The initial message, merely alerting Williamson that he was being activated, arrived five hours later in the bachelor apartment overlooking the port where he worked as a freight clerk to a shipping firm. Obedient to his training, his first response was to initiate the cover story to protect himself against any curiosity for what, to those who knew him, would be regarded as unusual. In preparation for such an alert, Williamson had let it be known that he had family in the east, and now he obtained a week’s leave of absence in Washington on the grounds of his father’s impending death after a long and painful illness.
By ten o’clock in the morning he had packed, cancelled all deliveries and set out for the poste restante mail-box where he knew his instructions would be awaiting him.
It was exactly nine years, eight months and nine days from the Wednesday morning when he had arrived, on a students’ ticket on the Paris-Dallas flight and then boarded the Greyhound bus for San Diego. He was very excited. The package was waiting and he immediately put it unopened into an inner pocket of his jacket and walked until he found an unoccupied park bench before unsealing it. He sat for thirty minutes, committing his instructions to memory, then found a washroom in a nearby motel where he shredded the paper and flushed it, piece by piece, down a toilet. There were some other things in the package, which he put into his pocket.
By noon he was at the airport, with a ticket secured for the three o’clock flight to Miami. There had never been a day when a part of him had not remained tense, in readiness for this moment. Many times he had tried to conjecture the sort of mission for which he would be roused, but never imagined it would be anything like this. Knowing the importance of General Valery Kalenin in the Soviet Union, Williamson recognised the degree of confidence they were placing in him.
The type of mission had not been the only surprise. The conclusion of the briefing remained with him, more indelibly than the rest. He had been trained for such an eventuality and schooled to perform the function, but had always wondered how he would react if he were told to kill a man.
And that was what the message had insisted, most explicitly. He was to discover the person who knew the K.G.B. chief’s identity, learn how it had come about and then, to prevent any further dissemination, kill whoever had that knowledge.
The flight was on time and the plane half empty, so the seat next to Williamson was unoccupied, enabling him to put his bags there and have more foot room.
He sighed. It was good to be working properly after so long. He wondered if he would be able to get the job done and return to San Diego within the week. In only one thing had he veered from the intense training he had received in Moscow. He had never been able truly to appreciate either American baseball or football, so the advent in the United States of European soccer had delighted him. He rarely missed a match of the Los Angeles Rams, and their next game, somewhat ironically, was against the Miami Rowdies. He didn’t want to miss it.
15
Jack Pendlebury felt no hesitation in bringing one of his squads into Palm Beach. Since they were not to be employed in any way connected with the exhibition, he was confident that they would not be detected by any check Giuseppe Terrilli might make.
Within an hour of his poolside conversation with Clarissa Willoughby, the American had withdrawn Roger Gilbert from Lake Worth and appointed him controller of the surveillance operation on Charlie Muffin, with responsibility for thirty men. It took Gilbert a further two hours to get his people into position, identify their subject and establish a rota system under which each group operated every third day.
Charlie recognised the surveillance almost as soon as it was imposed. Relief came with the identification, because since Clarissa’s supposed indiscretion Charlie had been tensed for some response and would have been more alarmed had there not been one.
Charlie was confident that his training and past experience still gave him an advantage. It enabled him to think like Pendlebury, which was of primary importance. And now that he was aware of being watched, it meant he could, without Pendlebury suspecting it, influence the man’s responses.
‘ A clever animal, knowing it is being pursued, can always lead its hunters to disaster.’
That had been another of Sir Archibald’s catch-phrases and Charlie had used it before when an operation had temporarily slipped out of control.
He left the Breakers, pausing at the end of the drive to check his watch and then began pacing along South County Road, a man establishing a time schedule. At Bethesda, Pendleton Avenue and Barton Avenue he consulted his watch again, then turned left, to bring himself out to Ocean Boulevard. At the entrance to the private road to Terrilli’s house, he hesitated, looking once more at his watch, continued for about a hundred yards and then retraced his steps. As he passed the private road, he allowed another pause and glanced in towards the unseen, castellated mansion. Despite the heat, which made him sweat, Charlie returned to the Breakers at the same brisk pace. Twice during the journey he checked the time.
Inside the hotel, he queued at the cashier’s for change, then entered one of the public telephone boxes, from which it would be impossible for anyone to establish from the hotel switchboard with whom he made contact. Shuddering slightly as the air conditioning cooled the perspiration upon him, Charlie went through a fifteen-minute charade of making long distance calls, in fact dialling for the time, the weather information, the small-advertisement department of the Palm Beach Daily News to ask about small-ad rates, and the airport to enquire about services to Miami, New Orleans and New York.
He created a satisfied expression on his face before leaving the kiosk and went immediately to the Alcazar, where he had arranged to meet Clarissa.
She was already waiting. She wore a crisp white dress, with little jewellery, hardly any make-up and her hair was tied back in the way he had told her he liked.
He waved exuberantly at her, kissed her cheek as he got to the table and then gestured extravagantly at a waiter, announcing as he looked back to Clarissa, ‘We’ll celebrate.’
‘What?’ she asked, frowning slightly at Charlie’s performance.
‘It’s a game,’ he said, more quietly. ‘I’m trying to worry people.’
‘Do I need to know the rules?’
‘No. Just follow along,’ said Charlie. Once, he thought, she would have turned the remark into some sort of sexual innuendo. Her attitude was a pleasant improvement.
‘Where have you been?’ she said.
Raising his voice, Charlie said, ‘Taking an important walk.’
Clarissa grimaced through the window, towards the sun-whitened sand.
‘It’s too damned hot for walking,’ she said.
‘Not for the sort of walking I did,’ said Charlie.
‘You seem very pleased with yourself.’
‘People seem to be responding in the way I want.’
‘When am I going to know the secret?’
‘As soon as I do,’ said Charlie seriously and more softly.
‘More puzzles?’
‘But we’ve got a lot more of the pieces fitted together than we had a few days ago.’
‘Has Pendlebury approached you yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Isn’t that odd?’ said Clarissa. ‘Surely as the man in charge of security, he should have contacted you immediately, after what I told him.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘That’s what he should have done. But he isn’t thinking properly.’ He raised his drink to her and said, loudly again, ‘To the success of the operation.’
She drank, disguising her bewilderment.
In a corner of the room but with a better view of the ocean, Robert Chambine sat unaware of the couple, Coca Cola before him and a copy of the Miami Herald discarded beside it. He was looking towards the door when Leonard Saxby and Peter Boella entered. There was not the slightest indication of any recognition between them. The two men went immediately to the bar, gossiping about that morning’s golf score.