The Namedropper

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Stop!’ insisted Alyce. ‘Please stop! I don’t want you to go on misunderstanding … saying things I don’t want to hear you say, although I do want to hear you say them—’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ halted Jordan, in turn.

  ‘Then let me,’ pleaded Alyce. ‘Let me talk, try to explain as best I can, without stopping me. Without stopping me and hating me because I never want you to hate me, not now and not ever. I know who you are, Harvey. Know what you are. Which means I know what you’ve done to Alfred. How I guessed you paid all the bills and didn’t want my money …’ She stopped, gulping too deeply at her drink and having to cough when it caught her breath.

  ‘I tricked you, my darling,’ she started again. ‘Tricked you and now I am so very, very sorry. I never intended it to happen, none of it. I never imagined Alfred would invoke that stupid fucking criminal conversation claim; never thought I’d ever see you again, which made everything worse, because I wanted to, so much, after France.’

  ‘You’re not—’ Jordan started again but sharply she interrupted him.

  ‘No! I’ve got to finish because I don’t think I can say it all a second time. Of course I knew Alfred was having me watched here because I was having him watched long before he put his private detectives on to me. I knew all about Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies, and had two other women if I needed to cite them. But here, in America, he was getting too close. He had to be diverted, get the co-respondent he needed for the divorce. Which is why I went to France and found you. You were only ever supposed to be a necessary name to get him to pull his people off. I didn’t even know of something called criminal conversation. Or guess in a million years that you would fight it. Never thought I’d ever see you again although by the time I flew back I wanted to, so very much …’

  Jordan took advantage of another gulped drink. ‘How do you know what I do?’

  ‘That extra week, when I extended the vacation? That was to get my own enquiry people to France: those I’d personally employed to watch Alfred, not the DKK agency that Bob engaged.’ She sniggered a humourless laugh. ‘You know why I did it? I did it because I really didn’t want you to get in the situation you ended up in. But you confused us so much, back in England. Changing from Harvey Jordan to Peter Thomas Wightman. It didn’t take long to work out why, though. Then we thought you’d caught us out, all those evasion tricks when you went back to your own apartment …’ She raised her hand towards him. ‘Don’t worry, darling. What you did when you got back to England wasn’t breaking any American law, not that I’d have blown the whistle on you if it did. And I’m certainly not going to tell anyone about what you’ve done to Alfred.’

  ‘You keep calling me darling.’

  ‘Why do you think I wore that stupid plastic ring all the time, after you gave it to me … even wore it back here on the plane? I loved you by then … like I love you now. Which is why I’m going to end it now and marry Walter, who’s kind and gentle and who I came to France to protect from Alfred’s people. And who I think I love enough, just enough, to marry.’

  ‘No!’ refused Jordan. ‘We could make something work. I don’t know what or how but there’ll be some way …’

  Alyce shook her head. ‘It might have worked, maybe, if Alfred hadn’t sued for criminal conversation. And if you hadn’t beat him in court, as you did. Somehow, somewhen, it would come out if we got together. And when it did Alfred would have every grounds for appealing the court’s decision. Alfred would employ every private detective he could, although he wouldn’t need many to show your photograph to the banks in which you opened the accounts in his name and the realtor from whom you leased the apartment on West 72nd Street that all the newspapers have identified, would it? And then you’d go to prison – which I couldn’t bear – and all the Bellamy Foundations and trusts would be disgraced because I’d be linked – possibly even charged with complicity with you – and I couldn’t expose the family to that, as much as I love you. It’s over, my darling. It’s got to be over. We got too clever, both of us. And ended up beating ourselves.’

  Jordan reclined the back of the First Class seat and adjusted the eye shades against being disturbed by the cabin staff, even though he’d already told the supervisor he didn’t want anything to eat or drink, just to be left alone. Which he was, he acknowledged; alone again, with only himself to consider or think of, which he’d once considered the perfect way to be, but didn’t any more.

  Alyce was right, of course. He’d known that all the time he’d argued with her – close to pleading with her – that they could work out a way to stay together, be happy together, to her head-shaking adamant refusal that they’d end up hating each other, unable to hide from Appleton. Which meant, he supposed, that in a way Appleton had won, after all. Too convoluted, Jordan corrected himself: too much self-pity. He had to accept what had happened – not yet, but eventually – and move on, as he’d eventually moved on after that other long ago collapse into self-pity.

  Except that he didn’t want to. The sudden awareness surprised Jordan; confused him even and he forced himself to confront exactly what it was he didn’t want any more To go on as he was, doing what he did, he answered himself, further surprised at another potential, self-imposed upheaval in his life. What life? he asked himself, continuing the personal analysis. What – where – was the life in becoming someone with a different name every two or three months, turning some poor bastard’s existence on its head as his had been turned by what had just happened to him? Compartmentalizing everything between himself and Alyce, Jordan recognized he’d been lucky escaping as he had, remaining undiscovered for what he was by Appleton’s surveillance team. Harvey Jordan, the man who never gambled, acknowledged that his luck couldn’t last.

  What could – would – he do then? Not a decision to be rushed, although he’d once done well enough running his own legitimate computer programming business and there was more than sufficient money squirreled away in Jersey to start again. There was no need or reason to rush the decision, he thought again. Maybe something to think about, refine in detail, on another vacation. But then again, maybe not: the vacation that is, not the detailed consideration on his future. The weather in the South of France was uncertain in October.

  He slept dreamlessly and undisturbed during the flight and disembarked in London actually excited at the thought of doing something new. The immigration officer was a blonde girl who reminded him vaguely of Alyce. She looked between him and his passsport photograph and said, ‘Harvey Jordan?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, to his own satisfaction. ‘Very definitely Harvey Jordan.’

  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 mos
t 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.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  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 © 2007 by Brian Freemantle

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  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