‘It’s very bad,’ conceded Levy, going along with the charade.
‘Do you know how bad?’ asked Cohen, rhetorically. ‘At best we’re being made to look an incompetent laughing-stock. At worst there are private demands being made from the American State Department for a full explanation. According to our Washington embassy a lot of Congressmen are openly doubting that it was a mistake at all. There’s a groundswell growing to block any further aid. At this morning’s Cabinet meeting the conclusion was that the whole thing has backfired. Disastrously.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said the intelligence chief.
‘Are you sure it was the Englishman?’
‘It has to be,’ said Levy. ‘I gave him the phoney biography.’
‘Why!’
‘To deflect him,’ said Levy. ‘I wanted to bury him in paper.’
‘Why didn’t you get the damned thing back!’
‘I never thought he’d use it; certainly not like this,’ admitted Levy. Sadly he remembered: ‘And he said I’d made him look a fool.’
‘Now it’s been reversed,’ said the Foreign Minister. Pointedly he added: ‘In your case, publicly.’
‘Yes,’ accepted Levy, tightly.
‘Has there been any count of the number of times you have been openly named?’
‘Quite a lot,’ said Levy. ‘About thirty, worldwide.’
‘Israeli intelligence personnel are expected always to remain anonymous.’
Levy did not reply.
Cohen said: ‘I’m sorry.’
Still Levy did not speak.
‘The Cabinet meeting also decided that a gesture was necessary beyond the formal expression of regret,’ disclosed the Foreign Minister. ‘Something to placate the Americans.’ Cohen paused and said: ‘I know it was my instruction but if I go it will be confirmation that there was prior government awareness: make everything worse rather than better.’
At last Levy responded. He said: ‘I would like it to be a resignation, not a dismissal.’
‘Of course,’ accepted the Foreign Minister.
‘Thank you,’ said Levy.
‘I really am sorry,’ said Cohen.
‘When?’
‘Immediately.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ said Levy. ‘Charlie Muffin actually called me the bastard!’
Epilogue
Natalia Nikandrova Fedova came with just the slightest hesitancy into Berenkov’s office, surprised at his standing politely to greet her, which was a Western courtesy, not Russian. At first Charlie embarrassed her by doing it.
‘I was told to report to you, Comrade Berenkov?’
‘Natalia Nikandrova,’ smiled the man. ‘I am evolving a mission, a very special mission. One in which you are to be involved.’
‘Yes?’
‘Concerning an Englishman,’ said Berenkov, intent upon her. ‘Someone you once knew.’
‘Someone I knew?’
‘Charlie Muffin.’
She blushed, just slightly but enough. It had been there all the time and he hadn’t realized it, thought Berenkov. But he did now. He knew the way to make it all work, too.
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.