Charlie’s Apprentice

‘The flowers were a signal.’

He was supposed to be muddled, remembered Gower. He blinked and made several attempts to form his words before saying: ‘Told you earlier what they were for.’

‘Tell me again!’

‘My room at the embassy.’

‘Liar!’

More word-searching. ‘Demand the embassy be told. I have the right of access.’

‘Tell me who you were signalling and I will inform your embassy where you are. And why.’

Gower dropped his head, not sure if he could conceal his full reaction to what the other man had disclosed. If they wanted him to provide a name, they hadn’t arrested Snow! ‘Not signalling anyone,’ he mumbled. ‘Here inspecting embassy facilities.’

‘What is the importance of the Taoist shrine?’

‘Not important. It seemed unusual. I was interested.’

‘We’ve set a trap,’ announced Chen.

Gower decided he couldn’t respond: show any reaction at all. He moved his shoulders, barely shrugging, but said nothing.

‘We’re putting flowers at the shrine.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Yes, you do.’

Gower shrugged again.

‘We’re going to make the signal you were supposed to give. Trap the others.’

Could it work? Possibly. The colour of the flowers had to be right. And the precise position, in the troughs. The significance of the colour would probably be obvious but they wouldn’t know where to put them. But would it matter if the signal was wrong and the priest ignored it? Snow – a Westerner – would arouse suspicion merely by being there if they expected a Westerner: risk almost automatic arrest. Still no personal danger, Gower reassured himself, recalling his reflection at the earlier confrontation. Snow didn’t know him: couldn’t name him. But was there any safety there, either? If Snow were seized, merely for being in the same area, and under interrogation disclosed that the flowers were a signal, then the connection was established. And Snow hadn’t been trained to resist interrogation. There was nothing he could do. If it happened – and Snow broke – he was lost. ‘I don’t understand,’ he repeated.

‘It would be better for you if you confessed now.’

‘I am a diplomat. I want to talk to my embassy.’

‘You’re guilty.’

Gower stayed silent.

‘You’re a fool.’

Still silence.

‘We just have to wait,’ said Chen.

Charlie knew immediately from the expression on Julia’s face that there was a crisis. She stood unspeaking at the door of her house for several moments before backing away, for him to enter.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘Gower,’ she said. ‘They’ve swept up your apprentice.’

Thirty-six

The gesture of pouring Charlie the Islay malt she was buying specifically for him now was practically automatic: that night Julia poured for herself, which was not: normally she didn’t drink whisky. Charlie accepted the glass but put it at once on the side-table before leaning forward from his facing chair to bring them very close. He reached out for her hands to direct her entire concentration upon him.

‘Every detail,’ he urged. ‘Everything you know.’

‘Very little,’ apologized the girl. ‘Nobody knows anything. He went out of the embassy in Beijing, telling people he would be back around midday. He never arrived.’

‘Beijing?’ queried Charlie.

‘That was the assignment. China, to bring out someone we think is under suspicion: liable to arrest.’

‘What about an announcement? An accusation?’

‘Nothing yet. We’re making official representations, enquiring about his whereabouts. As a missing diplomat, of course. That’s why I’m telling you now: you’d have learned anyway, in a few hours. The idea’s to create a fuss: the Director thinks it might make them cautious about the pressure they’ll put on him.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ll do what they like. It’s China, for Christ’s sake! They don’t care about Western opinion.’

‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ said Julia, sadly. ‘Really very sorry.’

Charlie was grateful but indifferent to sympathy for himself. ‘Gower will be a bloody sight sorrier. Hardly anything of what we did … what he did before, at the proper training schools … prepared him. Why the fuck did it have to be China?’

‘There’s a hell of a flap at the Foreign Office. The DG – and Patricia – have made a lot in their memoranda about Gower’s resistance to interrogation.’

Charlie shook his head. ‘It’s not the same: never can be. You can go through all the motions … authentic physical stress … beating … drugs … sleep deprivation … all of that. But it’s not the same. You can always hold on to the fact that it’s a war game: that it’ll stop sometime. That insurance isn’t there, for the real thing. And the Chinese are good at it. They’ve been doing it longer and better than anybody else.’

‘You think he’ll break?’

‘I know he’ll break. Everyone does …’ Charlie was looking away from her now, deep in reflection. ‘It shouldn’t have been Beijing, not the first time. He wasn’t ready. That was wrong.’ His voice was distant: he wasn’t really addressing the girl whose hands he still held.

‘It was pretty shitty luck,’ agreed Julia.

‘Luck never enters into it.’ Charlie looked up, abruptly. ‘What about the person who’s exposed?’

Julia shook her head. ‘Not a lot. He’s a priest: told to get out but wouldn’t.’

Charlie frowned across at her, concentrating again. ‘Why send in? Why didn’t his Control in Beijing simply tell him to get out?’

‘The relationship collapsed. We brought the Control out a long time ago. A damage-limitation move, if the priest was arrested.’

‘What damage limitation, with Gower in the bag?’

She nodded in further agreement, at Charlie’s outrage. ‘No one anticipated this.’

Charlie stayed frowning. ‘Is that the way it’s being put forward?’

Julia nodded.

More damage limitation at Westminster Bridge Road than ten thousand miles away in China, thought Charlie, bitterly. ‘If the priest was arrested?’ he echoed.

‘There’s been nothing about that, either,’ conceded Julia. ‘But there is something.’

‘What?’

‘He had a dissident source, about a year ago. A man named Zhang Su Lin. He’s one of a number of dissidents who’ve been arrested in the past few weeks. There’s a purge going on.’

Charlie was silent for several moments. At last he took his drink, sipping it. Then he said, distantly again: ‘This could be a full-scale, eighteen carat, one hundred per cent disaster. With political and every other sort of fallout all over the place. And with Gower buried under it, right at the very bottom.’

‘I wish I could think of something practical to say.’

So did Charlie. But he didn’t know enough: supposed he’d never know enough. Only sufficient to make the judgement he’d just reached, which hardly required the political acument of the age. ‘The official reaction, if there is an accusation, will be absolute denial?’

‘It’s standard,’ reminded Julia. ‘I guess that’ll be it.’