‘What is this laborious point?’ demanded Miller, a man close to exasperation.
A point for my benefit, not yours, thought Charlie. ‘There wasn’t enough time, even if they had followed him, to get more than twenty people, soldiers as well as civilians, into position. With Li in charge. You’d agree with me about that, wouldn’t you?’
‘You were clearly mistaken, about his not being followed,’ insisted Miller.
Wrong! thought Charlie. ‘Still not enough time.’ How much more could he say, at this stage? How much more could he say at all? Not much. It was a pity: more than a pity.
‘The fact is they did get into position!’ rejected Miller. ‘Where’s all this getting us?’
‘I was trying to explain why I took a long time to get home,’ offered Charlie. ‘I thought it best to use my own airline reservation as a decoy and come out another way.’
‘Which way?’
‘Through Hong Kong, on the first leg,’ disclosed Charlie. ‘It was a hell of a trip. I had chronic jetlag.’
‘You took a holiday, at our expense!’ challenged Patricia.
‘There were some other things in Beijing that didn’t make sense to me,’ continued Charlie. ‘Like the obvious observation on the mission. There was observation, you see. It was easy to locate, when I approached the mission the first time…’ Charlie paused coughing. ‘But then there was a funny thing. I made another check, the day after Snow died. And do you know what? All the surveillance had been lifted. No one was watching the mission any more.’
‘What’s so surprising about that?’ demanded Patricia. ‘Snow, their suspect, was dead!’
‘One priest out of two,’ reminded Charlie.
‘What?’ asked Miller.
‘Snow was the younger priest, the man better able physically – despite the asthma – to move about on fact-finding trips. But if you had been carrying out the investigation, from your long previous career in counter-intelligence, wouldn’t you have suspected that Father Robertson and Snow might have been operating together? And that it might be useful to maintain the watch on the mission to see what Father Robertson might do? Particularly when Father Robertson was somebody who had been arrested and jailed, in the past? Was someone they’d already accused of crimes against the State?’
Miller remained clearly disdainful. ‘My interpretation is that the Chinese aren’t interested in him.’
‘Oh but they are,’ said Charlie. ‘I wanted to be very sure the surveillance had been lifted from the mission. I was thinking of going there, to talk to Father Robertson. But I was glad I didn’t. On the last two days I watched the place I saw Father Robertson with Li Dong Ming, the man who escorted Snow on his trip and then pursued him, right to the time he went under the train and was killed…’
‘ What? ’ It was Miller who asked the question, voice scarcely above a whisper.
‘Li and Father Robertson,’ Charlie said again. ‘Very friendly with each other. Laughing, in fact. Once they walked quite a long way up the road leading from the mission and Robertson even held Li’s arm, for support, although he didn’t look like the frail old man I had seen at the embassy.’
They were both looking at Charlie. Patricia’s mouth was slightly parted. All the attitudes had gone from both of them.
Charlie was regarding them just as intently in return. ‘I could never quite understand why, having arrested and jailed Robertson like they did, the Chinese let him stay on to run the mission. But what if he broke, in jail? Agreed to work for them? It all makes sense then, doesn’t it? They’d have someone who is part of the Western community in Beijing, with access to the British embassy, perfectly in place to spy. The perfect asset…’
‘… No!’ said Miller, shaking his head, his voice still distant. ‘No!’
‘Wouldn’t that also explain why Robertson is still there: why the mission is still open? They lost their chance to stage a trial with Gower and Snow, but they’d have closed the mission down. Thrown Robertson out. But they haven’t, have they? Because he’s too useful to them, remaining in place.’
‘There’s no proof of any of this!’ said Patricia. ‘It’s all surmise, based solely upon your seeing Li and Robertson together. And we’ve only got your word for that. It might not even have been Li.’
‘It was,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Definitely. I think for a long time the Jesuit mission in Beijing had one priest working for Britain and one for the Chinese. With neither supposedly knowing about the other. We’d better warn the embassy, hadn’t we?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Miller. He sounded distracted.
‘So it wasn’t a miserable failure, was it?’ pressed Charlie.
‘No… maybe not…’ faltered Miller. ‘We need to analyse everything.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘It all needs to be analysed.’ But not any more by me, he thought: I’m sure I’ve got it all right.
Natalia based herself in Cologne and on the third day took a river trip on the Rhine. The ferry made several stops, the longest in Koblenz.
Forty-nine
It was Charlie’s suggestion they go to Kenny’s, in Hampstead’s Heath Street, where they’d eaten the first time they’d gone out together. Julia agreed without apparent thought and didn’t remark upon it when they got there, so Charlie didn’t bother either. He hadn’t chosen it for any special significance anyway. Charlie was careful with the choice of table, getting them into a far corner, close to the speaker relaying the background music which would overlay whatever they talked about. They had a lot to talk about. He ordered Chablis and told the waitress not to worry about the food for a while, they weren’t in a hurry.
‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘There was chaos after I left.’
‘I’ve never seen either of them like it before,’ agreed the girl.
Charlie smiled, happily. ‘Miller said he was going to dump me. But that was before I told him about Robertson.’
‘It’s been a bloody awful business. All of it,’ she said.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Charlie.
‘Enough.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Julia frowned up from her wineglass. ‘I’m personal assistant to both, remember.’
‘So who do you think Robertson’s working for?’
The frown remained. ‘Maybe I don’t know everything.’
‘It was a set-up,’ announced Charlie. ‘All of it. Right from the very beginning. From Snow getting permission to make the trip south with Li and me being put under the control of Patricia Elder and told I only had a menial future, to make me resentful and distracted, and then Gower, the man who could resist interrogation, being selected for me to train and afterwards sent to China, where he hadn’t been trained to operate.’
Julia shook her head. ‘Charlie, I’m not getting any of this!’
‘I didn’t, not for a very long time. It was sacrifice time: me, Snow, Gower. We should have all been in the dock together, all part of the dissident trials the Chinese are putting on. Would have been in court, if Snow hadn’t been killed. That really did break the chain. Ruined it all, for any public display at least. It was still good enough for Robertson: would have been, that is, if I hadn’t realized the mission surveillance was lifted and then seen him with Li…’
‘Please, Charlie!’ begged the girl.
‘Robertson isn’t supposed to be theirs!’ said Charlie. ‘He’s supposed to be our source, the man we thought we had deeply in place and would need even more when we lost all our facilities in Hong Kong after 1997: need him enough to sacrifice all of us.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘You tell me!’ Charlie came back. ‘You’re in a position to know. Isn’t Robertson supposed to be ours?’
‘There are things I’m not allowed to know,’ insisted Julia.
‘I’d hoped you would know: and that you’d tell me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I would have been, if I had been swept up. Very sorry.’
‘I can’t believe it! Won’t believe it! You must be wrong!’
Charlie topped up their glasses. ‘I suppose they imagined a lot would be concealed in a Chinese prosecution that could be manipulated to cover anything, but they were still very clumsy. Samuels should be withdrawn. Pickering, too. They’re no bloody good, either of them. And according to what Snow told me, from their visit to the mission when Robertson was ill, they’re not getting on. Rowing all the time.’