Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Don’t. That hurts.’

  ‘So does what you’re doing. I can feel your teeth.’

  ‘Want me to stop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your feet are a funny brown colour.’

  ‘My shoes leaked. The dye won’t come off.’

  ‘Poor Charlie.’

  Then:

  ‘I like what you’re doing, Charlie.’

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ he said, with difficulty.

  ‘At school.’

  All that and cooking too, reflected Charlie. He winced, conscious of her teeth again. He should have washed his feet a second time, he told himself. She’d bathed, after all.

  Charlie and his wife crossed on the following night’s ferry from Southampton, so they were in Cherbourg by 6.30 in the morning.

  Charlie liked driving Edith’s Porsche, enjoying the power of machinery performing fully in the manner for which it was designed. I perform best fully extended, he thought, looking sideways at the woman as they climbed the curling road out of the French port and thinking of the previous night. Had Janet been acting her whore’s role when she’d cried, he wondered.

  Edith was a handsome woman, decided Charlie, as she smiled back at him. She had wound the window down, so that her naturally blonde hair tangled in the wind. She was definitely very lovely, he thought, her face almost unlined and no sag to the skin around her throat. He was very lucky to have her as a wife.

  They stopped at Caen to look around the war museum and still easily reached Paris by noon. While Edith sipped kir on the pavement outside Fouquet’s, Charlie telephoned their lunch reservation.

  They ate at the Tour d’Argent, fond of the view across the Quai de la Tournelle to the Notre Dame. With the filet de sole cardinale, Charlie ordered Corton Charlemagne and then — ‘we’re on holiday, after all’ — a half bottle of Louis Roederer with the soufflé vallesse, which he later agreed was an ostentatious mistake.

  ‘You enjoy spending money, don’t you, Charlie?’ she said, as they unpacked at the Métropole-Opéra.

  ‘Do you begrudge it?’ he asked, immediately.

  ‘You know I don’t,’ she said, quickly, frightened of offending him. ‘But I saw the bill. It was over £50.’

  ‘But worth it,’ he defended.

  He sat watching her change, enjoying her body. She was very well preserved, he thought, admiringly. Her waist was bubbled only slightly over the panty girdle, which he didn’t think she needed anyway, and her legs were firm and unveined. Her full breasts fell forward as she unclipped her bra and she became conscious of his attention, covering herself like a surprised schoolgirl.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Don’t,’ she protested, emptily, pleased at the attention. She loved him very much and it frightened her sometimes.

  Janet liked him admiring her body, Charlie compared, even insisting they made love with the light on. Edith always wanted it dark. Women were funny, he thought: his wife had much the better body. She should learn to be proud of it, not shy.

  Edith was a comfortable women to be with, he decided, the sort you didn’t have to talk to all the time. With Janet three minutes of silence was construed either as boredom or boring so there was always a frenzy of meaningless chatter, like annoying insects on a summer’s picnic. He definitely preferred Edith, he decided. They were friends, more than lovers, he thought. But very much lovers; Edith had a remarkable appetite for a woman of forty.

  She backed towards him, the zip of her dress undone.

  ‘Do me up.’

  ‘Why don’t we undo it?’

  ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Don’t muck about, Charlie. Tonight.’

  He fastened the dress: she didn’t bulge it anywhere, he saw.

  He gave every indication of loving her, she thought, patting her hair into place before the dressing table.

  ‘Promise me something, Charlie,’ she said, crossing the room to him and placing her hands upon his shoulders. She was very serious, he realised. Her eyes were quite wet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You won’t leave me because of this office business, will you?’

  ‘You know I won’t,’ chided Charlie. ‘I’ve told you not to worry.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Edith, who ten years earlier had occupied the position that Janet now held as secretary to Sir Archibald Willoughby. Charlie had told her in detail of his treatment since Cuthbertson’s arrival.

  He stood up, coming level with her.

  ‘I love you, Edith,’ he insisted, putting his hands round her waist. ‘I promise you that everything will work out. They’re bloody fools.’

  ‘They can’t be as stupid as you think.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it!’

  He kissed her, very softly, and she clung to him, head deep into his shoulder.

  ‘I’m so worried about you, Charlie.’

  He stroked her neck, lips against her hair.

  ‘I’m a survivor, Edith. Don’t forget that. I always have been.’

  She shook her head, dismissing the assurance.

  ‘Not this time, Charlie.’

  ‘We’ll see, darling. We’ll see.’

  Edith had allotted £100 a day for their holiday and Charlie drove eastwards from Paris the following morning £ 10 under budget, which pleased her.

  Financial security meant everything to Edith, he knew, as it always had to her family. She couldn’t temper her attitude, despite what had happened to her father. He had been a bank manager in Reigate, a respected Freemason, church deacon and treasurer to the local Rotary Club. And he’d embezzled £600 to cover stupidly incurred gambling debts he was too proud to ask his rich wife to settle, shocking her and Edith by the knowledge that he feared their contempt and attitude to money more than the ignominy of a jail sentence.

  Edith had never forgotten the barrier that money had created between her parents and tried desperately to avoid it arising between her and Charlie. She was terrified that she was failing.

  Charlie had planned the holiday with care, determined they should enjoy themselves. In Reims, they stayed at La Paix but ate at Le Florence, on the Boulevard Foch, dining off pâté de canard truffé and langoustine au ratafia, drinking the house-recommended Maureuil. The next day, Charlie drove hard, wanting to reach the German border by the evening. They stayed in Sarreguemines, where Charlie remembered the Rôtisserie Ducs de Lorraine on Rue Chamborand from an operation eight years earlier.

  ‘The duck is as good as it ever was,’ he declared at the table that night.

  ‘I wish we could stay in France,’ said Edith, almost to herself.

  ‘I thought you were looking forward to seeing Austria and Germany in the autumn.’

  ‘I was,’ she agreed. ‘But not any more. Not now.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, Edith,’ he answered, holding her eyes.

  ‘I know I’m inclined to keep a pretty close check on money,’ she said, looking down into her wine glass and embarking upon a familiar path. ‘But I can’t help it: it’s bred into me. But I regard it as our money, Charlie. Not just mine. Spend all of it, if you want to.’

  He waited.

  ‘I mean, it wouldn’t matter if you were downgraded … we wouldn’t starve or anything. And it would be safer, after all.’

  ‘I’ll have Cuthbertson begging me for help,’ predicted Charlie. ‘And it’ll be my money that supports us.’

  Why, thought the woman sadly, did he have to have that bloody grammar-school pride. Just like her damned father.

  (5)

  The priority coded warning had come from the C.I.A. Resident at the Moscow embassy in advance of the diplomatic bag containing the full report, so the Director was already alerted and waiting when the messenger
arrived at Langley.

  He spent an hour examining the messages, then analysing the station head’s assessment, reading it alongside the report that had come in two days earlier from the agency monitoring station in Vienna, which had fed his excitement the moment the initial Moscow report had been received.

  Finally he stood up, gazing out over the Virginia countryside, where the leaves were already rusting into autumn.

  Garson Ruttgers was a diminutive, frail man who deliberately cultivated a clerk-like appearance with half-lens spectacles that always appeared about to fall off bis nose and slightly shabby, Brooks Brothers suits, invariably worn with waistcoats, and blue, button-down-collared shirts. He smoked forty cigarettes a day against doctor’s advice, convincing himself he compensated by an almost total abstinence from liquor, and was consumed by the ambition to become to the C.I.A. what Hoover had been to the F.B.I.

  In a period that included the last year of the Second World War – when he had been a major in the O.S.S. – and then in the Korean conflict, he had killed (by hand because weapons would have made a noise and attracted attention) ten men who had threatened his exposure as an agent. Never, even in moments of recollection, had he reproached himself about it, even though two of his victims had been Americans whose loyalty he only suspected but could not disprove, and so had disposed of just in case.

  That more people had not been killed with the same detachment was only because he had spent nearly eighteen years in Washington and the need had not arisen. He was, Garson Ruttgers convinced himself, a complete professional. A psychiatrist, knowing of his tendency to kill without compunction, would have diagnosed him a psychopath.

  Ruttgers shivered, suddenly frightened by the information that lay before him. There could only be one conclusion, he judged. And the British, whom he regarded as amateurs, were bound to screw it up.

  He dispatched a ‘most urgent’ classified instruction to the embassy, ordering the Resident back to Washington on the next civilian aircraft, guaranteeing the man’s presence in the capital at dawn the following day by arranging for a military plane to be specially available at the first airfield in the west.

  Building a margin for any flight problems, he arranged the meeting with the Secretary of State, Willard Keys, at noon, cautioning in their telephone conversation that Keys might want to request an immediate meeting with the President.

  From the computer in the Langley headquarters Ruttgers had within two hours a complete print-out on the man named in the report lying on his desk. It was very brief, as Ruttgers had anticipated: a man like General Valery Kalenin used anonymity like a cloak, he knew. Annexed to the print-out was the brief confirmation: ‘no photograph known to exist’.

  It had to be right, assessed Ruttgers, summarily cancelling all appointments and meetings during the next week.

  There had never been an opportunity like this, he reflected. If they could get involved, the Agency would wipe away all the post-Watergate criticism. Internal telephone tapping, the Bay of Pigs and the Rockefeller Commission would be laughed at. And Garson Ruttgers would achieve the awe that had surrounded Hoover.

  That night Ruttgers broke his habit and had two brandies after dinner; without them, he decided, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He looked upon the second drink as a celebration in advance.

  William Braley’s cover as C.I.A. Resident in Moscow was as cultural attaché to the U.S. embassy. He was a puffyfaced, anaemic-looking man with a glandular condition that put him two stone overweight, pebble glasses that made him squint and the tendency to asthma when under pressure. He arrived in Washington at 10 a.m., delayed by fog at Frankfurt, gravel-eyed through lack of sleep and wheezing from apprehension.

  Ruttgers would be furious if it transpired he had overreacted, he knew, thrusting the inhaler into his mouth in the back of the Pontiac taking him and the Director into Washington.

  The prospect of meeting the Secretary of State terrified him: he wouldn’t be able to use the breathing aid at the meeting, he thought, worriedly. Keys might be offended. He was rumoured to have a phobia about health.

  ‘It could be nothing,’ Braley cautioned Ruttgers, hopefully. If he expressed doubt in advance, perhaps the recriminations wouldn’t be so bad.

  Ruttgers shook his head, determined.

  ‘No way, Bill,’ dismissed the Director, who took pride in his hunches and knew this had the feel of a defection. ‘You got it right the first time. I’m proud of you.’

  Keys was waiting for them in his office in the Executive Building, a taciturn, aloof man, whose careful enunciation, like a bored educationalist in a school for retarded children, concealed a word-stumbling shyness. He knew the shell of arrogance beneath which he concealed himself caused dislike, which exacerbated the speech defect when meeting strangers for the first time.

  Ruttgers had submitted a full report overnight and it lay now, dishevelled, on the Secretary of State’s desk.

  ‘Don’t you think we’re assuming a lot?’ asked Keys, seating them considerately in armchairs before the fire. Braley remained silent, taking his lead from his superior sitting opposite. The fat man seemed unwell, thought the Secretary, distastefully. He hoped it wasn’t anything contagious.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Secretary,’ argued Ruttgers. ‘Consider the facts and equate them against the computer information.’

  Keys waited, nodding encouragement. Ruttgers would think him obtuse, the Secretary knew, unhappily.

  ‘Until last week,’ explained Ruttgers, ‘there wasn’t a Western embassy in Moscow who had a clue what Kalenin looked like … no one even knew for sure that he existed. Then, without any apparent reason, he turns up at one of our own receptions, a party considered so unimportant that apart from our own ambassador, it was only attended by First Secretaries and freeloaders with nowhere else to go on a dull night.’

  He nodded sideways to Braley, aware of the man’s apprehension and trying to relax him.

  ‘Thank God Bill was there, able to realise the significance.’

  ‘And what was that?’ asked Keys, seeking facts rather than impressions.

  ‘A man known only by an incredible reputation attends an unimportant function,’ he repeated. ‘He stays for two hours and makes a point of speaking almost exclusively to the British military attaché …’

  Ruttgers grew discomforted at Keys’s complete lack of reaction.

  ‘… And if that isn’t odd enough,’ the Director hurried on, desperately, ‘a man of whom no photographs are known to exist, willingly poses for his picture to be taken …’

  ‘How do we know it is Kalenin,’ butted in Keys, ‘if there haven’t been any pictures.’

  ‘Known pictures,’ qualified Ruttgers. ‘We’ve had photographs compared with every Praesidium group taken over the last twenty years. The one established fact about Kalenin is his incredible survival … he appears in official pictures dating back two decades …’

  Ruttgers waved his own file, like a flag. ‘… examine it,’ he exhorted the Secretary. ‘Six photographs of the most secretive man in the Soviet Union …’

  Keys sighed. On amorphous interpretations such as this, he thought, the policies of a nation could be changed. It was little wonder there were so many crises.

  ‘All this,’ stressed Ruttgers, ‘just three days after one of the most vicious diatribes ever published in Pravda and by Izvestia about lack of State security … an attack that can only be construed as a direct criticism of Kalenin …’

  Keys waved a hand, still unconvinced.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Braley?’ he asked. He was not interested, but it would give him time to consider what he’d read in the file and consider it against Ruttgers’s conviction.

  ‘It’s strange, sir,’ managed the fat man, breathily. ‘I know it appears vague. But I seriously interpret it as indicating that Kalenin is considering the idea of coming across. Which is what worries me …’

  ‘Worries you …?’

  ‘Our reception was the o
nly Western diplomatic function that week … Kalenin used us, just to reach the British. As soon as we realised who he was, I and the ambassador tried to get involved. The man was positively rude in rejecting us.’

  Keys pursed his lips, with growing acceptancy. On the other side of the desk, Ruttgers frowned, annoyed the Secretary wasn’t showing the enthusiasm he had expected. He gestured towards the dossier.

  ‘And don’t forget the Viennese reports,’ he continued encouragingly. ‘In Prague, according to our Austrian monitor, Rude Pravo have actually named Kalenin. No newspaper in the East does that without specific Praesidium instructions … the man’s being purged. There can’t be any doubt about it. He knows it and wants to run.’

  ‘To the British?’

  ‘That’s how it looks.’

  ‘I’d like more information upon which to make a judgment,’ complained Keys, cautiously. He’d use the antiseptic spray in the office when the two had gone: Braley looked as if he could be consumptive.

  ‘As far as Russia is concerned, sir,’ offered Braley, ‘the indications we’ve got so far and those which are in the last report, are amazingly informative.’

  ‘Have you tried the British?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Braley. ‘Their attitude encourages our conviction.’

  Keys waited.

  ‘They’ve gone completely silent,’ reported Braley. He paused, like Ruttgers expecting some reaction. When none came, he added: ‘For a closed community like Moscow, that’s unheard of. We live so cut off from everything that embassy-to-embassy contact, particularly between ourselves and the British, is far greater than anywhere else. For the past five days, I’ve tried to encourage a meeting, on any level …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The British Embassy is tighter than the Kremlin itself.’

  ‘It certainly looks unusual,’ conceded Keys, finally. ‘If Kalenin is thinking of coming over, for whatever reason, how close are we to the British for access?’

  Ruttgers controlled the sigh of impatience. He wasn’t waiting until the British had finished, he had decided. That could take years.

  ‘That’s what made me request this meeting,’ said the Director. ‘The British have just had a major overhaul, throwing out nearly everyone.’