Brian Freemantle: Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

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.

‘You’re that fascinating man!’ exclaimed the woman.

‘I represented the company in Hong Kong,’ said Charlie, modestly. Clarissa Willoughby was someone who constantly talked in italics. She probably shouted at foreign airport porters who didn’t speak English too.

‘And were brilliant!’

‘Lucky,’ qualified Charlie.

‘I always think people make their own luck,’ said Clarissa.

Italics and cliches, thought Charlie.

‘There were some people who weren’t quite so lucky,’ he said. A whore named Jenny, Charlie recalled. And an Englishman ostracised because he had loved her. Their graves would be overgrown, he guessed. The neglect would offend the Chinese, who attached great importance to their ancestors and to whom cemeteries were places to visit on holidays, like picnic parks. It could easily have been him in that cemetery overlooking the New Territories and the Chinese mainland. He had allowed Willoughby to invoke the loyalty and respect he had felt for the man’s father and had come nearer than at any time in five years to discovery by the C.I.A.

Charlie became aware of Clarissa’s examination and thought how strange it was that people usually did that, as if in search of something they couldn’t understand. Instinctively he started pulling in his stomach and then stopped, annoyed at himself. Bollocks, he thought, relaxing so that the hired suit bulged again. Why should he try to impress her?

‘You’re very different from what I expected,’ she said.

‘Shakespeare probably stuttered,’ said Charlie.

‘What?’ she said, frowning.

‘And disappointed people who expected brilliant conversation,’ said Charlie, laboriously. She would be a difficult woman to live with.

‘I didn’t say I was disappointed,’ she said, coquettishly.

The lift arrived with more guests and she jerked towards it. The ambassador and the princess? Charlie wondered.

‘We must meet again, when there are fewer people. Dinner perhaps,’ she invited, hurrying away.

‘That would be nice,’ said Charlie, aware that she hadn’t heard. She probably hadn’t intended the invitation, either.

Willoughby did not go with her.

‘I’d like us to meet soon, Charlie,’ he said, taking up his wife’s remark.

‘Why?’ asked Charlie. So there was a reason for the invitation, he thought, unoffended.

‘What do you know about stamps?’

‘Nothing,’ said Charlie.

‘We’ve been approached for a rather unusual cover,’ said Willoughby. He looked after the disappearing figure of his wife.

‘Politician in Washington; his wife is a friend of Clarissa’s, actually. They want cover for an exhibition. Value is put at ?3,000,000.’

‘That’s a lot of stamps.’

‘It is, as a matter of fact. Unique, too. Nearly the entire collection of Tsar Nicholas II. There are gaps, filled in by part of a second collection created by someone else attached to the court.’

Charlie turned so that he was directly facing Willoughby. There was a look of pained rebuke about his expression.

‘I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to become associated with anything connected with the Soviet Union, do you?’ he demanded.

Willoughby had anticipated the reaction. The inept army generals who had chosen Charlie for sacrifice during a Berlin border crossing had been those who had replaced his father in the Department and had led to the old man’s suicide. So he had wanted revenge as much as Charlie. To anyone else, setting the department heads of M.I. 6 and the C.I.A. for humiliating Soviet arrest and then even more humiliating exchange for an imprisoned Russian spymaster could only be construed as traitorous. Charlie had been lucky to escape the combined pursuit of both agencies. No, not lucky. Clever. It had cost him a lot, thought. The assassination of his wife. And the permanent uncertainty of being discovered. Willoughby looked at the other man, pityingly. Charlie Muffin might have survived, upon his own terms, but he’d created a miserable life for himself.

‘Surely there wouldn’t be any harm in discussing it?’ said the underwriter hopefully.

‘Or purpose,’ said Charlie. It was a conversation very similar to this which had sent him to Hong Kong.

‘A discussion might help me decide what to do.’

‘Haven’t you offered cover yet?’

‘Yes,’ said Willoughby, nodding. ‘It’s the protection I’m concerned about.’

‘We can talk about it,’ agreed Charlie, his voice indicating that that was all he was prepared to do.

‘How about tomorrow?’

Charlie frowned at Willoughby’s insistence. ‘All right,’ he said. It would be a way of filling another day. Since Edith’s death he had been very lonely.

‘I’ll remind Clarissa about that dinner invitation, too,’ said the underwriter.

‘Fine,’ replied Charlie. He wondered how he would enjoy a concentrated period in the woman’s company.

‘Tomorrow then?’ pressed Willoughby, as if he doubted Charlie’s agreement.

‘Eleven,’ said Charlie. ‘But it’s only to talk. I don’t want to become involved.’

‘I understand,’ said Willoughby.

He didn’t, Charlie decided. He left the party as early as he considered polite. Clarissa Willoughby was at her station by the lift, unconscious of everything except the hoped-for arrival of guests she considered important. From her reaction to his farewell, Charlie guessed she had forgotten him already.

There were taxis going to and from Chelsea and Victoria, but Charlie walked, despite his pinching shoes, more confident of that way identifying any surveillance.

It took him over an hour to reach his flat in Vauxhall. He had searched a year to find it, a high-rise block that loomed permanently black beside the Thames because it was on the windward side of Battersea Power Station and got all the smuts, regardless of what everyone expected from the Clean Air Act. It was the sort of building frequently criticised as socially wrong at inquests upon the people who threw themselves from the top, depressed by anonymity and loneliness. It was precisely because of its anonymity and the fact that nobody was interested in him that Charlie had taken the flat. It was a series of boxes within boxes, a sitting room with a dining annexe, just one bedroom, a bathroom and a toilet. The window to the fire escape was always ajar, winter or summer, for a quick exit.