Brian Freemantle: Here Comes Charlie M

‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘Neighbours think I’ve been working on a five-year contract in Saudi Arabia.’

Pie nodded again, the encounter concluded. Everything was to a formula, even the apparent small talk.

‘So should anyone want you, they could contact you there?’

‘Any time,’ Johnny assured him, keeping the hope from his voice. ‘Any time.’

‘And no amateurs this time?’

‘No amateurs,’ promised Johnny.

A clear enough warning, Johnny decided. The repeated criticism meant they still doubted him. So no one would be visiting Wimbledon until he’d proved himself again, no matter if he were one of the three top safecrackers in London. He’d have to do something pretty remarkable to recover, he decided.

‘I think you’ll like it,’ said Onslow Smith.

Wilberforce sipped the wine, nodding appreciatively. The other man was unquestionably accepting his leadership, he decided, gratified.

‘Not French,’ he judged.

‘Californian,’ agreed the American Director.

‘Excellent,’ said Wilberforce. Surrounding himself with sports mementoes was all part of a carefully maintained affectation on Smith’s part, decided the other Director generously, an invitation for people to imagine his thinking and intelligence as muscled as his body. Which would have been a mistake. Smith’s decision to involve Ruttgers in the meeting that morning, just as he had included Cuthbertson, showed they were both aware of the dangers of the operation upon which they were embarking. And were taking out insurance. Both he and Smith could afford to be magnanimous in the vengeance hunt; if it were successful, then both would gain sufficient credit because of their association, while the two men worst affected would salvage something of their reputations. But if anything went wrong, then the fault could be hopefully offloaded on to those already disgraced. Perhaps that was why Smith was letting him take the lead, he thought fleetingly.

‘It is a bank, isn’t it?’ guessed the American, suddenly.

Wilberforce smiled. Definitely very intelligent.

‘What made you realise that?’

‘When Charlie Muffin walked out of the house in Vienna, leaving Ruttgers and Cuthbertson to be grabbed, he took with him $500,000 we’d provided in the belief it was what Kalenin wanted to cross over. But you didn’t mention the money this morning. So you must know where he’s hiding it … along with anything else that might embarrass us.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Wilberforce. ‘It’s a bank. And I know which one.’

‘How?’

‘We picked him up in a cemetery. Eventually he went to a house in Brighton, where he collected a woman we’ve since identified as his wife. It was obviously a house they’d had for some time. From the voters’ register we got the name they had assumed. From then on, it was merely a routine job of having a team of men posing as credit inspectors calling up all the banks in the area until we found an account. We didn’t expect a safe deposit, though … that’s what has made me worry he might have tried to protect himself with some documents.’

Wilberforce paused. Just like the drunken sot of a previous Director, Sir Archibald Willoughby, had tried to do. He hadn’t succeeded, though: they’d sealed up that difficulty just as they’d erase this if it existed.

The American added more wine to both their glasses.

‘You know something that surprises me?’

‘What?’ asked Wilberforce.

‘That Charlie Muffin didn’t go to Russia. He’d have been welcome enough there, for God’s sake.’

Wilberforce sighed. It was increasingly obvious, he thought, why it would have to be he who initiated everything in this operation.

‘But Russia is the last place he would have gone,’ he tried to explain. ‘Charlie Muffin wouldn’t have regarded what he did as helping Russia. Any more than he would think of it, initially anyway, of being traitorous to Britain or America.’

Onslow Smith frowned curiously at the other man.

‘What the hell was it then?’

‘Charlie Muffin fighting back,’ said Wilberforce. ‘When he realised we were prepared to let him die.’

‘This isn’t going to be easy, is it?’ said Smith thoughtfully.

‘No,’ said Wilberforce. ‘But it’s the only way we can guarantee there won’t be problems.’

‘And it’s necessary for us to be personally involved, potentially dangerous as it is?’

He seemed to be seeking reassurances, thought Wilberforce.

‘There’s no one else we could trust with it.’

Onslow Smith nodded, slowly.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he accepted.

He smiled uncertainly.

‘I bet the President never had this in mind when he promised to correct mistakes with the utmost vigour,’ mused the American.

‘But that’s exactly what we’re doing,’ encouraged Wilberforce. ‘But neither he nor the Prime Minister will ever appreciate it.’

‘If they did know,’ said Smith, ‘they’d be damned scared. Tell me, George, are you frightened?’

‘Properly apprehensive,’ answered Wilberforce evasively. Somehow, he had decided, the British Premier would learn what had been done for him. When it was all safely concluded, of course.

The C.I.A. Director smiled across the table.

‘I’m scared,’ he admitted. ‘I’m damned scared.’

He wasn’t asleep, Edith knew. Any more than he had been the previous night at this time, just before dawn. Or the night before that. Any night, in fact, since the cemetery incident.

She breathed deeply, hoping Charlie wouldn’t realise she was awake and start talking. If they talked, they’d row. It was too late for rows. And anyway, Charlie’s response would be to fight back. Survival, he called it. She sighed, maintaining the pretence of sleep. The need to survive: Charlie’s panacea for anything unpalatable.

She became annoyed with herself, recognising the criticism. She had no right to think like that, she thought. No right at all. They had decided that Charlie was a disposable embarrassment, someone who could be dumped because he didn’t have the right accent or public school tie and was a remnant from another, discredited era. So he had had every justification for what he had done. Justification on the filthy terms within which they operated, anyway.

If only Charlie hadn’t stopped believing that. Poor Charlie. No matter what explanation or reasoning he advanced, he could never lose the feeling of remorse that had grown during the last year. Misplaced remorse, she thought. Because Charlie Muffin wasn’t a traitor. An opportunist, she accepted. Amoral, too. Worryingly so. But no traitor. He couldn’t dislodge the doubt, though. Perhaps he never would. And from that uncertainty, all the others had grown. And the drinking. Perhaps the drinking most of all. The churchyard mistake had certainly been through booze.

And all the others, before. At least that had stopped, after the latest scare. Odd how real fear made him abandon alcohol. Survival again, she supposed.

‘How long have you been awake?

She turned at his question, discarding the charade of sleep.

‘Quite a while. You?’

‘Quite a while.’

‘I still wish you wouldn’t go.’

‘I’ve got to.’

‘They couldn’t find us now.’

He didn’t reply and she demanded urgently, ‘Could they?’

‘If I don’t meet Rupert Willoughby, he might contact the department,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget how closely his father involved him … he wouldn’t have the hesitation of anyone else. And if he were to telephone them, he’d give them the lead they need.’

‘You said it was safe here,’ she accused him. ‘We moved back the same day, for heaven’s sake.’