Charlie’s Apprentice

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.’

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’ Even seated, Samuels seemed as tall as he was when he was standing. Which gratefully he wasn’t.

‘Gower was accredited to this embassy, for God’s sake! If they proceed with these espionage accusations, and prove them to their satisfaction, there could be diplomatic expulsions.’

‘That’s why I am here. To try to stop them being proved.’

‘You weren’t on the plane upon which we’d been advised you’d arrive. I waited for two hours.’

‘Sorry about that,’ said Charlie, emptily. ‘Decided on a different flight.’

‘London want an explanation: they’re very annoyed.’

‘I’ll give it to them later,’ said Charlie, casually. ‘Are there any more details about Gower’s arrest?’

‘Only that it happened near a Taoist shrine, to the west of the city.’

London had already inferred that, merely from learning the district of Beijing. Just as they’d inferred Gower had been moving to place the signal, so that the seizure had been made before he had done anything incriminating. ‘Nothing else?’

Samuels shook his head. ‘And there’s no movement on access.’

Time to see how things were really going to be here at the embassy. ‘There should have been a request from London to give me every possible assistance.’

Samuel’s face tightened. ‘There was.’

‘With Foreign Office endorsement?’

‘Yes.’ Samuels appeared reluctant to make the admission.

‘I need to call upon it.’

Samuels raised his hands, in a stopping gesture. ‘The ambassador has protested in the strongest terms, about what’s already happened because of you people. And about this… your coming and possibly further involving the embassy.’

‘I’m trying to avoid a problem, not worsen it.’

‘Sir Timothy met Gower. Warned him…’ The man snorted a laugh. ‘For all the good that did! You can see the danger, can’t you?’

‘Help me,’ suggested Charlie. To get the maximum cooperation he’d have to go along at the diplomat’s pace.

‘If Gower makes a confession, Sir Timothy could be named in it!’ said Samuels, impatiently. ‘Associated with an espionage situation! He could be one of the expulsions!’

He shouldn’t have been such a silly sod to have got involved in the first place, thought Charlie. ‘All the more reason for me to be given as much assistance as possible, so the whole thing can be contained.’

‘He won’t see you,’ declared Samuels.

Charlie blinked in genuine surprise, which didn’t occur often. ‘I don’t want to see him.’

Now Samuels appeared surprised. ‘He thought you might. Because of the Foreign Office pressure.’

‘Even without the benefit of the hindsight we now have, I think it was unwise of him to have met Gower.’

‘Something else,’ Samuels bustled on, raising a stopping hand again. ‘We want to know as much as possible: we don’t want to be caught out, not as we were with Gower. The ambassador demands…’ The man hesitated, smiling in apology. ‘… is requesting, that you tell me as much as possible, of what’s going on. And it’s going to be me you’ll deal with all the time. No one else. That clear, too?’

Charlie frowned, in a different sort of surprise. The suggestion was illogical, following so immediately after the regret at any personal connection with Gower. And an absurd expectation that he’d discuss intelligence matters in detail with them, anyway. Or was it either? In usual operational circumstances, perhaps. But this was anything but a usual operational situation.

Seeing the expression on Charlie’s face, Samuels’ smile became even more apologetic. ‘This is Sir Timothy’s first prestige posting: all his other positions have been relatively minor. He’s still feeling his way.’

Charlie nodded, accepted the explanation. ‘I’m going to ask for certain things which I would not normally think of doing.’

The smile on Samuels’ face died. ‘I want a full explanation of that!’

‘I have to bring someone to the embassy,’ announced Charlie, shortly.

‘The person you want to get out of the country!’ seized the political officer, at once.

He couldn’t give the confirmation, Charlie knew. It was unthinkable, professionally, for him to offer or professionally for Samuels to ask: inconceivable, no matter how desperate they considered the circumstances, that the political officer or the ambassador or the Foreign Office would countenance the entry into the embassy of a man so close to exposure as Jeremy Snow. Lie and cheat time, Charlie recognized: it was like discovering an old friend, lurking in a dark corner. ‘No. I would not put everyone to that sort of risk. The person I wish to see is a conduit, that’s all.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! There would still be a provable connection! I cannot agree to it. Neither will the ambassador.’

‘Gower was clearly trying to do it away from the embassy. Now he’s in jail. And we’re facing a diplomatic fiasco… possible expulsions, as you say: maybe expulsion of the ambassador.’

‘I don’t consider that an argument.’

Charlie thought he detected a weakness in the rejection. ‘The man is a Westerner. Someone who has visited the embassy on occasions. His coming here will arouse no suspicion.’

Samuels’ head was to one side, an attitude of intent curiosity. ‘Someone who’s attended public events here, as part of the Western community?’

Charlie paused, not wanting to give a millimetre more than he felt necessary. ‘Yes.’

The smile returned. ‘No problem. We have an event here in a fortnight! You can attend as well: carry out your business without anyone being the wiser!’

Charlie sighed. ‘John Gower is under interrogation. Denied contact with anyone who might give him the slightest indication what’s happening, outside. You think he can last two more weeks, before collapsing? Possibly say something to bring the ambassador into the problem, by name? With our exposed person still here, in Beijing? I don’t: I really don’t. I think there is going to be a God-almighty explosion long before then.’

Samuels looked away, but having done so seemed uncertain where to direct his attention, his eyes darting all over the office for focus. ‘A hell of a mess!’

‘We’ve already agreed to that.’ They hadn’t even got to the bad part yet.

There was a silence each wanted the other to break. Charlie outlasted the diplomat.

‘Just for someone to come here? Someone who’s known: won’t arouse suspicion?’

‘That’s all.’ Charlie wondered why he didn’t feel any guilt: long practice, he supposed.

‘Then he goes away?’

‘Yes.’ A moment of truth.

‘Then what?’

‘So do I. And the problems with us. Leaving you to get Gower out. Which you will, if the Chinese can’t bring their case.’

‘You realize my whole career could stand or fall on this?’

Tough shit, thought Charlie: Gower could be hanging by his balls from a rusty nail. ‘Of course I realize that: wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it. My career depends upon it.’ The last bit was certainly true.

‘I have your word?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘All right!’ declared Samuels, in the voice of a headquarters general five miles behind the lines ordering soldiers to go over the top into enemy fire. ‘I agree! You can bring him in! The important thing is to get the whole stupid nonsense over. Out of the way, once and for all.’

‘I’m grateful we’ve been able to reach this degree of cooperation. I’ll pass a memo on, when I get back to London.’

The light-bulb smile went on and off. ‘Most kind.’

‘We need to agree a little more,’ ventured Charlie.

‘What?’

‘How to get him here.’

‘But I thought…’

‘… he has to know I’m here. To be told. I can’t go, an obvious stranger, to where he is. That could be what Gower tried to do. I don’t trust the telephone, either.’

‘How then?’ All the rejecting hostility was back.

‘Someone who isn’t a stranger: someone who’s been there so many times recently that his going again probably wouldn’t even be noticed.’

‘Someone from this embassy!’

There were remarkable flashes of prescience in between the diplomatic pomposity, thought Charlie. ‘ Yes.’

‘You need to tell me everything.’

He did, acknowledged Charlie: not everything, exactly, but far more than he would have liked. ‘There were several references in Foreign Office reports, in your name, to a recent illness of Father Robertson…’

‘… He’s the man?’ burst in Samuels, astonished.

‘… which the embassy physician, Dr Pickering, treated,’ completed Charlie. ‘And those same reports said Dr Pickering was maintaining a medical check, after the apparent recovery.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Samuels, doubtfully.

‘So there is every proper reason for Dr Pickering to go again to the mission. Tomorrow, for instance?’

‘I asked you a question you haven’t answered.’

Charlie wished to Christ there was a way to avoid the identification, but there wasn’t. ‘Not Father Robertson. Father Snow.’

‘Snow!’

‘Nothing more than a message-carrier: he’s not even aware of what he’s doing,’ lied Charlie.

‘No!’ refused Samuels, indignantly. ‘I’ve agreed to the man coming here. I accept it has to be this way: that there’s no alternative. But this is inveigling an actual member of the embassy staff. Exposing him to God knows what! He could be swept up, like Gower. I can’t possibly condone that. It’s too much.’

It probably was, conceded Charlie: certainly if the person was aware beforehand what he was doing, so that he was denied the benefit of genuinely innocent denial. ‘Exposing him to nothing,’ argued Charlie. ‘All I am asking is that Dr Pickering makes a routine house call at the Jesuit mission, which he has been doing irregularly for the past two or three weeks, to carry out one of the established checks upon Father Robertson. And while he is there tells Snow there is someone at the embassy who wishes to see him at once. Where’s the danger? The exposure?’

‘It’s too much,’ insisted the political officer.

‘Compared to a diplomatic disaster? The expulsion of an ambassador?’

‘That’s…’

‘… the choice.’

The unusually tall man came reflectively forward on his desk, a bend at a time, like a tower building collapsing from a controlled explosion. ‘It’s too… I can’t…’

‘Why don’t we ask the doctor?’ If he spread even the limited awareness much further he might as well take out newspaper advertisements and make radio announcements from the roof, thought Charlie. He loathed being this dependent on other people: loathed being anything but entirely self-contained, entirely self-dependent, having to trust and rely upon no one except himself. This really was a shitty job: the shittiest.

‘You’ll accept his refusal?’

‘If you’ll accept his agreement.’

Samuels hesitated, for several moments. ‘Which of us will explain it?’

‘You,’ said Charlie. ‘Or me, if you’d prefer.’

‘Me,’ decided the diplomat.

Charlie at once recognized the man introduced to him as George Pickering to be the sort of doctor who made patients feel guilty for being ill. The man’s suit strained around his bulging body, and the moment Samuels began a limited explanation Pickering turned to fix Charlie with a disconcertingly unblinking stare through oddly large spectacles. Charlie thought the man looked like the grandfather to all the owls. He stayed with his eyes on Charlie after Samuels finished, initially not speaking. Then he said: ‘This arrest business?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie.

‘Bugger off.’

‘Where’s the risk?’

‘I’m a doctor. Nothing else.’

‘Can you imagine the physical condition Gower’s in by now?’

‘A risk with your sort of job.’

‘Whose medical philosophy is that?’

‘Mine.’

‘Don’t you talk to Snow, when you go to the mission?’

‘Of course I do!’

‘“Someone at the embassy wants to see you.” Eight words.’

‘Do it yourself.’

‘You’ve heard why I can’t.’

‘I said bugger off.’

But he hadn’t left the room in offended indignation, realized Charlie. ‘Eight words.’

‘Why should I?’

‘To prevent a diplomantic debacle. And stop the suffering of a man in prison.’

‘Neither is my concern.’

‘I would have thought both were,’ insisted Charlie.

‘We want to get it over as quickly as possible, George,’ intruded Samuels. ‘And as best we can.’

‘You asking me to do it?’ demanded Pickering.

Samuels shook his head. ‘It’s got to be your decision.’

Sensing the weakening, Charlie reiterated: ‘Eight words.’

Pickering was silent again for several moments. Then he said: ‘Bloody lot of nonsense, all of it: kids’ stuff.’

‘You’ll do it?’ asked Charlie.

‘Only pass on that exact message. Nothing else.’

Charlie guessed Pickering had been quite prepared to do it from the beginning but had put up the token rejection to see them plead. People played all sorts of games, he reflected. He had a lot of his own to play. He managed the airport conversations himself but needed Samuels’ Chinese for the rail enquiries and reservations. It took two hours. As he thanked the political officer, Charlie said: ‘From what I’ve read in his personal file, you and Snow must be about the same height. Coincidence, that, isn’t it?’

‘Whatever it is you’re thinking of, don’t even bother to ask,’ said Samuels.

The request from the State-appointed defender for Natalia to appear as a character witness for Eduard was made through Agency channels, which surprised her: if it had come at all she would have expected it to have been sent direct to Leninskaya. She used the same Agency route to reply, refusing the request.