He waited until Exchange Square with its fresh skyscrapers before hailing a cab. Once more he was cautious, isolating Repulse Bay for the first leg, settling back against the seat and momentarily closing his eyes against the growing sun glare as the vehicle began its climb over Victoria Peak. Almost at once he felt the sink of sleep and blinked awake, fighting it off, knowing he’d feel worse if he relaxed and had to start functioning again, after only an hour.
How easy would it be, to get into the Composite Signals Station? Something else he should have fixed with the Director, before severing contact in Tokyo: just like he should have agreed to the despatch of some sort of military aircraft. Charlie shifted, moving against the recurring drowsiness but also in irritation, worried at the things he had overlooked. If you lose your touch, my boy, your balls are going to end up on a hook, he told himself.
The car started its descent from the high spine of the island, edging down to sea level on the back-upon-itself road, and after one of the curves Charlie caught the first sight of the orange-roofed villas of Repulse Bay and thought it looked like a part of the French Riviera that had been put down for a moment and then forgotten.
He paid the cab off by the beach and walked slowly further into the tiny settlement while the taxi reversed and then set off for the return trip. It was more difficult than he’d thought it would be to get another car, and when he finally managed it and gave the address at Chung Hom Kok he was aware of the driver’s examination, in the mirror. To be expected, Charlie supposed. The Composite Signals base is an electronic intelligence-gathering installation with equipment sufficiently powerful for Britain to listen to radio and telephone communication as far away as Beijing and to both the Soviet naval headquarters at Vladivostok and the Russian rocket complex on Sakhalin Island. Charlie wondered what would happen to it after 1997: it would certainly be on a spy category list even greater than any upon which Harry Lu’s name appeared. Moscow were probably shitting themselves, aware of how the Chinese could use the ready-made and well functioning station. He hoped to Christ he could use it too.
He came forward in his seat as the car approached. There were a lot of angled radio dishes and Nissen-hut hedgehogs of bristling radio antennae, but like most secret installations Charlie had ever visited, it still looked like a temporary army barracks, ready for a war. Which perhaps it was. Alert, Charlie saw the camera monitor manoeuvre to their arrival, to record the car — and its number — before he even alighted, and as he walked towards the gate-house Charlie registered the inner protection of wire which he guessed was electrified and the further array of cameras beyond that focussed upon him and guessed the perimeter would be sensor-seeded, to detect any entry which got past either.
Self-rehearsed, Charlie asked for the guard commandant, and when the man — sparse-haired, sun-worship brown and in a tropical uniform so uncreased Charlie expected the starch to crack with each movement — came curiously across the quadrangle, Charlie asked for the duty officer. For identification he provided his Foreign Office registry number, as well as his name. It was obvious that the registry number meant something to the man, who withdrew without asking any questions: seconds after he disappeared into what appeared to be the main administrative building at the end of the entry road Charlie heard the muffled ring of a telephone in the gatehouse complex, and soon after that three more uniformed gatehouse attendants appeared to support their original colleague and Charlie accepted he was under guard. Which was fine with him and he wished he had more of it. He smiled at them. No one responded, but at least there wasn’t the disdain of the American embassy reception in Tokyo.
Charlie had hoped to get through the gatehouse area, but the crackling-uniformed officer returned with another man who also wore a tropical suit but this one bagged and was actually dirty at the cuffs and lapel edges, the shirt rumpled beneath. Charlie thought he looked the sort of bloke to suffer the morning-after ravages of bad meat pies, but perhaps that was too much to expect.
The telephone call Charlie detected had gone further than he imagined because at the approach of the two men one of the additional guards opened a side door, gesturing Charlie into what he saw, when he got inside, to be an interview room. With the obvious limit on talking, Charlie passingly thought an interview room was an unnecessary luxury.
The crumpled man came in alone and did not attempt to identify himself. Instead he gestured with the paper upon which the commandant had recorded the registry number and demanded: ‘Where did you get this?’
‘It’s mine,’ insisted Charlie. Before the man could speak, Charlie added his department categorization, its clearance level, the communication code to London, with its standby alternative, and the demand code for the Director. ‘You’ll need to take a note, so I’ll repeat them more slowly,’ he finished. He’d just disclosed enough for a ten-year sentence under the Official Secrets Act, Charlie realized; maybe not as much as ten years. He’d only got fourteen for screwing two intelligence Directors. Certainly five then; and perhaps this time not the way out he’d been offered before.
There was a barely discernible relaxation in the man’s attitude. He said: ‘What do you want?’
‘Communication,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘Believe you’re good at it here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ rejected the man, at once.
‘Ask London,’ said Charlie. When the man remained impassive, Charlie added: ‘Please!’
The duty officer looked towards the door behind which Charlie knew the four guards would still be waiting. Charlie extended his hands, palm upwards, and said urgently: ‘You have a facsimile machine here: take a full set of fingerprints and check them out with London, in addition to what I’ve already given you.’
‘You seem to be in a great hurry,’ said the man, still doubtful.
‘A hell of a hurry,’ agreed Charlie. ‘An emergency. Call London …’ He hesitated and added again: ‘Please.’ It had always been a difficult word for him.
‘It’s not the purpose or function of this facility,’ said the man, adamantly.
‘I said it was an emergency!’
‘I heard what you said.’
Charlie felt the sweat bubble, burst and then find its way down his back. He nodded towards the door. ‘Effectively I’m under arrest, even though I haven’t penetrated any part of this establishment. You can do with me what you like. I’m no danger, to you or anything that you’re doing here. All I want is secure liaison with London …’ The indication this time was to the paper upon which the man had made his notes. ‘You know that’s not bullshit.’
‘I know that if it’s genuine you’ve broken a lot of regulations.’
Dear God spare me from another Witherspoon, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Which I know. Like I said, an emergency …’ The thought came suddenly and Charlie said: ‘You’ll have to make contact with London anyway now, won’t you?’
‘I’ll need a passport as well as fingerprints,’ said the man.
‘You can have whatever you want,’ said Charlie, relieved.
There was a delay bringing the inkpad and paper, and when the man finally left the room Charlie experimentally tried the door and found it to be locked. He smiled, appreciatively, not offended. He’d risked — and endangered — everything by coming here like this. He closed his eyes, in brief contemplation rather than prayer: just one wrong word, the smallest misconception, and he’d be down the drain without even touching the sides. He was becoming accustomed to the perpetual apprehension.
It was a full hour before the man returned, an hour when, despite attempts not to, Charlie kept lapsing into a half-sleep, slumped awkwardly in a stiffly upright chair in an oppressively hot room. He dreamed but consciously, all the time part of him aware of what was happening, confronting a mental mirror of disjointed images: exploding planes and threatening Americans, an emotionless Russian and a big woman whose voice was too loud and who spoke with her hands on her hips, and more threats, from a Chinese who looked like a European this time, and then the voices and the faces and the threats got further confused, coming from the wrong faces with the wrong voices, and that aware part of him, the part that knew it was a dream anyway, tried to get everything back together, in their right compartments, properly to understand what was really happening, and that same, conscious reasoning part of his mind told him he’d come back to the major difficulty and that he still didn’t understand what was really happening, not at all.