Charlie’s Apprentice

And then he saw the man.

The supposed diplomat was hurrying from the direction of the pagoda, head lowered, eyes to the ground, as if he were trying physically to diminish himself. Getting nearer the bench upon which Snow sat, Foster lifted his head to make a last-minute check before lowering himself on to the adjoining seat. The entire charade had looked absurdly furtive.

‘We’re quite clear,’ announced Foster. He was a small man, red hair awry from his hurried walk, red-faced as well from the exertion. The redness accentuated the freckles. The three jacket buttons of his tight, blue-striped suit were all secured: he didn’t undo them when he sat down, straining into tight ridges the cloth around his slightly bulged body. In his lap his hands moved constantly one over the other, as if he were washing them.

‘Of course we are!’ said Snow. ‘We could have set up something far more sensible if you’d agreed to see me before I left.’

‘It wasn’t possible.’

‘It could have been made possible. I’m not prepared to go on like this. If you want me to continue – if London wants me to continue – there must be regular meetings.’

‘I could talk with London. They make the rules.’

Snow sighed, wondering if the man had ever made an independent decision in his life. ‘If there’s no improvement, I want to take it up with London myself.’

There was another sideways look. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘I do not want to do anything to endanger your position here. Or your career. I will show you any letter I wish to be sent on to London.’

Foster was silent for several moments. ‘You’re being very honest.’

‘Priests are supposed to be honest.’ It was not, Snow accepted, a dictum he practised with Father Robertson. He considered the deceit justified. There was a concentrated movement far away to their right, a few people running, and Snow realized that the wind was dropping and the kites with it: two or three seemed to have collided, snarling their lines.

‘I was told very specifically in London that there never had to be any official difficulty: since the changes in Moscow, this is the most sensitive posting in the world.’

Snow sighed again, realizing there was no purpose in taking this up at a local level. ‘Talk to London,’ he urged, but patiently at last. ‘Say – and I really want you to say – that I can’t continue working under this present arrangement.’

‘That is a threat!’ insisted the man.

‘It’s a choice. Your choice. London’s choice.’ Snow was surprised he didn’t feel more uncomfortable, talking so aggressively: actually browbeating the other man. But was he? Wasn’t he, rather, trying to restore a situation to the proper footing, the way he’d operated with all Foster’s predecessors?

There was another silence between them, longer this time. Across the park, all the birdlike kites had come home to roost: men were huddled in head-bent intensity, untangling strings. At last Foster said: ‘Tell me about the trip.’

Well rehearsed, Snow went chronologically through the journey, setting out the successes before reaching Zhengzhou and the less easily documented findings afterwards. He finished by edging along the seat to the other man a brown paper carton containing canisters of all the film he had exposed, his journal of the map coordinates he believed important and his full written account of everything that had happened. Foster became more and more agitated during the narrative, finally twisting directly to face the priest.

‘You were suspected!’ declared Foster, at once.

‘For being what? Nothing happened to me – no conversation was ever begun with me – that doesn’t happen every day to every waiguoren in every major city in China.’

‘No!’ refused Foster. ‘You were under surveillance! Oh my God!’

‘Stop it!’ ordered Snow, curtly, unhappy at the other man’s panicked reaction. ‘I’m not under surveillance now. You personally checked it, before making the meeting. So you know you’re safe: that I’m safe.’

‘From what you’ve said Li seems far more than an escort. You were targeted.’ He straightened further, looking apprehensively around the grassed area.

‘If I was targeted, it failed, didn’t it? I saw every ploy for what it was and refused to respond. Not even Li – for all the effort he put into trying to make me say or do something indiscreet – could make the slightest accusation in any report that I couldn’t refute on every level.’

‘I don’t like it,’ complained Foster. ‘I’ll have to give a full account to London.’ Again he looked nervously around him.

‘I’ve already done that, in my own report.’

‘They’ll need my opinion, too.’

Coloured to maintain the arm’s-length meetings, guessed Snow. ‘We’ll need to meet again for me to get their decision how we’re going to meet in the future.’

Foster attempted to back off immediately. ‘We could use a normal drop.’

‘I want a personal meeting.’

‘The same as today,’ insisted Foster. ‘If I am not happy, I won’t make the contact.’

Something had to be done! ‘Don’t run out on me.’

‘What are you accusing me of?’

‘I know how sensitive everything is here,’ avoided Snow. ‘Nothing has been endangered. Nor will it be. There’s no reason for anyone to lose their heads.’

‘London’s got to decide about all this,’ said Foster. ‘There has been a lot of government-inspired comment in the People’s Daily about foreign intervention and counter-revolution. Something is building up.’

Snow decided that instead of being his link with London this man was a positive barrier. ‘But not connected with me. So there’s nothing for London to decide: they just have to be told about what happened.’

‘You’ve got to take care!’ said the embassy man.

‘I always take care,’ sighed Snow, bored with the need for repetition. He’d have to complain, irrespective of any effect it had upon Foster’s career.

‘Extra care.’

Snow felt his chest begin to tighten. He always carried a relieving inhaler, but he was strangely reluctant to ease the asthma by using it in front of the other man. Foster might construe it as being brought on by matching nervousness when in fact it was caused by his angry impotence, at this fool and this meeting.

‘You leave first,’ ordered Foster. ‘I’ll watch you out: make sure you’re clear.’

‘A week from now. Here,’ repeated Snow. ‘No flower signal nonsense.’

‘All right,’ said Foster, uncertainly.

Snow did feel some apprehension, walking from the park, and his anger at the other man increased for creating the totally unnecessary tension. His discomfort grew, banding tighter, and he began to strain for breath. But still he denied himself the relief until he knew he was well beyond Foster’s view. By which time he had left it too late. The seat was actually filming before his eyes when he reached it, slumping down to fumble the inhaler finally to his mouth. It took a long time for the muscles to relax: even then there was a rasping wheeze which Snow knew would take maybe an hour completely to leave him.

It was the worst attack he could remember for months and it disturbed him. Foster was a fool, to have caused it: a frightened, stupid fool who was making life intolerable, physically now as in every other way. Snow didn’t see any reason to worry about the man’s career: clearly Foster loathed it and would positively welcome a chance of escape.

‘He really is unusual,’ admitted Gower. ‘Not at all what you’d imagine anyone attached to the Foreign Office to be like.’ Very nominally attached, Gower qualified, to himself.

‘So what is he like?’ demanded Marcia, sharing the dinner wine evenly between them.

‘He complains all the time about bad feet: wears things that look more like snowshoes than proper footwear. I suppose the first impression is that he’s scruffy but he’s really not: that’s the trick. It’s difficult to get a proper picture of him at all, even when you’ve been with him as constantly as I have.’