Charlie’s Apprentice

Forty-two

The dust fell about him when Snow parted the curtains, filling his throat and mouth and banding his chest more tightly. The slide of the dividing grille jammed when Father Robertson initially tried to draw it back, never quite fully opening the space between them.

‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. For these and all my other sins that I cannot remember I humbly ask forgiveness.’ Even the rote of the beginning was difficult. The dust seemed to be blocking the way to his lungs and his chest positively ached, but Snow knew the agony had nothing to do with any of it, solely caused by the enormity of what he was doing.

‘Go on,’ urged Robertson, when Snow did not continue after several moments.

It was still some further time before Snow could speak and then, initially, the words were badly chosen and disjointed, sentences half finished, the worst parts of all delivered scarcely beyond a whisper.

But Snow told it all, in every detail. He fought against the wheezing breathlessness to force himself to talk and had a greater, choking struggle to keep Father Robertson listening in the linked cubicle. The older priest positively tried to stop the admission, of everything, protesting he would hear no more and scuffling to his feet, so that Snow had to break the ritual – as Father Robertson was breaking the ritual – and insist, over and over again, his mouth tight against the grille, that Father Robertson’s vows made it impossible for the man to refuse to let him finish.

‘Men have confessed to murder in a confessional and been heard!’

‘Continue.’ Father Robertson’s voice was strained tight, as if he were having as much difficulty to speak as the younger priest.

Snow talked on, but Father Robertson heard the last few minutes in such utter silence that Snow thought at one stage that the man had slipped out anyway. Then, almost imperceptibly, he detected the faintest sound: short, sharp intakes of breath, a man gasping.

The continuing silence, when Snow finished, was absolute. Snow waited a very long time before speaking further. ‘I seek absolution.’

‘No! This is a travesty! Obscene!’

‘I demand absolution.’

‘Absolution is for the repentant. Are you repentant?’

He wasn’t, not at all, Snow accepted: what he’d done was right. What he was doing now was a sin greater than any he had committed outside this dust-swirled box. For this he would be damned. ‘I am repentant.’

‘I will not give you absolution!’

It didn’t matter, accepted Snow, sadly. The old man had been right. What he had done that morning was a travesty and it was obscene, and the point had not been to seek forgiveness. This moment, Snow supposed, marked his failure as a priest. But what about as a Jesuit, a Soldier of Christ? He didn’t think he had the intellect or the theological philosophy to answer that question. That was a question to be put to other priests and other judges far away from Beijing, before whom he accepted he would have to place himself.

He heard the swish of the curtain pulled back in the other stall and smelled the dust driven through the lattice. He followed more slowly, so that Father Robertson was already some way across the nave when Snow emerged. Snow followed, more slowly: only when he neared the end of the walkway connecting the church to their living quarters, coming close to the room in which Father Robertson normally worked, did Snow become concerned that the older man might have gone out into the city.

He hadn’t.

Father Robertson was at his desk, bent slightly forward as he had when he was ill, and tremors were vibrating through him as they had then. Snow’s renewed concern was that the mission chief was suffering another collapse. He remained uncertainly at the door. Finally Father Robertson straightened, looking up at him. The man’s eyes were wet and red-rimmed, like the eyes of a person who had been crying.

‘Do you know what you have done?’

‘What is talked about in the confessional is sacrosanct.’ Snow wanted Father Robertson to know and to think about it, but never to talk about it. Which he couldn’t.

‘You dare lecture me on ritual!’

‘I did not wish – do not wish – to endanger the mission.’

‘You have! You know you have! This Englishman who’s been arrested! He’s all part of it, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. I think so.’

A shudder worse than the others went through the old man. ‘Lost. Everything could be lost.’

‘I was told to get out,’ disclosed Snow.

The rheumy eyes came up to him. ‘When?’

‘Soon after Li began taking an interest.’

‘Does he have something incriminating to put against you?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Does he?’ Father Robertson’s voice creaked, so it didn’t come out as the intended shout of anger.

‘Yes.’

‘Terrible. This is absolutely terrible.’

‘I could not have left without permission from the Curia, in Rome.’

Father Robertson looked directly at him again, one hand gripping the other, physically clutching himself for control. ‘That is true,’ he agreed, but doubtfully, more curiosity than anger in his voice.

Snow hesitated. ‘In exceptional circumstances, a head of mission in our Order could grant such dispensation.’

Father Robertson became suddenly and completely still, all the shaking gone, face suffused in livid outrage. ‘You bastard! You absolute and utter bastard!’

Snow hadn’t imagined such an outburst – he hadn’t imagined anything – but he accepted at once that it was true, that he was a bastard. He was surprised Father Robertson was so quickly realizing, in its entirety, what he had done. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not! There’s no contrition: that’s why I wouldn’t grant you absolution …’ The old man stopped, mouth slightly apart at a further awareness. ‘You weren’t even seeking absolution, were you?’ He paused, momentarily beyond speech. ‘I’ll inform the Curia! See to it that you are dismissed the Order you are disgracing.’

‘What is talked about in the confessional is sacrosanct,’ repeated Snow, quietly.

Father Robertson’s mouth gaped fully, in complete comprehension. ‘You’ve actually abused it, to save yourself! Knowing I can’t bring any complaint against you because of how I learned what you’ve done: what you are! You are beyond belief …’ The priest twisted his own word. ‘You can’t believe, to behave like this!’

‘I am prepared to face the judgement of our superiors. To explain myself, my way. Not have a case presented for me: against me.’ Snow was hating the confrontation: hating himself. Despising what he’d done and how he’d done it, unable to find any vindication, any excuse. A man was suffering unspeakable horrors because of him: the Jesuit mission in Beijing was endangered because of him. And all he could think of doing was to run away, like a coward. But wasn’t that the mitigating factor, the only thing he could do? Without him there would be no corroborated case against the arrested Englishman. Who would have to be released, eventually. And just as the man’s safety depended upon his getting out of the country, so did the continuing existence of Father Robertson’s precious mission. So he was not acting cowardly – he was not ceasing to be a Soldier of Christ- by running. It was an act to save others first, himself very much last.

‘Get out!’ rejected Father Robertson. ‘Out of Beijing as soon as possible! Go to Rome. You need help: a great deal of help. You’re surely going to strain God’s compassion.’

‘You will inform the Curia of my permission to travel?’

‘Go!’ repeated Father Robertson, exasperated.

‘Li is demanding something: some photographs. I do not believe I will be allowed to leave until I pass them over.’

Father Robertson shook his head, a man pummelled with too much, too quickly. ‘Give them to him!’

‘I do not have them, not yet.’

The elderly man shook his head, wearily. ‘I do not understand. Do not want to understand. All I want is for you to go. Please go.’

‘As soon as I find a way,’ promised Snow. But who was there to show him?

‘So he is a spy?’ demanded Patrick Plowright.

‘He came to clear up some sort of mess, after that bloody man Foster. I’ve no idea what,’ confirmed Samuels. The feet of the diminutive embassy lawyer sitting opposite only touched the floor when the man stretched his toes, to make contact. Samuels tried to avoid obviously looking at them.

‘Still nothing on access?’

The political officer shook his head. ‘The ambassador has delivered three Notes, so far. The same number have been given to their ambassador in London.’

‘What’s the next step?’

Samuels looked uncomfortable. ‘Someone else is coming in.’

‘What!’

‘I know. It’s appalling, isn’t it?’

‘When’s he arrive?’

Samuels shrugged, realizing he was looking at the tiptoe difficulty of the other man and hurriedly averting his eyes. ‘He wasn’t on the plane we’d been told to expect. We’ve asked London what’s happened.’

‘Surely there’s something else we can do about Gower! Something practical?’

‘As a gesture of protest, Sir Timothy could be recalled to London. But that would blow up badly in our faces if the Chinese proved espionage.’

‘Which still has to be denied?’

‘Emphatically.’

‘It’s ridiculous!’

‘Of course it is. Sir Timothy is privately making the strongest protest imaginable to London.’

‘I thought all this spying nonsense was a thing of the past.’

‘I only wish it had been.’

‘What’s this new person going to do?’

‘God only knows.’

Charlie believed he’d moved around like a blue-assed fly, although making less noise. And achieved some early, possibly useful impressions.

He was pleased with the Hsin Chiao, a hotel reserved for Western tourists among whom he could merge and become lost. The reception desk wouldn’t let him have their only street map, so he had to memorize the position of the British embassy, which was marked, against the district containing the mission, which wasn’t. He studied a separate map, listing in English the numbers and routes of the buses, which looked comparatively convenient but which he guessed wouldn’t be. They weren’t. It meant a lot of walking.

Charlie went close enough to the embassy on Guang Hua Lu to fix it in his mind but not close enough for him to become identified with it. He didn’t try directly to approach the mission, either. Instead he circled where he knew it to be, always keeping a street distance away, until he found the logical main road leading away from it. There was a convenient park, where he remained for an hour, and a stall market in front of several shops, where he immersed himself for slightly longer. He identified two cars that made more than one journey up and down. One stopped within sight of Charlie, so he was able to see the two men who got out. And then he recognized Father Robertson from the photographs he’d studied in London. The priest strode from the direction of the mission remarkably quickly for a man of his age, and with purpose, as if he were keeping an appointment. Charlie was still in the final shop, supposedly looking at bolts of silk, when he saw Father Robertson returning. It was automatic for Charlie to check the timing: the mission chief had been away an hour. Seeing Father Robertson was a plus he hadn’t expected: it was too much to hope that Father Snow might use the approach road. Charlie still lingered, but the younger priest didn’t appear. Charlie wouldn’t have approached him, if he had.

Charlie had to walk much further than he anticipated, to get to the bus-stop. And then had to stand for almost forty-five minutes, because the first bus was filled. By the time he got back to the hotel his feet were on fire. It was just his shitty luck, he thought, to be in the land of The Long March.