Here Comes Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

They turned at the hurried arrival of the second car. Braley misjudged the last corner, actually scuffing stones and dust against the barrier wall.

  Braley took the vehicle almost to where his superior was talking to the officials.

  ‘The baggage,’ Smith identified it, as Braley got out of the car.

  ‘Fine,’ said the customs man.

  ‘No need for me to delay you either,’ said the immigration official. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ responded Smith, politely.

  The men who had gone with Braley were already unloading the luggage, he saw, turning to the car.

  He waited until the British officials were sufficiently far away, then demanded urgently: ‘Well?’

  ‘Absolutely no trouble,’ Braley assured him.

  ‘The police hadn’t got there then?’

  ‘No.’

  Breath was rasping into the man. He’d made a complete recovery, decided Braley.

  The Director turned to where Ruttgers and the doctor were waiting.

  ‘Let’s get him away,’ he said. It was still going to be all right, he thought, in a sudden burst of euphoria.

  Ruttgers followed a military steward up the steps, taking without question the wide, double seat that the man indicated to the left side of the aisle. The doctor belted himself into the seat immediately to the right and then looked up at Onslow Smith.

  ‘Call me at the embassy, from Washington,’ ordered the Director.

  ‘There’ll be nothing to report,’ said the doctor, truculently. Behaving like a lot of kids, he thought, irritably.

  ‘Call me anyway. I want to know he got theresafely.’

  ‘O.K.’

  Smith turned back to where Braley and his men were coming aboard, stacking the luggage they had collected from the Crawley hotel into seats at the rear and then spreading themselves around the aircraft.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Smith to Braley. ‘You did very well.’

  The man smiled at the praise. His breathing was easier.

  ‘Want me to stay with him all the way?’ he enquired, nodding towards Ruttgers.

  ‘All the way,’ confirmed the Director. ‘You’re being routed through to the Andrews Air Base. There’ll be an ambulance waiting when you arrive, to take over from the doctor.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘And Braley?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ve been impressed with the way you work. Very impressed. I think we can establish a working relationship when all this is over.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Braley.

  There was movement from the front of the aircraft and Smith looked up to see the co-pilot nodding.

  ‘I’ll see you in a few days,’ said Smith, automatically.

  ‘Good luck,’ responded Braley.

  ‘I’ll need it,’ said Smith, caught by the expression.

  Men were standing by the ramp as he descended, to wheel it away. He hurried to the doorway of the building, where the chauffeur was waiting with a coat. Smith pulled it on and they both turned to watch the aircraft start its take-off manoeuvre, taxiing out on to the slip runway.

  Inside the plane, the steward ensured that Ruttgers had his seat-belt secured and then sat down for take-off in the seat immediately in front.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Ruttgers announced.

  The steward turned, smiling politely at the man he’d been told was a government official of high rank who was suffering a mental collapse.

  ‘There’s food on board,’ he said. ‘I’ll be serving it once we’ve taken off.’

  At the rear, Braley’s team were already sprawled out, eyes closed. Only Braley remained awake, staring up the aircraft at Ruttgers. It was a pity, the man decided. A damned pity. Ruttgers had his faults, but he’d once been a very good Director. He didn’t deserve a back-door hustle to some sanatorium, just because a few people in Washington needed protection. Braley closed his eyes, reflectively. So Charlie had escaped for the second time. But not as cleanly as in Vienna. How badly would he be affected by his wife’s death? he wondered. Probably, thought Braley, he was one of the few people caught up in the Vienna operation who didn’t hate Charlie Muffin. Perhaps because he had known him so well. He smiled at the sudden thought. Actually, he decided, he was quite glad Charlie had slipped away again.

  The plane began its take-off run and then snatched up. Braley opened his eyes and looked out at the fast-disappearing ground. The sodium lights still stretched away from the airport like yellow strands of a spider’s web. It looked very peaceful and calm, he thought.

  As the aircraft’s climb flattened out, the steward unclipped his belt and stood up, smiling down again at Ruttgers.

  ‘I’ll get you something to eat,’ he said.

  The man was staring up at the light forbidding smoking and the moment it was extinguished began groping into his pocket. Gratefully, he flipped open the top and then turned, frowning at the doctor, holding out the empty packet like a spoiled child showing an exhausted sweet bag.

  ‘Don’t smoke,’ apologised the doctor.

  ‘In my grip,’ said Ruttgers. ‘There’s a carton in my grip.’

  The steward was even farther back, in the galley, the doctor realised. He unfastened his belt and walked down to Ruttgers’ luggage. An armrest had been removed and the seat-belts from two places adjusted through the straps for take-off safety. The doctor disentangled them, then stood frowning. Finally he picked up two shoulder bags and walked back up the aisle, holding them stretched out before him.

  ‘We’re still climbing. Do you mind sitting down,’ the steward called out, from behind.

  The doctor smiled, apologetically, then looked back to Ruttgers.

  ‘Which one?’ he asked Ruttgers.

  The former Director hesitated, frowning his confusion and the doctor immediately wondered at a relapse. Curiously Ruttgers reached out for the soft black leather bag that Edith had used during her trip from Zürich and over which Charlie, hands shaking with emotion and urgency, had worked upon five hours before in the Crawley hotel, after returning from the Wimbledon home of John Packer.

  ‘Don’t understand,’ mumbled Ruttgers.

  The doctor realised the difficulty the man was having assembling his thoughts and turned towards his own bag, on the adjoining seat. There was some Vallium, he knew. That’s all the man needed, he was sure. Just a tranquilliser.

  Ruttgers scraped back the zip and looked inside. Lodged on top of the dirty clothing was a hard, black rectangle. Ruttgers turned it, then opened the passport that Charlie had used for the two years since the Vienna disaster.

  ‘Him!’ shouted Ruttgers, loud enough to awaken the sleeping men behind, thrusting the passport towards the startled doctor and trying to snatch the clothes out of the bag.

  At that moment, the pilot levelled further, at one thousand feet sufficiently away from the noise restrictions of the airport, and the first of the pressure devices that Charlie had taken from Packer’s home and triggered for that height detonated the plastic explosive.

  The jet jumped and momentarily appeared to those watching on the ground to hang suspended. Then it sagged, where the explosion had shattered the fuselage in half and as the two sections fell away the full cargo of fuel erupted in a huge ball of yellow and blue flame.

  Charlie was already out of the car park, needing the initial confusion to avoid detection from the people statued four hundred yards away, gazing open-mouthed into the sky.

  The movement of the small car was quite undetected.

  As he headed eastwards along the M-4 towards London, fire engines from Hounslow and Feltham blared in the opposite direction, sirens at full volume, blue lights flashing.

  It was too much to think that Ruttgers might have looked into the bag, decided Charlie.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Superintendent Law had telephoned from London, so when he swept white-faced into the office, Hardiman had all the files from the Brighton robbery carefully parcelled and waiting on the t
ables against the wall.

  The sergeant stood uncertainly, frowning at the men who followed the superintendent into the room.

  ‘There they are,’ said Law, sweeping his hand towards them.

  ‘What …?’ questioned Hardiman, but Law waved the hand again, stopping him.

  The strangers began carrying the files from the office. They didn’t speak to each other and Superintendent Law didn’t speak to them. It took a very short time.

  ‘You’ll want a receipt?’ said one of the men.

  ‘Yes,’ said Law.

  Quickly the man scribbled on to a pad and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you for your co-operation,’ he said.

  Law did’t reply.

  ‘What the hell has happened?’ demanded the sergeant, as the room emptied.

  Law slammed the door, turning to stand immediately in front of it.

  ‘That,’ he said, a vein throbbing at his temple in his anger, ‘was the beginning of the big cover-up.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Hardiman.

  ‘Neither do I, not completely,’ admitted the superintendent. ‘Nor am I being allowed to.’

  ‘But what happened?’ repeated Hardiman.

  Law walked away from the door, seating himself with elaborate care behind the desk and then staring down at it, assembling the words.

  ‘In Whitehall,’ he started. ‘There were separate meetings. First the Chief Constables of Surrey, Sussex and Kent were taken into an office and addressed by God knows who. Then we were taken into another room and told that the whole thing had been taken over by a government department and that as far as we were concerned, the cases were closed.’

  The vein increased its vibrations.

  ‘Cases?’

  ‘The Brighton robbery. And the shooting.’

  ‘But you can’t just close a million pounds robbery. And a murder,’ protested Hardiman. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Law. ‘It is, isn’t it? But you can, apparently, if it’s felt sufficiently important for national security. And that’s the bullshit we’ve been fed, all day … a question of national security and official secrets.’

  ‘But what about … what about the money?’ floundered the sergeant, with too many questions to ask.

  ‘Everyone who suffered a loss will be compensated by the Clearing Houses … who I suppose will receive their instructions like we received ours today.’

  ‘But how shall we mark the files?’

  Law snorted, waving towards the door.

  ‘What files?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Hardiman, slumping down.

  ‘No,’ said Law. ‘Neither do I. Incidentally, because of your close involvement, you’re to see the Chief Constable at four this afternoon.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To be told, presumably, that if you disclose anything of what happened to anyone, you’ll be transgressing the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘But what about that damned man’s passport … the one that was found with all that other stuff after the crash? It was a direct link. It was all tidied up: the robbery, the murder, the air crash …’

  Law shook his head. ‘We are told that no explanation could be made, other than that it was part of an attempt … an attempt which failed … to discredit Britain. I don’t think that a complete account was even given to the Chief Constables.’

  Hardiman laughed, suspiciously.

  ‘Attempt to discredit Britain by whom?’

  Law made an irritable movement.

  ‘Ask the Chief Constable this afternoon, perhaps he knows.’

  ‘Does it mean the bloody man is dead?’

  ‘I presume so,’ said Law. ‘Perhaps he was being taken to America in the aircraft. I don’t really know. We weren’t allowed to ask questions.’

  The superintendent’s annoyance thrust him from the chair and he began walking around the office without direction.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Hardiman.

  Law smiled at him, a crooked expression.

  ‘Resign, you mean?’ he queried. He shook his head. ‘In another two years I’ll have got my thirty in. Do you think I’m going to chuck up a pension, just for this?’

  ‘No,’ accepted Hardiman. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘But I’d like to,’ added the superintendent, softly. ‘Christ, I’d like to. Can you imagine how frightened they’d be by that?’

  He looked up at the sergeant, throwing his arms out helplessly.

  ‘The way they use people!’ he protested. ‘What gives them the right to use people like … like they didn’t matter?’

  ‘Power,’ said Hardiman, cynically. ‘Just power.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ reflected the detective, ‘to know that just occasionally it all gets cocked up?’

  ‘For them it never does,’ said Hardiman. ‘Not enough, anyway. There’s usually too many people between them and personal disaster.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Law. ‘People like us.’

  ‘So,’ said Hardiman, positively. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘The official orders,’ recited the superintendent, ‘are to conclude the matter, bringing to an immediate close any outstanding parts of the investigation.’

  The sergeant glanced over at the empty file tables.

  ‘Are there any outstanding parts?’

  ‘The underwriter, Willoughby, is probably wondering where his mysterious investor is … he’s obviously been used, like everybody else …’

  He moved towards his coat.

  ‘And the journey will do me good. I don’t want to stay around a police station any more today. I might be reminded about justice and stupid things like that.’

  ‘What are you going to tell Willoughby?’

  Law turned at the door.

  ‘The way I feel at the moment,’ he said, ‘I feel like telling him everything I know.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ anticipated the sergeant.

  ‘No,’ agreed Law. ‘I won’t. I’ll do what I’m told and wait another two years to collect a pension. Don’t forget that four o’clock appointment.’

  The tiredness dragged at Smallwood’s face and occasionally the hand that lay along the arm of the chair gave a tiny, convulsive twitch.

  ‘Well?’ demanded the Foreign Secretary.

  The Premier made a dismissive movement.

  ‘There’s an enormous amount of police annoyance,’ he said. ‘But that was to be expected.’

  ‘Will they obey the instructions?’

  ‘They’ll have to,’ said Smallwood. ‘The Official Secrets Act is a useful document. Thank God none of them knows the complete story.’

  ‘What about America?’

  Smallwood shifted in his chair.

  ‘They made the bigger mistakes this time. We agreed to cover for them.’

  ‘So hopefully not too much damage has been caused?’ said Heyden.

  ‘Not too much,’ agreed Smallwood.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The grief would always be there, Willoughby knew. In time, he supposed, Charlie would learn to build a shell around it, a screen behind which he would be able completely to hide. It wouldn’t happen yet though. Not for months; maybe more. The amount of time, perhaps, that it would take his own feelings to subside.

  ‘I was wrong,’ announced the underwriter. It seemed so long, he thought, since had had practised the honesty upon which Charlie had once commented.

  Charlie looked up, the concentration obviously difficult.

  ‘In thinking I would do anything to help you,’ expanded Willoughby. ‘Even though we talked about it, on that first day here in this office. I still didn’t believe it would result in that sort of slaughter.’

  When Charlie said nothing, the underwriter demanded; ‘Do you realise there were twelve people on that plane … a total of twelve people killed?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ reminded Charlie. ‘Don’t forget Edith died.’

  ‘An eye for an e
ye, a tooth for a tooth,’ quoted Willoughby. ‘I can’t accept that biblical equation, Charlie. Can you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘I can. I don’t expect you to. But I can.’

  ‘With no regrets at all?’

  William Braley had been on the plane, remembered Charlie.

  ‘I would have preferred to kill just one man … the man responsible,’ he said. ‘But that wasn’t possible.’

  He straightened, sloughing off the apathy.

  ‘Your father disliked killing, too,’ he went on, staring directly at Willoughby. ‘And avoided it, whenever it was possible, just as he taught me to avoid it. But sometimes it isn’t possible. We didn’t make the rules …’

  ‘Rules!’ exclaimed Willoughby, infusing the word with disgust and refusing Charlie’s defence. ‘Is that what it was, Charlie? Some sort of obscene game? Do you imagine Edith would have wanted that sort of revenge?

  Charlie looked evenly across the desk at the outraged man. It was proper that Willoughby should feel like this, he decided. There was no point in trying to convince him. At least he fully understood it now.

  ‘No,’ he replied softly, abandoning the explanation. ‘Edith wouldn’t have wanted it. But I did.’

  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.’