‘What about the day after that?’
‘There was a reception for the exhibition,’ said Clarissa. ‘We were all there.’
‘Could he have left the reception? Gone to Washington for instance?’
‘No,’ said Clarissa. ‘After the reception we had dinner. About eight of us.’
‘And the following day, the 10th,’ said Wilson. ‘Could he have flown to Washington that day?’
‘We were together throughout 10 June,’ said Clarissa, looking back to Charlie. ‘I remember it very well.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘Mostly in bed,’ she said. ‘We were together the entire day. And night.’
Jane Williams came back from the table in front of the chaise longue, where she had freshened Lady Billington’s gin, and side by side they looked down at the jewellery boxes which were stacked in a neat wall, like building blocks in a nursery. ‘I never thought you’d get them back so quickly. Or intact,’ said the secretary.
‘No,’ said Lady Billington.
‘Did you?’
The ambassador’s wife shrugged. ‘Didn’t really think about it.’
Jane looked at her curiously. ‘Weren’t you really worried?’ she said. ‘I mean, to have lost all that.…’
‘No,’ said Lady Billington. ‘I really wasn’t; I wish I had been. It makes me feel a freak,’ she sipped her drink. ‘Do you know the only feeling I have?’
‘What?’
‘Sadness that for some reason I don’t understand someone had to die over them.’
‘Isn’t it difficult to feel sad, after what Walsingham did?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lady Billington. ‘But he was a human being, whatever he’d done.’
They were still breathless after the lovemaking and Jane Williams lay with her head against Semingford’s chest. He was moving his hand gently up and down her back and she realized, pleased, that he would want to make love again soon.
‘I’ve had a reply from London,’ said Semingford. ‘About the pension. If I cashed it in, I’d have three thousand pounds after settling the overdraft.’
‘Which isn’t good enough for anything much, is it?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Lady Billington says she feels like a freak, not being concerned about the jewellery.’
‘She sounds it.’
‘And that she feels sorry for Walsingham.’
She felt him pull away from her. ‘What?’
‘I know: that’s what she said.’
‘Was she drunk?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘They’re moving heaven and earth to keep it quiet,’ said Semingford. ‘The Italians have agreed to cooperate.’
‘It’s difficult to imagine Walsingham doing it, isn’t it?’
‘It’s funny,’ said Semingford. ‘Two days ago, before any of us knew, it was Henry. Now everyone’s calling him Walsingham.’
‘Wonder what it’s like to be a spy?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ said Semingford, moving his hand between her legs.
28
In Rome, as in other embassies Sir Alistair Wilson had used, the communications centre was a room within a room, an inner shell fastened to the outer wall by a series of tubular struts from above and below, as well as from the sides. The inner compartment had been created by security workmen, guaranteeing that no monitoring device could have been built in. Access was across a drawbridge-type walkway which pulled up once the room was occupied. Cipher machines, like experimental typewriters, were banked against the left wall. At the back, a huge radio dominated the room, a pilot’s cockpit of twitching dials and level measures. To the right were the security-cleared telex machines. The telephones were on a narrow bench to the left. There were three, all designated different colours. The white fed directly into Downing Street, equipped both here and at the other end with matching voice modulators which scrambled the conversation into unintelligible static unless it was cleared through a corrective device. This programme was changed weekly.
To remove the need for a cipher clerk, Naire-Hamilton had chosen the telephone. Before making the connection, he and Wilson had written out a full account and then attached notations to a master sheet, to ensure that the Permanent Under Secretary omitted nothing. He made the report with only occasional interruptions from London and by the time he’d finished his voice was hoarse and strained. There was a sheen of perspiration on his face when he finally replaced the telephone.
‘He isn’t happy,’ he said.
‘What the hell does he want?’
‘He thinks the Italians got too much: that we allowed ourselves to be pressured.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘But easily said from the comfort of Downing Street.’
‘What are the instructions?’
Naire-Hamilton hesitated. ‘To terminate everything,’ he said. ‘He wants us out by tomorrow.’
‘I think we should continue the debriefing.’
‘To what purpose, for God’s sake!’
‘Why did Walsingham have the wrong date?’
‘A simple enough mistake.’
‘Men who keep records, like Walsingham and Muffin, don’t make simple mistakes.’
‘I’m fed up to the back teeth with sitting in that dungeon staring at that fellow holding up his trousers like some damned scarecrow,’ said Naire-Hamilton.
‘One more session,’ said Wilson urgently.
Jackson handed Charlie his belt as he entered the room. Seeing the start of apprehension, the supervisor smiled and said, ‘Not yet. They’re pissed off seeing you standing there as if you’ve shit yourself.’
Still without laces, Charlie had to shuffle once more into the interrogation room. The arrangement was as before, with no chair for him to sit on. Without the necessity of supporting his trousers, Charlie stood with feet apart with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. It was the sort of insolent at-ease that had driven the parade sergeants mad. Wilson didn’t like it either.
‘How long had you been the liaison between Moscow and Walsingham?’ said the director.
‘I was never the liaison. Until the day at the villa, I’d never set eyes on him.’
Wilson was handed something from the folder. ‘This will be exhibit 10,’ he said towards the recording machine. He offered it to Charlie. ‘Who is this?’
‘Who do you think?’ said Charlie. It must have been taken by a hidden camera: it looked like a London street but he couldn’t be sure.
‘I want the deposition to show that this photograph of Charles Muffin was recovered from the safe deposit box in the name of Henry Walsingham. Attached to it were instructions, upon identification, for the contact meeting in Washington. Those instructions were dated February of last year.’
Something pricked at Charlie’s memory and he groped for it, like a man trying to distinguish a half-formed shape in a fog.
‘Quite obviously it was planted there,’ said Charlie.
‘Walsingham knew you.’
‘He didn’t know me until we met at the villa.’
‘There’d been a previous time, in Washington.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘You’d been identified to him, for the Washington meeting.’
‘The meeting!’ Charlie shouted the words. ‘That’s where it went wrong.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Wilson.
Charlie didn’t respond at once. Then the answers came like a flood that follows the initial trickle through the dam wall. It had taken him a bloody long time; it wouldn’t have done once.
‘Four days ago I made contact with the man who robbed Billington’s safe,’ said Charlie. ‘The man I found dead at the apartment.’
‘Emilio Fantani,’ said Wilson.
‘I never knew his name. I recognized him then from the hand injury the police talked about. It was in Harry’s Bar on t
he Via Veneto. The staff there can confirm it. It’ll be independent corroboration.’
‘Of what?’
‘That a meeting took place.’
‘It had to,’ said Wilson. ‘Your instructions were to silence Walsingham. And Fantani was the link.’
‘What was the only thing that would have mattered to Fantani?’
Wilson considered the question. ‘The pay-off, I suppose. That’s what he’d been promised by Walsingham, according to the message from Moscow.’
‘The pay-off,’ agreed Charlie. ‘The pay-off figure was wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You believe Walsingham staged the robbery on his own initiative?’
Wilson was beginning to feel slightly uneasy.
‘The insurance was for one and a half million pounds,’ said Charlie. ‘Fantani demanded a ransom of twenty-five per cent.’
‘Well?’
‘What’s twenty-five per cent of one and a half million?’
‘Three hundred and seventy-five thousand,’ said Wilson.
‘But Fantani asked for five hundred thousand,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ve recovered the money. Count it yourself.’
‘What’s the significance?’
‘Fantani knew the policy was a replacement one, with adjustments for the increased value of the jewellery that took its cost up to two million. And he couldn’t have learned that from Walsingham, because Walsingham couldn’t have known those details.’
‘You did.’
‘But I wasn’t working with him, according to you!’
Wilson and Naire-Hamilton exchanged worried looks. In the pause the final piece of the puzzle fitted into place, ‘The timing,’ said Charlie, more to himself than his interrogators. ‘Walsingham was at the Via Salaria earlier than I said.’
‘What are you saying?’ demanded Wilson.
‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’
Naire-Hamilton twitched nervously towards the turning tapes and then back to Charlie. He didn’t speak. Neither did Wilson.
‘I know who did it,’ said Charlie. ‘I know who your spy is.’
‘Who?’
‘A deal,’ said Charlie. ‘My life for the name of the spy. If not, you can go to hell.’
Willoughby and Clarissa were put aboard the same RAF plane that had brought the underwriter to Rome and seated next to each other. It occurred to neither of them to object, which they could have done because Clarissa was not under any detention. The aircraft had been flying for almost an hour before Willoughby spoke.
‘I know what happened in Rome.’
She glanced at him but said nothing.
‘I trapped you,’ he said with bitter triumph. ‘I could have got anyone to do the security check but I knew he was desperate and so I tricked him into coming. I guessed what had happened in New York and I knew you’d come rutting after him instead of going to Menton. You were watched the whole time.’
‘You needn’t have wasted your money,’ she said wearily. ‘All you had to do was ask.’
‘You’re a whore,’ he said.
‘Haven’t we had these recriminations before?’
‘I’m divorcing you.’
‘You’ve said that before too.’
‘How could you!’ said Willoughby. ‘With him! Even before you knew the sort of man he is.’
Clarissa smiled wanly. ‘Actually it wasn’t easy,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to at first. Said it would be letting you down.’
‘You mean you seduced him?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I did. It was a joke at first.’
‘It means nothing to you, does it?’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not normally.’
He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Surely you don’t think that you love him!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I do. Insane, isn’t it?’
Wilson was seated in the small office that had been allocated to them in the embassy. Naire-Hamilton was still striding about the room, the more nervous of the two. His hands twitched about him.
‘Do you realize the risk you’re taking?’
‘Do you realize what it is if I don’t?’
‘What authority have you got for giving in to his demand?’
‘None,’ admitted the intelligence director. ‘If I hadn’t given it he wouldn’t have told us.’
‘Bloody guttersnipe!’
‘What if he’s right?’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Mrs Walsingham is here,’ said Jackson.
At first Igor Solomatin remained stiffly to attention but Kalenin seated him and watched him gradually relax under the congratulations.
‘You made no contact afterwards with the embassy?’ asked Kalenin.
‘I considered it safer not to.’
‘Quite right.’
‘There’s little doubt that it worked, though,’ said Solomatin hurriedly. ‘There would have been news of an arrest if it hadn’t.’
Seeing the man’s anxiety, Kalenin said, ‘It was a brilliant operation.’
‘Thank you.’ Solomatin was visibly relieved.
‘There is a vacancy upon my staff of deputies,’ said Kalenin. ‘I’d like you to take it. You’d be responsible for initiating clandestine activities: precisely the sort of thing you’ve just done.’
‘I’m honoured, Comrade General,’ said Solomatin.
Kalenin knew his turn was coming. The Politburo meeting was only two days away.
29
Sir Hector Billington came hesitantly into the basement. A chair had been set on the side opposite the recording table and the Permanent Under Secretary showed him to it.
‘We appreciate your coming,’ said Naire-Hamilton.
‘Are you sure this is necessary?’
‘Essential,’ said Wilson.
‘How can I help you?’ asked Billington.
‘On some points he has raised,’ said Naire-Hamilton, nodding towards Charlie.
Billington regarded Charlie with undisguised contempt. ‘I’m to be questioned by him!’
‘It won’t take long.’
‘I sincerely hope not.’
‘Proceed,’ Wilson said to Charlie.
‘You telephoned me at the hotel to tell me where to meet Fantani?’ Charlie couldn’t afford to make one mistake.
Billington appeared embarrassed at the reminder of co-operation. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Where was the meeting?’
‘I think it was Harry’s Bar.’
‘At the villa the day after the robbery the police decided to limit the information publicly released. And the value was put at the original assessment, one and a half million pounds.’
Billington looked annoyed. ‘What is the purpose of this?’
‘Establishing guilt,’ said the Permanent Under Secretary.
Billington returned to Charlie. ‘Go on,’ he said, stiffly.
‘When I met Fantani, he demanded twenty-five per cent of the insurance value, and put it at five hundred thousand. And that was the new, not the old, valuation.’
‘I don’t see your point,’ said Billington.
‘Let’s try something else then,’ said Charlie. ‘When I talked to Fantani, he made a remark about there being no danger of his being arrested, because police had fingerprints, not palm prints. And that he had destroyed the jacket, so there would be no fibre tracings.’
Billington gave an exaggerated shrug.
‘No information was publicly released about a palm print being found at the villa,’ said Charlie. ‘Or of cloth fibres. But I told you, after I’d talked to Inspector Moro.’
Billington’s eyes pebbled in abrupt realization, colour flooding his face. He jerked around to Naire-Hamilton and Wilson and said, ‘Of all the …! Are you allowing this man to cross-examine me, as if I’m involved in some way in a robbery of my own property!’
‘You’re a cautious man,’ persisted Charlie. ‘Everyone kept telling me that when I first went to the v
illa. And you obviously are. I’ve never seen so many alarms. So why didn’t you put away the jewellery your wife had worn that night? That’s what a properly cautious man would have done; unless he didn’t want to risk premature discovery.’
‘I want this stopped!’ demanded Billington.
‘And in the end it was premature,’ said Charlie. ‘Your wife told me what happened, because she was in the dressing room. About your saying, “Oh! My God!” immediately you opened the safe. But you couldn’t have seen anything immediately you opened the safe, could you? All the jewellery was kept in cases, which had to be opened. Your wife mentioned that too. “When we opened the cases, everything was gone,” she said.’
Billington was holding himself stiffly in the chair. He stared fixedly at Charlie. ‘Finish,’ he said. ‘I want you to finish.’
‘There’s only one more thing,’ said Charlie. ‘On the day of the robbery I talked a lot of quasi-legal rubbish, making it up as I went along, to persuade you to agree to a settlement idea. And you didn’t challenge me. But you’re a lawyer with an Oxford degree. So you would have known I was talking nonsense.’
Billington rose to his feet, standing with his back to Charlie and looking down at Naire-Hamilton and Wilson. ‘From the start,’ he said, only just managing the evenness to his voice, ‘your behaviour has been appalling. I have permitted it because of the circumstances that were explained to me, making every excuse and every allowance. But this I will not excuse. Today I am going to request the Foreign Secretary to recall me to London. There I shall demand a full inquiry. Even to have considered asking me to confront these demented ramblings of a known traitor, to imagine any need for me to explain myself, is scandalous.’
‘Sit down,’ said Wilson.
Jill Walsingham came like a sleepwalker into the room. Solicitously Wilson helped her into a chair and nodded towards Jackson. The supervisor appeared with a water glass and put it by her on the recording table. She was going through the deadening period of shock, when the senses retreat.
‘This won’t take long,’ assured Wilson.
‘I want to know what’s going on!’ insisted Billington from the facing chair.
‘You will,’ said Wilson. ‘I promise you will.’ He looked back to the woman. ‘You told me you were frightened, after I found out about the Communist association in Australia?’
Madrigal for Charlie Muffin Page 19
