Charlie’s Apprentice cm-10

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘This is all circumstantial,’ suggested Julia, uncertainly. ‘You’ve no proof the Chinese monitor.’

  ‘Every country monitors embassy traffic!’ insisted Charlie. ‘There was a lot for Beijing to listen to. The day before Gower went out, there was another cable from London, to the embassy. It said Second Hunter arriving. All Gower needed, from the moment of his arrival, was a sign around his neck.’ Charlie paused. Why, he wondered, hadn’t Gower done what he’d been told, always to travel under his own, personal arrangements? Too inexperienced, Charlie guessed. He smiled again, this time in his acceptance of the second bottle. Julia’s glass was still full, untouched, so he only bothered with his own. ‘It didn’t stop there. I made a specific request, to Patricia Elder, that everything about my going to Beijing should be by diplomatic pouch, so there couldn’t be any electronic interception. Yet the day before I got there, there was an open cable message about Hunter Three. It was lucky I wasn’t on the plane they expected me to be.’ Luck, reflected Charlie, had nothing at all to do with it.

  Julia drank at last. Soft-voiced, she said: ‘I typed the cables … I didn’t realize … Christ, Charlie, I did it and I didn’t even realize what I was being told to do …!’

  ‘It’s not your fault: not important.’

  ‘Not important! Snow’s dead. We don’t know yet what Gower went through. You could have gone through the same. Worse even!’

  Time to move on, Charlie decided. ‘I might not have thought about looking in Hong Kong if it hadn’t been for something Samuels said. Silly really. It’s just that I listen to everything. He talked about Snow being “swept up”. That’s a trade expression: departmental. Not the way a diplomatic officer talks. And then, later, he referred to the fact that Snow had used the confessional to tell Father Robertson what he had done, to get permission to run. Snow told me he’d done it. Only me. And I didn’t tell anybody. So the only other person from whom Samuels could have learned about it was Robertson himself. There were a lot of other things, as well. Like a political officer baby-sitting a sick missionary, which a person of his rank and pomposity would never have done, unless of course he was the man’s Control and worried that Robertson, sick with remorse at what he was doing, might have hallucinated and talked about it. No message ever got to or from Rome, about Robertson’s illness, incidentally. Or about the Chinese targeting Snow. I know because I stopped off in Rome on the way back: the Jesuit Curia didn’t know what I was talking about. That was the advantage of mailing through the British embassy: Samuels could filter everything. Run a very tight ship.’

  Julia moved her head, aimlessly, stunned.

  ‘Samuels is the Resident, isn’t he?’

  The head movement was more positive, a refusal to confirm the question.

  ‘Snow’s death told me,’ said Charlie. ‘English was OK to set up the airport decoy, making plane reservations I never intended to take up. But I needed Samuels’ ability to speak Mandarin to go through the train departures. That’s how the Chinese were able to have so many men in place, at the station: Samuels told Robertson how we were planning to get away. And Robertson alerted the people to whom he is really answering these days.’

  ‘No!’ disputed Julia, at once. ‘If they knew Snow was on the Nanchang train – moved against him when he left, to get to you – how come they didn’t get you, as well?’

  ‘They tried,’ said Charlie, smiling across at her. ‘The Shanghai express wasn’t the only train leaving at five that afternoon. There was one to Changsha, four tracks further along the concourse. That’s the train I told Samuels I was catching: the train I saw surrounded by troops as I left.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Julia, aghast.

  ‘Which was another very good reason why I didn’t want to catch the plane out of Beijing that Samuels ordered me to catch: considerately booked for me.’

  ‘You think they’d still have tried to put you and Gower on trial, if they’d got you?’

  ‘If they’d caught me.’

  ‘You sure Pickering was part of it?’

  ‘It all goes back to the nonsense of how Snow was treated. Not in the beginning. Then Snow was properly handled by his Control. There was a man called Bowley. Another named George Street. Their liaison procedures were impeccable. Snow could make his meetings through the public event visits through the embassy but more regularly by using the trips for his asthma medication from the resident doctor. I checked with two who have retired to Sussex. But then Pickering arrived. The same Pickering who sent a cable on a security reserved line to London – but monitored in Hong Kong, where I found it – informing Miller directly of a meeting I had with him. The same Pickering who from the moment of his arrival in Beijing closed down the asthma drug facility and told Snow he had in future to get his stuff from Rome, separating him from the embassy. Like Foster kept the poor bastard at arm’s length, although Foster didn’t know how he was being used in the scheme, constantly to expose Snow and force him into that ridiculous message-signalling crap, which really did become obsolete with the ending of the Cold War that everyone keeps on about. Foster – another first-time appointee, according to the files – was too stupid to have realized or suspected, of course.’

  ‘Why was Foster withdrawn, for Gower and you to go in?’

  ‘Foster’s withdrawal indicated panic, for the Chinese to pick up on: don’t forget, we were doing it to fool them and keep Robertson safe: we didn’t know we were fooling ourselves. Gower going in – and me after him – showed more panic. It was all part of Miller and Patricia Elder’s perfect package. With the Chinese laughing their balls off at all the effort we were going to for their benefit.’

  ‘It’s inconceivable that Snow and Gower and you were considered expendable, to protect one man!’ refused the girl.

  Charlie slowly moved his head from side to side. ‘Not to keep someone like Robertson in place. I don’t know, but Robertson must have proved himself over and over again to London. The Chinese would have guaranteed that. They must have passed over an enormous amount of genuine stuff to have built up Robertson’s credibility. You any idea what a completely trusted agent can do, feeding disinformation back to people who never query it because he’s so reliable?’

  Julia visibly shuddered, pushing her glass forward for more wine. ‘Why?’ she demanded sharply. ‘Why any of this? Why did Snow and Gower and you have to be entrapped? I can’t accept what you’re telling me!’

  ‘Robertson was an asset, always to be protected,’ insisted Charlie. ‘That’s why Snow was approached, as permanent, in-place insurance against Robertson being suspected by the Chinese: approached by our idiots who didn’t know Robertson was with the Chinese ever since his brainwashing imprisonment. Snow told me at the embassy our people came to him within days of his appointment to Beijing being decided by his Curia, before any public announcements. Again, that could only have come from Robertson, who would have been consulted beforehand. Any mistake Robertson made could have been switched on to Snow. Who was always expendable, as far as London was concerned. But it wasn’t London who became concerned. It was Beijing. Because Snow was too good. Look what he got on that trip, despite being chaperoned by Li. Snow was bloody marvellous! So he had to be got rid of. And then there was the Chinese decision to move against their dissidents again. But not like before, in Tiananmen. The international outcry was too much then: they couldn’t risk arbitrary round-ups and imprisonment. It had to be internationally acceptable. Robertson would have marked Zhang Su Lin the moment he came into the mission. What better way of staging a countrywide swoop and a huge and genuine show trial than by being able to prove a connection between Zhang and Snow – both of whom would have confessed – with Gower and me thrown in for good measure? It was perfect.’

  Julia was slumped wearily over the table. ‘It’s still difficult to follow: I’m not even sure I want to follow it!’

  ‘No one was supposed to follow it,’ said Charlie. ‘Not the way Miller and Patricia Elder set it up, believin
g Robertson at risk of exposure because of the past connection of the mission with Zhang Su Lin. And certainly not how the Chinese twisted it back against us, to rid themselves of a troublesome priest.’

  Julia straightened, seemingly too overwhelmed to argue against him any more. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve done all I can,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve warned them against Robertson, which is the most important thing. It means we haven’t got an asset left in Beijing, but at least we’re not going to be misled with phoney information, for as long as the old bastard goes on living …’ He shrugged, resigned. ‘I could challenge them, about Samuels and Pickering and all the intercepted messages, but you know and I know that I’d achieve bugger-all. There’d be denials. Within an hour, there would be no evidence left in the Hong Kong files.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ agreed Julia, sadly.

  ‘I’m screwed,’ said Charlie. ‘Not as badly or as much as they intended me to be. But I’m still screwed.’

  ‘I wish there was something – any thing – that I could do!’

  Now Charlie straightened. ‘You’ve done a lot already.’

  ‘It just doesn’t seem fair!’

  ‘Life isn’t.’ Charlie looked enquiringly around the room, for their waitress. ‘We haven’t even ordered yet.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I am!’ said Charlie, enthusiastically. ‘A lot of that Chinese food was shit!’ He ordered cajun blackened chicken. It was good.

  It was an easier run down from London than he’d expected, so Charlie had time to stop at the Stockbridge hotel that allowed the exclusive fishing club their special privileges. They had Islay malt, which he recognized as his privilege. He savoured two whiskies, still trying to plan his moves to survive in the department, which he was determined to do. The snare he’d already laid seemed very inadequate: he still wasn’t sure whether – or how – to play his trump card.

  Charlie was still at the nursing home when visiting began, hesitating at the matron’s office to apologize for his recent absence.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here at last,’ said the woman. ‘We’ve got something for you.’ Seeing Charlie’s reaction when he opened the package, she said worriedly: ‘Whatever is it? I thought for a moment you were going to faint.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie, thick-throated. He’d thought he was going to collapse, as well. And he’d never done that before, no matter how great the shock.

  The package contained two photographs.

  One was of the Director-General and Patricia Elder which he guessed he had actually seen being taken that morning outside the Regent’s Park penthouse.

  The other was of a baby. Written on the back, in handwriting he recognized because they’d often left notes for each other in Moscow, was: ‘Her name is Sasha’ and a date.

  Fifty

  Charlie cut the visit as short as he could, but it still took a supreme effort of will to sit by his mother’s bedside and maintain even a minimal conversation. It didn’t help that she was more alert than she had been for months, talking incessantly and clearly expecting him to stay much longer, as did the nursing home staff. He left promising to extend his next visit.

  He stopped again at the Stockbridge hotel, the first available convenient place, still feeling shaky. He couldn’t believe how close he’d been to collapsing when he’d recognized Natalia’s writing! He was getting far too bloody old for shocks like that. Shock wasn’t the right word, although it described how it had affected him. He couldn’t think how he wanted to express it, but revelation was one word that occurred to him. Escape – inexplicably – was another. Then he asked himself why it was important to categorize it at all, so he stopped bothering, because there was so much else he had to think about. He bought another Islay malt, a large one, and settled in a corner far away from any possible interruption. He drank, settling himself further. He laid the package on the table in front of him, but did not immediately take out the contents – stupidly reluctant to touch it in case it wasn’t true, stupid because it was true-staring down at it instead like a fortune-teller consulting a crystal ball.

  This had to tell him much more than a crystal ball had ever told any fortune-teller, he determined. And he had to read and understand every sign.

  His first and most important realization wasn’t that he was the father of a child named Alexandra, wonderful and incredible though that was: so wonderfully incredible that he knew he would need much more time to fully comprehend it.

  His initial and most important awareness was that Natalia had survived his abandonment in London, thus answering the persistent and recurring uncertainty that had nagged at him ever since he watched her keep the rendezvous from which he’d held back. Very quickly came the only possible progression. He hadn’t lost her! Natalia had traced him, so she didn’t hate him, as she had every right to hate him. As he’d expected her to.

  What else? Read the signs, read the signs! Too much nostalgia risked obscuring the reasoning she expected him to follow. Which he had to follow, not to lose her again. Only consider the important facts that the nostalgia had provided, then. Two essential points: that she had survived and that she’d found him. More to learn from the second than the first. Not just found him. Found Miller and Patricia Elder and the significance of Regent’s Park. Careful here! Nothing to do with the sort of bluff, double-bluff, agent, double-agent bullshit he’d so recently been involved with in Beijing. What Natalia was offering was personal, not business. Her dilemma, when she’d agonized about staying in London with him, had always been about an absolute refusal to become an informing defector against her own country, and because he knew her so well Charlie was sure that loyalty hadn’t changed.

  So why had she included the photograph that he’d actually – by astonishing coincidence – witnessed being taken? Not just taken, he qualified, moving towards a hopeful conclusion: officially taken. As part of an operation. Abruptly Charlie remembered the grey Ford in his rear-view mirror as he travelled back to London from the nursing home, briefly allowing himself the satisfaction of knowing that he had been right that day. The same operation?

  It all had to be guesswork, the most obvious and logical surmises he could reach, but Charlie thought he saw it. Natalia was telling him she hadn’t just survived but was now powerful enough to use the resources of the Russian agency virtually how she liked. To do which she had to be very powerful indeed.

  And the package at which he was still staring confirmed it! Powerful enough to travel to Koblenz, from where she’d posted it. But why to the nursing home? Because they’d talked about it! For all those months he’d been in Moscow he’d worried about not being able to make his usual visits and he’d talked about it to Natalia, although he couldn’t recall what he’d said that had remained with her after all this time to lead her to the location from which they followed him. But then lost him. Or rather he’d lost them! So the nursing home was all she had: the only way of reaching him again, if she chose to do so.

  Charlie pulled the contents from their folder at last, smiling down at the Moscow photograph. It was a Moscow photograph and a place he recognized. Alexandra – Sasha as Natalia obviously preferred to call her – was in an adjustable buggy, tilted back, seeming to smile up at the camera although she was obviously too young, not yet a year old, to know how to smile for a camera. But it was the background in which Charlie was interested. There appeared to be a monument of some sort but it was incomplete, only half a sphere. He was sure he knew it but couldn’t bring it to mind, no matter how fixedly he stared at it.

  Gradually, inevitably, his concentration slipped sideways to the second print, and then he fully appreciated what he was looking at – and how he could use it – and Charlie sniggered aloud, quickly stifling the reaction.

  For the moment Natalia and a baby he had never seen and never expected to have would have to wait. There was his own survival to guarantee. Charlie considered just one more drink, believing he de
served a celebration, but didn’t have it, anxious to get back to London to complete everything.

  The paper upon which the photograph was printed could be forensically proven to be Russian, and photographic paper anyway provides one of the best possible surfaces for fingerprints, so it had to be changed. Natalia’s fingerprints could be upon it and his own certainly were and Charlie wasn’t satisfied with just wiping either side with a cloth. He did that anyway, of course, as thoroughly as he could, before taking the print of Miller and Patricia Elder into a department store photocopying section. The assistant wore gloves, the way they all do. Charlie was extremely careful handling the copies that were returned to him, cupping his fingers only at the edges, where no print could register. When he got back to the Primrose Hill flat he actually used tweezers.

  He cut newsprint letters from that night’s Evening Standard to address the first envelope to the security division at Westminster Bridge Road, enclosing one duplicate photograph of Peter Miller and Patricia Elder arm-in-arm on the ring road around Regent’s Park.

  He addressed with the same cut-out letters the second duplicate print, again by itself without any attempted explanation, in a second envelope to Lady Ann Miller at the Berkshire stud listed in Who’s Who. Knowing that the franking was relevant, Charlie travelled back to Kensington to post them. He didn’t touch either envelope at any time with his bare hands.