Charlie supposed she showed some integrity in being honest. ‘On trial?’
‘You’re being given the opportunity.’
Jesus, he wanted it! All Charlie’s regret and nostalgia of the past months concentrated into one consuming awareness that he wanted, under any circumstances or conditions, to become actively operational again. He’d accept the terms, whatever and however they were offered: anything to get back. ‘What have you done, already?’
The deputy Director shook her head. ‘You’re supposed to be the expert. Tell me what you’d do. Give me something to put to the embassy.’
Flattering, thought Charlie. ‘According to the embassy, Gower left everything in the security vault?’
‘It’s one of the straws we’re clutching, that there was nothing incriminating on him when he was picked up.’
‘Authorize my access to it: I’ll probably still need the photographs. Advise them of my arrival, with a request for every possible facility, as and when I call upon it.’
‘They won’t agree to that sort of carte blanche: not the embassy nor the Foreign Office here. They just won’t like it.’
‘They’ll like a bloody sight less a full-scale trial of Britons in the dock of a Chinese court: they haven’t got any choice but to help.’
‘I’ll try,’ promised the woman, doubtfully.
‘And announce through the Foreign Office the intention to send out an official, to enforce the protests of Gower’s innocence. There’ll have to be a visa application, too: to provide them with a name.’
‘What?’ From her window-ledge vantage point the deputy Director was looking at him in head-tilted surprise. ‘But that …’
‘… will give them someone to look out for,’ completed Charlie. ‘It won’t be me.’
The woman came back to her desk but did not immediately sit at it. Instead, shaking her head, she leaned across to face him. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you here.’
Charlie smiled. ‘I don’t want anybody to.’
‘I want more than that.’ Patricia sat, slowly.
‘If the Foreign Office will agree, make it one of their own men. A lawyer would be the obvious choice. Let him work with the legal representative in Beijing, then pull him out.’
The head-shaking refusal grew. ‘You must have embassy cover: diplomatic protection.’
‘Like Gower did!’
‘That’s a cheap shot, which doesn’t get us anywhere,’ rejected Patrica. ‘From what we’re getting from Beijing, there was nothing the embassy could have done. But at least, for Gower, we can mount every diplomatic protest because he was accredited. There’s no question of your going there as a loose cannon: it’s absolutely out of the question.’
‘The embassy is what they’ll be watching!’ argued Charlie. ‘If you link me to it in a visa application you’ll alert the Chinese I’m coming. And so soon after Gower’s seizure, the connection is inevitable.’
‘It’s a point,’ she conceded, with seeming reluctance.
‘Just allow me a few days, without provable links to the embassy: as a tourist. Tell the embassy I’ll present myself, when it’s necessary. But nothing radioed or wired. Everything by pouch.’
‘You think our cipher’s insecure!’
Charlie sighed. ‘Everyone’s cipher is insecure. Use the diplomatic bag. Please!’
‘There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done that way,’ she agreed, in further concession.
‘I’ll want to look at the duplicate prints of all that Snow photographed, along with the rest of the file. And see Foster.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know, not until I’ve talked to him,’ said Charlie, matching her awkwardness. ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t see him, is there?’
‘If he’d done the job properly, we wouldn’t have this crisis,’ said Patricia, bitterly.
‘I don’t want to learn his mistakes,’ said Charlie. ‘I want to know how to avoid them.’
She hesitated, momentarily. ‘You should know that Foster’s finished, because of this. He’ll be retained but never given any responsibility again.’
‘Better not appoint him a special, end-of-course instructor of how to survive,’ said Charlie.
The cynicism went badly wrong. ‘We didn’t choose very well last time, did we?’ she said, sourly.
Charlie decided, impatiently, that this was childish, yah-boo stuff. He regretted starting it in the first place. ‘Gower had a fiancée. Marcia. I don’t have a surname. She’s been on television and in the papers.’
‘So?’ frowned the woman.
‘She’ll be as frightened as hell. Not know what’s going on.’
The frown remained. ‘You think she should be told?’
Now she was initiating the childlike remarks. ‘I think when she tries to find out she shouldn’t be fobbed off by some metal-voiced Foreign Office robot with the usual load of bollocks. But convinced as much as possible that everything is being done to help the man she thought she was going to marry!’ said Charlie, irritated.
The smile was brief but with neither humour nor sympathy. ‘Didn’t you tell me once that you’d never let any personal feelings intrude?’
Bugger her, thought Charlie. ‘Gower might appreciate it. He’s probably doing his best for you at the moment.’
‘Let’s hope it’s better than he’s done so far.’
‘How did it go?’ demanded Peter Miller.
‘He practically bit my hand off,’ said Patricia. She’d gone immediately next door after Charlie Muffin’s departure, nervously surprised there’d been nothing from Miller before the encounter. The previous night Ann had been due at the Regent’s Park penthouse, her first visit since they’d spent the week there together.
‘Nothing you didn’t expect?’ The voice, as usual, was blandly neutral.
Patricia didn’t respond at once, although the hesitation was not to consider the question. She shouldn’t show any expectation: certainly not apprehension. ‘Not really, although he wasn’t quite as overwhelmed as I thought he would have been. Very quickly began making demands.’
‘Difficult ones?’
She forced a smile. He should have said something by now! Miller didn’t smile back. ‘He wants to avoid the embassy at the beginning. And he asked for a decoy to be sent.’
‘What did you say?’
Maybe his wife hadn’t come after all. Or maybe – although hard to believe – the perfume hadn’t been discovered yet. Against which was the fact that he hadn’t made any move to kiss her, which he normally did, when they met for the first time in the day. She desperately wished now that she hadn’t left the bottle: taken the risk. ‘Agreed to his being solo, at first. Left the decoy idea for us to think about.’
‘It’s not a bad idea.’
When was he going to talk about something other than about this damned assignment interview, which he should know without asking would have gone quite satisfactorily? ‘He wants to talk to Foster.’
The Director-General came forward over his desk, hands steepled before him. ‘What did you say to that?’
‘Agreed. What else?’ Was she imagining the brittle-ness in his voice? Why had she done it?
Miller nodded. ‘No reason why he shouldn’t, I suppose.’
‘Every reason why he should: it’s an obvious thing to do.’
‘You tell him we’re sidelining Foster?’
The perfume couldn’t have been found yet: that was the only explanation. She nodded to the question. ‘There were some wisecracks: except they weren’t very wise. He made himself look stupid. And realized it, too.’
‘That’s a word that’s been in my mind overnight,’ said Miller.
Patricia looked at him, in apparent incomprehension. At last! ‘What word?’