Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

25

The preparations had begun before their arrival, but men were still working when Charlie was led down the stairs into the main storeroom of the embassy basement. An area about twenty feet square had been cleared, the boxes and containers pushed against the far wall and stacked into a floor-to-ceiling barrier. Charlie expected the questioning to start at once, but he was pushed into an annex, below ground and without any windows. Against the far wall there was a cot with one blanket, and beside it a bucket to pee in. Henry Jackson followed Charlie into the cell and snapped his fingers.

‘Let’s have them,’ he said.

Charlie thought, fleetingly, of feigning ignorance but then dismissed it as pointless; everything would be pointless from now on. He bent, extracting the laces from his shoes, and handed them to the man, together with his tie and belt. Jackson pointed towards the bed and said, ‘Everything in your pockets on there.’

Methodically Charlie began unloading. There was a comb in his top pocket, passport and travellers’ cheques inside his jacket, his airline ticket with the baggage label still attached, a crumpled sponge of Italian paper money, a pen, the keys to the Battersea apartment, a driving licence and one neatly folded square of toilet paper.

‘Linings.’

Dutifully Charlie turned all the pockets inside out. He stood in front of the man, clutching his trousers and aware of the barely subdued hostility.

‘Watch.’

Charlie unstrapped it from his wrist.

‘Know what I’d like to do?’ said Jackson.

‘What?’

‘I’d like to kick the shit out of you.’

Charlie had been waiting for the beating. He tightened his body against the attack and the man sniggered.

‘The name’s Jackson,’ he said. ‘Remember it. I’m going to be the first.’

He scooped Charlie’s belongings into a plastic envelope and closed the door. There was only the sound of a single lock and Charlie didn’t think the woodwork looked particularly resistant. He dismissed the speculation as academic. He was not going anywhere any more.

The seizure at the apartment house and the bundled drive, with his hands manacled painfully behind him, had been too hurried for him to examine his situation with any detachment. But, alone in his rectangular box smelling of decayed, abandoned paper, Charlie confronted the realization that, after seven years of middle-of-the-night wakefulness and gut-heaving at casual glances, they’d got him. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness settled over him. The muscles in his thighs began jerking in involuntary spasms and he sat down quickly upon the cot, wrapping his arms around his legs. The man… what was his name? Jackson… Jackson had said there’d be a beating. Why not at once? Maybe the standard technique, complete solitude, to let the fear seep in, and make sure there was no sleep to complete the disorientation. Scalpalomine maybe. But why? That was standard procedure to break someone, to erode a false cover or deceit. They knew who he was. And what he’d done. He didn’t have a cover story to destroy: he had no one to protect.

Charlie rolled sideways onto the bed, keeping his knees in a foetal ball under his chin. He didn’t want anything to happen to Willoughby. Clarissa either. Particularly Clarissa. He tried to put her from his mind and concentrate on his surroundings. Was this what he could expect from now on? An eight foot by twelve existence, with a cot and a bucket, and water dripping down the walls?

From outside tame the sound of heavy things being shifted and scraped across the floor; twice there were footsteps seemingly right outside and Charlie raised his head apprehensively. Both times they receded. He looked at his wrist, before remembering the watch had gone. A time check was one of the first things to establish, according to the resistance technique: something else he’d forgotten. An hour, Charlie estimated: maybe longer. He closed his eyes against the light. ‘ Trust me, Edith. We’ll beat the bastards’. He hadn’t. Not in the end.

Charlie reckoned it was another hour before they came for him. He managed to swing his legs to the floor before they reached him. There was another man with Jackson. Charlie blinked at them, gritty-eyed even though he hadn’t slept.

‘Up,’ said Jackson.

Charlie rose, grasping at his waistband. The Hush Puppies threatened to fall off and he had to scuff his feet across the floor. The only obvious change in the room beyond was a baize-topped table, positioned near the centre. There was a smaller table alongside and as he got closer Charlie noticed the tape recorder. From a more darkened part of the basement a man came into the light and sat behind the machine. He didn’t bother to look up.

‘Sit down,’ said Wilson. He was seated in the centre of the table, clearly the questioner. Naire-Hamilton was to his left.

Charlie sat.

The operator started the tape.

‘Your name is Charles Muffin?’ said Wilson.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. It had been a long time since he’d heard his Christian name properly.

‘You were for eighteen years a Grade 1 operative within the security service of Great Britain?’

‘Yes.’ Had it really been as long as that?

‘And as such signed an undertaking governed by the Official Secrets Act?’

‘Yes.’ Charlie coughed, not wanting his voice to betray any nervousness when he was called upon to respond in any greater detail.

‘Did you at some date in 1977, communicate with the Soviet Union?’

It seemed so damning, put as bluntly as that. ‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

‘How?’ demanded Wilson.

‘Through Vienna. I made contact with the Soviet embassy.’ His voice remained controlled.

‘With whom?’

‘A KGB colonel.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Valery Kalenin.’

‘Did you know of this man?’

‘I knew he was operational head of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezpasnosti.’

‘What was the purpose of the meeting?’

Revenge. To teach arrogant bastards they couldn’t throw him to the dogs, like so much disposable meat. But whichever way he attempted to put it, the explanation would make him what they’d already decided, a traitor. ‘Nine months earlier I had controlled the arrest of a man running a Soviet spy cell in Britain. His name was Alexei Berenkov. During the final stages of that operation we needed documents from East Berlin proving the man’s identity to be Russian. To create a diversion and minimize the risk of the documents being intercepted, the department arranged for my capture. The car they had marked as the one I should have been driving was destroyed. Had I been in it, I would have died.’ Charlie licked his lips. Not bad so far, he thought. ‘I suspected a set-up. An East German who believed I was arranging his crossing into West Berlin drove the car; I returned by U-bahn. The purpose of the Vienna meeting was retribution, against people who had decided I was expendable.’ A bad finish, conceded Charlie.

‘Retribution?’ said Wilson.

‘The Soviet Union never allows captured spies to endure long imprisonment. They wanted an exchange and I provided people for it.’

‘Who?’

‘The British and American directors. Kalenin let it be understood he wanted to cross to the West. Both directors went to Austria to receive him. They were taken by Soviet commandos to be held until there was a swap.’

‘You knowingly betrayed to a hostile power the identity and whereabouts of the two most senior officials?’ said Wilson.

‘An exchange was guaranteed: that was the only reason for their seizure. I knew they wouldn’t be held for more than two or three weeks.’ In a barren room surrounded by impassive men, it sounded a weak plea of mitigation.

‘At the end of 1977, after the seizure of your superior officers, you defected to the Soviet Union?’ said Wilson. Charlie stared blankly across the small table at the director.

‘We got your London address from your driving documents,’ said Wilson. ‘I’ve had the place entered: we found everything.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Charlie. It sounded fatuous, he realized.

‘We know you have killed three British agents during the last ten months. And about your connection with Walsingham.’

‘No!’ Charlie stiffened and instantly felt hands on both his shoulders, forcing him back into his chair. ‘I admit what I did in Vienna,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand anything else you’re saying.’

The asthma banded around his chest, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

It was midnight when the director and the Permanent Under Secretary got to Billington’s office.

‘The Italians are furious,’ said the ambassador. ‘I’ve been officially summoned to the Foreign Ministry tomorrow. They want a full explanation.’

‘We’d rather it wasn’t given,’ said Naire-Hamilton.

‘That’s preposterous,’ said Billington. ‘You’ve trampled all over the scene of a killing, removed bodies and evidence and disregarded absolutely that any Italian sovereignty exists.’

‘It was necessary,’ insisted Naire-Hamilton.

‘They’ll never accept that.’

‘Ask them to expand the meeting tomorrow,’ suggested Wilson. ‘Include their security people. And promise our attendance.’

‘You?’ The ambassador appeared surprised.

‘It would be easier than briefing you,’ said Wilson. ‘We don’t think the Italians will want a scandal so near the Summit. Any more than we do.’

‘You can’t conceal crime,’ protested Billington.

‘When it’s necessary you can,’ said Naire-Hamilton easily.

Trying to force a little calm, Billington looked towards a drinks tray and said, ‘Would you like anything?’

Both Wilson and Naire-Hamilton chose whisky. The ambassador took nothing. He handed them the drinks and said, ‘On a personal level, I consider I should have been told what was going on.’

‘Until we had proof, everyone was suspect.’

Momentarily Billington’s face clouded. ‘How long had Walsingham been a spy?’

‘According to what we’ve already discovered in London from the flat of the man Muffin, a long time. We might learn more when the banks open here tomorrow. Walsingham had what appears to be a safe deposit key on him: his wife insists she knows nothing about it.’

‘What about her?’

‘She’s still to be questioned,’ said Wilson. ‘It’s likely she was the link, from her past association.’

‘I would have staked my reputation that Walsingham was sound,’ said Billington. ‘Not brilliant, but sound.’

‘That’s the sort of impression spies are trained to convey.’

‘And the other fellow,’ said Billington. ‘What sort of man commits five murders?’

‘A desperate one,’ Wilson replied.

‘Not any more,’ said Naire-Hamilton. ‘He’s finished.’ The Permanent Under Secretary looked directly at Wilson. ‘And I mean that,’ he said.

The empty place at the Politiburo table stood out like a child’s gap-toothed smile. General Kalenin studiously ignored it, concentrating fixedly upon the First Secretary.

‘An overwhelming success, Comrade General.’

It was fitting to be modest. ‘It will be several days,’ said Kalenin, ‘before we can be completely sure.’

Zemskov frowned at the reservation. ‘How long?’ he said, wanting specifics.

‘Two or three days.’

‘We’ll look forward to the meeting.’

And so would he, thought Kalenin; he’d wear his medals for the ceremony.

The butler, in dressing gown and pyjamas, tried to prevent their entry but the security men were accustomed to delaying tactics, bustling him aside the moment the door was opened into the Eaton Square apartment. Two took the stairs while another two waited for the lift. The fifth man insisted the butler take him through the servants’ quarters and up the back stairs.

Rupert Willoughby awoke startled to find his bedroom full of men. ‘What the…?’

‘Rupert Willoughby?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve a warrant for your arrest, under the Treason Act,’ said one of them.

‘Treason?’

‘We’d like you to get dressed and come with us.’

‘I want to ring my solicitors.’

A security man moved the telephone away from the underwriter. The one holding the warrant said, ‘Later. Just come with us now.’