‘What are you going to do?’
‘Leave, I suppose.’
‘When?’
‘I’ve already had the lecture from Peter Samuels.’
Surprisingly Pickering smiled. ‘It’s pretty easy to become paranoid in a society like this.’
‘I’m coming to realize that.’
‘We’re all very nervous. None of us have known anything like all this recent pressure and accusation. It’s pretty frightening if you’ve got to live here all the time.’
‘I guess it must be,’ allowed Charlie.
Back at his hotel, Charlie conceded there was little purpose in his remaining any longer in the Chinese capital. He had never imagined escorting Gower home. And Snow, his reason for being there in the first place, was dead. But still Charlie was reluctant to leave. It was instinctive in a situation which still troubled him for Charlie to pick and probe and turn stones over even when he didn’t know what he was looking for beneath them. And Charlie always followed instinct.
He stayed away from the embassy for several days. Experimentally he embarked, almost immediately sore-footed, on a strictly limited tourist trail, ending the painful test reasonably sure he was not under surveillance and therefore in no immediate danger, although yet again acknowledging the difficulty of being as convinced as he would have been in a Western environment, and yet again thinking how inadequately Gower had been prepared for the situation into which he had been pitched.
Eventually, inevitably, Charlie was drawn to the district in which the mission was located. He went without any positive intention of meeting Father Robertson, which might have been dangerous. He was glad he chose the time to match that of his first visit and followed the same, most obvious route, although Charlie was unhappy having to use the same silk shop for concealment because it was repetitive and therefore not good tradecraft. It was a passing uncertainty, instantly replaced by another far greater curiosity at something immediately obvious to Charlie’s trained eye and which, like so much else, didn’t make sense.
He confirmed his impression, to be quite sure, from the more open park in which there was sufficient protective, personal cover. It was from there that Charlie saw Father Robertson, thinking at once that he could confront the man now. He didn’t attempt to. The priest was still careworn but slightly less stooped than when Charlie had unobtrusively watched his arrival and departure from the embassy. That day there seemed more spring in his step, too: Dr Pickering would be pleased at the advancing recovery. It was even better the following day. And the third, when Father Robertson positively bustled up the road, exactly on schedule. A man of regular pattern, Charlie recognized, glad of the park concealment and deciding that he wouldn’t try to talk to the mission chief after all. Charlie liked patterns that fitted, although always with others, never himself. Sometimes it was really surprising what lurked under overturned stones.
Samuels greeted Charlie furiously when he reappeared at the embassy. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Staying away, like you wanted.’
‘God knows what’s going on in London. They’re frantic about you …’ He offered a sheaf of cables. ‘A lot have been duplicated, to me. They want to know why you didn’t rebase days ago, as you were ordered.’
‘Didn’t feel it was right, not then.’ Another question to be resolved, he thought, remembering an earlier conversation. ‘Why didn’t you call the hotel? You knew where I was.’
‘I didn’t want it to appear the embassy were chasing you,’ said Samuels. ‘I wouldn’t like to be you, when you get back!’
‘I’m not looking forward to it myself,’ admitted Charlie, sincerely. He still had to get back.
They sat facing each other in Samuels’ office for several moments, with no conversation. Then Samuels said: ‘I am authorized by the ambassador – and empowered by the Foreign Office – positively to order you out of this embassy and out of the country. On the next plane to London. Which leaves tomorrow morning, at ten. I’ll make the reservation.’
‘That would be good of you,’ smiled Charlie. ‘Actually, I’d already decided to leave. So we’re both going to be happy, aren’t we?’
‘I don’t think you’re going to survive this.’
‘I was supposed to teach Gower that,’ said Charlie. ‘How to survive.’
‘You didn’t do very well, did you?’
‘That’s what other people have said.’
‘We’re being given access, at last. No definite day, yet. But there’s been a formal agreement. And without the ambassador having to be recalled, in protest.’
Charlie came forward in his chair. ‘No charge or accusation?’
‘No.’
‘So he held out?’
‘It looks like it. That’s why there was so much panic about you in London. You were the last loose end.’
It really was time to go home, Charlie decided. He supposed it probably was an accurate enough description of him, a worrying loose end. ‘It’s good, about Gower. A relief.’ How long would a proper recovery take?
‘Don’t forget,’ cautioned Samuels. ‘Tomorrow morning: ten o’clock.’
‘I won’t,’ promised Charlie.
He did leave the following morning, although not on the London plane. Charlie took an earlier, internal flight to Canton and from there caught a train further south. As he crossed by road into Hong Kong Charlie thought that Samuels would get an awful bollocking for not personally ensuring he was on the London flight.
At Chung Horn Kok, in the very centre of Hong Kong island, there is an installation known as the Composite Signals Station. It is an electronic intelligence-gathering facility run by Britain in conjunction with its other world-spanning eavesdropping centre, the Government Communication Headquarters at Cheltenham, in the English county of Gloucestershire. Although the Composite Signals Station is much smaller than the facility in England – and is in the process of being dismantled prior to the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997 – there is still at Chung Horn Kok equipment sufficiently powerful to listen to radio and telephone communications as far north as Beijing and to both the Russian naval headquarters at Vladivostok and their rocket complex on Sakhalin Island.
Charlie’s security clearance was high enough for him to be given all the cooperation he sought: his requests were quite specific and therefore easily traced. He only needed to spend four hours there, so he was able to catch the night flight back to England, via Italy.
He boarded the plane a depressed and coldly furious man, believing he knew enough to be able to guess other things. Charlie didn’t sleep and he didn’t drink: booze never helped at the deep-thinking, final working out stage. Halfway through the second leg of the flight, from Rome, he decided he might not have reached that final stage after all, so did not return to Westminster Bridge Road immediately after reaching London.
Instead, he took a train north to the national registration centre for births, deaths and marriages at Southport, near Liverpool. Again he knew exactly what he was looking for, even though he had to go between two different departments, so he wasn’t able, more depressed than ever, to catch the afternoon train back to London.
There, the following day, he went to the Records Office at Kew for back editions of the Diplomatic Lists, which led him to the directory of the General Medical Council. He was lucky. The men he was looking for had both retired, but to Sussex, so he only had an hour to travel. It wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with either.
Charlie expected his internal telephone to be ringing when he entered his office at Westminster Bridge Road, because it had been obvious from ground-floor security that his arrival was flagged for instant notification.