Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

28

In Rome, as in other embassies Sir Alistair Wilson had used, the communications centre was a room within a room, an inner shell fastened to the outer wall by a series of tubular struts from above and below, as well as from the sides. The inner compartment had been created by security workmen, guaranteeing that no monitoring device could have been built in. Access was across a drawbridge-type walkway which pulled up once the room was occupied. Cipher machines, like experimental typewriters, were banked against the left wall. At the back, a huge radio dominated the room, a pilot’s cockpit of twitching dials and level measures. To the right were the security-cleared telex machines. The telephones were on a narrow bench to the left. There were three, all designated different colours. The white fed directly into Downing Street, equipped both here and at the other end with matching voice modulators which scrambled the conversation into unintelligible static unless it was cleared through a corrective device. This programme was changed weekly.

To remove the need for a cipher clerk, Naire-Hamilton had chosen the telephone. Before making the connection, he and Wilson had written out a full account and then attached notations to a master sheet, to ensure that the Permanent Under Secretary omitted nothing. He made the report with only occasional interruptions from London and by the time he’d finished his voice was hoarse and strained. There was a sheen of perspiration on his face when he finally replaced the telephone.

‘He isn’t happy,’ he said.

‘What the hell does he want?’

‘He thinks the Italians got too much: that we allowed ourselves to be pressured.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘But easily said from the comfort of Downing Street.’

‘What are the instructions?’

Naire-Hamilton hesitated. ‘To terminate everything,’ he said. ‘He wants us out by tomorrow.’

‘I think we should continue the debriefing.’

‘To what purpose, for God’s sake!’

‘Why did Walsingham have the wrong date?’

‘A simple enough mistake.’

‘Men who keep records, like Walsingham and Muffin, don’t make simple mistakes.’

‘I’m fed up to the back teeth with sitting in that dungeon staring at that fellow holding up his trousers like some damned scarecrow,’ said Naire-Hamilton.

‘One more session,’ said Wilson urgently.

Jackson handed Charlie his belt as he entered the room. Seeing the start of apprehension, the supervisor smiled and said, ‘Not yet. They’re pissed off seeing you standing there as if you’ve shit yourself.’

Still without laces, Charlie had to shuffle once more into the interrogation room. The arrangement was as before, with no chair for him to sit on. Without the necessity of supporting his trousers, Charlie stood with feet apart with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. It was the sort of insolent at-ease that had driven the parade sergeants mad. Wilson didn’t like it either.

‘How long had you been the liaison between Moscow and Walsingham?’ said the director.

‘I was never the liaison. Until the day at the villa, I’d never set eyes on him.’

Wilson was handed something from the folder. ‘This will be exhibit 10,’ he said towards the recording machine. He offered it to Charlie. ‘Who is this?’

‘Who do you think?’ said Charlie. It must have been taken by a hidden camera: it looked like a London street but he couldn’t be sure.

‘I want the deposition to show that this photograph of Charles Muffin was recovered from the safe deposit box in the name of Henry Walsingham. Attached to it were instructions, upon identification, for the contact meeting in Washington. Those instructions were dated February of last year.’

Something pricked at Charlie’s memory and he groped for it, like a man trying to distinguish a half-formed shape in a fog.

‘Quite obviously it was planted there,’ said Charlie.

‘Walsingham knew you.’

‘He didn’t know me until we met at the villa.’

‘There’d been a previous time, in Washington.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You’d been identified to him, for the Washington meeting.’

‘The meeting!’ Charlie shouted the words. ‘That’s where it went wrong.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Wilson.

Charlie didn’t respond at once. Then the answers came like a flood that follows the initial trickle through the dam wall. It had taken him a bloody long time; it wouldn’t have done once.

‘Four days ago I made contact with the man who robbed Billington’s safe,’ said Charlie. ‘The man I found dead at the apartment.’

‘Emilio Fantani,’ said Wilson.

‘I never knew his name. I recognized him then from the hand injury the police talked about. It was in Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto. The staff there can confirm it. It’ll be independent corroboration.’

‘Of what?’

‘That a meeting took place.’

‘It had to,’ said Wilson. ‘Your instructions were to silence Walsingham. And Fantani was the link.’

‘What was the only thing that would have mattered to Fantani?’

Wilson considered the question. ‘The pay-off, I suppose. That’s what he’d been promised by Walsingham, according to the message from Moscow.’

‘The pay-off,’ agreed Charlie. ‘The pay-off figure was wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You believe Walsingham staged the robbery on his own initiative?’

Wilson was beginning to feel slightly uneasy.

‘The insurance was for one and a half million pounds,’ said Charlie. ‘Fantani demanded a ransom of twenty-five per cent.’

‘Well?’

‘What’s twenty-five per cent of one and a half million?’

‘Three hundred and seventy-five thousand,’ said Wilson.

‘But Fantani asked for five hundred thousand,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ve recovered the money. Count it yourself.’

‘What’s the significance?’

‘Fantani knew the policy was a replacement one, with adjustments for the increased value of the jewellery that took its cost up to two million. And he couldn’t have learned that from Walsingham, because Walsingham couldn’t have known those details.’

‘ You did.’

‘But I wasn’t working with him, according to you!’

Wilson and Naire-Hamilton exchanged worried looks. In the pause the final piece of the puzzle fitted into place, ‘The timing,’ said Charlie, more to himself than his interrogators. ‘Walsingham was at the Via Salaria earlier than I said.’

‘What are you saying?’ demanded Wilson.

‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’

Naire-Hamilton twitched nervously towards the turning tapes and then back to Charlie. He didn’t speak. Neither did Wilson.

‘I know who did it,’ said Charlie. ‘I know who your spy is.’

‘Who?’

‘A deal,’ said Charlie. ‘My life for the name of the spy. If not, you can go to hell.’

Willoughby and Clarissa were put aboard the same RAF plane that had brought the underwriter to Rome and seated next to each other. It occurred to neither of them to object, which they could have done because Clarissa was not under any detention. The aircraft had been flying for almost an hour before Willoughby spoke.

‘I know what happened in Rome.’

She glanced at him but said nothing.

‘I trapped you,’ he said with bitter triumph. ‘I could have got anyone to do the security check but I knew he was desperate and so I tricked him into coming. I guessed what had happened in New York and I knew you’d come rutting after him instead of going to Menton. You were watched the whole time.’

‘You needn’t have wasted your money,’ she said wearily. ‘All you had to do was ask.’

‘You’re a whore,’ he said.

‘Haven’t we had these recriminations before?’

‘I’m divorcing you.’

‘You’ve said that before too.’

‘How could you!’ said Willoughby. ‘With him! Even before you knew the sort of man he is.’

Clarissa smiled wanly. ‘Actually it wasn’t easy,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to at first. Said it would be letting you down.’

‘You mean you seduced him?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I did. It was a joke at first.’

‘It means nothing to you, does it?’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not normally.’

He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Surely you don’t think that you love him!’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I do. Insane, isn’t it?’

Wilson was seated in the small office that had been allocated to them in the embassy. Naire-Hamilton was still striding about the room, the more nervous of the two. His hands twitched about him.

‘Do you realize the risk you’re taking?’

‘Do you realize what it is if I don’t?’

‘What authority have you got for giving in to his demand?’

‘None,’ admitted the intelligence director. ‘If I hadn’t given it he wouldn’t have told us.’

‘Bloody guttersnipe!’

‘What if he’s right?’

There was a knock at the door. ‘Mrs Walsingham is here,’ said Jackson.

At first Igor Solomatin remained stiffly to attention but Kalenin seated him and watched him gradually relax under the congratulations.

‘You made no contact afterwards with the embassy?’ asked Kalenin.

‘I considered it safer not to.’

‘Quite right.’

‘There’s little doubt that it worked, though,’ said Solomatin hurriedly. ‘There would have been news of an arrest if it hadn’t.’

Seeing the man’s anxiety, Kalenin said, ‘It was a brilliant operation.’

‘Thank you.’ Solomatin was visibly relieved.

‘There is a vacancy upon my staff of deputies,’ said Kalenin. ‘I’d like you to take it. You’d be responsible for initiating clandestine activities: precisely the sort of thing you’ve just done.’

‘I’m honoured, Comrade General,’ said Solomatin.

Kalenin knew his turn was coming. The Politburo meeting was only two days away.