Julia was looking at him unblinkingly, only her throat moving, wine forgotten in front of her.
‘And you don’t have to say anything,’ smiled Charlie. Like she hadn’t had to enunciate, confirming word for confirming word, the situation with Miller and his deputy.
‘I said from the beginning…’
‘… I know,’ said Charlie, indifferent to the protest. ‘I’m really not asking you to tell me anything…’ He seemed surprised to find the bottle empty, holding it aloft for the waitress to see and bring another. ‘I came out through Hong Kong. Did you hear about that?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘But you know about the Composite Signals Station at Chung Horn Kok, from which all the electronic traffic in Beijing is listened into?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was all picked up there, of course,’ said Charlie. ‘Not a risk, as far as Miller or the woman were concerned, because they were controlling it all and could dismiss it as unimportant. Its only significance was if someone else saw it. Someone like me, for instance.’
She had gone very white. ‘You’re not suggesting…!’
‘Not suggesting,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Definitely saying. Snow’s cable name was “Hunter”. He actually told me so. Chose it himself, from Genesis. Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field. That’s what Jeremy Snow thought he was: cunning. Poor bugger. London cabled Foster while Snow was travelling, asking on an open wire when “Hunter” would be getting to Beijing. And Foster, who was a frightened idiot and chosen because of it, replied, again on an open link because it’s the system, providing the actual day. Which gave the Chinese, who maintain their own electronic surveillance on all the embassies, a date from which Snow could be positively identified, at any subsequent trial. There was another reference to “Hunter” in an emergency cable that Foster sent, after Li’s visit to the mission to ask for the photographs.’
‘This is all circumstantial,’ suggested Julia, uncertainly. ‘You’ve no proof the Chinese monitor.’
‘ Every country monitors embassy traffic!’ insisted Charlie. ‘There was a lot for Beijing to listen to. The day before Gower went out, there was another cable from London, to the embassy. It said Second Hunter arriving. All Gower needed, from the moment of his arrival, was a sign around his neck.’ Charlie paused. Why, he wondered, hadn’t Gower done what he’d been told, always to travel under his own, personal arrangements? Too inexperienced, Charlie guessed. He smiled again, this time in his acceptance of the second bottle. Julia’s glass was still full, untouched, so he only bothered with his own. ‘It didn’t stop there. I made a specific request, to Patricia Elder, that everything about my going to Beijing should be by diplomatic pouch, so there couldn’t be any electronic interception. Yet the day before I got there, there was an open cable message about Hunter Three. It was lucky I wasn’t on the plane they expected me to be.’ Luck, reflected Charlie, had nothing at all to do with it.
Julia drank at last. Soft-voiced, she said: ‘I typed the cables… I didn’t realize… Christ, Charlie, I did it and I didn’t even realize what I was being told to do…!’
‘It’s not your fault: not important.’
‘Not important! Snow’s dead. We don’t know yet what Gower went through. You could have gone through the same. Worse even!’
Time to move on, Charlie decided. ‘I might not have thought about looking in Hong Kong if it hadn’t been for something Samuels said. Silly really. It’s just that I listen to everything. He talked about Snow being “swept up”. That’s a trade expression: departmental. Not the way a diplomatic officer talks. And then, later, he referred to the fact that Snow had used the confessional to tell Father Robertson what he had done, to get permission to run. Snow told me he’d done it. Only me. And I didn’t tell anybody. So the only other person from whom Samuels could have learned about it was Robertson himself. There were a lot of other things, as well. Like a political officer baby-sitting a sick missionary, which a person of his rank and pomposity would never have done, unless of course he was the man’s Control and worried that Robertson, sick with remorse at what he was doing, might have hallucinated and talked about it. No message ever got to or from Rome, about Robertson’s illness, incidentally. Or about the Chinese targeting Snow. I know because I stopped off in Rome on the way back: the Jesuit Curia didn’t know what I was talking about. That was the advantage of mailing through the British embassy: Samuels could filter everything. Run a very tight ship.’
Julia moved her head, aimlessly, stunned.
‘Samuels is the Resident, isn’t he?’
The head movement was more positive, a refusal to confirm the question.
‘Snow’s death told me,’ said Charlie. ‘English was OK to set up the airport decoy, making plane reservations I never intended to take up. But I needed Samuels’ ability to speak Mandarin to go through the train departures. That’s how the Chinese were able to have so many men in place, at the station: Samuels told Robertson how we were planning to get away. And Robertson alerted the people to whom he is really answering these days.’
‘No!’ disputed Julia, at once. ‘If they knew Snow was on the Nanchang train – moved against him when he left, to get to you – how come they didn’t get you, as well?’
‘They tried,’ said Charlie, smiling across at her. ‘The Shanghai express wasn’t the only train leaving at five that afternoon. There was one to Changsha, four tracks further along the concourse. That’s the train I told Samuels I was catching: the train I saw surrounded by troops as I left.’
‘Jesus!’ said Julia, aghast.
‘Which was another very good reason why I didn’t want to catch the plane out of Beijing that Samuels ordered me to catch: considerately booked for me.’
‘You think they’d still have tried to put you and Gower on trial, if they’d got you?’
‘If they’d caught me.’
‘You sure Pickering was part of it?’
‘It all goes back to the nonsense of how Snow was treated. Not in the beginning. Then Snow was properly handled by his Control. There was a man called Bowley. Another named George Street. Their liaison procedures were impeccable. Snow could make his meetings through the public event visits through the embassy but more regularly by using the trips for his asthma medication from the resident doctor. I checked with two who have retired to Sussex. But then Pickering arrived. The same Pickering who sent a cable on a security reserved line to London – but monitored in Hong Kong, where I found it – informing Miller directly of a meeting I had with him. The same Pickering who from the moment of his arrival in Beijing closed down the asthma drug facility and told Snow he had in future to get his stuff from Rome, separating him from the embassy. Like Foster kept the poor bastard at arm’s length, although Foster didn’t know how he was being used in the scheme, constantly to expose Snow and force him into that ridiculous message-signalling crap, which really did become obsolete with the ending of the Cold War that everyone keeps on about. Foster – another first-time appointee, according to the files – was too stupid to have realized or suspected, of course.’
‘Why was Foster withdrawn, for Gower and you to go in?’
‘Foster’s withdrawal indicated panic, for the Chinese to pick up on: don’t forget, we were doing it to fool them and keep Robertson safe: we didn’t know we were fooling ourselves. Gower going in – and me after him – showed more panic. It was all part of Miller and Patricia Elder’s perfect package. With the Chinese laughing their balls off at all the effort we were going to for their benefit.’
‘It’s inconceivable that Snow and Gower and you were considered expendable, to protect one man!’ refused the girl.