Brian Freemantle: Here Comes Charlie M

‘What an incredible coincidence,’ said Willoughby.

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, the confusion genuine now.

Immediately fear swept it aside. If the graveyard were still under surveillance, then now he had been positively identified, he realised. Sir Archibald’s son would be known, to all of them. And they were standing immediately outside the vault, the marker he’d managed to avoid only minutes earlier. He still had a little time, he decided. Not much. But still enough to use.

He tried to withdraw his hand, turning back to the gate.

‘… decided to pay my respects,’ he stumbled, badly. ‘Haven’t been able to, before … in a hurry, though. Really must go.’

‘No, please, wait,’ protested Willoughby. ‘There’s a great deal for us to discuss … a business matter …’

‘Perhaps another time … sorry, I’m very late …’

Willoughby was walking with him, frowning at the rudeness. He reached into his pocket and Charlie edged away, apprehensively. The man produced a small wallet and offered Charlie a card.

‘We must meet again,’ he said. ‘It’s most important … to do with my father …’

‘Call you,’ promised Charlie, thrusting the pasteboard into his pocket. He was almost at the exit now. The obvious place, he decided; the lychgate would certainly provide some cover and they could get him away in a car before anyone in the cemetery realised the attack had happened. Charlie paused, examining it. There was no one there.

‘Promise?’ demanded Willoughby.

Charlie turned to the man, realising the need to recover.

‘I really am very sorry,’ he said, stopping with his back to the support pole for the gate roof, positioning himself where he could see the beginning of any approach. ‘It must seem very rude.’

Willoughby didn’t reply, confirming the assessment.

‘Like to spend more time … believe me.’

‘Call me then?’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

‘Soon,’ promised Charlie hurriedly, turning through the gate. The mourners he had seen around the fresh grave were dispersing, heads bowed, into various cars. A woman was crying. The man who had been scrubbing the surround had finished, too, he saw. Carefully the man had packed the brush, cloths and bucket into the boot of an old Morris and was walking slowly towards the telephone.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ called Willoughby, after him.

Charlie drove alert for the slightest danger, eyes constantly scanning the rear view mirror. Purposely he went north-west, choosing Tunbridge Wells because it was the first town of any size, twisting and turning through the streets and then continuing north, to London, to repeat the evasion.

‘You’re a prick, Charlie,’ he accused himself again, as he took the car over Vauxhall Bridge. ‘A careless, idiot prick who deserves to die.’

He’d arranged to clear out the bank the following morning. But that didn’t matter now. Only survival mattered.

‘Prick,’ he said.

The London home and elegant, sophisticated refuge of George Wilberforce was a second-floor apartment overlooking Eaton Square. Here, from Monday to Friday, he lived, returning only at the weekends to a nagging, condescending wife who refused him the respect that everyone seemed to find so difficult, and from whom he would have welcomed divorce but for the admittedly remote but nevertheless possible harm such an event might have caused his career. Those responsible for appointments in the permanent civil service were known sometimes to possess strong religious views and it was wise not to take chances.

Particularly not now. Because now his career was more assured than it had ever been.

Delius, he decided, would suit his mood.

Apart from the habit with never-smoked pipes, the Director was a man who rarely betrayed any emotion, but now after standing for several movements by the stereo unit he suddenly moved away in a halting, stiff-jointed attempt at what appeared to be a waltz. He stopped, embarrassed by his efforts.

‘I’ve got you, Charlie Muffin,’ he said. ‘And now you’re going to suffer for what you did. Christ, you’re going to suffer.’

George Wilberforce blinked at the gritty sensation behind his eyes, knowing he should have allowed more time after the flight from London before this conference in the C.I.A. complex in the Virginia countryside. But this time he had wanted the meeting in America; to arrive the courier of news for which they had waited so long and sense the approbation, even if there were no open praise.

“You’re quite sure?” demanded Onslow Smith urgently. The American Director, whom he had had to tell in advance of the meeting, was a large open-faced man who seemed constantly restricted within the confines of an office chair, business suit and subdued tie. As if in apologetic explanation for his build, the wall behind his desk was patterned with sports pennants, shields and group pictures of the Yale rowing and boxing teams. The Onslow Smith smile was featured in all.

‘Quite sure,’ said Wilberforce, keeping the exhilaration from his voice. ‘We’ve caught Charlie Muffin.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Smith distantly. ‘It’s about goddamn time.’

Appearing suddenly aware that the remark could be construed as criticism, he added quickly: ‘Congratulations.’

Wilberforce’s shrug of uncaring dismissal was perfect.

‘And now can we kill him?’ demanded Garson Ruttgers.

Wilberforce came up from the pipe at which he had already begun probing, staring at the diminutive, frail-seeming American whose ambition to become, as chief of the C.I.A., what Edgar Hoover had been to the F.B.I., had been destroyed by Charlie Muffin. Ruttgers was an unsettling feature of the group, thought Wilberforce, watching the man light a cigarette from the stump of that which had preceded it, never once breaking the staring-eyed gaze across the table through clerk-like, half-lens spectacles. About Ruttgers there was an aura of unpredictability, thought the Briton. And something else. The man physically frightened him, Wilberforce realised, surprised.

‘It’s not quite as easy as that,’ he said guardedly.

‘Why not?’ demanded Ruttgers.

The constant inhalation of nicotine had turned the man’s false teeth yellow. Why, wondered Wilberforce, didn’t the American soak the dentures in stain remover? His breath must smell appallingly.

‘Yes, why?’

The repeated question in the unpleasantly recognisable, phlegmy tone, came from Wilberforce’s right and he turned to Sir Henry Cuthbertson. The baronet was a bulky, cumbersome man proud of family links that went back to the service of James I, who had conferred the original baronetcy. He’d earned the D.S.O. in the Second World War and been seconded from the Chief of Staff council to revitalise Britain’s intelligence system after the fading, twenty-five-year directorship of Sir Archibald Willoughby. And lost the job in less than a year. Four hundred years of honour wrecked in a few short months by a scruffy ex-grammar school boy with an irritating Mancunian accent and the distressing tendency not to change his shirt every day, reflected Wilberforce.

It was hardly surprising Cuthbertson and Ruttgers wanted Charlie Muffin’s immediate assassination, thought Wilberforce. But neither had operated under the new governments. Or knew — because nobody knew — of Wilberforce’s determination to make Charlie Muffin’s capture a personal triumph.

‘Because there mustn’t be any mistake,’ said the British Director simply.

‘No,’ agreed Onslow Smith hurriedly. ‘No mistakes.’

To be convinced, the feelings of the two older men would have to be bruised, realised Wilberforce.

‘Let’s not forget,’ he said, ‘that the errors made with Charlie Muffin in the past were absolutely horrifying.’