Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

Charlie regarded each of these incidents as personal. But there was something more; worse to him, in his bizarre idiosyncrasy, than the attempt at physical harm. Each time there had been people treating him as a fool. Perhaps only Edith had come near to guessing the cause of that; the resentment of someone whose apparently widowed mother had charred and sometimes offered the men of the household additional services to earn the extra money to keep her son at the grammar school. He had never been able to lose his conviction that the university graduates who were his constant companions were unable to regard him as an equal.

Sir Archibald had come near, too. ‘ You’re so good because each time you’ve proving yourself,’ the old man had said.

But he hadn’t proved himself this time, reflected Charlie, entering the lift and pressing the button for the first floor.

‘Prick,’ Charlie accused himself, as the lift descended. ‘Made to look a thorough prick.’

The first positive idea had come as Charlie had emerged on the first floor, turned immediately left and gone down the last storey by the fire stairs, which had an exit to the back as well as the front of the hotel. He had learned enough from the importance attached to timing in the control room to utilise it to his advantage. In one of the passages leading past the Alcazar lounge towards the beach, he’d checked his watch. Twelve-eighteen. Quite obviously, to avoid any confrontation with the security guards, the operation had to be completed within the next twelve minutes: probably within five, to enable them to get clear of the hotel before the theft was detected.

Five minutes, then, before his disappearance was discovered. What would be Pendlebury’s reaction? Radio first. Instructions to seize and maybe even eliminate; there might be just enough time to plant a body, to obtain the second, more serious indictment.

What next? Pendlebury was a professional and the professional response would be to attempt immediately to assess the damage Charlie could cause and then move to prevent it interfering with what still had to be done when the collection was delivered to Terrilli’s house.

Charlie smiled, coming out near the oddly darkened pool area and turning back around the hotel. He was moving north towards the private highway leading out on to the South County Road.

Had the situation been reversed, Charlie knew he would guess that Pendlebury had made for Terrilli’s house. It was the only natural, logical conclusion to make: and Pendlebury was a natural, logical person.

Charlie took a short cut across the lawn, gained the harder surface of the private road and sprinted down towards the better lighting of the public thoroughfare. He arrived at the junction panting, checking the time again. Twelve-twenty-two. His chest hurt, but he forced himself to hurry, wanting the telephone kiosk near the junction with Cocoanut Walk. Breath was groaning from him when he reached it and he leaned out, grabbing at it and trying to recover. Twelve-twenty-five.

He wedged himself into the box, aware for the first time of the perspiration running across his back and chest and even down the inside of his legs.

He started up at movement from the Breakers’ drive. A Ford station waggon with four men in it came out carefully. The driver checked for traffic in both directions and then turned left. Immediately behind was a second vehicle, a Chrysler compact, with three occupants. That too stopped for any cars on South County Road before turning left and putting on a spurt to get into convoy.

His breath easier now, Charlie stood waiting, hand outstretched towards the telephone, his eyes not moving from the driveway.

‘Come on, you bastard,’ he said, in quiet impatience. The sweat felt wet and uncomfortable. He shivered despite the warmth of the Florida night.

The first F.B.I. car came out at twelve-twenty-seven. It was a Dodge Colt. Behind it came a Plymouth, low against the ground because of the equipment Charlie guessed it carried. A thick-bodied radio antenna waved from the roof and there were two more aerials mounted at the rear. A white Plymouth Fury was the third car. It was quite easy to see Pendlebury in the passenger seat.

Charlie had dialled police emergency before the lead car had come on to the highway. The police receptionist replied in a measured calm voice.

‘There’s a robbery, at the house of Giuseppe Terrilli,’ said Charlie, speaking carefully but refusing to give any identi fication.

Charlie replaced the telephone before Pendlebury’s car cleared the driveway. He remained in the booth, watching it turn towards Terrilli’s castle. He seemed to have failed to get any response from an anonymous telephone call to the Russians and wondered if he would have better luck with a warning involving one of Palm Beach’s most respected residents.

As the tail-light of the F.B.I. squad turned towards Bethesda, Charlie saw the taxi flag and waved.

Four Cubans deputed as Charlie’s protectors had been positioned in the foyer of the Breakers in the belief that it would be around there that any violence would occur, but one had been positioned on the corridor of Pendlebury’s second room, and so Charlie had been identified as soon as he had emerged. Charlie’s disembarkation on the first floor, to walk down the last stairway, had caused a few seconds of confusion, but it had enabled the tail to alert Ramirez and through him Williamson. They had located Charlie again by the time he had reached the private road. Three stayed with him, while Ramirez returned to the Breakers for transport. Williamson took a second car and was actually driving slowly southwards, along South County Road when he recognised the surveillance team in Ramirez’s parked vehicle. Then he saw Charlie get into the taxi and move off ahead of him. Williamson slowed further, letting Ramirez interpose himself between him and the taxi, checking the timing from the dashboard clock.

It was twelve-thirty.

At precisely that moment, Tony Santano turned his 350SL Mercedes off Ocean Boulevard into the private roadway leading to Terrilli’s mansion. Ahead of him, unseen, waited fourteen Russian-trained Cuban guerrillas. One minute behind and only four hundred yards away came Robert Chambine, in the station waggon, with Saxby following in the Chrysler. Pendlebury, prevented from following too closely by the radio reports being constantly fed into his vehicle, estimated that he was at least three minutes behind the Chrysler.

Pendlebury had evolved a codeword which would activate the one hundred agents he had grouped within five miles of Terrilli’s castle, pleased with the ambiguity of it. Everyone would move when he opened his radio channel and said ‘Stamp’.

At twelve-thirty-one, Chambine went by the last of the F.B.I. monitoring spots, placed one hundred yards away from the entrance to the private road to avoid detection. Pendlebury, who had been riding with his finger on the transmission button, depressed it and said, in a consciously controlled voice, ‘Stamp. I repeat, Stamp.’

He turned the radio off, turned to Gilbert beside him and added, ‘And I hope to Christ I find that Englishman, to stamp him, too.’

A mile away, twenty-five Palm Beach policeman were activated in eight cars, with two back-up vehicles, to investigate an anonymous allegation of robbery at the home of one of their leading citizens. For Palm Beach, where there is rarely violent crime, it constituted a major response, reflecting the importance of Giuseppe Terrilli.

It was twelve-thirty-two and fifty seconds.

Tony Santano had not intended to be so late returning. He had properly anticipated Terrilli’s response to the marijuana seizures. He recognised, too, that it gave him the opportunity to come back, a loyal lieutenant apparently doing everything to ensure that there were no further mistakes with the security and this private business. It enabled him in fact to report the names of the men involved to those who were also going to censure Terrilli.