Willoughby shook his head, exasperated.
‘The police found your passport, you know. Just slightly charred. Superintendent Law told me. They’ve closed the case, incidentally. I inferred the civil police believe you were on board … you’re probably freer now than you’ve been since Vienna.’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie, uninterested.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Willoughby. ‘If they’d found your passport, in a bag that shouldn’t have been aboard, then Ruttgers would have lived.’
‘No,’ said Charlie, definitely. ‘That’s why the passport and Edith’s bag were important.’
Willoughby sat, waiting. It would only increase the man’s disgust, realised Charlie. It didn’t seem to matter.
Sighing, he went on: ‘The bomb that destroyed the aircraft wasn’t in Edith’s bag. There were two other bombs, both in separate pieces of Ruttger’s own luggage. I wasn’t able to get near enough to the aircraft to see what sort of baggage checks were being conducted. So I had to create a dummy … something that could have been discarded, if there had been any sort of examination. In fact, there wasn’t.’
‘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.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-329a4b-97b0-154a-0a9c-b27d-47bf-0eeecf
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 13.03.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.22, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Brian Freemantle
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Here Comes Charlie M cm-2 Page 19