‘This is China, for God’s sake! It would be enough if they wanted to move against you: certainly if Gower cracks and they want someone else to make a show trial!’
Charlie nodded, solely for Samuels’ benefit. ‘Certainly no reason to stay: I can’t officially become involved in helping John Gower.’
‘I can tell the ambassador you’re going? The Foreign Office, as well?’
‘Very soon,’ assured Charlie. In your dreams, he thought.
‘I know what you’re hoping for!’ declared Samuels, suddenly. ‘You’re hoping Gower’s going to be released, for you to escort him home. Like looking after like. Which is stupid, bloody madness.’
Something was, conceded Charlie: he wished he could work out what it was. ‘It would be stupid, bloody madness. That’s why I’m not even thinking about it.’
‘Get out!’ insisted Samuels. ‘Your being here is endangering the embassy.’
Not really, Charlie decided. He acknowledged that the frequency with which he visited the legation had probably identified him for what he was to several members of the embassy, although they would have linked him to the publicly accused Gower, not to Snow. And he had connected himself to Snow with the message-passing request to Pickering. But that was all internal. Safe. There wasn’t anything external. So Samuels was panicking, talking through the hole in his ass.
Charlie made a point of seeking out the doctor the same afternoon as his encounter with Samuels. Pickering greeted him with expected brusqueness but not with positive hostility, not even as dismissive as the political officer.
Pickering agreed with Charlie’s easy opening that Father Robertson was showing signs of understandable strain. ‘Which I don’t like, coming so soon after the other business.’
‘Snow told me you’d diagnosed nervous exhaustion.’
Pickering nodded. ‘We reached an understanding then – Snow and I – that if I thought Robertson was medically incapable of remaining here I should tell their Curia, in Rome.’
‘ Is he medically incapable in your opinion?’
‘Close,’ judged Pickering. ‘I’ve got to make allowances for the shock of how Snow died, of course. He could pick up when he’s properly realized what has happened.’
At once calling to mind Snow’s admission at their first meeting, Charlie decided the old man would probably have more difficulty accepting, and living with, what he’d been told in the confessional. ‘What if he doesn’t?’
Pickering humped his shoulders. ‘I don’t know who to tell in Rome. The assumption was always that Snow would handle it. Certainly from the outburst from Robertson, when it arose before, he wouldn’t admit any incapacity to Rome himself. He’d do the reverse.’
‘How many British patients do you have in Beijing?’ asked Charlie.
There was another uncertain shoulder movement. ‘No idea. Quite a few, as a regular panel. And it’s obvious that in emergencies I’m here for any Brit that gets ill. It’s regulation Foreign Office advice.’
‘Like Father Robertson was an emergency?’
‘Snow thought so.’
‘Father Snow was ilclass="underline" a chronic asthma sufferer. He told me, although he didn’t really have to.’
‘Yes?’ Pickering was shifting, irritably, a busy man whose time was being too much imposed upon.
‘Why didn’t you prescribe his medication? He needed inhalers all the time but told me he didn’t come to the embassy to collect them: to collect anything. It all had to come from Rome. I don’t understand that.’ It would, thought Charlie again, have given Snow a perfectly acceptable reason – and contact opportunity – to come to the embassy as frequently as he’d wanted.
Up and down went the shoulders. ‘Never arose,’ said Pickering. ‘Everything for the mission was simply channelled through here for convenience. I inherited the system when I arrived. Told Snow early on, of course, that if there was ever a problem he should call me. He never did: never had any reason. He was young, after all. Asthma is a condition its sufferers live with.’
Charlie had the briefest of mental images of the tall, ungainly priest clutching himself against the agony as he stumbled beside the moving train beneath which he’d fallen. ‘Maybe that was a mistake.’
Pickering frowned. ‘What you mean by that?’
The doctor wouldn’t have understood, conceded Charlie, breaking away from the reflection fully to concentrate. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘I’m worried about this man Gower,’ said Pickering.
‘So am I.’
‘I can’t guess how he’ll have been treated, but I don’t expect it to have been very good.’
‘They’ve got to grant access soon.’
‘One would have thought so. After living in China, I’m not so sure. There’s no logic here: no Western sort of logic, that is.’
‘I wish there were: it would be easier.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Leave, I suppose.’
‘When?’
‘I’ve already had the lecture from Peter Samuels.’
Surprisingly Pickering smiled. ‘It’s pretty easy to become paranoid in a society like this.’
‘I’m coming to realize that.’
‘We’re all very nervous. None of us have known anything like all this recent pressure and accusation. It’s pretty frightening if you’ve got to live here all the time.’
‘I guess it must be,’ allowed Charlie.
Back at his hotel, Charlie conceded there was little purpose in his remaining any longer in the Chinese capital. He had never imagined escorting Gower home. And Snow, his reason for being there in the first place, was dead. But still Charlie was reluctant to leave. It was instinctive in a situation which still troubled him for Charlie to pick and probe and turn stones over even when he didn’t know what he was looking for beneath them. And Charlie always followed instinct.
He stayed away from the embassy for several days. Experimentally he embarked, almost immediately sore-footed, on a strictly limited tourist trail, ending the painful test reasonably sure he was not under surveillance and therefore in no immediate danger, although yet again acknowledging the difficulty of being as convinced as he would have been in a Western environment, and yet again thinking how inadequately Gower had been prepared for the situation into which he had been pitched.
Eventually, inevitably, Charlie was drawn to the district in which the mission was located. He went without any positive intention of meeting Father Robertson, which might have been dangerous. He was glad he chose the time to match that of his first visit and followed the same, most obvious route, although Charlie was unhappy having to use the same silk shop for concealment because it was repetitive and therefore not good tradecraft. It was a passing uncertainty, instantly replaced by another far greater curiosity at something immediately obvious to Charlie’s trained eye and which, like so much else, didn’t make sense.
He confirmed his impression, to be quite sure, from the more open park in which there was sufficient protective, personal cover. It was from there that Charlie saw Father Robertson, thinking at once that he could confront the man now. He didn’t attempt to. The priest was still careworn but slightly less stooped than when Charlie had unobtrusively watched his arrival and departure from the embassy. That day there seemed more spring in his step, too: Dr Pickering would be pleased at the advancing recovery. It was even better the following day. And the third, when Father Robertson positively bustled up the road, exactly on schedule. A man of regular pattern, Charlie recognized, glad of the park concealment and deciding that he wouldn’t try to talk to the mission chief after all. Charlie liked patterns that fitted, although always with others, never himself. Sometimes it was really surprising what lurked under overturned stones.
Samuels greeted Charlie furiously when he reappeared at the embassy. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Staying away, like you wanted.’
‘God knows what’s going on in London. They’re frantic about you…’ He offered a sheaf of cables. ‘A lot have been duplicated, to me. They want to know why you didn’t rebase days ago, as you were ordered.’