The meal over, Willoughby poured the port and leaned back in his chair.
‘Why did you go to the cemetery, Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Surely, it was a dangerous thing to do?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Absolutely insane,’ he agreed.
Willoughby waited.
‘I’d drunk too much,’ Charlie admitted. ‘It was becoming a habit. And I had intended it to be my last visit to England. So I wanted to make just one visit.’
‘They did watch the grave,’ offered Willoughby.
Charlie’s eyes came up, questioningly.
‘Must have been for almost six months,’ expanded the underwriter. ‘I go there about twice a month … learned to recognise them, in the end. They were quite obvious, even to an amateur like me …’
So he’d been lucky, decided Charlie. Bloody lucky.
‘It wasn’t just drink,’ Charlie tried to explain. ‘I’d always wanted to … just couldn’t take the risk, earlier …’
He stopped, looking at Willoughby in sudden realisation.
‘I came here to guarantee my own safety,’ he said. ‘You know, of course, that I could have compromised you …’
There was no artifice in the gesture of dismissal, assessed Charlie. The underwriter definitely regarded it as a game for adults, he decided. But then, how would any outsider regard it otherwise?
‘My distaste for them, Charlie, is far greater than yours. I loved my father.’ Willoughby spoke without any embarrassment.
‘I think we both did.’
‘Are we going to meet again?’ asked Willoughby.
Charlie sat, considering the question. For two years, he thought, he and Edith had been imprisoned, bound together in a bizarre form of solitary confinement by the knowledge of what he had done, able to trust no one. Being able to talk, comparatively freely, to Willoughby, was like having the dungeon door thrown open.
‘It would hardly be fair to you,’ said Charlie.
‘You know how I feel about that.’
The unexpected inheritance intruded into his mind again, the ill-formed idea hardening. He’d got away from the cemetery. And Willoughby was sincere. He was safe. So now he had to do something to fill the vacuum that had been destroying him. The inheritance and Willoughby’s occupation presented an opportunity from which he couldn’t turn away. It would mean leaving a reserve of money in the Brighton bank, but he’d only agreed to move it because of Edith’s insistence. She’d understand why he’d changed his mind: be glad he’d found something to interest him.
He cleared his throat. Willoughby could always reject it, he decided. And should do, if he had any sense. He was using the other man, Charlie realised. Just as he’d used Günther Bayer for the ambushed crossing. It didn’t lessen the guilt to admit to himself that he was sometimes a shit, Charlie decided.
‘I’m thinking of asking you to do something that might offend you,’ he warned. ‘Professionally, I mean.’
‘What?’
The question was immediate, without the gap that would have indicated reluctance. The man thought he was being invited to play.
‘The money your father left me … the money I don’t really need.’
‘What about it?’
‘Use it for me.’
‘Use it?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Part of the problem, the drinking I mean, was the absolute boredom,’ he confessed. ‘For almost two years, I’ve done nothing. Atrophied, almost. Can’t I invest that money … more, if it’s not enough, through you?’
Willoughby poured himself some more port.
‘There couldn’t be anything in writing,’ he said, thinking aloud.
‘That doesn’t worry me.’
Willoughby looked up, smiling at the trust.
‘A very silent Lloyd’s underwriter,’ he identified. ‘Breaking every rule in the profession.’
‘So I’d be embarrassing you,’ said Charlie.
Willoughby made an uncaring motion with his hand.
‘I can’t see how,’ he said. ‘The money would be in my name … nothing traceable to you … I was executor of my father’s estate, so it can be transferred without any problem.’
Again the underwriter smiled.
‘And it would create the need for us to meet from time to time, wouldn’t it?’ he said presciently.
‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie. He waited several moments, then added: ‘I’m asking you to take a very big risk.’
‘I know,’ said Willoughby.
‘Greater than I’ve really any right to ask, despite the request of your father.’
‘Yes.’
‘It would be right for you to refuse … sensible to do so, in fact,’ advised Charlie.
‘Yes, it would,’ said Willoughby. After a moment’s pause, he added: ‘But we both know I won’t refuse, don’t we?’
Yes, thought Charlie.
The underwriter stood, proffering his hand.
‘This is the only way we’ll have of binding the agreement,’ he said.
‘It’s sufficient for me,’ said Charlie, shaking the offered hand.
‘Underwriting is sometimes dangerous,’ warned Willoughby.
‘Any more dangerous than what I’ve done so far?’
Willoughby laughed at the sarcasm.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I live a normal life and it’s easy to forget.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Charlie, ‘going to the cemetery wasn’t the mistake I believed it might be.’
‘No,’ reflected Willoughby. ‘I don’t think it was.’
The ambassador turned away from the window and its view of the Moscow skyline, smeared grey by the sleeting rain. Next week, when it snowed, Moscow would look beautiful again, he thought.
Idly, Sir Robert picked up the inventory that had arrived that morning from the Hermitage in Leningrad, comparing it to the list from the Moscow Armoury. The Russians were making available far less of the regalia than he had expected from the agreement he had signed with the Minister of Culture, he saw. Still, at least they were letting some out. He supposed he should be grateful for that.
In London, a man whose hatred of Charlie Muffin was absolute sat in an office adjoining that of George Wilberforce, carefully examining the files obtained through the combined but unsuspecting channels of the Special Branch, Scotland Yard records, the Inland Revenue and the Bank of England and Clearing Houses security sections. A vivid scar disfigured the left side of his face and as he worked his fingers kept straying to it, an habitual movement.
Tonight he was concentrating upon the Special Branch and Scotland Yard dossiers and after two hours one folder remained for detailed consideration on the left of the desk.
‘John Packer,’ he identified, slowly, opening the cover.
He read for a further hour, then pushed it away.
‘From now on,’ he said, staring down at the official police photographs, ‘it’s the big time for you, John Packer …’
He paused.
‘… for a while, anyway,’ he added.
NINE
Edith looked away from the view from the Baur au Lac balcony, coming back to her husband. It had been a long time, she thought, since she had see him as relaxed and as happy as this. Almost two years, in fact. She’d never know him completely, she accepted. He was a strange man.
‘You’re fun again, Charlie,’ she said gratefully.
He responded seriously to the remark.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s been ages,’ she said.
‘It’ll be better now,’ he promised.
‘It’s a lot of money,’ she protested cautiously, reverting to the conversation in which they’d been engaged throughout the dinner.
‘Two hundred thousand, added to what Sir Archibald left me,’ recounted Charlie. ‘Still less than half of what I’ve got. And that’s not an unusual amount for underwriters to deposit To be admitted simply as a member of Lloyd’s needs assets of £75,000.’