Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

Terrilli had not waited to see what would happen. He was on the telephone to the private house of the mayor of Palm Beach, shouting for protection and repeating what he had said earlier to the police control room about being under attack.

As he replaced the receiver, he heard the sound of the first siren and went back to the hallway. The gunfire that had shattered the windows and splintered the door had caused a great deal of damage, pockmarking the marble balustrades and puncturing several of the oil paintings which hung in the entrance. Falling debris had smashed some of the display cases, but Terrilli was still able to locate the case he had handled. Carefully he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away any trace of fingerprints. Satisfied, he crouched just five feet from the treasure he had coveted so much but now couldn’t even touch, He became aware of the handkerchief, still in his hand and put it gratefully to his face, blowing hard. He wasn’t surprised at the emotion.

The sirens were louder now and there were more of them. There was still sporadic shooting, but it no longer appeared to be directed towards the house. Terrilli allowed a lot hammering against the door before he moved to open it, adopting an air of bewilderment. He opened the door at last, just slightly, peering through the opening as would a properly frightened man. There were five police officers grouped on the step around the police chief. Beside them stood Terrilli’s lawyer.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ said Terrilli, managing just the right catch in his voice and opening the door wider, ‘I’ve been terrified.’

The police had summoned to the scene ambulances from every one of the seven hospitals serving Palm Beach. Pendlebury was carried to the ambulance from the Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, but by the time he got to it the emergency morphine supplies had been exhausted. The pain came, even through his unconsciousness, as the vehicle slowly manoeuvred its way along the car-littered private road. Pendlebury began to scream because the bullet had practically severed his left arm and gone on to penetrate his lung, and the attendant had to hold the writhing man down in his stretcher. Williamson, driving a circuitous route back towards the Breakers, heard the ambulance siren and slowed, allowing the vehicle right of way across Cocoanut Walk. By that time the attendant did not have to stay by Pendlebury’s side any more because the man was dead.

The police cars in the driveway of the Breakers alarmed Williamson at first, but then he remembered the robbery and that this would be the official reaction to it, and continued cautiously towards the entrance.

As he got out of the car, he identified the figure of Charlie Muffin, walking with his jacket folded and carried across his arm, and he felt a lessening of the tension bunched inside him. How soon would it be, he wondered, before he discovered what had happened to the Cubans?

The foyer was thronged with people. Near the exhibition, Charlie saw Cosgrove in the middle of a group of men. Some were uniformed and others were not; police, guessed Charlie.

He hesitated and in that moment Cosgrove saw him. He pushed through the men around him, hurrying across to Charlie. He appeared to have forgotten about Charlie’s exit from the control room.

‘What happened?’ he demanded urgently, his voice soft and his head forward so that there were only inches between them. ‘Did it all go okay… as we planned?’

Charlie remembered how he’d lost his last encounter with the man. Then he had a recollection of the unsuspecting F.B.I. agent getting out of the radio car in the private roadway and the fleeting second of shocked surprise as the Cuban had shot him, and then of the destroyed gatehouse, and he wondered for the first time how many men had died.

‘Terrific,’ he assured the senator. ‘Couldn’t have been better.’

Cosgrove smiled, looking past the waiting policemen. Charlie became aware for the first time of technicians assembling television lights and of cameramen.

Cosgrove hurried back towards the exhibition entrance, but before he got there called out, so that the journalists as well as the police would hear. ‘Excuse me… I’ve an announcement…’

The noise in the foyer subsided.

Cosgrove spoke directly to the reporters now.

‘There’ll be a statement almost immediately,’ he promised. ‘First I must discuss some developments with the detectives in charge of this case and then I’ll address you. Just a few minutes, please.’

Charlie pushed his way politely through towards the lift, suddenly feeling very tired. He was too old to spend nights running up and down ditches, he thought.

The idea came to him upon impulse when he got to his suite. For a moment he considered it, then picked up the telephone, dialled Clarissa’s number and asked for her extension.

It rang several times, and Charlie realised that it was past one o’clock and began regretting the call. Then the receiver was lifted at the other end.

‘Who is it?’ demanded a man’s voice.

There was the briefest of pauses from Charlie. ‘Wrong number,’ he said, putting down the telephone. Which it was, but he was never to know it.

Bowler had stationed his secretary in the corridor to learn when Warburger returned from his conference with the Attorney-General and had wondered at the hour it had taken for the summons to the Director’s office. As soon as he entered he guessed the reason. Warburger sat hunched behind his desk as if he were in physical pain and when he looked up at his deputy, the man’s face was colourless and ill-looking.

‘Nothing,’ he said, flatly.

‘There must be something!’ insisted Bowler.

Warburger shook his head. ‘Terrilli’s lawyers are claiming entrapment and the ruling is that they’re right. We’ve got nothing we could bring before a Grand Jury.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ said Bowler, bitterly.

‘Everything is in Terrilli’s favour,’ said the Director. ‘Cosgrove really ruined it with that god-damned press conference at the Breakers. If he’d kept his mouth shut until he’d known what was happening, we might have stood a chance. But that gave Terrilli the complete let-out. Then there was his own call to the police. And the mayor…’

‘What about Cosgrove?’

‘Terrilli is threatening to sue in a civil court.’

‘Could he win?’

‘Easily, if Terrilli wants to press the case. His only hope is that Terrilli will hold back because of awkward questioning.’

‘Think we’ve frightened the bastard?’

Warburger spread his hands in an unknowing gesture. ‘May have fouled him with the organisation for a while, but it won’t be permanent. He’s too good. He’ll be careful, obviously, but within a year everything will be back like it was before.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ said Bowler again. He hesitated at the question, then asked, ‘What about the C.I.A.?’

‘They won’t admit a damned thing,’ said Warburger. ‘But they screwed it: sure as hell they screwed it. At least they got the shit in their own laps.’

‘What were they doing, moving in on a thing like this? It was our operation… an internal thing, for God’s sake.’

Warburger laughed, a sneering sound. ‘Know what they say? They say it wasn’t them… that they know nothing about it and that they thought the Cubans had been killed in the Bay of Pigs invasion.’

‘Do they think we’re stupid?’

‘I don’t know what they’re trying to prove,’ said Warburger, ‘but if it’s a war they want, it’s all right with me. A lot has been leaked already, but I want every file detail that’s known about those Cubans released to the media. I want it to stink worse than a skunk on heat.’