Charlie’s Apprentice

‘I don’t think that’s funny.’ It had been Julia who’d returned his visaed passport and given him the plane tickets for the following day.

In view of the situation, Charlie had half expected a final briefing from Patricia Elder or even the Director- General himself, although he supposed there wasn’t anything further for them to talk about. ‘I’ll be all right.’ Julia’s concern unsettled him.

‘Gower’s fiancee was on television before you got here. She looked dreadful.’

‘Gower wanted me to meet her. I didn’t.’

Julia nodded, not needing an explanation. ‘The deputy Director has tried to get her treated properly, at the Foreign Office. That’s why she was on television: going in to see one of the permanent secretaries.’

So Patricia Elder wasn’t an ogress who used razor-blades for tampons after all. ‘That’s considerate.’

‘Won’t do much to help, though, will it?’

‘Still nothing on Snow? Or access to Gower?’ He supposed he would have been told, but he’d known of worse oversights, in the past.

She shook her head. ‘There was a request to the Foreign Office, to send a lawyer out to help. They refused.’

Drawbridges being raised, portcullises slammed down, recognized Charlie: he always had regarded that message about assistance and protection in the front of his passport as a load of bullshit. ‘There’s probably not a lot he could have done, in any practical sense.’ Except hopefully put up a faint smoke-screen for him.

‘For Christ’s sake be careful, Charlie.’

‘Always.’

‘I mean it!’

‘So do I.’ The early flight the following morning gave him an excuse to leave: he was certainly anxious to get away from the awkwardness. ‘I think I should be going.’

‘If you want …’Julia started, then stopped.

‘What?’ asked Charlie, more unsettled than ever.

‘Nothing.’

He was very glad she hadn’t continued: Charlie didn’t want anything to go beyond the stage of being platonic. He was comfortable at that level. Not at many others.

‘Just don’t take any chances,’ she pleaded.

‘I see them, I avoid them,’ promised Charlie. Or sometimes turn them to my advantage, he thought, when he arrived in Beijing less than twenty-four hours later, although not on the aircraft for which Julia had given him a ticket but on a Pakistani flight to which he’d changed at London airport.

He assimilated himself among the confusion of an organized tour group, staying close through the baggage collection and the straggling exit of overtired, overawed people as they crocodiled across the concourse to the waiting coach. Only then did he detach himself towards the taxis, but the tour guide, who wore an identifying armband and a lapel badge naming him as Peter, said: ‘Visiting by yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

‘We’ll give you a lift in, if you like: there’s plenty of room on the coach.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ accepted Charlie. He hoped his luck continued like this: it was long overdue.

Forty-one

The tactics changed, which was predictable, so Gower was able to hold the fear off and retain the disguised resistance to appear an innocent man. The possibility of Chen realizing that he was resisting them – and by so doing showing the professional training that would confirm their accusations – became a greater concern than anything they did in their efforts to break him.

Having announced their intention to set the trap at the Taoist shrine, they left him absolutely alone for what Gower estimated to be a full day and a night, broken only once by another delivery of foul and discreetly discarded food by the same bowed old man and his two army guards. And in contrast to his first day of imprisonment, there was absolute and echoing silence, so there was not the slightest distraction or interruption to his imagination conjuring the apprehension of what would happen to him if they did make another arrest. Gower refused himself any false assurances. If Snow was detained, simply by the suspicion of being a Caucasian near the Taoist temple, he would be lost. If it happened – if he was confronted by proof that the priest was arrested and had broken and had identified the shrine and the flower signal – then he was in a new and far more dangerous situation which he would have to handle when it arose. But not before. He refused to let his imagination do their job for them.

The silent treatment was actually counter-productive, and while recognizing its intention Gower was surprised by it, seizing the advantage properly to rest and push back as far as he could the effect of sleep deprivation. He did so now stretched full-length on the concrete ledge, for any observation through the Judas-hole, because that was how an innocent man, recovering slightly from the initial shock of detention, would try to sleep. It was still rigidly uncomfortable but he’d largely adjusted to the stink of the lavatory hole and the uniform he was forced to wear. There were occasions when he fully lost consciousness, and for the rest of the time he slept more deeply than when he had squatted, that first day, but there was practically always the vague subconscious awareness of everything around him. He came, for instance, quickly awake at the scratching.

One rat was already out of the toilet hole, easily climbing the table leg to forage along its top where any spilled or dropped food scraps would have been: the second was sniffing its way out, briefly disturbing the irritated flies. It followed the obviously familiar route, scuttling quickly up to join the first.

Gower remained lying as he was, making himself watch and accept, refusing the revulsion at the actual sight of what he’d already known to exist within the hole. The rats were brown and plump and their fur had a sheen of cleanliness he didn’t expect from the imagined slime from which they had emerged. He wondered if these were the only two or whether there were more. Probably more. Probably a whole colony. He distantly remembered hearing or reading that rats always existed in colonies: he’d have to be particularly careful to keep his hands from coming into any contact with the table-top over which they would have trailed their infections.

With his watch taken from him, denied any natural light and having slept for intermittent periods, Gower was unable to judge whether it was day or night when the peep-hole disturbance began again, which worried him, because losing track of time was a footstep on the way to disorientation. His concern was brief because Gower knew he could establish a rough schedule from the moment of his next interrogation.

The next meal was noodles, which were sour and which Gower guessed really did have maggots in them, from the shifting movement under the surface pasta strands that had nothing to do with the mucus-like soup in which they floated. The observation hole scraped open, so again Gower went through the eating and drinking pretence, his back to the person watching. He reset his mental clock to gauge the intervals between the apparently resumed inspections, to dispose of the entire contents of the bowl.

Not eating wasn’t a risk to Gower’s opposition: wouldn’t be for a very long time. He knew the human body could go for weeks without nourishment, before the hallucinations began. And so far he had not felt the slightest hunger.

Water was the problem. The effect of dehydration was far quicker, destabilizing in a matter of days. Already his mouth felt completely dry, very little saliva forming when he tried to generate it, and there was a scratchiness in his throat when he swallowed, which he tried to avoid as much as possible.

Gower supposed it would have been sometime during the third day – or maybe the third night – when he was finally forced to take the fetid water, unable to deprive himself any longer. He did not fully drink it. He took a minimal amount, four sips, flushing it around his mouth before spitting it disgustedly into the hole. The relief was very brief: his throat remained scratchy.

If he did develop diarrhoea he would quickly become even more dehydrated, Gower knew. And need to take even more of the water, which would worsen the infection and tighten the circle of demeaning, eroding illness.

Dear God let something, anything, happen soon! Horrified, Gower checked the thought. That was despair. And despair went with fear. He wasn’t entirely successful in controlling it. Surely, he continued to think, somebody had to be doing something by now!

Snow felt he had exhausted all the prayers of which he was capable, agonized by the immediate blasphemy