‘Then what?’
‘So do I. And the problems with us. Leaving you to get Gower out. Which you will, if the Chinese can’t bring their case.’
‘You realize my whole career could stand or fall on this?’
Tough shit, thought Charlie: Gower could be hanging by his balls from a rusty nail. ‘Of course I realize that: wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it. My career depends upon it.’ The last bit was certainly true.
‘I have your word?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘All right!’ declared Samuels, in the voice of a headquarters general five miles behind the lines ordering soldiers to go over the top into enemy fire. ‘I agree! You can bring him in! The important thing is to get the whole stupid nonsense over. Out of the way, once and for all.’
‘I’m grateful we’ve been able to reach this degree of cooperation. I’ll pass a memo on, when I get back to London.’
The light-bulb smile went on and off. ‘Most kind.’
‘We need to agree a little more,’ ventured Charlie.
‘What?’
‘How to get him here.’
‘But I thought…’
‘… he has to know I’m here. To be told. I can’t go, an obvious stranger, to where he is. That could be what Gower tried to do. I don’t trust the telephone, either.’
‘How then?’ All the rejecting hostility was back.
‘Someone who isn’t a stranger: someone who’s been there so many times recently that his going again probably wouldn’t even be noticed.’
‘Someone from this embassy!’
There were remarkable flashes of prescience in between the diplomatic pomposity, thought Charlie. ‘ Yes.’
‘You need to tell me everything.’
He did, acknowledged Charlie: not everything, exactly, but far more than he would have liked. ‘There were several references in Foreign Office reports, in your name, to a recent illness of Father Robertson…’
‘… He’s the man?’ burst in Samuels, astonished.
‘… which the embassy physician, Dr Pickering, treated,’ completed Charlie. ‘And those same reports said Dr Pickering was maintaining a medical check, after the apparent recovery.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Samuels, doubtfully.
‘So there is every proper reason for Dr Pickering to go again to the mission. Tomorrow, for instance?’
‘I asked you a question you haven’t answered.’
Charlie wished to Christ there was a way to avoid the identification, but there wasn’t. ‘Not Father Robertson. Father Snow.’
‘Snow!’
‘Nothing more than a message-carrier: he’s not even aware of what he’s doing,’ lied Charlie.
‘No!’ refused Samuels, indignantly. ‘I’ve agreed to the man coming here. I accept it has to be this way: that there’s no alternative. But this is inveigling an actual member of the embassy staff. Exposing him to God knows what! He could be swept up, like Gower. I can’t possibly condone that. It’s too much.’
It probably was, conceded Charlie: certainly if the person was aware beforehand what he was doing, so that he was denied the benefit of genuinely innocent denial. ‘Exposing him to nothing,’ argued Charlie. ‘All I am asking is that Dr Pickering makes a routine house call at the Jesuit mission, which he has been doing irregularly for the past two or three weeks, to carry out one of the established checks upon Father Robertson. And while he is there tells Snow there is someone at the embassy who wishes to see him at once. Where’s the danger? The exposure?’
‘It’s too much,’ insisted the political officer.
‘Compared to a diplomatic disaster? The expulsion of an ambassador?’
‘That’s…’
‘… the choice.’
The unusually tall man came reflectively forward on his desk, a bend at a time, like a tower building collapsing from a controlled explosion. ‘It’s too… I can’t…’
‘Why don’t we ask the doctor?’ If he spread even the limited awareness much further he might as well take out newspaper advertisements and make radio announcements from the roof, thought Charlie. He loathed being this dependent on other people: loathed being anything but entirely self-contained, entirely self-dependent, having to trust and rely upon no one except himself. This really was a shitty job: the shittiest.
‘You’ll accept his refusal?’
‘If you’ll accept his agreement.’
Samuels hesitated, for several moments. ‘Which of us will explain it?’
‘You,’ said Charlie. ‘Or me, if you’d prefer.’
‘Me,’ decided the diplomat.
Charlie at once recognized the man introduced to him as George Pickering to be the sort of doctor who made patients feel guilty for being ill. The man’s suit strained around his bulging body, and the moment Samuels began a limited explanation Pickering turned to fix Charlie with a disconcertingly unblinking stare through oddly large spectacles. Charlie thought the man looked like the grandfather to all the owls. He stayed with his eyes on Charlie after Samuels finished, initially not speaking. Then he said: ‘This arrest business?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie.
‘Bugger off.’
‘Where’s the risk?’
‘I’m a doctor. Nothing else.’
‘Can you imagine the physical condition Gower’s in by now?’
‘A risk with your sort of job.’
‘Whose medical philosophy is that?’
‘Mine.’
‘Don’t you talk to Snow, when you go to the mission?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘“Someone at the embassy wants to see you.” Eight words.’
‘Do it yourself.’
‘You’ve heard why I can’t.’
‘I said bugger off.’
But he hadn’t left the room in offended indignation, realized Charlie. ‘Eight words.’
‘Why should I?’
‘To prevent a diplomantic debacle. And stop the suffering of a man in prison.’
‘Neither is my concern.’
‘I would have thought both were,’ insisted Charlie.
‘We want to get it over as quickly as possible, George,’ intruded Samuels. ‘And as best we can.’
‘You asking me to do it?’ demanded Pickering.
Samuels shook his head. ‘It’s got to be your decision.’
Sensing the weakening, Charlie reiterated: ‘Eight words.’
Pickering was silent again for several moments. Then he said: ‘Bloody lot of nonsense, all of it: kids’ stuff.’
‘You’ll do it?’ asked Charlie.
‘Only pass on that exact message. Nothing else.’
Charlie guessed Pickering had been quite prepared to do it from the beginning but had put up the token rejection to see them plead. People played all sorts of games, he reflected. He had a lot of his own to play. He managed the airport conversations himself but needed Samuels’ Chinese for the rail enquiries and reservations. It took two hours. As he thanked the political officer, Charlie said: ‘From what I’ve read in his personal file, you and Snow must be about the same height. Coincidence, that, isn’t it?’
‘Whatever it is you’re thinking of, don’t even bother to ask,’ said Samuels.
The request from the State-appointed defender for Natalia to appear as a character witness for Eduard was made through Agency channels, which surprised her: if it had come at all she would have expected it to have been sent direct to Leninskaya. She used the same Agency route to reply, refusing the request.
Forty-five
The problem of Jeremy Snow took on a whole new and deeper significance as soon as the priest entered the room at the embassy that Samuels had made available. After the meeting with the liaison man in London and from much of what he had read in the files, Charlie had expected a bombastic, self-opinionated man. But there was no arrogance at all. The asthmatic priest was wheezing with apprehension. Almost as soon as he came in he said: ‘Thank God you’re here: I’ve been terribly wrong,’ and Charlie guessed Snow would collapse and make a full confession within minutes of being seized.
‘It can still be sorted out,’ said Charlie, seeing the priest’s need for reassurance. Although he knew the personal statistics from the file, Snow’s height still surprised him.
‘What about the man who’s been arrested? He came for me, didn’t he?’