‘Didn’t feel it was right, not then.’ Another question to be resolved, he thought, remembering an earlier conversation. ‘Why didn’t you call the hotel? You knew where I was.’
‘I didn’t want it to appear the embassy were chasing you,’ said Samuels. ‘I wouldn’t like to be you, when you get back!’
‘I’m not looking forward to it myself,’ admitted Charlie, sincerely. He still had to get back.
They sat facing each other in Samuels’ office for several moments, with no conversation. Then Samuels said: ‘I am authorized by the ambassador – and empowered by the Foreign Office – positively to order you out of this embassy and out of the country. On the next plane to London. Which leaves tomorrow morning, at ten. I’ll make the reservation.’
‘That would be good of you,’ smiled Charlie. ‘Actually, I’d already decided to leave. So we’re both going to be happy, aren’t we?’
‘I don’t think you’re going to survive this.’
‘I was supposed to teach Gower that,’ said Charlie. ‘How to survive.’
‘You didn’t do very well, did you?’
‘That’s what other people have said.’
‘We’re being given access, at last. No definite day, yet. But there’s been a formal agreement. And without the ambassador having to be recalled, in protest.’
Charlie came forward in his chair. ‘No charge or accusation?’
‘No.’
‘So he held out?’
‘It looks like it. That’s why there was so much panic about you in London. You were the last loose end.’
It really was time to go home, Charlie decided. He supposed it probably was an accurate enough description of him, a worrying loose end. ‘It’s good, about Gower. A relief.’ How long would a proper recovery take?
‘Don’t forget,’ cautioned Samuels. ‘Tomorrow morning: ten o’clock.’
‘I won’t,’ promised Charlie.
He did leave the following morning, although not on the London plane. Charlie took an earlier, internal flight to Canton and from there caught a train further south. As he crossed by road into Hong Kong Charlie thought that Samuels would get an awful bollocking for not personally ensuring he was on the London flight.
At Chung Horn Kok, in the very centre of Hong Kong island, there is an installation known as the Composite Signals Station. It is an electronic intelligence-gathering facility run by Britain in conjunction with its other world-spanning eavesdropping centre, the Government Communication Headquarters at Cheltenham, in the English county of Gloucestershire. Although the Composite Signals Station is much smaller than the facility in England – and is in the process of being dismantled prior to the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997 – there is still at Chung Horn Kok equipment sufficiently powerful to listen to radio and telephone communications as far north as Beijing and to both the Russian naval headquarters at Vladivostok and their rocket complex on Sakhalin Island.
Charlie’s security clearance was high enough for him to be given all the cooperation he sought: his requests were quite specific and therefore easily traced. He only needed to spend four hours there, so he was able to catch the night flight back to England, via Italy.
He boarded the plane a depressed and coldly furious man, believing he knew enough to be able to guess other things. Charlie didn’t sleep and he didn’t drink: booze never helped at the deep-thinking, final working out stage. Halfway through the second leg of the flight, from Rome, he decided he might not have reached that final stage after all, so did not return to Westminster Bridge Road immediately after reaching London.
Instead, he took a train north to the national registration centre for births, deaths and marriages at Southport, near Liverpool. Again he knew exactly what he was looking for, even though he had to go between two different departments, so he wasn’t able, more depressed than ever, to catch the afternoon train back to London.
There, the following day, he went to the Records Office at Kew for back editions of the Diplomatic Lists, which led him to the directory of the General Medical Council. He was lucky. The men he was looking for had both retired, but to Sussex, so he only had an hour to travel. It wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with either.
Charlie expected his internal telephone to be ringing when he entered his office at Westminster Bridge Road, because it had been obvious from ground-floor security that his arrival was flagged for instant notification.
It was ringing, stridently. Julia said: ‘For Christ’s sake, Charlie, where the hell have you been?’
‘Here and there.’
‘They want you!’
‘I thought they might,’ said Charlie.
John Gower was never to know how close he was to giving up. Didn’t want to know. Ever. But later – much later – he openly admitted during his debriefing that he wasn’t far off. A day maybe. He was badly dehydrated by then, constantly hallucinating, and the dysentery had become so bad he wasn’t able to keep himself clean any more. He was too far gone to be personally disgusted.
So far gone, in fact, that he failed to realize the awakening sounds, even the spy-hole scraping, had ceased. It was the chance to get clean that told him he had won.
He shuffled dutifully to his feet when the escorts entered the cell, needing their support either side initially to move. He’d started to turn automatically to the left down the corridor, towards the interview room and the persistent Mr Chen, but they steered him in the opposite direction. He did not realize it was a shower stall until he was standing before it and they were helping him out of his stinking, encrusted uniform.
The awareness came as he stood under the needle-stinging spray, drawing up the last reserve of adrenalin. Won! he thought: beaten them! I’ve beaten them! He risked letting the water from the shower into his parched, cracked mouth, although he held on to the presence of mind not to gulp too much, further to upset his stomach.
There was a razor and soap with which to shave when he stepped out, and the clean uniform waiting for him wasn’t stiff as the other had been, from previous unwashed use. He wasn’t taken back to the cell but to a ground-floor room where the toilet closet was partitioned off from a proper bed, with a mattress and a pillow and clean sheets.
A doctor came in what he gauged to be the afternoon to examine the lip sores, producing a salve which he had to administer himself, every three hours, over the course of two days. The food that was delivered wasn’t bad any more. The water came in a covered tin mug.
On the fourth day of his release from the cell, he was taken to meet a Chinese who gave no name. ‘You are seeing people from your embassy tomorrow,’ announced the man.
‘Where’s Mr Chen?’
The man ignored the question.
When the moment came, Natalia couldn’t bring herself to do what she had so carefully planned. For several days she kept the necessary files in her personal office safe, taking them out and replacing them, telling herself that so many things might have changed. Charlie could have married. Found somebody else at least. So for her to do what she intended had no point or purpose. There had been, after all, two opportunities for Charlie to be with her and he’d turned his back on both. Going beyond any professional reasoning, it had to mean he didn’t love her enough: if he’d loved her enough, he would have found a way. Any way. And if he didn’t love her enough what interest would he have in Sasha? How, sensibly and logically, could they do anything about it in any case, even if he were interested? They were separated – and always would be – by far more than miles.
Then she told herself that he deserved to know: had the right. What might – or might not – have existed between her and Charlie shouldn’t come into her thinking. The only consideration was Sasha. So Sasha’s father had to know.