Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘That’s all you ever had,’ Charlie reminded him.

  Pendlebury smiled. ‘I was always sure of the robbery,’ he said.

  Where, wondered Charlie, were the people whom he believed the Russians had moved in?

  ‘They’re here,’ said Gilbert.

  Instinctively they all looked at the television screen, which remained eerily silent and empty.

  ‘Saxby and Boella have gone into the dining room,’ said the radio operator, hunched over the receiver. ‘Chambine is still in his room. The other four are just moving about the hotel.’

  ‘I reached an agreement,’ Charlie reminded Cosgrove, but turning to include Pendlebury. ‘I haven’t heard you give any instructions about it on that radio over there.’

  Pendlebury sighed in apparent reluctance, then moved to where Gilbert had the communications equipment. Pendlebury glanced once towards Charlie and then curtly gave the all units order, countermanding his earlier instructions about Charlie.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You’re pretty cocky for someone who’s just learned how close he’s come to death,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘It’s a kind of nervousness, really,’ said Charlie. He wondered, with a detached objectivity, how he was going to settle with Pendlebury. The bastard had led him along, almost by the nose, set him up to be killed and even now was treating him like a tolerant headmaster.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ said Pendlebury, just avoiding being patronising.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Charlie. It was like a bloody film script, he thought.

  Cosgrove smiled, a politician who has succeeded in another compromise to suit everybody.

  ‘I’ll not forget your part in this,’ he said to Pendlebury.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the F.B.I. man.

  Cosgrove thrust out his hand and self-consciously Pendlebury took it.

  There was movement on the television monitor and they all started towards it. Three uniformed guards had entered the room and were patrolling dutifully between the display cases.

  ‘Eleven-thirty,’ said Gilbert. There was a mumble from the radio. ‘Saxby and Boella have left the restaurant,’ he added, ‘and the other four are moving into some sort of grouping just outside the Alcazar …’ There was a pause, then Gilbert resumed: ‘And Chambine has just left his room.’

  Pendlebury scooped a handful of ice into a glass and poured a measure from a full bottle of vodka that was on a small table. Appearing suddenly aware of the others, he said, ‘Help yourselves.’

  Neither Cosgrove nor Charlie took up the invitation.

  ‘Saxby and Boella have gone out through the pool area,’ said Gilbert, ‘and Petrilli is making his way towards the ante-room …’

  Charlie knew that would be where he had stood, in apparent contrition, four hours earlier while Cosgrove had announced the resumption of insurance cover to the rest of the committee. The door leading from the foyer was in a small recess and there were parts of it where a man would be quite invisible to the general reception area.

  ‘He’s through …’ said Gilbert.

  ‘His job is to bypass the electrical alarms in the ante-room and the linking door into the exhibition hall proper …’ said Pendlebury. He was looking at a clipboard. There were names written in a left-hand column and tiny figures were inscribed on the paper.

  ‘Now the others are crossing,’ said Gilbert. ‘Bertrano first … now Bulz … Beldini’s waiting … apparently there’s been a sudden influx of people into the foyer …’

  The Russians? wondered Charlie hopefully. They should have responded by now.

  Cosgrove patted his pockets, located his cigarettes and lit one, staring throughout the entire operation at the radio set. Pendlebury stood with both hands held in front of his chest, with the glass against his lips, but not drinking from it.

  ‘He’s moving now … he’s through…

  ’ Pendlebury sighed, drinking at last, and Cosgrove exhaled cigarette smoke in relief.

  ‘Eleven-fifty-three,’ recorded Gilbert.

  ‘Two minutes ahead of schedule,’ said Pendlebury. ‘Now they wait until the midnight security round.’

  ‘You appear to know a lot about it,’ said Charlie. Briefly Pendlebury smiled. ‘I know more about it than they do themselves,’ he said, moving towards the bottle.

  It seemed he had been wrong about the people he had imagined the Russians had installed, thought Charlie. He had been wrong about almost everything else so far. He curbed the self pity. Not wrong. Just misunderstood. He’d still fucked it up, though, whatever qualification he tried to make in his own defence.

  Williamson had lost his supremacy and because of it he was uneasy: not wishing to do anything not properly thought out, but still uneasy. From the moment Pendlebury had established his control room, it had been occupied by a minimum of three people, often more. They took no room service because of the risk of revealing the equipment inside, which made it impossible for Williamson to establish surveillance similar to that in the other accommodation. Because of the conversation he had monitored from Pendlebury’s original rooms, he knew the purpose of the move, which made Charlie’s admission to it even more inexplicable. As confusing, almost, as the hour-long meeting the man had had in Senator Cosgrove’s suite. Failing to install any listening devices there had been a bad mistake. His first; but still it was inexcusable. The only obvious conclusion was that Charlie Muffin had concurred with the robbery. It would be a remarkable about-face, his having gone to the extreme of warning Moscow. But then his own instructions had changed, just as remarkably. Williamson thought back to the conversation during which he had been appointed the man’s protector. ‘Someone unusual for his deviousness’ had been the warning. The man whom he now knew to be Charlie Muffin was certainly that.

  Williamson, who was sitting in the foyer, glanced up at the wall clock and then expectantly along the corridor in the direction from which the security men would enter. Exactly on time, they approached the exhibition hall and three entered while a fourth remained on guard outside. How easy it would have been, reflected Williamson, to walk up calmly and alert the guard that four men who intended to steal the contents of the chamber behind him were at that moment crouched in the darkness of the ante-room, its alarms already nullified. The security people emerged within two minutes. Aware that Pendlebury wouldn’t risk his people humping a dead body through the foyer, Williamson had decided that if an attempt were to be made upon Charlie’s life, it would be within ten feet of where he sat. And within the next twenty-eight minutes. He looked around, wondering if the Englishman had left Pendlebury’s control centre. On the far side of the reception area, Ramirez waited in the position Williamson had specified. Aware of the man’s attention, the Cuban looked up, anticipating some nodded instruction. Williamson stared at the man blank-faced, then looked away.

  24

  There was something surrealistic about witnessing a robbery in which the participants were being operated, puppet-like. Visually, thought Charlie, it was a combination of an old silent movie and a moon walk. The cameras undetected were fixed and concealed, so there was not a complete view of the exhibition room, and Chambine’s men kept entering and leaving the picture, heightening the impression of a staged production.

  Everyone in the control room was staring fixedly at the television screen. Pendlebury and Cosgrove had arranged chairs alongside Gilbert, from around whom came the only activity in the room. He was quietly dictating the identities of the thieves into a tape recorder from which court depositions were later to be assembled, to accompany the film. Beside Gilbert was hunched a second F.B.I. man, counting aloud, allowing Pendlebury to time the robbery according to Chambine’s own assessment and therefore gauge the risk to the twelve-thirty security patrol. To Pendlebury’s left was the operator who had taken over from Gilbert the radio surveillance on Saxby, Boella and Cham-bine. The man had already recorded the extinguishing of the pool lights by the time Bulz and Beldini enter
ed the room. It was exactly two minutes past twelve.

  ‘Sixty seconds early,’ Pendlebury said. Until then Charlie had not realised that clipped to the front of the man’s sweatdamp shirt was the pick-up of a microphone connected to a second tape recorder.

  The disguise of the first two men was excellent. It was impossible to discern where the black balaclava headpieces merged with their black tracksuits.

  Their movements appeared almost choreographed. Going for the lights first, they glided from fixture to fixture, one never impeding the other, each confident of the other’s position and purpose. The light died on the picture as if someone in the control room had turned down the brightness button.

  ‘Twelve-six,’ intoned the timekeeper.

  ‘Made up two minutes,’ calculated Pendlebury.

  Cosgrove was hunched forward, hands against his knees.

  The picture suddenly brightened again as the coverings were taken from the lights, and in the second it took for their eyes to adjust, Bertrano and Petrilli had entered the room. Bulz and Beldini snatched their balaclavas off and there were a few grunts of amusement at the silent picture of the two men puffing to indicate how hot the coverings had been.

  ‘That’ll convict the bastards,’ said Pendlebury.

  The four men began moving with the precision that Bulz and Beldini had earlier shown. Bertrano and Petrilli slid the rods beneath the display cases and then lifted, like carriers of a miniature sedan chair, while the two who had entered first crouched with their bypass leads, clamped them into position and then crab-walked to the adjoining cases, to make the connection to the Unking alarm. It was almost an amusing sequence, thought Charlie, like a complicated Morris dance. As the impression came to Charlie, Cosgrove sniggered.

  ‘Twelve-nine,’ said the man alongside Gilbert.

  ‘All display case alarms circumvented,’ Gilbert mouthed into his recorder.

  ‘Two minutes, fifty seconds ahead,’ confirmed Pendlebury.

  Maintaining the Morris dance analogy, Bertrano and Beldini skipped back to the first case, repeating the sequence but this time lifting higher so that Bulz could cut through the immobilised connecting wires. As each display case became free, they ran it to the window through which they intended to hand them all to Saxby and Boella.

  ‘Drive lights going,’ said the man in radio contact with the outside observers. ‘First section … second … third … now Chambine is in the car park, moving towards the cars …’

  Nine of the twelve display cases were lined up near the window. Bulz remained there now, scraping the covering from the alarm wire beneath the sill and infusing the last bypass lead into the system.

  ‘Twelve-sixteen,’ said the man with the watch.

  ‘Saxby and Boella have entered the car park,’ reported the radio listener. There was a momentary pause, then: ‘First lights gone … second …’

  ‘Made up three minutes,’ recorded Pendlebury. The shoulders of his shirt were black with sweat.

  ‘They’re good,’ muttered Cosgrove, addressing no one. ‘They’re very, very good.’

  ‘Car park completely out,’ said the radio man.

  ‘Twelve-eighteen.’

  The four men were grouped around the window. There was a momentary pause, as if they were taking breath, then Bertrano unbolted the sash, paused again and then jerked the window upwards. Chambine and Saxby were just identifiable in the square of darkness.

  ‘Marvellous,’ groaned Pendlebury, as if enjoying some physical pleasure. ‘Oh Christ, bloody marvellous.’

  ‘Boella’s by the station waggon,’ said the radio man.

  The cases were chain-handed through the window and into the car with the same efficiency there had been throughout the robbery.

  ‘Twelve-nineteen …’ counted the man, ‘twelve-nineteen, fifty …’

  ‘Eight cases loaded …’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘Twelve-twenty …’

  ‘Just one more to go …’

  ‘Twelve-twenty, fifty seconds …’

  ‘They’ve done it!’ There was a note of personal triumph in Pendlebury’s voice as they watched Bertrano vault easily through the window and turn to close it so that the sixty-second burst of light in the car park would not be investigated, and they were again looking at the unmoving but now empty picture of the exhibition hall.

  ‘And we’ve done it,’ said Cosgrove, turning to the F.B.I. man. His voice began softly, but rose as he got towards the end of the sentence. ‘We’ve done It!’ he shouted, slapping Pendlebury’s damp shoulder.

  The F.B.I. man grinned, almost shyly, as if he still found it difficult to believe it had gone as smoothly as he had planned. ‘Yes,’ he said, controlling himself better than the senator, ‘it all worked.’

  ‘Moving off down the drive,’ said the man at the radio, ‘quite undetected.’

  Appearing to remember Charlie Muffin, Pendlebury swivelled in his chair, the triumph that Cosgrove had earlier shown starting out upon his fat, reddened face. For a moment of incomprehension, the look stayed there, the smile flickering uncertainly.

  ‘Gone,’ he said, his voice broken in disbelief. ‘The son-of-a-bitch has gone.’

  Had Giuseppe Terrilli ever been asked, incautiously, what he considered the single most important reason for his success he would have named his self control. It had been with him that childhood morning on the tenement roof, remained throughout his early career as a soldier when he was determined to rise to the very top of the organisation, and was with him now, subduing the excitement that was churning through him at the thought of feeling and touching and caressing the stamps that had once belonged to Tsar Nicholas II of All the Russias.

  After his return from the beach and changed instructions to Santano had come news of two fresh interceptions of the boats, and because of the warning he had issued at their previous meeting and the displeasure which he had anticipated and received from the inner council of the organisation, he had summoned both Santano and Patridge to a conference and reviewed the disaster with an ice-cold detachment which had worried both of them.

  Able now because the robbery had been brought forward to release Santano immediately, he had ordered that a personal aircraft be made ready for the following morning to fly his lieutenant directly to Bogota. So serious were the interceptions considered that he had ordered that Santano be accompanied by four others, physically to impress upon the Colombian organisers his annoyance at what had happened.

  Santano and the accountant had remained for dinner, not for any social reason but because Terrilli was determined that neither would leave the house unaware that their own future employment and safety did not depend upon a higher rate of success. Throughout the meal, Terrilli never once consulted a watch or clock to establish how close the robbery was.

  It was Santano who drew attention to the time, interrupting Terrilli at ten o’clock to ask if he could leave the room to check the arrangements for relaxing the security precautions for the stipulated period. Patridge was obviously curious, but refrained from any comment, instead continuing the conversation about the marijuana arrests and offering tentative suggestions for preventing a recurrence. Terrilli sat nodding, occasionally interposing a question or observation, and all the time his mind was occupied with thoughts of the quality and texture of what was soon to be his and how he would rearrange his collection to make the Romanov stamps the focal point of the display room.

  Terrilli waited until Santano’s return and only then, after they had had coffee, did he push his chair away from the table to indicate that the conference was over.

  Patridge had released his driver when he had been told to stay for dinner, and Terrilli agreed to Santano’s suggestion that he should drive the accountant home, seeing benefit in the frightened men continuing the discussion in the car.

  Santano rechecked the security instructions as he went down the driveway and then out into the private road leading to Ocean Boulevard. He turned northwards and was almost at the po
int where the Flagler Bridge joins the mainland before the first of the Cubans moved quietly through the palms and shrubs bordering the approach to Terrilli’s castle.

  Before they had attempted the Bay of Pigs disaster they had been trained in the basic art of jungle warfare, because Langley had imagined Castro’s overthrow would involve quite a lot of guerrilla fighting. During their imprisonment in the Soviet Union, that basic instruction had been perfected in the special K.G.B. training forest bordering the Black Sea, even though its precise advantage had not been guessed at the time. So they moved easily across the cropped lawns and through the clipped hedges, expertly using all available cover and remaining unseen by Terrilli’s patrolling guards and undetected by the Dobermann dogs they held on tight leash.

  The Cubans had been infiltrated into America without any weapons, because they were so easy to obtain within the country. For this exercise they had been provided with ·375 Magnums, four carried Armalite rifles and one had a Russian-made AK47 which, if seized by the authorities, could be traced back to a three-term Vietnam veteran who had bartered it for his last three fixes of heroin and was now undergoing psychiatric rehabilitation in a New England sanatorium.

  The Cubans’ training had brought them up to British commando or American marine standard. There were fourteen of them and they divided equally, dispersing themselves either side of the approach road and coming within twenty feet of the now secured electrified gates. Their information was that when the cars they were to intercept came along the road, those gates would already be opened. If, for any reason, that failed to happen or the gates closed before they could get through, they carried sufficient grenades to blow them off their hinges.

  It was always possible, of course, that the grenades would not burst the gates. So, confident that there was still time before they had to spring the ambush, two of them crept undetected beneath the piercing searchlights and fixed plastic explosive charges to one of the concrete gate pillars, trailing the detonating wire back to where the main body was assembled.