Charlie’s Apprentice

‘Preposterous!’ rejected Gower. When were specific charges going to be put against him, maybe even with Jeremy Snow being identified by name?

‘Our courts deal leniently with counter-revolutionaries who confess.’

‘There is nothing whatsoever for me to confess,’ rejected Gower. ‘I demand to be released. The strongest possible protests will be made by my embassy to your Foreign Ministry.’

‘Why did you come to Beijing?’

No danger here if he maintained the established lie. ‘To examine the facilities that exist at the embassy, for British diplomats and employees.’

‘That is not true.’

‘The embassy will confirm it.’

‘Tell us the true reason for your being here.’

‘I have already done so.’ If they had something better, something provable against him, they would surely have produced it by now!

‘Admit what you’re here for!’

Gower remained as he was, refusing to speak.

‘Answer me!’ Chen’s voice was becoming louder.

Desperation, determined Gower. Dare he risk the open confrontation? It might give him some indication if they really had anything against him. ‘I have answered your questions, which according to my legal status I am not required to do. I did so to show my cooperation, over what is clearly a mistake. But not any more. I demand to be able to speak with my embassy.’

‘We know what you have done, since you have been in Beijing,’ said the Chinese. ‘And we know why you did it. What you hoped to achieve.’

Bluff, dismissed Gower. They had made a mistake, seizing him too quickly. Now their only hope of making a case would be if he stupidly gave them a confession. Gower slumped as best he could in the straight-backed chair, trying to convey an impression of relaxed confidence.

The man who had been in the van said something from his place near the wall. Chen’s reply was sharp and irritable. To Gower he said: ‘Take off your clothes.’

‘What?’

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘I absolutely refuse!’

Chen sighed. ‘Do it yourself. Or be stripped.’

It was an established questioning technique, to demean a man with his nakedness, recalled Gower. But he’d gone through it, in training: knew how to refuse the embarrassment. He stood, actually having to feign the reluctance, worried only there might be a yellow stain on his underpants. It wasn’t much. He stood with his hands cupped in front of him, expecting the examination to continue. Instead one of the men by the recording apparatus picked a bundle Gower hadn’t noticed before from a side chair, carrying it to him. Gower stared at the trousers and slipover top. They were striped, white and blue: at first he thought the stiffness was because they were made of canvas, but then he detected the human smell and realized it was from months, even years, of unwashed wear by others. ‘I will not wear these!’

Chen shrugged, as if he were uninterested, going himself to open the door to a military escort outside.

‘I want my embassy informed about this!’ Gower tried, once more.

The man gave a hand-flicking, discarding gesture. The escort formed up around Gower. With no alternative – still naked – he allowed himself to be led away. Close to the door through which he had originally entered, he was jostled down echoing stone steps into what was obviously a basement detention centre. There were solid metal doors along either side. Again, as in the corridor above, there was no sound from behind any of them.

Gower was prodded towards the middle cell, entering but instantly stopping on the threshold, gagging at the stench. There was a concrete bunk to his left, forming part of the wall out from which it was built. There was no pillow and only one thin blanket. Against the far wall, facing him, there was a small table, fronted by a stool. The gagging smell was coming from an uncurtained, open hole in the corner furthest from the bed, a stink of never- emptied sewage so bad that Gower retched and thought he was going to have to go to it to be sick. He only just managed to avoid it, swallowing the bile, recognizing that what he had thought to be the black stains of excreta all around the edge of the hole was, in fact, a cluster of gorging flies. There was a shove from behind and someone threw the sweat-starched tunic after him.

Gower edged on to the concrete ledge, arms tight across himself again, willing the revulsion to go. It still took a long time for him to be sure he wouldn’t be sick. If the embassy reacted with the outrage that it should, he could be out of this obscenely vile place by the evening. He hoped to God he was: he couldn’t imagine spending a whole night there. Certainly not being able to sleep. Hurry, he thought: dear God, please hurry.

It was to be some hours, slumped in growing despair on the rock-hard ledge, before Gower accepted he wasn’t going to be freed, because the embassy hadn’t been told of his detention.

It was bitterly, damply, cold. At first Gower tried just to use the blanket, twitching at the movement of whatever lived in it against his skin, but he began to shiver violently, so at last he was forced to put on the tunic. It was much too small for him: the top was like a straitjacket.

Would the embassy hurry to find him, when he was missed? That would be the ordinary reaction to the disappearance of someone accredited to the legation. But he wasn’t regarded as ordinary by an ambassador who considered him a nuisance and would regard him as a positive liability after this.

There was no guarantee they’d do anything quickly. Gower was still shaking, but it wasn’t solely from the cold any more.

Thirty-three

It was the attentive Ian Nicholson who raised the alert, although with no immediate urgency: at first Nicholson regarded the problem as no greater than that of a visiting Foreign Office colleague getting lost in a strange and unaccustomed city, without the ability to speak or read the language to seek help. Initially Nicholson even hesitated about mentioning it at all, and having decided he should he was uncertain whom to tell, because it was not a situation he had encountered before. He finally determined upon the senior security officer, Alan Rossiter, who was as uncertain as Nicholson and for the same reasons. It was late afternoon, minutes before the embassy was officially closing for the day, before Rossiter finally spoke to Peter Samuels and the sensitive bells began to jangle.

Samuels ordered the security man and Nicholson to remain on the premises for a possible discussion with the ambassador. Samuels held the senior legal attache, Patrick Plowright, for the same reason, without offering an explanation.

‘This could be everything we feared,’ judged Railton, when the political officer disclosed Gower’s absence. The ambassador was away from his desk, fidgeting in front of the fireplace and the largest of the carpet wall hangings, striding back and forth but only briefly, not more than four or five steps in either direction.

‘We don’t know that it’s bad at all, at this point,’ cautioned the political officer. ‘He apparently indicated to Nicholson that he would be back around mid-day. He hasn’t arrived.’

Railton looked unnecessarily at his watch. ‘He’s been adrift for six hours then?’

‘If he is missing,’ said Samuels, trying to calm the other man. ‘There could be a dozen reasons why he hasn’t returned yet. We just don’t know: can’t know.’

‘Damn them!’ said Railton, vehemently. ‘Damn these stupid services with their cloak-and-dagger rubbish! You’re right: we don’t know what the hell the man was up to. So we can’t formulate any sort of response!’

‘We haven’t been asked to make one yet,’ pointed out Samuels.

‘What have you done, so far?’

‘Told Rossiter and Nicholson to stand by. Plowright, too.’

Railton nodded approval, ‘Quite right. Best to confine it to as small a group as possible. We should tell London, of course.’

‘Should we?’ queried Samuels. ‘Tell them what? Gower didn’t log an official return time. Just mentioned