Charlie’s Apprentice (42 page)

‘I am prepared to face the judgement of our superiors. To explain myself,
my
way. Not have a case presented for me: against me.’ Snow was hating the confrontation: hating himself. Despising what he’d done and how he’d done it, unable to find any vindication, any excuse. A man was suffering unspeakable horrors because of him: the Jesuit mission in Beijing was endangered because of him. And all he could think of doing was to run away, like a coward. But wasn’t that the mitigating factor, the only thing he
could
do? Without him there would be no corroborated case against the arrested Englishman. Who would have to be released, eventually. And just as the man’s safety depended upon his getting out of the country, so did the continuing existence of Father Robertson’s precious mission. So he was not acting cowardly – he was not ceasing to be a Soldier of Christ- by running. It was an act to save others first, himself very much last.

‘Get out!’ rejected Father Robertson. ‘Out of Beijing as soon as possible! Go to Rome. You need help: a great deal of help. You’re surely going to strain God’s compassion.’

‘You will inform the Curia of my permission to travel?’

‘Go!’ repeated Father Robertson, exasperated.

‘Li is demanding something: some photographs. I do not believe I will be allowed to leave until I pass them over.’

Father Robertson shook his head, a man pummelled with too much, too quickly. ‘Give them to him!’

‘I do not have them, not yet.’

The elderly man shook his head, wearily. ‘I do not understand. Do not
want
to understand. All I want is for you to go. Please go.’

‘As soon as I find a way,’ promised Snow. But who was there to show him?

‘So he
is
a spy?’ demanded Patrick Plowright.

‘He came to clear up some sort of mess, after that bloody man Foster. I’ve no idea what,’ confirmed Samuels. The feet of the diminutive embassy lawyer sitting opposite only touched the floor when the man stretched his toes, to make contact. Samuels tried to avoid obviously looking at them.

‘Still nothing on access?’

The political officer shook his head. ‘The ambassador has delivered three Notes, so far. The same number have been given to their ambassador in London.’

‘What’s the next step?’

Samuels looked uncomfortable. ‘Someone else is coming in.’

‘What!’

‘I know. It’s appalling, isn’t it?’

‘When’s he arrive?’

Samuels shrugged, realizing he was looking at the tiptoe difficulty of the other man and hurriedly averting his eyes. ‘He wasn’t on the plane we’d been told to expect. We’ve asked London what’s happened.’

‘Surely there’s something else we can do about Gower! Something practical?’

‘As a gesture of protest, Sir Timothy could be recalled to London. But that would blow up badly in our faces if the Chinese
proved
espionage.’

‘Which still has to be denied?’

‘Emphatically.’

‘It’s ridiculous!’

‘Of course it is. Sir Timothy is privately making the strongest protest imaginable to London.’

‘I thought all this spying nonsense was a thing of the past.’

‘I only wish it had been.’

‘What’s this new person going to do?’

‘God only knows.’

Charlie believed he’d moved around like a blue-assed fly, although making less noise. And achieved some early, possibly useful impressions.

He was pleased with the Hsin Chiao, a hotel reserved for Western tourists among whom he could merge and become lost. The reception desk wouldn’t let him have their only street map, so he had to memorize the position of the British embassy, which was marked, against the district containing the mission, which wasn’t. He studied a separate map, listing in English the numbers and routes of the buses, which looked comparatively convenient but which he guessed wouldn’t be. They weren’t. It meant a lot of walking.

Charlie went close enough to the embassy on Guang Hua Lu to fix it in his mind but not close enough for him to become identified with it. He didn’t try directly to approach the mission, either. Instead he circled where he knew it to be, always keeping a street distance away, until he found the logical main road leading away from it. There was a convenient park, where he remained for an hour, and a stall market in front of several shops, where he immersed himself for slightly longer. He identified two cars that made more than one journey up and down. One stopped within sight of Charlie, so he was able to see the two men who got out. And then he recognized Father Robertson from the photographs he’d studied in London. The priest strode from the direction of the mission remarkably quickly for a man of his age, and with purpose, as if he were keeping an appointment. Charlie was still in the final shop, supposedly looking at bolts of silk, when he saw Father Robertson returning. It was automatic for Charlie to check the timing: the mission chief had been away an hour. Seeing Father Robertson was a plus he hadn’t expected: it was too much to hope that Father Snow might use the approach road. Charlie still lingered, but the younger priest didn’t appear. Charlie wouldn’t have approached him, if he had.

Charlie had to walk much further than he anticipated, to get to the bus-stop. And then had to stand for almost forty-five minutes, because the first bus was filled. By the time he got back to the hotel his feet were on fire. It was just his shitty luck, he thought, to be in the land of The Long March.

Forty-three

With convoluted but personally adjusted logic, Charlie decided early the next day that what he had to do was comparatively simple because it was so difficult. Impossible, in fact, without unacceptable risks. And Charlie Muffin never took unacceptable risks.

Had Gower? There could be a logic to that, too: an over-ambitious officer on his first foreign assignment, taking too few precautions in an eagerness to prove himself. Charlie wouldn’t have thought Gower would do that. But the further, unarguable logic was that John Gower
had
done something wrong. And was now in jail because of it. Not just Gower’s failure, Charlie corrected. He himself surely had to share in whatever had happened? He’d been the graduation teacher, the supposed expert: Mr Never-Been-Caught, according to Patricia Elder’s well deserved sneer. So why had Gower – his apprentice, according to another sneer – been caught? Maybe easier here to come some way towards an understanding, by examining more inconsistencies. He’d certainly tried to teach Gower never to take unacceptable risks, and he’d preached about over-eagerness, but what else had there been that was applicable here? Bugger-all, decided Charlie, never to know how close his reflections were now to those of John Gower, so very recently. What benefit was learning about vehicle evasion in a city of bicycles? Bugger-all, he thought again. What could a Caucasian do to watch – or to avoid being watched – in a country of such different physiognomy? Once more, bugger-all.

Gower had come to him green and left him green, to come here. It didn’t make operational sense. What did then?

The impossibility of working safely outside the embassy, he recognized, reluctantly conceding that the iron-drawered deputy Director-General had been right. That morning he’d gone back to the main approach road, near the silk shop, and seen the rare and therefore recognizable cars repeat their up-and-down journeys of the previous day. Once more the second vehicle had discharged two men, and one had carried the same brown briefcase and the tightly furled umbrella of yesterday.

If he couldn’t approach Snow, then Snow had to approach him. But how? And where?

Charlie had the mission telephone number and could have dialled from an untraceable outside kiosk or stand, but the intercept would be on the mission line. And Snow anyway would have been followed to any outside rendezvous. So how … Charlie stopped, his mind snagging but unable to recognize upon what. Something else that didn’t make sense. Why? he demanded of himself. Why, trying to work out how to make contact with a sealed off priest in a much watched Jesuit mission, had his train of thought suddenly been derailed by something he couldn’t identify? He ran the reflection he had been having back and forth but still nothing came. It had to remain another question without a proper answer.

So how and where? The second query was easy. It had to be in the unapproachable security of the embassy. But how to get the priest there?

They wouldn’t like it, Charlie knew, when the idea came to him. The man would probably refuse and be quite entitled to do so, and if he did Charlie had no better suggestion at that time. But it was the best he could come up with at the moment and it was a relief to think of something that had a chance of working. It was his partially simple way out of the initially difficult situation. But still with a long way to go. Like how to get a followed and watched suspect priest out of a watched British embassy and on to a plane away from the country, without detection or interception.

One problem at a time, decided Charlie: until he won friends and influenced people he hadn’t solved the first one yet.

The receptionist at the embassy looked up enquiringly when Charlie reached her desk in the vestibule.

‘I think some people are expecting me,’ he said, smiling to ingratiate himself. He usually tried at the beginning.

It wasn’t dysentery but it was bad enough, and instead of throwing most of the water away Gower used it to keep himself as clean as possible. He tried to cleanse his hands as best he could, too. He was still managing to restrict himself to the four sips of water at a time, hovering on the brink of dehydration, and his lips had begun to crack, widening into painful sores risking further infection through their being open. He hadn’t eaten the food.

He hadn’t been taken for any further interrogation, and without being able to count whether it was night or day, from seeing sunlight or darkness, he had completely lost track of time. He guessed he had been in custody for more than a week – it certainly couldn’t have been any less – but it could have easily been longer, nearer two. He was expecting another questioning session soon: the constant noise had erupted again, as well as the perpetual rattle of peep-hole surveys to which he performed. Gower believed he had restored a lot of his sleep bank, and even though the noise had been resumed he still found it possible to close much of it out, suspending himself into something approaching rest.

It was night when he was taken from his cell again. Gower had tried to exercise, in between door-hole inspections, but out of the restricted cell he had great difficulty walking properly. It seemed impossible for him to retain a straight line, wavering from side to side and twice colliding with the escorting soldiers. It was hard for him to lift his feet, as well; he tried at first but then relapsed back to shuffling, hoping it would help maintain a better direction, but it didn’t.

‘It’s all over!’ announced Chen. He was smiling, triumphant.

Nothing to which he should respond, Gower told himself. Keep everything to the minimum.

‘We’ve arrested him!’

‘Him’, isolated Gower: no longer the mistake of ‘them’. So it could be Snow, picked up at the shrine. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He lisped because of the cracks in his lips.

‘Just a few hours ago. And already he’s confessed. Admitted everything. Hardly worth protecting, was he? You’ve lost.’

Still no response. Worryingly, Gower was hearing the Chinese oddly, the words loud and then receding, although the man was remaining in the same position directly in front of him.

Chen nodded to the waiting note-takers at the side of the room. ‘They’re waiting.’

Something to which he could reply. ‘What for?’

‘Your denials are ridiculous!’

‘Nothing to deny.’

‘Exactly! It’s all written down, elsewhere.’

‘Not guilty of anything.’

‘You’ll be treated better when you confess: give up this nonsense. Be allowed to bathe. Eat better food.’

‘I want contact with my embassy.’

‘They’ve been told.’

Momentarily the reply off-balanced Gower. ‘Why haven’t I seen anybody?’

‘You will see somebody when you’ve told us the truth.’

‘I have told you the truth.’

‘We can hold you for as long as we like,’ threatened Chen. ‘Weeks if we want to.’

Gower wished the voice did not keep ebbing and flowing. It was becoming difficult for him to remember everything that was being said. There’d been a lecture about that: always vital to recall every word. And then he did remember.
We’ve arrested him
, Chen had said. And then:
Just a few hours ago
. That wasn’t possible! Despite the time loss, he had to have been in custody for more than a week: more than seven days. And the arrangement was for Snow to check the signal spot every
three
days. Any arrest would not have been just a few hours before. It would have been
days
before. So they still didn’t have the priest: suspected him but still hadn’t seized him. And all this was still a bluff, to get a confession. ‘You are holding me illegally. With no justification.’

‘You are subject to our laws,’ said Chen. ‘You will tell us what we want to know.’

Not yet, thought Gower: not for a very long time yet. If ever.

‘Why the hell wasn’t he on the plane he was supposed to be on?’ demanded the enraged Miller.

‘It’s typical,’ said Patricia. She hadn’t anticipated Charlie’s manoeuvre and it irritated her, although not as much as Miller. ‘At least we know it’s not sinister. Special Branch got a definitive photo identification from the Pakistan Airlines desk.’

‘Why does the bloody man
do
things like this?’

‘I don’t think he knows himself a lot of the time.’

Forty-four

The embassy introductions were formal but not as immediately hostile as some Charlie had experienced. There seemed to be a slight surprise at Charlie’s appearance, but then he was accustomed to that. On this occasion he returned the curiosity, head tilted upwards: the man had to be a long way over six foot tall. There was, of course, no open conversation until they got to Samuels’ office. Once inside Samuels said: ‘This is a hell of a mess.’