Charlie’s Apprentice

Twenty

Walter Foster’s emergency cable was coded for the Director-General’s ‘Eyes Only’ attention. Miller handed it to Patricia Elder as she responded to his summons and said: ‘It’s a bastard.’

Patricia looked up from the message and said: ‘We didn’t anticipate this, did we?’

‘We couldn’t, not until it was too late: after the photographs had already been taken.’ Miller nodded to the cable slip on the desk between them. ‘There’s no reason to wait until Foster gets here personally with a fuller account.’

‘What about Snow’s suggestion?’ asked the woman, doubtfully.

Miller shook his head. ‘Claiming some got damaged during processing or didn’t come out is as phoney as hell.’

‘It wouldn’t provide evidence for an actual seizure, though, would it? Snow is not one of their own people, where proper evidence doesn’t really matter. And it would give us time: everything has got to be in sequence.’

Miller shook his head again. ‘A time-frame we’d have no way of controlling: maybe cause more moves we couldn’t anticipate. You forget another problem, maybe as big as any other – the obvious determination of this bloody man Li. He won’t be stalled for long, not from the way he’s behaved so far.’

‘There’d still be no positive evidence to justify an arrest,’ persisted the woman.

‘We can’t rely on delay that goes on too long.’

Patricia got up, moving aimlessly about the office. ‘We don’t know how sophisticated their photographic analysis is: what scientific techniques they have. The only thing we can be sure about is that there will be technical analysis.’

‘Talk it through with our own Analysis here,’ ordered Miller. ‘They will have examined every one by now. Some photographs will be easier to treat than others. Get a list, in order of priority. What has to be erased or covered. How easy and undetectable it will be. Explain the problem fully to Technical. Have them make prints first, so they can suggest to us what is feasible before they actually do anything to the negatives.’

‘It’s possible the Chinese examination will only be a physical one, by eye: obviously by Li himself,’ suggested Patricia. ‘Maybe they won’t go to any laboratory.’

‘We’ve got to work from the opposite assumption,’ refused Miller.

‘We’ve got something!’ declared the deputy Director suddenly, stopping her perambulation. ‘In his account of the journey Snow referred to Li taking his own photographs. What if what Li took were copy sheets of everything Snow photographed, for comparison? That could be why Li wants to see Snow’s pictures: because the Chinese know already from examining Li’s stuff that they show things in the background that shouldn’t be there.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ conceded Miller, reluctantly.

‘More than a possibility,’ argued Patricia, increasingly convinced she was right. ‘Certainly one we have to consider.’

‘Definitely a question to put to Snow, to see if he can remember.’

Patricia Elder sat down again. ‘An additional reason for the direct contact he’s demanding.’

‘If there are true copy prints – and we alter ours here so the two don’t compare – it will provide whatever espionage proof the Chinese need: unquestionably be sufficient for an arrest.’

‘It’s all unravelling too quickly,’ complained the woman.

‘So we have to adjust just as quickly!’ said Miller. ‘I’m not worried. Merely trying to recognize the pitfalls before they open up ahead of us, as this has done.’

‘Shall I brief Gower?’

‘Both of us,’ determined the intelligence chief. For several moments he remained looking down at his desk, immersed in thought. ‘The speed of things is restricting our manoeuvrability.’

‘Which is being further restricted by his refusal to accept any authority other than that of his Order in Rome,’ added the woman.

‘It will still be all right,’ said Miller.

‘So what about the authority of the Order?’ demanded Patricia. ‘That could become a very real problem.’

‘Have you forgotten any Vatican exchange with their mission in Beijing comes through our embassy channels, Father Robertson and Father Snow being British nationals?’

The woman had briefly overlooked the ease of interception. She nodded, wishing she hadn’t. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, slowly. ‘We can monitor every exchange. That could be useful.’

‘So we can control him very effectively,’ said Miller, confidently.

‘Sure we don’t need to see Foster, before we go on?’ queried the deputy.

‘No,’ said the Director. ‘We’ve got to catch up.’

John Gower entered the Director-General’s office with polite deference, but no lack of confidence.

‘Your first assignment,’ announced Miller.

Gower smiled. ‘I was hoping it would be that.’

‘You’re going to Beijing,’ said Patricia Elder, taking up the briefing. ‘An emergency has arisen: something that has to be resolved from here.’

Gower felt the beginning of excitement: the likelihood of his going to China had never entered his mind, during any private speculation as to where in the world he might go. ‘What?’

‘We think an agent is about to be exposed,’ said Miller. ‘You’re to get him out. We can’t risk an arrest: any political or diplomatic embarrassment.’

Political embarrassments had been covered in his most recent, unusual instruction, Gower remembered. ‘When do I go?’

‘We’ll begin the travel and visa arrangements today,’ said Patricia.

‘Who is it I have to get out?’

There was no immediate reply. Then Miller said: ‘You’ll get that later.’

Now the silence was from Gower. Then he said: ‘Why don’t you simply order the man to leave?’

‘He doesn’t accept the situation is as serious as we believe it is,’ said the woman. ‘He’s freelance, not officially attached to the department.’

‘Could there be an official attempt to stop us getting out?’

‘Not if we move quickly enough.’

‘But it’s a possibility?’ pressed Gower. How was he expected to handle official obstruction in perhaps the most ordered and restricted country on earth?

‘A possibility,’ agreed the Director-General.

‘I’m to travel with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘ How do I get him out?’

‘The quickest and most practical way: that’ll have to be your decision, according to the circumstances you find when you get there,’ said Miller.

‘He’s already been warned? There’s been an attempt to get him to leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if he refuses to come with me?’

‘There was a personality clash with our resident officer, who is being withdrawn,’ said the Director-General. ‘There mustn’t be, with you. You’ve got to get him out.’

‘I’m to work through the embassy?’ He was already wondering how to tell Marcia.

‘Officially you’ll be a representative from Foreign Office Personnel, making a ground tour of existing embassy facilities: that cover puts you in the embassy, but only as long as you need: we won’t have to claim you’re filling a diplomatic vacancy.’

‘Who in the embassy will know my real function?’

‘The ambassador, obviously,’ replied Miller. ‘Possibly his most senior attache. You’ll work quite alone.’

At that moment, at either extreme of the world, two things that were very much to affect John Gower occurred simultaneously.

At London’s Heathrow airport, Walter Foster disembarked from the Beijing flight. He paused just inside the terminal building, allowing himself the theatricality of breathing deeply, feeling free, which was a sensation he had not known for months.

And in the church complex in Beijing, Jeremy Snow looked up at Li’s unexpected appearance, again at the back of a class in progress.

‘I thought you might have received the photographs from England,’ said the Chinese,’ when the class had once more hurried away, frightened by another official intrusion.

‘Not yet,’ apologized Snow.

The London apartment address listed in Who’s Who for Lady Ann Miller – an entry which recorded in one line the occupation of her husband as a civil servant – formed part of one of the most spectacular Regency mansions built by Nash at the very edge of the park. It was a penthouse and therefore far too high for Charlie to gain an impression of its interior, but he was able to see into other lower flats on the nights when their occupants didn’t draw their curtains. This wasn’t simply wealth, Charlie decided: people who lived here wouldn’t know how much they were worth because money – the need for it and most certainly never the lack of it – would never have intruded into their lives.

He alternated between morning and night, an observation he accepted from the beginning was inadequate if attempted irregularly by only one man upon a house with possible exits not only on to the park but into Albany Street as well.

After several unproductive days and nights, Charlie began to wonder if his inference from Julia’s remark might not, after all, have been wrong. Or if this wasn’t the love-nest in any case.