‘That becomes clear, from your side of the exchanges,’ said the Director-General.
Foster relaxed again. ‘He’s extremely arrogant. Refuses to accept that he is under any sort of official scrutiny.’
‘What do you think?’ said Patricia Elder.
‘He’s unquestionably under suspicion.’
Miller waved a hand generally towards the folders in their neat order on his desk. ‘There didn’t seem to be any doubt, from what you already provided. So it’s the arrogance that’s preventing his coming out?’
‘He insisted it’s the Jesuit Curia that holds the power of withdrawal over him,’ qualified the former liaison man. ‘He won’t accept that he’s been compromised. He thinks there will always be an explanation to satisfy the authorities.’
‘We’re having trouble with the Technical Division, over the photographs,’ disclosed Patricia, slightly changing the direction of the debriefing. ‘Zhengzhou is no trouble: they were virtually tourist shots, apart from identifying Li for our records. It’s the Shanghai prints we can’t successfully alter.’
‘Not at all?’ queried Foster. He had been right, getting out when there was still the chance: he couldn’t conceive what a Chinese detention centre or prison would be like. Whatever, Foster was sure he could not have survived any term of imprisonment without quickly losing his mind.
Miller took up the explanation. ‘They can, intentionally, be poorly developed. With two that is very effective: reduces the background virtually to make what is technogically interesting on the warships meaningless…’ He paused. ‘But on two it doesn’t work.’
‘What about positively changing the Shanghai background?’
‘He was photographing away from the city and the Bund, towards the river. It’s impossible,’ dismissed Miller.
Foster smiled, pleased as the idea came to him. ‘Why worry about the real photographs at all? Why don’t we send back four completely innocuous photographs of Shanghai that Snow didn’t take?’
Miller and the woman swapped looks. Patricia said: ‘According to Snow, Li took pictures too. They’ve got a comparison, to put against whatever we provide: every photograph was to be from exactly the same position, with exactly the same climatic conditions, even to the same cloud formations.’
Beneath his red hair Foster blushed slightly, bringing out the freckles. ‘Can’t we ask the Curia to bring him out?’
‘How? And on what grounds?’ demanded the Director-General. ‘We couldn’t explain the reason for our approaching them. Or even how we know a man named Jeremy Snow is a Jesuit priest, in Beijing. Believe me, if that had been a route to follow, we’d have done it weeks ago.’
Foster flushed further. ‘What then?’
‘More persuasion,’ said Patricia Elder.
There was a brief silence in the room. Then Foster said: ‘By somebody else?’
‘Yes,’ said Miller.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Foster, accepting the criticism without it having to be openly made by either of them.
‘You were an accredited British diplomat attached to the embassy,’ reminded the woman. ‘You’re out. We’re saved official embarrassment, if Snow gets arrested. The government line will be to deny all knowledge of any Chinese accusation: dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.’
‘Which means completely abandoning Snow,’ said Foster.
‘He was told to get out,’ said Miller, with a hint of irritability. ‘And we are making another attempt.’
‘He won’t come,’ said the liaison man, flatly.
‘Then his problems are his own, aren’t they?’ said the Director-General.
Neither spoke for several moments after Foster had left. Then Patricia said: ‘He didn’t ask what his next assignment was going to be.’
‘Foster’s a fool whose use is over,’ dismissed Miller.
‘What are we going to do with him?’
Miller shrugged. ‘Something internal, I suppose. Nothing we need to decide in a hurry. You ready for Gower?’
The woman nodded: ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow. His flight leaves in the afternoon.’
‘I wonder if it will work,’ said Miller, unexpectedly reflective.
‘I wish to Christ I knew,’ said Patricia.
Twenty-three
Gower’s final, eve-of-departure briefing was given by Patricia Elder alone. She provided two identifying photographs of Snow, explained he was a priest and described the need to get him out as an operational tragedy. She went carefully through the contact and meeting procedures, making Gower repeat them until she was satisfied he had completely memorized them.
‘We couldn’t risk a spy-cell accusation, involving Snow and Foster,’ said the deputy Director. ‘And we still can’t. Don’t set up any contact with Snow outside the embassy, where you’re vulnerable and beyond diplomatic protection. Use the Taoist temple signal to get Snow to a letter drop of your choice. And use the drop to bring him to the embassy. Tell him it’s his last chance. He either comes out, or we’re severing all responsibility: disowning him.’
‘What if he goes on refusing?’
Patricia produced the Shanghai pictures from the folder on her desk. ‘He’ll never even reach the airport unless he hands these over to the Chinese. The top four are quite innocent, but we’ve tricked them, to be slightly different from any copy prints his escort might have taken. It’ll confuse them: occupy their time working that out. The rest are the important ones: they told us a lot about Chinese naval technology. We’ve doctored them, too: as much as our technical people say is possible. But it’ll show, under scientific examination. Make it absolutely clear to Snow that these pictures give him time to run. But that’s all. If he doesn’t come out with you, they’ll be used against him to prove he’s an agent. If he accuses us of blackmailing him, tell him he’s damned right: that’s exactly what we’re doing.’
‘You’re showing a lot of loyalty,’ admired Gower.
‘Mutual protection,’ said Patricia Elder.
Natalia Fedova was far too professional to be panicked by the discovery of Fyodor Tudin’s surreptitious interest in her. She was forewarned: now she had to find some way of being forearmed. Which presented problems of differing urgency.
She had every right to consult her own records: so an explanation would be easy to provide, if one were officially sought. Not so if she were asked why, from among the thousands of still retained former KGB files on foreign intelligence officers, she had withdrawn the one upon a man with whom she had provable links in the past. She’d have to find a justification to protect herself there. Which still left the biggest problem of alclass="underline" not knowing if consulting the files was all that Tudin was doing. And what she didn’t know, she couldn’t guard against.
Very quickly Natalia contradicted herself. That wasn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that now she was aware of being spied upon, she would have to abandon any hope of locating Charlie Muffin to tell him he was a father.
Twenty-four
The apprehension settled deep within him during the long outward flight. Gower went through the pretence of trying to sleep but couldn’t, lying cocooned in an airline blanket for hours in the darkened, droning aircraft, trying instead to exorcize the unformed ghosts: to put everything in order in his mind and anticipate what he was likely to encounter. Had he been told to do that, or not to do that, during the final, street-wise training sessions? He couldn’t remember. At once fresh anxiety flared, because that had certainly been one of the edicts, always to remember, always to be aware. The scruffy man who’d refused to be identified had told him it was all right to feel nervous. But how nervous?
Nothing in the training had equipped him to work in Beijing. Apart from the two inadequate briefing sessions with the deputy Director-General and from what he’d learned from the equally inadequate file in the few days prior to his visa approval, there’d been no preparation or guidance whatsoever.