Brian Freemantle - Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

‘That’s our assessment as well.’

‘The Italians are worried.’

‘With every reason to be.’

‘Still didn’t expect a visit from you people quite so soon,’ said Walsingham. ‘There’s a lot of time left.’

‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Jackson. It was the sort of remark the other man would expect. ‘I’ve brought five people with me. I want to move them into the embassy tomorrow.’

‘What for?’

‘Familiarize themselves with the working of the place,’ said Jackson. ‘Find out where the lavatories and the different departments are.’

‘I think I should advise the ambassador.’ Walsingham was a man who always deferred to a superior officer.

‘Of course.’

‘What exactly will they be doing?’

‘Poking around the cipher room and vaults mostly.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Jackson patiently. ‘It’s from there all the stuff will be going back to London. Don’t want any embarrassments, do we?’

Indignation showed upon Walsingham’s face. ‘There is nothing wrong with the security at this embassy,’ he, said stiffly.

‘I’m sure there’s not,’ said Jackson, at once placatory. He spread his hands, entering the charade he was sure the other man would accept, ‘Not my decision, old boy. You know what it’s like at Whitehall: they still use initials instead of proper names for the director and talk about moles and daft stuff like that.’

There was a complete surveillance operation upon Henry Walsingham and Richard Semingford when they left the embassy that evening. Walsingham went to his apartment overlooking the Tiber and remained there. Semingford met Jane Williams at a cafe on the Via Condotti. They had a drink, walked a short distance to a restaurant where they ate early, and went back to her apartment. Semingford was still there at midnight and all the lights were out.

‘Why the hell didn’t one of the bastards react!’ demanded Jackson irritably, when the reports were brought back to him at the Eden. ‘I was supposed to have made one of them nervous.’

Kalenin used the best calligraphist but, even so, limited the entries to initialled notations in Charlie Muffin’s name and to the signatures against the bank authority. There were four genuine messages of top-secret classification which he had received from the British embassy in Rome re-copied on paper brought in from Italy to satisfy any forensic test. The reference to the earlier meeting with Charlie Muffin in Washington the previous June was provably upon Russian foolscap and he hesitated, looking down at it. They had identified Charlie in Florida on 15 June, but, from the checks later, Kalenin knew the stamp exhibition had been in New York from 8 June. From New York it was easier to reach Washington than from Palm Beach, just an hour on the shuttle. It was the sort of detail that was important; 10 June was perfect. He put it with the other documents, then another Russian foolscap containing all the information about the combination and security precautions at Billington’s Ostia villa. The final, fittingly cosmetic, touch was ten thousand dollars in American currency.

Kalenin had just addressed it for diplomatic transport to Igor Solomatin in Rome when the message arrived from London about the previous shipment. The hidden compartment had been fixed below the base of a bedroom closet and all the material placed in it. They were confident it would be found, but only after a rummage search.

Kalenin sat back at his desk. allowing himself a brief moment of satisfaction. Almost immediately he rose to his feet. Alexander Hotovy had undergone sufficient preparation. Everything was going too well to allow uncertainty, and Kalenin was anxious to satisfy himself the Czech did not represent any greater danger than he already imagined.

Emilio Fantani had a criminal’s ability to distinguish between true wealth and surface glitter, and as he rounded the promontory on the Ostia road to gaze down upon the Billington villa he knew this was true wealth. Unlike Charlie Muffin, who had taken the same route earlier, Fantani slowed and then stopped, using the elevation of the hill for his reconnaissance. The angle prevented his establishing a seafront approach, but there would obviously be one leading up to the grape and flower hung verandah he could just determine at the right-hand side of the house.

With a burglar’s patience he waited for thirty minutes slumped back in his seat, ensuring the information about no ground patrol was correct before releasing the handbrake to coast down under minimal power towards the entrance. He was briefly aware of the men in the gate lodge but his concentration was upon the electrical wiring thatched along the top of the walls.

The sea, he decided, reverting to his original intention. There was a layby almost at the junction of the Pratica road and as he reached it Fantani saw the parked police car. It was unmarked but identifiable from the heavy radio antennae that was always mounted in the roof; as discreet as elephants in ballet slippers, he thought. There were three men inside the yellow vehicle, lounged back with the practice of those who spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen.

Fantani didn’t slow. To his right the sun sparked off the polished water and far out to sea a clutch of fishing boats moved sedately along the skyline, like ducks in a line. The hills were ochre and bald, patched occasionally with thin grass. Hobbled goats, neck bells jangling, nuzzled hopefully and once Fantani had to brake and swerve to avoid one that started into the road to tug at a suddenly discovered tuft.

It took longer than Fantani wanted before he found a cliff break to get down to the beach. He parked and took a towel and the raffia mat from the rear seat. Descending the looped pathway, he set out through the foot-sucking sand and shingle in the direction of the villa. It took an hour and Fantani was glad he had allowed himself so much time. He stopped some way from the barrier that made the ambassador’s beach private. Fantani had come prepared, already wearing a costume beneath his clothes. He spread the mat, undressed and folded everything neatly before stretching out, apparently to sunbathe. For almost half an hour he did, before turning over onto his stomach to begin the examination. The beach fence was high and spike-topped and projected some unseen distance into the water. Fantani did not think it was insurmountable. It didn’t matter anyway, he decided, looking to the cliff face. It might have been possible to scale once, but from the artificially smooth surface of the rocks he guessed it had been blasted away to create the almost perpendicular drop.

Like a black line drawn down it, there was a smoked-glass lift linking the villa to the sea, and alongside the zigzag of emergency steps. It would only need one man at the top to protect both approaches. Fantani squinted up against the sun at the villa, locating more pillars and bourgainvillea. It was at the point where the protective estate wall abutted the cliff that Fantani stopped. The wall had been brought to the edge and from the conduit box which stuck up like a proud thumb he guessed the electrical connection stopped there. The screen was completed by a wide half-circle of meshed spikes, splayed out like a woman’s fan against the wall end and the cliff face, over a drop which Fantani estimated at four hundred metres but accepted would probably be more, because of his shortened elevation. He smiled, seeing the way, and turned over onto his back again to doze in the sun. For another hour he relaxed, then dressed and rolled up his mat, leaving his shoes and socks off for the gritty walk back to the car.

It was still only four in the afternoon so Fantani continued towards Pratica until he found the first roadside cafe. He considered a brandy but decided his nerves didn’t need any help. Instead he took coffee.