Charlie’s Apprentice

satisfaction at the end of it. No, he rejected at once. He could have still recovered, if he’d found himself in a genuine situation: dodged and weaved, evaded a problem. There was still no satisfaction: failed mental masturbation.

Charlie remained unsettled after he got back, in good time, to his Primrose Hill apartment after returning the hire car. He confirmed the order in which he’d left the letters on the mat, before picking them up, and checked the traps he’d set in the bedroom and the kitchen by leaving the doors slightly ajar. There had not been any entry. There was still time to shower before meeting Julia.

In the bar, during the theatre interval, Charlie said: ‘Gower came to see me: said he was going operational.’

Julia regarded him seriously. ‘Still missing it?’

‘Always will,’ said Charlie, shortly.

‘Let go!’ she pleaded. ‘Accept it’s over!’

He couldn’t, Charlie realized. Not yet, though maybe he should after that afternoon’s fuck-up. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘Welcome back!’ greeted the Director-General.

Walter Foster smiled, although uncertainly, looking between the man and Patricia Elder, unsure what sort of meeting it was going to be. At once he blurted: ‘I believe it was essential I leave: it wasn’t panic or anything like that.’

‘We’re sure it wasn’t,’ soothed the woman.

‘You said it had to be an on-the-ground decision,’ continued the man, unconvinced by her assurance.

‘It’s officially recorded, on file,’ said Miller. ‘We’re glad you’re back. We need your impressions: everything. Far better than written reports.’

Foster relaxed, very slightly. ‘Quite simple. Snow’s blown: they’re just waiting their time. Maybe waiting for something positively incriminating, although I’m not sure they’ll bother.’

‘And Snow himself?’

Foster, who was perched on the very edge of the visitor’s chair in the Director-General’s office, had finally to look away from their concentrated attention, disguising the avoidance as a moment of head-lowered contemplation, properly to answer the query. Tentatively he said. ‘He is not an easy person. Never has been.’

‘Go on,’ urged Patricia Elder.

Foster hardly needed the prompting. ‘He and I never hit it off: it was always particularly difficult.’

‘His last complete report was a refusal to work with you any longer,’ Miller pointed out.

Instantly Foster inferred criticism. ‘I am extremely sorry about the breakdown. I did everything I believed proper and safe to correct it. Followed your orders from here to the letter. Nothing worked.’

‘That becomes clear, from your side of the exchanges,’ said the Director-General.

Foster relaxed again. ‘He’s extremely arrogant. Refuses to accept that he is under any sort of official scrutiny.’

‘What do you think?’ said Patricia Elder.

‘He’s unquestionably under suspicion.’

Miller waved a hand generally towards the folders in their neat order on his desk. ‘There didn’t seem to be any doubt, from what you already provided. So it’s the arrogance that’s preventing his coming out?’

‘He insisted it’s the Jesuit Curia that holds the power of withdrawal over him,’ qualified the former liaison man. ‘He won’t accept that he’s been compromised. He thinks there will always be an explanation to satisfy the authorities.’

‘We’re having trouble with the Technical Division, over the photographs,’ disclosed Patricia, slightly changing the direction of the debriefing. ‘Zhengzhou is no trouble: they were virtually tourist shots, apart from identifying Li for our records. It’s the Shanghai prints we can’t successfully alter.’

‘Not at all?’ queried Foster. He had been right, getting out when there was still the chance: he couldn’t conceive what a Chinese detention centre or prison would be like. Whatever, Foster was sure he could not have survived any term of imprisonment without quickly losing his mind.

Miller took up the explanation. ‘They can, intentionally, be poorly developed. With two that is very effective: reduces the background virtually to make what is technogically interesting on the warships meaningless …’ He paused. ‘But on two it doesn’t work.’

‘What about positively changing the Shanghai background?’

‘He was photographing away from the city and the Bund, towards the river. It’s impossible,’ dismissed Miller.

Foster smiled, pleased as the idea came to him. ‘Why worry about the real photographs at all? Why don’t we send back four completely innocuous photographs of Shanghai that Snow didn’t take?’

Miller and the woman swapped looks. Patricia said: ‘According to Snow, Li took pictures too. They’ve got a comparison, to put against whatever we provide: every photograph was to be from exactly the same position, with exactly the same climatic conditions, even to the same cloud formations.’

Beneath his red hair Foster blushed slightly, bringing out the freckles. ‘Can’t we ask the Curia to bring him out?’

‘How? And on what grounds?’ demanded the Director-General. ‘We couldn’t explain the reason for our approaching them. Or even how we know a man named Jeremy Snow is a Jesuit priest, in Beijing. Believe me, if that had been a route to follow, we’d have done it weeks ago.’

Foster flushed further. ‘What then?’

‘More persuasion,’ said Patricia Elder.

There was a brief silence in the room. Then Foster said: ‘By somebody else?’

‘Yes,’ said Miller.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Foster, accepting the criticism without it having to be openly made by either of them.

‘You were an accredited British diplomat attached to the embassy,’ reminded the woman. ‘You’re out. We’re saved official embarrassment, if Snow gets arrested. The government line will be to deny all knowledge of any Chinese accusation: dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.’

‘Which means completely abandoning Snow,’ said Foster.

‘He was told to get out,’ said Miller, with a hint of irritability. ‘And we are making another attempt.’

‘He won’t come,’ said the liaison man, flatly.

‘Then his problems are his own, aren’t they?’ said the Director-General.

Neither spoke for several moments after Foster had left. Then Patricia said: ‘He didn’t ask what his next assignment was going to be.’

‘Foster’s a fool whose use is over,’ dismissed Miller.

‘What are we going to do with him?’

Miller shrugged. ‘Something internal, I suppose. Nothing we need to decide in a hurry. You ready for Gower?’

The woman nodded: ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow. His flight leaves in the afternoon.’

‘I wonder if it will work,’ said Miller, unexpectedly reflective.

‘I wish to Christ I knew,’ said Patricia.

Twenty-three

Gower’s final, eve-of-departure briefing was given by Patricia Elder alone. She provided two identifying photographs of Snow, explained he was a priest and described the need to get him out as an operational tragedy. She went carefully through the contact and meeting procedures, making Gower repeat them until she was satisfied he had completely memorized them.

‘We couldn’t risk a spy-cell accusation, involving Snow and Foster,’ said the deputy Director. ‘And we still can’t. Don’t set up any contact with Snow outside the embassy, where you’re vulnerable and beyond diplomatic protection. Use the Taoist temple signal to get Snow to a letter drop of your choice. And use the drop to bring him to the embassy. Tell