confirmed bookings on direct London flights for the sixth day, leaving the intervening twenty-four hours to contact the priest. As protective insurance against any additional delay that he could not, at that moment, anticipate he repeated the reservations, under other different names, on the two succeedings days.
It had been the uneventful visits to the Forbidden City and Coal Hill that convinced him it would be pointless going to the Taoist temple without activating the system: not to do so
And wait for Snow to come to him at the embassy.
According to the London briefing, Snow had been told to check at three-day intervals, but Gower didn’t have a starting-point for his count, so he had to allow that full period for the priest to respond. He remained momentarily unsure whether he could chance the reservations so soon or whether to extend over several more days. No need for an immediate decision, he decided: if Snow didn’t appear, bookings could still be made. For the moment he could leave things as they were.
That night he accepted the dinner invitation from the Nicholsons. Jane agreed at once and enthusiastically to shop for the cheongsam. After an animated discussion, he chose blue for the colour and said he thought her sizing would fit Marcia. He hoped Marcia’s underwear wouldn’t be quite so obvious if she ever did wear it.
Jeremy Snow grew increasingly frustrated as he monitored the constantly empty signal spot by the temple, until finally he began to think London had taken him at his word and withdrawn, ending their relationship.
Most frustrating of all was the acceptance that there was nothing he could do, to restore things as they had been before; as he wanted them to be again. Walter Foster had gone and London had clearly not appointed a successor. Which left him in a vacuum, with no one at the embassy he could approach to try to put things right. His very dilemma showed the stupidity of the system that London had insisted upon, and Foster adhered to, so rigidly.
Snow followed the too familiar route by the temple, seeking the signal that wasn’t there, and afterwards walked almost for a further hour before going back to the mission to rid himself of the anger. He still got there before noon.
‘Have you seen the
Snow took the offered newspaper, at first not properly concentrating. And then he did. There was a photograph of three manacled men being led from a police van. One of them was Zhang Su Lin, his underground information source and English-language student until a year ago.
For the first time Snow felt a bubble of genuine uncertainty. It became difficult for him to breathe properly, although not bad enough for any medication.
Thirty
‘You could have done something with yourself, you could. Been a doctor. Went to grammar school, didn’t you!’
‘Yes, mum.’ Charlie was surprised how well she was holding on to reality today. And had been, for weeks now.
‘What
‘Clerk, in a government office.’
‘Girl’s job,’ dismissed the woman, scornfully. The rear of the bed had been cranked up, to put her in a sitting position. She wore the knitted bedcoat Charlie had bought the previous Christmas over her nightdress, and one of the nurses had carefully crimped and prepared her hair she way she liked it done. She smelled of lavender, her favourite. He’d have to remember that, next Christmas.
‘Get a lot of holidays,’ said Charlie, letting the conversation run, most of his mind elsewhere, conducting the private debate about his Regent’s Park discovery.
‘No money, though, is there?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘That’s why you’re a bloody tramp!’ she said, triumphantly.
‘Yes, mum.’ It was an accusation made on average at least once during every visit. His mother had always been extremely clothes-conscious. Ironically, considering his constant concern for his painful feet, her particular delight had been shoes: he could vaguely remember the floor of a bedroom closet completely covered with pairs that overflowed from a shoe-rack. He hadn’t expected Julia to notice the effort he’d made, with new shoes. They were settling in now but they really had hurt like hell at first.
‘No wonder you never got married.’
‘No, mum.’ She’d forgotten Edith and there seemed no purpose in reminding her. Charlie wondered what Julia was preparing for that evening: she’d invited him to eat in her house for the first time.
‘Your dad was a smart man.’
‘I’m sure he was.’
‘Give me my handbag! There! Under the cabinet.’
Charlie did as he was told, watching her fumble with veined hands through a bag crammed with long-ago letters, most still in their tattered envelopes.
‘There!’ she said, in further triumph. ‘There’s your dad. Officer in the navy: lieutenant or something. Always smart, he was.’
Charlie took the picture. It had to be the sixth she had produced of a man she claimed to be his father. He had not seen this one before. It was of a stiffly upright, unsmiling officer in an army uniform. He wondered where she got them all from: he supposed they had all been men whom he’d been told to call uncle when he was young. He definitely couldn’t remember this one. ‘Good-looking man,’ he agreed.
‘Name was George. He could have got you into the navy, if you’d wanted. Had a lot of influence. Knew admirals.’
It was almost time to go. ‘Everything all right? Nothing you want?’
‘They’ve stopped my Guinness,’ complained the old woman. ‘Won’t let me have any now. Used to, but not any longer.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t like me.’
‘I’ll fix it,’ promised Charlie.
‘It’s the matron: she’s the one.’
‘I’ll talk to her. I have to go now.’
She hardly seemed to notice when Charlie kissed her goodbye. He stopped at the matron’s office on the way out, gently asking if there was a problem over Guinness, and was told by Mrs Hewlett that the nightly allowance for those who wanted it was two bottles but his mother was demanding more, which they didn’t think was good for her. Charlie said he was sure they knew best.
He was glad to get back into the hire car, with the prospect of a two-hour, solitary journey ahead of him in which to think. But think about what, any differently or any better than he’d already examined the question from each and every side? There was not the slightest doubt that his only course was to report the hostile Regent’s Park surveillance upon the Director-General and Patricia Elder. It was his duty, in fact, enshrined in all the regulations and conditions under which he was supposed to work.
Which would destroy them both. There’d be an internal investigation, admissions demanded, discreet and accepted resignations hurried through, damage limitation at its very British best.
But what damage limitation was there for Charles Edward Muffin? None, he acknowledged, miserably. As there never seemed to be. If he did what he should do and alerted internal security and counter-intelligence and Christ knows who else that Peter Miller and Patricia Elder were being targeted, the first and most obvious demand would be how the hell he knew. And to answer that honestly – to say that for weeks he had been unofficially and privately targeting them himself – would bring in roughly three seconds the most inglorious end it was possible to imagine to an inglorious career. In fact his ever-painful feet – or his ass – wouldn’t even touch the ground on his way out.
