Charlie’s Apprentice

was standing before it and they were helping him out of his stinking, encrusted uniform.

The awareness came as he stood under the needle-stinging spray, drawing up the last reserve of adrenalin. Won! he thought: beaten them! I’ve beaten them! He risked letting the water from the shower into his parched, cracked mouth, although he held on to the presence of mind not to gulp too much, further to upset his stomach.

There was a razor and soap with which to shave when he stepped out, and the clean uniform waiting for him wasn’t stiff as the other had been, from previous unwashed use. He wasn’t taken back to the cell but to a ground- floor room where the toilet closet was partitioned off from a proper bed, with a mattress and a pillow and clean sheets.

A doctor came in what he gauged to be the afternoon to examine the lip sores, producing a salve which he had to administer himself, every three hours, over the course of two days. The food that was delivered wasn’t bad any more. The water came in a covered tin mug.

On the fourth day of his release from the cell, he was taken to meet a Chinese who gave no name. ‘You are seeing people from your embassy tomorrow,’ announced the man.

‘Where’s Mr Chen?’

The man ignored the question.

When the moment came, Natalia couldn’t bring herself to do what she had so carefully planned. For several days she kept the necessary files in her personal office safe, taking them out and replacing them, telling herself that so many things might have changed. Charlie could have married. Found somebody else at least. So for her to do what she intended had no point or purpose. There had been, after all, two opportunities for Charlie to be with her and he’d turned his back on both. Going beyond any professional reasoning, it had to mean he didn’t love her enough: if he’d loved her enough, he would have found a way. Any way. And if he didn’t love her enough what interest would he have in Sasha? How, sensibly and logically, could they do anything about it in any case, even if he were interested? They were separated – and always would be – by far more than miles.

Then she told herself that he deserved to know: had the right. What might – or might not – have existed between her and Charlie shouldn’t come into her thinking. The only consideration was Sasha. So Sasha’s father had to know.

Know more, in fact. Not just that she herself had survived the London episode but that she had maintained a position – risen in rank, even – and that therefore Sasha would always be cared for and protected.

She didn’t want to write. Not more than she had already decided to do. Apart from the obvious danger, minimal though it might be after the destruction of Fyodor Tudin, for her to write might make it seem that she was asking for something, and she wasn’t. All she was doing was telling Charlie what he should know. Nothing else.

Gazing down at the London file she had ordered assembled, Natalia suddenly smiled when the way occurred to her, carefully extracting one photograph. She took another, from her handbag this time. It was on this one that she wrote, very briefly.

That night, packing in the bedroom of the Leninskaya apartment, the baby awake in the cot beside her, Natalia said: ‘We’re going on holiday, darling. Germany is a beautiful country.’

It was a further and obvious precaution for Natalia to go outside of Russia, which it was now very easy to do under the new freedoms. She supposed she could have even gone to England. She wouldn’t, though: determined as she was – having tried as hard as she had – she could only go so far. But no further. Not to England.

Forty-eight

Julia Robb pointed with an outstretched finger to the open intercom, shaking her head but mouthing the word ‘later’, and Charlie nodded his agreement. He started to move towards Patricia Elder’s room but Julia stopped him, gesturing towards the Director-General’s suite as she announced his arrival. Charlie winked at her as he changed direction. He thought she looked very pretty.

Peter Miller was rigidly upright at his desk. The woman was seated alongside it but with her chair turned outwards, also to confront him. There was no chair for Charlie. Bloody fools, he thought. The stupidity of having him before them like an errant schoolboy didn’t upset him. Schoolboy, schoolmaster, it was all the same. Bloody daft. Standing upset him, though. His feet were playing up: he guessed he must have travelled about fifteen thousand miles and at the moment it felt as if he’d walked every one of them.

‘I want an explanation! A proper one. And it had better be good,’ declared Miller. His usually bland voice was tight with anger.

It was unfortunate he couldn’t give it to them outright, reflected Charlie. ‘It all seems to have worked out pretty straightforwardly,’ he suggested. ‘Samuels told me before I left Beijing we were finally going to get Gower.’

‘He’s to be released, without charge,’ disclosed Patricia. She seemed to be having difficulty with the tone of her voice, too.

‘So there’s been no public embarrassment, apart from the initial business with Gower,’ assessed Charlie. ‘We can surely smother that with a public relations blitz, about false arrest and imprisonment? Everyone must be very happy.’

‘You were supposed to have left Beijing five days ago! On a flight the embassy booked for you. Where the hell have you been, for five days?’

They really weren’t very good, either of them, reflected Charlie: certainly Miller shouldn’t have been showing this degree of anger. ‘Being careful,’ said Charlie, easily. ‘Snow’s death was a tragedy. Didn’t want any more, did we?’

‘You’re arrogant!’ declared Miller. ‘Arrogant and supercilious! I told you I wanted an explanation!’

‘I don’t understand how I’ve upset you,’ said Charlie, open-faced.

‘You disappeared off the face of the earth!’ shouted Miller. ‘We thought the Chinese might have swept you up, like Gower. We were about to approach the Chinese authorities for information, as we did with him.’

‘We want to know!’ insisted the woman.

‘A lot’s happened that hasn’t made sense – still doesn’t make sense – so I avoided the obvious risks,’ smiled Charlie, hopefully.

‘Don’t patronize us!’ warned the Director-General.

‘I’m not!’ asserted Charlie. ‘But you’ve got to admit some odd things happened. Things that just didn’t add up.’

‘Like what?’ demanded Miller.

Charlie levered his shoulders up and down. His feet really did hurt like a bugger. ‘You’ll think I’m rude.’

‘We think that already,’ said the woman.

‘Gower, for instance,’ continued Charlie, unruffled. ‘This could have been one God- almighty problem, if Snow had been roped in with Zhang Su Lin and all the other political protesters. So it was vitally important to prevent. Too important, I would have thought, for a first-time operation for someone untried and untested, as Gower was. And not just untried and untested. Hardly prepared at all, for the special circumstances of working in China.’

There was a shift of discomfort, Miller looking briefly to the woman. ‘That was a mistake. I’ll concede that.’

‘Which might have been mitigated if you had properly fulfilled the job you were appointed to do,’ said the woman, defensively.

‘My fault?’ asked Charlie, ingenuously.

‘An admitted mistake not alleviated by any instruction or advice you gave,’ she said.

You won’t annoy me, my lovely, thought Charlie: I wonder how much I am going to disconcert you. ‘Then there’s that business of keeping Snow away from the embassy. Never quite understood the reason for that.’

‘Our operation decision: I think the reason was obvious.’

‘Then there was the quickness of things. And their sequence,’ continued Charlie. ‘If the Chinese were seeking to identify a cell, why did they jump Gower when they did? Why didn’t they let him set his signal and wait until