Brian Freemantle - Dead Men Living

But what choice did he have? It was the only way forward, it did fit sufficiently for him to be sure of at least part and there was Kenton Peters on tape describing him as a fall guy, if one was necessary. So he was damned if he went solo and damned if he didn’t. He refused to think about being dead.

Charlie forced his mind from the negative to the positive. It was physically possible to fly to England and back in one day, leaving on the first morning plane and returning on the last at night. So he’donly be away for twelve hours at the most and it wouldn’t be difficult to give London an excuse in advance for his absence from the embassy. The newspaper coverage of the art recovery-particularly the speculation that Fyodor Belous was guiding the authorities to more treasure, possibly even the Amber Room-had been enormous, but Charlie already knew from Natalia there wasn’t going to be anything more London might panic about, so that wasn’t a bar to his going. What else? An ally, he decided, now that he and Miriam had resolved their personal war. She’d been described as a fall guy, too. It would require slight adjustment to his dislike of being dependent on someone else, but Charlie Muffin’s rules of engagement were always adjustable to suit his needs and at that moment he judged his need to be quite extreme.

The positive fell far short of outweighing the negative, but there was a balance of sorts. And he took as an omen the fact that when he inquired there was availability on both the outgoing and incoming British Airways flights the following day. He made reservations and then set about establishing the cover for his absence. Which would be easy. He could use the art recovery. Charlie was later to remember the startled look with which Richard Cartright greeted him when he entered the MI6 man’s office.

“I don’t like this,” objected the military attache at once, looking to Raymond McDowell for support.

“Neither do I,” agreed the head of chancellery.

“Do you think I do?” demanded Richard Cartright. “They’re my instructions, from London!”

“Why?” asked Gallaway. They were in the military attache’s office and theatrically the man got up and locked the door.

Cartright’s relief, at being told officially by his own department to assess Charlie Muffin’s investigation, was limited: it had briefly been shattered by the scruffy man’s arrival in his office an hour earlier, which Cartright had at first thought, frightened, to be a confrontation. Since then he’d tried to rationalize what there was to work from and realized how limited that was, too. Apart from the contempt with which Charlie Muffin had dismissed his superiors on his return from London, everything else remained totally unsupported, mostly bedroomtittle-tattle. But what increased Cartright’s unease was being asked, in the authorizing message from his operational officer that morning, if the man had boasted of making misleading telephone calls during his London recall or had ever referred to someone named Lionel Burbage. A confused Cartright was still awaiting clarification on that.

His explanation prepared for the inevitable question from one or the other of them, Cartright said, “I didn’t like his attitude, when he came back: behaving as if what we’re all supposed to be doing wasn’t important. I asked London if anything had happened there to sort the whole business out. When they asked me why, I told them.” Seeing the look on the faces of the other two men, Cartright added, “I don’t consider that disloyal. I see it as self-protection, for us all.” He looked pointedly at McDowell. “You forgotten what happened to your predecessor?”

“Muffin certainly hasn’t tried very hard to be a team player,” conceded the diplomat.

“And from what I gather, he caused Jackson some embarrassment in Berlin. Me, too, for that matter,” joined in Gallaway. “I had the ministry on, demanding to know why I wasn’t aware of his going there. Looked a bit of a bloody fool having to admit he hadn’t told me, after I’d already assured them we were working well together.”

“Which is another joke, this time on us,” insisted Cartright. “He came to see me this morning. Said he thought there might be something in this Russian statement and, when I asked him what, said he couldn’t tell me until he’d looked into it properly.”

“You think we should tell London?” asked Gallaway, at once.

“I’m certainly going to cover myself,” said Cartright. “Nothing specific because I can’t be. Just an advisory, that there might be something. That’s what he said he was doing.”

“Probably a good idea for us all to do the same,” said McDowell. He paused. “I suppose it’s true to say he’s treated us all a bit shabbily. But I’m still not sure it justifies an official inquiry.”

“Not by itself, perhaps,” Cartright admitted. “But I think there are things going on in London we don’t know about, which, let’s face it, has been our problem all along, not properly knowing what’s going on. I think what I’ve been asked is part of a far deeper inquiryinto how the investigation has been conducted from the start. As far as we know it’s got nowhere. I, for one, don’t intend having any responsibility for failure off-loaded on me.”

The other two men shifted uncomfortably. Gallaway said, “I understand your point of view.”

McDowell said, “Yes, quite.”

Pleased with the way it was going, Cartright said, “All I’m asking is to be able to say you were with me when he said what he did. And to know you’ll support me if you get asked about it from London direct.”

“It would be the truth, would it?” accepted McDowell. “He did say what he did, in front of all three of us. Virtually made a joke of it, in fact. Think maybe I should tell the ambassador, though. Not exactly conducive to the smooth running of the embassy.”

“Probably wise to make our position clear,” said Gallaway.

“Thank you. I’m glad we’re agreed,” said Cartright. He hoped it would go on being this easy. He hoped Irena wasn’t on a long-haul flight. It would be better-more convincing-if he had a Russian with him. He shouldn’t forget Miriam, either.

“I thought we’d stopped all this shit!” protested the American. The reaction from the high-class hookers-imagining unequal competition-to her entry at the Savoy hotel bar was only just subsiding. They had, Charlie remembered, agreed on his role as Miriam’s pimp. It would be a job with career prospects.

“If it goes wrong, you don’t want to know about it,” said Charlie. “My plane arrives back at ten, local time. I’ll call you by eleven. If there’s time, I might check in during the day.”

“If it goes right, you’ll know it all by tomorrow night?”

“Enough,” assured Charlie. Once he’d always needed to know it all, he remembered. Another adjustable rule.

“If anyone asks, you’re following up something about this art recovery but haven’t told me what it is?” Miriam clarified.

“That’s all.”

“It’s an odd coincidence.”

“What is?” asked Charlie.

“Richard Cartright’s called. Invited me to dinner.”

“You going?”

“I stalled. Waited to see what you wanted first.”

“What are you going to do?”

Miriam shrugged. “A gal’s got to eat. You never did give me a name, incidently.”

“Orgnev,” supplied Charlie, glad of the reminder. “Arkadi Orgnev. Operates from a pitch near the Buratino Cafe, in the Arbat.”

Charlie spent longer than necessary assuring Sasha that the giraffe’s neck hadn’t been stretched by someone pulling its head, hoping Natalia’s concern-driven anger would have lessened by the time he went back into the living room. It hadn’t.