Charlie’s Apprentice

by Brian Freemantle

  Father Robertson made two visits to the embassy to arrange for the shipment of the body back to England for burial in the family vault in Sussex. Samuels met him on both occasions, and on the third accompanied the elderly man from the mission to the Foreign Ministry, to complete the final formalities for the release of the body. Charlie asked to sit in unobtrusively on the embassy meetings. Samuels refused. Charlie, who thought Samuels was a pompous shit, did however time his own visits to be at the embassy when Father Robertson came. He saw a slightly bent, careworn man making an obvious effort to cope with circumstances threatening to overwhelm him. Dr Pickering was necessarily part of the group that met the priest on every occasion. In addition to Samuels and Pickering, both Plowright and Nicholson were at the meetings and also went to the Foreign Ministry interview, in the event of a legal question arising. None did.

  Samuels agreed with visible reluctance to see Charlie after that Chinese Foreign Office encounter.

  ‘I really can’t understand why you’re hanging around any longer!’ protested the political officer. ‘You’ve been ordered home. Why not go?’

  ‘I want to make sure something doesn’t come up that we didn’t expect: that’s important, don’t you think?’

  ‘Nothing will,’ said Samuels. ‘They’ve released the body. Signed all the forms. It’s over, thank God.’

  ‘How’s Father Robertson? He looks wrecked.’

  ‘Hanging on by a thread.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything that I should know about? That my department needs to hear?’ Charlie disliked getting things at second hand.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Samuels, impatiently. ‘He doesn’t know I’m aware of what Snow was doing. And Snow’s admission to him was covered by the secrecy of the confessional, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I thought he might have told you if Li had come to the mission again.’

  ‘I can hardly ask, can I? Again, I’m not supposed to know.’

  ‘What’s coming trom Rome?’

  Samuels shrugged. ‘Shock and mourning. As far as they are concerned, Snow was the victim of a tragic accident.’

  ‘It’s not all over is it?’ reminded Charlie. ‘It won’t all be cleared up until John Gower is released. Which won’t happen if he admits who he really is.’

  Samuels shifted, uncomfortably. ‘The ambassador expects to be recalled. It’s a hell of a risk, if Gower does break: confirmation of direct British government involvement. Another reason we want you out. We need to be able to account for every person at the embassy: you’ve been coming too much.’

  ‘I can’t be connected with anything,’ said Charlie, irritably.

  ‘You got Snow here, to the embassy. Which makes the connection. You were at the railway terminus when he got killed.’

  ‘But I was never identified,’ rejected Charlie. He’d been bloody lucky as well as professionally very smart.

  ‘This is China, for God’s sake! It would be enough if they wanted to move against you: certainly if Gower cracks and they want someone else to make a show trial!’

  Charlie nodded, solely for Samuels’ benefit. ‘Certainly no reason to stay: I can’t officially become involved in helping John Gower.’

  ‘I can tell the ambassador you’re going? The Foreign Office, as well?’

  ‘Very soon,’ assured Charlie. In your dreams, he thought.

  ‘I know what you’re hoping for!’ declared Samuels, suddenly. ‘You’re hoping Gower’s going to be released, for you to escort him home. Like looking after like. Which is stupid, bloody madness.’

  Something was, conceded Charlie: he wished he could work out what it was. ‘It would be stupid, bloody madness. That’s why I’m not even thinking about it.’

  ‘Get out!’ insisted Samuels. ‘Your being here is endangering the embassy.’

  Not really, Charlie decided. He acknowledged that the frequency with which he visited the legation had probably identified him for what he was to several members of the embassy, although they would have linked him to the publicly accused Gower, not to Snow. And he had connected himself to Snow with the message-passing request to Pickering. But that was all internal. Safe. There wasn’t anything external. So Samuels was panicking, talking through the hole in his ass.

  Charlie made a point of seeking out the doctor the same afternoon as his encounter with Samuels. Pickering greeted him with expected brusqueness but not with positive hostility, not even as dismissive as the political officer.

  Pickering agreed with Charlie’s easy opening that Father Robertson was showing signs of understandable strain. ‘Which I don’t like, coming so soon after the other business.’

  ‘Snow told me you’d diagnosed nervous exhaustion.’

  Pickering nodded. ‘We reached an understanding then – Snow and I – that if I thought Robertson was medically incapable of remaining here I should tell their Curia, in Rome.’

  ‘Is he medically incapable in your opinion?’

  ‘Close,’ judged Pickering. ‘I’ve got to make allowances for the shock of how Snow died, of course. He could pick up when he’s properly realized what has happened.’

  At once calling to mind Snow’s admission at their first meeting, Charlie decided the old man would probably have more difficulty accepting, and living with, what he’d been told in the confessional. ‘What if he doesn’t?’

  Pickering humped his shoulders. ‘I don’t know who to tell in Rome. The assumption was always that Snow would handle it. Certainly from the outburst from Robertson, when it arose before, he wouldn’t admit any incapacity to Rome himself. He’d do the reverse.’

  ‘How many British patients do you have in Beijing?’ asked Charlie.

  There was another uncertain shoulder movement. ‘No idea. Quite a few, as a regular panel. And it’s obvious that in emergencies I’m here for any Brit that gets ill. It’s regulation Foreign Office advice.’

  ‘Like Father Robertson was an emergency?’

  ‘Snow thought so.’

  ‘Father Snow was ill: a chronic asthma sufferer. He told me, although he didn’t really have to.’

  ‘Yes?’ Pickering was shifting, irritably, a busy man whose time was being too much imposed upon.

  ‘Why didn’t you prescribe his medication? He needed inhalers all the time but told me he didn’t come to the embassy to collect them: to collect anything. It all had to come from Rome. I don’t understand that.’ It would, thought Charlie again, have given Snow a perfectly acceptable reason – and contact opportunity – to come to the embassy as frequently as he’d wanted.

  Up and down went the shoulders. ‘Never arose,’ said Pickering. ‘Everything for the mission was simply channelled through here for convenience. I inherited the system when I arrived. Told Snow early on, of course, that if there was ever a problem he should call me. He never did: never had any reason. He was young, after all. Asthma is a condition its sufferers live with.’

  Charlie had the briefest of mental images of the tall, ungainly priest clutching himself against the agony as he stumbled beside the moving train beneath which he’d fallen. ‘Maybe that was a mistake.’

  Pickering frowned. ‘What you mean by that?’

  The doctor wouldn’t have understood, conceded Charlie, breaking away from the reflection fully to concentrate. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘I’m worried about this man Gower,’ said Pickering.

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘I can’t guess how he’ll have been treated, but I don’t expect it to have been very good.’

  ‘They’ve got to grant access soon.’

  ‘One would have thought so. After living in China, I’m not so sure. There’s no logic here: no Western sort of logic, that is.’

  ‘I wish there were: it would be easier.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Leave, I suppose.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’ve already had the lecture from Peter Samuels.’

  Surprisingly Pickering smiled. ‘It’s pr
etty easy to become paranoid in a society like this.’

  ‘I’m coming to realize that.’

  ‘We’re all very nervous. None of us have known anything like all this recent pressure and accusation. It’s pretty frightening if you’ve got to live here all the time.’

  ‘I guess it must be,’ allowed Charlie.

  Back at his hotel, Charlie conceded there was little purpose in his remaining any longer in the Chinese capital. He had never imagined escorting Gower home. And Snow, his reason for being there in the first place, was dead. But still Charlie was reluctant to leave. It was instinctive in a situation which still troubled him for Charlie to pick and probe and turn stones over even when he didn’t know what he was looking for beneath them. And Charlie always followed instinct.

  He stayed away from the embassy for several days. Experimentally he embarked, almost immediately sore-footed, on a strictly limited tourist trail, ending the painful test reasonably sure he was not under surveillance and therefore in no immediate danger, although yet again acknowledging the difficulty of being as convinced as he would have been in a Western environment, and yet again thinking how inadequately Gower had been prepared for the situation into which he had been pitched.

  Eventually, inevitably, Charlie was drawn to the district in which the mission was located. He went without any positive intention of meeting Father Robertson, which might have been dangerous. He was glad he chose the time to match that of his first visit and followed the same, most obvious route, although Charlie was unhappy having to use the same silk shop for concealment because it was repetitive and therefore not good tradecraft. It was a passing uncertainty, instantly replaced by another far greater curiosity at something immediately obvious to Charlie’s trained eye and which, like so much else, didn’t make sense.

  He confirmed his impression, to be quite sure, from the more open park in which there was sufficient protective, personal cover. It was from there that Charlie saw Father Robertson, thinking at once that he could confront the man now. He didn’t attempt to. The priest was still careworn but slightly less stooped than when Charlie had unobtrusively watched his arrival and departure from the embassy. That day there seemed more spring in his step, too: Dr Pickering would be pleased at the advancing recovery. It was even better the following day. And the third, when Father Robertson positively bustled up the road, exactly on schedule. A man of regular pattern, Charlie recognized, glad of the park concealment and deciding that he wouldn’t try to talk to the mission chief after all. Charlie liked patterns that fitted, although always with others, never himself. Sometimes it was really surprising what lurked under overturned stones.

  Samuels greeted Charlie furiously when he reappeared at the embassy. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Staying away, like you wanted.’

  ‘God knows what’s going on in London. They’re frantic about you …’ He offered a sheaf of cables. ‘A lot have been duplicated, to me. They want to know why you didn’t rebase days ago, as you were ordered.’

  ‘Didn’t feel it was right, not then.’ Another question to be resolved, he thought, remembering an earlier conversation. ‘Why didn’t you call the hotel? You knew where I was.’

  ‘I didn’t want it to appear the embassy were chasing you,’ said Samuels. ‘I wouldn’t like to be you, when you get back!’

  ‘I’m not looking forward to it myself,’ admitted Charlie, sincerely. He still had to get back.

  They sat facing each other in Samuels’ office for several moments, with no conversation. Then Samuels said: ‘I am authorized by the ambassador – and empowered by the Foreign Office – positively to order you out of this embassy and out of the country. On the next plane to London. Which leaves tomorrow morning, at ten. I’ll make the reservation.’

  ‘That would be good of you,’ smiled Charlie. ‘Actually, I’d already decided to leave. So we’re both going to be happy, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to survive this.’

  ‘I was supposed to teach Gower that,’ said Charlie. ‘How to survive.’

  ‘You didn’t do very well, did you?’

  ‘That’s what other people have said.’

  ‘We’re being given access, at last. No definite day, yet. But there’s been a formal agreement. And without the ambassador having to be recalled, in protest.’

  Charlie came forward in his chair. ‘No charge or accusation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he held out?’

  ‘It looks like it. That’s why there was so much panic about you in London. You were the last loose end.’

  It really was time to go home, Charlie decided. He supposed it probably was an accurate enough description of him, a worrying loose end. ‘It’s good, about Gower. A relief.’ How long would a proper recovery take?

  ‘Don’t forget,’ cautioned Samuels. ‘Tomorrow morning: ten o’clock.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Charlie.

  He did leave the following morning, although not on the London plane. Charlie took an earlier, internal flight to Canton and from there caught a train further south. As he crossed by road into Hong Kong Charlie thought that Samuels would get an awful bollocking for not personally ensuring he was on the London flight.

  At Chung Horn Kok, in the very centre of Hong Kong island, there is an installation known as the Composite Signals Station. It is an electronic intelligence-gathering facility run by Britain in conjunction with its other world-spanning eavesdropping centre, the Government Communication Headquarters at Cheltenham, in the English county of Gloucestershire. Although the Composite Signals Station is much smaller than the facility in England – and is in the process of being dismantled prior to the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997 – there is still at Chung Horn Kok equipment sufficiently powerful to listen to radio and telephone communications as far north as Beijing and to both the Russian naval headquarters at Vladivostok and their rocket complex on Sakhalin Island.

  Charlie’s security clearance was high enough for him to be given all the cooperation he sought: his requests were quite specific and therefore easily traced. He only needed to spend four hours there, so he was able to catch the night flight back to England, via Italy.

  He boarded the plane a depressed and coldly furious man, believing he knew enough to be able to guess other things. Charlie didn’t sleep and he didn’t drink: booze never helped at the deep-thinking, final working out stage. Halfway through the second leg of the flight, from Rome, he decided he might not have reached that final stage after all, so did not return to Westminster Bridge Road immediately after reaching London.

  Instead, he took a train north to the national registration centre for births, deaths and marriages at Southport, near Liverpool. Again he knew exactly what he was looking for, even though he had to go between two different departments, so he wasn’t able, more depressed than ever, to catch the afternoon train back to London.

  There, the following day, he went to the Records Office at Kew for back editions of the Diplomatic Lists, which led him to the directory of the General Medical Council. He was lucky. The men he was looking for had both retired, but to Sussex, so he only had an hour to travel. It wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with either.

  Charlie expected his internal telephone to be ringing when he entered his office at Westminster Bridge Road, because it had been obvious from ground-floor security that his arrival was flagged for instant notification.

  It was ringing, stridently. Julia said: ‘For Christ’s sake, Charlie, where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘They want you!’

  ‘I thought they might,’ said Charlie.

  John Gower was never to know how close he was to giving up. Didn’t want to know. Ever. But later – much later – he openly admitted during his debriefing that he wasn’t far off. A day maybe. He was badly dehydrated by then, constantly hallucinating, and the dysentery had become so bad he wasn’t able t
o keep himself clean any more. He was too far gone to be personally disgusted.

  So far gone, in fact, that he failed to realize the awakening sounds, even the spy-hole scraping, had ceased. It was the chance to get clean that told him he had won.

  He shuffled dutifully to his feet when the escorts entered the cell, needing their support either side initially to move. He’d started to turn automatically to the left down the corridor, towards the interview room and the persistent Mr Chen, but they steered him in the opposite direction. He did not realize it was a shower stall until he was standing before it and they were helping him out of his stinking, encrusted uniform.

  The awareness came as he stood under the needle-stinging spray, drawing up the last reserve of adrenalin. Won! he thought: beaten them! I’ve beaten them! He risked letting the water from the shower into his parched, cracked mouth, although he held on to the presence of mind not to gulp too much, further to upset his stomach.

  There was a razor and soap with which to shave when he stepped out, and the clean uniform waiting for him wasn’t stiff as the other had been, from previous unwashed use. He wasn’t taken back to the cell but to a ground-floor room where the toilet closet was partitioned off from a proper bed, with a mattress and a pillow and clean sheets.

  A doctor came in what he gauged to be the afternoon to examine the lip sores, producing a salve which he had to administer himself, every three hours, over the course of two days. The food that was delivered wasn’t bad any more. The water came in a covered tin mug.

  On the fourth day of his release from the cell, he was taken to meet a Chinese who gave no name. ‘You are seeing people from your embassy tomorrow,’ announced the man.

  ‘Where’s Mr Chen?’

  The man ignored the question.

  When the moment came, Natalia couldn’t bring herself to do what she had so carefully planned. For several days she kept the necessary files in her personal office safe, taking them out and replacing them, telling herself that so many things might have changed. Charlie could have married. Found somebody else at least. So for her to do what she intended had no point or purpose. There had been, after all, two opportunities for Charlie to be with her and he’d turned his back on both. Going beyond any professional reasoning, it had to mean he didn’t love her enough: if he’d loved her enough, he would have found a way. Any way. And if he didn’t love her enough what interest would he have in Sasha? How, sensibly and logically, could they do anything about it in any case, even if he were interested? They were separated – and always would be – by far more than miles.