Charlie’s Apprentice

Seventeen

Patricia Elder used Miller’s discarded shirt as a dressing-gown to make the breakfast coffee, naked beneath. The apartment, the entire top floor of a period mansion on the edge of Regent’s Park, was owned by Miller’s wife and she used it when she came up from the country, so Patricia never kept any of her clothes there. The programme and ticket stubs for the previous night’s opera at Covent Garden were on the hall table, ready to be taken and disposed of when they left. So was the after-theatre dinner bill for two.

The breakfast alcove was in the bay of the window overlooking the park. Miller was already at the table, dressed apart from his jacket, when Patricia came in from the kitchen. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

The Director-General looked up from his newspaper, shaking his head. ‘Last night’s got a bad review. I’ve certainly seen better performances. Glyndebourne, for instance.’

‘I wasn’t with you at Glyndebourne,’ reminded Patricia, pointedly. As with everything else, they took great care where to be together in public. It was at Miller’s insistence, not hers.

‘Believe me, it was better,’ he insisted, looking directly at her, guessing the mood in which she had awoken. His impression was that they had lately become more frequent. He hoped she wasn’t going to become difficult.

Patricia poured the coffee and said: ‘These are the good times, when we can spend two or three nights consecutively together.’

Miller suppressed the sigh. ‘I like it, too. But don’t, darling. Please!’

‘Don’t what?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘You don’t have to,’ he said, wearily. He wondered if he could cut the conversation off by returning to the newspaper but decided against it. She’d become even more resentful.

‘You don’t love her. She doesn’t love you.’

Instead of immediately answering – because he could not quickly think of an answer he knew would satisfy her – Miller gazed fleetingly around the sprawling, antique-cluttered flat. That was a mistake.

‘I can’t believe it!’ exclaimed Patricia, seeing the look. ‘I can’t believe you stay just because she’s got money!’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Miller defended, weakly.

‘You didn’t have to,’ she said, using his words against him.

‘It’s not the money.’

‘So why then?’

‘I want to get the boys settled. We’ve talked it through enough times.’

‘You’ve talked about it enough times, as an excuse! They’re grown up, for Christ’s sake!’ She hadn’t argued this forcefully before. She wanted to but at the same time she was frightened, not anxious to push him too much.

‘They’re still both at university. I don’t want to create a family crisis that could affect that.’

‘You know how long we’ve been together, you and I?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Five years!’ said Patricia. ‘Five years of unkept promises. I even transferred from counter-intelligence because you said you didn’t want us to be apart!’

‘I don’t!’ insisted the man. ‘But the transfer was as much professional as personal.’ He was desperate for something to deflect the attack, surprised by her determination. Patricia had made all the concessions and all the sacrifices since the affair started. So why didn’t he divorce Ann? There was no feeling between them now: he wasn’t sure much had ever existed. It had practically been an arranged match, both minor aristocrat families – his impoverished, Ann’s securely wealthy – knowing each other for years, expecting their respective children to marry. Which they’d done, having the same expectation without quite knowing why.

It wasn’t the money, Miller told himself, although he liked the security of having it always available. So what was it? A mixture of things, he decided, answering the repeated question. There was the impact a divorce might have upon his career, which he despised himself for thinking. It wasn’t a fear directed towards Ann, who he didn’t think would give a damn. The risk came from her impeccable family being offended by the minimal slur a divorce might cause: a family whose influence had carried him through his official career so far. Ann’s was a lineage traditionally involved for almost a hundred years through Permanent Secretaries and ministry mandarins in the perpetually enduring government of the country, irrespective of which political party imagined itself in power. And those influences and panelled-club connections extended particularly through the Foreign Office, to which he was now attached. What other element was there in the mixture? Selfishness, he conceded. He didn’t want the upheaval, the absolute disruption, that a divorce would even temporarily bring to his comfortably arranged, comfortably convenient life. Which could only surely mean that he didn’t love Patricia sufficiently? He was sure – or fairly sure – he did.

‘I’m not prepared to go on for ever,’ warned the woman. She was, she recognized at once. She didn’t have any alternative, apart from lonely, solitary spinsterhood.

‘I’m not asking you to.’ He was becoming irritable at her persistence.

In her confused anxiety it was Patricia who backed off, changing the subject with the abruptness of a switch being thrown. ‘Are we leaving separately this morning?’

Sometimes they staggered their departure from the Regent’s Park mansion, from which the penthouse apartment had its own discreet exit, so as to produce an acceptably different time to arrive at the office.

‘The diplomatic pouch from Beijing should have arrived overnight,’ said Miller, seizing the escape. ‘I want to get to it first thing: I’ll précis it, before you get in.’

‘I’m more interested in what we get after the embassy encounter.’

Miller realized, relieved, that Patricia had turned completely to professional considerations. ‘I’m not sure how objective Foster’s evaluation will be any longer, when they finally do meet. And Snow has made his position clear, refusing any further liaison contact.’

‘Snow will be expecting our response, to his demand for a new controller.’

Miller leaned forward over the table, looking reflectively downwards. ‘That’s got to be balanced by a hair: one mistake on our part and it’ll all end in disaster.’

‘So what’s the guidance we give Foster?’

‘We’ll have to wait to see if there is anything new in the pouch this morning,’ pointed out the Director-General, logically. ‘If there isn’t, I don’t see we give Foster any fresh instructions at all.’

‘You don’t want the withdrawal orders from us?’

Miller screwed his face up quizzically, at the same time shaking his head. ‘I’d rather it be his decision. It would ultimately look better.’

‘Something else that hangs by a hair,’ mused the woman.

‘Foster’s got to be out first. The sequence has to be right.’

‘The sequence has always had to be right,’ reminded the woman.

After he’d left, Patricia hand-washed the breakfast things, dried them and restored them all to their respective cupboards so no evidence remained of two people having used the flat. Before finally leaving she checked carefully through every room – particularly the bedroom – to ensure she’d left nothing behind that shouldn’t be there. As she was passing the hall table, she saw Miller had left the theatre programme, ticket stubs and restaurant bill for her to throw away. She hesitated for several moments before gathering everything up and stuffing it into her handbag. She waited until she had crossed the river and was several miles from Regent’s Park before tossing the things into a waste basket. Even then she found a separate bin for the programme than for the tickets. She went directly into Miller’s suite when she arrived.

‘Just as it was,’ reported Miller at once. ‘Foster wants guidance, for the embassy meeting, that’s all.’

‘Good,’ said the deputy Director.

Every building with any sort of vantage point directly overlooking the headquarters of Britain’s external intelligence service is government-owned and occupied, to prevent a hostile service gaining access – or worse, permanent occupancy – to carry out surveillance of people entering or leaving. The monitoring that is attempted is, therefore, haphazard and virtually unproductive, snatched from passing vehicles or briefly parked cars and vans or temporarily halting pedestrians. Any effort positively to identify SIS operatives is additionally hampered by the building itself on some floors being occupied by government offices totally unconnected with any intelligence activity.

Natalia still tried, because it was the most obvious way and she couldn’t think of anything else. She demanded every surveillance report and photograph obtained in the previous three months and spent every spare moment for four days looking through them all, straining for the slightest indication or sight of Charlie. And found nothing.

She even thought, briefly, of ordering a positive surveillance operation until she realized she was considering precisely what Berenkov had done and by so doing brought about his own downfall. Charlie had to be found another way, Natalia accepted.

But which way? Dear God she wished she knew.