Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

13

Charlie Muffin stood at the window of his suite, staring out unseeingly over the Atlantic, assembling in his mind the facts he already had and trying to decide what further action to take.

An anti-crime politician was fronting a?3,000,000 exhibition which, after a cosmetic display in New York, had been moved to the unlikely venue of Palm Beach. Less than three hundred yards away lived a man with previously established links with organised crime. Giuseppe Terrilli’s hobby was stamp collecting. And Jack Pendlebury was an F.B.I. operative infiltrated – obviously knowingly – into control of security.

‘A set-up,’ judged Charlie, in conversation with himself. So what could he do? Certainly more than he was attempting with Clarissa Willoughby. At best that could only prompt some ill-considered response from Pendlebury, which would do little more than confirm what he’d already established. What then? There could be no open confrontation. That might lead to a personal investigation which would disclose that he had not always been an insurance company official but was, in fact, a former Intelligence officer supposed to be dead.

Let it happen?

That was the logical way – the only way – to avoid any personal risk. Just let it happen and trust that whatever the F.B.I. hoped to achieve would result, eventually, in the recovery of the stamps. He sighed, shaking his head and turning away from the ocean view.

Until Sir Archibald Willoughby had been replaced by former soldiers who had introduced into the service ex-public-school limp-wrists, Charlie Muffin had established himself as the premier operative within the Department. Even under someone as independent and innovative as Sir Archibald, however, there had still been a degree of bureaucracy with which they had had to conform, and part of it had been the yearly psychological examinations for continued suitability. And because he had afterwards always burgled the filing cabinets of the personnel officer to find out what his assessment had been, Charlie knew that every time there had been a report upon his peculiar inability to turn away from a challenge.

‘Tenacity syndrome’ was one of the more pompous attempts to describe it, and had taken his fancy. Vindictiveness had been another judgment, which Charlie had thought unnecessarily critical. He didn’t regard it either as tenacity or vindictiveness. He had just always resented anything that made him look a prick. And that was what would be happening now, if he didn’t interfere. Pendlebury and whoever else was involved would be pissing themselves with laughter, imagining they were financially protected if anything went wrong. And Charlie had been part of sufficient ‘foolproof schemes to know how easily they got cocked up and ended in disaster.

And for the syndicate of which Willoughby was the head to be responsible for a?3,000,000 settlement would be a disaster.

‘What’s the answer, Charlie?’ he demanded of himself.

It came with the suddenness and clarity of all good ideas, and Charlie sniggered at the perfect simplicity of it. What was it he’d said that day in Willoughby’s office? ‘Never underestimate the Russian national pride.’ So he wouldn’t. Who better to safeguard what had once been Russian than the Russians themselves?

Unwilling for there to be any connection between the call he was planning and the hotel, which could lead to his discovery, Charlie went to the lobby and changed ten dollars into coin at the cashier’s desk and then drove across Lake Worth to the mainland, travelling without any intended direction. Merely because he saw a signpost to Riviera Beach, he turned northwards, slowing when he entered the township and managing to park within twenty yards of a drugstore. He ensured that the booth door was tightly closed behind him when he entered the telephone kiosk and obtained the Washington number of the Russian Embassy from the information service within minutes. As he was about to make the call he hesitated, stopped by another thought. He would have to use the name, he decided. Otherwise there was a risk of the warning being ignored as a crank call.

The connection with Washington was immediate. The switchboard operator was a woman, but her intonation was mannish.

‘The Second Secretary,’ demanded Charlie. ‘I’m calling on behalf of Comrade General Valery Kalenin.’

He put a curtness into his voice, a challenge against any argument.

There was a lull of uncertainty on the line.

‘Put me through to the Second Secretary,’ repeated Charlie.

The line went blank and then another voice, obviously a man’s this time, said, ‘Who is this?’

Ignoring the question, Charlie said, ‘An attempt is to be made to steal the Romanov Collection, currently on display in Palm Beach, in Florida.’

‘Who is this?’ demanded the voice again.

‘Ensure that the information reaches Comrade General Valery Kalenin,’ said Charlie, and replaced the receiver.

He returned to the car, going back south along the coast road. It had been seven years, he reflected. Nearly eight, in fact. Would Kalenin still be the operational head of the K.G.B.? Charlie had liked the squat, burly Russian during their meetings in Vienna and Prague, when he had determined upon the retribution against those who had tried to have him killed. Then Kalenin had agreed that the only bait big enough to lure the British and American Directors to Vienna would be for the head of the Russian service to appear to be a defector.

‘You’ll regret doing it, afterwards,’ Kalenin had warned him, when there had still been time for the whole thing to be called off.

‘They were willing to let me die,’ Charlie had argued. ‘I shan’t be sorry.’

But he had been wrong, he admitted to himself, turning the hire car back across the bridge towards Palm Beach. There had rarely been a day when he and Edith had been on the run when he hadn’t remembered what the K.G.B. chief had said. And after Edith had died, during the time when the British and the Americans had come so close to catching him, that regret had changed to abject remorse. If it hadn’t been for Willoughby, Charlie sometimes wondered if it would not have eventually become suicidal.

Reminded of Willoughby’s friendship, Charlie thought again of what he had asked Clarissa to do. By the time anything happened, she would be miles away, at Lyford Cay, he decided. That offered a little reassurance: no matter what the justification, it was no way to repay Willoughby’s help. He continued the reflection, snorting at his own hypocrisy. If he were completely honest, he would admit to being a willing bed partner, too.

‘You’re a shit, Charlie,’ he told himself as he parked the car outside the hotel. ‘A proper shit.’

He heard movement through the open, linking door of their suites as soon as he entered his own rooms. At the sound of his door closing, she came through, smiling at him. She had been swimming. Her wet hair was coiled back with a band and she still wore the bathing wrap in which she had come from the pool. Without make-up she looked very young.

‘Wonderful news,’ she said eagerly.

‘What?’

‘I met that man Pendlebury. He was in the bar by the pool and spoke to me. We chatted and then he asked me where you were and I said working because you were worried and when he asked why I said because you thought there might be an attempt on the collection… isn’t that fabulous?’

Her words tumbled out in her excitement, which gradually diminished at the look on his face.

‘What is it, darling?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ said Charlie. ‘I was just reminded of something that had occurred to me coming back in the car.’

She came further into the room, putting out her arms to hold his. ‘That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I wanted.’

‘You don’t sound pleased.’

Knowing her need for reassurance, he pulled her close and kissed her forehead.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I’m very pleased.’

She clung to him and Charlie stood, staring out over her head to the view at which he had been looking when the idea about the Russians had come to him three hours earlier.

Survival – his own, personal, unhindered safety – had always been the motivating force in Charlie’s life. He had conceded that, to himself, very early in his operational career and then defended it, later, when others had recognised the trait and criticised the lengths he was prepared to go for it. There had, of course, been the proper awareness and a proper regret that people sometimes had to suffer, but Charlie had rarely been troubled by any lasting conscience, perhaps because usually people he was exploiting were in the same profession and would not have been concerned at doing the same to him.

But suddenly it wasn’t easy any more. He pulled Clarissa away from him, kissing her lightly on the forehead again. He didn’t think he was going very much to enjoy living with the sort of conscience he had now.

Jack Pendlebury sat unmoving in a chair in his sitting room, two floors below Charlie Muffin, considering what the woman had told him. He decided that Clarissa Willoughby was stupid. And that therefore the information had been volunteered unwittingly.

He was connected to Warburger within minutes and as soon as he told the Director the reason for the call, War-burger brought Bowler on the line in a conference call.

‘Kill him,’ said Warburger immediately.

‘But at the proper time,’ argued Pendlebury, content with the idea that had come to him.

‘That’s now,’ insisted Bowler.

‘No,’ said Pendlebury. ‘My way we get an indictment for murder against Terrilli.’