‘I’m going to enjoy being able to afford good clothes,’ reflected Charlie. ‘And keeping a decent wine bin.’
He looked down at his scuffed Hush Puppies. He’d keep them as a souvenir, he decided.
‘You always were a snob, Charlie,’ protested his wife, laughing at him.
‘But honest about it,’ he defended. ‘Always honest.’
‘Why did you have to be so scruffy?’
‘Psychology,’ avoided Charlie. ‘It made them contemptuous of me. People never suspect a person of whom they’re contemptuous.’
And it would have meant using even more of your money, he added, mentally.
‘Don’t you feel sorry about Harrison and Snare?’
He frowned. Why was Edith so determined there should be some contrition? he wondered.
‘Those two bastards stood on a viewing platform in Berlin, watching for me either to get captured or shot. When I got to the Kempinski, they were celebrating my death. Why should I feel sorry for them?’
Edith shuddered, very slightly.
‘You don’t forget, do you, Charlie? Ever?’
‘No,’ he accepted. ‘Never.’
His wife stared at him for several minutes, uncertain whether to raise the question. Then she said, hurriedly: ‘Was it really necessary to have an affair with that secretary?’
‘Essential,’ said Charlie. ‘It deflected their interest away from you completely … made it possible for you finally to draw all the money out without their thinking of checking your account. When they bugged her apartment, which I didn’t expect, it gave me a channel to feed Cuthbertson any attitude I wished. And from Janet I got everything I wanted to know about their thinking.’
She sat, unconvinced.
‘With Janet,’ persisted Charlie, ‘they thought they had a tap on every unguarded moment. Through her and the recorders, I was able to prove myself and allay any suspicion before it had time to arise.’
‘Poor Janet,’ said Edith, sadly.
‘Forget it,’ advised Charlie. There was no feeling. It was a game for her, like backgammon or Scrabble. And I bet she made some money, as well.’
‘It seems a daft thing to say in the circumstances, Charlie, but I hope you’re right. I don’t like to think of you being cruel.’
‘It was a necessary part of survival,’ said Charlie.
‘Promise me you never loved her?’
‘I promise,’ said Charlie, looking up and smiling directly at his wife.
‘Will they be searching for us now, Charlie?’
The man nodded.
‘Bound to be,’ he said. ‘But knowing their minds they will think of the Mediterranean. Or perhaps the Far East. Certainly not here, in Brighton.’
‘I do hope it’s a nice summer,’ said Edith, going to the window. ‘I did so much like to travel.’
‘I gave you a holiday of a lifetime before contacting Kalenin,’ reminded Charlie. ‘And we’ll do it again, in a few years’ time.’
‘Kiss me, Charlie,’ said Edith, urgently. ‘Kiss me and say you love me.’
He crawled across the floor, dislodging the money from the orderly piles, and embraced his wife.
‘I do love you, Edith,’ he said.
‘And I love you, Charlie. I was very worried, you know.’
‘Worried?’
‘That you’d leave me for her.’
Charlie frowned, his face inches from hers.
‘But why should I have done that?’
‘It’s just that sometimes you frighten me, Charlie … we’ve been married fifteen years and there are times when I think of you as a stranger.’
‘That’s a point,’ he said, pulling away and wanting to lighten the mood. ‘I’ll have to get another name.’
‘But Charlie is so … I don’t know. It just seems to fit,’ she protested.
‘Not any more,’ insisted the man. He squatted, reflectively. He would take the Christian name of the old Director, he decided.
‘It will be Archibald,’ he announced, grandly. ‘I’ll keep the first name, but from now on it will be Charles.’
What a pity that Cuthbertson would never know, he thought. He rolled the words uncomfortably in his mouth.
‘Charles Archibald,’ he declared. ‘With a very definite accent on the “Charles”. Charlie Muffin is dead.’
The Home Office car drove directly on to the airstrip, ten minutes after the rest of the passengers had boarded BE 602 to Moscow.
Berenkov got unsteadily from the vehicle and stood for several minutes, supported by one of the officials, gazing for the last time at the Heathrow complex. Finally he turned and shuffled with difficulty up the steps and into the specially curtained first class section.
The steward approached him after they had cleared the airport and the seat-belt sign had been turned off.
‘A drink, sir?’ he suggested.
Berenkov looked up, whey-faced, considering the invitation.
‘It’s been so long,’ he said, quietly. ‘So very long.’
The steward waited.
‘You’d only have claret in those little bottles, of course,’ said the Russian, professionally. ‘And that wouldn’t be what I’d enjoy. I’ll have a miniature champagne.’
He watched apprehensively as the drink foamed in the glass, then waited for the bubbles to settle.
Finally he lifted it, then paused, glass almost to his lips.
‘Your health, Charlie Muffin,’ he said.
‘Sir?’ enquired the steward, half turning.
‘Nothing,’ said Berenkov. ‘Nothing at all.’
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.
