Here Comes Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

  It was a tense, hostile encounter, different – although for opposing reasons – from what either the Americans or Wilberforce had anticipated when Smith and Ruttgers had stormed from the office less than twenty-four hours before.

  ‘Well?’ insisted Smith.

  ‘It isn’t what I expected,’ conceded Wilberforce, reluctantly.

  ‘Isn’t what you expected!’ echoed Smith, etching the disgust into his voice. ‘At this moment, Charlie Muffin should be trying to disappear into the woodwork!’

  He stood up, moving to a sidetable where copies of the photographs had been laid out. He picked them up, one by one, as he spoke.

  ‘Instead of which,’ he said, displaying them to everyone in the room, ‘he’s practically advertising his presence from the rooftops, drinking champagne at the Savoy until he can hardly stand and then occupying the centre table at the river-view restaurant for a lunch that took almost three hours!’

  ‘He’s very clever,’ said Cuthbertson, in his wet, sticky voice. ‘We shouldn’t forget he’s very clever.’

  ‘We shouldn’t forget anything,’ agreed Smith. ‘Any more than we should have forgotten the point of this operation.’

  ‘It’s not been forgotten,’ said Wilberforce stiffly.

  ‘Just endangered,’ hit back the American Director. ‘God knows how badly.’

  The Russian robbery had been in England, he thought suddenly. At the moment there was nothing to prove any American involvement. That was how it was going to stay.

  ‘We can’t eliminate him, not now,’ said Cuthbertson. ‘Not until we discover the reason for his extraordinary behaviour.’

  ‘Of course we can’t kill him,’ accepted Smith, careless of his irritation.

  ‘What do you think it means?’ demanded Wilberforce, of Braley.

  Braley considered the question with his customary discomfort.

  ‘That there’s something we don’t know about … despite all the checks and investigations, there’s obviously something we overlooked … something that makes Charlie confident enough to act as he’s doing.’

  Braley blinked at his superiors, worried at the open criticism.

  ‘I’ve always warned of that possibility,’ Wilberforce tried to recover. ‘That was the point of the bank entry in the first place, don’t forget.’

  Smith looked at the other Director in open contempt.

  ‘It could just be a bluff,’ said Snare.

  ‘It could be anything,’ said Smith. ‘That’s the whole damned trouble. We just don’t know.’

  ‘The Russians are upset,’ said Cuthbertson, mildly. The first time anything had gone wrong and Wilberforce was unsettled, he saw. Practically gouging the pipe in half. He smiled, uncaring that the other man detected the expression. Always had thought he could do the job better than anybody else.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Smith.

  Wilberforce looked sourly at his one-time chief before replying.

  ‘Formal note of protest to our ambassador in Moscow,’ he reported. ‘The Russian ambassador here calling at his own request upon the Foreign Secretary and two questions tabled in the House of Commons by some publicity-conscious M.P.s.’

  ‘Hardly more than you expected,’ retorted Smith. No one seemed to realise how serious it was, he thought.

  ‘We decided upon a course of action,’ said Wilberforce, pushing the calmness into his voice. ‘So far every single thing has proceeded exactly as it was planned. Certainly what the man did today was surprising. But that’s all it is, a surprise. We mustn’t risk everything by attempting ill-considered improvisations.’

  ‘You know, of course,’ said Smith, ‘that after that lunch he booked into the Savoy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wilberforce, the irritation returning.

  ‘Another assumed name?’ asked Cuthbertson.

  Damn the man, thought Wilberforce. The former Director knew the answer as well as any of them.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘He seemed to take great care to register as Charles Muffin.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Charlie knew he had registered at the hotel at exactly 3.45 in the afternoon. That concluding act of a flamboyant performance, using his real name, would have confused them sufficiently for at least a two-hour discussion, he estimated. Early evening then. And it would have taken more than twenty-four hours from the moment of decision, even if it had been made in the daytime when people were available, for the necessary warrants and authorisations and then the installation of engineers to put any listening device on the telephone in his hotel room.

  Even so, he still went immediately after breakfast to the Savoy foyer to book the call to his Zürich apartment from the small exchange by the lounge stairs, then insisted on taking it in one of the booths from which he could watch the operator.

  The first conversation with Edith was abrupt, lasting little more than a minute. Charlie allowed her half an hour to reach the Zürich telephone exchange. She was waiting by one of the incoming booths when he made the second call.

  ‘So you think the apartment here will be monitored?’ she said immediately.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘The robbery wasn’t a coincidence, then?’

  He smiled to himself at her insistence on an admission. She never liked losing arguments.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. I was trying to stop you becoming too frightened.’

  ‘You really thought that possible?’

  He could detect how strident her voice was. He didn’t answer, refusing to argue.

  ‘What else happened?’ she demanded.

  Briefly, Charlie outlined the details of the Russian robbery and the effect any settlement would have upon Willoughby’s firm.

  ‘They know everything about you, Charlie. Everything. You’re going to get killed.’

  The assertion blurted from her and he heard her voice catch at the other end.

  ‘Edith,’ he said patiently, ‘I know a way out.’

  ‘There isn’t a way out, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Stop being such a bloody fool.’

  He sighed, fighting against the irritation in his voice.

  ‘Did you call to say goodbye, just like you said goodbye to Sir Archibald before you left for Vienna to begin this fucking mess?’ she said desperately.

  She’d been too long alone, Charlie realised. Now all the fears and doubts were firmly embedded in her mind and refusing to leave. And Edith shouldn’t swear, he thought. She paraded the words artificially, like a child trying to shock a new schoolteacher.

  ‘I called to say I loved you,’ said Charlie.

  The tirade stopped, with the abruptness of a slammed door.

  ‘Oh, Christ, Charlie,’ she moaned.

  He winced at the pain in her voice. She would be crying, he knew.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘I love you and I’m going to get us out of all this. We’ll find another place …’

  ‘… to hide?’ she accused him.

  ‘Has it been that bad?’

  ‘It’s been terrible, Charlie. And you know it. And you’d never be able to make it any different, even if you got away from it now.’

  He had no argument to put against that, Charlie realised.

  ‘You should have told me how you felt … before now,’ he said.

  ‘What good would it have done?’

  None, he accepted. She was right. As she had been about the drinking and the damned cemetery and everything else.

  ‘I’m sorry, Edith,’ he said.

  ‘So am I, Charlie,’ she said, unhelpfully.

  ‘I need your help,’ said Charlie. At least, he thought, she’d have something more than fear to occupy her mind.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Depression flattened her voice.

  ‘We’ll need the other passports,’ he said. ‘Now that they know our identity the ones we’ve got aren’t any good, not any more.’

  He heard her laugh, an empty soun
d.

  ‘For when you’ve beaten them all, Charlie?’ she asked sadly.

  ‘We’re going to try, for God’s sake,’ he said. The shout would carry beyond the box, but he knew he had to break through the lassitude of defeat.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, trying to force a briskness into her voice. ‘At least we must try.’

  The effort failed; she was convinced of failure, he realised.

  ‘Do you have a pen and paper?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I want you to draw the passports from your bank and then travel, by ferry, to England.’

  He paused.

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted. The dullness was still evident.

  ‘Hire a car,’ he continued. ‘Then set out at your own pace, touring around the countryside.’

  ‘Charlie …?’ she began, but he stopped her.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘But I want you every third night to be at these hotels …’

  Patiently he recited from an A.A. guide book the first listing and then the hotel once removed in case the initial choice was full in towns selected from a carefully calculated, sixty-mile radius of London. It took a long time because Charlie insisted she read them back to him, to ensure there was no mistake.

  ‘Start from Oxford,’ he concluded, ‘the day after tomorrow and go in order of the towns as I’ve given them to you.’

  ‘And just wait until you contact me at any one of the hotels, always on the third day?’ she anticipated.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Sounds very simple,’ she said and he started to smile, hoping at last for a change in her attitude.

  ‘There’s just one thing, Charlie,’ she added.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What happens after a month, when I’ve gone around and around and you haven’t contacted me … haven’t contacted me because you’re lying dead in some ditch somewhere?’

  Her voice switchbacked and she struggled to a halt.

  ‘I don’t expect to be lying dead somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘But what if you are?’ she insisted. ‘I’ve got to know, for Christ’s sake!’

  Very soon she would be crying, he knew. He hoped she was in one of the end boxes at the Zürich exchange where there would be some concealment from the high wall.

  ‘Then it will be Rupert who calls you,’ he admitted, reluctantly.

  For several minutes there was complete silence.

  ‘It would mean we’d never see each other again, Charlie.’

  She was fighting against the emotion, he realised, carefully choosing the words before she spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ she went on, straining to keep her voice even. ‘That never really registered with me, the day you left to go to London. But that could be it; the last time. And you didn’t kiss me, when you left.’

  ‘I said I don’t expect to be lying dead somewhere,’ he repeated, desperately.

  ‘What would I do, Charlie?’ she pleaded. ‘I’ve always had you.’

  Now it was his voice that was flat, without expression. It wouldn’t be the answer she wanted, he knew.

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ he said. ‘Not to them, I mean. So they wouldn’t try to hurt you.’

  ‘So I could come safely back here, to an apartment where you’d never be again and to a bed in which you’d never sleep or touch me and …’

  Grief washed over the bitterness.

  ‘… and live happily ever after,’ she finished badly, through the sobs.

  ‘Please, Edith,’ he said.

  He waited, wincing at her attempts to recover.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, finally. ‘I can’t help blaming you and I know all the time that it’s not your fault … not in the beginning, anyway.’

  ‘We can still win,’ he insisted.

  ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ she challenged. ‘You can’t lose that bloody conceit, no matter what happens to you.’

  If I did, thought Charlie, then I’d be slumped weeping in a telephone box.

  ‘I mean it,’ he tried again, avoiding another confrontation.

  ‘I’ll be at Oxford,’ she sighed, resigned to the plan.

  ‘I love you, Edith,’ he said again.

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If … if you’re right … if you manage it … promise me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll tell me that more often.’

  ‘Every day,’ he said, too eagerly.

  ‘Not every day,’ she qualified. ‘Just more than you have in the past.’

  The telephone operator looked up at him, eyebrows raised, when Charlie left the box. It had been very hot in the tiny cubicle, he realised. His shirt was wet against his back.

  ‘Thirty-five minutes,’ said the man. ‘It would have been far more comfortable in your room.’

  ‘Probably,’ agreed Charlie.

  Edith wouldn’t have left the booth in Zürich yet, he knew. She’d be crying.

  The pipe stem snapped, a sudden cracking sound in the silent room.

  ‘Sure?’ asked Cuthbertson.

  ‘Positive,’ said Wilberforce.

  ‘Why would the Americans impose their own surveillance?’

  ‘Because they don’t trust ours. Probably don’t trust us, either. No reason why they should.’

  ‘They won’t kill him?’ demanded Cuthbertson, worriedly.

  ‘No,’ Wilberforce assured him. ‘Not until they’ve found out why he’s doing these things.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the British Director. ‘It might be a useful safeguard.’

  The man was bewildered by Charlie Muffin’s attitude, Cuthbertson knew. Served him right; always had been too conceited by half. He coughed, clearing the permanently congested throat.

  ‘Not going quite as we expected,’ suggested Cuthbertson.

  ‘No,’ admitted Wilberforce.

  Upon whom, wondered Cuthbertson, would the man try to put the responsibility this time?

  NINETEEN

  The lunch with Willoughby was as open as that of the previous day, but kept to a much tighter schedule. For that reason they ate at the Ritz, because the bank Charlie had carefully chosen was a private one less than five hundred yards away in Mayfair and he wanted to begin on foot.

  They left at three o’clock. Charlie paused outside, handing Willoughby the document case while he struggled into a Burberry, turning the collar up under the dark brown trilby hat.

  ‘You look rather odd,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s hope others think so too.’

  ‘I’d hate to think we’re wasting our time,’ said the underwriter.

  ‘We’re not,’ Charlie assured him. ‘Believe me, we’re not.’

  I hope, he thought.

  He led the way through the traffic stop-starting along Piccadilly and up Stratton Street.

  An assistant manager was waiting for the appointment that Charlie had made by telephone, one of several calls he had made after speaking to Edith. The formalities were very brief, but Charlie lingered all alone in the safe deposit vault, keeping strictly to the timing that had been rehearsed with the others in Willoughby’s office. Edith would have already decided her route and timetable, thought Charlie, sighing. Maybe even packed. She always liked doing things well in advance.

  He and Willoughby left the bank at three-fifty, turning up Curzon Street towards Park Lane.

  ‘We’re running to the minute,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Are you sure we’re being followed?’ asked Willoughby.

  ‘Stake my life on it,’ said Charlie, smiling at the unintended irony. ‘In fact, I am,’ he added.

  ‘I feel rather ridiculous,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘You’re supposed to feel scared,’ said Charlie.

  Four o’clock was striking as they emerged in front of the park. For several
seconds they remained on the pavement, looking either way, as if seeking a taxi.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Charlie, seeing a break in the traffic stream and hurrying across towards the underground car park. The limousine came up the ramp as they reached the exit and the chauffeur hardly braked as Charlie and Willoughby entered. It slotted easily into the stream of vehicles, heading north towards Marble Arch.

  ‘Now I feel scared,’ confessed Willoughby.

  ‘There’s nothing illegal,’ Charlie said.

  The halt outside the Marble Arch underground station was purposely sudden, causing a protest of brakes from the line of cars behind, but before the first horn blast Charlie and Willoughby were descending the stairs. They caught the train immediately, an unexpected advantage. As he sat down, Charlie looked at his watch. They were two minutes ahead of schedule, he saw.

  ‘Only another ten minutes and we’ll see the beginning of the rush hour,’ he said.

  Willoughby nodded, without replying. He was staring straight ahead, tight-lipped. The man was scared, Charlie realised.

  They jerked away from the train at Oxford Circus almost as the doors were closing, going up the escalator on the left and walking swiftly. The car pulled smoothly into the kerb as they emerged, turned quickly left through the one-way system into Soho and then regained Regent Street.

  ‘I wish we could go faster,’ muttered Willoughby.

  ‘Speed isn’t important,’ said Charlie.

  There was no need for the braking manoeuvre at Piccadilly station because there was a traffic jam. Charlie led again, bustling down the stairs. This time they sat without speaking until they reached Green Park. As they came up beneath the shadow of the hotel in which they’d eaten, one of Willoughby’s clerks, wearing a Burberry, trilby and carrying a document case fell into step with them and the three of them entered the vehicle.

  ‘There’s still a car with us,’ volunteered the driver, taking a traffic light at amber and accelerating into the underpass on the way to Knightsbridge.

  They got out at Knightsbridge station and as they descended the stairway a second clerk, dressed identically to the first and also carrying a matching case, joined the group. They travelled only as far as South Kensington, but when they emerged for the car this time, one of the raincoated men turned away, walking quickly into Gloucester Road. There was another clerk at Victoria and this time they went on for two stations, getting off at the height of the rush hour at Embankment. The throng of people covered the delay of the car reaching them. They travelled north again, to Leicester Square, and when they got out this time, the man who had left them in Kensington was waiting, joining without any greeting until Holborn. They crowded into the car, sped down Southampton Row and then boarded a District Line train at Temple. The car turned, going back along the Strand, circling Trafalgar Square, then pulled in for petrol in St Martin’s Lane.