Brian Freemantle: Dead Men Living

“What does she want?”

“Says she hasn’t been able to contact me. She flies for Aeroflot and brings things from abroad for Sasha.”

“What have you told her about Sasha?”

“That there was an affair that ended.” She looked directly at Charlie. “I thought it had.”

And maybe would have liked it to, Charlie thought. “Am I going to meet her?”

“Maybe,” said Natalia, noncommittally. “I suppose I should call her or write. There’s something else about us.”

“What?”

“I don’t expect you to ask me anything-to use my position-and I don’t expect you to share anything with me.”

“Neither’s crossed my mind,” Charlie said with a smile, trying to lighten the atmosphere. McDonald’s hardly seemed the place for such a conversation, but then what-or where-was?

“That’s bollocks and you know it,” accused Natalia, using the word that Charlie had taught her.

“It doesn’t sound the same when you say it.”

“It means the same.”

Charlie accepted that he’d abused Natalia’s professional position badly enough in the very beginning, after he’d staged his phony defection to Moscow and deceived her when she’d been assigned to debrief him. So her distrust was justified, like everything else. Natalia had sufficient professional integrity to make up for any that he might lack. Still seemed a pity, if the facility was there. But then … Charlie abruptly stopped the reflection. He wouldn’t cheat or treat Natalia badly, ever again. In fact, he had to do even better than that. He had to make her love him again.

Difficult though it was about anything involving the man, Gerald Williams did his best to remain totally objective about Charlie Muffin. And objectively he accepted he’d lost the last battle, like so many before it. But most certainly he hadn’t lost the war. Nor would he. Still objective, he conceded that Charlie Muffin had succeeded in hisexperimental posting to Moscow by shattering a Russian nuclear-smuggling operation to the Middle East and that, for the moment, Charlie Muffin could do no wrong in the opinion of Sir Rupert Dean, the director-general. Which wasn’t, by any stretch of any imagination, Williams’s opinion. Charlie Muffin could-and would-break rules. The man couldn’t help himself. It was Muffin’s way. The way that one day-the sooner, the better-he’d make the mistake he couldn’t wriggle away from, as he’d wriggled away from so many; the mistake with which he, Gerald Williams, would finally rid the service of a nuisance that should not have been allowed to exist in the first place and shouldn’t be allowed to continue in these uncertain times.

There had been too many changes made too quickly in expanding the department with the hope of justifying its continued existence after the end of the Cold War. There’d actually been some personnel moves as a direct result of what the damned man had already done in Moscow. Which meant that for the moment not enough people remained in power who knew Charlie Muffin for what he truly was. But Gerald Williams knew. He knew Charlie Muffin to be an insubordinate liar and cheat with an inverted snobbery about people with better accents whose boots he shouldn’t have been allowed to lick, let alone appear equal to-sometimes, even, superior.

Williams, a fat but fastidiously neat man, was sure of his strategy. Time. But with persistence. What he had to do was allow Charlie Muffin all the time-all the rope-with which to hang himself. But not let this ridiculous admiration cult grow, simply because of one initial new posting success. So there had to be constant, leveling reminders. And there was no one better qualified than he to introduce that constant balance. And he was going to be able to do that now that he was being included in these nervous discussions about the uncertainty of their organization.

Williams was happy with his reflections, quite content for the departmental conference, chaired by Sir Rupert Dean, to swirl around. For some of the time he’d only half listened, more interested in his own thoughts, gazing across the Thames to the headquarters of the MI6, or SIS, as Britain’s external intelligence service preferred to call itself.

Today’s meeting had been convened by the director-general toassess the effectiveness of the National Crime Squad as Britain’s FBI-the role they’d fought to establish for themselves in the post-Cold War adjustments-and Williams felt the least threatened of all. The first to suffer from any retraction or functional change would be operational heads. His record as financial director and chief accountant was unblemished, although as careful as he was, Williams recognized a danger-another reason to be wary of the man-in the drunken-sailor way Charlie Muffin was being allowed to throw money around in Moscow, as if he had the key to the safe. Worriedly it occurred to Williams that the bloody man was devious enough actually to have made an impression and done just that.

“I believe they’ve made inroads, damaged our claim,” insisted Jocelyn Hamilton. He was new to the control group, a replacement as Dean’s immediate deputy. The demise of Hamilton’s predecessor had come from the man’s own power struggle miscalculation, but the nuclear-smuggling Moscow episode had been the trigger and Williams hoped he’d find an ally in the bull-chested, sparse-haired new deputy whose office was festooned with photographs of him as a rugby prop forward and four-time English rugby international.

“We’ve more than held our own,” countered Dean, a disheveled man whose hair retreated from his forehead in an upright tidal wave. He’d been appointed director-general from the chair of Modern and Political History at Oxford’s Balliol College and was internationally acclaimed as the foremost sociopolitical authority in Europe. There was no longer talk of his tenure being temporary, as it had been described in the beginning. Williams didn’t believe the nuclear affair had anything to do with Dean’s knighthood, but it had come soon afterward and some people thought there was a connection.

“It’s just more duplication,” persisted Hamilton. “There’s already the National Criminal Intelligence Service. There’s regional crime squads. There’s us. What can a National Crime Squad do that we or any of the others couldn’t? Or aren’t already doing?”

“Focus on the criminals identified at the very top,” said Jeremy Simpson, the legal adviser. Heavily he added, “And NCIS isn’t operational.”

Patrick Pacey, a small, dark-haired, and totally nondescript man, except for a face permanently reddened by blood pressure, said, “Itmakes the government’s commitment against organized crime look good.” He was the political officer.

“I don’t think there is any cause for us yet to overreact,” said Dean. He habitually spoke too quickly, his voice staccato, and seemed to make more use of his spectacles as worry beads than as an aid to reading.

“Nor to be complacent,” said Hamilton.

Time carefully to venture a toe into the water, decided Williams. He said, “Certainly it would be a bad time for us to make a mistake.”

Jeremy Simpson, who compensated for his alopecia baldness with a drooping bush of a mustache, sighed. “Do you know a good time to make a mistake?” He didn’t like Williams and regretted his inclusion in these meetings, although acknowledging finances and costs were important in their overall future.

Williams flushed, well aware he couldn’t expect any support from the odd-looking lawyer, who was buttressed against any upheaval within the department by an inherited personal fortune. “I meant that perhaps we should devote some time to anticipating potential problems.”

“Like what?” demanded the political officer.