Charlie’s Apprentice

Nine

The next session began well. Everything Gower wore was subdued. The shirt was plain white, with no monogram, the tie a bland blue and the chain-store suit nondescript. He’d left off the signet ring. He continued to call Charlie ‘sir’. Charlie supposed the man had to address him in some way.

Charlie carefully chose the centre at Berkshire where he knew Gower had not been instructed: he didn’t want identification by association from instructors careless of security.

Charlie selected the motorway route. After half a mile he demanded the number of vehicles Gower had overtaken since they’d joined and which cars that had been behind from the beginning were still close.

‘Someone’s following! It’s a test!’ exclaimed Gower, snatching a series of hurried looks into the rear-view mirror.

‘Soon it isn’t going to be training. When you’re operational and it’s got to be an automatic reflex to check. And check and check again. You’ve always got to know what’s happening around you.’

‘Even when I’m not on assignment.’

‘Always,’ insisted Charlie. He wasn’t happy with the slight head movement of disbelief from the other man.

‘Are we being followed?’

‘You tell me.’

Gower was silent for several moments. Then he admitted: ‘I don’t know how to identify pursuit in this sort of circumstance.’

Charlie was glad Gower’s admission hadn’t taken longer: the turn-off was already indicated. ‘Slow, into the inside lane. Mark the cars behind. And those ahead, too. In a moving vehicle it’s as easy to watch a target from the front as from the back; all you need to do is maintain speed.’

Gower did as he was instructed, nervously checking both directions. ‘I take the turn-off?’

‘Don’t indicate until the very last moment: without a warning you can lose anyone in front. Take the turn. See who’s behind you …’ There was a protesting blare of a horn from the rear at the lateness of the indication. ‘Fuck him,’ dismissed Charlie. ‘Get on to the roundabout underneath the motorway: here’s your learning point. Everywhere in the world major highway slip-roads go into roundabouts from which there’s always another slip-road to rejoin as well as leave. Go completely around … watch your back. Anyone?’

‘A red Ford … no, he’s turned off.’

‘Now go up the connecting link to get back on to the motorway in the same direction we were originally going.’

‘What about a real operational situation? What should I do if a recognizable car stays with me?’

‘Abort,’ declared Charlie. ‘But sensibly. Don’t panic and go dashing back to where you started: panic is proof of guilt. If it had been operational, we’d have taken the next turn-off to whatever reasonably sized town was signposted. That would have been an explanation for the first suspicious manoeuvre: we’d made a mistake and came off too early. Every town has something historical it’s proud of. We’d have been tourists, looking at the sites. After which we would have made our way back leisurely.’

‘And then?’

‘I told you. Abort.’

‘Abandon an assignment?’ Gower seemed surprised.

Charlie frowned across the car at the other man. ‘What’s the alternative? Leading whoever is watching you to whatever that assignment is?’

‘That seems …’ began Gower slowly, searching how to explain himself. Charlie talked across him. ‘What was the final thing I said to you at the last meeting?’

‘Something …’ Gower stopped abruptly, suspecting another test and remembering the instruction to recall everything, word for word. ‘I asked if what we were doing had a title. You said “It’s called survival.’”

Charlie smiled, pleased. ‘If you as much as think an operation is blown get out: save yourself and maybe the operation. Let someone else come in after you to take it over …’ Charlie saw the other man prepare to speak. ‘That’s not failing: giving up. That’s being professional.’

‘It’s not been explained to me like that before.’

‘For Christ’s sake lose your public school pretension. You haven’t joined a club your father put you down for at birth. Road-sweepers and refuse-collectors go around the streets, picking up the shit and muck that people cause. Our job is picking up the shit and muck that governments and countries cause.’ He remembered virtually the same exchange with Patricia Elder: she hadn’t appeared to accept it.

Gower took the proper turning off the motorway, heading into Berkshire.

‘Isn’t there some inverted snobbery there somewhere?’

‘Complete objectivity,’ insisted Charlie. Not completely true, he conceded. Always a problem: always a self-admitted fault. He was uncomfortable the inherent attitude had shown through.

At the creeper-clad Georgian mansion they had to sign in at a reception desk to one side of the huge entrance hall. The straight-backed man who recorded their arrival would have medals at home, guessed Charlie, recalling Patricia Elder’s threat: being a teacher was definitely better than being part of the security staff at a safe house. Charlie chose a preparation time of fifteen minutes, ignoring Gower’s questioning look, leading the way into a small but immaculately maintained drawing-room.

There was a bowl of roses on a piano set in the larger of two window areas, with a low table and two easy chairs to the right. There was an arrangement of magazines on the table. Near the door was an open-fronted display case, showing a series of miniature porcelain figurines set out on the shelves. There was a spray of dried flowers filling the cold fireplace. At either end of an elaborately carved marble mantelpiece there were porcelain statues of red-coated Georgian military figures. Between the figures there was a porcelain-cased clock, the bottom half-glassed to show the wheeled movement. A large couch fronted the fireplace, with matching chairs either side. A padded leather fender sealed off the fireplace, with a magazine lodged on one corner. There were two bookcases, one open, one glass-doored and closed, to the left. The open bookcase had a protruding reading ledge. There were books on it, one lying open. A telephone stood on an adjacent glass-topped table. The curtains in the second window annex were draped almost to meet at the top of the rail, looping down practically to the floor. They were held back by plaited crimson cords.

‘Room intrusion!’ recognized Gower.

‘Standard rules,’ acknowledged Charlie. ‘It’s a room you’ve been allocated, possible in unfriendly surroundings. You occupy it briefly, then leave. You’ve got to itemize the indications of it having been searched.’

Gower walked carefully around the room just once before announcing that everything was registered in his mind and that he was ready. They left the room for the ex-army duty officer to go through the pretence of a search. When the man recalled them, Gower repeated the examination he’d made to imprint everything in his mind but this time turned back on himself, retracing the route to return to the centre, by the couch. He missed ten items that had been rearranged by the duty officer.

‘Shit!’ said Gower, viciously, when they were pointed out to him.

‘Your advantage was knowing there had been some rearrangement: you’ll never know that for certain, in a genuine situation,’ lectured Charlie. ‘Your mistake was looking for the probable tricks. Play your own. Leave something ajar when you leave a room. A searcher invariably closes a door, after looking to see what’s inside. You can even extend it. In a hotel room you’ll have a suitcase, which would have to be looked at by anyone going though your things. Leave one lock secure, the other one open, and remember the sequence. Again it’s instinctive for anyone looking through to resecure the locks. Keep that in mind if you’re doing the searching: always remember what’s open and what’s closed.’

‘I missed too much,’ insisted Gower.

‘In an operational situation you only have to realize one thing is out of place to know you’ve been turned over. You’re not expected to score a hundred per cent.’

Charlie took the duty officer’s recommendation of a pub with outside tables in an orchard with chickens running free, pecking at the fallen apples. Gower ordered beer, like Charlie, and drank with obvious enjoyment. Charlie eased his shoes off. Each was well into the first pint when Gower said suddenly: ‘I’m quite nervous, you know.’

Charlie frowned across the rough wood table. ‘About what?’

‘The job. What it will be like. Because that’s the trouble: there’s no way of knowing what it will be like, is there? Not really like. I wish I wasn’t. Nervous, I mean.’

‘I’m glad you are,’ said Charlie. ‘It gives you the right edge. I’ve never known an over-confident intelligence officer who was good at his job.’

‘You were operational?’

Charlie swallowed at the use of the past tense, nodding again.

‘Tell me what it’s like!’

At once aware of the man’s need, Charlie said: ‘There are some generalities. You’ll usually be working alone. So you’ll be lonely: miserable. It’s not uncommon, if you are sent in to a foreign capital, to be ordered to keep away from the embassy, to avoid it becoming compromised if anything goes wrong. If you are attached in any way to an overseas embassy, you’ll be unwelcome: diplomats are always frightened of people like us. You’ll make mistakes. A lot of the things you’ll be sent to do won’t work: most don’t, in fact. A success rate of twenty per cent is excellent.’

‘A failure rate that high isn’t going to look good on a personnel record.’

‘Hold it, now!’ cautioned Charlie, glad of the conversation. ‘We’re back to public school now, without the pretensions. Don’t ever look upon what you’re doing like it earns high or low marks to be totted up for a good end-of-term report.

‘Always remember an operation aborted or simply walked away from is better than a diplomatic incident that requires ministerial apologies to foreign governments and statements in the House of Commons. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be disowned: become a non-person.’

‘You’re not painting a very pretty picture,’ complained Gower.

Charlie had to put his shoes back on to go inside the pub for more drinks. When he returned to the table he didn’t immediately sit. Standing over Gower he said: ‘It isn’t a pretty picture. Ever. It’s not even exciting. Nine times out of ten it’s boring, dull routine: checking files or official registers, conning your way past officialdom, trying to make sense out of nonsense.’

‘You married?’ demanded Gower, suddenly. He held up both hands, in a shielding gesture. ‘All right! I know it’s a personal question, which isn’t allowed. But it’s important to me.’

Charlie hesitated, finally sitting down. ‘I was once.’

‘Divorced?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘She was killed.’

‘I didn’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Charlie, which was a lie. It would never be OK: there would always be the guilt that Edith had intentionally put herself between him and the gun of the deranged CIA official whom he’d exposed in retribution for an earlier joint-service decision to sacrifice him. The long-ago time of the Cold War, recalled Charlie, without any nostaligia: it had been an actual crossing through the Berlin Wall, with final proof of a Russian espionage ring operating out of London. ‘Why’s it important for you to know?’

‘How can you live with someone – get married, have kids – without ever telling them what you really do?’ demanded Gower. ‘It’s got to be unnatural: impossible. People talk about their jobs. Go to the firm’s events, stuff like that. How can you go through life living a lie with someone whom you’re supposed to love? Cheating them all the time?’

Charlie sighed. ‘When I married my wife she was the personal assistant to the Director-General: she knew what I did. Her knowing made it more difficult. Whenever I was away on assignment, she went through hell.’

‘You saying it goes beyond security: that it’s better if a wife doesn’t know?’

‘Are you married?’

‘Not yet. There is a girl.’

‘I’m saying it’s something everyone has to work out for themselves.’ Charlie paused. ‘Any of your illustrious other instructors teach you properly how to lie?’

Gower gazed back at Charlie across the table. ‘No!’ he said, close to indignation.

Charlie sighed again. ‘Christ, I’ve got an awful lot to teach you, haven’t I?’

*

The transfer of much of the KGB to the Russian Federation after the Commonwealth of Independent States was formed from the old Soviet Union meant that as the head of the old First Chief Directorate Natalia Fedora inherited practically intact the entire overseas network of the renamed external security agency. And a lot more responsibility besides.

In addition to what she had controlled in the past it was now necessary to have intelligence facilities in the former satellite countries like Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia of whose intelligence services the KGB was no more the overall controller, but instead despised, no longer accepted interlopers. Added to which was the need to establish completely new networks in the republics of the new Commonwealth, now technically foreign sovereign states in which any legacy of the old KGB which once ruled them by terror was not merely despised but considered criminal intrusion.

The only practical way for Natalia to run such a sprawling empire was to delegate, which she did both to create the service she wanted and, equally important, in the hope of forestalling any danger from Fyodor Tudin, whom she objectively regarded as an enemy whose every move had to be anticipated and watched, at all times.

She had appointed the man head of the Commonwealth republics division. It was unarguably a prestige position of real and proper power, impossible for Tudin, one of the few old guard KGB survivors, to perceive as a demeaning secondary post. So demanding was the creation and supervision of such a division that Natalia intended the man to be occupied to the exclusion of everything else, certainly any conspiracy against her.

But Fyodor Tudin was a resourceful and energetic man, a very bad enemy to have.

Walter Foster was surprised the query had come by wire and not in the diplomatic bag, because there didn’t seem any reason for urgency. And airline-carried diplomatic mail only normally took two days between London and Beijing. The resident intelligence liaison officer shrugged, long ago having given up trying to make sense from a very great deal of what London asked.

It was a short reply, taking him only minutes to encode. Because the message had come by wire, it was regulations that he reply by the same route. That also took only minutes.

His message said: Hunter journey ends two weeks.

The following day the People’s Daily carried a leading article threatening the strongest measures against foreign interventionists fomenting counter-revolution within the country.