‘I’m not prepared to go on for ever,’ warned the woman. She was, she recognized at once. She didn’t have any alternative, apart from lonely, solitary spinsterhood.
‘I’m not asking you to.’ He was becoming irritable at her persistence.
In her confused anxiety it was Patricia who backed off, changing the subject with the abruptness of a switch being thrown. ‘Are we leaving separately this morning?’
Sometimes they staggered their departure from the Regent’s Park mansion, from which the penthouse apartment had its own discreet exit, so as to produce an acceptably different time to arrive at the office.
‘The diplomatic pouch from Beijing should have arrived overnight,’ said Miller, seizing the escape. ‘I want to get to it first thing: I’ll precis it, before you get in.’
‘I’m more interested in what we get after the embassy encounter.’
Miller realized, relieved, that Patricia had turned completely to professional considerations. ‘I’m not sure how objective Foster’s evaluation will be any longer, when they finally do meet. And Snow has made his position clear, refusing any further liaison contact.’
‘Snow will be expecting our response, to his demand for a new controller.’
Miller leaned forward over the table, looking reflectively downwards. ‘That’s got to be balanced by a hair: one mistake on our part and it’ll all end in disaster.’
‘So what’s the guidance we give Foster?’
‘We’ll have to wait to see if there is anything new in the pouch this morning,’ pointed out the Director-General, logically. ‘If there isn’t, I don’t see we give Foster any fresh instructions at all.’
‘You don’t want the withdrawal orders from us?’
Miller screwed his face up quizzically, at the same time shaking his head. ‘I’d rather it be his decision. It would ultimately look better.’
‘Something else that hangs by a hair,’ mused the woman.
‘Foster’s got to be out first. The sequence has to be right.’
‘The sequence has always had to be right,’ reminded the woman.
After he’d left, Patricia hand-washed the breakfast things, dried them and restored them all to their respective cupboards so no evidence remained of two people having used the flat. Before finally leaving she checked carefully through every room – particularly the bedroom – to ensure she’d left nothing behind that shouldn’t be there. As she was passing the hall table, she saw Miller had left the theatre programme, ticket stubs and restaurant bill for her to throw away. She hesitated for several moments before gathering everything up and stuffing it into her handbag. She waited until she had crossed the river and was several miles from Regent’s Park before tossing the things into a waste basket. Even then she found a separate bin for the programme than for the tickets. She went directly into Miller’s suite when she arrived.
‘Just as it was,’ reported Miller at once. ‘Foster wants guidance, for the embassy meeting, that’s all.’
‘Good,’ said the deputy Director.
Every building with any sort of vantage point directly overlooking the headquarters of Britain’s external intelligence service is government-owned and occupied, to prevent a hostile service gaining access – or worse, permanent occupancy – to carry out surveillance of people entering or leaving. The monitoring that is attempted is, therefore, haphazard and virtually unproductive, snatched from passing vehicles or briefly parked cars and vans or temporarily halting pedestrians. Any effort positively to identify SIS operatives is additionally hampered by the building itself on some floors being occupied by government offices totally unconnected with any intelligence activity.
Natalia still tried, because it was the most obvious way and she couldn’t think of anything else. She demanded every surveillance report and photograph obtained in the previous three months and spent every spare moment for four days looking through them all, straining for the slightest indication or sight of Charlie. And found nothing.
She even thought, briefly, of ordering a positive surveillance operation until she realized she was considering precisely what Berenkov had done and by so doing brought about his own downfall. Charlie had to be found another way, Natalia accepted.
But which way? Dear God she wished she knew.
Eighteen
The underlying tension that had always existed between Snow and Father Robertson came even closer to the surface in the days following Li’s visit, frequently erupting into open argument. Both priests were stretched in opposite directions by conflicting emotions, Father Robertson seemingly racked with even greater fear than ever, Snow even angrier than before at his frustrating isolation from any contact with London. They even ceased, without discussion, taking each other’s confession: for his part Snow was relieved, spared the hypocricy.
The dissent between them was exacerbated by Father Robertson’s constant insistence – usually in the evening, after he’d been drinking – that both the embassy and the Vatican Curia of the Jesuits had to be warned, until finally Snow’s patience snapped with his demanding why the older man didn’t just do something instead of talking about it.
So Father Robertson did. Three days after their uneasy encounter with the Chinese, he broke his daily schedule of always being around the complex in the morning by announcing he was going out – without saying where – and being absent for three hours. When he returned the head of mission made the further announcement that he’d sent to Italy through the diplomatic mail a full account of what had happened and had an hour-long discussion at the embassy with the political officer, Peter Samuels.
‘He agreed with me that there’s a potential difficulty,’ concluded Father Robertson.
‘I should talk with him as well,’ insisted Snow.
‘I suggested that. Samuels said for you to visit, so closely after me, would be a mistake.’ His words were slightly slurred.
‘Why?’ demanded Snow.
‘The embassy is watched. If I go, then you follow almost immediately after, it could suggest that we have something to be frightened about: that we are conducting services – preaching religion – from the mission.’
‘But we’re not! If the Chinese suspect that we are, they will have been watching us here, as well. And we know they won’t have found anything because there’s nothing to find!’
‘You’re being insubordinate.’
‘I’m being truthful and factual and objective. You’re building this into something far greater and far more important than it is!’
‘That is not for you to decide. Or me.’
‘It’s an opinion that will be reached from how the facts are presented. Yours have been. Mine haven’t. I want the opportunity to put my assessment forward.’
‘You’ll be given it, if it’s thought necessary.’
‘ I think it’s necessary.’
‘You serve. You don’t demand.’
Snow’s breathing started to become difficult. ‘What have you told the Curia?’
‘Precisely what happened.’
‘With what recommendation?’
‘None. I also serve, not demand. Any decision has to be theirs, uninfluenced by any opinion of mine.’
‘What will you recommend, if you are asked?’
‘That you are withdrawn. This mission can’t be endangered.’
‘How is it any less endangered with only you here? You can conduct religious services just as easily as me.’
‘Before your appointment, when I worked here by myself, there was never any official interest.’
Because you’re their hollow totem, thought Snow, contemptuously. Just as quickly he confronted the reality. His primary function, as a Jesuit, was to serve: so he would have to leave, permitted no opposing argument, if he were ordered out of the country by the Vatican. So why did the prospect make him so unsettled? Surely his unofficial activities had not assumed greater importance than his avowed vocation? Of course not, he assured himself: a ridiculous doubt. Snow said: ‘When do you expect to hear back from Rome?’