Here Comes Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

  She appeared not to hear.

  What he wanted appeared almost immediately and he smiled at Edith. She looked back, without expression.

  The smaller child was already crying, overtired and demanding to be carried. The mother, face throbbing red and split by sunburn, tried to push it away and by mistake hit the other girl, who started crying too, and immediately an argument began between the woman and her husband.

  ‘Perfect,’ judged Charlie.

  He moved quickly now, his hand cupping Edith’s elbow. He could feel the nervousness tighten within her as they wedged themselves behind the squabbling family and began edging closer to the immigration office.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he assured her emptily. She remained stiff by his side, staring straight ahead.

  The children caused the expected distraction, filling the tiny room with noise. The parents’ row spilled over to the immigration officer at a query about the children being entered on both passports and Charlie and Edith passed through in the wake of the official’s anticipated anxiety to regain order in the file of people.

  ‘Works every time,’ said Charlie, still holding Edith’s arm and leading her back towards the bar. She was still very frightened, he knew.

  In recent months she had shown her concern at his drinking by almost total abstinence, but she accepted the brandy now, gulping at it.

  ‘It’s been too long,’ he said. ‘They will have abandoned the blanket scrutiny long ago. And there’s nothing wrong with the passports.’

  She shook her head, refusing the lie.

  ‘That’s nonsense and you know it. They’ll never give up. Not until you’re dead.’

  ‘This is the fifth time we’ve crossed from the Continent without any trouble.’

  She shrugged, still not accepting the reassurance.

  ‘Thank God we won’t have to go through it again.’

  ‘We’re safe, I tell you.’

  With his empty glass, he gestured to the attentive barman, waving away the change.

  ‘If you’re so safe, why are you drunk every night by ten o’clock?’ she demanded. It was an unfair question, Edith realised. Fear wasn’t the only reason. But she wanted to hurt him, desperate for any reaction that would cause him to stop. She was very worried at the growing carelessness. She should be grateful, she supposed, that he’d finally agreed to abandon England. It had taken enough arguments.

  He smiled, a lopsided expression.

  ‘Nothing else to do,’ he said, answering her question.

  Edith shook her head, sadly.

  ‘You know something, Charlie?’ she said.

  He drank awkwardly, spilling some of the liquor down his suit. It was already stained, she saw.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I never thought I would feel sorry for you. Amost every other emotion, probably. But never pity. And that’s nearly all there is now, Charlie. Pity.’

  Another attempt to hurt, she recognised. Because it wasn’t true.

  ‘What about love?’

  ‘You’re making it difficult,’ she persisted. ‘Very difficult.’

  He tried to straighten, to conceal the extent of his drunkenness, then discarded the pretence, slumping round-shouldered in the chair.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to leave England,’ she said sincerely. The gesture was for her, she accepted.

  Charlie shrugged, knowing the words would jam if he tried to speak. She had been right in persuading him, he knew. They were both much happier in Zürich, and having dispensed with Paris there wasn’t much point in retaining the Brighton house either. That was the trouble, he decided, extending the thought; there didn’t seem much point in anything any more.

  ‘We’ve still got to get nearly £300,000 out of England,’ he said. ‘Won’t you be frightened?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. It would be wrong to suggest he just left it and lived on the money she had, she knew.

  ‘Won’t you be?’ she asked.

  He humped his shoulders, an uncaring gesture.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. He nodded and the refilled glass dutifully appeared.

  He probably wouldn’t recall the conversation in the morning, decided Edith. It was already long past remembering time … long past many things.

  Charlie was bored, she recognised. Bored and uninterested. For someone who had led a life as unique as Charlie’s, it was like an illness, gradually weakening him. Now he had nothing. Except guilt. There was a lot of that, she knew.

  ‘Promise me something else,’ she tried, hopefully, as the ferry began to move alongside the Southampton quayside.

  His eyes were filmed, she saw, and his face was quite unresponsive.

  ‘Don’t go to the grave,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s a stupid, sentimental pilgrimage. He wouldn’t have expected you to do it.’

  ‘Want to,’ said Charlie, stubbornly.

  ‘It’s ridiculous, Charlie. There’s absolutely no point. And you know it.’

  ‘We’re coming here for the last time,’ he reminded her. ‘So I’m going, just once. I’ve waited long enough. It’ll be safe now.’

  She sighed, accepting defeat.

  ‘Oh Charlie,’ she said. ‘Why does it all have to be such an awful mess?’

  The office of George Wilberforce, Director of British Intelligence, was on the corner of the Whitehall building that gave views over both the Cenotaph and Parliament Square.

  It was a darkly warm, reassuring room, in which the oil paintings of bewigged and satined statesmen adorning the panelled walls seemed an unnecessary reminder of an Empire.

  The modern innovation of double glazing excluded noise from outside and deep pile carpet succeeded within. The books were in hand-tooled leather and the massive desk at which Wilberforce sat had been salvaged in 1947 aboard the same vessel that brought home the Queen’s throne from an independent India. Wilberforce considered he had the more comfortable piece of furniture.

  The Director appeared as tailored for the room as the antique furniture and the unread first editions. He was a fine-featured, elegantly gangling man who affected pastel coloured shirts with matching socks and a languid diffidence that concealed the fervent need for acceptance in a job he had coveted for fifteen years and seen to go to two other men before him.

  The only intrusive mannerism was the habit, during acrimonious or difficult discussions, of using a briar pipe, which he was never seen to light, like worry-beads, revolving it between his peculiarly long fingers and constantly exploring the bowl with a set of tiny tools that retreated into a gold container.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ greeted Wilberforce formally. Always before the meetings had been in Washington: he couldn’t recall an American Director of the C.I.A. making a visit like this to his predecessors, he thought.

  Onslow Smith responded with one of the open-faced, boyish smiles that Wilberforce recalled from the sports photographs that littered the man’s office.

  ‘Seemed a good idea to hitch a ride on the same aircraft taking the new vice-President on his tour of Europe,’ said the C.I.A. director.

  Wilberforce looked doubtful and the other man’s smile became apologetic.

  ‘And there was another reason,’ he conceded.

  ‘What?’

  Smith hesitated, arranging the words.

  ‘The President has a new broom complex,’ he said. ‘Just like your guy.’

  He cleared his throat, to make the quote obvious.

  ‘… “loose ends neatly tied … mistakes vigorously rectified where necessary.”’

  Already, recalled Wilberforce, political cartoonists were featuring Austin and Smallwood taking turns at being each other’s ventriloquist’s dummies.

  ‘So I hear,’ said the Briton, waiting.

  ‘There’s been an official policy document,’ said Smith.

  ‘We’ve had something like that here,’ admitted Wilberforce.

  ‘Which means we have the same old problem,’ said Onslow Smith.

  Wilberfo
rce nodded, reaching out for a worry pipe.

  ‘Charlie Muffin,’ he agreed. ‘The bastard.’

  FIVE

  It wasn’t until he got into the churchyard and felt the damp, cold wind that always seems to blow in English cemeteries in November that Charlie Muffin sobered sufficiently to realise completely what he had done. And that the stupidity could kill him. Like so many stupidities before it.

  The trained instinct surfaced through the swamp of alcohol and he pulled away from one of the main pathways, using a straggled yew tree for cover. About ten yards away, a black knot of people huddled speechless around a grave still cheerfully bright from funeral flowers. Nearer, a practised mourner, shirt-sleeved despite the cold, knelt over a green-pebbled rectangle on a padded cloth, scrubbing the headstone and surround into its original whiteness, lips moving in familiar conversation with someone who couldn’t reply any more. Charlie turned, widening his vision. At least twenty people spread throughout the churchyard. Too many.

  ‘You’re a prick,’ Charlie told himself. ‘A right prick.’

  He frowned, surprised at the emergence of the habit. He’d always talked to himself, unashamedly, when he was under stress or afraid. It had been a long time since he had done it. Like welcoming back an old friend, he thought.

  The drunkenness was gone now, but the pain was banded around his head and his throat was dehydrated. For a man apparently seeking a momentarily forgotten grave, he’d stood long enough beneath the tree, Charlie decided, groping for the professionalism of which he had once been so confident He swallowed, forcing back the desire to flee, to run back along the wider pathway to the car he could still see, over the low wall.

  ‘Never run,’ he murmured. ‘Never ever run.’

  One of the basic lessons. Often ignored, though. Sometimes by people who should know better. And invariably by amateurs. Günther Bayer had been an amateur. No, Charlie corrected, not an amateur. An innocent. A trusting, manipulated innocent who had believed Charlie was sincere in trying to help him escape across the Wall. And so he’d run when he got caught in the East German ambush that had been intended for Charlie. He’d been dead before the flames had engulfed the Volkswagen, Charlie assured himself. Had to be, in that cross-fire.

  He pushed away from the tree, rejoining the main path, alert for the attention the movement would have caused even a trained watcher. Nothing. Perhaps he was all right, after all. Perhaps, after so long, there was no observation. Or perhaps they were too well trained.

  The pathway along which he was walking ran parallel with the perimeter wall, Charlie realised. But there was a linking lane, built like a spoke through the middle. He could turn on to that and regain the entrance. Four hundred yards, he estimated. It seemed a very long way.

  The hesitation was hardly perceptible when, suddenly, he saw the tomb. In his earlier drunkenness he had imagined that Sir Archibald Willoughby’s grave would be marked in an ordinary, traditional way, like that tended by the shirt-sleeved man near the yew tree. The family vault was an ornate, castellated affair, protected by an iron fence and reached through a low, locked gate. Plaques were set into the wall, recording the names of the occupants.

  Charlie was confident his reaction to the vault had been completely covered; to stop, pause, even, would be all the confirmation they would need.

  He was past, actually on the straight path leading to the exit, when the challenge came.

  ‘Charlie! Charlie Muffin!’

  Afterwards Charlie remembered with satisfaction the smoothness of his reactions. The gateway was still too far away to consider walking on, as if the name meant nothing. He couldn’t run, of course. But they could. They’d get him before he’d gone twenty yards. They? It had been a single voice. Just one man, after so long? Probably. Fight then. Feign bewilderment, to gain the moment of uncertainty. Then fight to kill. Quickly, before anyone in the cemetery realised what was happening. Go for the throat, the carotid artery, smashing the voice box with the same blow. Sir Archibald’s tomb would give him the concealment. He’d only need minutes to get to the car.

  He tensed, to make the turn, then stopped. There’d been all the training, certainly. Poncing about in canvas suits, waving his arms about and yelling ‘aargh’ like a bloody idiot. But he’d never killed anyone – not body to body, feeling the warmth of their skin and possibly seeing the terror in their faces. That had always been done by proxy, by others.

  He completed the turn, head held curiously, keeping the movement purposely slow.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ he frowned, the confusion perfectly balanced.

  It was a tall man, habitually stooped in an effort to reduce his size. Beaked nose, too large for his face. A clipped, military moustache, a darker brown than the swept-back, short-cropped hair. Familiar, decided Charlie. Someone from the old department then. The man smiled and began coming forward.

  ‘It is Charlie Muffin, isn’t it?’

  He wasn’t professional, judged Charlie. Couldn’t be. What properly trained man openly challenged a victim? And then walked forward, both arms held out, losing any chance of surprise in producing a weapon? He wouldn’t make another juvenile mistake like Paris, Charlie decided.

  Who then?

  ‘Willoughby,’ the man identified himself, as if in answer to Charlie’s question. ‘Rupert Willoughby.’

  Charlie’s eyes flickered for a moment to the name on the tomb plaques, then back to the man who was now offering his hand, recognising the similarity. The handshake was firm, without the usual ridiculous tendency to turn it into a form of Indian palm wrestling, and the brown eyes held Charlie’s in a direct, almost unblinking gaze. Just like the old man’s, remembered Charlie. Until the end, that was.

  ‘What an incredible coincidence,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, the confusion genuine now.

  Immediately fear swept it aside. If the graveyard were still under surveillance, then now he had been positively identified, he realised. Sir Archibald’s son would be known, to all of them. And they were standing immediately outside the vault, the marker he’d managed to avoid only minutes earlier. He still had a little time, he decided. Not much. But still enough to use.

  He tried to withdraw his hand, turning back to the gate.

  ‘… decided to pay my respects,’ he stumbled, badly. ‘Haven’t been able to, before … in a hurry, though. Really must go.’

  ‘No, please, wait,’ protested Willoughby. ‘There’s a great deal for us to discuss … a business matter …’

  ‘Perhaps another time … sorry, I’m very late …’

  Willoughby was walking with him, frowning at the rudeness. He reached into his pocket and Charlie edged away, apprehensively. The man produced a small wallet and offered Charlie a card.

  ‘We must meet again,’ he said. ‘It’s most important … to do with my father …’

  ‘Call you,’ promised Charlie, thrusting the pasteboard into his pocket. He was almost at the exit now. The obvious place, he decided; the lychgate would certainly provide some cover and they could get him away in a car before anyone in the cemetery realised the attack had happened. Charlie paused, examining it. There was no one there.

  ‘Promise?’ demanded Willoughby.

  Charlie turned to the man, realising the need to recover.

  ‘I really am very sorry,’ he said, stopping with his back to the support pole for the gate roof, positioning himself where he could see the beginning of any approach. ‘It must seem very rude.’

  Willoughby didn’t reply, confirming the assessment.

  ‘Like to spend more time … believe me.’

  ‘Call me then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon,’ promised Charlie hurriedly, turning through the gate. The mourners he had seen around the fresh grave were dispersing, heads bowed, into various cars. A woman was crying. The man who had been scrubbing the surround had finished, too, he saw. Carefully the man had packed the brush,
cloths and bucket into the boot of an old Morris and was walking slowly towards the telephone.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ called Willoughby, after him.

  Charlie drove alert for the slightest danger, eyes constantly scanning the rear view mirror. Purposely he went north-west, choosing Tunbridge Wells because it was the first town of any size, twisting and turning through the streets and then continuing north, to London, to repeat the evasion.

  ‘You’re a prick, Charlie,’ he accused himself again, as he took the car over Vauxhall Bridge. ‘A careless, idiot prick who deserves to die.’

  He’d arranged to clear out the bank the following morning. But that didn’t matter now. Only survival mattered.

  ‘Prick,’ he said.

  The London home and elegant, sophisticated refuge of George Wilberforce was a second-floor apartment overlooking Eaton Square. Here, from Monday to Friday, he lived, returning only at the weekends to a nagging, condescending wife who refused him the respect that everyone seemed to find so difficult, and from whom he would have welcomed divorce but for the admittedly remote but nevertheless possible harm such an event might have caused his career. Those responsible for appointments in the permanent civil service were known sometimes to possess strong religious views and it was wise not to take chances.

  Particularly not now. Because now his career was more assured than it had ever been.

  Delius, he decided, would suit his mood.

  Apart from the habit with never-smoked pipes, the Director was a man who rarely betrayed any emotion, but now after standing for several movements by the stereo unit he suddenly moved away in a halting, stiff-jointed attempt at what appeared to be a waltz. He stopped, embarrassed by his efforts.

  ‘I’ve got you, Charlie Muffin,’ he said. ‘And now you’re going to suffer for what you did. Christ, you’re going to suffer.’

  SIX

  George Wilberforce blinked at the gritty sensation behind his eyes, knowing he should have allowed more time after the flight from London before this conference in the C.I.A. complex in the Virginia countryside. But this time he had wanted the meeting in America; to arrive the courier of news for which they had waited so long and sense the approbation, even if there were no open praise.