He was kept waiting for nearly fifteen minutes before the clerk returned and nodded his head towards the rear office. With difficulty Charlie squeezed past the counter and went into the room.
It was as spartan and functional as that through which he had just come. A desk, three filing cabinets, one upright chair for any visitors, the walls bare and unbroken by any official photographs, even of Mao Tse-tung.
‘May I?’ asked Charlie, hand on the chair-back.
The head of the Chinese Legation stared at him without any expression of greeting, then nodded. Like confronting a headmaster for the first time, thought Charlie. Christ, his feet hurt.
‘You will take tea?’ said the official.
It was a statement rather than a hospitable question.
‘Thank you,’ said Charlie, accepting the ritual.
Kuo rang a handbell and from a side door almost immediately appeared another tunicked man carrying a tray dominated by a large Thermos. Around it were grouped teapot and cups.
‘Proper Chinese tea,’ announced Kuo, pouring.
Charlie took the cup, sipping it.
‘Excellent,’ he said politely. He had rushed almost everything else and made a balls of it, he thought. And this was his last chance, hopeless though the attempt might be, under the newly recognised rules. So the meeting could proceed at whatever pace the other man dictated.
Kuo topped up the pot from the Thermos, then sat back, regarding Charlie again with a headmasterly look.
Charlie gazed back, vaguely disconcerted. Kuo was a square-bodied, heavily built man, dressed in the regulation tunic but with no obvious signs of his rank. Under its cap of thick black hair, the man’s face was smooth and unlined.
Kuo nodded towards the telephone.
‘You spoke of wanting help?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie.
‘What kind of help?’
‘I represent one of the syndicate members who insured the Pride of America… ’
‘Who now stand to lose a large sum of money.’
‘Who now stand to lose a large sum of money,’ agreed Charlie.
‘And you don’t want to pay?’
Can’t pay, thought Charlie, sighing. There was something almost artificial in the communist criticism of capitalism, he decided. As ritualistic as the tea-drinking.
‘We’re trying to avoid paying out wrongly,’ he explained. ‘And at the moment, we might be forced to.’
‘How is that?’ demanded Kuo.
‘The liner was not set alight by agents of the People’s Republic of China,’ declared Charlie.
For the first time there was reaction from the man; no facial expression, but a hesitation before he spoke again.
‘If it is an assurance of that which you want, then of course you have it,’ said Kuo. ‘The accusation has been ridiculous from the start.’
For someone of Kuo’s control, it had been a clumsy response, thought Charlie.
‘I want more than assurance,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Proof.’
Kuo leaned forward over the desk, pouring more tea.
‘How long have you been in Hong Kong?’ he asked, settling back into his chair.
‘Little over a week,’ said Charlie.
‘Then you must have seen the police?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Mr Lu?’
‘Yes.’
‘So we must be almost at the bottom of the list,’ decided Kuo.
Charlie considered his reply. Was Kuo seeking an apology, imagining some insult in the order of priority? There seemed no point in evading the accusation.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘At the bottom.’
Briefly, unexpectedly, Kuo smiled.
‘You’re very honest,’ he said.
‘If I thought I’d achieve more by lying, then I would,’ said Charlie.
Again the smile flickered into place.
‘Very honest indeed.’
Charlie sipped his tea. Again he’d made the proper response, he realised, relieved.
‘Even if you are prepared to help me,’ Charlie went on in explanation, ‘it might not be possible for you to do so.’
‘Why?’
‘I believe Lu destroyed his own ship,’ said Charlie. ‘I believe that he used gambling debts to force the shipyard workers into doing it and then had them murdered by someone else who had also got into debt…’
Charlie hesitated, Kuo remained impassive on the other side of the desk.
‘Believe,’ repeated Charlie. ‘But cannot prove to the satisfaction of the English court in which Lu is suing for payment. But there might be a way to obtain that proof…’
‘By seeing if a prison cook named Fan Yung-ching has returned to his family in Hunan?’
Charlie nodded, letting the curiosity reach his face.
‘We are not entirely ignorant of the affair,’ said Kuo.
‘Then help me prove the truth of it,’ Charlie urged him. ‘The real truth.’
‘You expect my country to help a capitalist institution save a fortune!’
‘I expect China to have a proper awareness of the harm that could be caused to its relations with Washington if this remains unchallenged,’ said Charlie.
‘An insurance official with a politician’s argument,’ mused Kuo.
‘A logical, sensible argument,’ Charlie corrected him. He sounded as pompous as Johnson, he thought.
‘Come now,’ said Kuo. ‘Lu has the irritation of a droning insect on a summer’s day. Are you seriously suggesting an impediment between my country and America from someone as insignificant?’
‘The Pride of America was built with an enormous grant from the American government. And then sustained by an equally enormous grant, until it became blatantly uneconomical. Millions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money supported that ship. And there was a pride in it. The destruction, within weeks of leaving America, is far from insignificant. And I’m sure there are people within your Foreign Ministry who feel the same way…’
Charlie paused, tellingly.
‘And if you didn’t think so, too,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t be as familiar with the details as you obviously are.’
Again there was the brief, firefly smile.
‘Not only honest,’ said the Chinese, ‘but remarkably perceptive as well.’
‘Am I wrong?’
Kuo fingered his teacup, finally looking up.
‘No,’ he admitted, matching Charlie’s earlier honesty. ‘You’re not wrong.’
‘Then help me,’ said Charlie again.
‘How?’
‘If the cook has returned to Hunan…’ began Charlie.
‘He has,’ Kuo cut him off.
Charlie felt the sweep of familiar excitement at the awareness that he could win. Lu’s boastful words, he remembered. But that’s all it was, a boast. In himself, Charlie knew, the need was far deeper. Sir Archibald had recognised it; one of the few who had. And used it, quite calculatingly. But openly, of course. ‘Go out and win, Charlie.’ Always the same encouragement. And so he’d gone out and won. Because he’d had to. Just as he’d had to win, and win demonstrably, when he’d realised Sir Archibald’s successors were trying to beat him. And then again, when they’d begun the chase. ‘Go out and win, Charlie.’ No matter who gets hurt. Or dies. Poor Edith.
Charlie began concentrating, considering another thought: he’d expected the Chinese to be properly concerned, but to have established already the return to China of the Hunan cook showed a determined investigation.
‘Superintendent Johnson told me he had sought assistance from you,’ said Charlie.
‘He wants the man returned to the colony.’
‘And that’s not possible?’ probed Charlie gently.
‘It might not be thought wise.’
‘I wouldn’t need his return, to fight Lu in the English High Court,’ Charlie assured him.
‘How, then?’
‘Give me an entry visa to China,’ said Charlie. ‘Let me interview the man, in the presence of your officials and someone from the British embassy in Peking who can notarise the statement as being properly made and therefore legally admissible in an English court.’
He’d been involved in British espionage for two decades, reflected Charlie. And in that time used a dozen overseas embassies. There could easily be an earlier-encountered diplomat now assigned to Peking who might recognise him. He would, thought Charlie, spend the rest of his life fleeing through a hall of distorted mirrors and shying away from half-seen images of fear.