Charlie’s Apprentice

Father Robertson made two visits to the embassy to arrange for the shipment of the body back to England for burial in the family vault in Sussex. Samuels met him on both occasions, and on the third accompanied the elderly man from the mission to the Foreign Ministry, to complete the final formalities for the release of the body. Charlie asked to sit in unobtrusively on the embassy meetings. Samuels refused. Charlie, who thought Samuels was a pompous shit, did however time his own visits to be at the embassy when Father Robertson came. He saw a slightly bent, careworn man making an obvious effort to cope with circumstances threatening to overwhelm him. Dr Pickering was necessarily part of the group that met the priest on every occasion. In addition to Samuels and Pickering, both Plowright and Nicholson were at the meetings and also went to the Foreign Ministry interview, in the event of a legal question arising. None did.

Samuels agreed with visible reluctance to see Charlie after that Chinese Foreign Office encounter.

‘I really can’t understand why you’re hanging around any longer!’ protested the political officer. ‘You’ve been ordered home. Why not go?’

‘I want to make sure something doesn’t come up that we didn’t expect: that’s important, don’t you think?’

‘Nothing will,’ said Samuels. ‘They’ve released the body. Signed all the forms. It’s over, thank God.’

‘How’s Father Robertson? He looks wrecked.’

‘Hanging on by a thread.’

‘He didn’t say anything that I should know about? That my department needs to hear?’ Charlie disliked getting things at second hand.

‘Of course not!’ said Samuels, impatiently. ‘He doesn’t know I’m aware of what Snow was doing. And Snow’s admission to him was covered by the secrecy of the confessional, wasn’t it?’

‘I thought he might have told you if Li had come to the mission again.’

‘I can hardly ask, can I? Again, I’m not supposed to know.’

‘What’s coming trom Rome?’

Samuels shrugged. ‘Shock and mourning. As far as they are concerned, Snow was the victim of a tragic accident.’

‘It’s not all over is it?’ reminded Charlie. ‘It won’t all be cleared up until John Gower is released. Which won’t happen if he admits who he really is.’

Samuels shifted, uncomfortably. ‘The ambassador expects to be recalled. It’s a hell of a risk, if Gower does break: confirmation of direct British government involvement. Another reason we want you out. We need to be able to account for every person at the embassy: you’ve been coming too much.’

‘I can’t be connected with anything,’ said Charlie, irritably.

‘You got Snow here, to the embassy. Which makes the connection. You were at the railway terminus when he got killed.’

‘But I was never identified,’ rejected Charlie. He’d been bloody lucky as well as professionally very smart.

‘This is China, for God’s sake! It would be enough if they wanted to move against you: certainly if Gower cracks and they want someone else to make a show trial!’

Charlie nodded, solely for Samuels’ benefit. ‘Certainly no reason to stay: I can’t officially become involved in helping John Gower.’

‘I can tell the ambassador you’re going? The Foreign Office, as well?’

‘Very soon,’ assured Charlie. In your dreams, he thought.

‘I know what you’re hoping for!’ declared Samuels, suddenly. ‘You’re hoping Gower’s going to be released, for you to escort him home. Like looking after like. Which is stupid, bloody madness.’

Something was, conceded Charlie: he wished he could work out what it was. ‘It would be stupid, bloody madness. That’s why I’m not even thinking about it.’

‘Get out!’ insisted Samuels. ‘Your being here is endangering the embassy.’

Not really, Charlie decided. He acknowledged that the frequency with which he visited the legation had probably identified him for what he was to several members of the embassy, although they would have linked him to the publicly accused Gower, not to Snow. And he had connected himself to Snow with the message-passing request to Pickering. But that was all internal. Safe. There wasn’t anything external. So Samuels was panicking, talking through the hole in his ass.

Charlie made a point of seeking out the doctor the same afternoon as his encounter with Samuels. Pickering greeted him with expected brusqueness but not with positive hostility, not even as dismissive as the political officer.

Pickering agreed with Charlie’s easy opening that Father Robertson was showing signs of understandable strain. ‘Which I don’t like, coming so soon after the other business.’

‘Snow told me you’d diagnosed nervous exhaustion.’

Pickering nodded. ‘We reached an understanding then – Snow and I – that if I thought Robertson was medically incapable of remaining here I should tell their Curia, in Rome.’

‘Is he medically incapable in your opinion?’

‘Close,’ judged Pickering. ‘I’ve got to make allowances for the shock of how Snow died, of course. He could pick up when he’s properly realized what has happened.’

At once calling to mind Snow’s admission at their first meeting, Charlie decided the old man would probably have more difficulty accepting, and living with, what he’d been told in the confessional. ‘What if he doesn’t?’

Pickering humped his shoulders. ‘I don’t know who to tell in Rome. The assumption was always that Snow would handle it. Certainly from the outburst from Robertson, when it arose before, he wouldn’t admit any incapacity to Rome himself. He’d do the reverse.’

‘How many British patients do you have in Beijing?’ asked Charlie.

There was another uncertain shoulder movement. ‘No idea. Quite a few, as a regular panel. And it’s obvious that in emergencies I’m here for any Brit that gets ill. It’s regulation Foreign Office advice.’

‘Like Father Robertson was an emergency?’

‘Snow thought so.’

‘Father Snow was ill: a chronic asthma sufferer. He told me, although he didn’t really have to.’

‘Yes?’ Pickering was shifting, irritably, a busy man whose time was being too much imposed upon.

‘Why didn’t you prescribe his medication? He needed inhalers all the time but told me he didn’t come to the embassy to collect them: to collect anything. It all had to come from Rome. I don’t understand that.’ It would, thought Charlie again, have given Snow a perfectly acceptable reason – and contact opportunity – to come to the embassy as frequently as he’d wanted.

Up and down went the shoulders. ‘Never arose,’ said Pickering. ‘Everything for the mission was simply channelled through here for convenience. I inherited the system when I arrived. Told Snow early on, of course, that if there was ever a problem he should call me. He never did: never had any reason. He was young, after all. Asthma is a condition its sufferers live with.’

Charlie had the briefest of mental images of the tall, ungainly priest clutching himself against the agony as he stumbled beside the moving train beneath which he’d fallen. ‘Maybe that was a mistake.’

Pickering frowned. ‘What you mean by that?’

The doctor wouldn’t have understood, conceded Charlie, breaking away from the reflection fully to concentrate. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘I’m worried about this man Gower,’ said Pickering.

‘So am I.’

‘I can’t guess how he’ll have been treated, but I don’t expect it to have been very good.’

‘They’ve got to grant access soon.’

‘One would have thought so. After living in China, I’m not so sure. There’s no logic here: no Western sort of logic, that is.’

‘I wish there were: it would be easier.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Leave, I suppose.’

‘When?’

‘I’ve already had the lecture from Peter Samuels.’