Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

11

The table in the dressing room was set with a damask cloth and laid with glasses, ice bucket, bottles and water jug. It was within reaching distance of the chaise longue upon which Lady Billington lay, goblet in hand. ‘Pell and Mell didn’t like it,’ she said.

‘What?’ said Charlie.

‘The cats. They spend all their time with me. They’re locked up with Jane and they don’t like it.’

Charlie didn’t imagine that Jane Williams would like it much either. He carried his drink to the bureau. He knelt before it, released the securing bolt and eased sideways the left-hand pedestal leg. The face of the floor-mounted safe was about two feet in diameter, the combination dial snug in the centre.

‘Hector used to suffer from allergies,’ said Lady Billington. ‘Took a course of injections for it once.’

‘I tried,’ said Charlie. ‘It didn’t work. Have I your permission to open the safe?’

‘Do you need it?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Go ahead.’

Charlie huddled over the insurance guide to the safe combination, turning the numerals into position. At the final click he didn’t lift the lid at once, but felt carefully beneath. ‘There isn’t a breaker alarm,’ he said.

Lady Billington was leaning forwards towards the table. ‘Should there be?’

‘It’s not listed,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But I would have expected one.’

‘Better ask Hector,’ she said. ‘How’s your drink?’

‘Fine, thank you.’

Charlie lifted the covering upon a miniature cavern carved out below. The cleverness of the concealment denied the normal facilities of shelves and the boxes were stacked one on top of the other. Charlie lifted them out, first to the mouth of the safe and then across the room to arrange before Lady Billington. Automatically he separated the newer-looking containers from the old. Seeing the division she said, ‘There’s a lot of heirlooms.’

‘I’ve read the policy,’ said Charlie.

‘Don’t wear the old stuff much,’ she confessed. ‘Most of it is too big. I feel like a shire horse decorated for the country fair.’

‘It’s an awful lot of brass,’ said Charlie, flattening the noun for the north-country meaning. She laughed.

It was a dazzling kaleidoscope of wealth, the red of rubies and iced white of diamonds, the dull white of pearls and the greens and blues of emeralds and sapphires. Briefly he was reminded of the bridge lights over the Thames on those stumbling nights towards Battersea.

‘Better have a drink before we start,’ suggested Lady Billington.

‘Why not?’ said Charlie. It didn’t seem he was alone in drinking when he was bored. Her appearance wasn’t affected yet; perhaps it had only just started.

‘Will I have to do this every year?’ The hiss was more obvious when she spoke.

‘Probably,’ said Charlie.

‘How do you want to do it?’

‘As it comes, I suppose.’

‘Cheers,’ she said.

‘Cheers.’

Charlie might once have argued it impossible for it to be tedious physically to handle one and a half million pounds’ worth of jewellery, but it was. He had to locate on his list whatever Lady Billington produced to compare with the accompanying photograph and description, check the setting and stone content and then restore it to the safe to avoid confusion with what remained. Quickly all awareness of what he was touching disappeared. Cosmetic surgeons doing breast operations probably felt the same way.

Lady Billington treated the business with the same casual detachment. After an hour she said, ‘When Hector said this was legally necessary I thought it was a good idea. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘It’s best to be careful,’ said Charlie. She stretched her legs out along the chaise longue, so he eased himself onto the dressing-table stool, flexing the cramp from his legs. Pieces of fluff from the carpet speckled his trousers.

‘Quite frankly I couldn’t give a damn,’ she said. ‘Surprised?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

‘Right that you should be,’ she said. ‘Just as I should be surprised at the poor little rich girl feeling.’

The confessional of gin, thought Charlie. It was tenuous but Charlie decided there was a similarity between this woman and the one he had left in bed at the hotel. Lady Billington sought her escape in a bottle and Clarissa in bed. He felt a twitch of anger towards both of them.

Lady Billington stirred a box with her feet; a rope of pearls, Charlie knew.

‘Know what I think sometimes when I’m putting these things on?’

‘What?’

‘How many empty bellies they could fill.’

She was draining bottles and putting messages inside, he thought. ‘Why don’t you give them away then? Save this sort of thing every year.’

She smiled wearily. ‘All the old stuff is in family trust anyway,’ she said. ‘And there is already a charity established: something to do with bringing Africans to England to train them to be agronomists. My father set it up.’

‘Aren’t there organizations you could become involved with?’

‘International committees flying first class to New York or Geneva and eating six-course banquets and agreeing how beastly it is for people to starve.’

He’d been wrong about Lady Billington. She was a woman brim full of sadness. ‘It’s an uneven world,’ agreed Charlie.

‘That’s trite,’ she said.

‘But true.’

Lady Billington added unsteadily to her glass, spilling some onto the cloth so that a damp grey stain spread across it. ‘“From each according to his abilities… to each according to his needs,”’ she quoted indistinctly.

‘Is that the Karl Marx original or the Oxford Book of Quotations ?’

‘Political science. Girton. A poor Second.’

Charlie indicated the boxes and then spread his hands to include the villa. ‘Do you need all this?’

‘Truth is I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘Couldn’t give a damn about the jewellery. But I don’t think I want to get rid of everything…’ She smiled wearily again. ‘Am I making sense?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘I shouldn’t drink so much.’

‘It’s an easy habit to get into,’ said Charlie with feeling. ‘Shouldn’t we get on?’

‘How’s your drink?’

‘All right, thank you.’

‘Don’t suppose I should,’ she said reluctantly.

It took a further hour to complete the jewellery inventory. They finished with Lady Billington’s engagement ring, which was the only piece she hadn’t returned to the safe in preparation for his visit.

‘One for the road,’ she insisted.

‘A small one.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve got bits all over your clothes.’

Charlie made an ineffective attempt to sweep away the carpet debris. Lady Billington gazed vaguely around the dressing room. ‘Suppose there should be a brush somewhere.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Do you need to see my husband for anything?’ she said. ‘If you do, it’ll have to be at the embassy.’

Charlie shook his head in instant rejection. ‘No,’ he said. The whole business had been remarkably straightforward. How easy would it be to persuade Willoughby to employ him more regularly? The idea settled and he decided it was a good one: anything was better than the state into which he had been crumbling. Charlie’s mind blocked at the thought. What about Clarissa?

They left through the ambassador’s bedroom and Lady Billington stopped near the oar-blade display. ‘Have you seen these?’ she said, the pride obvious.

Charlie went alongside her. Lady Billington’s finger traced a line along the photographs of her husband in the university rowing team. ‘He was almost chosen for the Olympics,’ she said.

Although he’d looked at them before, Charlie politely studied the pictures again. All assured, confident, good-looking young men, their places in life guaranteed by name and influence. Lucky buggers.

They left the bedroom and Lady Billington walked with him down the marbled staircase and along the corridor to the door. ‘Forgive the maudlin,’ she said.

‘Thanks for the drink.’

‘Drive carefully.’

‘Don’t worry.’

Charlie was an intuitive man, reacting to feelings and to impressions. And the feeling at the moment was uncertainty. As he took the hire car down the tree-lined driveway he tried to find a reason for it. He’d avoided absolutely any contact with the embassy and the security check had been what he had anticipated in Willoughby’s office, a job for a clerk. So why the unease? On the return to Rome Charlie maintained a regular speed and constantly checked his rear-view mirror; today there was no obvious pursuit. He must have imagined the blue Lancia, like everything else. It had to be Clarissa.

She was already in the hotel room when he got there, surrounded by packages and parcels, like a child who’d found its way into Santa’s storeroom.

‘I’ve had a fantastic time,’ she said. ‘My American Express card is like a piece of rubber.’

‘I felt like that this morning,’ said Charlie.

‘I can fix that.’

‘Won’t Rupert wonder at purchases in Rome when you’re supposed to be off the coast of France on a yacht?’

‘Oh, bugger Rupert,’ she said carelessly. ‘He never notices anything anyway.’

In the foyer downstairs, a patient man in a grey suit carefully folded the newspaper he couldn’t read because it was in Italian, and made another precise entry in a notebook. Already the list was extensive.

Henry Jackson was a large, soft-fleshed man who would have looked the part astride a policeman’s bicycle on an English country beat. It was an impression he purposely conveyed because it made people careless. He was, in fact, extremely astute and even, when the occasion demanded, physically quick, which was why Harkness had chosen him to supervise the British field team in Rome. Henry Walsingham greeted him with the withdrawn friendliness of an out-of-town representative undergoing an annual visit from head office. Jackson emphasized plodding officialdom. He insisted upon a complete tour of every department, hoping to gauge the required degree of efficiency from the behaviour of the staff and the material on their desks. In one office overlooking the Via Settembre he identified Richard Semingford. The Second Secretary looked up in mild interest at the intrusion and then returned to his work. There were marines on guard in the cipher and vault room and every check and identification was observed. Jackson remained for some time in the cipher room, stressing its importance for the forthcoming Summit for direct communication between the Premier and his ministers in Italy with the cabinet in London. It would be necessary for him to instal someone over a longer period, but Jackson’s initial impression was that the security was being maintained at the proper level. Back in Walsingham’s office, he allowed himself to be taken through the list of every official and unofficial function in which the British party would be involved. Indexed against each function were details of the security provisions made by the Italian government.

‘There’s extensive use of helicopters.’

‘So I see.’

‘The whole thing is an obvious target for the Red Brigade,’ said the embassy security man. Even when he was supposedly relaxed there was a military uprightness about him.

‘That’s our assessment as well.’

‘The Italians are worried.’

‘With every reason to be.’

‘Still didn’t expect a visit from you people quite so soon,’ said Walsingham. ‘There’s a lot of time left.’

‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Jackson. It was the sort of remark the other man would expect. ‘I’ve brought five people with me. I want to move them into the embassy tomorrow.’

‘What for?’

‘Familiarize themselves with the working of the place,’ said Jackson. ‘Find out where the lavatories and the different departments are.’

‘I think I should advise the ambassador.’ Walsingham was a man who always deferred to a superior officer.

‘Of course.’

‘What exactly will they be doing?’

‘Poking around the cipher room and vaults mostly.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Jackson patiently. ‘It’s from there all the stuff will be going back to London. Don’t want any embarrassments, do we?’

Indignation showed upon Walsingham’s face. ‘There is nothing wrong with the security at this embassy,’ he, said stiffly.

‘I’m sure there’s not,’ said Jackson, at once placatory. He spread his hands, entering the charade he was sure the other man would accept, ‘Not my decision, old boy. You know what it’s like at Whitehall: they still use initials instead of proper names for the director and talk about moles and daft stuff like that.’

There was a complete surveillance operation upon Henry Walsingham and Richard Semingford when they left the embassy that evening. Walsingham went to his apartment overlooking the Tiber and remained there. Semingford met Jane Williams at a cafe on the Via Condotti. They had a drink, walked a short distance to a restaurant where they ate early, and went back to her apartment. Semingford was still there at midnight and all the lights were out.

‘Why the hell didn’t one of the bastards react!’ demanded Jackson irritably, when the reports were brought back to him at the Eden. ‘I was supposed to have made one of them nervous.’

Kalenin used the best calligraphist but, even so, limited the entries to initialled notations in Charlie Muffin’s name and to the signatures against the bank authority. There were four genuine messages of top-secret classification which he had received from the British embassy in Rome re-copied on paper brought in from Italy to satisfy any forensic test. The reference to the earlier meeting with Charlie Muffin in Washington the previous June was provably upon Russian foolscap and he hesitated, looking down at it. They had identified Charlie in Florida on 15 June, but, from the checks later, Kalenin knew the stamp exhibition had been in New York from 8 June. From New York it was easier to reach Washington than from Palm Beach, just an hour on the shuttle. It was the sort of detail that was important; 10 June was perfect. He put it with the other documents, then another Russian foolscap containing all the information about the combination and security precautions at Billington’s Ostia villa. The final, fittingly cosmetic, touch was ten thousand dollars in American currency.

Kalenin had just addressed it for diplomatic transport to Igor Solomatin in Rome when the message arrived from London about the previous shipment. The hidden compartment had been fixed below the base of a bedroom closet and all the material placed in it. They were confident it would be found, but only after a rummage search.

Kalenin sat back at his desk. allowing himself a brief moment of satisfaction. Almost immediately he rose to his feet. Alexander Hotovy had undergone sufficient preparation. Everything was going too well to allow uncertainty, and Kalenin was anxious to satisfy himself the Czech did not represent any greater danger than he already imagined.