Brian Freemantle: Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

The man who set out to be Terrilli’s destroyer never discovered the example killings. It would have been difficult, because Dean Warburger was in the Director’s office at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington and the murders were in the northern Colombian province of Guajira.

But Warburger had learned that day of something else and his initial excitement was such to prompt a four-martini and lobster au gratin lunch at the Sans Souci. By four in the afternoon, Warburger had a bad headache, and realised that the intake was dangerous as well as premature and the proposal probably impractical. He authorised a feasibility study anyway.

It was the first time, after almost a year of exhaustive investigation, that he had become aware of Terrilli’s interest in philately. And Warburger, who was determined to make his directorship of the F.B.I. as legendary as that of J. Edgar Hoover, thought he had known everything that it was possible to uncover about Terrilli. Warburger usually disdained any dictum by which Hoover had ruled the Bureau, but on this occasion he made an exception. Hoover had said that personal secrets were weaknesses. It was the hope that Hoover was right which had caused the early Sans Souci celebration.

It took six weeks to steer the Lady McLeod of Trinidad towards a dealer through whom they discovered Terrilli had bought in the past. Warburger only became really excited when Terrilli made the purchase, because he had ensured that the theft of such a rare stamp as the Lady McLeod had been widely publicised. Having confirmed the weakness, Warburger refused to hurry, recognising it as possibly the only chance he would get. The indictment had to be unbreakable, with Terrilli provably involved in a crime. And that meant the bait had to be spectacular.

It took a further two months for Warburger to determine upon the Romanov and Zarrins Collections. They were unusual enough and their disposal in America between 1926 and 1967 meant they were traceable by the Bureau.

Warburger was an expert in the internal government of Washington, which meant it would have been unthinkable of him to confine the operation only to Terrilli’s arrest. There had to be political side benefits and he employed himself in obtaining them while his agents traced the stamps to their scattered ownership. By the time Warburger had the location of nearly every item, he had a senator ambitious to be Attorney-General set up as a front man and therefore the protection of the F.B.I. guaranteed for several years.

It was a full twelve months from the Sans Souci hangover before Warburger was completely happy with the preparations.

‘There’s nothing I haven’t anticipated,’ he boasted to his deputy, Peter Bowler.

At that stage it would have been as difficult for him to predict the involvement of Charlie Muffin as it had been to learn of the Guajira killings.

Charlie Muffin, who was a realist and therefore aware of the social gulf between himself and Rupert Willoughby’s friends, was curious about the reason for his invitation. He still went to the party, of course; a man officially listed as a dead traitor by the Intelligence Services of both Britain and America and wishing to remain that way doesn’t get out much and Charlie liked company, even company which seemed to regard him oddly.

Realist again, Charlie accepted that it wasn’t their fault. It had always been the same, whenever he’d worn a black tie. He had hired the dinner jacket and everything that went with it, even the shoes, which pinched. He had expected the discomfort with his feet, because they usually hurt, but he had hoped for more success with the suit. Inside the jacket he had found a raffle ticket for the Henley regatta, with a telephone number on the back. Perhaps there would be some compensation in the reply when he called the number.

Very early in the party Charlie had discarded his champagne, because the bubbles gave him wind and he genuinely didn’t want to fart and reduce the chances of his being invited again. But he hadn’t realised the combined disadvantages of not having a glass in his hand and looking as he did in a hired outfit.

Since he had entered the two-floored apartment off Eaton Square, in which a smaller party of people had already eaten and at which a larger number of guests were now arriving for an after-dinner party, several people had half turned to him, as if expecting him to be carrying a tray of drinks. Once, rather than interrupt the conversation of an angular, flat-chested woman who had gestured at him. Charlie had taken her empty glass so that she could gesticulate at a frowning man whose photograph Charlie recognised from one of those blown-up displays outside the Young Vic.

Charlie became aware that Willoughby had witnessed the episode with the angular woman and he wandered towards the Lloyd’s underwriter, who was standing immediately before the lift from the first floor to receive people as they arrived.

‘Sorry about that,’ Willoughby apologised. He was much taller than Charlie and stooped, attempting to minimise his embarrassing height. It gave him an odd, hunched-back appearance.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Charlie. He looked to where the woman had begun another hand-moving story. ‘She’s wasting her time,’ he added. ‘That guy’s a poof.’

‘So I believe,’ said Willoughby. ‘Would you like another drink?’

Charlie shook his head. He was quite proud of how well he had conquered the booze habit. It had always been worse when he was bored: and he was very bored now. Sometimes he wondered if it were even necessary still to take precautions against detection. The doubt never lasted long. There was never a moment of his waking life when he could properly relax. His exposure of the incompetence of the British and American services had been too complete and the Soviet propaganda too embarrassing for him ever to believe himself safe.

‘Nice party,’ he said.

Willoughby smiled at the politeness. ‘Clarissa likes these sort of things,’ he said, his voice that of a man who knows he is criticised for allowing his wife’s indulgences but can’t stop permitting them.

As if on cue, the hostess of the party appeared through the crush of people, bright smile attached like a badge, head twisting from side to side in permanent greeting, and chirping cries of apparent delight and surprise at the people she saw. Frequently she stopped, offering her cheek to be kissed. She was not a particularly tall woman and her face was chiselled by perpetual diet. Her hair bubbled in a current style, which tended to accentuate the appearance of thinness and her dress, which Charlie assumed to come from the latest designer to be lionised by the society rich, was layered in tiers of brightly coloured chiffon, which bounced, feather-like, as she moved. She looked like a bird in search of a nest. A slim cuckoo, perhaps. No, more like a bird of paradise.

She greeted her husband as if he were standing alone and Charlie realised that like so many others, she believed him to be one of the extra staff brought in for the evening.

‘Millie says the Ambassador is coming. And that he’s trying to persuade the Princess, too.’

The scientist who perfected a cancer cure would probably have a matching note of triumph in his voice when he announced the discovery, decided Charlie. He wondered if Clarissa Willoughby would be a difficult person to like; he would try, for her husband’s sake.

‘Good,’ said the underwriter, unimpressed and showing it. He turned, making the woman aware of Charlie.

‘This is the person whom you particularly asked to meet,’ he said, in introduction.

Clarissa focussed upon him for the first time. She squinted, not frowned, when she was curious, Charlie saw.

‘Who…?’ she said doubtfully.

‘He helped us over the Hong Kong problem,’ enlarged the underwriter. ‘Helped’ seemed such an inadequate word, thought Willoughby. It was easy for him to understand why his father, when he had been head of the Intelligence Service, had regarded Charlie as the best operative he had ever had. Willoughby doubted if anyone else could have uncovered the liner insurance fraud which would have bankrupted his firm for?6,000,000. Clarissa had openly announced her intention to divorce him if it happened. Sometimes Willoughby wondered if he should have been as grateful to Charlie about that outcome as he was about everything else.