Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

At the desk he enquired for messages, said he was checking out and sat waiting for his luggage to arrive. It came out of the service lift at the same time as his chauffeur entered, looking for him. Without speaking, Terrilli indicated the cases, walking out ahead to the waiting car.

It was rare to find anyone as efficient as Chambine, Terrilli decided. The man would make an excellent lieutenant: better than Santano, who was becoming over-ambitious. He nodded to himself, reaching the decision. He would allow a proper length of time, after the robbery, for Chambine to become fully acquainted with the operation and then have Santano put away.

‘Turn up the air conditioning,’ ordered Terrilli as the driver pulled out on to Collins Avenue. Walking to the Fountainbleau had made him sweat.

How long would it be until Chambine became ambitious? he asked himself. They all did, in the end. And had to be killed. Terrilli sighed. He had always considered it unfortunate, having to waste such talent. It was a pity a way could not be found to suppress their aspirations, as eunuciis were treated in order to become caretakers in harems.

‘Will we be stopping anywhere, Mr Terrilli?’ asked the driver.

‘No,’ said Terrilli. ‘Straight home.’

He had decided to spend the afternoon with his stamps. When the Romanov Collection arrived, he would have to get more display cases and racks installed.

Whatever the permutations, there could only be one conclusion, decided Charlie. With it came the sweep of nausea similar to that he had known eight years before in the Sussex churchyard in which Sir Archibald Willoughby was buried, when he had realised he had probably been recognised and was only a pistol shot from disaster.

Pendlebury had unquestionably lied about working in New York. Yet Heppert considered him genuine. The man had practically dated the photograph of his over-indulgent wife by talking of her two-month Weight Watchers membership. Pendk-bury couldn’t be a criminal because he could not possibly have inveigled himself into such a position of seniority within a security organisation in that time. So he had to be there by consent. To whom would Pinkerton consent to provide such a cover? A policeman, obviously. Yet the exhibition had opened in New York and was now in Florida. Not a local policeman, then, but Federal. Why would the F.B.I. want to attach a man to a stamp exhibition? And not just attach, Charlie corrected himself; put in over-all security control.

The solution fell into a neat, logical sequence. But Charlie still felt the need for confirmation. He reached out for the telephone, realising before attempting it that the test might not work.

Directory information gave him the Houston telephone number of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he dialled it himself so that there would be no operator record of the call.

Had the professionalism not been so deeply ingrained, Charlie might have made the mistake of enquiring for Pendlebury the moment the call was answered. But he didn’t, knowing that it would be at the switchboard that the man would be best protected against such an approach.

He asked instead for the station manager, refused to be deflected to an assistant, and when the man finally came on the line did not ask a question but stated a fact.

Jack Pendlebury had told him he would be out of town for a few weeks, Charlie said. But he had the information that Pendlebury had asked him to obtain and was anxious to know when he would be returning.

‘We’re not sure,’ said the F.B.I. manager. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘No,’ replied Charlie, putting down the telephone. The man already had more than he would ever know.

Pendlebury’s visit to Washington had been scheduled to finalise the plans for the back-up support with which he was to be provided in Palm Beach, but what had been discovered on the separate videotapes gave extra point to the interview with Warburger and Bowler. Every night, since the New York opening reception of the exhibition and now, in Florida, the duplicate tape had been flown to Washington for both visual examination by recognition experts and a scan from a computer programmed with the physiognomic characteristics of every known Mafia associate on the files. Because of the speed at which it could be operated, it had been the computer which twice registered Robert Chambine. Upon re-examination, the visual experts had confirmed the identification.

The three men sat hunched forward in the viewing room, watching the latest film of Chambine touring the exhibition in Palm Beach, occasionally slowing the film to establish better any idea which occurred to them. Then they sat through the first film, as if it were important they recognised Chambine there as well.

It was Warburger who put up the room lights, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the one in front.

‘Right again,’ he said. There was a self-satisfaction in his voice.

‘We’ve run the tapes through until they’re almost frayed at the edges,’ said Bowler. ‘Chambine is the only face that so far has any connection. Surely it’s not going to be a one-man operation?’

‘Couldn’t be,’ said Pendlebury immediately. ‘The stamps aren’t heavy, certainly. But they are difficult to handle. One man couldn’t do it. It would take too long.’

‘Maybe he’s a spotter,’ assessed Bowler.

‘Or the man whom Terrilli has entrusted with organising the job,’ suggested Warburger.

The Deputy Director went back to the file. ‘Only a soldier,’ he read aloud.

‘Ambitious, you said,’ Pendlebury reminded him. ‘What about surveillance?’

‘Initially we’ve moved in a twelve-strong team, three women included. No one is to maintain observation on two consecutive days. We’ll change the whole shift before the weekend.’

Pendlebury nodded. ‘Any contact with Terrilli?’

‘Not that we’ve picked up so far.’

‘Telephone monitor?’

‘It’ll be in place by tonight. Then he’ll be sewn up tighter than a Thanksgiving Day turkey.’

‘Chambine has got to be the man,’ said Pendlebury, more to himself than the other men in the room. ‘It doesn’t check out any other way.’

‘It’s better than I ever expected,’ confessed Warburger.

‘What’s known?’ asked Pendlebury, who had not had the advantage of previously seeing either film.

‘Robert Chambine,’ recited Bowler, from the file before him, ‘soldier attached to the New York family, minor conviction for loan sharking, suspicion of homicidal assault in 1975, released through lack of evidence, happily married with two children, no known connection with Giuseppe Terrilli or any of the Florida people. Thought to be ambitious, as I said earlier.’

‘And not a stamp collector,’ said Pendlebury quietly.

‘We played back every video taken at the Waldorf Astoria,’ said Bowler. ‘We’ve only the sighting of him the night before the exhibition ended.’

‘Do I control the surveillance team on Chambine?’ asked Pendlebury.

Warburger nodded. ‘Pointless our trying to do it from here. It would lead to confusion. We’re assigning a total of fifty people, just for him alone. That enables you to shift-change every two days.’

‘What’s the rest?’ asked the dishevelled man.

Warburger stood up, went to a desk in the screening room and took up a clipboard.

‘Besides the people covering Chambine, we’re allocating you another one hundred men. In addition, there’ll be a communications section, answerable to you, plus three helicopters which we’re placing at Miami rather than at Palm Beach. Terrilli’s air division is installed there and he might have some intelligence set-up which could get suspicious of the sudden arrival of three helicopters, even though the company owning them has no traceable association with us.’