Brian Freemantle - Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

It was an assassination method the Russians had perfected, the bullet soft-nosed and lightly packed, from an adapted Tokarev automatic. There had been no exit wound, just an instantaneous explosion of the heart. The photograph showed no distortion of the features: the dead man looked as if he might awaken at any moment, just like the others had done. Sir Alistair Wilson was surprised at that. He would have expected an expression of pain. The intelligence director pushed the latest file away, knowing there was nothing he could learn from it. Delhi, Ankara and now Bangkok: and he was no closer to the traitor now than he had been six months ago, when the killings of embassy intelligence Residents started.

Wilson felt impotent, having to rely so completely upon Alexander Hotovy. The man’s defection from the Czech embassy in London had been agreed when the assassinations began. And was immediately postponed, for Hotovy, a major in the Statni Tajna Bezpecnost, the Czech intelligence service, to earn his asylum by discovering how the British operatives were being pinpointed. The initial response had been encouraging: perhaps too much so. Within a week, Hotovy confirmed that all Eastern bloc embassies were receiving, via Moscow, details of British cabinet guidance to overseas ambassadors, together with personnel details from which it was easy to isolate intelligence officers in the field. Then came the stalemate. By the time the guidance arrived from Russia, all indication of original source had been removed. Which meant Wilson knew he had a spy in a British embassy somewhere in the world, but not which one. The trap had seemed feasible, even clever, when he devised it. That had been six months before and since then two more people had died.

The irritation of his own ineffectiveness was showing on Wilson’s face when he looked up at his deputy’s entry.

‘It’s worked!’ declared Peter Harkness.

For a moment Wilson didn’t speak. Then he said: ‘Sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Thank God for that!’ How long would it take, he wondered.

General Valery Kalenin’s car was an official Zil, authorized to use the exclusive centre lane of Moscow roads, but the traffic at night was light, so the privilege reserved for members of the Soviet hierarchy was unnecessary. Kalenin’s driver still used it; he enjoyed the advantage of power more than the KGB chief. The Zil swept past Kutuzovsky Prospect and the Kremlin towards Dzerzhinsky Square. That day’s overseas files and reports were waiting for him, neatly arranged in order of their late-afternoon transmission. Kalenin unfastened his jacket, lit a tube-filtered cigarette and settled down to work. He read steadily and carefully, annotating margin notes from which his deputies could initiate action the following day.

For years Kalenin had maintained an office cleaner at the British embassy in Cairo. Usually the information was of low-level interest, little more than the occasional indiscretion from a waste-paper basket, from which they had to make a surmise. But sometimes there was something worthwhile. Like tonight. Kalenin had a retentive memory and saw the significance at once. A meticulously cautious man, he went to the filing cabinet where the intelligence from his top agents was kept and located at once what he wanted, turning the shade of his angled light upon an identical message he had received a month earlier. Identical but for one thing. The source of the first message was listed as Cape Town. The origin of the second, which he had upon his desk, was given as Lagos. From the advice docket attached to the initial information he saw that it had been transmitted a week before to the Warsaw Pact capitals, for guidance to their embassies.

Kalenin returned to his desk and for a long time stared sightlessly at the wall. A trap had been set and he had fallen into it: and it could hardly have happened at a worse time. The qualification came almost at once. If he were clever, it could be worse for others.

British and Soviet intelligence operations began within twenty-four hours of each other, one to uncover, the other to conceal.

The Russians had the advantage. Kalenin had anticipated the possibility and had the framework of a protection operation ready. He went again to the filing cabinets, for the dossier on Charlie Muffin.

Charlie Muffin jarred stiff-kneed along Cheyne Walk, head bent to concentrate upon the pavement cracks. Easy to make a straight line; always had been. Just fix on the pavement joins and left right, foot either side, like the police-station tests in the old days, before the breathalyzer. Done it a dozen times pissed as a monkey. Never pulled department weight, until it became absolutely necessary. Rarely had been. Always able to make the straight walk, enunciate the trick phrases from the card, without denting the words. Sherry’s a difficult one, when you’re Brahms and Liszt. Always clever to use that. Just a sherry, officer, maybe two. National service reunion: get together with the boys; you know the sort of thing. Should have remembered the pills, of course. Trying a new treatment, for the migraine. Nasty business, Malaya: nasty wound, too. Not much to talk about, really. Lucky to have made it, so the doctors say; should have warned me about the pills though, silly buggers. Terribly sorry. Guarantee it won’t happen again. That a Korea ribbon? North Africa! Christ, now that must have been a war. ’Course it won’t happen again, officer. Solemn promise.

Bit different now. Couldn’t defeat the progress of science: blow into the bag, pee in the bottle, blood smear under the microscope and there you were, fucked without a kiss.

Charlie looked up, neck aching from the effort. To his right, the bridge illuminations necklaced the Thames, chokers of ambers and yellows and whites and reds. Charlie blinked, trying to sharpen the blur. Too bright to be Battersea Bridge. The Albert then. Shit: he’d done it again. He peered across the road for confirmation and got it from the road sign. Oakley Street. Second time it had happened recently. Or was it the third? He couldn’t remember; didn’t matter anyway. Missing Battersea Bridge did. Probably easier to go back. Why bother? He wasn’t going anywhere, not tonight. Or any other night. Charlie reached out for the support of the metalwork, swinging himself into position to cross the bridge for the roundabout route to his Battersea flat. The footpath ribboned away ahead of him and Charlie paused for a moment, breathing deeply like an Olympic athlete preparing himself for the run that would win the gold. The pavement cracks; that’s all he needed, a line of pavement cracks. He started out, head forward again, left right, left right, the impact against the concrete hard beneath his heels.

Used this bridge a lot in the early days. Vauxhall and Lambeth too. Mattered then, to vary the route. Not just on foot either. Underground during the rush hour when there were people among whom he could get lost. Buses, too. And a taxi, when he’d thought there was something suspicious and needed care – a cautious, circuitous route, tensed for any back-street dodging.

Never suspicious any more. No one was chasing Charlie Muffin. Quite safe to have a few drinks. No worry about surveillance.

He jerked up suddenly, grimacing in half-remembered awareness. Confined space, easy to spot. So they’d be running parallel observation, maybe triangular, one behind, one in front and the other making the third point, on the opposite side of the road. Charlie turned awkwardly, stumbling as his foot edge missed the kerb. He snatched sideways, grabbing for the wall. Far behind, on the further side of the road, a couple meandered entangled in groping love. In front a girl was approaching, hobbled by a short, thigh-hugging skirt. A man strode past him, bowler purposefully slanted over his forehead, tightly furled umbrella striking the ground in time to his marched progress, like a parade sergeant’s staff. Too dark and too quick to see the regimental tie, but there’d be one. Just like the pricks who took over the department and tried to get him killed. Screwed them, though. Sucked them up and blew them out in bubbles.