Charlie’s Apprentice

to adjust to everything else.

‘How’s the course?’ asked Marcia.

‘OK.’ His pause was longer than before.

‘What sort of course is it?’

Another hesitation. ‘Difficult to define, really. I suppose it’s to see how well I’ve learned everything else.’ Gower wasn’t at all sure that was correct, but it was the best he could offer.

‘What are the people like?’

It was obvious she would expect there to be a classroom group. ‘Odd,’ he said, honestly, giving his personal judgement on his instructor with shuffling shoes.

‘Like them?’

‘Too soon to say.’ He’d done what had occurred to him at the first meeting and was apprehensive now at the outcome. Whatever, he knew he’d made the right decision. ‘How’s it going in Manchester?’

‘I’ve had two invitations to dinner tonight. One guy has a gold tooth and claims he owns a Rolls Royce.’

‘Accepted either?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘If I said no it would mean I didn’t trust you. As I do trust you, I don’t think it’s my decision.’

‘But do you want me to?’ she persisted.

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I refused both.’

It had taken Charlie days of trying to catch the same downward elevator as Julia Robb. She showed no sign of recognition.

‘I’ve been meaning to thank you for the other day.’

For what?’

‘Miller keeps his intercom live, so he can hear what happens in the outside office, doesn’t he? Could have been embarrassing for me. So thanks.’

She gave no confirmation but she did smile, very briefly.

‘I think I owe you a drink,’ pressed Charlie.

‘I thought we’d covered all this already?’

‘For the benefit of the open intercom.’

Julia smiled more broadly. ‘Just for a drink?’

Charlie looked open-faced at the joint personal assistant for both the Director-General and his deputy. ‘What else?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Sometimes the old tricks were the best, reflected Charlie.

Eight

For long periods – as long as a total of six months on one occasion – Charlie’s mother had retreated from any reality, unreachable in total catatonia. It had all changed with the development of new drugs. Now she was invariably brightly alert, chattering constantly, although the senility was still well advanced. The largely one-sided conversations were confused and disjointed, the names of the men of whom she boasted so proudly more imagined than properly remembered any more. That afternoon she’d identified Charlie’s father by two different names, neither of whom he believed responsible for his conception and twice called him William instead of Charlie. He remained at the nursing home for an hour, leaving with the usual assurance to come again soon, which he repeated at the matron’s office on the way out, without stipulating a positive date: it was automatic for him to avoid creating the most innocent of patterns, even in something as mundane as visiting a bedridden mother suffering Alzheimer’s Disease. It was automatic to check the car park for occupied, waiting vehicles when he left. Abruptly he stopped, just as he immediately afterwards consciously avoided the instinctive pursuit check on the twisted and curved road leading from the home.

He didn’t have to bother any more. He was no longer active: no longer an operational officer who had always to be alert to everything around him, never able properly to relax. Charlie accepted he was effectively retired: like those sad, mentally eroding people he’d just left, sitting motionless in chairs, living in yesterday.

Charlie took the hire car out on to the main road, coming to the big decision of the day, where to have lunch. There was the Stockbridge hotel which didn’t let rooms to the general public ahead of one of Britain’s most exclusive fishing clubs. Or a country pub further on. Or wait until he got to London. A country inn, he decided. He still hadn’t found anywhere he really liked around the new flat in Primrose Hill: all wine bars and mobile phones that never rang. Charlie had been much more at home south of the Thames: like an animal, knowing its own warren. Denied him now though, even for a casual return visit to the Pheasant with the best pork pies in London, beer from the wood and Islay malt whisky always available.

Was it still denied him? Hadn’t he already decided he didn’t have to bother, no longer being operational? Yes. No. Confused self-pity, Charlie decided, annoyed. Of course he had to stay away, even for a casual pub visit. There was no doubt – there was proof!. – the Russians had located the Vauxhall flat, in the targeting operation that had included Natalia and which he still didn’t understand: whatever their failed objective and the now much changed circumstances of Moscow, he couldn’t go back.

The inn was alongside the river on which the exclusive club had its rods and which still had some of the best fishing in England, despite – ironically – the pollution of the bankside fish farms breeding trout the size of small whales. The menu insisted the salmon was locally caught so Charlie took a chance. The beer was good – not as good as the Pheasant, but good enough – and he got a seat at an outside table, overlooking the hurrying, insect- swarmed river.

The self-annoyance at thinking as he had about his old apartment at Vauxhall stayed with Charlie, becoming more specifically focused. What the fuck was this self-pity all about? OK, so his pride was hurt. But it was an assignment. He was – for the moment or maybe forever – a schoolmaster. Which on the surface he hated. He’d never liked schoolmasters who’d always, in his experience, been bullying bastards. But hadn’t he been a bullying bastard in the first encounter with John Gower? Why didn’t he properly fulfil, to the absolute best of a personally never doubted ability, the job he’d been given? Which would be to instil the attitude and aptitude always for self-preservation, by John Gower, of John Gower. To make John Gower as good as he’d been himself, in the past.

Deep within the bar the number of his food order was distantly called, breaking Charlie’s reflection while he collected and carried it back to his waterside place: the salmon was properly sized, not a fish farm freak, and tasted earthily fresh. He was outwardly content.

Could he make John Gower – could he make anyone – his alter ego? Charlie felt the challenge stir, the self-pity receding further. He didn’t know: couldn’t know, until he tried. But he determined to try: to accept the function he’d been given, maybe still hoping in the far back reaches of his mind that it was only temporary and that he might one day go back on to the active roster. In the meantime he’d give everything he had to turning Gower and whoever else might follow into the best intelligence officers possible.

Having made the positive decision Charlie felt … felt what? Illogically the emotion seemed to be relief, which didn’t make any sense but was the closest description he could find. Even more illogical, it seemed that only now, on a Hampshire river bank in the early spring sunshine, picking his way through a perfect fish, had he properly realized what he’d been ordered to do. Not properly realized: properly accepted, professionally putting all his pride and resentment aside to start thinking like the teacher he had become. He would genuinely try to teach John Gower everything he’d ever learned in a bruised and battered life in the very specialized art of saving his ass. Or at least not getting his ass too badly burned.

Charlie had intentionally introduced a day’s gap before his next contact with Gower, hoping for something to emerge from his initial encounter with the man. There was nothing official from the ninth floor when he got into his office the following day, and Charlie was disappointed, although he supposed it was too much to expect it to have happened the first time. He still wished it had.

It was not until late into the afternoon, gone four, that the summons came from Patricia Elder. It was a