Brian Freemantle - Here Comes Charlie M

‘I did it,’ suddenly declared Ruttgers, with the bright pride of a child announcing a school prize. ‘Everyone else fouled it up, but I did it.’

‘Yes,’ soothed the doctor. ‘You did it.’

‘He couldn’t have managed it,’ said Ruttgers, pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Onslow Smith. ‘Not him.’

‘Can’t you shut him up?’ demanded the Director, exasperated.

The doctor turned to him, not bothering to disguise the criticism. ‘Is it really doing any harm?’ he said.

Smith snorted, twisting the question.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he said, bitterly. ‘In a million years, you wouldn’t believe it.’

He turned back to Braley, positive again.

‘We’ve got blanket diplomatic clearance,’ he said. He indicated the former Director. ‘And his name was on the list approved by the Foreign Office. So he leaves. Tonight.’

Seeing the doctor move to speak, Smith hurried on: ‘There’s an aircraft already laid on … for me. He can go instead.’

‘I think he still might need some medical help,’ warned the doctor.

‘I’ll fix it with the ambassador for you to go as well,’ said Smith, anxious to move now he had reached a decision. He’d have to speak to the Secretary of State, he knew. Very soon.

‘You will go, of course,’ he ordered Braley.

The man nodded in immediate agreement. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘By this time tomorrow I want nothing to associate us in any way with this,’ announced the Director.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Braley, softly.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Smith, the alarm flaring.

‘The hotel at Crawley,’ remembered Braley. ‘The one in which we were waiting for Mr Ruttgers to return when you called us …’

‘What about it?’

‘The woman stayed there … and Mr Ruttgers is registered. With his luggage.’

Beneath the desk, where they couldn’t see the tension, Smith gripped and ungripped his hands, fighting against the desire to scream at them for their stupidity. They had had no idea two hours before why he was panicking them from the place and couldn’t then have anticipated the danger of not collecting the cases, he remembered. And he’d lost control in front of them sufficiently for one evening, he decided.

‘Get your asses back there,’ he said, his voice unnaturally soft in his anxiety to contain his anger. ‘Get down there and explain that Mr Ruttgers has had to leave, in a hurry. Pay his bill and collect his bags and then get out. And hurry. For God’s sake hurry.’

The police would unquestionably uncover the link, he accepted. But by then Ruttgers would be over three thousand miles away and he would have begun negotiations.

‘Can we get Ruttgers to London airport by ourselves?’ queried Smith, to the doctor.

The bespectacled man nodded, pausing at the doorway. The unexpected flight to Washington upset a lot of arrangements, he realised, annoyed.

‘You guys lead an ass-hole of a life, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Smith dully. The hotel was an awkward complication, he thought.

‘Then why the hell do you do it?’ persisted the doctor.

The Director concentrated upon him, fully.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘it seems important’

But this hadn’t been, he decided. Apart from a few inflated egos and a questionable argument about teaching the Russians a lesson, this hadn’t been important at all. Quite worthless, in fact.

‘How often do you get it right?’ asked the doctor.

‘Not often enough,’ admitted Smith honestly. Suddenly annoyed at the interrogation, he started up and said, curtly: ‘Let’s get Ruttgers to the airport, shall we?’

Road blocks would have been established within an hour of the murder, Charlie knew, sealing a wide area. It had meant he had had to drive in a circuitous route, impatient at the amount of time it was taking him to do all that was necessary.

Purposely he was crowding the thoughts into his mind, trying to blot out the memory of Edith’s collapsed, pulped body.

The Wimbledon house had seemed deserted, he decided. Where, he wondered, was John Packer? Certainly not arrested; the garden shed would have been empty after a police search.

The jewellery recovery had been publicised everywhere. Panicked then. Panicked and run. The word stayed in his mind, linking the next thought.

Perhaps, in their panic, they would forget Ruttgers’ luggage. No, he assured himself, in immediate contradiction. The connection was too important Braley wouldn’t overlook something as vital as that. And he’d certainly appeared in a position of authority at the airport, someone involved in the final planning. No, Braley would think of the luggage; it was that sort of professionalism that made him so good.

Charlie lost the fight against recollection and knuckled his eyes, trying to clear the blur.

‘Shouldn’t have been you, Edith,’ he said. ‘I won’t fail … even if this goes wrong, I won’t fail.’

The improvement in Garson Ruttgers’ condition began almost immediately they left the American embassy and started through the quiet, early dawn streets of London. By the time they had cleared the city, he was lighting his own cigarettes and as they neared the airport, he turned to the doctor and asked, quite rationally, if they were going back to America.

When he nodded, Ruttgers turned to Onslow Smith.

‘You coming?’

The Director shook his head.

‘Then I’ll let them know how well it all went,’ said Ruttgers.

Smith looked sharply at the man but was stopped by the doctor’s warning look.

‘Sure,’ he said, dismissively. ‘You tell them.’

It would take seven hours for the aircraft to reach Washington, calculated Smith. Sufficient time for him to sleep away the fatigue that was gripping his body, before attempting to meet with British officials. It wouldn’t be easy, now Wilberforce was gone. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to arrange through the American ambassador an appointment with somebody in the government. Perhaps, he thought, the Secretary of State would insist upon taking control. There’d be a lot of anxiety in Washington when he told them.

He swayed at the sudden movement of the car and realised they had turned off the motorway.

‘I hardly think there’s any need for me to go,’ said the doctor, in hopeful protest.

Smith looked at Ruttgers before replying.

‘I think there is,’ he insisted. ‘It’s a long flight.’

The internal injury would be intensive, Smith knew. And he was going to make damned sure that he closed every avenue of criticism that he could, even down to something as minor as having the man accompanied back to Washington by a physician.

‘I really don’t think there’s much wrong with him,’ said the doctor.

‘You can be back here by tomorrow,’ said Smith, closing the conversation. He had more to worry about than the feelings of an embassy doctor, decided Smith. It was his future career he was trying to save.

They looped off before the tunnel, taking the peripheral road to the private section. Soon, thought Onslow Smith It would all be over very soon.

Because of the twenty-four-hour activity at the airport, there were several cars in the staff park and the darkened mini was quite inconspicuous as the limousine swept by.

Despite the growing daylight, lights still held the building in a yellow glow. The driver had already spoken into the radio and as they pulled in front of the embarkation lounge, marines and airport security men moved out into a prearranged position, closing off the area. Others arranged themselves loosely around the aircraft, an inner protection for the people boarding.