Brian Freemantle: Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

‘We’ll discuss your defection,’ said Wilson, as if there had only been a few minutes’ interruption.

‘There was no defection,’ said Charlie.

‘At the end of 1977 you went to the Soviet Union,’

‘I did not.’

Wilson put out his hand and from the box file the bespectacled man produced a small wallet. Wilson leaned forward across the table and said, ‘Is that your photograph?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie curiously.

Wilson turned towards the recording equipment. ‘Exhibit 1 that Charles Muffin has identified containing his photograph is an identity document, according him the rank of major in the KGB and establishing entry into the Soviet Union in November 1977.’

‘This is nonsense.’

‘We found everything in your flat,’ said the director. ‘And Walsingham’s on-demand safe deposit box here in Rome. If he hadn’t panicked, you’d have got away with it. He would have been dead, but you’d still have been free.’

Wilson was handed something else from the document box and held it up for Charlie. ‘Is that your photograph attached to this card?’

‘Of course it is.’ Careful, he thought: he’d let the irritation show.

Again Wilson turned to the side table. ‘Let the record show that Muffin has just acknowledged his photograph on the official authorization to concessions in certain restricted Moscow stores. It will be exhibit 2.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ demanded Charlie. ‘You know it’s not true.’

Wilson ignored the protest. ‘Do you know what these are?’ He held up some sort of decoration in his hand. With it was a long, official-looking form. Charlie saw the writing was Cyrillic.

‘I’ve never seen either before in my life,’ said Charlie. He tried to reject the panic sweeping through him.

Once more Wilson spoke to his right. ‘Exhibit 3 is the official decoration of the Hero of the Soviet Union, with a citation commending Charles Muffin for outstanding work on behalf of the security service of the Soviet Union.’

‘It’s not true!’ said Charlie desperately. ‘It’s complete invention.’

Naire-Hamilton cupped his hand to Wilson. The director listened, and then said to Charlie, ‘There’s no point in extending this, is there? Why not admit it?’

‘My name is Charlie Muffin,’ he recited, in a name, rank and serial number monotone. ‘In 1977 I disclosed to the Soviet Union the whereabouts in Vienna of the British and American intelligence directors, for personal reasons. That is all I have ever done. At no time beyond that have I had any contact with Russia…’ He stared straight at Naire-Hamilton. ‘I have killed no one.’

‘What’s that?’ demanded Wilson.

‘A Canadian passport,’ said Charlie.

‘Take it.’

Charlie held onto his trousers with his left hand and felt out with his right.

‘What’s the entry stamp, on page thirty-six?’

Charlie turned the pages awkwardly, supporting the document against his chest. ‘Delhi,’ he said.

‘Did you, on 14 April, two days after the admission into India recorded on that date stamp, kill a British intelligence agent named Walter Thomison?’

‘No!’

‘What’s the entry on page twenty-eight?’

Charlie fumbled through. ‘Ankara.’

‘Did you, on 27 August, one day after your arrival in Turkey, assassinate Rupert Bullock, a British intelligence agent attached to the embassy there?’

‘This is a farce…’

‘Page forty-four,’ stipulated Wilson.

Dully Charlie turned the pages. ‘Bangkok.’

‘Did you, on 3 October, four days after your arrival, shoot Peter Weighill, who had been identified to you as an intelligence operative working out of the British embassy in Thailand?’

‘No,’ said Charlie. His mind was misted by the accusations being made against him.

‘Do you recognize these?’ demanded the director, offering a fan spread of paper.

Charlie sighed. ‘No,’ he said.

Wilson went to the note table. ‘This will be itemized as exhibit 5, the passport being exhibit 4,’ he said. ‘It consists of congratulatory cables, two signed personally by General Kalenin, commending Charlie Muffin on the success of his assassination of British agents attached to embassies in the three countries in which the Canadian passport numbered 18756 shows he had access.’

He’d let them play themselves out. There was nothing else he could do.

‘Let the deposition show we are discussing what I shall identify as exhibit 6,’ said Wilson. He offered it to Charlie. It was long, running to two pages and on flimsy paper that Charlie remembered from intelligence briefings. ‘Do you know this?’

‘No.’

Wilson sat back, holding it loosely before him. ‘It’s your instruction sheet.’

‘What instruction sheet?’

‘Telling you what to do here,’ said Wilson. ‘Telling you that Henry Walsingham, a spy like you, had panicked after the caution from Moscow that he was under suspicion and intended organizing a robbery on the ambassador’s safe, believing information incriminating him was being held there…’ Wilson broke off. ‘You were brilliant, getting to that safe as you did to find it wasn’t so. Didn’t Walsingham believe you when you told him there was nothing there?’

‘Walsingham wasn’t a spy.’

Wilson waved the paper. ‘The instructions make it clear you were to kill him, because he’d become unstable. You had to improvise when the robbery went ahead, didn’t you?’

‘Like everything else alleged today, this is complete nonsense,’ said Charlie. He spoke towards the recorder: if they were going to get the bullshit on tape, his denials were going to be there too.

‘You knew Walsingham, didn’t you: you were his control?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve proof,’ said Wilson. ‘We found the key, to the safe deposit box. It’s all there.’

‘I met Henry Walsingham the day after the robbery, at the ambassador’s villa at Ostia. I had never met him before.’

Wilson reached for the document.

‘Exhibit 7 will be listed as the Soviet message indicating initial control contact with Charlie Muffin,’ he said. ‘It contains a notation in Walsingham’s handwriting confirming that the meeting took place on 10 June last year in Washington.’

Relief surged through Charlie. ‘What was that date?’

‘10 June!’

‘No!’ said Charlie triumphantly. ‘And now it’s in the record there’s nothing you can do about it.’

As Charlie through of Willough by there was a kaleidoscope of imagery, of his meeting in the underwriter’s office and then, intrusively, of a grey-suited man reading a magazine in the waiting room; the same grey-suited man who fell into step behind Clarissa as she walked past the Trevi fountain.

‘Bastard!’ said Charlie. But why? Hadn’t he been the bigger bastard for what he’d done with Clarissa, willing though she might have been? Ironically it made things easier. He looked at the director. ‘Rupert Willoughby can prove I wasn’t in Washington on 10 June last year.’ Charlie hesitated, arrested by another image – the crying, tear-stained face of Edith during one of their last rows. And her accusation, ‘ Nothing matters to you but survival does it Charlie

… nothing at all…’ She’d been right, as always. To Wilson he said, ‘And it can be corroborated.’

It was a vast high-ceilinged room, already prepared for some of the conferences to be held during the forthcoming Summit. It was dominated by two tables arranged in a T; ministers sat at the top cross section and their advisers were spread away from them. Wires ribboned the floor, for the microphones set before each place and for the translations to be fed into the headsets clipped discreetly against each chair arm. Beyond the main seating arrangement was a small table, for the conference secretariat, and it was here that Billington, Wilson and Naire-Hamilton sat.