Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘What would you do?’ demanded Pendlebury.

  Cosgrove shrugged. ‘At the meeting this morning there was talk of curtailing the exhibition.’

  Charlie had been watching Pendlebury as the other American spoke, so he saw the open concern on the F.B.I. man’s face.

  ‘We could have extra staff here by tomorrow,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘It’s not my agreement that’s necessary. It’s the insurers’,’ said Cosgrove.

  ‘The whole thing could be settled within three days,’ Charlie tempted him. ‘Four at the outside.’

  ‘I don’t think we would be prepared to run the risk for that length of time,’ responded Cosgrove.

  ‘No,’ said Pendlebury, unaware of the trap Charlie had set. ‘It must be resolved before then. Two days would be the longest we could consider waiting.’

  Charlie kept from his face any expression of satisfaction at Pendlebury’s slip. Two days was acceptable; four was not. So whatever was going to happen was scheduled for either Wednesday or Thursday. The meeting was proving far more productive than Charlie had hoped.

  ‘You’re not prepared to confirm full cover with the promises that have been made here today?’ Cosgrove demanded of Charlie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you will contact your principal immediately?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And warn your London office what I said about lawyers?’ added Cosgrove.

  ‘Of course,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Until the insurance is restored, we’ll restrict opening,’ decided Cosgrove. ‘We’ll delay until eleven in the morning. And close earlier than nine. Five, I think.’

  ‘That should make it easier for you to organise your security properly,’ Charlie said to Pendlebury.

  ‘I never regarded it as badly organised before,’ said the American.

  ‘It was though, wasn’t it?’ said Charlie.

  Anticipating that there would be reporters and cameramen outside the room, Charlie lingered, unwilling to be photographed. The journalists descended on the recognisable figure of Cosgrove and Charlie moved quickly around the crush, hurrying back to his rooms. He kept the telephone to his ear, after booking the call, listening to the connection being made with London and trying to identify any other sound which would indicate a tap on his line. Willoughby answered immediately. Fairly confident there was no monitor, Charlie outlined to the underwriter what had happened and what he suspected.

  ‘Wednesday or Thursday is only a guess?’ asked Willoughby.

  ‘I think I’m right,’ said Charlie.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie. ‘Just keep the whole thing in the air.’

  ‘I’ll have to put it to the company lawyers tomorrow. If it’s judged that we’re introducing frivolous objections, I would be contravening Lloyd’s regulations. The American lawyers might claim that.’

  ‘I don’t care what arguments go on,’ said Charlie. ‘Just as long as nothing is resolved. When have you ever known lawyers to give an opinion in hours rather than days?’

  ‘Never,’ admitted the underwriter.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Charlie. ‘As long as we’re known to be doing the proper things, we can’t be accused of breaking any regulations.’

  ‘Have you thought you could be wrong about all this?’ asked Willoughby suddenly.

  The question momentarily stopped Charlie. Despite his apparent success in tilting Pendlebury off balance, Charlie still had a vague feeling that there was something he had missed.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not wrong.’

  Charlie replaced the receiver after his call to Willoughby at about the same time as Pendlebury, two floors below, ended his conversation with Warburger, in Washington. Pendlebury went to the window of his room, worried by the panic he’d detected in the Director’s voice. He stared down at the specks on the beach far below, knowing it was ridiculous but trying to see Terrilli and Chambine and his surveillance team. An impending disaster, Warburger had called it. An exaggeration, Pendlebury thought; but considering the meeting that morning, not much of one.

  Pendlebury had been right in guessing that Terrilli would choose the hotel section of the beach. Despite owning it, Terrilli had rarely been down to his private seafront. He crunched awkwardly over the beach now, unhappy at the surroundings. He found it easy enough to relax by the side of his pool, assured of people in attendance and with cleanliness guaranteed, but the sand irritated him, getting into his shoes and making it uncomfortable to walk, and although the beaches had been swept that morning. there was still the occasional palm frond or scrap of paper, which he found messy. He crossed the barrier designating his own property, and among the bathers his feeling of distaste increased. There seemed to be a lot of shouting and children were screaming, and he knew that when they all went home they’d leave the place like a garbage tip. Disdainfully he lowered himself to the sand, on a soot as far away from other people as he could find, and while he waited for Chambine he took off his tennis shoes and tried to clean the grit from between his toes. He looked up as the sun was temporarily shaded from him, but made no sign of recognition to the man for whom he was waiting. Chambine did not stop beside him. Instead he spread a beach mat several feet away, stripped off his towelling top and lay out, not looking at Terrilli.

  ‘You heard the news?’ demanded the older man.

  ‘Not the first announcement,’ admitted Chambine. ‘But I picked it up after the meeting that was held in the hotel this morning.’

  ‘What was the result?’

  ‘Inconclusive. There are going to be greater security measures taken. But the insurers still seem unhappy.’

  ‘What about cancellation?’

  ‘Not yet … but it seems likely.’

  ‘So we can’t wait until Thursday?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Will that be a problem for you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Chambine. ‘They seemed ready when I went to the warehouse.’

  ‘Could it be tonight?’

  Chambine didn’t reply immediately. ‘Yes,’ he said, after thinking.

  ‘I think it would be best, before they get any extra men organised and in place.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t like having to make the change.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘But I don’t think there’s a choice.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Chambine, ‘I don’t think there is.’

  ‘You’d better leave first,’ said Terrilli. ‘You’ve things to organise.’

  ‘Your people will be expecting us?’

  ‘I’ll see to it. We’ll keep to the original timing.’

  Chambine got up slowly, dusted off his mat and rolled it up.

  ‘See you tonight,’ he said, still bending so that the conversation would be hidden from any observers.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ promised Terrilli.

  He remained for the minimum amount of time upon the beach, then rose gratefully and returned to his house. He went straight to the changing cabin alongside the pool, stripped off his sand-gritted clothes and left them for collection later. He looked up as Santano approached.

  ‘There’s been a change,’ he said. ‘Warn everyone who needs to know. It’s going to be tonight.’

  Two miles away, a relieved Jack Pendlebury learned the same thing from his communications unit, which was monitoring all the telephone calls into the Contemporary Resort hotel in Disneyworld. Pendlebury smiled across at Roger Gilbert, who had just given a depressing report of their quite unsuccessful attempt to discover the purpose of Cham-bine’s beach meeting with Terrilli.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Pendlebury, unconcerned by the emotion evident in his voice. ‘They haven’t called it off; they’ve brought it forward. It’s tonight.’

  Gilbert half stood, imagining the need to respond in a hurry, but Pendlebury waved him down, content that he was in control of the
situation once more.

  ‘Everyone is in the right place,’ he said. ‘There’s no hurry. It’ll all go just as we planned.’

  ‘What about the Englishman?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘Kill him,’ said Pendlebury decisively. ‘Kill him and dump him in the exhibition room. And then let’s see Terrilli get out of that.’

  Pendlebury had argued with Warburger and Bowler that it was possible. And now he was going to prove it: he was going to get a murder indictment against Terrilli as well as one of robbery.

  Williamson knew he would have to get Moscow’s agreement, but he could not foresee any objections. Having learned from his monitoring of Pendlebury’s rooms of the Americans’ intention to assassinate Charlie, Williamson intended merely to remain on the sidelines, to ensure that they carried out the operation satisfactorily; and then, virtually free from any possibility of involvement, to return to California.

  Williamson knew that he had been exceptionally lucky. But Moscow wouldn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, he would have responded brilliantly to a difficult assignment.

  Because he was anticipating congratulation, he was not surprised at the summons from the Washington Embassy, telling him to cross from Palm Beach to the mainland and establish contact from a call box. Williamson actually passed Charlie Muffin as he left the hotel and drove over the Flagler Bridge. The number he called was not any of those attributed to the Embassy and therefore free from interception.

  Williamson’s superb training which, as much as luck, was responsible for what he had achieved in so short a time, again prevented his expressing the slightest surprise at the succinct instructions he was given.

  Under no circumstances was he to carry out his original instructions to kill Charlie Muffin. Rather, he was to do everything to protect the man from any harm.

  21

  Williamson’s instructors had never sought to eradicate fear, because Russian psychologists at the training academy considered that a man who was not frightened was incapable of proper caution. And so while he had still been talking to Washington, Williamson had recognised the danger that the alteration to his instructions created, and felt the first wash of apprehension.

  But it was not, as those psychologists might have expected, at the thought of injury or even death, concerned though he would be when the moment came. Williamson’s initial reaction came from an uncertainty that had grown with every week he had spent in America and which, try as he had, he had been unable to dispel.

  To protect Charlie Muffin, he would have to involve the Cubans, which meant becoming known to them. And once that disclosure was made, he knew he would constantly risk exposure.

  Williamson was not afraid of capture, but what would follow. The inviolable rule of his service – the insurance under which every Russian agent worked – was that eventually an exchange would be arranged and he would be repatriated to Russia.

  And Williamson knew that he didn’t want to go back.

  The feeling did not come from any disloyalty or lack of patriotism, but from the excellence of his training. While his allegiance remained unquestionably to Russia, Williamson was an American. He genuinely liked the California sunshine and twenty-four-hour drugstores and being able to pick up a telephone and get a meal delivered within an hour. His education had shielded him from the harsher aspects of Soviet life, but he knew they existed. He didn’t want a shared apartment, or the Bolshoi, or bone-numbing Moscow winters, or restaurant waits of four hours for a nearly inedible meal. That was why, still in the mainland kiosk, he had decided to brief only the leader of the Cubans and to try to avoid any meeting with the entire group. Because he knew Ramirez would accept unquestionably his identity from Washington, saving him the time-wasting necessity of establishing proof of who he really was, Williamson had asked that the Cuban leader be contacted first by the Embassy and instructed to come to his room at the Breakers. There was a tentative knock on the door and Williamson admitted the man, checking the corridor behind as he did so. ‘No one has seen me,’ Ramirez assured him. ‘I checked.’ Williamson turned back into the room, extending his hand. Ramirez took it, unsmiling.

  ‘I thought I was working alone, without a controller,’ said the Cuban. There was no resentment in his voice, just curiosity.

  ‘There were other things to be done,’ said Williamson. He was conscious of the Cuban’s attitude and knew Ramirez thought him to be an American. ‘Are our instructions changed?’

  Williamson shook his head. ‘Just modified. The exhibition still has to be protected. But now there’s something else.’

  He gestured Ramirez to take a chair. The Cuban sat, head to one side in the attitude of a slightly deaf man, as Williamson told him the result of monitoring Pendlebury’s rooms.

  ‘Ingenious proposal,’ said Ramirez. ‘They’ve taken a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Williamson, ‘I suppose they have.’

  ‘Knowing what we do now, protecting the collection will be easy.’

  ‘I’ve given some thought to that,’ said Williamson. ‘I don’t think we should oppose the robbery here. It’s too public. There’d be little chance of our escaping undetected.’

  And therefore of my being able to remain in America, thought Williamson. He would have to be careful that his determination not to return to Russia did not become obvious to Moscow.

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘There’s a private road leading to Terrilli’s house,’ said Williamson. There’s sufficient cover for an ambush there. When they get there, they will believe they’ve succeeded with the robbery. The timing will be right.’

  ‘The collection could get damaged.’

  ‘No more than it might if we confront them in the exhibition hall.’

  ‘Why is the man we have to protect so important?’

  ‘Because Moscow says he is,’ said Williamson shortly. ‘I wasn’t given a reason.’

  ‘Is he to know of the protection?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to brief the others?’

  ‘No,’ said Williamson again, immediately regretting the urgency with which he spoke.

  ‘No,’ accepted Ramirez, looking at Williamson thoughtfully. ‘I suppose there’s no need. Are they to know of you at all?’

  ‘There’s no reason that they should. We’ll finalise all the arrangements now.’

  ‘So we won’t meet again?’

  ‘Not unless I become aware of any changes you should know about,’ said Williamson.

  ‘What about afterwards?’

  ‘You were given your instructions in Moscow?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ramirez.

  ‘Then follow them.’

  ‘This isn’t going to be easy, is it,’ said Ramirez, ‘despite our knowing so much in advance?’

  ‘No,’ replied Williamson.

  ‘We’ve been told we can stay. I’m very glad to be back.’

  ‘America is a good country,’ said Williamson.

  ‘I’ve missed it,’ admitted the Cuban. ‘I’ve no complaints at the way we were treated, either in Cuba or in Moscow. But I’ve still missed it.’

  ‘I can understand,’ said Williamson.

  ‘We all feel the same. That’s why we want it to go well.’

  ‘We’ve got a lot of advantages,’ said Williamson, trying to reassure the man. ‘More than we could have hoped.’

  ‘The Americans told us that before we set off for Cuba.’

  ‘This time it will be different,’ promised Williamson.

  ‘I hope so.’

  Heppert had been the willing messenger from Senator Cosgrove, to inform Charlie that he was wanted in the committee room. Immediately, Heppert had stressed, in a carefully contrived afterthought.

  ‘Their lawyers have given an opinion,’ said the Pinker-ton’s man, unable to get the satisfaction out of his voice.

  ‘Have they?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yes. So the senator wants to see you …’ He paused, then repeated, �
�immediately.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Charlie. It was a small point, juvenile almost, but even if he were to be forced to capitulate he wasn’t going to run cap-in-hand to the damned man.

  ‘He said immediately.’

  Heppert talked like a programmed robot, thought Charlie. ‘Tell him I said fifteen minutes,’ he replied.

  The politician had moved more quickly than he had anticipated, Charlie admitted. There was a chance that he could prevaricate until the following day, pleading the problem of the time difference between America and England, but the company would have to restore cover within twenty-four hours. It was a bugger.

  He was moving towards the door, to answer Cosgrove’s summons, when the call came. He smiled, recognising Clarissa’s voice. He wondered why he was pleased to hear from her.

  ‘How are you?’

  Fine,’ he said.’You?’

  ‘Missing you.’

  ‘I thought all your friends were there.’

  ‘They are. I’m still bored. I hoped you might invite me up for the celebration.’

  ‘What celebration?’ demanded Charlie.

  ‘The one that Kelvin Cosgrove is planning. Sally had a call this afternoon talling her to come up He said he wanted her with him; that it was important.’

  ‘When is it to be exactly?’ asked Charlie, feeling the beginning of a warmth spread through him.

  ‘Tomorrow, I gather,’ said Clarissa. ‘Surely you knew about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘Apparently I’m not to be invited.’

  If the celebrations were planned for tomorrow, then he had a timing for the robbery. No wonder Cosgrove wanted him so urgently. Strange how the most difficult things were often resolved by the simplest of errors. He wondered if Cosgrove had overlooked his wife’s friendship with Clarissa Willoughby or merely forgotten the tendency to gossip among the people with whom she mixed.

  ‘Can I come up?’ asked Clarissa.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘you don’t see. I’d like you to be here, really I would. But the next couple of days aren’t going to be safe.’

  There was an urgent knocking on the door of Charlie’s suite.