‘Not for too long,’ said Samuels.
‘It’s not causing any inconvenience, is it?’
Samuels didn’t reply.
The residential compound was at the rear but separate from the legation itself, a range of low, barrack-type buildings. The quarters allocated to Gower were at the end of an apparently empty wing. It consisted of a living area furnished with a basic three-piece suite, very old-fashioned in style and hung in Paisley-patterned loose covers. An unsteady-looking table with four chairs stood in a dining annex with one wall almost completely occupied by a dresser-type piece of furniture with drawers and cupboards below and a latticework of shelves and standing places above a long, flat display surface. There was a television, with compatible video-playing equipment beneath, on a fitted television table. The carpet directly in front was oddly threadbare in one place, as if someone had intentionally rubbed away the weave. Everything was covered with a faint layer of dust. The dust continued in the bedroom, with just a bed, a bare dressing-table and fitted wardrobes along one wall and a strangely sized bed, wider than a single but not big enough to be considered a double. The kitchen was narrow, without any appliances on the Formica working tops. The kettle was an old metal type that had to be placed on heat to boil, and the refrigerator was small and bow-fronted, from the same era as the suite in the outside living-room. Gower thought it looked like a forgotten furniture repository rather than a place to be lived in.
‘Temporary accommodation; that’s all you’ll need, after all,’ said Samuels, defensively.
‘It looks very comfortable,’ lied Gower.
‘Be pointless your trying to watch Chinese television,’ said the political officer. ‘Rubbish anyway. There’s a video selection in the embassy library: pretty old stuff, though.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘Ian Nicholson’s the official housing and hospitality officer. Anything else you need to know, ask him.’ He paused. ‘An hour, for the ambassador?’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
The shower was hot, although the water came unevenly and in spurts, juddering loudly through the pipes: Gower forgot to wipe the dust from the bottom of the stall and initially, mixed with water, it formed a faint mud scum. As he dressed, Gower made a mental note to ask Ian Nicholson about clothes-washing facilities, which shouldn’t be a problem in a country that had given the world the Chinese laundry. All the hangers in the wardrobe were metal wire. Remembering the instruction to trust no one, wherever he was, Gower set his traps. He put one jacket away in the wardrobe facing in the opposite direction to the other three, fastened the right clasp of his suitcase but not the left, and closed the bottom drawer of the dressing-table with just an inch protruding.
Samuels telephoned precisely on the hour.
The interior of the embassy was a marked contrast to the barely functional sparseness of the living accommodation. Everything gleamed from polish and attention: there were Chinese carpet wall hangings and a lot of Chinese carvings and sculptures in niches and on display pedestals. There were revolving fans in the ceilings of all the rooms and corridors through which Gower passed, but he guessed at additional air-conditioning from the coolness, which was practically chilling compared to the outside courtyard across which he had walked, with worsening perspiration, to reach the main building.
Peter Samuels was standing beside Sir Timothy Railton when Gower entered the ambassador’s office. The man nodded to the formal introductions but offered no handshake. It was Samuels who gestured to an already positioned chair: the political officer remained standing.
The ambassador nodded sideways to the other diplomat and said: ‘You’ve talked? So there’s no misunderstandings? You know your position here?’
‘I did, before I left England,’ said Gower, surprised both by the staccato questioning and by the man himself. The ambassador was immaculately dressed, although the suit was light grey and discreetly checked, and with a waistcoat, despite the outside heat. The tie was Stowe, the shirt-collar hard and starched. Gower couldn’t see but he guessed there was a monogram somewhere. There was a signet ring, although he was too far away to see if it carried a crest. Railton was a very smooth-faced, narrow-lipped man, his hair black but thinning and combed directly back from his forehead, flat against his skull. Although the ambassador was so much smaller in stature, Gower decided at once from their demeanour and attitude that he and his political officer were very much a matching pair. Gilbert and Sullivan could probably have written a convincing duet for them.
‘Most ambassadors choose not to be aware of you people in their embassies,’ declared Railton. ‘I’m not one of them.’
Gower couldn’t think of a reply.
‘I regard you as a questionable but not a necessary evil,’ declared Railton. ‘Don’t want you thinking, no matter how little time you’re here, that you’re welcome. You’re not. Don’t want any nonsense, any difficulties, while you are here. Am I making myself clear?’
Gower hesitated. ‘I have already assured Mr Samuels that I am fully aware of the sensitivity of this embassy.’
Railton gazed unconvinced across the heavy, inlaid desk. Decorative carpets hung from two of the walls and on a display stand to the left of the desk was a stampede of high-necked Chinese horses. Behind the man, through an expansive window, Gower could see three conical-hatted Chinese bent over ornately created, almost barbered lawns and flowerbeds. Railton said: ‘I’ve no intention of having this embassy compromised. Any nonsense and I shall complain to London. And I want you to carry out your supposed function here: don’t want staff gossip about what you’re supposed to be doing. Certainly not gossip spreading outside the embassy.’
‘I will do everything I have to do as discreetly as possible,’ guaranteed Gower.
‘The sooner you’re gone, the better,’ insisted Railton.
‘I agree,’ said Gower, sincerely. Whatever happened to diplomatic niceties?
‘Nothing more to say,’ dismissed Railton. He nodded sideways again. ‘Anything you’re not sure about, don’t decide for yourself. Talk with Samuels.’
‘Thank you,’ said Gower, unsure precisely for what he was expressing gratitude. Taking his guidance from the political officer, who started forward, Gower stood to follow from the room.
In the corridor outside Samuels said: ‘Sorry about that.’
Gower was intrigued by the sudden change of attitude and at once further confused when the political officer went on: ‘Expressed what we all feel, of course: but I think he went much too far.’
‘He was certainly very direct,’ said Gower, curiously, hurrying as he’d had to at the airport to keep up with the striding diplomat.
‘It’s his first ambassadorial appointment. Father was an ambassador before him: four prestige embassies. So Railton sees himself having to keep up a family tradition. Makes him naturally nervous of any problems.’
They halted at a side entrance but still behind the closed doors, within the fan and air-conditioning coolness.
‘I can’t get involved in whatever you’re going to do,’ said Samuels. ‘Know you wouldn’t let me, even if I asked. But if there is anything I can do other than that, then of course I will. Just ask.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ said Gower, at last genuinely grateful. ‘All I want to do at the moment is sleep.’
‘Don’t forget an orientation map, when you first go outside the compound. The city is like a maze: certainly if you haven’t got the language. I’ll ask Ian Nicholson to contact you in the morning.’
‘I hardly need another diplomatic lecture,’ said Gower.
For the first time since they’d met, Samuels smiled, a strained, difficult expression. ‘Just to see if you need any help settling in.’
The air-conditioning was much less effective back in the residential section. Gower was aching with exhaustion but still did not fall immediately to sleep. He wasn’t gripped by the nervousness he’d known throughout the flight, but supposed it would come back when he actually started working. The only feeling he had at the moment was disappointment. He hadn’t expected friendship but he hadn’t anticipated openly being denounced as a pariah, either. Which did make genuine his parting remark to Sir Timothy Railton: he was probably more anxious to get out than the ambassador was to see him go.