Charlie’s Apprentice cm-10

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Yes you had, hadn’t you?’ picked up the security chief. ‘But not to me?’ There was no positive suspicion in the man’s voice, but Natalia thought there was a discernible reserve in his attitude.

  ‘I wanted to get the opinion of the Federal Prosecutor, before raising it with you. If he had not been enthusiastic, there would have been no point,’ said Natalia, easily.

  ‘You had no suspicion what Tudin was doing?’

  ‘None,’ said Natalia, easily again.

  ‘Some legal charges could be formulated against him.’

  ‘Would it be wise, opening it all up to public debate in a court? I would have thought dismissal is sufficient.’

  Lestov nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ The chairman paused and then said: ‘I’m going to liaise personally with Korolov about a task force. It is a good idea. Commendable, considering the personal circumstances.’

  ‘I considered it my duty,’ said Natalia, unembarrassed.

  Lestov smiled, at last. It was still a brief expression. ‘I really am most impressed at how you have reorganized your directorate. It’s unfortunate this business had to arise.’

  ‘It’s resolved now. Very satisfactorily.’

  ‘I would, in future, like copies of any communication before you send them to outside ministries.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You have my sympathy, about your son.’

  ‘We really have been apart for a very long time. There is nothing left between us.’ Adulterated drugs sometimes maim and kill, she remembered.

  Later, at the apartment in Leninskaya, Natalia rocked Sasha back and forth and said: ‘We won, darling. We’re safe.’ She would have liked to have told somebody properly about it: been able to boast. To someone like Charlie, for instance.

  With the pressure of Tudin finally removed she could think about Charlie again. She would have to take a holiday. She couldn’t do what she intended from Moscow.

  One of the most important strands of the safety net which Charlie Muffin always tried to have beneath him when he was working was the fullest knowledge possible before taking the first step forward, so he was glad of the delay on the visa application. He spent the entire day following his briefing from Patricia Elder studying the Beijing files, working from before Foster’s appointment or even Snow’s arrival through until the most recent folder. That folder contained duplicates of the incriminating photographs, as well as several of Li Dong Ming. Charlie thought the Chinese looked quite a pleasant-faced man. But then so had some photographs of Hitler and Stalin.

  Charlie had finished his reading and was sitting in deep contemplation when Walter Foster entered, looking around in obvious and immediate disappointment. ‘I was hoping this would be about a new assignment but it isn’t, is it?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ said Charlie. ‘But I know how you feel.’

  ‘Have they got Snow yet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They will. The man was an idiot.’

  ‘Tell me about him. Everything about him.’

  Foster frowned. ‘There’s not going to be another attempt to get him out?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ avoided Charlie, smoothly. ‘Far too dangerous. I’ve just got to write one of those reports: you know how bureaucratic everything is.’

  ‘It’s going to end in disaster,’ insisted Foster.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Charlie, mildly. It really was time people thought of a different way to describe what the outcome was going to be.

  Forty

  It did not take Charlie long to form an opinion about Walter Foster and it confused him, as quite a lot in the files and records had confused him. Despite insisting that he wanted every detail – he actually used the word debriefing – Charlie had constantly to interrupt the former liaison man to clarify or bring out points Foster seemed to consider unimportant: it quickly became an account to justify himself. The priest, Charlie decided, had been handled very badly. Which added further to the confusion.

  ‘You dictated the contact procedure?’ queried Charlie.

  ‘Not me,’ said Foster, instantly defensive. ‘London’s orders. Standard stuff: the usual separation from the embassy.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have adjusted it?’ Charlie wondered if that was what Gower had tried to do.

  ‘Snow wanted too much: virtually meetings every week. That would have been dangerous.’

  ‘Your decision?’

  ‘Following orders.’

  ‘How often did you meet?’

  ‘Regularly enough, when there were things at the embassy that the British community came to. And then when we needed to, just the two of us.’

  ‘How often were the embassy occasions?’ persisted Charlie.

  Foster shrugged. ‘Once a month, I suppose. Sometimes a little longer. That was the benefit of how we worked: there wasn’t a pattern that could be identified.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you meet Snow as often as the man wanted?’

  ‘For exactly the objection I’ve just told you!’ insisted Foster, indignantly. ‘It would have created a pattern that could have been picked up.’

  ‘Snow’s not well?’

  ‘He suffers from asthma,’ qualified Foster.

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been the perfect way for Snow to have met you whenever he liked, coming to the embassy for medication or to see the resident doctor?’

  From the surprise obvious on Foster’s face, Charlie guessed the opportunity hadn’t occurred to the other man.

  ‘The instructions were always that there had to be no provable embassy link. That was always how I had to work.’

  ‘How did you feel about him, personally?’ Charlie was curious how Foster would explain the breakdown between himself and the priest.

  The man coloured slightly, heightening the sandstorm of freckles. ‘He was arrogant.’

  ‘So you didn’t get on?’

  ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘I would have thought it was, in a place like Beijing.’

  ‘We had a working relationship. It was satisfactory.’

  It very definitely hadn’t been, thought Charlie. It had been obvious that he should talk to the man who had been the priest’s Control, but he wasn’t learning at all what he’d expected. He wasn’t sure, at that moment, exactly what he was learning. ‘How were things between Snow and the other priest, Father Robertson?’

  Foster shrugged again. ‘Not particularly good, I don’t think. Robertson was very worried about upsetting the Chinese and getting the mission closed down.’

  Charlie frowned. ‘Snow told you that?’

  ‘Several times. He called Robertson an old woman.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  ‘I only met him a few times, at embassy things. He seemed nervous but I always thought that was understandable, after being jailed like he was.’

  ‘Did he talk about that?’

  ‘Not to me. It was something we all knew about, at the embassy. It made him kind of a celebrity.’

  They didn’t know yet how Gower had been arrested, Charlie remembered. ‘Apart from the occasions when he could visit the embassy for some event, you always signalled Snow for a meeting? Or he signalled you?’

  The other man nodded. ‘Usually he signalled me. Like I said, he wanted too much contact.’

  ‘You always met in public places? Never went to the mission?’

  ‘Never!’ Foster seemed appalled at the suggestion.

  ‘You read about Gower’s arrest?’

  Foster nodded. ‘I guessed he was ours.’

  ‘I was wondering if he tried to do things differently from you. Tried to make a direct approach.’

  ‘If he’d done that, they’d have picked up Snow as well, wouldn’t they?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘None of this would have happened if he’d done what I told him.’

 
‘I thought there was some problem about leaving without his Order’s authority.’

  ‘An excuse, that’s all,’ insisted Foster. ‘He wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy.’

  ‘Beijing isn’t easy. People don’t realize.’

  ‘That’s true,’ sympathized Charlie. ‘People never do.’

  ‘I hope I’ve helped.’

  ‘You have,’ assured Charlie. ‘A lot.’

  ‘You’re sure you haven’t heard where my next posting is to be?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I didn’t like Beijing very much.’

  ‘I guessed,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s all behind you now.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  Why was it, wondered Charlie, that things dumped upon him so often didn’t make any sense at all?

  Julia had said she did not want to eat out, so she cooked at home, and Charlie quickly decided it was a mistake for him to have accepted. He tried very hard but she barely responded to anything he said. She pushed her plate away virtually untouched.

  ‘This isn’t exactly the last supper!’ he protested, still trying.

  ‘I don’t think that’s funny.’ It had been Julia who’d returned his visaed passport and given him the plane tickets for the following day.

  In view of the situation, Charlie had half expected a final briefing from Patricia Elder or even the Director-General himself, although he supposed there wasn’t anything further for them to talk about. ‘I’ll be all right.’ Julia’s concern unsettled him.

  ‘Gower’s fiancée was on television before you got here. She looked dreadful.’

  ‘Gower wanted me to meet her. I didn’t.’

  Julia nodded, not needing an explanation. ‘The deputy Director has tried to get her treated properly, at the Foreign Office. That’s why she was on television: going in to see one of the permanent secretaries.’

  So Patricia Elder wasn’t an ogress who used razor-blades for tampons after all. ‘That’s considerate.’

  ‘Won’t do much to help, though, will it?’

  ‘Still nothing on Snow? Or access to Gower?’ He supposed he would have been told, but he’d known of worse oversights, in the past.

  She shook her head. ‘There was a request to the Foreign Office, to send a lawyer out to help. They refused.’

  Drawbridges being raised, portcullises slammed down, recognized Charlie: he always had regarded that message about assistance and protection in the front of his passport as a load of bullshit. ‘There’s probably not a lot he could have done, in any practical sense.’ Except hopefully put up a faint smoke-screen for him.

  ‘For Christ’s sake be careful, Charlie.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I mean it!’

  ‘So do I.’ The early flight the following morning gave him an excuse to leave: he was certainly anxious to get away from the awkwardness. ‘I think I should be going.’

  ‘If you want …’Julia started, then stopped.

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie, more unsettled than ever.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He was very glad she hadn’t continued: Charlie didn’t want anything to go beyond the stage of being platonic. He was comfortable at that level. Not at many others.

  ‘Just don’t take any chances,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I see them, I avoid them,’ promised Charlie. Or sometimes turn them to my advantage, he thought, when he arrived in Beijing less than twenty-four hours later, although not on the aircraft for which Julia had given him a ticket but on a Pakistani flight to which he’d changed at London airport.

  He assimilated himself among the confusion of an organized tour group, staying close through the baggage collection and the straggling exit of overtired, overawed people as they crocodiled across the concourse to the waiting coach. Only then did he detach himself towards the taxis, but the tour guide, who wore an identifying armband and a lapel badge naming him as Peter, said: ‘Visiting by yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We’ll give you a lift in, if you like: there’s plenty of room on the coach.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ accepted Charlie. He hoped his luck continued like this: it was long overdue.

  Forty-one

  The tactics changed, which was predictable, so Gower was able to hold the fear off and retain the disguised resistance to appear an innocent man. The possibility of Chen realizing that he was resisting them – and by so doing showing the professional training that would confirm their accusations – became a greater concern than anything they did in their efforts to break him.

  Having announced their intention to set the trap at the Taoist shrine, they left him absolutely alone for what Gower estimated to be a full day and a night, broken only once by another delivery of foul and discreetly discarded food by the same bowed old man and his two army guards. And in contrast to his first day of imprisonment, there was absolute and echoing silence, so there was not the slightest distraction or interruption to his imagination conjuring the apprehension of what would happen to him if they did make another arrest. Gower refused himself any false assurances. If Snow was detained, simply by the suspicion of being a Caucasian near the Taoist temple, he would be lost. If it happened – if he was confronted by proof that the priest was arrested and had broken and had identified the shrine and the flower signal – then he was in a new and far more dangerous situation which he would have to handle when it arose. But not before. He refused to let his imagination do their job for them.

  The silent treatment was actually counter-productive, and while recognizing its intention Gower was surprised by it, seizing the advantage properly to rest and push back as far as he could the effect of sleep deprivation. He did so now stretched full-length on the concrete ledge, for any observation through the Judas-hole, because that was how an innocent man, recovering slightly from the initial shock of detention, would try to sleep. It was still rigidly uncomfortable but he’d largely adjusted to the stink of the lavatory hole and the uniform he was forced to wear. There were occasions when he fully lost consciousness, and for the rest of the time he slept more deeply than when he had squatted, that first day, but there was practically always the vague subconscious awareness of everything around him. He came, for instance, quickly awake at the scratching.

  One rat was already out of the toilet hole, easily climbing the table leg to forage along its top where any spilled or dropped food scraps would have been: the second was sniffing its way out, briefly disturbing the irritated flies. It followed the obviously familiar route, scuttling quickly up to join the first.

  Gower remained lying as he was, making himself watch and accept, refusing the revulsion at the actual sight of what he’d already known to exist within the hole. The rats were brown and plump and their fur had a sheen of cleanliness he didn’t expect from the imagined slime from which they had emerged. He wondered if these were the only two or whether there were more. Probably more. Probably a whole colony. He distantly remembered hearing or reading that rats always existed in colonies: he’d have to be particularly careful to keep his hands from coming into any contact with the table-top over which they would have trailed their infections.

  With his watch taken from him, denied any natural light and having slept for intermittent periods, Gower was unable to judge whether it was day or night when the peep-hole disturbance began again, which worried him, because losing track of time was a footstep on the way to disorientation. His concern was brief because Gower knew he could establish a rough schedule from the moment of his next interrogation.

  The next meal was noodles, which were sour and which Gower guessed really did have maggots in them, from the shifting movement under the surface pasta strands that had nothing to do with the mucus-like soup in which they floated. The observation hole scraped open, so again Gower went through the eating and drinking pretence, his back to the person watching. He reset his mental clock to gauge the intervals between the apparently
resumed inspections, to dispose of the entire contents of the bowl.

  Not eating wasn’t a risk to Gower’s opposition: wouldn’t be for a very long time. He knew the human body could go for weeks without nourishment, before the hallucinations began. And so far he had not felt the slightest hunger.

  Water was the problem. The effect of dehydration was far quicker, destabilizing in a matter of days. Already his mouth felt completely dry, very little saliva forming when he tried to generate it, and there was a scratchiness in his throat when he swallowed, which he tried to avoid as much as possible.

  Gower supposed it would have been sometime during the third day – or maybe the third night – when he was finally forced to take the fetid water, unable to deprive himself any longer. He did not fully drink it. He took a minimal amount, four sips, flushing it around his mouth before spitting it disgustedly into the hole. The relief was very brief: his throat remained scratchy.

  If he did develop diarrhoea he would quickly become even more dehydrated, Gower knew. And need to take even more of the water, which would worsen the infection and tighten the circle of demeaning, eroding illness.

  Dear God let something, anything, happen soon! Horrified, Gower checked the thought. That was despair. And despair went with fear. He wasn’t entirely successful in controlling it. Surely, he continued to think, somebody had to be doing something by now!

  Snow felt he had exhausted all the prayers of which he was capable, agonized by the immediate blasphemy of a priest ever exhausting the capacity to pray. Finally, as he’d always known he would, which wove thorns into the guilt, Snow went to the mission chief, appalled at his own hypocrisy.

  ‘Father,’ he said. ‘Would you please hear my confession?’

  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.