By the time of the conducted tour of the embassy (‘important to get the layout in your mind as quickly as possible, I always think’) Gower had virtually given up trying to make it a two-way conversation.
There were five introductions to other embassy people – four men and a woman – during the tour. Each was as friendly as Nicholson. Gower wondered if they would have been if they had known his true purpose for being in Beijing.
Nicholson tried to press the luncheon invitation in the embassy mess (‘everyone will be there: good time to get to know people’) but Gower declined, pleading continuing tiredness after the flight, which to an extent was true: he’d awoken while it was still dark, unbalanced by jetlag.
He was eager to get out into the city although not, so soon, to start work. He realized that had it not been for those final training sessions he almost surely would have tried to begin at once. But then, until those final sessions, he hadn’t known any better. Now he did. So instead, trying to put into active practice the survival instructions that were supposed to be instinctive, Gower decided that impatient though he was – impatient though the Beijing ambassador and the deputy Director-General in London were – the proper professional action was to orientate himself before even considering anything else.
Although there was to be no encounter beyond the protection of the embassy, he had to venture outside to get the priest to come to him. So he had minimally to know his way around: find the message drops and the signal spot. With his mind on the proper sequence, Gower picked out on the supplied map those designated places, all already memorized in London, recognizing from the plan before him that most were grouped conveniently close around the obvious landmarks, the places where Western visitors would naturally go.
The drops were concentrated around the Forbidden City, with its available labyrinth of alleys and passage-ways, and the tree-shrouded Coal Hill. He could survey them all by going to Tiananmen Square, the site of Mao’s tomb and fronted by the Great Hall of the People: where, in fact, any first-time visitor would go.
He put the map in his pocket and set out forcefully across the embassy courtyard, but recalled at once another warning and slowed to a more sensible pace to prevent the thrusting determination attracting the very attention he always had to avoid.
At the Chinese-guarded gate he actually stopped, gazing around to establish his directions, settling the immediate places and buildings in his mind, against the memorized map. There was the jumbled swirl of people and bicycles and occasionally vehicles all around, as there had been on his way from the airport the previous day. And among it all was the possible surveillance. Gower brought his concentration closer, even looking from face to face, bicyclist to bicyclist. Impossible, he decided: absolutely impossible. The only obvious, identifiable person was himself, taught to merge into a background into which, here of all places, he could never disappear. The sort of man that crowds are made of, he remembered. But not this crowd.
Would he be able properly to reconnoitre everything he wanted, in one day? Perhaps not. If it became impossible, he’d have to spread it over to the following day: set out earlier than this, to give himself more time. Maybe include the Temple of Heaven, to avoid his interest appearing too obvious to anyone watching. Take several days, maybe. Get himself properly established: prepare escape routes, as he’d been instructed to do.
Or should he take so much time? The demand from everyone was that he get out as quickly as possible. Why was he delaying? Fear, of actually committing himself by a clandestine action? Ridiculous! He wasn’t frightened. Just the proper edge of apprehension he’d been told was not only natural but necessary. He was obeying instructions; not the briefing instructions but the guidance he’d got, those last few weeks, sensibly identifying his working area, not making any premature moves that might risk everything. Definitely not frightened.
Consciously, obeying the first taught rule, Gower tried to observe, properly to see, everything and everyone directly around him. He’d already decided facial characteristics were impossible to work from, in identifying any surveillance. Clothes then. He could utilize obvious physical characteristics – fat or thin, tall or short – but his best additional chance of spotting someone staying close to him had to be by isolating peculiarities or tell-tale points of dress. The anxiety, tinged with despair, deepened. There was colour – garishly bright reds and greens and pinks he couldn’t imagine women wearing in the West – but his overall impression was one of uniformity here, too: white shirts, grey trousers, usually grey jackets where jackets were worn at all. When the colour wasn’t grey, it was black or blue. The conformity even extended to shoes. All were black and all appeared steel-tipped and maybe even with steel or studs in the heels. Even with the competition of other street sounds, Gower was conscious of a permanent scuffing, tip-tap beat of metal against concrete.
Sure of his direction, Gower changed and altered his route, remembering to make his first deviation to the left, then left again before switching twice to his right down streets to bring himself back on course. Several times, concentrating for the abrupt confusion it might hopefully cause, he halted halfway along a road, feigning the uncertainty of a stranger realizing he had taken the wrong turning and going back the way he had come, intent upon anyone wheeling around to follow. No one did, at any of his staged performances.
Although he had seen pictures and newsreels, the vastness of Tiananmen Square momentarily overawed him. From where he stood the giant memorial photograph of Mao Tsetung was postage-stamp size, the Great Hall of the People and the walled Forbidden City initially of doll’s house dimensions. He couldn’t guess how many people were there in total – certainly hundreds – but the square still looked comparatively deserted.
Gower set out across it, towards the tomb with its snake of the faithful waiting to make their obeisance. As he walked he was aware for the first time of a fine dust in the air: it was settling on his face and hands and was gritty in his mouth. There was no sun, as there hadn’t been the previous day, but heat seemed trapped beneath the blanket of thick clouds, causing him to sweat. Mingling with the dust, it made his skin irritate. He used the act of taking off his jacket, throwing it over one shoulder, to turn fully to look around him. Nowhere, as far as he could see, was there anyone who appeared to be following or watching.