Charlie’s Apprentice (6 page)

Charlie frowned. ‘Were you, of other instructors?’

Gower hesitated, unsure of his reply. ‘We came to know each other, naturally.’

‘By name?’

‘Of course.’

‘Christian name? Surname? Or both?’

Gower’s uncertainty grew. ‘Both, I suppose.’

‘You underwent arrest training? How to respond to interrogation? Physical pressure?’

Gower permitted himself a different smile, this time of satisfaction. ‘I achieved the maximum, every time.’

‘Would you disclose the identities of your instructors if you were detained? Put under intensive interrogation: tortured, even?’

‘Of course not!’ said the younger man, indignantly.

‘What
would
you do?’

‘Refuse, of course! Resist! I know how to do that.’

Charlie nodded, briefly looking down at his desk. Eyes still averted, he said: ‘That a family ring you’re wearing?’

Gower was so accustomed to the platformed gold band that he looked at it as if surprised to see it on his finger. ‘Very minor. No proper title: no money either.’

‘But there’s a family crest?’

Gower frowned again. He didn’t want it to show but he was growing angry. ‘Yes.’

‘What do you think of that poster on the door behind you?’ demanded Charlie.

Gower swivelled his head: the uncertain chair creaked precariously. Groping for comprehension he said: ‘Very nice.’ It was a mountain scene, with long-haired Scottish cattle.

‘I think it’s dreadful,’ said Charlie, who’d put it up minutes before Gower’s arrival. ‘You’re right-handed, aren’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

Charlie ignored the question. ‘And you came here by car, didn’t you?’

Gower had to hold tightly on to his temper. ‘We spent the weekend in the country with my mother: came up this morning. Why?’

‘So clothes are important to you?’

Gower regarded Charlie with total confusion. ‘I don’t understand any of this!’

‘What’s the name of the deputy Director-General?’

Gower blinked across the cramped office. ‘Patricia Elder.’

‘She tell you her name?’

Gower made a vague movement of his shoulders. ‘I … I can’t remember. Yes …’ There was a momentary pause. Then, in immediate contradiction, he said:’No. It was Personnel. When I was told to go to see her, to be told to come here, they said her name was Patricia Elder.’

‘Let’s go back to your being detained. Would you disclose her identity, under questioning?’

‘Of course not!’ said Gower, as indignantly as before.

‘You’d refuse? Resist?’ said Charlie, offering the words back.

‘Yes.’

‘How many times have you been here, to Westminster Bridge Road?’

Gower paused. ‘Four times.’

‘You know it’s the headquarters building?’

‘Yes.’

‘You wouldn’t disclose it, under duress?’

‘Am I under interrogation now?’ demanded Gower, trying to get some sense into the bizarre encounter.

‘Would you?’ persisted Charlie.

‘I think you know the answer to that, without my telling you. But if this is something for the record, no I wouldn’t disclose it. That would be unthinkable.’

Charlie made a grunting, reflective sound. ‘There isn’t any record being made. Perhaps there should be.’ There was certainly a memorandum he had to send. They’d probably disregard it, as they’d disregarded everything else he’d sent upstairs to the rearranged Executive echelon on the ninth floor, but that didn’t matter. There were lapses that had to be corrected.

‘I think I’m entitled to know what’s happening here!’ said Gower, finally giving way to the annoyance. ‘I haven’t understood a moment of it: it’s been ridiculous!’

Charlie gave another reflective grunt. ‘And you achieved the maximum in interrogation techniques?’

‘Yes!’ said Gower, his voice too loud in his anger.

Charlie sat intently regarding the other man for several moments. ‘You’re entering the external intelligence service. And you’ve been through all the training? You know all that’s involved?’

His uncertainty in the car, remembered Gower: the uncertainty a previous instructor hadn’t helped him resolve. ‘No,’ he said, honestly. ‘I don’t think I do know what’s involved: not
really
involved. I was told there’s no apprenticeship I could properly go through. Just training.’

Unexpectedly Charlie smiled. ‘There’s some,’ he disagreed. ‘That’s what this is about, to answer your question a while back … the first lesson.’

‘I don’t …’ started Gower and then stopped.

‘… Know what you’ve learned?’ anticipated Charlie. ‘Nothing yet. Let’s hope you will, when I explain.’

‘I wish you would.’

‘You’ve just had a very small indication of what is necessary to be a professional intelligence officer. Very small. Childlike, compared to the level you’ve got to achieve.
Will
achieve, before we’re through.’

‘I’m still not properly following you.’

‘What was the first thing I said to you, when you came into this room?’

‘Ah …’ Gower hesitated, unsure. ‘Something about a mistake.’ He smiled, hopefully.

‘What, exactly?’

There was another hesitation. ‘ “You’ve made a mistake.” ’

‘My exact words were “your first mistake”,’ corrected Charlie. ‘You were entering a completely unknown situation, with no idea what you were here for. You admitted that very shortly afterwards, which was another mistake because you never admit anything you don’t have to in an unknown situation. And in an unknown situation you remember
every
word that’s said: not
something
like what’s said.
Everything
.’

‘I see,’ said Gower. He thought this
was
childlike: stupid and unnecessary. He didn’t think he liked this man who would not even introduce himself.

‘As someone who achieved his maximum in interrogation technique, tell me what your first mistake was.’

There was a silence. Then Gower admitted: ‘I don’t know.’

‘You offered your name,’ said Charlie, simply.

‘This is an officially arranged meeting, for God’s sake! We had an appointment! I assumed you’d know my name.’

‘All the more reason for not offering it. In an unknown situation, you take, never give.’

‘I was personally told to come here by the deputy Director!’ Gower fought back. ‘And this is the headquarters building! Surely it’s safe to think …’

‘… Nothing’s ever safe,’ interrupted Charlie, urgently. ‘You’ve got to behave
instinctively
: in a real life situation there isn’t time to work everything out Immediately putting advice into practice, he demanded: ‘Why do you imagine it was important for me to find out you were right-handed?’

Gower hunched his shoulders, head bowed to avoid the older man detecting from any facial reaction the continuing annoyance. ‘I don’t know.’

‘
How
did I find out?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’ Pompous bastard, Gower thought.

‘I put the chair so you’d have to move it. You did it with your right hand, the same hand with which you offered the appointment docket. Then I told you to look at a poster behind you: you turned over your right shoulder …’ Charlie hesitated. ‘Mean anything?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then either you were badly taught, or you’ve forgotten evasion techniques, if you suspect yourself to be under surveillance that you have to lose. It’s automatic if you are a right-handed person to move to the right: take right turnings, check to your right more than to your left. Learn to check both ways. Never stick to any pattern.’

‘I was told about avoiding patterns.’

‘But not about right or left?’

Gower wanted very much to say he considered it a meaningless trick. He didn’t. ‘I’ll remember,’ he promised, emptily.

‘If I had you under surveillance out there somewhere on the streets, without any idea where you lived or what your name was, how long do you think it would take me to discover both? Just from how you appear today?’

Another trick, anticipated Gower. ‘I don’t know.’ He wished he didn’t have to keep admitting that.

‘Less than a day,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I knew you’d come up by car, remember? That was obvious from your suit jacket
not
being creased: even if you’d taken it off on a train, you would have kept it on in a taxi or a bus, showing some signs of recent wear. So you took it off for the drive back from the country. With your own car, there’s a more than fifty per cent chance you would have parked it on a two-hour meter to which you would have to return. When you did, I could have got the vehicle registration number. Your name and address is recorded by the registration authorities: they respond to apparent official enquiries about vehicles possibly involved in unreported accidents. Remember if you’re under official surveillance –
anywhere
– there are official facilities that can be utilized. The initials on the left cuff of your shirt would be an immediate confirmation, of course. Your ring has a halved shield, the left half blank, the opposing half crossed with swords or possibly lances. I could locate that crest at the Office of Heraldry. Having identified the family name, I could get your full family history from
Who’s Who, Debrett
and
Burke’s
. I would expect to find that your father is dead or that your parents are divorced: you qualified spending the weekend with your “mother”. And you weren’t alone. You said “we”. So it was either a girlfriend or wife. If it was a wife, there’d probably be an indication in the listing in the reference books I’ve mentioned. Then there’s the Eton tie. From Eton records I could trace the university you went to: Oxford or Cambridge would be the obvious first choices. The Old Boys’ clubs and societies of either would be another check, whether you were married or not.’

Gower still regarded it as a trick, but at the same time it was unsettling, like having someone spying on him through a hole in a lavatory wall. ‘What, exactly, am I supposed to be understanding from all this?’

Charlie paused, isolating a continuing fault that he wasn’t yet prepared to discuss. ‘The value of proper observation. And the disadvantage of being so noticeable. Your suit is too good: and therefore too distinctive. Your shoes, too. The shirt’s too obvious and shouldn’t be monogrammed. You shouldn’t wear your ring: you’d probably get away with it in France and in a few rarefied surroundings in Spain and Germany but there’s no guarantee you’ll ever work in rarefied surroundings and even less that you’d be doing so in France or Spain or Germany. So the ring would pick you out – to a properly trained observer – as a foreigner in a country in which you were trying to assimilate, particularly if that country was in any part of Eastern Europe or Asia. The tie is identifiable and wrong, as well, for the reasons I’ve already spelled out.’

Gower was hot with annoyance. ‘What the hell are you saying, then?’

‘I’ve given you the best piece of instruction you’ve had since you got accepted into the service,’ said Charlie, evenly.

Gower studied the other man from the chair that really did seem about to collapse, wishing he’d concentrated more – instead of making angry judgements – to have avoided the need for yet another question. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, with no alternative.

‘The definition of a perfect intelligence officer,’ said Charlie. ‘The perfect intelligence officer is the sort of man that crowds are made of. Which is what I want you to become.’

Gower wished he didn’t feel so inadequate in front of a man he wouldn’t have even noticed in the street: and then the full import of the thought, against the immediately preceding definition of the perfect intelligence officer, came to him. He only just avoided smiling, not so much in amusement as in acceptance of the lesson. ‘I haven’t done very well, have I?’

‘I didn’t set out for you to do well. Or badly. Just for you to realize, from the absolute basics, what your job involves.’ Was this how schoolmasters conducted lessons?

Which was what he’d wanted so much to discover, conceded Gower: he’d been stupid, allowing the resentment. ‘Anything else I did wrong?’

‘Your other instructors didn’t mind you knowing their names?’

‘They didn’t seem to.’

‘Then why should you bother to conceal their identities, in a hostile interrogation? Cause yourself unnecessary pressure?’

‘You mean name them!’ Gower was astonished.

‘Why not? They let their names be known: why should you try to hide them?’

‘But that’s …’

‘… treasonable? It would be an arguable point. But in the circumstances we’re discussing, you’d have to reduce as much as possible what was being done to you. Use the names, if it’s necessary.’

Gower was concentrating now, not absolutely convinced – but growing increasingly so – of what he had to do. ‘What about the identity of the deputy Director-General, in such circumstances?’

‘The same, once your interrogators prove they’ve definitely identified you,’ insisted Charlie. It was looking hopeful.

‘And the location of Westminster Bridge Road as the headquarters of our service?’

‘Do you really think there’s an intelligence organization anywhere in the world that doesn’t know where every other organization lives, in its own country? Paperback spy writers identify this place!’

There was silence between them for several moments. Gower said finally: ‘I think I’ve learned a lot.’

‘You haven’t,’ Charlie contradicted. ‘You’ve gone through a good three-quarters of this meeting at varying stages of anger. Which I set out to achieve. So that’s something else you either didn’t learn or don’t remember, from your interrogation resistance lectures. You’ve lost the moment you let your temper go. Dead: maybe even literally. Don’t you ever forget that. Don’t you ever forget anything I try to teach you, but don’t forget that most of all.’

‘Every other training session had a title,’ said Gower.

‘This has, too,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s called survival.’

Charlie wrote three memoranda.

The first pointed out the obvious dangers of instructional staff allowing their names to be easily known to trainee officers and the even greater danger of the identity of the deputy Director-General being disclosed by the Personnel department, in inter-office correspondence.