Charlie’s Apprentice

Twenty-two

There was a lot of slow-moving traffic on the country roads and Charlie was glad to loop up on to the motorway at last, settling in the cruising lane at just five miles over the speed limit, fast enough to get him back to London on time without seriously risking police interference. One of life’s elementary precautions was to obey the obvious civil laws: all part of never drawing unnecessary attention to himself. He was unsure whether he’d given John Gower that advice. He should have done. Too late now. On his own, about to become operational. From now on Gower had to learn for himself, develop his instincts. It wouldn’t be easy because operational assignments never were: sometimes boring, too often abject failures, but never easy. Charlie hoped this would not be as difficult as some could be. Always useful to have a fairly simple ride the first time, to build up just the right amount of confidence.

Enough reflection, Charlie cautioned himself. Wrong to let himself get personally involved, as he’d told the man himself. Lied, too, saying he’d refused to think in terms of liking or disliking. He hadn’t intended to, but he had liked John Gower. Have to guard against it happening with the next one. He’d thought there would already have been someone to follow Gower: expected his still unfamiliar, thoroughly unwanted role to be ongoing, one apprentice approved, another waiting to follow. Something else he hadn’t properly understood about the job. He hoped there’d be someone soon: the boredom factor was creeping up on him, although he hadn’t yet started playing with paper darts.

Charlie checked the dashboard clock, contentedly ahead of the evening traffic build-up. He wanted to go back to Primrose Hill before meeting Julia: shower if he had time. He’d considered suggesting she come with him this time, not to the nursing home but just for the ride: there were enough antique shops in Stockbridge to browse around while he was seeing his mother. Then they could have spent the rest of the day in the country. Then again, perhaps it wouldn’t have been a good idea. He wouldn’t have wanted her to think he was suggesting a night as well as a day in the country, because he wouldn’t have been.

Charlie was enjoying the friendship with Julia. It had practically been a reflex to offer it that night in the Hampstead restaurant, and for some time afterwards he hadn’t been sure what either of them had agreed upon. So far it was fine. She’d accepted the cinema invitation, laughing in disbelief when he admitted it was his first visit for over a year, and having decided against inviting her to the country he’d bought theatre seats that night for a play she’d said she wanted to see. He’d been tempted to make it a surprise, but decided against it as he’d decided against asking her to drive down to Hampshire. Hopeful lovers created surprises: friends discussed things in advance, ensuring outings were mutually convenient, with no need to impress.

Charlie was comfortable with Julia, just as she seemed comfortable with him, neither having to try too hard. Best of all, there was no sexual tension, which would have made everything difficult. After the restaurant confession she’d spoken once or twice about the divorce and the double despair she’d felt at the betrayal, but as a catharsis, not in any way as an invitation. Never once had she asked a direct question about himself. Cynically Charlie had wondered if Julia might have known all there was about him from the red boxes and manila envelopes for which the deputy Director-General had shown such contempt on the day of his reassignment. Just as quickly he dismissed the suspicion. When he had talked of Edith, briefly and only then to let her know he was familiar with loneliness too, Julia had given no indication of being aware of Edith’s death or of its circumstances, and he didn’t think she was a good enough actress – or liar – to have done that.

No one would learn everything about him from the archival records, of course. Remarkably little, in fact. And definitely not about Natalia, who had been the most important part of his life after Edith.

Perhaps confusingly, although not to himself, Charlie believed the forever lost Natalia had made it easy for the friendship with Julia. The way he felt – and would always feel – about Natalia meant he didn’t want, romantically or sexually or on any other level, an involvement with anyone. Any more than Julia did, for her part. Charlie supposed he and Julia qualified as the perfect platonic couple. A marriage, almost, without the difficult, messy parts. He didn’t imagine it an analogy easy for anyone else to follow.

The word – marriage – stayed with Charlie. What about the involvement of the beneficially married Peter Miller with the unmarried Ms Patricia Elder? Charlie had maintained his occasional and therefore inadequate observation of the Regent’s Park mansion. And confirmed that Peter Miller used it as a London base. But so far always alone. The woman who had also used the private penthouse door – but only on two occasions – had not been Patricia Elder, so he assumed her to be Lady Ann: she’d certainly looked a lot like the horses she was said to breed. Remembering his earlier doubts, Charlie thought again that maybe Miller didn’t use the place for his affair with his deputy: even wondered, indeed, if they were having an affair. Another earlier doubt, like the possibility that Patricia Elder’s apartment or house could much more safely be the love-nest. And as she wasn’t listed in any of the biographical reference books – and there was no way he could search department records without the request becoming known – he didn’t have any idea where she lived.

All of which made it a fairly good bet that he was wasting his time, playing at nothing more than amateur surveillance, like playing with paper darts. But then time seemed to be something he had a lot of to waste. And he did, after all, have practically to go past Miller’s London home to his own flat in Primrose Hill.

What would he do if he did confirm an affair? Strictly according to regulations, he had to report it as a security risk. But doing things according to regulations wasn’t the point of Charlie’s exercise: it rarely was. The point was personal protection, hoarding any ammunition available. And ammunition wasn’t any good thrown away in advance of the battle: far better to wait until the shots were fired in his direction. Charlie accepted at once that with their power and authority, Miller and Patricia Elder outgunned him. But if they seriously moved to bring him down – permanently to get rid of him, for instance – he would, if he could, bring them down, too. So he’d go on hanging around outside the lavish mansion.

The warning proof from what he’d done all those years ago when he’d been offered up for sacrifice was clearly there in those red boxes and manila files, but Charlie doubted they fully understood that if he believed himself under attack he was an overwhelmingly vindictive bastard. And proud to be so. Sometimes he even practised.

Charlie followed motorways completely to reach London, connecting with the M4 by the M25 orbital link, beginning, but quickly refusing the recollection, to think of the evasion technique he’d taught John Gower on part of the same route. Just as quickly, refusing the refusal, he forced himself – alarmed – to remember the routine, positively rising more fully in the driving seat, as if coming abruptly awake.

Which was about bloody right, Charlie decided, horrified. He had been asleep. Not once, since leaving the nursing home almost two hours before, had he once searched around him, which he’d patronizingly lectured Gower it was always essential – ‘until it becomes instinctive’ – to do.

So much for the conceit of considering himself a good and conscientious intelligence officer! The lapse did more than worry Charlie: it frightened him. It had always been automatic in the past: should still have been, something he never had consciously to think about! So why hadn’t he done it this time? There was no excuse, no explanation. No matter how deeply he’d been preoccupied, part of his concentration should have remained on what was going on around him. It wasn’t an argument – not to Charlie anyway – that it didn’t matter because he was no longer operational. He didn’t want to lose the constant alertness: wouldn’t lose it. If he stopped being alert, aware at all times of what was going on about him, he would start to atrophy: start to sink into mumbling insensitivity, the dinosaur ready for retirement that Patricia Elder clearly considered him to be. Too late, a stupid effort at reassertiveness that didn’t work, Charlie began checking, using all the mirrors, actually gazing around himself on the filled up, six-lane highway. What the fuck was he doing so late: too late? Playing with himself, without any satisfaction at the end of it. No, he rejected at once. He could have still recovered, if he’d found himself in a genuine situation: dodged and weaved, evaded a problem. There was still no satisfaction: failed mental masturbation.

Charlie remained unsettled after he got back, in good time, to his Primrose Hill apartment after returning the hire car. He confirmed the order in which he’d left the letters on the mat, before picking them up, and checked the traps he’d set in the bedroom and the kitchen by leaving the doors slightly ajar. There had not been any entry. There was still time to shower before meeting Julia.

In the bar, during the theatre interval, Charlie said: ‘Gower came to see me: said he was going operational.’

Julia regarded him seriously. ‘Still missing it?’

‘Always will,’ said Charlie, shortly.

‘Let go!’ she pleaded. ‘Accept it’s over!’

He couldn’t, Charlie realized. Not yet, though maybe he should after that afternoon’s fuck-up. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘Welcome back!’ greeted the Director-General.

Walter Foster smiled, although uncertainly, looking between the man and Patricia Elder, unsure what sort of meeting it was going to be. At once he blurted: ‘I believe it was essential I leave: it wasn’t panic or anything like that.’

‘We’re sure it wasn’t,’ soothed the woman.

‘You said it had to be an on-the-ground decision,’ continued the man, unconvinced by her assurance.

‘It’s officially recorded, on file,’ said Miller. ‘We’re glad you’re back. We need your impressions: everything. Far better than written reports.’

Foster relaxed, very slightly. ‘Quite simple. Snow’s blown: they’re just waiting their time. Maybe waiting for something positively incriminating, although I’m not sure they’ll bother.’

‘And Snow himself?’

Foster, who was perched on the very edge of the visitor’s chair in the Director-General’s office, had finally to look away from their concentrated attention, disguising the avoidance as a moment of head-lowered contemplation, properly to answer the query. Tentatively he said. ‘He is not an easy person. Never has been.’

‘Go on,’ urged Patricia Elder.

Foster hardly needed the prompting. ‘He and I never hit it off: it was always particularly difficult.’

‘His last complete report was a refusal to work with you any longer,’ Miller pointed out.

Instantly Foster inferred criticism. ‘I am extremely sorry about the breakdown. I did everything I believed proper and safe to correct it. Followed your orders from here to the letter. Nothing worked.’

‘That becomes clear, from your side of the exchanges,’ said the Director-General.

Foster relaxed again. ‘He’s extremely arrogant. Refuses to accept that he is under any sort of official scrutiny.’

‘What do you think?’ said Patricia Elder.

‘He’s unquestionably under suspicion.’

Miller waved a hand generally towards the folders in their neat order on his desk. ‘There didn’t seem to be any doubt, from what you already provided. So it’s the arrogance that’s preventing his coming out?’

‘He insisted it’s the Jesuit Curia that holds the power of withdrawal over him,’ qualified the former liaison man. ‘He won’t accept that he’s been compromised. He thinks there will always be an explanation to satisfy the authorities.’

‘We’re having trouble with the Technical Division, over the photographs,’ disclosed Patricia, slightly changing the direction of the debriefing. ‘Zhengzhou is no trouble: they were virtually tourist shots, apart from identifying Li for our records. It’s the Shanghai prints we can’t successfully alter.’

‘Not at all?’ queried Foster. He had been right, getting out when there was still the chance: he couldn’t conceive what a Chinese detention centre or prison would be like. Whatever, Foster was sure he could not have survived any term of imprisonment without quickly losing his mind.

Miller took up the explanation. ‘They can, intentionally, be poorly developed. With two that is very effective: reduces the background virtually to make what is technogically interesting on the warships meaningless …’ He paused. ‘But on two it doesn’t work.’

‘What about positively changing the Shanghai background?’

‘He was photographing away from the city and the Bund, towards the river. It’s impossible,’ dismissed Miller.

Foster smiled, pleased as the idea came to him. ‘Why worry about the real photographs at all? Why don’t we send back four completely innocuous photographs of Shanghai that Snow didn’t take?’

Miller and the woman swapped looks. Patricia said: ‘According to Snow, Li took pictures too. They’ve got a comparison, to put against whatever we provide: every photograph was to be from exactly the same position, with exactly the same climatic conditions, even to the same cloud formations.’

Beneath his red hair Foster blushed slightly, bringing out the freckles. ‘Can’t we ask the Curia to bring him out?’

‘How? And on what grounds?’ demanded the Director-General. ‘We couldn’t explain the reason for our approaching them. Or even how we know a man named Jeremy Snow is a Jesuit priest, in Beijing. Believe me, if that had been a route to follow, we’d have done it weeks ago.’

Foster flushed further. ‘What then?’

‘More persuasion,’ said Patricia Elder.

There was a brief silence in the room. Then Foster said: ‘By somebody else?’

‘Yes,’ said Miller.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Foster, accepting the criticism without it having to be openly made by either of them.

‘You were an accredited British diplomat attached to the embassy,’ reminded the woman. ‘You’re out. We’re saved official embarrassment, if Snow gets arrested. The government line will be to deny all knowledge of any Chinese accusation: dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.’

‘Which means completely abandoning Snow,’ said Foster.

‘He was told to get out,’ said Miller, with a hint of irritability. ‘And we are making another attempt.’

‘He won’t come,’ said the liaison man, flatly.

‘Then his problems are his own, aren’t they?’ said the Director-General.

Neither spoke for several moments after Foster had left. Then Patricia said: ‘He didn’t ask what his next assignment was going to be.’

‘Foster’s a fool whose use is over,’ dismissed Miller.

‘What are we going to do with him?’

Miller shrugged. ‘Something internal, I suppose. Nothing we need to decide in a hurry. You ready for Gower?’

The woman nodded: ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow. His flight leaves in the afternoon.’

‘I wonder if it will work,’ said Miller, unexpectedly reflective.

‘I wish to Christ I knew,’ said Patricia.