Charlie’s Apprentice

was going to go forward into new ways, in all things, or fall backwards into the familiar mire of the past. Natalia felt a surge of sympathy for the man who’d acted in the only manner he knew. She said: ‘There was more discussion between us, after I had been to the cells, wasn’t there?’

Kapitsa’s face furrowed, in the effort for recall. ‘Yes.’

‘Did I not say that my son’s arrest – and the interception of the convoy – had to be handled properly, to everyone’s satisfaction?’

Kapitsa nodded, eagerly. ‘Yes. And I said that was what I wanted.’

Natalia was glad the man had picked up on her offer, recognizing at the same time how he had sanitized his original reply. ‘So we were discussing a prosecution?’

She wondered if Kapitsa’s search for a reply she wanted was as obvious to the panel as it was to her. ‘Yes. That’s what I understood.’

‘Did I ever, at any time, say or indicate to you that I was going to prevent or stop a prosecution of my son?’

Kapitsa’s hesitation was greater than before. ‘No.’

‘I will not lead you on this question,’ warned Natalia. ‘I want you to recall, as precisely as possible, the remark my son made about embarrassment.’ You’re a detective, trained to remember things, thought Natalia: for God’s sake remember this!

There was a long silence. The man’s hands fluttered for things to do and touch. ‘He was talking about telling me your name and position …’ groped Kapitsa. ‘You agreed, when he guessed, that you had a higher rank than the one he knew …’ The investigator straggled to a halt.

Go on, go on, thought Natalia: she wanted it all. ‘Yes?’ she encouraged.

‘… He said something about there being much more openness in Moscow …’ Kapitsa’s face cleared. ‘And then he went on that it was very easy for people in important positions to be embarrassed: damaged by embarrassment even … and that we didn’t want any embarrassment …’

Natalia gave no outward signal of her relief. She had to risk leading now, to ensure the man answered correctly. ‘Did you interpret that remark as a threat?’

Seizing her guidance, he said: ‘Yes. It was clearly that.’

Enough, decided Natalia. She believed she had weakened Tudin’s attack sufficiently. Now there had to be the coup de grace. She thanked Kapitsa, dismissing him, but remained standing to avoid losing the momentum. Addressing Lestov, she said: ‘If this is the end of what amounts to a prosecution against me, I ask the committee’s permission to call evidence of my own.’

‘A witness?’ queried Lestov.

‘The Federal Prosecutor, Petr Borisovich Korolov,’ confirmed Natalia, formally. The stir went through everybody in the room.

The publicity over John Gower’s arrest was greater in the People’s Daily than in the Western media – most of the front page was devoted to it, with a government statement about foreign conspiracies and counter-revolutionary crimes published verbatim – so Jeremy Snow learned of the seizure within forty-eight hours of it happening.

The Taoist temple was not named, but the district of Beijing was, which was sufficient for Snow to realize that he had not been abandoned and that an effort was being made to reach him through the prearranged system.

The priest’s satisfaction was momentary. Not was being, he told himself: had been. By someone now in custody. Which left him as stranded as ever. It was obviously pointless – dangerous, in fact – to go anywhere near the shrine again, for any other signal, which he had intended to do that day, maintaining the imposed three-day timetable. Or to any of the message drops, which might have been filled and be waiting for him. And anyone going to the British embassy now would risk automatic association in the minds of the permanently watching Public Security Bureau.

With a stab of helplessness, Snow accepted that he didn’t know what to do.

And then, quickly enough for him to have considered it some kind of superior guidance, which he refused to countenance because it would have been an ultimate blasphemy, he did see a way. Partially, perhaps: but still a way. The final inevitable, irrevocable blurring of everything, he recognized at once. So he wouldn’t do it: couldn’t do it. Not inevitable and therefore not irrevocable. He couldn’t prostitute his faith and its tenets. Wouldn’t do it.

It would still be a way out, though, partial or not. Once he pacified – perhaps deflected was a better word – Li Dong Ming. He’d try to think of something else: anything else first. Didn’t want to sacrifice ail integrity.

Appropriately Snow’s prayer came from the Book of Lamentations. Oh Lord, he thought, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause. Blasphemy, he thought again: therefore utterly inappropriate.

Thirty-eight

‘You’ve seen the newspapers? And television?’ greeted Patricia Elder. She was not sitting at her desk but standing before the window with its distant view of the Houses of Parliament. She was wearing the high-necked, dark green coat dress she had been wearing the morning Charlie had seen her leaving the Regent’s Park penthouse with Miller. It was difficult to imagine her without it, with her legs in the air. But perhaps they didn’t do it with her legs in the air. Miller looked a prosaic, missionary-position player.

‘Of course,’ said Charlie. A time to listen and a time to question, he thought. For the moment, it was the mouth shut, ears open routine, but the question was burning to be asked. What was he doing here on the ninth floor, practically as soon as a crisis had erupted on the other side of the world? Julia didn’t know either, not even when he’d arrived minutes earlier. To his enquiring look she’d simply shaken her head. She’d gestured towards the intercom, too, to warn him it was on.

‘It’s a disaster,’ declared Patricia.

How much of a disaster was it being for John Gower? ‘I only know what I have read in the newspapers,’ he prompted.

‘We don’t know much else. As far as we can gather he was picked up three days ago. The Chinese announcement gave no details apart from the accusation. We aren’t being allowed access.’

Was it reassurance she wanted? ‘His interrogation resistance was supposed to be good: we touched upon it but not in any situation of duress. Which is the only real test.’

‘How long?’ she demanded, brutally objective.

Charlie turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘Impossible to estimate, without knowing what they’re doing to him: without knowing how they caught him and if he was doing anything to make his guilt obvious and undermine any denial. The more innocent the circumstances of the seizure the easier, obviously, it’ll be for him to hold out.’

‘Maximum?’ she persisted.

‘It’s a pointless exercise,’ refused Charlie. ‘If he feels he can resist because they don’t have enough, maybe two weeks. Three at the very outside. If he was compromised at the moment of detention, far less: he might be breaking already …’ Charlie hesitated. ‘I still don’t know what he was doing there?’ It was a testing invitation, to tell him far more than the simple answer, which he already knew anyway.

Patricia moved away from the window, sitting at last at her desk and looking down at it for several moments, as if reaching a decision. And then she told him, disclosing Jeremy Snow as a priest and talking of the man’s refusal to accept he was compromised and of the incriminating photographs. She even identified Li, not simply by his family name but in full, as Li Dong Ming.

Charlie listened intently to every word, analysing every word, unasked queries flooding into his mind, but he was always ahead of what she was saying, the one query above all the others echoing in his head. Why? Why was she giving him details of an active operation he had no right to know about under the compartmenting system by which every intelligence agency operated? It wasn’t enough that the person swept up had been someone he’d supposedly trained: not enough by half. So why?

‘That’s the catastrophe,’ the deputy Director concluded.