Brian Freemantle: Here Comes Charlie M

‘I was wrong,’ announced the underwriter. It seemed so long, he thought, since had had practised the honesty upon which Charlie had once commented.

Charlie looked up, the concentration obviously difficult.

‘In thinking I would do anything to help you,’ expanded Willoughby. ‘Even though we talked about it, on that first day here in this office. I still didn’t believe it would result in that sort of slaughter.’

When Charlie said nothing, the underwriter demanded; ‘Do you realise there were twelve people on that plane … a total of twelve people killed?’

‘Thirteen,’ reminded Charlie. ‘Don’t forget Edith died.’

‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ quoted Willoughby. ‘I can’t accept that biblical equation, Charlie. Can you?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘I can. I don’t expect you to. But I can.’

‘With no regrets at all?’

William Braley had been on the plane, remembered Charlie.

‘I would have preferred to kill just one man … the man responsible,’ he said. ‘But that wasn’t possible.’

He straightened, sloughing off the apathy.

‘Your father disliked killing, too,’ he went on, staring directly at Willoughby. ‘And avoided it, whenever it was possible, just as he taught me to avoid it. But sometimes it isn’t possible. We didn’t make the rules …’

‘Rules!’ exclaimed Willoughby, infusing the word with disgust and refusing Charlie’s defence. ‘Is that what it was, Charlie? Some sort of obscene game? Do you imagine Edith would have wanted that sort of revenge?

Charlie looked evenly across the desk at the outraged man. It was proper that Willoughby should feel like this, he decided. There was no point in trying to convince him. At least he fully understood it now.

‘No,’ he replied softly, abandoning the explanation. ‘Edith wouldn’t have wanted it. But I did.’

Willoughby shook his head, exasperated.

‘The police found your passport, you know. Just slightly charred. Superintendent Law told me. They’ve closed the case, incidentally. I inferred the civil police believe you were on board … you’re probably freer now than you’ve been since Vienna.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlie, uninterested.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Willoughby. ‘If they’d found your passport, in a bag that shouldn’t have been aboard, then Ruttgers would have lived.’

‘No,’ said Charlie, definitely. ‘That’s why the passport and Edith’s bag were important.’

Willoughby sat, waiting. It would only increase the man’s disgust, realised Charlie. It didn’t seem to matter.

Sighing, he went on: ‘The bomb that destroyed the aircraft wasn’t in Edith’s bag. There were two other bombs, both in separate pieces of Ruttger’s own luggage. I wasn’t able to get near enough to the aircraft to see what sort of baggage checks were being conducted. So I had to create a dummy … something that could have been discarded, if there had been any sort of examination. In fact, there wasn’t.’

‘That’s horrifying,’ said Willoughby. He seemed to have difficulty in continuing, then said at last: ‘Did my father teach you to think like that, as well?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Charlie simply.

‘And I thought I knew him,’ said Willoughby sadly.

‘I’m sorry that you became so deeply involved,’ Charlie apologised. ‘It was wrong of me to endanger you as much as I did.’

‘I would have refused, had I known it was going to turn out like this,’ said the underwriter.

‘Of course you would,’ said Charlie.

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘It’s over a month since the headstone went up on Edith’s grave,’ he said. ‘Those laburnum trees are very near and they stain …’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ corrected Willoughby.

‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘But that’s as far ahead as I want to think, at the moment.’

He rose, moving towards the door.

‘I saw a man working on a grave when we met that day near your father’s tomb. He’d maintained it in a beautiful condition. I want to keep Edith’s just like that.’

‘Charlie,’ said Willoughby.

He turned.

‘Keep in touch?’ asked the underwriter.

‘Maybe.’

‘I was wrong to criticise,’ admitted Willoughby. ‘I know they weren’t your rules …’

Charlie ignored the attempted reconciliation. It might come later, he supposed.

‘They won, you know,’ he said. ‘Wilberforce and Ruttgers and God knows who else were involved. They really won.’

‘Yes, Charlie,’ said Willoughby. ‘I know they did.’

‘We were damned lucky, Willard.’

‘Yes, Mr President. Damned lucky.’

Henry Austin pushed the chair back and stretched his feet out on to the Oval Office desk.

‘Can you imagine what the Russians would have done if they’d found the stuff. that fell out of the plane?’

‘It’s too frightening to think about.’

‘Thank Christ the British were so helpful.’

‘I think they were as embarrassed as we were.’

The telephone of the appointments secretary lit up on the President’s console.

‘The new C.I.A. Director is here, Mr President,’ said the secretary.

‘Send him in,’ ordered Austin.

Although the last snows of winter had thawed and it was officially spring, few other people had opened their dachas yet, preferring still the central heating of Moscow. Berenkov had lit a fire and stood, with the warmth on his back, in his favourite position overlooking the capital.

He heard the sound of glasses and turned as Valentina came towards him.

‘It was kind of Comrade Kalenin to give you this French wine,’ said the woman.

‘He knows how much I like it,’ said Berenkov. He sipped, appreciatively.

‘Excellent,’ he judged.

His wife smiled at his enjoyment, joining him at the window.

‘So she died, as well?’ said Valentina, suddenly.

Berenkov nodded. The woman’s interest in the Charlie Muffin affair had equalled his, he realised.

‘We’ve positive confirmation that it was her,’ he said.

‘But not about him?’

‘Enough,’ said Berenkov. ‘There’s really little doubt’

Neither spoke for several moments and then Valentina said: ‘That’s good.’

‘Good?’

‘Now there won’t be the sort of suffering that you and I would understand,’ explained the woman.

‘No,’ agreed Berenkov. ‘There won’t be any suffering.’

One thousand five hundred miles away, in a cemetery on the outskirts of Guildford, Charlie Muffin scrubbed methodically back and forth, pausing occasionally to pick the red and yellow laburnum pods from among the green stone chips.