“I know,” said Rudd. He looked at his personal assistant. “How would you feel about being vice-chairman?” he said.
“Me!” Hallett’s face twitched nervously.
“You know as much about it as I do,” said Rudd.
Hallett gave an uncertain smile. “That would be marvellous … I mean … thank you …”
“Congratulations,” Bunch said to Hallett. Bunch finished his drink, looked at the bottle and decided against it. “Mary and I are going up to Connecticut for the weekend,” he said. “Why don’t you come up, like you did before?”
Rudd shook his head. “Not this weekend,” he said. “Maybe some other time.”
Bunch’s departure was the cue for the others. After they’d gone Rudd stood staring out over the park. It wasn’t dark yet and a few joggers still felt it safe to exercise, jostling for position on the roadways around the zoo with the horse-drawn tourist buggies. Had it been an aberration, invoking Angela’s name? Or had Margaret really been a mental surrogate? He’d never know. Like so much else he’d never know. Abruptly he turned back into the apartment and used the telephone on the bar. The response was as prompt as always. There was a pause, for a further connection, and Joanne came on the line.
“How have you been, Harry?”
“Busy,” he said. He’d forgotten the huskiness of her voice. “How about you?”
“So so.”
“But now I’m back in Manhattan.”
“I could come over,” she said.
“I’d like that.” With Joanne he’d never be let down. She was a professional, like he was.
Margaret knew he was quite detached, intent only on pleasing her, not making love because he wanted to but because he thought she expected it. She lay with her eyes closed, feigning the excitement, finding it easy to whimper although not for the reasons he wanted. When the mechanical foreplay was over he thrust into her, unaware of her dryness, and she groaned and she saw him smile, pleased. He was very heavy and she found it difficult to breathe. She was glad it ended quickly because he was hurting her so much. She felt him quicken and pretended, thrusting upwards; her only relief was to shift his weight.
“I thought that was marvellous,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Was it for you?”
“Yes.”
He lay panting beside her, the winner of a one-man race. They remained side by side for a long time and she thought he was asleep but he said suddenly, “I know you surrendered your shares to Harry to ensure I stayed chairman of Buckland House. Thank you.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“And thank you for staying,” he said. “Thank you for that most of all.”
Why hadn’t she been brave enough? Why, for once in her life, hadn’t she done what she wanted to do, rather than what she knew would be expected of her.
“Are you going back to Cambridge tomorrow?” said Buckland.
“In the afternoon.”
“Mother will be glad,” he said. “She says no one plays bezique like you do.”
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.
Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the Daily Mail, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city’s orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.
Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with Charlie M. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series, The Blind Run, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date, Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is Red Star Rising (2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.
In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle’s other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia’s organized crime bureau.
Freemantle lives and works in London, England.
A school photograph of Brian Freemantle at age twelve.
Brian Freemantle, at age fourteen, with his mother, Violet, at the country estate of a family acquaintance, Major Mears.
Freemantle’s parents, Harold and Violet Freemantle, at the country estate of Major Mears.
Brian Freemantle and his wife, Maureen, on their wedding day. They were married on December 8, 1956, in Southampton, where both were born and spent their childhoods. Although they attended the same schools, they did not meet until after they had both left Southampton.
Brian Freemantle (right) with photographer Bob Lowry in 1959. Freemantle and Lowry opened a branch office of the Bristol Evening World together in Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England.
A bearded Freemantle with his wife, Maureen, circa 1971. He grew the beard for an undercover newspaper assignment in what was then known as Czechoslovakia.
Freemantle (left) with Lady and Sir David English, the editors of the Daily Mail, on Freemantle’s fiftieth birthday. Freemantle was foreign editor of the Daily Mail, and with the backing of Sir David and the newspaper, he organized the airlift rescue of nearly one hundred Vietnamese orphans from Saigon in 1975.
Freemantle working on a novel before beginning his daily newspaper assignments. His wife, Maureen, looks over his shoulder.
Brian Freemantle says good-bye to Fleet Street and the Daily Mail to take up a fulltime career as a writer in 1975. The editor’s office was turned into a replica of a railway carriage to represent the fact that Freemantle had written eight books while commuting—when he wasn’t abroad as a foreign correspondent.
Many of the staff secretaries are dressed as Vietnamese hostesses to commemorate the many tours Freemantle carried out in Vietnam.
The Freemantle family on the grounds of the Winchester Cathedral in 1988. Back row: wife Maureen; eldest daughter, Victoria; and mother-in-law, Alice Tipney, a widow who lived with the Freemantle family for a total of forty-eight years until her death. Second row: middle daughter, Emma; granddaughter, Harriet; Freemantle; and third daughter, Charlotte.
Freemantle in 1999, in the Outer Close outside Winchester Cathedral. For thirty years, he lived with his family in the basement library of a fourteenth-century house with a tunnel connecting it to the cathedral. Priests used this tunnel to escape persecution during the English Reformation.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product o
f the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1982 by Jonathan Evans
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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