Brian Freemantle - Charlie M

Quite unoffended, Charlie knew he was another experiment, like working for Sir Henry Cuthbertson, who was her godfather, and drinking warm bitter, which she had done for the first time on their initial date in the dive bar of the Red Lion, near Old Scotland Yard, and declared it, politely, to be lovely. Charlie was ‘other people’, a person to be studied like she had examined dissected frogs at her Zurich finishing school after leaving Sussex.

‘Like the duchess screwing the dustman,’ he reflected, aloud, stretching his feet towards the electric fire. They were still damp, he saw, watching the steam rise.

She reappeared from the kitchen, corkscrew in hand. She was a tall girl, hair looped long to her shoulders, bordering a face that needed only a little accent around the deep brown, languorous eyes and an outline for the lips that were inclined to pout.

‘What about a duchess?’ she queried.

‘You look like one,’ said Charlie, easily.

Who was using whom? he wondered, smiling up at her. Poor Janet.

He pulled the wine, filling the glasses she offered.

‘Love or what you will,’ he toasted.

She drank, swallowing heavily.

‘Very nice,’ she said bravely.

They had bred good manners in Switzerland, thought Charlie. He smiled, imagining Berenkov’s reaction to the wine. It was bloody awful.

‘For a man who has been demoted, you’re remarkably unconcerned,’ said Janet, sitting opposite. She wasn’t wearing a bra, he realised.

‘I told you, they’ve made a balls,’ he said. Rough talk would fit the image she wanted, he decided. He refilled his glass, ignoring her: it was unfair to expect her to drink it.

‘How?’

‘Completely misread the interview,’ he reported. ‘They have determined to get rid of me, certainly. But it won’t work this time.’

‘Cuthbertson won’t apologise,’ predicted Janet.

The fact that she was his god-daughter was incredibly useful, reflected Charlie: no one in the department knew the man like she did.

‘He’ll have to.’

She shook her head.

‘I know Sir Henry. He’s a bastard.’

‘So am I,’ responded Charlie. ‘Funny thing is, nobody has realised it. It’ll be the ruin of them.’

She smiled at the boast. It was a normal reaction, she supposed. His pride must be badly bruised: he’d once been the most important operative in the department.

‘I’ve cooked a meal, so we can eat here,’ she announced, wanting to move him away from the afternoon.

And not run the risk of being seen by any of your friends, thought Charlie. She would be very embarrassed by him, he knew. He was very happy with the proposal: there was no outing they would mutually enjoy and whatever they tried would have cost money and he didn’t have any. And she would never think of paying.

‘What happened after I left?’ asked Charlie, spreading the salmon mousse on the toast.

The girl sighed. The preoccupation was to be expected, she thought, but it made him boring.

‘They went potty,’ said Janet. ‘Wilberforce was sent to retrieve the report to the Minister, but it had already gone. So Sir Henry dictated a contradicting amendment, then scrapped it because it seemed ridiculous. When I left, he was making arrangements to dine the Minister at Lockets to explain everything.’

‘And who got the blame?’ queried Charlie.

‘Wilberforce,’ answered Janet. ‘Poor man. Uncle treats him almost like a court jester.’

‘Masochist,’ identified Charlie. ‘Gets a sexual thrill out of being tongue-lashed.’

She believed him, realised Charlie, seeing the interested look on her face. To correct the misunderstanding seemed too much bother.

He cut into the steak au poivre, sipping the wine she had provided.

‘This is good,’ he complimented.

‘Margaux,’ explained Janet, patiently. ‘Daddy takes the production of the vineyard. This is ’62.’

Charlie nodded, as if he’d recognised the vintage.

‘Where did you learn to cook like this?’

‘They thought it important at school.’

‘What have Snare and Harrison been told to do?’ he probed, insistently. She obviously hadn’t understood the wording of the Official Secrets Act she had promised to obey seven months earlier.

‘Interrogate Berenkov again.’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Charlie, putting aside his knife and fork. ‘That’s a tape I’d love to hear.’

She pushed away her plate, fingering the stem of her wine glass.

‘I’m very fond of you, Charlie,’ she announced, suddenly.

At least she didn’t make any pretence of love, he thought. He hoped she wasn’t moving to end the affair; he wasn’t ready for it to end yet. He gazed across the table, admiring her. Certainly not yet.

He waited, apprehensively.

‘What are you going to do? They’re determined to get you out,’ she said.

Charlie stopped eating, appetite gone.

‘I know,’ he said, completely serious. ‘And it frightens me to death. They won’t let me go, because they want me under observation. Or stay, because they detest me. So I’m faced with working for the next fifteen years as a poxy clerk.’

‘You couldn’t stand that, Charlie.’

‘I’ve got no bloody choice, have I? I’ve devoted my life to the service. I love it. There’s not another sodding thing I could do, even if they’d let me.’

He did love the life, he decided, adding to both their glasses. Because he was so good at it.

It had been wonderful before Cuthbertson and the army mafia had arrived, when his ability had been properly recognised.

The Director had been Sir Archibald Willoughby, who’d led paratroopers into Amhem with his batman carrying a?20 hamper from Fortnum amp; Mason, and Venetian goblets for the claret in special leather cases. He was cultivating Queen Elizabeth and Montana Star roses in Rye now, hating every moment of it. There’d been two written invitations to visit him since his summary retirement, but so far Charlie had avoided it. They’d drink to much whisky and become maudlin about previous operations, he knew. And there was no way they could have kept the conversation off Bill Elliot.

On the day of the purge, Elliot had been sent home early because Cuthbertson, who read spy novels, imagined he would find evidence of a traitor if he turned out every desk and safe in the department.

So the second-in-command had arrived in Pulborough three hours earlier than usual for a Tuesday to find his wife in bed with her brother.

Elliot had walked from the room without a word, gone directly to the hide at the bottom of the garden from which he had earned the reputation of one of Britain’s leading amateur ornithologists and blown the top of his head away with an army-issue Webley fired through the mouth. He had been crying and he’d made a muck of it, so it had taken two days for him to die.

The suicide had slotted neatly into Cuthbertson’s ‘who’s to blame’ mentality, despite the wife’s unashamed account to the police, and Elliot had been labelled responsible for the Warsaw and Prague debacles. It would be nice, reflected Charlie, to prove Cuthbertson wrong about that. Like everything else.

‘Sure they wouldn’t let you retire, prematurely?’ asked Janet, breaking Charlie’s silent reminiscence.

‘Positive,’ asserted Charlie. ‘And I don’t think I’d want to. At least rotting as a clerk would mean a salary of some sort. I wouldn’t live off a reduced pension.’

‘I thought Edith had money.’

‘She’s loaded,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘But my wife is tighter than a seal’s ass-hole.’

She smiled, nodding. It really was the sort of language she expected, Charlie realised.

‘Do you know there are receipted bills at home dating back ten years. And if you asked her the amount, she could remember,’ he added.