Charlie’s Apprentice cm-10

by Brian Freemantle

  Gower did not attempt to stretch out full-length. He was crouched forward at the next Judas-hole check but didn’t bother to move after the visor screeched shut. Instead he remained as he was, although as far back on the shelf as possible to support his back, trying to doze. He was never wholly successful, never lapsing into a proper sleep, but he didn’t want to do that because it would have been a dangerous mistake: he drifted in a half consciousness, resting but aware every time of the rasping scrape of the peep-hole, alert enough when it came to the louder sound of the door opening to be awake and looking at who entered. The bow-shouldered, bowed-headed man carrying the food wore a stained and shapeless tunic like him, obviously another prisoner. There was a guarding soldier either side. The food slopped over the edge of the bowl when it was dumped on to the table. The soldiers looked at him, expressionlessly. The food-carrier didn’t try. Nothing was said by anyone. The sound of the door slamming shut was still echoing in the corridor when the covering metal was slid back from the observation point.

  For a moment Gower remained undecided: he did not feel genuinely hungry and did not want to arouse suspicion by appearing so, after such a comparatively short time without food. The hole remained uncovered longer than at any other time and so Gower moved eventually, going across to the table.

  He had grown used to the lavatory in the corner. The smell from what was being offered as food was quite different but equally revolting. The bowl contained a predominantly grey liquid, but it was glutinous, slimed on top. There were things floating or suspended in it but Gower could not tell what they were supposed to be: they appeared transparent, as jellyfish are transparent, and when he looked closer he saw that like jellyfish there were black blobs or spots on some parts of whatever it was. There was a cup beside the food, half filled. Gower was prepared for the water to be discoloured, maybe even with detritus floating in it, but it was unexpectedly clear.

  Aware of the eyes upon him, Gower stood with his back to the door but in front of the table, so the food tray was hidden from his onlooker. He visibly went through the motions that from behind would have seemed to be his bringing the cup to his mouth but, sure his face was hidden from outside, kept his lips tight, barely letting the water wet them. It didn’t taste sour or bad, but he still didn’t drink. There was no spoon to eat with, so Gower lifted the food bowl, but still hidden from outside did not let it even touch his mouth. He tried to avoid inhaling, fighting against the bile building up in his throat. He made four or five lifting and head-back swallowing movements, then replaced the bowl. The visor swivelled shut as he sat down on the ledge. Gower rose at once, pouring half the water into the lavatory to make it appear to have been drunk, then emptied most of the viscous slops after it. The flies rose and settled: there was excited scratching from inside the clotted rim.

  Gower drowsed through four more doorway checks before the louder noise began. There was a lot of activity in the outside corridor, sounding like squads of men moving up and down to bursts of shouted orders, and then two separate loudspeakers started up with contrasting, discordant wails, one clashing against the other. It was so raucous that Gower almost missed the rasp of the peep-hole opening. He didn’t have to prepare himself. He was sitting up, awake, his hands actually to his ears against the cacophony. He remained like that but with his head bent, no longer able to doze but with his eyes closed, still resting after a fashion, despite the row.

  He hadn’t expected the middle-of-the-night resumption of the questioning, but it was one of the standard procedures so Gower was not disorientated by the abrupt entry of an escort squad, although he tried to appear confused. He kept up the pretence when he re-entered the room where Chen was waiting.

  The table was clear now, all his belongings gone. The recording operators looked to be the same men. The black-suited man who had been present at the arrest wasn’t there any more, and on this occasion the three-man escort remained inside the room.

  ‘We have proof that you are a spy,’ announced Chen, at once.

  ‘I am not a spy,’ rejected Gower. Although the Chinese was wearing the same tunic it appeared freshly pressed. The man’s open face gleamed with cleanliness and there was the obvious fragrance of a heavy cologne. Gower recognized it all as another attempted psychological twist of the screw, for him mentally to compare his predicament with that of his questioner. He edged forward on the table separating them, for Chen to catch the odour seeping from him, hoping to offend the man.

  ‘The flowers were a signal.’

  He was supposed to be muddled, remembered Gower. He blinked and made several attempts to form his words before saying: ‘Told you earlier what they were for.’

  ‘Tell me again!’

  ‘My room at the embassy.’

  ‘Liar!’

  More word-searching. ‘Demand the embassy be told. I have the right of access.’

  ‘Tell me who you were signalling and I will inform your embassy where you are. And why.’

  Gower dropped his head, not sure if he could conceal his full reaction to what the other man had disclosed. If they wanted him to provide a name, they hadn’t arrested Snow! ‘Not signalling anyone,’ he mumbled. ‘Here inspecting embassy facilities.’

  ‘What is the importance of the Taoist shrine?’

  ‘Not important. It seemed unusual. I was interested.’

  ‘We’ve set a trap,’ announced Chen.

  Gower decided he couldn’t respond: show any reaction at all. He moved his shoulders, barely shrugging, but said nothing.

  ‘We’re putting flowers at the shrine.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  Gower shrugged again.

  ‘We’re going to make the signal you were supposed to give. Trap the others.’

  Could it work? Possibly. The colour of the flowers had to be right. And the precise position, in the troughs. The significance of the colour would probably be obvious but they wouldn’t know where to put them. But would it matter if the signal was wrong and the priest ignored it? Snow – a Westerner – would arouse suspicion merely by being there if they expected a Westerner: risk almost automatic arrest. Still no personal danger, Gower reassured himself, recalling his reflection at the earlier confrontation. Snow didn’t know him: couldn’t name him. But was there any safety there, either? If Snow were seized, merely for being in the same area, and under interrogation disclosed that the flowers were a signal, then the connection was established. And Snow hadn’t been trained to resist interrogation. There was nothing he could do. If it happened – and Snow broke – he was lost. ‘I don’t understand,’ he repeated.

  ‘It would be better for you if you confessed now.’

  ‘I am a diplomat. I want to talk to my embassy.’

  ‘You’re guilty.’

  Gower stayed silent.

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  Still silence.

  ‘We just have to wait,’ said Chen.

  Charlie knew immediately from the expression on Julia’s face that there was a crisis. She stood unspeaking at the door of her house for several moments before backing away, for him to enter.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘Gower,’ she said. ‘They’ve swept up your apprentice.’

  Thirty-six

  The gesture of pouring Charlie the Islay malt she was buying specifically for him now was practically automatic: that night Julia poured for herself, which was not: normally she didn’t drink whisky. Charlie accepted the glass but put it at once on the side-table before leaning forward from his facing chair to bring them very close. He reached out for her hands to direct her entire concentration upon him.

  ‘Every detail,’ he urged. ‘Everything you know.’

  ‘Very little,’ apologized the girl. ‘Nobody knows anything. He went out of the embassy in Beijing, telling people he would be back around midday. He never arrived.’

  ‘Beijing?’ queried Charlie.

  ‘That was the assignment.
China, to bring out someone we think is under suspicion: liable to arrest.’

  ‘What about an announcement? An accusation?’

  ‘Nothing yet. We’re making official representations, enquiring about his whereabouts. As a missing diplomat, of course. That’s why I’m telling you now: you’d have learned anyway, in a few hours. The idea’s to create a fuss: the Director thinks it might make them cautious about the pressure they’ll put on him.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ll do what they like. It’s China, for Christ’s sake! They don’t care about Western opinion.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ said Julia, sadly. ‘Really very sorry.’

  Charlie was grateful but indifferent to sympathy for himself. ‘Gower will be a bloody sight sorrier. Hardly anything of what we did … what he did before, at the proper training schools … prepared him. Why the fuck did it have to be China?’

  ‘There’s a hell of a flap at the Foreign Office. The DG – and Patricia – have made a lot in their memoranda about Gower’s resistance to interrogation.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘It’s not the same: never can be. You can go through all the motions … authentic physical stress … beating … drugs … sleep deprivation … all of that. But it’s not the same. You can always hold on to the fact that it’s a war game: that it’ll stop sometime. That insurance isn’t there, for the real thing. And the Chinese are good at it. They’ve been doing it longer and better than anybody else.’

  ‘You think he’ll break?’

  ‘I know he’ll break. Everyone does …’ Charlie was looking away from her now, deep in reflection. ‘It shouldn’t have been Beijing, not the first time. He wasn’t ready. That was wrong.’ His voice was distant: he wasn’t really addressing the girl whose hands he still held.

  ‘It was pretty shitty luck,’ agreed Julia.

  ‘Luck never enters into it.’ Charlie looked up, abruptly. ‘What about the person who’s exposed?’

  Julia shook her head. ‘Not a lot. He’s a priest: told to get out but wouldn’t.’

  Charlie frowned across at her, concentrating again. ‘Why send in? Why didn’t his Control in Beijing simply tell him to get out?’

  ‘The relationship collapsed. We brought the Control out a long time ago. A damage-limitation move, if the priest was arrested.’

  ‘What damage limitation, with Gower in the bag?’

  She nodded in further agreement, at Charlie’s outrage. ‘No one anticipated this.’

  Charlie stayed frowning. ‘Is that the way it’s being put forward?’

  Julia nodded.

  More damage limitation at Westminster Bridge Road than ten thousand miles away in China, thought Charlie, bitterly. ‘If the priest was arrested?’ he echoed.

  ‘There’s been nothing about that, either,’ conceded Julia. ‘But there is something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He had a dissident source, about a year ago. A man named Zhang Su Lin. He’s one of a number of dissidents who’ve been arrested in the past few weeks. There’s a purge going on.’

  Charlie was silent for several moments. At last he took his drink, sipping it. Then he said, distantly again: ‘This could be a full-scale, eighteen carat, one hundred per cent disaster. With political and every other sort of fallout all over the place. And with Gower buried under it, right at the very bottom.’

  ‘I wish I could think of something practical to say.’

  So did Charlie. But he didn’t know enough: supposed he’d never know enough. Only sufficient to make the judgement he’d just reached, which hardly required the political acument of the age. ‘The official reaction, if there is an accusation, will be absolute denial?’

  ‘It’s standard,’ reminded Julia. ‘I guess that’ll be it.’

  Charlie wondered how a girl named Marcia whom he’d never met would feel seeing newspaper and television pictures of a cowed and brainwashed lover humbled in a court on the other side of the world. He smiled across at Julia. ‘Thanks, for bending the personal rules. Can you go on doing that? Just about Gower. I want to know much more than what’s going to be made officially public’

  Julia didn’t reply at once. Then she said: ‘Just about Gower.’

  ‘Poor bastard,’ said Charlie, reflective again. ‘Poor, frightened bastard.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s not you,’ said Julia, unexpectedly. ‘That’s selfish, I know. Doesn’t help anyone. But I’m so glad it’s not you.’

  Refusing to pick up on her remark, Charlie instead practically echoed the threat of John Gower’s interrogator. ‘All we can do now is wait.’

  It wasn’t to be long, for any of them.

  The British demands brought about the uproar.

  The Chinese ambassador to London was summoned to the Foreign Office personally to receive the request for information about John Gower, described as an accredited diplomat on temporary secondment to Beijing. The interview was timed to the minute to coincide with the visit to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing of Sir Timothy Railton. The request the British ambassador formally deposited was worded identically to that collected by his Chinese counterpart, in London. The press release was confined, for reasons of practicality, to London. It began by expressing the concern of the British authorities in the Chinese capital and of the British government in London at the apparent disappearance of Gower. The British government were unable to offer any explanation for his not returning to the embassy and could only infer the man had become ill or been involved in an accident which had so far prevented his being properly identified.

  The press statement was issued quickly after the simultaneously delivered information-seeking notes, so there was a gap of several hours before the Beijing answer. The delay was sufficient for media interest to begin, although initially with no suggestion of espionage overtones: the disappearance of a young and new diplomat in this still enclosed country, the one remaining communist superpower in the world, was enough to justify newspaper curiosity.

  That curiosity erupted into near hysteria with the Beijing announcement that John Gower had been arrested as a spy engaged in counter-revolutionary activities against the State, activities which had already led to widespread arrests of dissidents throughout the country. Within twenty-four hours the newspapers discovered the existence of Marcia Leyton: the innocent vicar who had christened her confirmed the wedding preparations and the media cup was filled to overflowing, a spy sensation they never imagined possible after the end of their self-entitled Cold War, complete with a perfect human-interest angle.

  All the pictures of Marcia were of a bewildered and confused girl. She broke down at the only press conference she attempted to give, so the denial that her fiance had any connection whatsoever with any intelligence service was issued by the family solicitor. Traced to Gloucestershire, Gower’s mother confronted the press on the lawn of the decaying mansion and insisted it was nonsense to describe her son as a spy. The Chinese had made a terrible mistake which they should rectify immediately.

  It was on the day of the televised press conference during which Marcia broke down that Charlie was called to the ninth floor of Westminster Bridge Road.

  There was another summons made that day, in Moscow. It demanded the appearance of Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before Vadim Lestov, the chairman of the Federal Agency for Internal Security. No reason was given.

  Natalia finally made the telephone call she had delayed. It was the third day of the deadline she had imposed upon herself.

  Thirty-seven

  Natalia was ordered not to the traditional headquarters of the former Soviet intelligence apparatus at Lubyanka, but to the nearby White House, the seat of the new Russian government. There Vadim Lestov maintained an office suite in which he spent most of his time, in preference to the ochre-painted mausoleum so closely associated with KGB oppression.

  Only when she approached the inner sanctum of the intelligence division, close to Lestov’s suite, was there any reminder of the old KGB
security mania, but even here the officers who carried out the mandatory screening were young, open-faced and comparatively friendly, not the stone-featured automatons she could remember from when she first joined the service, which now seemed so very long ago.

  Natalia felt completely alone and frighteningly vulnerable, without any indication of what or who she was going to confront. At this moment – this very last moment – the precautions she’d attempted, working blind, always having to guess where and how Tudin’s attack might come, seemed woefully inadequate.

  A man was waiting to receive her in an ante-room, gesturing her at once towards high, divided double doors. Natalia was disorientated the moment she entered. She had expected an office, with maybe just Lestov or Tudin waiting inside. Instead she walked into a small conference room already arranged as an examining tribunal. There was a table across the end of the room. Lestov sat in the centre, flanked by his two immediate deputies, Vladimir Melnik and Nikolai Abialiev. A bank of tables to the left already harboured a recording secretariat of three men and two women. There were two rows of chairs facing the three blank-faced members of the committee. Fyodor Tudin was already occuping a seat in the first row, on the left. Eduard was directly behind. Mikhail Kapitsa was in the same row, but separated from Eduard by two empty chairs. Also in that row sat a third man whom Natalia did not know.

  Her escort indicated the chairs to the right, separated from the others by a central aisle. Mustn’t become disorientated, confused by the unexpected! she told herself. She’d make mistakes if she let this tribunal hearing unsettle her. No reason why she should be unsettled. Her original KGB training had been as an interrogator, accustomed daily to being faced during debriefings with situations for which there had been no primer or rehearsal. It was at one such session that she’d met Charlie Muffin for the first time!