‘That’s horrifying,’ said Willoughby. He seemed to have difficulty in continuing, then said at last: ‘Did my father teach you to think like that, as well?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Charlie simply.
‘And I thought I knew him,’ said Willoughby sadly.
‘I’m sorry that you became so deeply involved,’ Charlie apologised. ‘It was wrong of me to endanger you as much as I did.’
‘I would have refused, had I known it was going to turn out like this,’ said the underwriter.
‘Of course you would,’ said Charlie.
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘It’s over a month since the headstone went up on Edith’s grave,’ he said. ‘Those laburnum trees are very near and they stain …’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ corrected Willoughby.
‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘But that’s as far ahead as I want to think, at the moment.’
He rose, moving towards the door.
‘I saw a man working on a grave when we met that day near your father’s tomb. He’d maintained it in a beautiful condition. I want to keep Edith’s just like that.’
‘Charlie,’ said Willoughby.
He turned.
‘Keep in touch?’ asked the underwriter.
‘Maybe.’
‘I was wrong to criticise,’ admitted Willoughby. ‘I know they weren’t your rules …’
Charlie ignored the attempted reconciliation. It might come later, he supposed.
‘They won, you know,’ he said. ‘Wilberforce and Ruttgers and God knows who else were involved. They really won.’
‘Yes, Charlie,’ said Willoughby. ‘I know they did.’
‘We were damned lucky, Willard.’
‘Yes, Mr President. Damned lucky.’
Henry Austin pushed the chair back and stretched his feet out on to the Oval Office desk.
‘Can you imagine what the Russians would have done if they’d found the stuff. that fell out of the plane?’
‘It’s too frightening to think about.’
‘Thank Christ the British were so helpful.’
‘I think they were as embarrassed as we were.’
The telephone of the appointments secretary lit up on the President’s console.
‘The new C.I.A. Director is here, Mr President,’ said the secretary.
‘Send him in,’ ordered Austin.
THIRTY-THREE
Although the last snows of winter had thawed and it was officially spring, few other people had opened their dachas yet, preferring still the central heating of Moscow. Berenkov had lit a fire and stood, with the warmth on his back, in his favourite position overlooking the capital.
He heard the sound of glasses and turned as Valentina came towards him.
‘It was kind of Comrade Kalenin to give you this French wine,’ said the woman.
‘He knows how much I like it,’ said Berenkov. He sipped, appreciatively.
‘Excellent,’ he judged.
His wife smiled at his enjoyment, joining him at the window.
‘So she died, as well?’ said Valentina, suddenly.
Berenkov nodded. The woman’s interest in the Charlie Muffin affair had equalled his, he realised.
‘We’ve positive confirmation that it was her,’ he said.
‘But not about him?’
‘Enough,’ said Berenkov. ‘There’s really little doubt’
Neither spoke for several moments and then Valentina said: ‘That’s good.’
‘Good?’
‘Now there won’t be the sort of suffering that you and I would understand,’ explained the woman.
‘No,’ agreed Berenkov. ‘There won’t be any suffering.’
One thousand five hundred miles away, in a cemetery on the outskirts of Guildford, Charlie Muffin scrubbed methodically back and forth, pausing occasionally to pick the red and yellow laburnum pods from among the green stone chips.
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.
Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the Daily Mail, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city’s orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.
Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with Charlie M. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series, The Blind Run, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date, Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is Red Star Rising (2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.
In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle’s other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia’s organized crime bureau.
Freemantle lives and works in London, England.
A school photograph of Brian Freemantle at age twelve.
Brian Freemantle, at age fourteen, with his mother, Violet, at the country estate of a family acquaintance, Major Mears.
Freemantle’s parents, Harold and Violet Freemantle, at the country estate of Major Mears.
Brian Freemantle and his wife, Maureen, on their wedding day. They were married on December 8, 1956, in Southampton, where both were born and spent their childhoods. Although they attended the same schools, they did not meet until after they had both left Southampton.
Brian Freemantle (right) with photographer Bob Lowry in 1959. Freemantle and Lowry opened a branch office of the Bristol Evening World together in Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England.
A bearded Freemantle with his wife, Maureen, circa 1971. He grew the beard for an undercover newspaper assignment in what was then known as Czechoslovakia.
Freemantle (left) with Lady and Sir David English, the editors of the Daily Mail, on Freemantle’s fiftieth birthday. Freemantle was foreign editor of the Daily Mail, and with the backing of Sir David and the newspaper, he organized the airlift rescue of nearly one hundred Vietnamese orphans from Saigon in 1975.
Freemantle working on a novel before beginning his daily newspaper assignments. His wife, Maureen, looks over his shoulder.
Brian Freemantle says good-bye to Fleet Street and the Daily Mail to take up a fulltime career as a writer in 1975. The editor’s office was turned into a replica of a railway carriage to represent the fact that Freemantle had written eight books while commuting—when he wasn’t abroad as a foreign correspondent.
Many of the staff secretaries are dressed as Vietnamese hostesses to commemorate the many tours Freemantle carried out in Vietnam.
The Freemantle family on the grounds of the Winchester Cathedral in 1988. Back row: wife Maureen; eldest daughter, Victoria; and mother-in-law, Alice Tipney, a widow who lived with the Freemantle family for a total of forty-eight years until her death. Second row: middle daughter, Emma; granddaughter, Harriet; Freemantle; and third daughter, Charlotte.
Freemantle in 1999, in the Outer Close outside Winchester Cathedral. For thirty years, he lived with his family in the basement library of a fourteenth-century house with a tunnel connecting it to the cathedral. Priests used this tunnel to escape persecution during the English Reformation.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1978 by Innslodge Publications Ltd
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Copyright Page
Here Comes Charlie M Page 19