Charlie’s Apprentice

Bamboo Park. Father Robertson had said he didn’t need a nurse after that first day.

‘So you can send the reminder now?’

Time to begin his own confrontation, decided Snow. ‘The photographs seem very important to you.’

Li shrugged. ‘It is pleasant to keep souvenirs.’

‘I agree,’ said Snow, pleased with the other man’s response. ‘I would like copies of those you took, during the trip.’ Snow smiled. ‘A mutual exchange, in fact.’

Momentarily Li faltered. ‘Is one conditional upon the other?’

Snow decided, even more pleased, that he’d rattled the man. ‘Of course not. But there is no reason why I can’t have copies, is there?’

‘None at all,’ said Li, tightly.

Snow was determined that conditional was exactly what the exchange would be: he wouldn’t offer anything until he’d seen Li’s pictures, and only then match the man, print for print, each tallying with the other, which removed any danger, remote though he’d always regarded it to be. Li couldn’t swap the Shanghai pictures because he would actually be providing material the Chinese would regard as sensitive. Snow was sorry the escape hadn’t occurred to him before. At least it had, at last: so he didn’t have anything to worry about any more.

*

The round-up of students publicly labelled counter-revolutionaries by the Chinese government began in Xingtai and was followed within a day by arrests in Jining and Huaibei. The People’s Daily carried photographs of two separate groups of head-bowed detainees, all manacled, together with an official statement that more seizures would be carried out to protect the country from civil unrest fomented by foreign imperialists.

Contacted in Paris, where she had been granted temporary political asylum, Liu Yin said it was the purge she had fled from and warned about at her Hong Kong press conference. It would be, she insisted, one of the most extensive and brutal political repressions in the People’s Republic for many years.

Statements expressing concern at a threatened suppression of human rights were issued by various foreign ministries in Europe and by the State Department in the United States.

Twenty-six

Ian Nicholson was an anxiously friendly Scot who, in his eagerness to ingratiate, rarely properly finished a sentence or waited for a reply before beginning another sentence. Gower appreciated the attitude if not the onesided exchanges after the other encounters he’d so far had in Beijing. The housing officer asked twice, phrasing the same query differently both times, if the accommodation was satisfactory. He was bustling on about the purchasing facilities at the embassy commissary (‘everything you’re likely to need, not just food: difficult to shop locally here’) before Gower gave the assurance that his living quarters were more than adequate. On their way to the commissary to stock Gower’s refrigerator Nicholson insisted it was necessary to become a temporary member of the embassy social club (‘sorry the social life here is so restricted: we do get together with other Western embassy people, of course’) and in the same sentence invited Gower to eat with him and his wife (‘whenever you like: just say’). The diplomat warned of the risk of money-changers in the street (‘happens all the time. Don’t deal, whatever you do: the police are damned strict about it and the ambassador doesn’t want any trouble’) and echoed Samuels’ warning about getting lost in the city. Gower was told to register with the embassy doctor (‘name’s Pickering: bark’s worse than his bite’) and advised against initially eating out in restaurants and even then not unless they were recommended by other embassy staff (‘best to let your stomach become acclimatized in the beginning: wonderful when you get used to it but it isn’t your average Golden Palace in the High Street’).

By the time of the conducted tour of the embassy (‘important to get the layout in your mind as quickly as possible, I always think’) Gower had virtually given up trying to make it a two-way conversation.

There were five introductions to other embassy people – four men and a woman – during the tour. Each was as friendly as Nicholson. Gower wondered if they would have been if they had known his true purpose for being in Beijing.

Nicholson tried to press the luncheon invitation in the embassy mess (‘everyone will be there: good time to get to know people’) but Gower declined, pleading continuing tiredness after the flight, which to an extent was true: he’d awoken while it was still dark, unbalanced by jetlag.

He was eager to get out into the city although not, so soon, to start work. He realized that had it not been for those final training sessions he almost surely would have tried to begin at once. But then, until those final sessions, he hadn’t known any better. Now he did. So instead, trying to put into active practice the survival instructions that were supposed to be instinctive, Gower decided that impatient though he was – impatient though the Beijing ambassador and the deputy Director-General in London were – the proper professional action was to orientate himself before even considering anything else.

Although there was to be no encounter beyond the protection of the embassy, he had to venture outside to get the priest to come to him. So he had minimally to know his way around: find the message drops and the signal spot. With his mind on the proper sequence, Gower picked out on the supplied map those designated places, all already memorized in London, recognizing from the plan before him that most were grouped conveniently close around the obvious landmarks, the places where Western visitors would naturally go.

The drops were concentrated around the Forbidden City, with its available labyrinth of alleys and passage- ways, and the tree-shrouded Coal Hill. He could survey them all by going to Tiananmen Square, the site of Mao’s tomb and fronted by the Great Hall of the People: where, in fact, any first-time visitor would go.

He put the map in his pocket and set out forcefully across the embassy courtyard, but recalled at once another warning and slowed to a more sensible pace to prevent the thrusting determination attracting the very attention he always had to avoid.

At the Chinese-guarded gate he actually stopped, gazing around to establish his directions, settling the immediate places and buildings in his mind, against the memorized map. There was the jumbled swirl of people and bicycles and occasionally vehicles all around, as there had been on his way from the airport the previous day. And among it all was the possible surveillance. Gower brought his concentration closer, even looking from face to face, bicyclist to bicyclist. Impossible, he decided: absolutely impossible. The only obvious, identifiable person was himself, taught to merge into a background into which, here of all places, he could never disappear. The sort of man that crowds are made of, he remembered. But not this crowd.

Would he be able properly to reconnoitre everything he wanted, in one day? Perhaps not. If it became impossible, he’d have to spread it over to the following day: set out earlier than this, to give himself more time. Maybe include the Temple of Heaven, to avoid his interest appearing too obvious to anyone watching. Take several days, maybe. Get himself properly established: prepare escape routes, as he’d been instructed to do.

Or should he take so much time? The demand from everyone was that he get out as quickly as possible. Why was he delaying? Fear, of actually committing himself by a clandestine action? Ridiculous! He wasn’t frightened. Just the proper edge of apprehension he’d been told was not only natural but necessary. He was obeying instructions; not the briefing instructions but the guidance he’d got, those last few weeks, sensibly identifying his working area, not making any premature moves that might risk everything. Definitely not frightened.

Consciously, obeying the first taught rule, Gower tried to observe, properly to see, everything and everyone directly around him. He’d already decided facial characteristics were impossible to work from, in identifying any surveillance. Clothes then. He could utilize obvious physical characteristics – fat or thin, tall or short – but his best additional chance of spotting someone staying close to him had to be by isolating peculiarities or tell-tale points of dress. The anxiety, tinged with despair, deepened. There was colour – garishly bright reds and greens and pinks he couldn’t imagine women wearing in the West – but his overall impression was one of uniformity here, too: white shirts, grey trousers, usually grey jackets where jackets were worn at all. When the colour wasn’t grey, it was black or blue. The conformity even extended to shoes. All were black and all appeared steel-tipped and maybe even with steel or studs in the heels. Even with the competition of other street sounds, Gower was conscious of a permanent scuffing, tip-tap beat of metal against concrete.

Sure of his direction, Gower changed and altered his route, remembering to make his first deviation to the left, then left again before switching twice to his right down streets to bring himself back on course. Several times,