No one would learn everything about him from the archival records, of course. Remarkably little, in fact. And definitely not about Natalia, who had been the most important part of his life after Edith.
Perhaps confusingly, although not to himself, Charlie believed the forever lost Natalia had made it easy for the friendship with Julia. The way he felt – and would always feel – about Natalia meant he didn’t want, romantically or sexually or on any other level, an involvement with anyone. Any more than Julia did, for her part. Charlie supposed he and Julia qualified as the perfect platonic couple. A marriage, almost, without the difficult, messy parts. He didn’t imagine it an analogy easy for anyone else to follow.
The word – marriage – stayed with Charlie. What about the involvement of the beneficially married Peter Miller with the unmarried Ms Patricia Elder? Charlie had maintained his occasional and therefore inadequate observation of the Regent’s Park mansion. And confirmed that Peter Miller used it as a London base. But so far always alone. The woman who had also used the private penthouse door – but only on two occasions – had not been Patricia Elder, so he assumed her to be Lady Ann: she’d certainly looked a lot like the horses she was said to breed. Remembering his earlier doubts, Charlie thought again that maybe Miller didn’t use the place for his affair with his deputy: even wondered, indeed, if they were having an affair. Another earlier doubt, like the possibility that Patricia Elder’s apartment or house could much more safely be the love-nest. And as she wasn’t listed in any of the biographical reference books – and there was no way he could search department records without the request becoming known – he didn’t have any idea where she lived.
All of which made it a fairly good bet that he was wasting his time, playing at nothing more than amateur surveillance, like playing with paper darts. But then time seemed to be something he had a lot of to waste. And he did, after all, have practically to go past Miller’s London home to his own flat in Primrose Hill.
What would he do if he did confirm an affair? Strictly according to regulations, he had to report it as a security risk. But doing things according to regulations wasn’t the point of Charlie’s exercise: it rarely was. The point was personal protection, hoarding any ammunition available. And ammunition wasn’t any good thrown away in advance of the battle: far better to wait until the shots were fired in his direction. Charlie accepted at once that with their power and authority, Miller and Patricia Elder outgunned him. But if they seriously moved to bring him down – permanently to get rid of him, for instance – he would, if he could, bring them down, too. So he’d go on hanging around outside the lavish mansion.
The warning proof from what he’d done all those years ago when he’d been offered up for sacrifice was clearly there in those red boxes and manila files, but Charlie doubted they fully understood that if he believed himself under attack he was an overwhelmingly vindictive bastard. And proud to be so. Sometimes he even practised.
Charlie followed motorways completely to reach London, connecting with the M4 by the M25 orbital link, beginning, but quickly refusing the recollection, to think of the evasion technique he’d taught John Gower on part of the same route. Just as quickly, refusing the refusal, he forced himself – alarmed – to remember the routine, positively rising more fully in the driving seat, as if coming abruptly awake.
Which was about bloody right, Charlie decided, horrified. He had been asleep. Not once, since leaving the nursing home almost two hours before, had he once searched around him, which he’d patronizingly lectured Gower it was always essential – ‘until it becomes instinctive’ – to do.
So much for the conceit of considering himself a good and conscientious intelligence officer! The lapse did more than worry Charlie: it frightened him. It had always been automatic in the past: should still have been, something he never had consciously to think about! So why hadn’t he done it this time? There was no excuse, no explanation. No matter how deeply he’d been preoccupied, part of his concentration should have remained on what was going on around him. It wasn’t an argument – not to Charlie anyway – that it didn’t matter because he was no longer operational. He didn’t want to lose the constant alertness: wouldn’t lose it. If he stopped being alert, aware at all times of what was going on about him, he would start to atrophy: start to sink into mumbling insensitivity, the dinosaur ready for retirement that Patricia Elder clearly considered him to be. Too late, a stupid effort at reassertiveness that didn’t work, Charlie began checking, using all the mirrors, actually gazing around himself on the filled up, six-lane highway. What the fuck was he doing so late: too late? Playing with himself, without any satisfaction at the end of it. No, he rejected at once. He could have still recovered, if he’d found himself in a genuine situation: dodged and weaved, evaded a problem. There was still no satisfaction: failed mental masturbation.
Charlie remained unsettled after he got back, in good time, to his Primrose Hill apartment after returning the hire car. He confirmed the order in which he’d left the letters on the mat, before picking them up, and checked the traps he’d set in the bedroom and the kitchen by leaving the doors slightly ajar. There had not been any entry. There was still time to shower before meeting Julia.
In the bar, during the theatre interval, Charlie said: ‘Gower came to see me: said he was going operational.’
Julia regarded him seriously. ‘Still missing it?’
‘Always will,’ said Charlie, shortly.
‘Let go!’ she pleaded. ‘Accept it’s over!’
He couldn’t, Charlie realized. Not yet, though maybe he should after that afternoon’s fuck-up. ‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Welcome back!’ greeted the Director-General.
Walter Foster smiled, although uncertainly, looking between the man and Patricia Elder, unsure what sort of meeting it was going to be. At once he blurted: ‘I believe it was essential I leave: it wasn’t panic or anything like that.’
‘We’re sure it wasn’t,’ soothed the woman.
‘You said it had to be an on-the-ground decision,’ continued the man, unconvinced by her assurance.
‘It’s officially recorded, on file,’ said Miller. ‘We’re glad you’re back. We need your impressions: everything. Far better than written reports.’
Foster relaxed, very slightly. ‘Quite simple. Snow’s blown: they’re just waiting their time. Maybe waiting for something positively incriminating, although I’m not sure they’ll bother.’
‘And Snow himself?’
Foster, who was perched on the very edge of the visitor’s chair in the Director-General’s office, had finally to look away from their concentrated attention, disguising the avoidance as a moment of head-lowered contemplation, properly to answer the query. Tentatively he said. ‘He is not an easy person. Never has been.’
‘Go on,’ urged Patricia Elder.
Foster hardly needed the prompting. ‘He and I never hit it off: it was always particularly difficult.’
‘His last complete report was a refusal to work with you any longer,’ Miller pointed out.
Instantly Foster inferred criticism. ‘I am extremely sorry about the breakdown. I did everything I believed proper and safe to correct it. Followed your orders from here to the letter. Nothing worked.’