Charlie’s Apprentice (36 page)

‘You think he’ll break?’

‘I
know
he’ll break. Everyone does …’ Charlie was looking away from her now, deep in reflection. ‘It shouldn’t have been Beijing, not the first time. He wasn’t ready. That was wrong.’ His voice was distant: he wasn’t really addressing the girl whose hands he still held.

‘It was pretty shitty luck,’ agreed Julia.

‘Luck never enters into it.’ Charlie looked up, abruptly. ‘What about the person who’s exposed?’

Julia shook her head. ‘Not a lot. He’s a priest: told to get out but wouldn’t.’

Charlie frowned across at her, concentrating again. ‘Why send
in
? Why didn’t his Control in Beijing simply tell him to get out?’

‘The relationship collapsed. We brought the Control out a long time ago. A damage-limitation move, if the priest was arrested.’

‘What damage limitation, with Gower in the bag?’

She nodded in further agreement, at Charlie’s outrage. ‘No one anticipated this.’

Charlie stayed frowning. ‘Is that the way it’s being put forward?’

Julia nodded.

More damage limitation at Westminster Bridge Road than ten thousand miles away in China, thought Charlie, bitterly. ‘
If
the priest was arrested?’ he echoed.

‘There’s been nothing about that, either,’ conceded Julia. ‘But there is something.’

‘What?’

‘He had a dissident source, about a year ago. A man named Zhang Su Lin. He’s one of a number of dissidents who’ve been arrested in the past few weeks. There’s a purge going on.’

Charlie was silent for several moments. At last he took his drink, sipping it. Then he said, distantly again: ‘This could be a full-scale, eighteen carat, one hundred per cent disaster. With political and every other sort of fallout all over the place. And with Gower buried under it, right at the very bottom.’

‘I wish I could think of something practical to say.’

So did Charlie. But he didn’t know enough: supposed he’d never know enough. Only sufficient to make the judgement he’d just reached, which hardly required the political acument of the age. ‘The official reaction, if there is an accusation, will be absolute denial?’

‘It’s standard,’ reminded Julia. ‘I guess that’ll be it.’

Charlie wondered how a girl named Marcia whom he’d never met would feel seeing newspaper and television pictures of a cowed and brainwashed lover humbled in a court on the other side of the world. He smiled across at Julia. ‘Thanks, for bending the personal rules. Can you go on doing that? Just about Gower. I want to know much more than what’s going to be made officially public’

Julia didn’t reply at once. Then she said: ‘Just about Gower.’

‘Poor bastard,’ said Charlie, reflective again. ‘Poor, frightened bastard.’

‘I’m glad it’s not you,’ said Julia, unexpectedly. ‘That’s selfish, I know. Doesn’t help anyone. But I’m so glad it’s not you.’

Refusing to pick up on her remark, Charlie instead practically echoed the threat of John Gower’s interrogator. ‘All we can do now is wait.’

It wasn’t to be long, for any of them.

The British demands brought about the uproar.

The Chinese ambassador to London was summoned to the Foreign Office personally to receive the request for information about John Gower, described as an accredited diplomat on temporary secondment to Beijing. The interview was timed to the minute to coincide with the visit to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing of Sir Timothy Railton. The request the British ambassador formally deposited was worded identically to that collected by his Chinese counterpart, in London. The press release was confined, for reasons of practicality, to London. It began by expressing the concern of the British authorities in the Chinese capital and of the British government in London at the apparent disappearance of Gower. The British government were unable to offer any explanation for his not returning to the embassy and could only infer the man had become ill or been involved in an accident which had so far prevented his being properly identified.

The press statement was issued quickly after the simultaneously delivered information-seeking notes, so there was a gap of several hours before the Beijing answer. The delay was sufficient for media interest to begin, although initially with no suggestion of espionage overtones: the disappearance of a young and new diplomat in this still enclosed country, the one remaining communist superpower in the world, was enough to justify newspaper curiosity.

That curiosity erupted into near hysteria with the Beijing announcement that John Gower had been arrested as a spy engaged in counter-revolutionary activities against the State, activities which had already led to widespread arrests of dissidents throughout the country. Within twenty-four hours the newspapers discovered the existence of Marcia Leyton: the innocent vicar who had christened her confirmed the wedding preparations and the media cup was filled to overflowing, a spy sensation they never imagined possible after the end of their self-entitled Cold War, complete with a perfect human-interest angle.

All the pictures of Marcia were of a bewildered and confused girl. She broke down at the only press conference she attempted to give, so the denial that her fiance had any connection whatsoever with any intelligence service was issued by the family solicitor. Traced to Gloucestershire, Gower’s mother confronted the press on the lawn of the decaying mansion and insisted it was nonsense to describe her son as a spy. The Chinese had made a terrible mistake which they should rectify immediately.

It was on the day of the televised press conference during which Marcia broke down that Charlie was called to the ninth floor of Westminster Bridge Road.

There was another summons made that day, in Moscow. It demanded the appearance of Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before Vadim Lestov, the chairman of the Federal Agency for Internal Security. No reason was given.

Natalia finally made the telephone call she had delayed. It was the third day of the deadline she had imposed upon herself.

Thirty-seven

Natalia was ordered not to the traditional headquarters of the former Soviet intelligence apparatus at Lubyanka, but to the nearby White House, the seat of the new Russian government. There Vadim Lestov maintained an office suite in which he spent most of his time, in preference to the ochre-painted mausoleum so closely associated with KGB oppression.

Only when she approached the inner sanctum of the intelligence division, close to Lestov’s suite, was there any reminder of the old KGB security mania, but even here the officers who carried out the mandatory screening were young, open-faced and comparatively friendly, not the stone-featured automatons she could remember from when she first joined the service, which now seemed so very long ago.

Natalia felt completely alone and frighteningly vulnerable, without any indication of what or who she was going to confront. At this moment – this very last moment – the precautions she’d attempted, working blind, always having to guess where and how Tudin’s attack might come, seemed woefully inadequate.

A man was waiting to receive her in an ante-room, gesturing her at once towards high, divided double doors. Natalia was disorientated the moment she entered. She had expected an office, with maybe just Lestov or Tudin waiting inside. Instead she walked into a small conference room already arranged as an examining tribunal. There was a table across the end of the room. Lestov sat in the centre, flanked by his two immediate deputies, Vladimir Melnik and Nikolai Abialiev. A bank of tables to the left already harboured a recording secretariat of three men and two women. There were two rows of chairs facing the three blank-faced members of the committee. Fyodor Tudin was already occuping a seat in the first row, on the left. Eduard was directly behind. Mikhail Kapitsa was in the same row, but separated from Eduard by two empty chairs. Also in that row sat a third man whom Natalia did not know.

Her escort indicated the chairs to the right, separated from the others by a central aisle. Mustn’t become disorientated, confused by the unexpected! she told herself. She’d make mistakes if she let this tribunal hearing unsettle her. No reason why she should be unsettled. Her original KGB training had been as an interrogator, accustomed daily to being faced during debriefings with situations for which there had been no primer or rehearsal. It was at one such session that she’d met Charlie Muffin for the first time!

As she reached her designated place, Lestov said: ‘This is a preliminary disciplinary examination, of complaints from Fyodor Ivanovich Tudin, under regulations governing the security service of the Russian Federation. If those complaints are found to be justified they will be laid before a full tribunal hearing. Any such findings will in no way interfere with quite separate criminal charges that might be considered appropriate by the Federal Prosecutor.’

Tudin, the outdated traditionalist who only knew well trodden routes, had moved as she’d anticipated, pursuing her through the organization’s regulations first! Natalia felt a surge of relief. There was still a lot more she had to understand and perhaps prepare herself against.

When she did not respond Lestov said: ‘Do you fully understand what I have said? Why you have been brought before us?’

‘Absolutely.’ She didn’t welcome the irritation in his voice. Natalia came slightly forward, concentrating entirely upon the chairman, needing his attention, which at that moment was upon the documents laid out before him. Natalia supposed she had either met him formally or been in his presence among others on about four or five occasions since their respective appointments. It had been Lestov who officially confirmed her as chairman of the external directorate. He was an inconspicuous, undistinguished man who nevertheless conveyed an impression of the authority he clearly possessed. Head-bent as he was, the thinning hair was more obvious than she could remember from their previous encounters. He was not a career intelligence officer. At one time in the turmoil of fledgeling Russian democracy, which still didn’t properly exist, Lestov had served as Interior Minister, but had been dismissed because he was considered too liberal. Natalia hoped the charge had been true. Not having expected an investigating panel she certainly hadn’t prepared herself for the sort of prosecution that was clearly intended.

At that moment, fortunately, Lestov came up from his papers, looking enquiringly at her.

‘Will I have the opportunity to question the accusations I am going to face?’

Lestov went briefly to the men on either side of him. ‘Within limits. There is no reason for this to be a protracted examination.’

Already judged guilty, decided Natalia, worriedly.

At Lestov’s nod, Tudin hurried to his feet. The man was more florid-faced than usual, and Natalia guessed at a combination of nervous excitement at appearing before his ultimate superiors at last to destroy her, and an excess of alcohol in premature celebration. He’d dressed for the occasion. His suit was immaculate and there was the pose of a man in command in the way he was standing. Twisted sideways, Natalia could easily see Eduard as well. He wore the same clothes as in the detention cell and they were creased, but he was clean-shaven and the near shoulder-length hair was no longer lank and greasy, so he’d been allowed to shower. His belongings had been returned to him. As well as the earring she had seen there was a heavy gold watch on his left wrist and a gold identity chain on the other. There were two rings on his left hand, one dominated by a large purplish-red stone, and one on his right: from where she sat it seemed to be in the shape of a face or a mask. The dishevelled Mikhail Kapitsa, deprived by the formality of the proceedings of the habitual cigarette, was blinking rapidly and frequently brought his hands to his face, as if troubled by an irritation. His frowning look towards her was one of confused bewilderment.

Tudin avoided any flamboyant speech or mannerisms: his attitude was practically the opposite, an address delivered in a flat, sometimes almost boring monotone, with few hand or body movements. He listed precisely by their subheadings and numbers the regulations governing the Agency under which he was bringing the accusations, which he summarized as abuse of power and condoning corruption. In addition he itemized the criminal statutes he contended Natalia had broken.

The man quickly sketched Eduard’s youth at Moscow University before gaining a junior officer’s commission in the Russian army which had ended with the scale-down of the military.

‘Returning to Moscow he became a criminal, joining a recognized Mafia syndicate known as the Lubertsy,’ declared Tudin. ‘He told his criminal associates – as he will tell you here today – that he was in a particularly privileged position. His mother was a high-ranking official in the State’s security service. Her rank and influence put him beyond the law. If he were ever unlucky enough to get arrested, he could call upon his mother to intercede to prevent any prosecution or conviction …’

Tudin paused, and despite his control the man was unable to avoid darting a satisfied look between mother and son.

‘An arrest did happen, through brilliant detective work by Militia Investigator Mikhail Stepanovich Kapitsa, who will also testify before you today …’ Tudin turned quickly, identifying the detective with a hand gesture. ‘… Eduard Igovevich Fedova was seized, with eight other members of a gang of which he was the leader, in possession of narcotic and medical drugs and a considerable amount of black market material. Fedova’s first action was to offer Investigator Kapitsa a substantial bribe. Which Kapitsa of course refused. At that point, Fedova identified his mother. He told Investigator Kapitsa it was quite pointless the man attempting any sort of criminal prosecution: that his mother would prevent it. And he demanded to see her …’

Tudin coughed, his voice becoming strained, but also wanting the minimal pause, for effect. Looking directly up at the assembled committee, he said: ‘Natalia Nikandrova Fedova was contacted on the eighteenth of this month. Within an hour of a telephone conversation between her and Investigator Kapitsa, she arrived at Militia headquarters at Petrovka, to do exactly what her son had always insisted she would do, intercede upon his behalf to block any prosecution against him.’