Charlie’s Apprentice

intimate gestures like that. ‘It’s difficult to believe he’s been responsible for all that I’ve read in his files.’

Miller continued to frown, hoping the woman was not being over-cautious. ‘I’m not sure appearance has got anything to do with it …’

‘… I am,’ she interrupted, confident of their relationship. ‘I think everything about Charlie Muffin is calculated to mislead. And most certainly his appearance.’

‘I thought you might have told him just now, in front of me. Make it clear that it is with my authority.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s important he realizes from the beginning there’s no longer any special relationships: most definitely not with the Director-General. From now on he’s simply an ordinary officer who’s got to take orders, as and when they’re given. My orders. We’ll keep your authority for when he challenges me.’

‘Have you chosen someone?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘John Gower. University entrant. Incredibly keen. Scored the highest for interrogation resistance.’

‘When are you going to brief Muffin?’

She smiled. ‘When there’s a benefit to be gained. Which isn’t yet.’

Four floors below, Charlie Muffin was thinking: attempting a very personal – and therefore vitally important – assessment of where he stood. If he stood anywhere at all. A woman! He was to be ordered about by a woman! Why not? Why the automatic sexism? Because it had never happened before, that was why not. He’d never had to work this way. Nothing to do with her sex: it was to do with too many dismissive changes. He had no chauvinistic difficulty about the fact that Patricia Elder was a woman. Or that he was expected to do what she told him to do, when she told him to do it. He just hoped she was properly professional, that’s all. Which was male chauvinism.

She’d worked hard during their brief meeting, to make it clear how much she was the superior and he was the subordinate. Why? The peremptory manner could indicate nervousness, a bravado effort to intimidate him. Or, on the other hand, to show a self-assured confidence and convey that from now on he was very much the subordinate. What about Patricia Elder herself? No wedding ring, which had to be kept in mind. No discernible accent, but obviously well educated private school delivery. No bust to get excited about but the suit jacket was high buttoned and might have hidden a surprise. Nice legs, crossed without embarrassment at his quick examination: strong-featured, the nose almost too big and not helped by the shortness with which she wore her slightly greying hair. Better to have grown it longer. Interesting, full-lipped mouth and unusual eyes, which were probably cosmetically described as brown but which he thought closer to black. She’d used them very directly, too, staring at him when she spoke, not dropping her gaze when he’d stared just as fixedly back, curious if he could face her down. But always an uncertainty. Charlie couldn’t understand that inference: couldn’t understand it at all.

What else?

Possibly that Peter Miller was a sneaky bastard. And that Julia Robb might not be the robotic ball-breaker she’d appeared. Charlie was sure Miller hadn’t used any foot button to activate the intercom. So it could have been on and relaying his arrival conversation with the girl. So she could have been protecting him, against betraying himself as … Charlie stopped, seeking the word, grinning when it came. Against betraying himself as a sneaky bastard, he supposed. Whatever, he’d have to be careful around Miller’s suite if he were ever allowed entry from now on, until he discovered if the Director-General did play eavesdropping tricks.

What about the meeting itself? Confusing, Charlie judged. There hadn’t been any real purpose in it: at least not one that he could find. It hadn’t needed a personal encounter for Miller to announce how he intended running the organization in the future. Or for the introduction to Patricia Elder to be made personally, either.

There had been no mention of anything positive for him to do. Despite the self-admonishment against expecting things in advance he had anticipated being given something today: something that would have broken this stultifying, paper-dart-throwing inactivity.

Analysed completely, what had taken place today was nothing more than his being summoned for examination, like a museum exhibit or maybe a laboratory specimen, to see how he would jump when the acid dripped on the nerve ends. Which had they considered him to be?

The musing began idly, his mind drifting, but abruptly Charlie began to concentrate. Couldn’t that be precisely the purpose: for them to study him, for some reason? It certainly hadn’t appeared an intense examination, from the quickness of the meeting, and the short conversation hadn’t given any indication, but it was the reason that made the most sense. Charlie liked things to make sense.

Examined for what? An impossible question, at this stage. Maybe not even a question. Maybe he was again mistakenly anticipating things, when there was nothing to anticipate. All he could do was wait. As he had been waiting, for far too long.

In Beijing, the People’s Daily carried a lengthy diatribe warning of foreign reactionaries encouraging counterrevolution within the country, pledging that any such activity would be sought out and crushed, with its perpetrators put on trial.

Three

Jeremy Snow never expected the length or the intensity of Father Robertson’s lecture upon every possible pitfall and disaster after the favourable reaction to his travel application. More specifically than ever before, the old man talked of the prisons and even the two re-education installations in which he had been incarcerated, regimes of rifle-butt discipline and brainwashing propaganda.

Always, however, Father Robertson declared personal suffering unimportant. The need, always, was to retain a mission in a country where Jesuits had lived and worked for hundreds of years. Throughout Snow gave repeated assurances that he would do nothing to jeopardize their tenuous position. On this occasion the man quoted from the Epistle of James: Ye have heard of the patience of Job.

Snow would have welcomed more the chance of a proper briefing with Foster: he’d suggested it, in the letter drop through which their communication was imposed and limited by the liaison officer, when he’d learned he was getting his travel permission. But Foster had predictably refused, arguing there were no embassy or other convenient gatherings of Westerners to disguise an encounter.

Snow had become increasingly frustrated in the nine months he’d worked under Walter Foster. The red- haired, freckle-faced man looked and behaved like a timid clerk: even when there was virtually no risk at embassy gatherings of diplomats or Western enclave people, Foster was always twitching over his shoulder, inviting the attention they forever sought to avoid. So very different from the others. Bowley had always managed personal meetings in the early, first-arrival days. And George Street, too, using the flamboyant eccentricity of handlebar moustaches and floral waistcoats and an imported Rolls Royce to hide behind, deflecting any official interest by drawing it upon himself.

After three and a half years Snow didn’t have to be told to get everything, which was what Foster had said. He always got everything. Photographs, whenever possible. Any scrap of conversation, no matter how inconsequential. Twice he’d even supplied names of men at the time unrecognized at the middle level of the government both of whom subsequently achieved influential appointments, marking them as people to watch and monitor. And from Zhang Su Lin, when he’d had the man as an informant, he’d provided the virtual framework of the dissident movement that survived Tiananmen.

Fleetingly Snow regretted not being able to complain about Foster: get something done to improve the communication through the embassy. Was it so unchristian to think as he was thinking? Maybe, if any complaint affected the man’s career. But didn’t it go beyond Foster’s career, to his own personal safety? He was taking all the risks. Foster had the protection of diplomatic cover. Snow accepted he had nothing. Not true, Snow decided, in immediate contradiction. Didn’t he have the protection of God? Spiritual protection, unquestionably: just as his spiritual conviction was unquestionable. But this was temporal. Still not a difficulty. After three and a half years he was sure he had completely assimilated into a Chinese way of life, far more adjusted temporally than in any other way.

Snow planned his itinerary with infinite care. Every route he suggested took him into closed areas – because obviously these were the cities and places of interest – and he discerned from beginning negotiations at the Foreign