Here Comes Charlie M Read online

  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. Bureauc
racy 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.’