Charlie’s Apprentice

Eight

For long periods – as long as a total of six months on one occasion – Charlie’s mother had retreated from any reality, unreachable in total catatonia. It had all changed with the development of new drugs. Now she was invariably brightly alert, chattering constantly, although the senility was still well advanced. The largely one-sided conversations were confused and disjointed, the names of the men of whom she boasted so proudly more imagined than properly remembered any more. That afternoon she’d identified Charlie’s father by two different names, neither of whom he believed responsible for his conception and twice called him William instead of Charlie. He remained at the nursing home for an hour, leaving with the usual assurance to come again soon, which he repeated at the matron’s office on the way out, without stipulating a positive date: it was automatic for him to avoid creating the most innocent of patterns, even in something as mundane as visiting a bedridden mother suffering Alzheimer’s Disease. It was automatic to check the car park for occupied, waiting vehicles when he left. Abruptly he stopped, just as he immediately afterwards consciously avoided the instinctive pursuit check on the twisted and curved road leading from the home.

He didn’t have to bother any more. He was no longer active: no longer an operational officer who had always to be alert to everything around him, never able properly to relax. Charlie accepted he was effectively retired: like those sad, mentally eroding people he’d just left, sitting motionless in chairs, living in yesterday.

Charlie took the hire car out on to the main road, coming to the big decision of the day, where to have lunch. There was the Stockbridge hotel which didn’t let rooms to the general public ahead of one of Britain’s most exclusive fishing clubs. Or a country pub further on. Or wait until he got to London. A country inn, he decided. He still hadn’t found anywhere he really liked around the new flat in Primrose Hill: all wine bars and mobile phones that never rang. Charlie had been much more at home south of the Thames: like an animal, knowing its own warren. Denied him now though, even for a casual return visit to the Pheasant with the best pork pies in London, beer from the wood and Islay malt whisky always available.

Was it still denied him? Hadn’t he already decided he didn’t have to bother, no longer being operational? Yes. No. Confused self-pity, Charlie decided, annoyed. Of course he had to stay away, even for a casual pub visit. There was no doubt – there was proof!. – the Russians had located the Vauxhall flat, in the targeting operation that had included Natalia and which he still didn’t understand: whatever their failed objective and the now much changed circumstances of Moscow, he couldn’t go back.

The inn was alongside the river on which the exclusive club had its rods and which still had some of the best fishing in England, despite – ironically – the pollution of the bankside fish farms breeding trout the size of small whales. The menu insisted the salmon was locally caught so Charlie took a chance. The beer was good – not as good as the Pheasant, but good enough – and he got a seat at an outside table, overlooking the hurrying, insect-swarmed river.

The self-annoyance at thinking as he had about his old apartment at Vauxhall stayed with Charlie, becoming more specifically focused. What the fuck was this self-pity all about? OK, so his pride was hurt. But it was an assignment. He was – for the moment or maybe forever – a schoolmaster. Which on the surface he hated. He’d never liked schoolmasters who’d always, in his experience, been bullying bastards. But hadn’t he been a bullying bastard in the first encounter with John Gower? Why didn’t he properly fulfil, to the absolute best of a personally never doubted ability, the job he’d been given? Which would be to instil the attitude and aptitude always for self-preservation, by John Gower, of John Gower. To make John Gower as good as he’d been himself, in the past.

Deep within the bar the number of his food order was distantly called, breaking Charlie’s reflection while he collected and carried it back to his waterside place: the salmon was properly sized, not a fish farm freak, and tasted earthily fresh. He was outwardly content.

Could he make John Gower – could he make anyone – his alter ego? Charlie felt the challenge stir, the self-pity receding further. He didn’t know: couldn’t know, until he tried. But he determined to try: to accept the function he’d been given, maybe still hoping in the far back reaches of his mind that it was only temporary and that he might one day go back on to the active roster. In the meantime he’d give everything he had to turning Gower and whoever else might follow into the best intelligence officers possible.

Having made the positive decision Charlie felt … felt what? Illogically the emotion seemed to be relief, which didn’t make any sense but was the closest description he could find. Even more illogical, it seemed that only now, on a Hampshire river bank in the early spring sunshine, picking his way through a perfect fish, had he properly realized what he’d been ordered to do. Not properly realized: properly accepted, professionally putting all his pride and resentment aside to start thinking like the teacher he had become. He would genuinely try to teach John Gower everything he’d ever learned in a bruised and battered life in the very specialized art of saving his ass. Or at least not getting his ass too badly burned.

Charlie had intentionally introduced a day’s gap before his next contact with Gower, hoping for something to emerge from his initial encounter with the man. There was nothing official from the ninth floor when he got into his office the following day, and Charlie was disappointed, although he supposed it was too much to expect it to have happened the first time. He still wished it had.

It was not until late into the afternoon, gone four, that the summons came from Patricia Elder. It was a different suit today, blue, but still severely businesslike. The greying hair seemed neater than the last time, and Charlie guessed she’d had it cut again. He still thought it was a mistake. The new shortness made even more pronounced the already strong features that didn’t need accentuating. There were still the two flower arrangements, although the blooms had been changed: they looked fresh. There were no folders on this occasion.

‘You seemed to find a lot to write about, after just one meeting with Gower,’ she said at once.

‘It’s a new job: I’m not sure what’s expected of me.’

‘The best you can do.’ The black eyes bored into him.

Bitch, thought Charlie. ‘I considered it a security lapse, instructors at training facilities disclosing their names. Don’t you?’

The woman lowered her head, in unspeaking concession. ‘I have already issued a memorandum, correcting it in future.’

‘How long has it been allowed? How long has it gone on?’

There was another head movement. ‘I’ve begun an inquiry into that, too.’

‘There’ll be a lot of lying. You’ll never get an accurate figure. If I were you I’d try to find out the other way around: enquire from officers who have passed out in …’ Charlie hesitated, seeking a sensible period. ‘… maybe the last four or five years.’

Patricia Elder sighed. ‘I’ve gone back six years.’

‘Good,’ said Charlie, feeling satisfied.

‘I am impressed, if that’s what you want to hear.’

‘It’s not,’ said Charlie, which wasn’t completely true: he was trying to impress this woman who for the moment had power over him. ‘What about Personnel bandying your name all over the place?’

‘Reprimands have been issued. It won’t happen again.’

‘You having every single memorandum checked, since you took up your appointment?’

‘ I’m not the person you’re supposed to be training!’

Charlie noted, pleased, that there was no outrage in the protest. ‘I sent a third memorandum.’

‘I read it.’

‘And?’ Charlie prompted.

‘According to the security log, your meeting with John Gower ended at 3.39 pm. I received that afternoon a memorandum from John Gower timed at 4.20 pm, warning me that you had advised him, in the event of hostile interrogation, to disclose the names of every one of the instructors who had allowed him to know their identity, my own identity, and the location of this building.’

Charlie smiled, broadly, in increasing satisfaction. ‘That’s excellent! Did he make any recommendation? Suggest I was a security risk?’

Patricia Elder frowned, coming slightly forward over her desk. ‘Was that what it was? A test you set up, to see if he would respond?’

‘Of course it was a test!’ said Charlie. ‘And he passed it.’

‘What if he hadn’t reported you?’

‘It would have put a doubt in my mind of his ever completely becoming the sort of officer he should.’

‘Would you have disclosed the information, under forced interrogation?’

‘Every one.’

‘You really mean that?’

‘Of course I mean it. If instructors are stupid enough to let their names be known, it’s their fault if they get a hostile file created on them. If security here is so lax your name is openly used on memoranda, then your identity deserves to become public knowledge as well. And what I told him about this place is true: this address is probably on lavatory walls in outer Mongolia. Why should anyone with their balls in a vice suffer more than they have to, because there aren’t professionals back here training them?’

‘The old Cold War warrior!’ mocked the woman. ‘And I’m not sure people get their balls put in a vice during interrogation any more.’

Charlie wasn’t offended by the sarcasm. ‘They will, if the interrogators think there’s something important enough to find out. And you agree with me about poor security: if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have ordered the tightening up you’ve already told me about.’ Charlie wasn’t sure but he thought she was colouring slightly, as if she were embarrassed at being so easily caught out.

‘So it’s begun well!’ she said, briskly, wanting to move the conversation on.

‘Well enough.’

‘Any idea how long it’s going to take?’

‘Not yet,’ frowned Charlie. ‘There’s no hurry, is there?’

‘None whatsoever,’ smiled the woman.

In one of those illogicalities of Chinese life to which Jeremy Snow had long ago become accustomed there was no luxingshe tourist bureau on Zhengzhou station, even though it was a large terminus. The first station official claimed not to know where the Jasmine Hotel was: from the direction from a second, it seemed too far to walk. Snow took a pedicab, instantly immersed in a shoal of bicycles weaving and darting all around him: just like the fish of which they reminded him, they always appeared on the point of disastrous collision but never quite hit each other. He saw that several riders were wearing pollution masks and wondered if he would soon have to use his.

Li Dong Ming was sitting patiently in the hotel foyer when Snow arrived, hurrying forward the moment the priest identified himself to the receptionist. There was no smile of greeting from the official escort, just the vaguest of bows. The spectacles added to the expression of seriousness: the man’s ears stuck out as prominently as they had appeared in the photograph provided in Beijing. He was extremely short, hardly more than 5’ tall, creating an almost ludicrous comparison between their respective heights.

The dormitory that had been allocated was small, fitted with only two beds.

‘I have the other one,’ said Li. ‘It seemed best, don’t you think?’ He had to strain to talk to the priest.

‘Yes,’ said Snow, not quite sure to what he was agreeing.