‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘I came down to be with you. How long can I stay?’
He turned to look fully at her, surprised at both the question and her attitude. And then he confronted the thought. If what he suspected were to happen, it might be physically dangerous for her to remain.
‘Not long,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘There might be some danger.’
‘I wouldn’t get in the way.’
‘You might not be able to avoid it,’ said Charlie.
‘I feel comfortable with you,’ said the woman and Charlie thought again of the hesitation in their greeting in the foyer. Was it a new game, he wondered? He would prefer that to the other alternative.
‘I want you to tell Pendlebury something for me,’ said Charlie, hurrying the conversation beyond the embarrassing pause. ‘But I want it done very carefully. It’s to sound as if you’ve let something slip
… as if you’re unaware you’ve told him.’
Now she frowned, as if she suspected him of mocking her.
‘Is this serious?’ she asked. ‘It sounds slightly ridiculous.’
‘I know it does,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But believe me, it’s very serious.’
He came to sit opposite her, reaching out to take her hands into his own and staring directly into her face.
‘It’s not a joke, Clarissa. I think there’s a risk… to the firm, to Rupert… of losing?3,000,000.’
‘Good God!’ She laughed nervously. ‘You must be joking!’
‘I’m not,’ insisted Charlie.
‘Well… why not tell the police?’ she suggested.
‘I don’t think it would help,’ predicted Charlie.
‘Now that is ridiculous!’
‘I know it seems that way. But it’s not.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Clarissa protested.
‘I can’t fully explain it, not yet anyway. If I did, it might spoil what I want you to do.’
‘What?’
‘I want you to let Pendlebury learn, apparently by accident, that I think there’s going to be an attempt to steal the Romanov Collection.’
‘ What!’ exclaimed Clarissa.
‘And that could cost the firm?3,000,000,’ Charlie reminded her again.
‘You must tell the police,’ said Clarissa.
‘I don’t think it would stop it happening,’ said Charlie patiently. ‘I believe the thing is being officially organised. Even if the police don’t know about it yet, I’m sure their involvement could be prevented.’
Clarissa frowned, confused by the conversation.
‘Will Pendlebury and his people stop it?’ she demanded.
‘No. I’m pretty sure of that too.’
She looked up at him, caught by a sudden thought. ‘I’ve got friends involved in the exhibition. Kelvin and Sally. They must be warned.’
‘No,’ said Charlie desperately. Perhaps asking the woman’s assistance had been a mistake.
‘You can’t think…’ protested Clarissa.
‘Not Sally, no,’ agreed Charlie. ‘But I suspect the senator is aware of what’s going on… some of it, at least…’
‘I wish I hadn’t agreed to help you,’ she blurted out hurriedly. ‘I don’t understand, and it frightens me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlie, immediately recognising the expression of regret as automatic. Unable accurately to predict what Pendlebury’s reaction might be, there could be a danger, involving Clarissa as he had. It was hardly the way to repay the friendship that Willoughby had shown him. Any more than going to bed with the man’s wife, however willing she might be.
13
Charlie Muffin stood at the window of his suite, staring out unseeingly over the Atlantic, assembling in his mind the facts he already had and trying to decide what further action to take.
An anti-crime politician was fronting a?3,000,000 exhibition which, after a cosmetic display in New York, had been moved to the unlikely venue of Palm Beach. Less than three hundred yards away lived a man with previously established links with organised crime. Giuseppe Terrilli’s hobby was stamp collecting. And Jack Pendlebury was an F.B.I. operative infiltrated – obviously knowingly – into control of security.
‘A set-up,’ judged Charlie, in conversation with himself. So what could he do? Certainly more than he was attempting with Clarissa Willoughby. At best that could only prompt some ill-considered response from Pendlebury, which would do little more than confirm what he’d already established. What then? There could be no open confrontation. That might lead to a personal investigation which would disclose that he had not always been an insurance company official but was, in fact, a former Intelligence officer supposed to be dead.
Let it happen?
That was the logical way – the only way – to avoid any personal risk. Just let it happen and trust that whatever the F.B.I. hoped to achieve would result, eventually, in the recovery of the stamps. He sighed, shaking his head and turning away from the ocean view.
Until Sir Archibald Willoughby had been replaced by former soldiers who had introduced into the service ex-public-school limp-wrists, Charlie Muffin had established himself as the premier operative within the Department. Even under someone as independent and innovative as Sir Archibald, however, there had still been a degree of bureaucracy with which they had had to conform, and part of it had been the yearly psychological examinations for continued suitability. And because he had afterwards always burgled the filing cabinets of the personnel officer to find out what his assessment had been, Charlie knew that every time there had been a report upon his peculiar inability to turn away from a challenge.
‘Tenacity syndrome’ was one of the more pompous attempts to describe it, and had taken his fancy. Vindictiveness had been another judgment, which Charlie had thought unnecessarily critical. He didn’t regard it either as tenacity or vindictiveness. He had just always resented anything that made him look a prick. And that was what would be happening now, if he didn’t interfere. Pendlebury and whoever else was involved would be pissing themselves with laughter, imagining they were financially protected if anything went wrong. And Charlie had been part of sufficient ‘foolproof schemes to know how easily they got cocked up and ended in disaster.
And for the syndicate of which Willoughby was the head to be responsible for a?3,000,000 settlement would be a disaster.
‘What’s the answer, Charlie?’ he demanded of himself.
It came with the suddenness and clarity of all good ideas, and Charlie sniggered at the perfect simplicity of it. What was it he’d said that day in Willoughby’s office? ‘Never underestimate the Russian national pride.’ So he wouldn’t. Who better to safeguard what had once been Russian than the Russians themselves?
Unwilling for there to be any connection between the call he was planning and the hotel, which could lead to his discovery, Charlie went to the lobby and changed ten dollars into coin at the cashier’s desk and then drove across Lake Worth to the mainland, travelling without any intended direction. Merely because he saw a signpost to Riviera Beach, he turned northwards, slowing when he entered the township and managing to park within twenty yards of a drugstore. He ensured that the booth door was tightly closed behind him when he entered the telephone kiosk and obtained the Washington number of the Russian Embassy from the information service within minutes. As he was about to make the call he hesitated, stopped by another thought. He would have to use the name, he decided. Otherwise there was a risk of the warning being ignored as a crank call.
The connection with Washington was immediate. The switchboard operator was a woman, but her intonation was mannish.
‘The Second Secretary,’ demanded Charlie. ‘I’m calling on behalf of Comrade General Valery Kalenin.’
He put a curtness into his voice, a challenge against any argument.
There was a lull of uncertainty on the line.
‘Put me through to the Second Secretary,’ repeated Charlie.
The line went blank and then another voice, obviously a man’s this time, said, ‘Who is this?’