Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

27

Williamson had known it would happen, but because it was an unacceptable decision, he had refused to consider it. Then he came within fifty yards of the approach road to Terrilli’s home, where he could ignore it no longer, and finally recognised that he would not carry out his instructions fully because to do so might mean capture and repatriation to Russia.

He slowed and then halted completely, aware of the proximity of the turning and correctly assuming that Charlie would approach the house on foot. Williamson surmised that the man must have paid while the taxi was still travelling because the moment it stopped, Charlie left the car and went straight down the darkened private roadway.

Ramirez had also stopped his car, sufficiently far away for Charlie to be unaware of it. Williamson nodded with satisfaction as the five Cubans entrusted with Charlie’s safety left their vehicles and went after him. Williamson knew the thoroughness of their training and was confident that Charlie would not detect them. What about his own training? It was far better and far more extensive than that of the five who had that moment set off unquestioningly to do what they had been ordered. He should have been at the turning now, using the shadows as expertly as they, because his was the ultimate responsibility for keeping the man alive.

Instead, he reached out and started his car, realising that to remain in the vicinity risked the very involvement he wanted to avoid. He continued south down Ocean Boulevard, around the curve and then along the section that runs parallel with the sea. After about twenty yards, the houses to the left stopped and he was looking beyond the palms to the open sea. It was a completely clear night, the moon silvering the gently lifting water. There were a few cars at the metred spaces, but Williamson easily found a place in which to put his vehicle. He stopped again, suddenly aware that he was perspiring and knowing, because psychology had formed part of his training, that it was because of his uncertainty rather than the heat of the night.

At the moment when he turned off the ignition, there was the thump of an explosion and he twisted around in time to see the sudden glare from the direction of Terrilli’s estate.

Pendlebury’s tiny convoy had driven cautiously down the private road, stopping at the scene of the two crashed cars. Pendlebury’s driver still hadn’t turned off the engine when the explosion came. The Cuban commandos, who were expecting it, were flattened and quite hidden, sixty yards away, but the small F.B.I. group was completely exposed. The Dodge Colt was still leading and caught the full impact of the blast. All the glass in the car shattered inwards, blinding the driver and severing the carotid artery of the man sitting beside him. No one realised at the time and so he bled to death before help could be obtained. What was later to be judged the most serious effect of the blast was the damage to the radio car. The roof-mounted antenna was shifted from its mountings, giving from that moment only an intermittent signal, and the transistorised valves in the two back-up sets were both broken. The windscreen was shattered in Pendlebury’s Plymouth Fury, but the only injury he suffered was a cut thumb, of which he was not even aware.

The F.B.I. men were all stunned and sat unmoving for several moments. In Pendlebury’s car, Gilbert was vaguely aware of movement some way off, in the area still dusty from the explosion, but his eyes would not focus. He was too confused to associate it at that time with any danger.

‘What in the name of Christ…’ said Pendlebury. His voice croaked and he became aware from the cotton-wool numbness in his ears that he could not hear his own voice.

‘Did you authorise any explosives?’ demanded Gilbert, recovering first. When Pendlebury did not reply, Gilbert shouted the question again.

‘Just grenades. And Mace, of course,’ said Pendlebury. His ears were clearing.

‘That wasn’t a grenade,’ said Gilbert. ‘What the hell’s happening

…’

‘I wish I knew.’

Pendlebury left the car with difficulty, his body aching as if he had undergone some strenuous exercise. The radio control man was sitting with the door open and his head in his hands, and when he looked up at Pendlebury’s approach, Pendlebury saw that he was bleeding from the nose and eyes.

He gestured the man from the vehicle, reaching inside to seize the microphone to warn the approaching agents. It wasn’t until he had finished the message and demanded acknowledgment, receiving instead a lot of static whine broken by the odd, unintelligible word, that he realised he had no radio contact with the one hundred men converging on the mansion.

‘Fuck,’ he said bitterly, slamming the microphone against the seat. It bounced and fell on to the floor.

Pendlebury looked up as Gilbert ran from the crashed Chrysler. ‘Saxby, Boella and someone I think is Beldini, but I can’t be sure because the bullets caught him in the face,’ he said.

‘Terrilli’s people had been told to let them in,’ Pendlebury said.

‘Who then?’ asked Gilbert.

Pendlebury shook his head, an almost weary gesture. ‘Who’s in the Mercedes?’

‘Impossible to say.’

Pendlebury straightened, trying to clear the ache that had started around his neck and shoulders. He looked around. The man in the Dodge was moaning, hand to his sightless eyes and the passenger unconscious. There were two men in the radio car who appeared unhurt and another from the car he and Gilbert had occupied. He gestured one of the radio men back into the Plymouth.

‘Find a hand-set that works,’ he ordered. ‘Stay here and keep broadcasting. I don’t know what’s going on, so I don’t want anyone taking chances. Understood?’

The man nodded, turning back to the vehicle.

‘We’ve only got handguns,’ Gilbert warned him.

‘They’ll have to do until the back-up arrives,’ said Pendlebury. The pain was going and he had almost completely recovered from the shock of the explosion. The operation had gone wrong, he decided. He didn’t know how, but the whole thing had gone disastrously wrong. It didn’t matter whether the Englishman had caused it or not. Pendlebury was more determined than ever to have him killed.

‘Let’s go,’ said Pendlebury. ‘Stay in a group. Anything else is hostile.’

Hesitantly they moved off towards the entrance to Terrilli’s house.

‘Must have been a bomb,’ judged Gilbert as they climbed over the gate which had been blown to form a ramp over the masonry and brickwork.

Charlie Muffin’s assessment had been the same, when the blast had reached him. The bend in the road had saved him almost completely from any effect, but there had still been sufficient shock waves to knock him over. He landed awkwardly, thrown against the root of a palm tree, so that he was winded. He rolled over, arms hugging his body, and as he pulled himself up, with a grimace, he thought he detected movement from the direction in which he had been walking. He drew back against the palm tree with which he had collided, sure of its cover. Twenty yards away the Cubans, three of whom had been knocked over, tried to reassemble, using less caution than before so that Charlie was able to confirm his first impression. Charlie stared around him. He was against the edge of a ditch, dry and hard underfoot. He crouched below the level of the road and scurried forward, one hand still against his bruised ribs, the other steadying himself against the ditch wall.

Two crashed cars stopped him, a Mercedes blocking his path. He started to drag himself upwards when he became aware, about five yards back along the road, of the vehicles that had formed Pendlebury’s convoy. He halted, using the cars for concealment. Two men in the Dodge appeared to be injured, and there was movement from the Plymouth, but he couldn’t judge how many occupants it had.

As he watched, the Cubans came around the bend, jerking to a halt at the roadblock. The man with the hand-set saw them and jumped from the Plymouth, waving.

‘Careful, you guys,’ he warned.

Ramirez had been leading. He hesitated, recognised instantly the other man’s mistake and continued walking, gesturing at the melee of cars and shouting as he approached, ‘What happened?’

Ramirez reached the operator when he was about to reply, but before the man could speak the Cuban shot him, once, in the head. The operator was hurled back into the Plymouth by the impact. Two of Ramirez’s group had gone to the Dodge. Both men in it were unconscious now, so the Cubans left them.

Charlie slid down, flattening himself and squeezing beneath the Mercedes. Once past the wheel, there was quite a lot of space at the bottom of the ditch. Something was driping on him, he realised. He hoped it wasn’t petrol. After a few seconds, he had a limited vision of feet and legs, as the Cubans stared inside the car.

‘All dead,’ Charlie heard one of them call.

‘We’ve lost him,’ said another. Charlie recognised the voice as that of the man who had shot the radio operator. Terrilli’s men, he decided.

Distantly, but identifiably from the direction of Terrilli’s house, came the sound of gunshots.

‘We’d better get in there,’ said the same man.

Charlie crouched where he was, listening to the sound of their footsteps and beyond that, more frequently now, the isolated cough of a shot; rifles, he thought.

He had become aware that there was more room between the wheel and the ditch bottom on the other side, but he still left the same way so that the Mercedes was between him and the group. He peered cautiously between the up-ended wheels. A lot of the lighting was still in operation, despite the devastation around the gate area. The electrified fence had been broken, but there was a secondary source of power, so that occasional strands sparked when the gentle breeze drove them against a contact. The explosion had settled now and Charlie could see just how much had been destroyed. Not only had the support pillar and the gate been flattened, but also a gatehouse and about ten yards of wall.

‘Christ,’ said Charlie softly. The Russians must have responded after all.

Satisfied that for the moment he was quite alone, Charlie climbed from the ditch, feeling his clothing and then putting his hand in front of one of the headlights: oil, he saw. The suit was only three years old, too.

He looked again at the destruction of the wall and the cars and their bloodied occupants. Very distantly he thought he heard the sound of police sirens and the noise hardened his decision.

He paused for the briefest moment and then started to jog towards the exit on to Ocean Boulevard.

‘Bugger a few poxy stamps,’ he said to himself. It was survival time again.

He was alert, and the sweep of lights warned him well in advance of the first of the F.B.I. cars turning into the road. Charlie leaped to his right, confident of the ditch and its concealment. He waited until the first car was past, then carried on more slowly as the cavalcade went by in the opposite direction. The road junction created a difficulty because he could not just appear in front of the headlights. However, the very congestion gave him the escape. As the cars jammed, blocked by the obstruction of the upturned Mercedes, people began leaving their vehicles, to continue on foot, and in the confusion Charlie rose unnoticed from the gully.

He was on Ocean Boulevard, moving towards the turning into Flagler Drive, when the first of the police cars swept around the corner, siren wailing, roof cones flashing red and blue. Charlie walked unhurriedly, keeping close to the hedges and shrubbery, tensed against a challenge that never came.

Terrilli’s telephone call for help had been radioed to all the converging units and the police chief alerted. The police operation was excellently co-ordinated, four cars sweeping through and then two others swinging across the highway either side of the sliproad, creating a road block which effectively prevented more than half of Pendlebury’s force ever reaching their objective.

The police were bewildered by the number of people involved in the attack on Terrilli’s house. The two officers in the first car snatched their riot pump guns from the rack between the two front seats and the driver, a nervous youth of twenty-two responding to his first major call, loosed off a burst scarcely above the heads of the scrambling F.B.I. men. The following police cars did not recognise the shots as coming from one of their own men. Having been told by their despatch officer to respond with force, they crouched mob-control fashion behind the protection of their vehicles and began shooting into the milling shapes they could see in their headlights.

In that first flurry of shots, five F.B.I. officers were killed and eight wounded, two with injuries from which they later died. When there was no answering fire, the two lead police cars flooded the entrance with their manoeuvrable spotlights, using their foghorns to tell everyone to place their hands against the roofs of the cars.

Thirty men did as they were told, which meant that less than forty managed to get by the blocked cars and follow Pendlebury and the other three agents into Terrilli’s property.

Pendlebury was moving around the edge of the lawn that fronted Terrilli’s mansion, knowing it was the long way round but guessing he would need the cover of the border hedges. The floodlights brilliantly illuminated the area immediately in front of the mansion and the moon was so bright that it would have been like crossing the remainder in broad daylight had he tried to go straight across.

The years of indulgence slowed him, as well as his customary reluctance when faced with gunfire. The two operatives from the radio car were leading, Pendlebury next in line and then Gilbert.

The Cubans had left two men as a rearguard, expecting the explosion to bring the authorities, who would have to be slowed while they made their escape along the beach, a decision they had reached in the ditch, seconds before blowing the gate. So close were Pendlebury’s group and so powerful the bullet from the Armalite rifle that the first shot actually killed both the lead man and the one behind him. Pendlebury whimpered his fear as he plunged to the ground. He hoped Gilbert would think the sound was the breath being knocked from him.

‘You all right?’ whispered Gilbert.

Pendlebury grunted, to maintain the impression of being breathless.

‘Can’t see him,’ complained Gilbert, crawling up alongside.

Nearer the house there broke out a sudden snatch of firing and from where they lay they could hear the sound of breaking glass.

‘Bloody war up there,’ said Pendlebury.

‘But who?’ repeated Gilbert. He could see figures ducking through the floodlighting like some bizarre son et lumiere, with gunfire instead of words and music.

There was the sound of movement behind and both men twisted on their backs, trying to swing their guns around in time to fight off an attack. Then a figure spoke. ‘It’s me,’ and they recognised Al Simpson.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ demanded Pendlebury.

‘It’s chaos back there,’ said the man who had headed the Boynton Beach group. ‘Police have fired into our guys. Some have been hit. It’ll take some time to sort out.’

‘How many do we have here?’

‘Maybe twenty. Perhaps a few more. I don’t know.’

From the darkness ahead, the Armalite was fired again, the bullet stripping leaves off the nearby bush with a hissing sound, and then the second Cuban fired, driving their heads down against the grass.

‘You got rifles?’ asked Pendlebury. The grass got into his mouth as he talked.

‘And a hand-set,’ said Simpson.

‘Thank God for that. We’re being held down by people in that clump over there, marked by the outline of that tall tree. I want fire poured in there. Tell everyone to keep down. There’s fighting ahead but I don’t know between whom.’

Simpson twisted, repeating the instructions into his handset. Other shapes began to materialise, grouping themselves around Pendlebury, and at his signal they started firing in the direction from which Pendlebury had identified the snipers. There was sporadic answering fire and then, from Pendlebury’s left, the group Ramirez had taken into the grounds started shooting at the perfectly identified target. Simpson and Gilbert were killed immediately, and Pendlebury felt a thump in his left side and then numbness spreading from his shoulder to his thigh, and he knew he had been hit. He lay with his face against the grass, surprised that there should be a dampness to it, and wondered when the pain would come. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it and hoped they got him back to an ambulance with morphine before it got too severe. He started trying to find the wound and then stopped; if he felt anything too bad he knew the pain would begin.

‘Hit,’ he said, to a movement behind him, ‘I’ve been hit.’

He was distantly aware of someone muttering into the hand-set that Simpson had carried and then of another crash of shots as Ramirez’s group was flushed out. Ramirez tried to run towards the one Cuban who remained as a rearguard, but was mistaken for the enemy and caught full in the chest with a burst from the Armalite. Marked by the flash of the explosion, the last sniper was killed in the crossfire of two groups either side of the coppice.

Terrilli’s house was built upon a slight, man-made elevation and with the floodlights he was able to see perfectly what was happening outside, like a Caesar watching an ancient Roman spectacle. Bulz had gone down within seconds of coming around the side of the house, and as Terrilli watched he saw Bertrano suddenly jerk upwards, crying out, hand cupped to his head. Terrilli strained to see the figures darting from cover to cover, trying to identify Chambine. He thought he had him once and smiled as the figure toppled sideways, but then he realised it was someone attached to his own staff. He was aware of more people entering the grounds, far away beyond the reach of the floodlights and tried to detect above the firing the sound of the police cars. They couldn’t be much longer.

He saw Chambine at last. He was with three others, crouched behind some ornamental masonry that marked the very front of the house. Initially it formed good cover, but then two groups managed to work their way around either side, so that it became a trap. Chambine appeared the first to realise this. He looked hurriedly around, saw that the front door of the house was the only escape and darted towards it. The station waggon in which he had arrived so very few minutes before was pockmarked with bullet holes and only one side window remained unbroken. He crouched against it, using the cover. One man still by the stonework went down and the other two at last came to the same conclusion as Chambine. One was hit as he tried to dash to the car, but the other just made it.

Terrilli saw Chambine turn towards the house.

‘Is the door open?’ Chambine yelled.

‘Yes,’ Terrilli shouted back, sliding the huge securing bolts into position and twisting the keys in both the locks. He fled back to the gunroom at the very moment that Chambine and the other man made their run for the house. They were perfectly silhouetted as they reached the door. Chambine thrust himself against the woodwork so hard that the breath went from him. He stood back frowning, jerking at the door handle and shoving again, and then the Cubans opened fire, cutting into Chambine and Terrilli’s man like fun-fair targets.

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.