‘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.’
He saw it as even greater independence from her money, she realised. Not moving the remainder from the Brighton bank worried her.
‘You’re not a normal underwriter. I’m amazed the man agreed.’
‘So am I,’ admitted Charlie. ‘He shouldn’t have done.’
‘You’re quite sure it’s safe?’ she asked, a frequent question since he had returned from London three weeks earlier.
Charlie sighed patiently.
‘I’ve checked the firm thoroughly,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s no trace with any of the standby companies the department use for links with outside businesses. And for three days after I made the arrangement with Rupert Willoughby I watched him, from morning to night. There was no contact whatsoever.’
‘You still can’t be one hundred per cent sure.’
‘Ninety-nine is good enough.’
‘It used not to be.’
Charlie frowned at her concern.
‘Edith,’ he lectured her, ‘it’s now over six weeks since the cemetery … almost a month since I went to London, by an appointment they would have known about had he been in any way connected with them. And here we are having a pleasant dinner in one of the best restaurants in Zurich. If Rupert Willoughby weren’t genuine, then I wouldn’t be alive. We both know that.’
She nodded, in reluctant agreement. His involvement with Willoughby would provide the interest he had lacked, she decided. And it was wonderful to see him laugh again.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said.
‘I always have been.’
That was another thing that had been absent for too long, Charlie’s confidence. It had been one of the first things to attract her, she remembered. It had been at a party at the Paris embassy, where Charlie had been on secondment and she had been the guest of the ambassador. The diplomat had apologised for Charlie afterwards, she recalled. Described him as an upstart. When she’d told Charlie, he’d nodded quite seriously and said ‘bloody right’: and two weeks later established that the ambassador’s mistress had links with Soviet intelligence.
‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Charlie.
‘Just thinking,’ said Edith.
‘What about?’
‘You.’
He smiled back at her.
‘It’s going to be all right, Edith,’ he promised.
‘Tell me something, Charlie,’ she said, leaning over the table to enforce the question. ‘Honestly, I mean.’
‘What?’
‘You regret it, don’t you?’
He took his time over the answer.
‘Some things,’ he admitted. ‘People died, which is always wrong. But I’m not sorry I exposed Cuthbertson and his band of idiots.’
He stopped, smiling sadly.
‘I tried to do it and Sir Archibald tried to do it,’ he recalled. ‘And I wouldn’t mind betting that people like Wilberforce have still clung on. Bureaucracy is a comfort blanket to people like that.’
‘The killing wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
‘Some was,’ he insisted. Gunther Bayer had had a fiancee in West Berlin, he remembered. Gretel. She’d been preparing a celebration dinner on the night of the crossing and Gunther had wanted him to go.