Here Comes Charlie M

FOUR

The mid-Channel passport check was always the most dangerous part, the moment when, despite the previous occasions, there could be a sudden challenge and they would be trapped aboard the ship, unable to run.

They had learned to time the public announcement about the immigration office and in the last few minutes preceding it Edith became increasingly nervous, sitting tense and upright and abandoning any attempt at conversation. There were no outward signs from Charlie, except perhaps in the way he drank the habitual brandy, not in spaced-out, even sips, but in deep swallows, so that the barman had already recognised him as a drinker and was standing close at hand, waiting for the nod.

They made an odd couple, she restrained, carefully coiffured and with the discreet but expensively maintained elegance of a Continental woman unafraid of obvious middle age, he baggy and shapeless in a nondescript suit, like a dustcover thrown over a piece of anonymous furniture about which nobody cared very much.

Edith started up at the metallic-voice broadcast, coming immediately to Charlie for guidance. Unspeaking, he led the way out into the purser’s square, then paused by the perfume and souvenir shop.

‘Don’t worry,’ he encouraged her.

She appeared not to hear.

What he wanted appeared almost immediately and he smiled at Edith. She looked back, without expression.

The smaller child was already crying, overtired and demanding to be carried. The mother, face throbbing red and split by sunburn, tried to push it away and by mistake hit the other girl, who started crying too, and immediately an argument began between the woman and her husband.

‘Perfect,’ judged Charlie.

He moved quickly now, his hand cupping Edith’s elbow. He could feel the nervousness tighten within her as they wedged themselves behind the squabbling family and began edging closer to the immigration office.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he assured her emptily. She remained stiff by his side, staring straight ahead.

The children caused the expected distraction, filling the tiny room with noise. The parents’ row spilled over to the immigration officer at a query about the children being entered on both passports and Charlie and Edith passed through in the wake of the official’s anticipated anxiety to regain order in the file of people.

‘Works every time,’ said Charlie, still holding Edith’s arm and leading her back towards the bar. She was still very frightened, he knew.

In recent months she had shown her concern at his drinking by almost total abstinence, but she accepted the brandy now, gulping at it.

‘It’s been too long,’ he said. ‘They will have abandoned the blanket scrutiny long ago. And there’s nothing wrong with the passports.’

She shook her head, refusing the lie.

‘That’s nonsense and you know it. They’ll never give up. Not until you’re dead.’

‘This is the fifth time we’ve crossed from the Continent without any trouble.’

She shrugged, still not accepting the reassurance.

‘Thank God we won’t have to go through it again.’

‘We’re safe, I tell you.’

With his empty glass, he gestured to the attentive barman, waving away the change.

‘If you’re so safe, why are you drunk every night by ten o’clock?’ she demanded. It was an unfair question, Edith realised. Fear wasn’t the only reason. But she wanted to hurt him, desperate for any reaction that would cause him to stop. She was very worried at the growing carelessness. She should be grateful, she supposed, that he’d finally agreed to abandon England. It had taken enough arguments.

He smiled, a lopsided expression.

‘Nothing else to do,’ he said, answering her question.

Edith shook her head, sadly.

‘You know something, Charlie?’ she said.

He drank awkwardly, spilling some of the liquor down his suit. It was already stained, she saw.

‘What?’

‘I never thought I would feel sorry for you. Amost every other emotion, probably. But never pity. And that’s nearly all there is now, Charlie. Pity.’

Another attempt to hurt, she recognised. Because it wasn’t true.

‘What about love?’

‘You’re making it difficult,’ she persisted. ‘Very difficult.’

He tried to straighten, to conceal the extent of his drunkenness, then discarded the pretence, slumping round-shouldered in the chair.

‘Thank you for agreeing to leave England,’ she said sincerely. The gesture was for her, she accepted.

Charlie shrugged, knowing the words would jam if he tried to speak. She had been right in persuading him, he knew. They were both much happier in Zürich, and having dispensed with Paris there wasn’t much point in retaining the Brighton house either. That was the trouble, he decided, extending the thought; there didn’t seem much point in anything any more.

‘We’ve still got to get nearly £300,000 out of England,’ he said. ‘Won’t you be frightened?’

‘Yes,’ she said. It would be wrong to suggest he just left it and lived on the money she had, she knew.

‘Won’t you be?’ she asked.

He humped his shoulders, an uncaring gesture.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. He nodded and the refilled glass dutifully appeared.

He probably wouldn’t recall the conversation in the morning, decided Edith. It was already long past remembering time … long past many things.

Charlie was bored, she recognised. Bored and uninterested. For someone who had led a life as unique as Charlie’s, it was like an illness, gradually weakening him. Now he had nothing. Except guilt. There was a lot of that, she knew.

‘Promise me something else,’ she tried, hopefully, as the ferry began to move alongside the Southampton quayside.

His eyes were filmed, she saw, and his face was quite unresponsive.

‘Don’t go to the grave,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s a stupid, sentimental pilgrimage. He wouldn’t have expected you to do it.’

‘Want to,’ said Charlie, stubbornly.

‘It’s ridiculous, Charlie. There’s absolutely no point. And you know it.’

‘We’re coming here for the last time,’ he reminded her. ‘So I’m going, just once. I’ve waited long enough. It’ll be safe now.’

She sighed, accepting defeat.

‘Oh Charlie,’ she said. ‘Why does it all have to be such an awful mess?’

The office of George Wilberforce, Director of British Intelligence, was on the corner of the Whitehall building that gave views over both the Cenotaph and Parliament Square.

It was a darkly warm, reassuring room, in which the oil paintings of bewigged and satined statesmen adorning the panelled walls seemed an unnecessary reminder of an Empire.

The modern innovation of double glazing excluded noise from outside and deep pile carpet succeeded within. The books were in hand-tooled leather and the massive desk at which Wilberforce sat had been salvaged in 1947 aboard the same vessel that brought home the Queen’s throne from an independent India. Wilberforce considered he had the more comfortable piece of furniture.

The Director appeared as tailored for the room as the antique furniture and the unread first editions. He was a fine-featured, elegantly gangling man who affected pastel coloured shirts with matching socks and a languid diffidence that concealed the fervent need for acceptance in a job he had coveted for fifteen years and seen to go to two other men before him.

The only intrusive mannerism was the habit, during acrimonious or difficult discussions, of using a briar pipe, which he was never seen to light, like worry-beads, revolving it between his peculiarly long fingers and constantly exploring the bowl with a set of tiny tools that retreated into a gold container.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ greeted Wilberforce formally. Always before the meetings had been in Washington: he couldn’t recall an American Director of the C.I.A. making a visit like this to his predecessors, he thought.

Onslow Smith responded with one of the open-faced, boyish smiles that Wilberforce recalled from the sports photographs that littered the man’s office.

‘Seemed a good idea to hitch a ride on the same aircraft taking the new vice-President on his tour of Europe,’ said the C.I.A. director.

Wilberforce looked doubtful and the other man’s smile became apologetic.

‘And there was another reason,’ he conceded.

‘What?’

Smith hesitated, arranging the words.

‘The President has a new broom complex,’ he said. ‘Just like your guy.’

He cleared his throat, to make the quote obvious.

‘… “loose ends neatly tied … mistakes vigorously rectified where necessary.”’

Already, recalled Wilberforce, political cartoonists were featuring Austin and Smallwood taking turns at being each other’s ventriloquist’s dummies.

‘So I hear,’ said the Briton, waiting.

‘There’s been an official policy document,’ said Smith.

‘We’ve had something like that here,’ admitted Wilberforce.

‘Which means we have the same old problem,’ said Onslow Smith.

Wilberforce nodded, reaching out for a worry pipe.

‘Charlie Muffin,’ he agreed. ‘The bastard.’

FIVE

It wasn’t until he got into the churchyard and felt the damp, cold wind that always seems to blow in English cemeteries in November that Charlie Muffin sobered sufficiently to realise completely what he had done. And that the stupidity could kill him. Like so many stupidities before it.

The trained instinct surfaced through the swamp of alcohol and he pulled away from one of the main pathways, using a straggled yew tree for cover. About ten yards away, a black knot of people huddled speechless around a grave still cheerfully bright from funeral flowers. Nearer, a practised mourner, shirt-sleeved despite the cold, knelt over a green-pebbled rectangle on a padded cloth, scrubbing the headstone and surround into its original whiteness, lips moving in familiar conversation with someone who couldn’t reply any more. Charlie turned, widening his vision. At least twenty people spread throughout the churchyard. Too many.

‘You’re a prick,’ Charlie told himself. ‘A right prick.’

He frowned, surprised at the emergence of the habit. He’d always talked to himself, unashamedly, when he was under stress or afraid. It had been a long time since he had done it. Like welcoming back an old friend, he thought.

The drunkenness was gone now, but the pain was banded around his head and his throat was dehydrated. For a man apparently seeking a momentarily forgotten grave, he’d stood long enough beneath the tree, Charlie decided, groping for the professionalism of which he had once been so confident He swallowed, forcing back the desire to flee, to run back along the wider pathway to the car he could still see, over the low wall.

‘Never run,’ he murmured. ‘Never ever run.’

One of the basic lessons. Often ignored, though. Sometimes by people who should know better. And invariably by amateurs. Günther Bayer had been an amateur. No, Charlie corrected, not an amateur. An innocent. A trusting, manipulated innocent who had believed Charlie was sincere in trying to help him escape across the Wall. And so he’d run when he got caught in the East German ambush that had been intended for Charlie. He’d been dead before the flames had engulfed the Volkswagen, Charlie assured himself. Had to be, in that cross-fire.

He pushed away from the tree, rejoining the main path, alert for the attention the movement would have caused even a trained watcher. Nothing. Perhaps he was all right, after all. Perhaps, after so long, there was no observation. Or perhaps they were too well trained.

The pathway along which he was walking ran parallel with the perimeter wall, Charlie realised. But there was a linking lane, built like a spoke through the middle. He could turn on to that and regain the entrance. Four hundred yards, he estimated. It seemed a very long way.

The hesitation was hardly perceptible when, suddenly, he saw the tomb. In his earlier drunkenness he had imagined that Sir Archibald Willoughby’s grave would be marked in an ordinary, traditional way, like that tended by the shirt-sleeved man near the yew tree. The family vault was an ornate, castellated affair, protected by an iron fence and reached through a low, locked gate. Plaques were set into the wall, recording the names of the occupants.

Charlie was confident his reaction to the vault had been completely covered; to stop, pause, even, would be all the confirmation they would need.

He was past, actually on the straight path leading to the exit, when the challenge came.

‘Charlie! Charlie Muffin!’

Afterwards Charlie remembered with satisfaction the smoothness of his reactions. The gateway was still too far away to consider walking on, as if the name meant nothing. He couldn’t run, of course. But they could. They’d get him before he’d gone twenty yards. They? It had been a single voice. Just one man, after so long? Probably. Fight then. Feign bewilderment, to gain the moment of uncertainty. Then fight to kill. Quickly, before anyone in the cemetery realised what was happening. Go for the throat, the carotid artery, smashing the voice box with the same blow. Sir Archibald’s tomb would give him the concealment. He’d only need minutes to get to the car.

He tensed, to make the turn, then stopped. There’d been all the training, certainly. Poncing about in canvas suits, waving his arms about and yelling ‘aargh’ like a bloody idiot. But he’d never killed anyone – not body to body, feeling the warmth of their skin and possibly seeing the terror in their faces. That had always been done by proxy, by others.

He completed the turn, head held curiously, keeping the movement purposely slow.

‘I’m sorry …’ he frowned, the confusion perfectly balanced.

It was a tall man, habitually stooped in an effort to reduce his size. Beaked nose, too large for his face. A clipped, military moustache, a darker brown than the swept-back, short-cropped hair. Familiar, decided Charlie. Someone from the old department then. The man smiled and began coming forward.

‘It is Charlie Muffin, isn’t it?’

He wasn’t professional, judged Charlie. Couldn’t be. What properly trained man openly challenged a victim? And then walked forward, both arms held out, losing any chance of surprise in producing a weapon? He wouldn’t make another juvenile mistake like Paris, Charlie decided.

Who then?

‘Willoughby,’ the man identified himself, as if in answer to Charlie’s question. ‘Rupert Willoughby.’

Charlie’s eyes flickered for a moment to the name on the tomb plaques, then back to the man who was now offering his hand, recognising the similarity. The handshake was firm, without the usual ridiculous tendency to turn it into a form of Indian palm wrestling, and the brown eyes held Charlie’s in a direct, almost unblinking gaze. Just like the old man’s, remembered Charlie. Until the end, that was.

‘What an incredible coincidence,’ said Willoughby.

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, the confusion genuine now.

Immediately fear swept it aside. If the graveyard were still under surveillance, then now he had been positively identified, he realised. Sir Archibald’s son would be known, to all of them. And they were standing immediately outside the vault, the marker he’d managed to avoid only minutes earlier. He still had a little time, he decided. Not much. But still enough to use.

He tried to withdraw his hand, turning back to the gate.

‘… decided to pay my respects,’ he stumbled, badly. ‘Haven’t been able to, before … in a hurry, though. Really must go.’

‘No, please, wait,’ protested Willoughby. ‘There’s a great deal for us to discuss … a business matter …’

‘Perhaps another time … sorry, I’m very late …’

Willoughby was walking with him, frowning at the rudeness. He reached into his pocket and Charlie edged away, apprehensively. The man produced a small wallet and offered Charlie a card.

‘We must meet again,’ he said. ‘It’s most important … to do with my father …’

‘Call you,’ promised Charlie, thrusting the pasteboard into his pocket. He was almost at the exit now. The obvious place, he decided; the lychgate would certainly provide some cover and they could get him away in a car before anyone in the cemetery realised the attack had happened. Charlie paused, examining it. There was no one there.

‘Promise?’ demanded Willoughby.

Charlie turned to the man, realising the need to recover.

‘I really am very sorry,’ he said, stopping with his back to the support pole for the gate roof, positioning himself where he could see the beginning of any approach. ‘It must seem very rude.’

Willoughby didn’t reply, confirming the assessment.

‘Like to spend more time … believe me.’

‘Call me then?’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

‘Soon,’ promised Charlie hurriedly, turning through the gate. The mourners he had seen around the fresh grave were dispersing, heads bowed, into various cars. A woman was crying. The man who had been scrubbing the surround had finished, too, he saw. Carefully the man had packed the brush, cloths and bucket into the boot of an old Morris and was walking slowly towards the telephone.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ called Willoughby, after him.

Charlie drove alert for the slightest danger, eyes constantly scanning the rear view mirror. Purposely he went north-west, choosing Tunbridge Wells because it was the first town of any size, twisting and turning through the streets and then continuing north, to London, to repeat the evasion.

‘You’re a prick, Charlie,’ he accused himself again, as he took the car over Vauxhall Bridge. ‘A careless, idiot prick who deserves to die.’

He’d arranged to clear out the bank the following morning. But that didn’t matter now. Only survival mattered.

‘Prick,’ he said.

The London home and elegant, sophisticated refuge of George Wilberforce was a second-floor apartment overlooking Eaton Square. Here, from Monday to Friday, he lived, returning only at the weekends to a nagging, condescending wife who refused him the respect that everyone seemed to find so difficult, and from whom he would have welcomed divorce but for the admittedly remote but nevertheless possible harm such an event might have caused his career. Those responsible for appointments in the permanent civil service were known sometimes to possess strong religious views and it was wise not to take chances.

Particularly not now. Because now his career was more assured than it had ever been.

Delius, he decided, would suit his mood.

Apart from the habit with never-smoked pipes, the Director was a man who rarely betrayed any emotion, but now after standing for several movements by the stereo unit he suddenly moved away in a halting, stiff-jointed attempt at what appeared to be a waltz. He stopped, embarrassed by his efforts.

‘I’ve got you, Charlie Muffin,’ he said. ‘And now you’re going to suffer for what you did. Christ, you’re going to suffer.’

SIX

George Wilberforce blinked at the gritty sensation behind his eyes, knowing he should have allowed more time after the flight from London before this conference in the C.I.A. complex in the Virginia countryside. But this time he had wanted the meeting in America; to arrive the courier of news for which they had waited so long and sense the approbation, even if there were no open praise.

“You’re quite sure?” demanded Onslow Smith urgently. The American Director, whom he had had to tell in advance of the meeting, was a large open-faced man who seemed constantly restricted within the confines of an office chair, business suit and subdued tie. As if in apologetic explanation for his build, the wall behind his desk was patterned with sports pennants, shields and group pictures of the Yale rowing and boxing teams. The Onslow Smith smile was featured in all.

‘Quite sure,’ said Wilberforce, keeping the exhilaration from his voice. ‘We’ve caught Charlie Muffin.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Smith distantly. ‘It’s about goddamn time.’

Appearing suddenly aware that the remark could be construed as criticism, he added quickly: ‘Congratulations.’

Wilberforce’s shrug of uncaring dismissal was perfect.

‘And now can we kill him?’ demanded Garson Ruttgers.

Wilberforce came up from the pipe at which he had already begun probing, staring at the diminutive, frail-seeming American whose ambition to become, as chief of the C.I.A., what Edgar Hoover had been to the F.B.I., had been destroyed by Charlie Muffin. Ruttgers was an unsettling feature of the group, thought Wilberforce, watching the man light a cigarette from the stump of that which had preceded it, never once breaking the staring-eyed gaze across the table through clerk-like, half-lens spectacles. About Ruttgers there was an aura of unpredictability, thought the Briton. And something else. The man physically frightened him, Wilberforce realised, surprised.

‘It’s not quite as easy as that,’ he said guardedly.

‘Why not?’ demanded Ruttgers.

The constant inhalation of nicotine had turned the man’s false teeth yellow. Why, wondered Wilberforce, didn’t the American soak the dentures in stain remover? His breath must smell appallingly.

‘Yes, why?’

The repeated question in the unpleasantly recognisable, phlegmy tone, came from Wilberforce’s right and he turned to Sir Henry Cuthbertson. The baronet was a bulky, cumbersome man proud of family links that went back to the service of James I, who had conferred the original baronetcy. He’d earned the D.S.O. in the Second World War and been seconded from the Chief of Staff council to revitalise Britain’s intelligence system after the fading, twenty-five-year directorship of Sir Archibald Willoughby. And lost the job in less than a year. Four hundred years of honour wrecked in a few short months by a scruffy ex-grammar school boy with an irritating Mancunian accent and the distressing tendency not to change his shirt every day, reflected Wilberforce.

It was hardly surprising Cuthbertson and Ruttgers wanted Charlie Muffin’s immediate assassination, thought Wilberforce. But neither had operated under the new governments. Or knew – because nobody knew – of Wilberforce’s determination to make Charlie Muffin’s capture a personal triumph.

‘Because there mustn’t be any mistake,’ said the British Director simply.

‘No,’ agreed Onslow Smith hurriedly. ‘No mistakes.’

To be convinced, the feelings of the two older men would have to be bruised, realised Wilberforce.

‘Let’s not forget,’ he said, ‘that the errors made with Charlie Muffin in the past were absolutely horrifying.’

Ruttgers and Sir Henry shifted, both discomforted at the prospect of being reminded.

‘Four years ago,’ said Wilberforce, ‘the British uncovered in Europe the most successful Russian infiltration of NATO since the Second World War. The man who led their operation, Alexei Berenkov, was jailed for forty years. It was one of the worst disasters ever suffered by the Russians – so grave, in fact, that it came as little surprise to either America or Britain to learn, as they did within a year, that Valery Kalenin, operational chief of the K.G.B., wanted to flee for asylum to the West …’

‘We’re all aware of the history,’ said Ruttgers, in an attempt to halt the other man.

‘And now we must put it in proper perspective,’ insisted Wilberforce. ‘It was a deceit. A deceit conceived and operated by Charlie Muffin, working not for the British intelligence organisation that employed him, but with Kalenin. A deceit to expose not just ordinary agents, but the British and American Directors; for them to be seized and offered in exchange for the repatriation of Alexei Berenkov.’

The embarrassment, recalled Wilberforce, had been incredible after that numbing evening in the C.I.A. ‘safe’ house in Vienna when Kalenin had arrived not nervous and alone, as they had expected, but followed by a Russian commando team who had carried Ruttgers and Cuthbertson back across the Czechoslovakian border. Charlie Muffin had shown a surprising knowledge of psychology, judging the ambition of both men would drive them to such close involvement. Upon reflection, it seemed lunacy. He hadn’t thought so at the time, though. That was something else ho one was ever going to learn.

‘The man is a traitor,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘So he should be shot.’

‘A traitor,’ agreed Wilberforce. Legally so, he qualified. But aware as he was – and as Charlie Muffin had certainly been – that Cuthbertson had decided he could be abandoned at the East German border in the final stages of the Berenkov seizure, Wilberforce found the accusation difficult. Another reservation, never admitted to anyone. Any more than it had ever been admitted that it had been Charlie who had co-ordinated Berenkov’s capture, fitting together the disparate jigsaw so cleverly that not only Berenkov but nearly everyone in the European cell was caught. Charlie, who had deserved first praise and then acceptance within the reorganised department Sir Henry was establishing. And who instead had realised that he had been selected for sacrifice in the final stages. Sir Henry would never concede he had decided Charlie should die, of course. Convenient amnesia wasn’t a new affliction in the department.

‘But a traitor who should not be allowed to cause further embarrassments to either government,’ Wilberforce added.

The irritation of Ruttgers and Cuthbertson was increasing, Wilberforce saw. The American fussily lighted yet another cigarette and the British baron twisted the family-crested ring on the little finger of his left hand as if seeking solace in a talisman of his family’s greatness.

‘That’s vitally important,’ said Onslow Smith, once more in immediate agreement.

‘And we couldn’t guarantee that by a simple elimination,’ declared Wilberforce. The American Director was definitely deferring to him, he decided.

‘Why not?’ demanded an unconvinced Ruttgers.

‘To start with,’ said Wilberforce, ‘because he isn’t in England. He was, very briefly. That’s where we picked him up and from where we followed him back to Zürich.’

‘I don’t see the problem,’ argued Cuthbertson. ‘What’s wrong with killing the man in Switzerland?’

The British Director sighed. They were very obtuse, he thought. But then, they hadn’t considered the long-term advantages as he had.

‘Initially,’ he said, ‘the problem is risking an assassination in a country other than our own, where we could not ensure complete co-operation of the civil authorities.’

‘We’ve done it dozens of times before,’ disputed Ruttgers.

‘Maybe so,’ agreed Wilberforce. ‘But not so soon after your President and my Prime Minister have pledged, publicly, that theirs are going to be open governments, free from unnecessary criticism.’

He paused. They still weren’t accepting the reasoning, he knew.

‘But more importantly,’ he started again, ‘we can’t kill Charlie Muffin without knowing whether he has established any automatic release of information from, say, a bank vault that would compound the difficulties he has already caused. Don’t forget how devious the damned man is.’

‘There’s no way we could do that, for Christ’s sake,’ objected Ruttgers.

‘Oh, yes there is,’ said Wilberforce, smiling. ‘And it’s the way to ensure that Charlie Muffin comes back to England like an obedient dog answering a whistle.’

He was going to enjoy himself, decided Wilberforce. Enjoy himself very much indeed.

Johnny Packer, who was never to learn the real reason for his good fortune or how closely his life was so very briefly to become linked with a man called Charlie Muffin, decided that the party to celebrate his release from Parkhurst was exactly right. Far better than he could have expected, in fact. He’d ruled there wouldn’t be any rubbish, no amateur tearaways in their flash suits and cannonballs of money where the other sort should have been, to impress whatever slag they were trying to pull that night. But he hadn’t been able to guarantee who would come. And that was the value of the party, showing how well he was regarded. Everyone was there, he saw. Everyone who mattered, anyway. Harry Rich, the soft-voiced Irishman, who’d personally put two people into the supports of the M-4 flyover while the concrete was still wet and was now the undisputed controller of the East End as far west as Farringdon Street; Herbie Pie, who had wept – though from pleasure, not remorse – carving the faces and the Achilles tendons during the last confrontation in Soho and now giggled at the rehearsed joke and said he had the whole place stitched up; even Andie Smythe, who rarely came this far east, silk-suited, smooth-haired and shiny-faced, looking always as if he’d been polished all over with a soft cloth before setting out for the nightly tours of the Mayfair casinos to receive what was rightfully his for ensuring that the unloading of the innocent was never violently interrupted.

Like an actor in a long-running play aware of his spot on stage at any one moment, Johnny stood stiffly in his two-day-old suit, away from the bar that had been erected in the upstairs room of The Thistle, nodding and smiling to everyone but getting involved in no prolonged conversation.

The positioning was decreed by the rules of such gatherings, as formalised as the steps of a medieval dance or the mating rituals of some species of African birds.

It was Herbie who broke away from the group, the appointed spokesman.

‘Good to see you out, Johnny.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Pie. Nice of everyone to come.’

‘Always happy to come to such functions. Specially when it’s kept to the right people.’

Johnny sighed at the reminder of why he had served five years in Parkhurst.

‘No more amateurs who can’t stop boasting about what they’ve done,’ he promised.

‘Hope not, Johnny,’ said Pie. ‘Craftsmen like you shouldn’t take risks.’

And he wouldn’t, any more, thought Johnny. If he were caught again through not taking sufficient care about the people he was working with, he’d go down for ten. Maybe longer.

‘Any plans, Johnny?’ enquired the other man.

‘I’m in no hurry, Mr Pie. Got to get myself together first.’

The man nodded.

‘Still got the little house in Wimbledon?’

‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘Neighbours think I’ve been working on a five-year contract in Saudi Arabia.’

Pie nodded again, the encounter concluded. Everything was to a formula, even the apparent small talk.

‘So should anyone want you, they could contact you there?’

‘Any time,’ Johnny assured him, keeping the hope from his voice. ‘Any time.’

‘And no amateurs this time?’

‘No amateurs,’ promised Johnny.

A clear enough warning, Johnny decided. The repeated criticism meant they still doubted him. So no one would be visiting Wimbledon until he’d proved himself again, no matter if he were one of the three top safecrackers in London. He’d have to do something pretty remarkable to recover, he decided.

‘I think you’ll like it,’ said Onslow Smith.

Wilberforce sipped the wine, nodding appreciatively. The other man was unquestionably accepting his leadership, he decided, gratified.

‘Not French,’ he judged.

‘Californian,’ agreed the American Director.

‘Excellent,’ said Wilberforce. Surrounding himself with sports mementoes was all part of a carefully maintained affectation on Smith’s part, decided the other Director generously, an invitation for people to imagine his thinking and intelligence as muscled as his body. Which would have been a mistake. Smith’s decision to involve Ruttgers in the meeting that morning, just as he had included Cuthbertson, showed they were both aware of the dangers of the operation upon which they were embarking. And were taking out insurance. Both he and Smith could afford to be magnanimous in the vengeance hunt; if it were successful, then both would gain sufficient credit because of their association, while the two men worst affected would salvage something of their reputations. But if anything went wrong, then the fault could be hopefully offloaded on to those already disgraced. Perhaps that was why Smith was letting him take the lead, he thought fleetingly.

‘It is a bank, isn’t it?’ guessed the American, suddenly.

Wilberforce smiled. Definitely very intelligent.

‘What made you realise that?’

‘When Charlie Muffin walked out of the house in Vienna, leaving Ruttgers and Cuthbertson to be grabbed, he took with him $500,000 we’d provided in the belief it was what Kalenin wanted to cross over. But you didn’t mention the money this morning. So you must know where he’s hiding it … along with anything else that might embarrass us.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Wilberforce. ‘It’s a bank. And I know which one.’

‘How?’

‘We picked him up in a cemetery. Eventually he went to a house in Brighton, where he collected a woman we’ve since identified as his wife. It was obviously a house they’d had for some time. From the voters’ register we got the name they had assumed. From then on, it was merely a routine job of having a team of men posing as credit inspectors calling up all the banks in the area until we found an account. We didn’t expect a safe deposit, though … that’s what has made me worry he might have tried to protect himself with some documents.’

Wilberforce paused. Just like the drunken sot of a previous Director, Sir Archibald Willoughby, had tried to do. He hadn’t succeeded, though: they’d sealed up that difficulty just as they’d erase this if it existed.

The American added more wine to both their glasses.

‘You know something that surprises me?’

‘What?’ asked Wilberforce.

‘That Charlie Muffin didn’t go to Russia. He’d have been welcome enough there, for God’s sake.’

Wilberforce sighed. It was increasingly obvious, he thought, why it would have to be he who initiated everything in this operation.

‘But Russia is the last place he would have gone,’ he tried to explain. ‘Charlie Muffin wouldn’t have regarded what he did as helping Russia. Any more than he would think of it, initially anyway, of being traitorous to Britain or America.’

Onslow Smith frowned curiously at the other man.

‘What the hell was it then?’

‘Charlie Muffin fighting back,’ said Wilberforce. ‘When he realised we were prepared to let him die.’

‘This isn’t going to be easy, is it?’ said Smith thoughtfully.

‘No,’ said Wilberforce. ‘But it’s the only way we can guarantee there won’t be problems.’

‘And it’s necessary for us to be personally involved, potentially dangerous as it is?’

He seemed to be seeking reassurances, thought Wilberforce.

‘There’s no one else we could trust with it.’

Onslow Smith nodded, slowly.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he accepted.

He smiled uncertainly.

‘I bet the President never had this in mind when he promised to correct mistakes with the utmost vigour,’ mused the American.

‘But that’s exactly what we’re doing,’ encouraged Wilberforce. ‘But neither he nor the Prime Minister will ever appreciate it.’

‘If they did know,’ said Smith, ‘they’d be damned scared. Tell me, George, are you frightened?’

‘Properly apprehensive,’ answered Wilberforce evasively. Somehow, he had decided, the British Premier would learn what had been done for him. When it was all safely concluded, of course.

The C.I.A. Director smiled across the table.

‘I’m scared,’ he admitted. ‘I’m damned scared.’

SEVEN

He wasn’t asleep, Edith knew. Any more than he had been the previous night at this time, just before dawn. Or the night before that. Any night, in fact, since the cemetery incident.

She breathed deeply, hoping Charlie wouldn’t realise she was awake and start talking. If they talked, they’d row. It was too late for rows. And anyway, Charlie’s response would be to fight back. Survival, he called it. She sighed, maintaining the pretence of sleep. The need to survive: Charlie’s panacea for anything unpalatable.

She became annoyed with herself, recognising the criticism. She had no right to think like that, she thought. No right at all. They had decided that Charlie was a disposable embarrassment, someone who could be dumped because he didn’t have the right accent or public school tie and was a remnant from another, discredited era. So he had had every justification for what he had done. Justification on the filthy terms within which they operated, anyway.

If only Charlie hadn’t stopped believing that. Poor Charlie. No matter what explanation or reasoning he advanced, he could never lose the feeling of remorse that had grown during the last year. Misplaced remorse, she thought. Because Charlie Muffin wasn’t a traitor. An opportunist, she accepted. Amoral, too. Worryingly so. But no traitor. He couldn’t dislodge the doubt, though. Perhaps he never would. And from that uncertainty, all the others had grown. And the drinking. Perhaps the drinking most of all. The churchyard mistake had certainly been through booze.

And all the others, before. At least that had stopped, after the latest scare. Odd how real fear made him abandon alcohol. Survival again, she supposed.

‘How long have you been awake?

She turned at his question, discarding the charade of sleep.

‘Quite a while. You?’

‘Quite a while.’

‘I still wish you wouldn’t go.’

‘I’ve got to.’

‘They couldn’t find us now.’

He didn’t reply and she demanded urgently, ‘Could they?’

‘If I don’t meet Rupert Willoughby, he might contact the department,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget how closely his father involved him … he wouldn’t have the hesitation of anyone else. And if he were to telephone them, he’d give them the lead they need.’

‘You said it was safe here,’ she accused him. ‘We moved back the same day, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I overlooked it,’ he admitted. Like so many other things, he thought.

‘You could be exposing yourself completely,’ she warned, frowning at the repetition of a previous argument.

‘I’ll be careful,’ he said. ‘Very careful.’

‘Will you bother about the money?’

‘I don’t know.’

So he did think he had been identified. If she hadn’t kept on about quitting England completely, they wouldn’t have gone back for the confounded money, she thought bitterly. The fact that she was a rich woman had always been a barrier between them.

Frightened that he might detect her tears in the growing half-light, Edith turned towards the window. Lake Zürich was already visible, dull and flat like a thrown-away silver dish.

‘What happens if he has contacted them?’ she asked, bringing the fear into the open. ‘It would be a trap.’

Again there was a pause. Then he said: ‘I won’t know. Not until I get there.’

They’d move on, she knew. Again. Away from the hide-out where she felt most safe, just five minutes’ walk from the Swiss Bank Corporation building in the Paradeplatz where her money was held in its numbered account, together with the false passports and forged documents, another identity to be donned, like new clothes, if that under which they had existed for the past two years were discovered because of that bloody graveyard idiocy.

Move on to where? At least not back to the small, greasy apartment in the Pigalle area of Paris, she thought gratefully; smelly and anonymous rooms among the no-questions-asked hotels in which the transient workers from North Africa and Turkey lived out their frightened existence, without the proper entry or work permits. So where? God knows.

‘I wish you hadn’t done it, Charlie.’

‘I’ve apologised, haven’t I? Don’t you think I regret it, every bit as much as you?’

She held back the response, recognising the defiance in his voice. She wouldn’t argue, she determined. There was no purpose in holding an inquest. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, caught by the word. Inquests were for people who had died. Usually violently.

‘I’ll go by myself, of course,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ she agreed. Quickly, the feeling clogging her voice, Edith added: ‘Be careful.’

He laughed.

‘I’m a survivor, remember?’

‘I’m very frightened, Charlie. It’s different now. You’re completely on your own. And everything seems to be going wrong.’

‘That’s how I’ve always been, on my own.’

She moved her head, a rustling gesture of rejection against the pillow.

‘I love you, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live without you.’

‘You won’t have to.’

‘I wish I could believe that.’

She waited for the reassurance to be repeated, but Charlie said nothing. The tears she had so far managed to hold back began feeling their way across her face and she turned farther towards the window, away from him.

‘You haven’t said you loved me for a long time,’ he remarked and she started crying even more.

In Moscow, the British ambassador, Sir Robert Black, accepted the sheaf of papers from the Soviet Minister of Culture and affixed his signature. The signing of the outline agreement completed, both men rose from the table. Immediately the waiters approached with the trays of drinks for the regulation toasts. Despite the regeneration of the British economy, it was sherry, not champagne. The Russian, Boris Navetsky, hesitated, looking disdainfully at the amber liquid. Bloody mean, he thought.

‘My country is eagerly looking forward to the exhibition,’ said the ambassador.

Navetsky nodded.

‘A pity, perhaps,’ ventured the Briton, ‘that it was not possible for the actual Romanov jewellery to be displayed.’

‘It is only the Fabergé replicas that have ever been allowed to leave the country on exhibition,’ Navetsky reminded him stiffly. He’d refuse a second drink, he decided.

‘Surely you don’t imagine my country would expose such works of art to any risk?’ said the ambassador.

‘Of course not,’ Navetsky assured him.

In London, a report on the exhibition of the Russian royal jewellery was despatched, as a matter of routine, from the Foreign Office to Wilberforce. It was to be several days before he read it.

The protection would never be necessary, Johnny Packer knew. But like Herbie Pie had said, he was a craftsman. And craftsmen always did things properly. So at the back of the shed, where the more volatile explosives were stored, Johnny had constructed a double-thickness brick wall, to cushion any accidental blast. Each was housed in its carefully partitioned section, with metal sheets forming an inner lining. The P-4 plastic, the easiest and least dangerous to use, was most readily to hand. Then the cordite, which he disliked because of the difficulty of control in certain circumstances. And in front of it all, the sacks of sodium chlorate, to be mixed with the sugar in the kitchen if the sudden need arose. Which he hoped it wouldn’t. Sodium chlorate and sugar was all right for the killers of Belfast, but Johnny Packer was a craftsman.

Away from the explosive material but still within the reinforced area the fuses and detonators were packed carefully into their boxes and in a third case were the clocks and pressure mechanisms.

He locked the shed and began walking round to the house. With equipment like that, there wasn’t an explosive device he couldn’t construct, decided Johnny. But when? Six weeks and there’d been nothing. It was a test, Johnny knew. The trade … the real, no-fucking-about trade … had to be sure he’d learned his lesson. Trouble was, the only way to prove that was to do a job. And without help, how the hell was he going to do that?

EIGHT

Charlie had allowed himself three days before the London meeting. The first two had been taken up travelling to England by as confused a route as possible, going by train from Zürich to Lyons, from there to Paris, backtracking to Auxerre and then returning to Paris to catch the night sleeper to Victoria.

The remaining day had been devoted entirely to watching Rupert Willoughby, following him from his house off Sloane Street to his City office, occupying the secluded table at Sweetings during the man’s business lunch, checking his firm to uncover any possible links to dummy or cover companies the names and addresses of which he might have recognised and then, finally, trailing him in his trendy, smoked-glass mini back from the City to Knightsbridge in the evening. Just like old times, reflected Charlie, welcoming the activity.

It would have needed a team of men to have established absolutely that the man was not under deep surveillance, Charlie accepted. And as Edith had warned, now he was completely on his own.

And so he would always be now, he reflected, content with the protection of the rush-hour crowd in the middle of which he spilled from the Bank underground station on the morning of the appointment.

‘So far, so good,’ he assured himself.

‘Yes,’ agreed a commuter beside him. ‘Much better this morning, wasn’t it? Extra trains at London Bridge, you know.’

‘About time,’ answered Charlie. He’d have to control the habit, he decided. It was embarrassing.

The office of the Lloyd’s underwriters of which, from enquiries he’d already made through the Company Register, Charlie knew Willoughby to be the senior partner, was off Leadenhall Street, high in a converted block with a view of the Bank of England.

Willoughby was already standing when Charlie entered the spacious, oak-panelled office. Immediately he came forward, hands held out like that Sunday in the churchyard. Remarkably like his father, decided Charlie. Even more so than he had realised from their initial encounter.

‘At last,’ greeted the underwriter, leading Charlie to a leather, button-backed chair immediately alongside the desk.

‘At last?’

Willoughby smiled at the quickness of the question, looking down at the man. Thinning, strawish hair, perhaps a hint of blood pressure or even alcohol from the slight purpling around the face and nose and a hunched, maybe apprehensive way of sitting. A very ordinary sort of man; the 8 a.m. traveller on every bus and train. Which proved, decided Willoughby, how deceptive appearances could be.

‘I always hoped you would make contact,’ he said. ‘If you could, that was. My father did, too.’

Very direct, assessed Charlie. Almost as if the man had some knowledge of what had happened.

‘I’ve cancelled everything for today,’ said Willoughby. ‘There’ll be no interruptions.’

Charlie remained silent, sitting forward in the chair. How could Willoughby know? It was impossible. Unless he were involved in the pursuit. And if he were involved, then he wouldn’t be so direct, arousing suspicion. It was a circle of doubt, Charlie recognised, without a beginning or an end.

‘So we finally meet,’ said Willoughby again, as if he couldn’t believe it.

‘There was a previous occasion,’ Charlie reminded him. Willoughby had been at Cambridge, Charlie recalled. Sir Archibald had brought him into the Whitehall office on his way for his first visit to the House of Commons. The boy had acne and seemed disappointed nobody carried a gun.

‘I’m sorry,’ apologised Willoughby. ‘I don’t remember meeting you with my father. But he didn’t take me into the office very often.’

‘No,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Do you know,’ continued Willoughby, leaning back in his chair and looking away from Charlie, ‘in the end those bastards Cuthbertson and Wilberforce actually tried to use something as ridiculous as that against him.’

‘What?’ demanded Charlie, very attentive. The continued openness was disconcerting; almost the professional use of honesty that he had employed to gain a person’s confidence.

‘His taking me into the office,’ explained the underwriter. ‘Claimed it was a breach of security.’

Charlie felt the tension recede. It would be wrong to formulate impressions too soon. But perhaps it hadn’t been a mistake to come, after all.

‘It’s the sort of thing they would have done,’ accepted Charlie. And been right, he thought honestly. But Sir Archibald had always made his own rules; that was one of the reasons why he and Charlie had established such a rapport. And why, in the end, Cuthbertson and Wilberforce had manoeuvred his replacement.

‘You realise he committed suicide, don’t you?’ said Willoughby.

Charlie shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. I was away when he died. It was never directly mentioned, but I inferred it was natural causes …’

Charlie paused.

‘Well …’ he started again, but Willoughby talked over him.

‘Cirrhosis of the liver?’ anticipated the man. ‘Yes, that too. They made him into an alcoholic by the way they treated him. And when he realised what had happened to him, he hoarded some barbiturates and took the whole lot with a bottle of whisky.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie began, then stopped, irritated by the emptiness of the expression. But he was sorry, he thought. There were few people to whom he had ever been close. And Sir Archibald had been one of them.

‘There was a note,’ continued Willoughby, appearing unaware of Charlie’s attempt at sympathy. ‘Several, in fact. The one he left for the police put the fear of Christ up everyone. Spelled everything out … not just what shits Cuthbert son and Wilberforce were in the way they got him fired, but the mistakes they had made as well. He did it quite deliberately because he believed that if they weren’t moved, they’d make a major, serious blunder.’

His feelings, remembered Charlie.

‘The department took the whole thing over,’ continued Willoughby. ‘They have the power, apparently, under the Official Secrets Act. Allows them to do practically anything, to protect the national interest. Squashed the inquest, everything. That’s how the natural causes account got spread about.’

Sir Archibald’s death could only have been a matter of weeks before he had exposed their stupidity and got them captured in Vienna by the Russian commandos, Charlie calculated. What, he wondered, had happened to Cuthbertson? Back where he belonged, probably, fighting long forgotten battles over the brandy and cigars at Boodles. Wilberforce would have survived, he guessed. Wilberforce, with his poofy socks and shirts and that daft habit of breaking pipes into little pieces. Always had been a sneaky bugger, even under Sir Archibald’s control. Yes, he would certainly have hung on, shifting all the blame on to Cuthbertson. Would he still be the second-in-command? Or had he finally got the Directorship for which he had schemed for so long? Always an ambitious man: but without the ability to go with it. If he had remained, then the danger of which Sir Archibald had warned still existed.

‘He asked me to tell you the truth, if ever you contacted me,’ said Willoughby.

‘I don’t …’ frowned Charlie.

‘I told you he wrote several letters. To avoid them being seized by the police, he posted them, on the night he killed himself. He really planned it very carefully. The one to me talked about his fears for the department … he felt very strongly about it, after all those years, and didn’t want it destroyed because incapable men had managed to reach positions of power. And another was devoted almost entirely to you.’

‘Oh.’

‘He told me you’d visited him … just before going away to do something about which you were frightened.’

So he’d realised it, thought Charlie. He’d imagined Sir Archibald too drunk that day he had gone down to Rye and sat in the darkened room and felt the sadness lump in his throat at the collapse of the old man.

‘He appreciated it very much … the fact that you regarded him as a friend.’

It was true, reflected Charlie. That was always how he’d thought of the man under whom he had spent all his operational life.

‘He often talked about you when … when he was Director and we were living together, in London. Boasted about you, in fact. Said you were the best operative he had ever created … that there was practically nothing you couldn’t do …’

The man’s forthrightness was not assumed, decided Charlie, unembarrassed at the flattery. Willoughby would have made a mistake by now, had he had to force the effect. ‘There were times when I was almost jealous of you.’ Willoughby added.

‘I don’t think he’d be very proud now,’ said Charlie, regretting the admission as he spoke. Carelessness again.

Willougby raised his hands in a halting movement.

‘I don’t think I should know,’ he said, quickly. He paused, then added bluntly: ‘The guilt was pretty obvious in the cemetery.’

Justified criticism, accepted Charlie. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if the graveyard had been covered that day.

‘I’ve known for a long time they’ve been looking for you,’ announced Willoughby.

Charlie came forward on his seat again and Willoughby tried to reduce the sudden awkwardness by smiling and leaning back in his own chair.

‘You’ve no need to be concerned,’ he said. He dropped the smile, reinforcing the assurance.

‘How?’ asked Charlie. His feet were beneath the chair, ready to take the weight when he jerked up.

‘They remembered the relationship between you and my father,’ recounted Willoughby. ‘I had several visits from their people, about four months after he died …’

‘They would have asked you to have told them, if ever I made contact with you,’ predicted Charlie, the apprehension growing.

‘That’s right,’ agreed Willoughby. ‘They did.’

‘Well?’ Charlie demanded. He’d buggered it, he thought immediately. Edith had been right: he was wrong again.

‘Charlie,’ said Willoughby, coming forward again so that there was less than a yard between them. ‘They reduced my father into a shambling, disgusting old drunk who went to sleep every night puddled in his own urine. And then, effectively, they killed him. I don’t know what you did, but I know it hurt. Is it likely I’m going to turn in someone who did what I’d have given my eye-teeth to have done?’

Charlie was hunched in the chair, still uncertain.

‘It’s been five weeks since your telephone call,’ Willoughby reminded him, realising Charlie’s doubt. He waved his hand towards the window.

‘In five weeks,’ said the underwriter, ‘they would have made plans that guaranteed that once inside this office you’d never be able to get out again. Go on, look out of the window. By now the roads would have been sealed and all the traffic halted.’

Willoughby was right, Charlie realised. He got up, going behind the other man’s chair. Far below, the street was thronged with people and cars.

‘The outer office would have been cleared, too,’ invited the underwriter.

Without replying, Charlie opened the door. The secretary who had greeted him looked up, enquiringly, then smiled.

‘Satisfied?’ asked Willoughby.

Charlie nodded.

‘Tell me something,’ said Willoughby, in sudden curiosity. ‘What would you have done if it had been a trap?’

‘Probably tried to kill you,’ said Charlie. And more than likely failed, he added to himself, remembering his hesitation at personal violence in the cemetery.

Willoughby pulled his lips over his teeth, a nervous gesture.

‘What good would that have done, if you’d been bottled up here?’

‘Kept me alive,’ suggested Charlie. ‘They couldn’t have eliminated me, if I’d committed a public murder.’

Why, wondered Charlie, was he talking like this? It was ridiculous. He waited for the other man to laugh at him.

Willoughby remained blank-faced.

‘And do they want to eliminate you?’

‘I would imagine so.’

Willoughby shook his head in distaste.

‘God, it’s obscene,’ he said.

Charlie frowned. That wasn’t a sincere remark, he judged. The man still thought of it as he had as a boy that day in the office, a sort of game for grown-ups.

‘Consider it,’ Willoughby went on. ‘Two men, sitting here in the middle of London, calmly using words like eliminate instead of planned, premeditated murder.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Sometimes it has to happen. Though not as much as you might think …’

He looked at the other man, to see if he were appreciating the words.

‘… thank God,’ he concluded.

‘That was one thing about the service over which my father could never lose his disgust,’ recalled Willoughby. ‘He talked to me a great deal …’

He smiled over the hesitation. ‘Cuthbertson and Wilberforce would say too much – another breach of security. My father believed very strongly in what he did … the need for such a department. But he was always horrified that people occasionally had to die.’

‘I know,’ said Charlie. The remaining doubts were being swept away by the reminiscence. Willoughby would have had to be very close to his father – as close as he had been to him in the department – to know so well the old man’s feelings.

Willoughby sighed, shedding the past.

‘And now I know about you,’ he said, gravely. ‘Whether I wanted to or not.’

‘Only their possible verdict,’ qualified Charlie. ‘Not the cause.’

‘It must have been serious?’

‘It was.’

For a moment, neither spoke. Then Willoughby said: ‘My father often remarked about your honesty. Considered it unusual, in a business so involved in deceit.’

‘You seem to have the same tendency.’

‘My father preferred it.’

‘Yes,’ remembered Charlie. ‘He did.’

It was strange, thought Charlie, what effect the old man had had upon both of them.

The intercom burped and Willoughby nodded briefly into the receiver, smiling up at Charlie when he replaced the earpiece.

‘From your reaction in the cemetery, I thought you’d prefer lunch here, in the seclusion of the office,’ he said. ‘Now I’m sure you would.’

Charlie detected movement behind him and turned to see two waiters setting up a gatelegged table. There were oysters, duck in aspic, cheese, chablis and port. Underwriters lived well, he thought.

Willoughby waited until they had seated themselves at the table and begun to eat before he spoke again.

‘I must satisfy myself about one thing, Charlie,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Whatever you did … was it illegal?’

Charlie examined the question. There couldn’t be a completely honest answer, he decided.

‘Nothing for which I would appear in any English court of law,’ he said. ‘I was just trying to achieve, although in a different way, the sort of changes that your father believed necessary.’

And survive, he thought.

Willoughby smiled.

‘Then you’ve nothing to fear from me,’ he said. ‘The opposite in fact.’

‘Opposite?’

‘In the letter,’ explained Willougby, ‘the one in which he mentioned you so much, my father said he thought they were trying to do to you what they had done to him. He asked that if the opportunity or necessity arose that I should help you in any way I could.’

Charlie finished the oysters and sat fingering his glass, staring down into the wine he had scarcely touched. Trying to do to him what they’d done to Sir Archibald; certainly the drinking had become bad. He’d never considered suicide, though. And didn’t think he ever would.

‘You’ve already helped,’ he said, ‘by saying nothing.’

‘There was something else,’ continued the underwriter.

‘What?’

‘My father was a very rich man,’ said Willoughby. ‘Even after the setlement of the estate and the payment in full of death duties, there was still over three-quarters of a million pounds. He left you £50,000.’

‘Good God!’

Willoughby laughed openly at the astonishment.

Charlie sat shaking his head. Three years ago, he reflected, he was saving the taxi fares from the Wormwood Scrubs debriefings with Alexei Berenkov by walking in the rain with holes in his shoes. Now he had more money than he knew what to do with. Why then, he wondered, did he feel so bloody miserable?

‘I’ve had it for two years on long-term deposit at fourteen per cent,’ added Willoughby. ‘It’ll have increased by quite a few thousand.’

‘I don’t really need it,’ shrugged Charlie.

‘It’s legally yours,’ said Willoughby.

And fairly his, added Charlie. Better even than the American money. He had more than Edith now. The thought lodged in his mind, to become an idea.

The meal over, Willoughby poured the port and leaned back in his chair.

‘Why did you go to the cemetery, Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Surely, it was a dangerous thing to do?’

Charlie nodded.

‘Absolutely insane,’ he agreed.

Willoughby waited.

‘I’d drunk too much,’ Charlie admitted. ‘It was becoming a habit. And I had intended it to be my last visit to England. So I wanted to make just one visit.’

‘They did watch the grave,’ offered Willoughby.

Charlie’s eyes came up, questioningly.

‘Must have been for almost six months,’ expanded the underwriter. ‘I go there about twice a month … learned to recognise them, in the end. They were quite obvious, even to an amateur like me …’

So he’d been lucky, decided Charlie. Bloody lucky.

‘It wasn’t just drink,’ Charlie tried to explain. ‘I’d always wanted to … just couldn’t take the risk, earlier …’

He stopped, looking at Willoughby in sudden realisation.

‘I came here to guarantee my own safety,’ he said. ‘You know, of course, that I could have compromised you …’

There was no artifice in the gesture of dismissal, assessed Charlie. The underwriter definitely regarded it as a game for adults, he decided. But then, how would any outsider regard it otherwise?

‘My distaste for them, Charlie, is far greater than yours. I loved my father.’ Willoughby spoke without any embarrassment.

‘I think we both did.’

‘Are we going to meet again?’ asked Willoughby.

Charlie sat, considering the question. For two years, he thought, he and Edith had been imprisoned, bound together in a bizarre form of solitary confinement by the knowledge of what he had done, able to trust no one. Being able to talk, comparatively freely, to Willoughby, was like having the dungeon door thrown open.

‘It would hardly be fair to you,’ said Charlie.

‘You know how I feel about that.’

The unexpected inheritance intruded into his mind again, the ill-formed idea hardening. He’d got away from the cemetery. And Willoughby was sincere. He was safe. So now he had to do something to fill the vacuum that had been destroying him. The inheritance and Willoughby’s occupation presented an opportunity from which he couldn’t turn away. It would mean leaving a reserve of money in the Brighton bank, but he’d only agreed to move it because of Edith’s insistence. She’d understand why he’d changed his mind: be glad he’d found something to interest him.

He cleared his throat. Willoughby could always reject it, he decided. And should do, if he had any sense. He was using the other man, Charlie realised. Just as he’d used Günther Bayer for the ambushed crossing. It didn’t lessen the guilt to admit to himself that he was sometimes a shit, Charlie decided.

‘I’m thinking of asking you to do something that might offend you,’ he warned. ‘Professionally, I mean.’

‘What?’

The question was immediate, without the gap that would have indicated reluctance. The man thought he was being invited to play.

‘The money your father left me … the money I don’t really need.’

‘What about it?’

‘Use it for me.’

‘Use it?’

Charlie nodded.

‘Part of the problem, the drinking I mean, was the absolute boredom,’ he confessed. ‘For almost two years, I’ve done nothing. Atrophied, almost. Can’t I invest that money … more, if it’s not enough, through you?’

Willoughby poured himself some more port.

‘There couldn’t be anything in writing,’ he said, thinking aloud.

‘That doesn’t worry me.’

Willoughby looked up, smiling at the trust.

‘A very silent Lloyd’s underwriter,’ he identified. ‘Breaking every rule in the profession.’

‘So I’d be embarrassing you,’ said Charlie.

Willoughby made an uncaring motion with his hand.

‘I can’t see how,’ he said. ‘The money would be in my name … nothing traceable to you … I was executor of my father’s estate, so it can be transferred without any problem.’

Again the underwriter smiled.

‘And it would create the need for us to meet from time to time, wouldn’t it?’ he said presciently.

‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie. He waited several moments, then added: ‘I’m asking you to take a very big risk.’

‘I know,’ said Willoughby.

‘Greater than I’ve really any right to ask, despite the request of your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘It would be right for you to refuse … sensible to do so, in fact,’ advised Charlie.

‘Yes, it would,’ said Willoughby. After a moment’s pause, he added: ‘But we both know I won’t refuse, don’t we?’

Yes, thought Charlie.

The underwriter stood, proffering his hand.

‘This is the only way we’ll have of binding the agreement,’ he said.

‘It’s sufficient for me,’ said Charlie, shaking the offered hand.

‘Underwriting is sometimes dangerous,’ warned Willoughby.

‘Any more dangerous than what I’ve done so far?’

Willoughby laughed at the sarcasm.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I live a normal life and it’s easy to forget.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Charlie, ‘going to the cemetery wasn’t the mistake I believed it might be.’

‘No,’ reflected Willoughby. ‘I don’t think it was.’

The ambassador turned away from the window and its view of the Moscow skyline, smeared grey by the sleeting rain. Next week, when it snowed, Moscow would look beautiful again, he thought.

Idly, Sir Robert picked up the inventory that had arrived that morning from the Hermitage in Leningrad, comparing it to the list from the Moscow Armoury. The Russians were making available far less of the regalia than he had expected from the agreement he had signed with the Minister of Culture, he saw. Still, at least they were letting some out. He supposed he should be grateful for that.

In London, a man whose hatred of Charlie Muffin was absolute sat in an office adjoining that of George Wilberforce, carefully examining the files obtained through the combined but unsuspecting channels of the Special Branch, Scotland Yard records, the Inland Revenue and the Bank of England and Clearing Houses security sections. A vivid scar disfigured the left side of his face and as he worked his fingers kept straying to it, an habitual movement.

Tonight he was concentrating upon the Special Branch and Scotland Yard dossiers and after two hours one folder remained for detailed consideration on the left of the desk.

‘John Packer,’ he identified, slowly, opening the cover.

He read for a further hour, then pushed it away.

‘From now on,’ he said, staring down at the official police photographs, ‘it’s the big time for you, John Packer …’

He paused.

‘… for a while, anyway,’ he added.

NINE

Edith looked away from the view from the Baur au Lac balcony, coming back to her husband. It had been a long time, she thought, since she had see him as relaxed and as happy as this. Almost two years, in fact. She’d never know him completely, she accepted. He was a strange man.

‘You’re fun again, Charlie,’ she said gratefully.

He responded seriously to the remark.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s been ages,’ she said.

‘It’ll be better now,’ he promised.

‘It’s a lot of money,’ she protested cautiously, reverting to the conversation in which they’d been engaged throughout the dinner.

‘Two hundred thousand, added to what Sir Archibald left me,’ recounted Charlie. ‘Still less than half of what I’ve got. And that’s not an unusual amount for underwriters to deposit To be admitted simply as a member of Lloyd’s needs assets of £75,000.’

He saw it as even greater independence from her money, she realised. Not moving the remainder from the Brighton bank worried her.

‘You’re not a normal underwriter. I’m amazed the man agreed.’

‘So am I,’ admitted Charlie. ‘He shouldn’t have done.’

‘You’re quite sure it’s safe?’ she asked, a frequent question since he had returned from London three weeks earlier.

Charlie sighed patiently.

‘I’ve checked the firm thoroughly,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s no trace with any of the standby companies the department use for links with outside businesses. And for three days after I made the arrangement with Rupert Willoughby I watched him, from morning to night. There was no contact whatsoever.’

‘You still can’t be one hundred per cent sure.’

‘Ninety-nine is good enough.’

‘It used not to be.’

Charlie frowned at her concern.

‘Edith,’ he lectured her, ‘it’s now over six weeks since the cemetery … almost a month since I went to London, by an appointment they would have known about had he been in any way connected with them. And here we are having a pleasant dinner in one of the best restaurants in Zürich. If Rupert Willoughby weren’t genuine, then I wouldn’t be alive. We both know that.’

She nodded, in reluctant agreement. His involvement with Willoughby would provide the interest he had lacked, she decided. And it was wonderful to see him laugh again.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said.

‘I always have been.’

That was another thing that had been absent for too long, Charlie’s confidence. It had been one of the first things to attract her, she remembered. It had been at a party at the Paris embassy, where Charlie had been on secondment and she had been the guest of the ambassador. The diplomat had apologised for Charlie afterwards, she recalled. Described him as an upstart. When she’d told Charlie, he’d nodded quite seriously and said ‘bloody right’: and two weeks later established that the ambassador’s mistress had links with Soviet intelligence.

‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Charlie.

‘Just thinking,’ said Edith.

‘What about?’

‘You.’

He smiled back at her.

‘It’s going to be all right, Edith,’ he promised.

‘Tell me something, Charlie,’ she said, leaning over the table to enforce the question. ‘Honestly, I mean.’

‘What?’

‘You regret it, don’t you?’

He took his time over the answer.

‘Some things,’ he admitted. ‘People died, which is always wrong. But I’m not sorry I exposed Cuthbertson and his band of idiots.’

He stopped, smiling sadly.

‘I tried to do it and Sir Archibald tried to do it,’ he recalled. ‘And I wouldn’t mind betting that people like Wilberforce have still clung on. Bureaucracy is a comfort blanket to people like that.’

‘The killing wasn’t your fault,’ she said.

‘Some was,’ he insisted. Günther Bayer had had a fiancée in West Berlin, he remembered. Gretel. She’d been preparing a celebration dinner on the night of the crossing and Günther had wanted him to go.

‘Not all.’

‘But for me, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘No one would be feeling regrets if you’d died,’ she said. ‘And God knows, they tried hard enough.’

‘Only you,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘I’d still be regretting it.’

Did Charlie have the love for her that she felt for him? wondered Edith. She wished he’d tell her so, more often.

‘And the money was a mistake,’ he conceded. ‘It was necessary, to make the Kalenin crossing seem absolutely genuine. But to take it was wrong …’

Because it put a price on his betrayal, decided Edith. Money – his lack of it and her inheritance – had always been a problem for Charlie. He’d accepted the house beyond that which he could have afforded on his Grade IV salary. And the furnishing. But he had always adamantly refused any for his personal needs, keeping shoes until they were worn through and suits until they were shiny at the seat and elbows. He’d actually tried to change, in the early months after the Kalenin affair. He’d bought Yves St Laurent and Gucci and looked as comfortable as Cinderella at five minutes to midnight. The seat and elbows weren’t shiny, but the suit still came from a department store. And the shoes were still Hush Puppies, even though they weren’t down at heel any more. Charlie would always be the sort of person to wear a string vest with a see-through shirt, she thought fondly.

‘Let’s stop living in the past,’ she said.

He nodded, brightening.

‘Right,’ he accepted. ‘At last we’ve got something to consider in the future … I’m going into high finance, Edith.’

She laughed with him, trying to match his enthusiasm. Please God, she thought, make it last. She hadn’t liked Charlie Muffin very much in the last two years.

‘John Packer?’

The safebreaker looked up from his drink, gazing steadily at the man standing at the other side of the table.

‘Yes,’ continued the man, as if satisfying some private question. ‘You’re John Packer.’

Packer sat back, waiting. The man pulled out a chair and sat down, smiling. Smart, decided Packer. But not flash. Good voice; air of breeding, too, so he could make everyone else feel a turd. Confidence trickster, maybe. Nasty scar on his face. Perhaps a job had gone wrong.

‘What do you want?’ asked Packer.

‘Want?’ echoed the man, as if it were an amusing demand. ‘I want to put you into the major league, John Packer.’

TEN

George Wilberforce sat easily at his desk, moving a pipe between his long fingers, letting everyone else settle in the Whitehall office. They’d all come to him, he thought. And that was how it was going to be, until the end of the operation. He was going to be in command.

‘We’re ready to move against Charlie Muffin,’ he announced. ‘Tonight.’

‘Still think it’s a waste of time,’ said Ruttgers defiantly.

‘Not if it makes Charlie Muffin suffer.’

Everyone turned to the speaker, one of the two men whom Wilberforce had accepted for the final planning session. It had taken almost a year for Brian Snare to recover physically from his Moscow imprisonment, Wilberforce remembered. He looked at the man. Perhaps, in other ways, he never would. Snare’s hand had gone automatically to the jagged, star-shaped scar where the skin had burst, rather than been cut, on the left side of his face. A warder’s boot in Lubyanka had caused that, Wilberforce knew. But at least he was still alive. Douglas Harrison had been shot down by East German Grenzschutztruppen.

Wilberforce moved to speak, then paused, halted by a sudden thought It had been Snare and Harrison, following Cuthbertson’s instructions, who had actually set Charlie Muffin up for sacrifice in East Berlin. And Charlie’s retribution had been planned as carefully as that which he himself was now evolving to destroy the man, decided Wilberforcft. In many ways, he thought, he and Charlie were very similar. He was just a little cleverer, determined the Director. As he was going to prove.

‘It would be a mistake to let personal feelings overly affect our judgment on this,’ warned the other newcomer. William Braley had been the C.I.A.’ Resident in the American embassy in Moscow specially appointed to work with Charlie on the last stages of Kalenin’s supposed crossing. Few people knew Charlie better, which was why Braley was being included in the discussion.

Reminded of the association, Wilberforce said: ‘Do you think there’s any undue risk in what has been proposed?’

The man squinted nervously at the direct question. Braley was a man fattened by a glandular malfunction and given to asthma in moments of tension. Predictably, his breathing became jerky and he wondered if he would be able to use his inhaler.

‘There’s always a danger with Charlie Muffin,’ he pointed out. ‘We should never forget that.’

‘But can he react any other way than that which we expect?’

Again Braley delayed replying, feeling his chest tighten further.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve thought about it, putting myself in his place. And I don’t think he can.’

Wilberforce smiled, turning to the others in the room, patting as he did so the thick file that lay before him on the desk.

‘You’ve all read the dossier,’ he said. ‘There hasn’t been a moment since we picked him up at the cemetery when Charlie Muffin has not been under detailed surveillance. There’s not a thing we don’t know about him. And we’ve planned against every eventuality.’

‘He seems to have found a friend in Rupert Willoughby,’ remarked Cuthbertson.

‘For the moment, that doesn’t affect what we are going to do,’ said Wilberforce. But it might, later on, he thought, remembering the report of the Russian exhibition. He was beginning to enjoy the idea of Charlie Muffin dancing in whatever direction he dictated; and if tonight went as he expected, that was all the man would be able to do from now on – perform as ordered.

‘So we go ahead?’ demanded Snare anxiously.

Wilberforce came back to the man who was going to be most dangerously involved in manipulating Charlie Muffin. He seemed desperate for them to agree, thought the Director. Which was out of character, for what he was being expected to do. But then, he’d suffered probably more than any of them. So his need for revenge was stronger.

‘Well?’ queried Wilberforce, taking the question to the Americans. He still had to give them the impression of consultation, he thought, even if it were really he who was making the decisions.

‘You’re still sure that what you propose will bring Charlie Muffin back to England?’ said Onslow Smith.

‘He won’t be able to do anything else.’

‘What if you’re wrong?’ said Ruttgers.

It was time, realised the British Director, to make concessions. Hardly a concession; if Charlie didn’t respond as he expected, then it would have to be done anyway, despite the risk of any incriminating documents Charlie might have prepared.

‘If Charlie Muffin isn’t back in Brighton within three days,’ said Wilberforce, ‘then I agree he should be immediately killed.’

He smiled, deciding to extend the offer.

‘Why not send an assassination squad to Switzerland, just in case?’ he suggested. ‘That way there would be absolutely no risk.’

Onslow Smith shrugged, an almost embarrassed gesture.

‘We already have,’ he admitted.

‘And I’m going there tonight,’ added Ruttgers, smiling to expose his yellow teeth.

Wilberforce frowned. Ruttgers was determined to be present when it happened, he thought. And the unexpected independence of Onslow was irritating.

‘So we go ahead,’ he announced.

ELEVEN

A professional, judged Johnny Packer. A bloody good professional, too. The knowledge tightened inside him, a comforting feeling. Which meant he was regarded in the same way. So this was going to be proof. No one would doubt him, after this.

‘Drill.’

Johnny looked up at the order. The other man was breathing heavily through the exertion of crawling along the confined space and the jagged, star-shaped scar on the left side of his face had reddened into an ugly blotch. Appearing suddenly aware of the disfigurement, he put his hand up, covering it. He often made the gesture, Johnny realised. When they’d got to know each other better, he’d have to ask him how it had happened. They would become friends in time, he hoped. Proper friends.

Johnny passed the tool along the narrow air conditioning duct to the other man, wondering what his real name was. If he hadn’t been such an obvious expert, Johnny would have sniggered at the man’s insistence on Brown. But he hadn’t. It wouldn’t have been right. He wasn’t the sort of person you laughed at. Or with, even. If he wanted to play around with names, that was all right with Johnny. Another indication of how good he was, really; neither knew the other, so there couldn’t be any risk of grassing if one were caught. Not quite true, corrected the safebreaker. The other man knew his name. And his record. And that he’d only been out for four months. The knowledge didn’t disturb Johnny. He regarded it as another indication of professionalism.

The drill, rubber-cushioned, began eating into the ducting at the spot the other man had selected, working from a set of draughtsman’s plans. Johnny leaned against the cold metal, experiencing another surge of admiration. Plans not just of the adjoining buildings and central heating and air conditioning systems, but every alarm installation in the place. And all the tools they were likely to need, brand new and bought with cash, one at each town along the south coast in an undetectable preparation that had taken over a week. They’d spent at least £4,000, guessed Johnny. He’d even queried the figure.

The man had smiled and said: ‘You’ve got to speculate to accumulate,’ and made it sound original.

Bloody professional.

‘Cutters.’

The snips went along the narrow passageway and Snare enlarged the hole, then drilled into the mortar. Johnny started back at the sudden eruption of dust, lacking the protection of the face mask that Snare had put on.

‘Vacuum.’

The more subdued whine of the cleaner came as a relief after the harsher bite of the drill.

‘There!’

Johnny strained forward, narrowing his eyes at the brightness of the extension lamp which Snare had erected over the hole he had begun to mark. The blue and green wires of the alarm system embedded into the concrete stood out like veins in an old man’s hand.

Snare reached back and Johnny gave him the bypass leads. Snare clamped them at either end of the exposed alarms, scraping his way through the plastic covering with a surgeon’s scalpel, then cut through the middle of the wire. They had made long connections, maybe five feet, giving themselves room for a big entry hole. Snare taped the surplus wire against the metal sides of the ducting so there would be no risk of dislodging it, and then began drilling again, enlarging the hole.

It took almost an hour, with two stops to vacuum away the debris before Snare stopped.

‘Enough,’ he announced. He turned, gesturing Johnny back. Dutifully, the safebreaker turned and crawled along the shaft until he reached their carefully reinforced entry point, then dropped down into the basement of the building adjoining the bank in Brighton’s North Street.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked worriedly, as the other man dropped through immediately behind him.

‘Coffee break,’ announced Snare.

He went to one of the four haversacks they’d brought in, took out a Thermos and poured the drinks. His hands were shaking, Johnny realised, embarrassed, as he cupped the plastic beaker to his lips. And the heat of the drink was making the surgical gloves he wore wet and sticky.

‘We’re thirty minutes ahead of schedule,’ he said.

‘You mustn’t worry about time.’

Johnny smiled, knowing the other man had seen his nervousness.

‘It’s not yet midnight. Tomorrow’s Sunday, so you’ve got all the time in the world,’ the man assured him.

Johnny nodded.

‘Shan’t need it,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘Couple of hours and there won’t be a lock still in place.’

Snare smiled tolerantly, hand up to his scarred face. It wasn’t proving as difficult as he had feared, he decided, feeling the well-concealed apprehension ebbing away. He found a strange comfort in having so many plans to work from: it was always easier, having properly prepared diagrams to follow.

‘Just don’t worry,’ he advised the other man.

It was ten minutes before they went back into the air conditioning system and this time Johnny led, hauling the light with him. There was a hole about three feet in diameter cut into the bank wall. Careful to avoid the clamped arms, Johnny eased through, wedging the light on top of a filing cabinet.

‘Storeroom,’ Snare identified it, a fresh set of plans in his hand now. He felt out for a switch and the neon light flickered into life. Filing cabinets lined the walls and in one corner files were heaped, one on top of the other.

They went out of the room, Johnny still in front.

‘Manager’s office first,’ instructed Snare.

The door at the top of the steps was secured from the far side, but by squinting through Johnny saw the key was still in the lock.

‘Easy,’ he smiled, looking for some reaction. Snare gazed back, unimpressed.

From the attaché case, new like everything else, Johnny took the long-spined dentist’s pliers, poked through to grip the key shank and unlocked the door.

On the main floor of the bank they relied upon shielded torches, moving slowly between furniture towards the office which Snare had designated. That, too, was locked and this time the key was missing. Johnny smeared thick grease on to a sliver of plastic, pushed it into the lock and then gently twisted, as if it were a key. He withdrew it and the tumbler edges were imprinted clearly into the grease. He lay the coated plastic along a matching piece of metal, plugged a dentist’s electric drill into a table lamp socket and within five minutes had cut the basic shape of the key from the impression he had made. It took a further ten minutes to file away the mistakes and open the door. As he moved to do so, Snare touched his shoulder, pushing the light around the surround. The alarm breaker was near the top of the jamb. They used another bypass, magnetised this time, putting wedges either side of the door so that it wouldn’t swing and pull the wire free.

‘The first safe,’ said Snare.

‘Standard Chubb.’

‘Difficult?’

‘Course it’s difficult’

‘But not impossible?’

‘Not impossible,’ said Johnny.

He worked with a stethoscope, hearing the tumblers into place. Twice, in his nervousness, he over-adjusted, missing the combination.

‘What about the key?’ asked Snare, reaching out to the second lock.

‘Drill it out,’ decided Johnny. ‘Can’t work the same trick as with the door.’

He used the dentist’s drill again, first driving out the rivets and securing screws and then, when there was sufficient looseness in the lock to pull it back, revealing the securing arm, inserted the blade of the electric saw and cut through it.

Johnny pulled the door back and then stood away, for Snare to get to it. Files and documents were neatly stacked on the shelves and at the bottom there was a small cash box.

Snare worked through the documents in complete concentration. Anything he didn’t want he replaced tidily within the file and then put the file back upon the shelf from which he’d removed it.

‘Ah!’

Snare turned, smiling.

‘Here it is.’

The man moved away from the safe with a sheaf of papers.

‘What about the cash box?’

Snare turned to the safebreaker, the pain etched into his face.

‘Let’s leave them their tea money, shall we?’

Johnny trailed the man from the office, face burning with regret at his first mistake. At Snare’s insistence, he relocked the manager’s door, then went back down the stairs, turning off at the first landing towards the barred safety deposit room.

The opening was like a huge safe door, set into metal barriers within the protection of the wall. Johnny felt another jump of excitement. He’d done one before, he recognised. So it wouldn’t be difficult; he’d pass the test.

He used the stethoscope again, more controlled this time, so he didn’t over-adjust the combination control. After the third tumbler, he allowed himself the conceit, counting aloud as each combination clicked home.

‘No alarms,’ declared Snare, bent over another blueprint.

The man hadn’t noticed the expertise, realised Johnny, annoyed. Irritably he pulled open the entrance to the vault.

The gates that formed the secondary barrier were ceiling to floor, protected by a wire alarm system and then by an electrified beam which triggered a signal when it was broken by any interruption between the ‘eyes’. Snare bypassed the first as he had the other wired precautions, then placed immediately in front of the door two wire cages used in hospitals to keep the pressure of bedclothes off patients suffering from broken limbs. Securing holes had been bored in the frames and he quickly bolted them to the floor. The beam played unbroken beneath the cages. To get into the deposit room, they would have to step over but even if their feet hit the protection, the bolts prevented it sliding into the beam.

Johnny stooped before the lock, then shook his head.

‘Have to blow it.’

Snare nodded, accepting the judgment.

From the attaché case, Johnny took his favourite, the P-4 plastic and a detonator, pressing it around the lock. Briefly in command now, he sent Snare to an office to get cushions and these he wired around the explosives, legs straddling the invalid hoops.

The explosion, decided Johnny, made up for the mistake over the petty cash box. He’d wedged the door, in case it swung too hard against the cages, but so well had he primed it that the caution wasn’t necessary. The lock blew with a muffled, crackling sound, hardly displacing the cushions.

‘Very good,’ Snare praised him. The department’s detailed training in use and construction of explosive devices would have been more than sufficient, decided Snare. But then, the real purpose of Packer’s involvement came later.

Johnny smiled, grateful for the remark.

Inside the safety deposit room, Johnny worked again from impressions, operating to Snare’s quiet instructions from the list of box holders. They took only cash and jewellery. Documents were replaced and then the boxes locked again. Snare stood in the middle of the room, packing the cash into stiff-sided cases and the jewellery into a leather hold-all.

‘What do you reckon?’ demanded Johnny, unable to control the excited question. ‘How much?’

The other man looked at him, as if he found the query curious.

‘Maybe a million,’ he said, casually.

It wasn’t normal, thought Johnny, for someone to be as calm as this bugger was.

They worked for another hour, the only conversation Snare’s commands to the other man. Suddenly, Snare said: ‘Try 216.’

It took Johnny fifteen minutes to get the key right. He moved the lock, tugging at the deep metal tray as he did so and then stopped in amazement.

‘Jesus!’ he said softly.

Snare made no response, calmly reaching over his shoulder and extracting the dollars, banded together in tight bricks. He abandoned the suitcases, counting the money out on a small table in the corner of the room.

‘Two hundred thousand,’ he announced. ‘And some insurance policies.’

Christ, he was cool, admired Johnny. Still not showing the slightest excitement. His own stomach was in turmoil and he knew he’d have diarrhoea in the morning.

Snare packed the money into a hold-all he kept separate from the containers in which he’d stored the rest of the property.

‘What about the policies?’ asked Johnny.

The other man hesitated, then laughed.

‘Leave the policies,’ he said. ‘The bastard is going to need all the insurance he can get’

There were no incriminating documents anywhere: Charlie Muffin had been too conceited. Always had been. So now there wasn’t a thing he could do to prevent his own destruction.

Johnny frowned.

‘You know him, then?’

Again the hand came up to the disfigurement.

‘Oh yes,’ said the man. ‘I know him.’

It had been worth it, decided Snare. Every gut-churning minute had been worth it.

The Aeroflot freight carrier touched down precisely on schedule and taxied to the north side of London airport, where maximum security could be guaranteed. Ignoring the rain, the diplomats from the Russian embassy insisted on standing next to the ramp, ticking the numbered boxes against the manifest as they were unloaded on to the ground and then into armoured cars.

‘These sort of jobs frighten the piss out of me,’ said a Special Branch inspector, huddled in the doorway for protection.

His sergeant looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s only jewellery,’ he said. ‘And copies at that.’

‘Fabergé copies,’ corrected the inspector. ‘Lose sight of one piece of this and our feet won’t touch the bloody ground.’

TWELVE

Because two film actors and an M.P. were named among the victims, a single-column story on the bank robbery was even carried in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, where Charlie read it first.

From the international news-stand in the foyer of the Dolder Hotel, he managed to buy that day’s Daily Telegraph and The Times. Both led their front pages with it; the Telegraph even had a diagram, showing the thieves’ entry. The work of complete professionals, a police spokesman was quoted as saying. Until all the safe deposit box-holders were contacted, no positive assessment could be made of the value.

‘The bastards,’ said Charlie. ‘The cunning bastards.’

He paused on the Kurhausstrasse outside the hotel. He was trapped, he recognised objectively. In a way he’d never foreseen. He prolonged the hesitation, then made his way to a pavement café to consider it fully before going home to Edith. She’d panic, he knew. Especially so soon after the cemetery business. And panic was the last thing he could afford. Not any more. So what could he afford? Very little.

‘Charlie,’ he said. ‘You’ve made a balls of it, like everything else. And now they’ve got you.’

The waiter who had served his coffee turned enquiringly and Charlie shook his head.

The involvement of the civil police – and the restrictions it would impose upon him – had been the one thing he had never envisaged, he realised. The one simple, obvious thing that took away his freedom to react in anything but a predictable way. So who was it? Wilberforce? He was devious enough. Or just bad luck, the chance-in-a-million he could never insure against? And why this way? To let him know he’d been found, and then watch him scrabbling for escape, like an animal in a trap of which they had the key? More than that, he decided. What then? He didn’t know. He’d need more clues. And they’d be sure to prevent that.

‘Never run,’ he reminded himself. ‘Basic rule never to run.’

He put some francs on the table and began walking back to Edith. He went directly to the apartment, making no effort to evade any possible surveillance. If they knew enough to have learned about the Brighton bank account, they would know about his Zürich home.

Edith looked up, smiling, as he entered. The expression faltered when she saw Charlie’s face.

‘What is it?’

‘The Brighton bank has been robbed,’ he reported. ‘The safe deposit room.’

The fear was immediate. She rose up, without thought, then remained standing in the lounge like a rabbit caught in a poacher’s torch, not knowing which way to flee.

‘So it’s all over,’ she said, very softly.

‘It could just be coincidence,’ he tried, hopefully.

‘Don’t be damned stupid,’ she said. ‘You can’t believe that.’

She moved at last, going towards the bedroom.

‘What are you doing?’

She stopped at the question.

‘I’m going to pack, of course.’

‘What for, Edith?’ he said. He spoke calmly, trying to reduce her apprehension.

She sniggered, control slipping again.

‘To get out … run … what else?’

‘We can’t run anywhere, Edith.’

She turned fully, to face him.

‘What do you mean, we can’t go anywhere?’

‘Just that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m not being. I’ve got to go back to Brighton, today.’

‘Charlie! For God’s sake!’

He went forward, taking both her hands in his. Fear was vibrating through her. Poor Edith, he thought, studying her. Poor frightened, abused, trusting, faithful Edith. She’d suffered a great deal because of him, Charlie realised. And never once complained, not even during their most bitter rows. The evidence wasn’t overly visible, not physically. Her body was still firm enough to be exciting; the figure of a woman ten years younger, he often assured her. And meant it, quite sincerely. It was in her face that the anxiety had settled, defying the efforts of successive and increasingly more expensive beauticians, lining the pale blue eyes and around her mouth and furrowing the forehead that had once been so smooth and unworried. It would have shown in the greyness of her hair, too, if she hadn’t constantly had it disguised during those weekly visits to the beauty salons.

‘Edith,’ he said, his voice even and deepened by the sadness. ‘The one thing we could never sustain is any detailed investigation by a civilian police force …’

‘But …’

‘Listen to me, Edith. There’s been a robbery estimated at upwards of a million pounds. What would happen if I don’t go back, the one box-holder they can’t locate? I’ll be the prime suspect, the man who rented the facility to obtain access to the deposit room, to plan the robbery.’

‘But it’s an assumed name,’ protested Edith, desperately.

‘Which would unquestionably establish the guilt,’ he insisted. ‘A box-holder who fails to turn up and is then discovered to have taken out the rental under a phoney name …’

He paused, waiting for the acceptance to register. Her face remained blank.

‘… an assumed name,’ he resumed. ‘That we are currently using on the passports legitimately obtained on forged birth certificates. It would be normal police routine to check for passports, if I don’t show up. From the application forms, they would get our pictures …’

She went to speak again, but he raised his fingers to her lips, stopping her.

‘I know we’ve got other passports, in your vault here. But the photographs are the one thing we can’t alter. If I don’t return to Brighton, our pictures will be circulated by Interpol distribution within forty-eight hours and there won’t be a passport control through which we could pass without identification …’

She sagged, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

‘Oh, God,’ she said. The lines on her face seemed to deepen.

He led her back to the chair, sitting her down.

‘I’m taking no risks, going to the police,’ he attempted to reassure her. ‘I’m not wanted for anything … not by them, anyway…’

She shook her head.

‘I’m confused, Charlie.’

To a degree, so was he, he thought. How soon would he be able to understand completely what was happening?

‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘All I have to do is return to Brighton and answer whatever questions the police will want to ask.’

‘But the money …’

‘… will be gone,’ he cut in. He hoped, he thought. If it had been left, it would need some explanation.

‘So all I have to do is name the insurance policies, admit to a small sum they will expect me to have had lodged there and that’ll be the end of it …’

The dullness had gone from her face, he saw.

‘You’re forgetting something, Charlie,’ she accused him. ‘Or perhaps trying to make me forget something.’

‘What?’

‘That would be all right if we thought the robbery were a coincidence …’

‘We can’t be sure …’

‘If we thought it were a coincidence,’ she repeated, refusing the interruption. ‘And we both know it isn’t. We both know that you’ve been found, Charlie. Not just found, either. They’ve discovered everything about you, Charlie – everything – we’re not discussing the end of anything. We’re talking about the beginning.’

‘There’s no proof of that. Not yet.’

‘Do you need proof, for heaven’s sake?’

‘I certainly need more than we’ve got so far before I abandon something it’s taken us so long to establish.’

She shook her head.

‘You’re walking right back to them, Charlie … right back to where they can do whatever they like.’

She was right, Charlie accepted. And too intelligent to be persuaded otherwise. And there was not a thing he could do about it. Not a bloody thing. Bastards.

‘The problem is, darling,’ he said, feeling the first surges of real fear, ‘that I’ve got no choice. At least this way I gain time to fight back.’

‘Fight back!’

She spat the words out, face twisted in disgust. She was very frightened, Charlie accepted.

‘Stop it, Charlie,’ she demanded. ‘Stop all this rubbish about fighting back and survival. Do you realise what you’re facing this time?’

‘Edith,’ he said, avoiding the question, ‘we both knew, no matter how much we tried to avoid admitting it, that it could happen, one day.’

Her anger died as quickly as it had erupted.

‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said, ‘I’m so frightened.’

‘I’ll find a way out,’ he promised.

It had been a fatuous thing to say, he realised, seeing the look on her face.

Charlie caught the evening flight to London. He travelled with only hand baggage and was one of the first Swissair passengers through passport control. It was 7.15 p.m.

At 7.35, George Wilberforce received a telephone call at his London flat, confirming the arrival for which he had been alerted by the earlier message from Zürich. He began to hum in time with the stereo and then smiled, in recognition. Delius. He’d played that the night he’d first located Charlie Muffin. And now he’d trapped him. He’d enjoy the satisfaction of the following day’s meeting with the Americans, he decided.

Onslow Smith was waiting at the Albemarle Street hotel in which they were both staying when Ruttgers returned from Zürich.

‘Everything according to plan?’ he greeted the ex-Director.

Ruttgers frowned at the assessment.

‘No,’ he disagreed. ‘He’s still alive.’