been so kind. Hoped they wouldn’t criticize him personally: hoped they’d decide it wasn’t his fault but budgetary restraints and penny-pinching back in London. Might be an idea to prepare the ground. Say something about trying his best but financial approval having to come from higher up. Nicholson was the gossip of the embassy, the man to spread it around. Hope Marcia liked the cheongsam Jane would be buying today. What would Marcia be doing right now, this very minute, thousands of miles away? Planning the wedding, most likely. Wasn’t sure he’d like her going away so much when they were married. Important she had a career of her own, of course. Extra salary would be useful in the beginning, too. Just try to rationalize the travelling. Have to talk to her about it. Be seeing her soon now. Just over a week at the most. Sooner maybe. Christ, he wanted to be with her so much: to get out of this place and back where he understood at least something of what was happening around him. Not nervous, though. Knew what he was doing: what he had to do. Everything in place. Easy. Today was the day. He felt good. Relaxed.

Gower got up when the light was just beginning to break, orange and yellow fingers feeling cautiously across the sky. This early there were no clouds, the blueness uninterrupted but very pale, practically white. He stood at the window for several moments, gazing out over the deserted, utterly quiet courtyard as the dawn hardened the outlines and shapes of buildings and trees and shrubs. He’d think back to this moment when his career began, so it was right he mark it all in his mind, always to remember. But only a recollection for himself, he realized, quickly: there would be no one else with whom he could fully share its importance or meaning. Enough that he should do it for himself.

It was when he was bathing, luxuriating with time to spare, that Gower realized an oversight, a gap in his preparation so big that his initial reaction was to laugh in disbelief rather than become annoyed at himself. The temple signal was fixed for him. But what about the actual summons to bring the priest to him? Gower lay with the water growing cold around him, running words and phrases through his mind to convey the appropriate urgency. And in the end dismissed them all. There was no need to convey any sort of urgency. According to the London briefing, it was Snow who was demanding instant personal contact, threatening any future cooperation. All the man needed to know was that someone had come from London to meet him and understand where that meeting was to be. All so easily fitting together, thought Gower, again: the perfect jigsaw puzzle.

Its coldness drove Gower from the bath. He towelled warmth back into himself but still in his robe went into the sitting-room for his briefcase, the way it was secured and the arrangement of its entirely innocuous contents one of the traps he’d daily left since his arrival. The interior was ornately sectioned and partitioned and pocketed: Gower had worked out himself the pouch for stiff-backed, blank memoranda cards. Slowly, determined on the legibility of every letter, he printed in the centre of the white rectangle 11, Guang Hua Lu, Jian Guo Men Wai. Very gently Snow bent the card back and forth between his fingers, testing its tensility, satisfying himself it was rigid enough to slide into the gap beneath the lion statue without buckling and jamming. In the bedroom, his suit still on its hanger, Gower eased the card into the top pocket of his jacket, careful not to bend it.

The sky had remained clear from the early dawn and the unexpected sun bore down, heavy on his back and shoulders as Gower left the embassy. On a convenient island in the middle of the traffic system outside the embassy he took off his jacket, but slung it over his shoulder rather than doubling it across his arm, to avoid losing the prepared card from his top pocket. The route memorized from the printed map seemed different when he tried to follow it in practice, road connections and turnings either too close or further away than he expected them to be, so finally he stopped again, needing to consult the city plan in conjunction with the landmarks around him. According to the map the temple should have been quite close, but he was beginning to think it was widely out of scale or proportion. Gower saw the money-dealer preparing to intercept him as he crossed a wide, multi-laned thoroughfare, the man quick-stepping this way and that like a rugby full back anticipating a long dropping ball as Gower dodged between the bicycles. Gower was shaking his head before he reached the man, repeating the refusal as the dealer scurried along beside him, babbling the different rates for what seemed to be the majority of world currencies. Towards the end Gower’s rejection became a matching, dull-voiced chant. The tout finally gave up, stopping abruptly and hurling, soft-voiced but vehemently, a one-word accusation at him. Gower wished he could have remembered it, later to ask Nicholson to translate.

He saw the tip of the temple roof ahead, but none of the building, and decided the Taoist shrine had to be in the next street, if not the one beyond. Minutes away: minutes until everything was put into motion. Leave the signal, plant the summons at Coal Hill and get back to the embassy. Safe. Should he tell Samuels when he got back that it was all drawing to a close? He was tempted but the warning about telling nobody anything immediate overrode the impulse. Could it have been only two months since he’d gone through those final, demanding sessions with the man with bad feet, sickeningly aware how gauche and unprepared he’d really been? Did the prohibition about disclosing things extend backwards,
after
an operation? He’d like to talk to the man about the Beijing mission when he got back to London: let him know how successful it had all gone.
Was
going; not over yet. Almost.

Gower pushed forward, easing his way through the shoppers. The street connected with a slightly wider road cutting diagonally across about two hundred yards beyond a tiny, two- or three-stall market. Gower paused at the junction, looking expectantly to his left. He could see much more of the tip-pointed roof but not the temple itself, hidden by other buildings in another side-street three hundred yards further down, but on the other side.

Gower waited for a break in the traffic to cross, so that he could turn without any hesitation when he reached the street he wanted. Bicycles plied in either direction and Gower had the impression of a river again: of walking along the bank of a fast-flowing waterway in which occasionally an out-of-place car floated by. People jostled, behind and against him, so that he had constantly to twist to his left and right to avoid colliding.

He turned abruptly, without pause, when he reached the street. His imagery still on a river, Gower thought this was like a backwater: there were far fewer people, far fewer bicycles and no cars at all. The only stall was that selling threadbare blooms, for the temple. Four he remembered: orange, to be placed on the left of the offering shelf on the shrine. The theatricality of it all suddenly struck him as absurd: no one would believe it if he ever did tell them. The seller was a woman, shapelessly layered despite the heat in brown and black, a shawl over a smock over a dress. There was a black cowl covering her head and her face appeared to be caving inwards on a toothless mouth. Gower smiled and pointed to the flowers he wanted, holding up six fingers. As she gathered them, he assembled the foreign exchange currency in readiness, holding the money out for her to help herself. She took the money before offering the meagre flowers. Gower moved towards the pots and troughs, variously filled with scraggy contributions.

He never reached them.

It started with a shout: an alert, not a challenge. At once there was a matching yell, like a reply, and then a whistle sounded and people were running at him, not just from the main road but behind from further up the side-street. There were uniforms – blue, he thought, and then khaki – and a very thin man who reached him first lashed out, hitting him in the chest. It would not have been hard enough to knock him over if the troughs hadn’t caught him behind his knees, tripping him backwards. The first jar into his back was where he fell into someone’s knee but the second blow, into the side of his face, was a deliberate kick. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once, too many people trying to grab at him: there were several more kicks and two obvious punches before Gower was able to turn on to his hands and knees to get upright. Before he fully succeeded, hands did get to him, finally pulling him from the ground.

One voice persisted louder than the rest, gradually forcing the uproar to subside. The squad pulled back, creating a tiny space, but stayed in a tight, enclosing circle.

The loud voice belonged to a thickset, neckless man in one of the khaki uniforms. Gower couldn’t detect any insignia of rank.

‘Spy!’ Although it was now comparatively quiet, the man still shouted, in English.

‘I am attached to the British …’ Gower tried, but there was a sudden thrust in his back, winding him so that he couldn’t finish.

‘Spy!’ yelled the man once more.

Hands grabbed at Gower again, thrusting him forward. He staggered, wishing his attempt to recover his breath didn’t sound like a whine. His head was bent forward in the strained, gasping effort: he saw the signal flowers trampled underfoot. There was a windowless van blocking the street where it joined the larger road. A lot of people were anxious to push him inside. Gower fell at the last moment, pitching full-length on the metal floor, but scrabbling up before he could be kicked any more. He just managed to get on to one of the metal benches that ran along either side before the van lurched away with a jerk that would have thrown him off his feet again.

Gower remained doubled up, arms across his body, face hidden so they couldn’t see his eyes and mouth squeezed tightly closed with the determination with which he was fighting against his bladder collapsing. No, he prayed: please God, no!

It happened but it wasn’t much: not enough for the wet stain to show for them to know how frightened he was.

Panicked desperation drove Fyodor Tudin personally to go to Petrovka, although he didn’t at the moment of arrival properly know why the Militia enquiry had been made at Mytninskaya, only that it had something to do with the boy: knew even less how to explain his coming there at all. So initially he didn’t attempt an explanation, clawing for guidance from the reaction of the policeman. He judged himself lucky with Kapitsa: one of the old school, only knowing the old ways.

‘I expected her to come back: not somebody else.’ The room was thick with cigarette smoke.

‘Is that what she said?’ He had to feel out with every word, like someone walking across a frozen lake unsure of the thickness of the ice.

‘Something about needing time to work out what we were going to do.’

Good but not good enough: not quite. ‘That was all?’

Kapitsa frowned. ‘You haven’t discussed it with her?’

Tudin thought he knew the way, although the personal risk was appalling: but then all the risks he faced were appalling. ‘I’m here on behalf of the Agency as much as for General Fedova: we’ve got to work out the proper balance, to avoid embarrassment to the Agency as well as General Fedova. You see that, don’t you?’

The investigator remained doubtful. ‘I would have thought the two were virtually the same.’

Tudin nodded. ‘For the moment, until everything is sorted out, this meeting – this discussion – must remain strictly between ourselves.’ Still hardly good enough, he conceded.

The policeman’s uncertainty was still obvious. ‘But we’re talking of some arrangement, aren’t we: something acceptable to everyone? Everything settled to everyone’s satisfaction?’

It was like a signpost, lighted before him. ‘Is that what she said?’ he chanced, tailoring his reply from the investigator’s attitude.

‘Not precisely: it was definitely to that effect.’

Gold-dust, thought Tudin, ecstatically: sparkling, glittering, life-saving gold-dust. ‘That an arrangement could be found?’ he pressed.

‘Yes.’ There was another hopeful smile. ‘We want to cooperate as much as possible, of course. Within reason. We need a prosecution.’