Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

‘I don’t find it easy to beg,’ she said.

‘Then don’t.’

‘I don’t want to go away from here.’

‘I want you to.’

‘It’s normally I who dictate the end to these sort of things,’ she said.

‘I’m not discarding you,’ attempted Charlie. ‘I’m asking you to go down to Lyford Cay because it might be safer for you there than here.’

‘You’ll see me when we get back to London?’

‘As a friend,’ he qualified.

She laughed, trying to make it a sneering sound. ‘What’s the difference between screwing a man’s wife three thousand miles from home rather than two miles away?’

‘None, I suppose,’ admitted Charlie honestly. ‘It just seems different, somehow.’

‘I think you’re a bastard,’ she said.

To remind her that it had been she who initiated the seduction would qualify him for the description, Charlie decided.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’

She made as if to rise abruptly, but then relaxed against the table.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been a nuisance,’ she said.

‘You haven’t.’

‘An embarrassment, then.’

‘Nor that, either.’

‘Could there really be danger?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Quite easily.’

‘And you could get hurt?’

Charlie thought about the question. ‘I’ve usually managed to avoid it,’ he said.

‘But you could?’

‘I suppose so. That’s why I don’t want you to say anything of this to Sally. It mustn’t get back to Cosgrove.’

‘Please be careful,’ she said.

‘I’m always that,’ promised Charlie.

‘I’ve a car coming for me at eight,’ said Clarissa. Seeing Charlie’s expression, she said, ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to stay. And I could have always cancelled it.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘It’s only twelve thirty.’

‘Do you want lunch?’

‘No.’

‘Another drink?’

‘No. I want to say goodbye properly.’

He rose, to help her from her chair. She didn’t stand immediately, instead remaining where she was and gazing up at him.

‘It’s strange,’ she said. ‘If anyone had told me a month ago that this was going to happen, I’d have said they were mad.’

‘Novelty,’ repeated Charlie.

‘I wonder how long it will take to wear off,’ she said, rising at last.

Pendlebury regarded the arrival of Saxby and Boella as marginally more important than the Englishman’s apparent awareness of Terrilli. He immediately allocated more men to the two known criminals, ignoring Warburger’s fears about detection because he felt the situation justified the risk. When he learned about their checks on the lighting cables he nodded happily, confident that the operation was going exactly as he intended and that he was in complete control.

The initial surprise at the Englishman’s visit to Terrilli’s home did not last long. It meant he had identified the video picture, that’s all. It still needn’t alter the timing of the man’s death.

Pendlebury left his room and shambled to the elevator, head sunk against his chest in concentration. He’d delayed too long to confront the man about his suspicions of robbery,

Pendlebury decided. He would have to behave as if he attached no importance to what the woman had said.

He was still deep in thought when he emerged at ground level, so that the presence of one of his people near the desk momentarily startled him.

‘Any news of the insurance guy?’ he asked.

‘Spent three hours with the woman,’ said the agent. ‘She’s just left and he’s gone back to his rooms; probably needs the rest. Must be quite a performer.’

‘Yes,’ said Pendlebury, ‘I think he is.’

John Williamson planned his attempted entry into the exhibition chamber very carefully, knowing there were only five minutes before it closed. The security men were in a bunch, even those in plain clothes, so the Russian managed to take a photograph including almost all of them with the Minnox camera concealed in the hollowed out book he carried beneath his arm. He allowed himself to be stopped and smiled apologetically at his stupidity in expecting to view the stamps so late, glancing around and identifying the security cameras while he was talking to an attendant. There would be time enough later, he assured the man. He was staying for several days.

He was turning when the lift opened to his right and he saw the unkempt figure of another of the security men whom he’d identified from his observation of the exhibition earlier in the evening. From the deference paid, someone in authority, Williamson had judged.

As Charlie Muffin strolled casually across the lobby, Williamson managed three exposures on his camera, two full face and one profile. With luck, he thought, he might get the other man who had gone upstairs about thirty minutes earlier: another person in authority, the man had realised. And similarly scruffy. If he didn’t manage it that night, there was always the following day.

For the moment, Williamson considered the Cubans more important. He was impressed with them, and intended telling Moscow. Despite being provided with a complete description, it had taken him several hours to identify them all. He seated himself casually in one of the lobby chairs, less than fifteen feet from Manuel Ramirez, whom he knew to be the leader from the information he had been provided with in San Diego. The Cuban was a middle-aged, thickly built man, his hair already whitening at the temples. He appeared quite at ease in the luxury of an American hotel; had Williamson not been a trained observer, it would have been impossible to detect the attention that Ramirez was paying to the exhibition, even though it was now closed for the night. Williamson continued his gaze around the lobby. Ramirez had perfectly placed his people, ensuring that every possible entry was under observation. Because he had come only minutes earlier from the parking area, Williamson knew there were two more men outside covering the garden windows.

He looked back to Ramirez, feeling a brief moment of pity for the man who imagined the operation to be his passport back to America. Quickly he stifled the feeling, surprised at its appearance. It made unarguable sense to expose them, if the need arose, so that the C.I.A. would be embarrassed.

He rose, moving towards the restaurant. All he had done so far, he admitted to himself, was establish the procedures which were basic to the start of any operation. It was time he concentrated upon the purpose of his mission, isolating the man who knew General Kalenin.

The maitre d’hotel greeted him at the entrance to the dining room, searched for a single seat and then led him to within three tables of where Charlie Muffin was sitting, also alone.

Robert Chambine, who had two children at a $2, ooo-a-year school in Scarsdale, stood unobtrusively at the edge of the warehouse, intently watching the group go through their rehearsal and thinking of the end-of-term plays through which he and his wife always sat, proud of their daughters’ participation.

Chambine was surprised by his own analogy, because really there wasn’t very much similarity. These six weren’t play-acting and it showed. They had improved upon the equipment provided and, using the plans and measurements, had created a workable reconstruction of the exhibition room at the Breakers. Polystyrene blocks represented the walls, with gaps for windows and doors. Each camera and spotlight had been fixed to a photographic extension pole, set at precisely the height and position at which Bulz and Beldini would have to work.

The innovation which particularly impressed Chambine was the Polaroid cameras, of which he had not thought. They had bought four, and while Bulz and Beldini came in through the side door and went through their practice, covering first lights and then lenses, the other men positioned themselves by four of the cameras and took photographs as rapidly as they could. This fell far short of what the videotape would record, but it had enabled the two men who would be going first into the room to recognise and therefore guard against the points of maximum exposure.