Charlie’s Apprentice

Snow accepted, sighing, that the problem of leaving the mission had been resolved for him. Father Robertson wouldn’t think any less of him, when he realized what had happened: it was probably impossible for the man to think any less than he already did. So it would have been a gesture entirely for his own benefit. Unimportant, then. Snow fervently hoped there was protection, in Father Robertson not knowing.

After just a few sips of the coffee the feeling of sickness worsened, so Snow threw the remainder away: the nausea was more discomforting than the tightness in his chest, which really wasn’t too bad at all, not as bad as he’d expected it might be. There was certainly no need at this stage for an inhaler.

With the edited pictures set out on the table before him, Snow wrote to Li as he had been instructed, apologizing for the photographs being incomplete, pausing briefly when he’d finished that letter as the idea came of writing also to Father Robertson. Positively Snow laid the pen aside, rising from the desk. The decision had been made for him, he repeated to himself.

He failed to reach Li by telephone at the Foreign Ministry. The switchboard at once put him on the carousel of Chinese bureaucracy, plugging him through to one department who put him on hold to transfer him to another. On the second connection, Snow was careful to identify himself and leave the required message before the third attempt at a transfer. Before it succeeded, he disconnected.

Snow had looked nostalgically around the church before he’d left it. He did the same now around the mission, and finally in his room there. And then concentrated upon his desk. The passport slipped easily into the inside of his jacket. He put the rosary into an outside pocket, patting it needlessly to ensure it did not bulge. His bible, the well thumbed, much used book his parents had given him the proud day of his graduation, was the only object left in front of the tiny, private altar. It was too big, both in length and width, for any of his pockets. He replaced it on the table, flicking open the cover to read the inscription he knew by heart: the ink in which his mother had written his name was already fading, tinged with brown. He closed it again but did not move from the desk. He wanted to take it. Needed to take it, his most precious possession. Carrying it in his hand would not indicate he was leaving. He was a priest. Priests carried bibles, although not often in proscribed China. But Catholicism was not proscribed: officially it was permitted. Snow picked the bible up again, testing how it looked if he held it upright, in his cupped hand close to his body. He was sure it hardly protruded to be visible at all: didn’t appear to be anything more than a wallet if it did show, and a wallet did not mean he was going anywhere.

He would take it, Snow determined.

He was at the door when he remembered the asthma medication. The two inhalers from the bathroom cabinet made a bigger bulge in his pocket than the rosary. Snow was at the door of the mission, about to step out into the street, when the abrupt fear gripped him, so that for a moment he was physically unable to move.

‘Dear God, please help me!’ he said aloud. ‘Help me!’ He forced himself to move, which he did with great difficulty, like someone suffering cramp or paralysis.

The overcast sky seemed to blanket the heat upon the street outside, which was, as usual, jostled with people and bicycles: he couldn’t see the nightsoil-collectors but the stink of their cargo hung in the air. The last time I’ll walk this way, among these people, among these smells, Snow thought: I’m leaving, running. I’ll never see this place again.

Were there people watching him? The man at the embassy clearly thought so, and from Li’s behaviour he supposed he had to accept it was so. But Li hadn’t been to the mission for over a week now: nearer two, in fact. Perhaps the suspicion was lessening. Perhaps … Snow stifled the hope, annoyed at himself. He didn’t know why Li hadn’t been to the mission but he did know the district in which John Gower had been arrested, which meant there hadn’t been any lessening of suspicion. It was a miracle he hadn’t been seized already, so he had to get away and today was his chance. His only chance, according to the scruffy man at the embassy. Snow wished he knew how to spot people watching him. Would it be easy, confusing them and evading them, as the man had made it sound yesterday? It had sounded easy then. It didn’t now. The instructions he’d been told to follow, to the letter, seemed totally inadequate now: impossible. He still felt sick and his chest was tightening. Should have remembered the mask: several people around him were wearing them and it might have helped. Too late to go back. No turning back. Just had to go on. Perspiration was making the cover of the bible wet and slippery in his hand. He didn’t want to draw attention to it, switching it from one hand to the other. Have to take some relief for the asthma soon. Stupid to put it off, which he knew he couldn’t: always had to be quick to prevent it becoming too severe. Couldn’t risk a severe attack today.

Snow held out until he reached the bus-stop and its straggled queue. He used the inhaler there, grateful for the immediate relief and the awareness that he hadn’t left it too long. He put the bible in his other hand, too.

Snow changed buses twice, which was necessary to reach the Foreign Ministry. The beginning of the confusion, he thought, hopefully, as he approached the building. He would have liked to know if those watching him were more confused than he was. There was certainly a babble of confusion inside the building. It was packed with people moving against each other and from place to place upon the insistence of officials who saw their function as never to make a decision, always to defer or sidetrack it untraceably on to someone else. The priest tried to use the melee, going into two crowded offices with only the minimal contact with officials to account for his moving on to yet further divisions. Only at the fourth did he attempt proper, sensible contact, repeating the name of Li Dong Ming, becoming finally convinced from the blankness with which he was met that Li was definitely attached to the Public Security Bureau. He had to insist the clerk take his offered, apologetic package addressed to Li, only at the last moment remembering further to insist upon a receipt, which would establish on its counterfoil proof of the delivery of the photographs.

People were all too close, too cloying, all about him in the eddying corridors, and Snow felt the fresh distress, wanting to stop and rest and knowing there was no possibility of his doing so. He let himself be carried along by the human tide. Once he collided with an unmoving, rocklike knot of people and felt the bible begin to go from his grasp, snatching out to get a fresh grip only seconds before he lost it completely. His breathing worsened: trying to confuse he was becoming confused himself.

The side door was small, quite different from the elaborate main entrance through which he had entered. Snow let himself be washed aside, thrusting gratefully out into the street: despite the overcast oppression it was cooler than inside the building. He wanted to pause, to relieve his breathing, but knew he couldn’t. He drove himself on, glad that this time he didn’t have to wait for a bus: one was pulling in as he reached the stop and he was aboard and moving within minutes. Snow slumped, panting, into a seat. He was soaked in perspiration and people immediately around were looking at him because of the snorting intake of his breathing. Snow put the bible openly on his lap, to free both hands from its wetness and let everything dry. Gradually his breathing quietened. No one had boarded the bus after him: he was absolutely sure of that. So if he had been under surveillance, he’d evaded it. Suddenly – wonderfully – what he’d been told to do didn’t seem inadequate or impossible any more. It was all going to work: make it possible for him to escape. His breathing became more even.

The offices of the Gong An Ju were very different. This was the headquarters of the omnipotent control of the People’s Republic, the all-seeing eyes that saw, the all-hearing ears that heard. There were a lot of people in the outer corridors and vestibules, but none of the hither and thither turmoil of the other place. Snow was uncomfortable here, anxious to get away, but he obeyed the instructions, waiting for a vacant booth and talking generally of taking another country tour, to the north this time, leaving his mission address and his name. Feeling increasingly confident, he allowed himself to stray very slightly from the script, suggesting he return the following day to fill out a proper application form to establish his hopeful itinerary. Automatically responding to the possibility that he would not have to be the one to process the paper work the following day, the clerk instantly agreed.

Almost there, thought Snow, going out once more through a side door and once more being lucky with a bus, which was again in sight as he came to the stop. Two men did get on directly behind him this time but both got off, long before the rail terminus. It was still only twenty to four: more than enough time for everything else he had to do, even taking into account the customary delay at the ticket office.

There was a delay. In front of every window there was a meandering line of patient travellers, almost everyone burdened with enough belongings to start life anew in another part of the country. Snow started, actually emitting a cry of frightened surprise, at the sudden but insistent plucking at his elbow. The money-barterer was gap-toothed and moustached and wore a Western-style suit that didn’t fit. Snow went through the ritual of offer and rejection, concerned how quickly his breath was snatched: it was five minutes before the tout gave up. Something else I’ll never know again, thought Snow. Nor want to. He was getting away: leaving forever. And glad to be going. Whatever worth he’d had here was over.

What explanation was he going to give the Curia, in Rome? Not the complete story, he thought. Just enough.