‘One for the road,’ she insisted.
‘A small one.’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve got bits all over your clothes.’
Charlie made an ineffective attempt to sweep away the carpet debris. Lady Billington gazed vaguely around the dressing room. ‘Suppose there should be a brush somewhere.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘Do you need to see my husband for anything?’ she said. ‘If you do, it’ll have to be at the embassy.’
Charlie shook his head in instant rejection. ‘No,’ he said. The whole business had been remarkably straightforward. How easy would it be to persuade Willoughby to employ him more regularly? The idea settled and he decided it was a good one: anything was better than the state into which he had been crumbling. Charlie’s mind blocked at the thought. What about Clarissa?
They left through the ambassador’s bedroom and Lady Billington stopped near the oar-blade display. ‘Have you seen these?’ she said, the pride obvious.
Charlie went alongside her. Lady Billington’s finger traced a line along the photographs of her husband in the university rowing team. ‘He was almost chosen for the Olympics,’ she said.
Although he’d looked at them before, Charlie politely studied the pictures again. All assured, confident, good-looking young men, their places in life guaranteed by name and influence. Lucky buggers.
They left the bedroom and Lady Billington walked with him down the marbled staircase and along the corridor to the door. ‘Forgive the maudlin,’ she said.
‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘Drive carefully.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Charlie was an intuitive man, reacting to feelings and to impressions. And the feeling at the moment was uncertainty. As he took the hire car down the tree-lined driveway he tried to find a reason for it. He’d avoided absolutely any contact with the embassy and the security check had been what he had anticipated in Willoughby’s office, a job for a clerk. So why the unease? On the return to Rome Charlie maintained a regular speed and constantly checked his rear-view mirror; today there was no obvious pursuit. He must have imagined the blue Lancia, like everything else. It had to be Clarissa.
She was already in the hotel room when he got there, surrounded by packages and parcels, like a child who’d found its way into Santa’s storeroom.
‘I’ve had a fantastic time,’ she said. ‘My American Express card is like a piece of rubber.’
‘I felt like that this morning,’ said Charlie.
‘I can fix that.’
‘Won’t Rupert wonder at purchases in Rome when you’re supposed to be off the coast of France on a yacht?’
‘Oh, bugger Rupert,’ she said carelessly. ‘He never notices anything anyway.’
In the foyer downstairs, a patient man in a grey suit carefully folded the newspaper he couldn’t read because it was in Italian, and made another precise entry in a notebook. Already the list was extensive.
Henry Jackson was a large, soft-fleshed man who would have looked the part astride a policeman’s bicycle on an English country beat. It was an impression he purposely conveyed because it made people careless. He was, in fact, extremely astute and even, when the occasion demanded, physically quick, which was why Harkness had chosen him to supervise the British field team in Rome. Henry Walsingham greeted him with the withdrawn friendliness of an out-of-town representative undergoing an annual visit from head office. Jackson emphasized plodding officialdom. He insisted upon a complete tour of every department, hoping to gauge the required degree of efficiency from the behaviour of the staff and the material on their desks. In one office overlooking the Via Settembre he identified Richard Semingford. The Second Secretary looked up in mild interest at the intrusion and then returned to his work. There were marines on guard in the cipher and vault room and every check and identification was observed. Jackson remained for some time in the cipher room, stressing its importance for the forthcoming Summit for direct communication between the Premier and his ministers in Italy with the cabinet in London. It would be necessary for him to instal someone over a longer period, but Jackson’s initial impression was that the security was being maintained at the proper level. Back in Walsingham’s office, he allowed himself to be taken through the list of every official and unofficial function in which the British party would be involved. Indexed against each function were details of the security provisions made by the Italian government.
‘There’s extensive use of helicopters.’
‘So I see.’
‘The whole thing is an obvious target for the Red Brigade,’ said the embassy security man. Even when he was supposedly relaxed there was a military uprightness about him.
‘That’s our assessment as well.’
‘The Italians are worried.’
‘With every reason to be.’
‘Still didn’t expect a visit from you people quite so soon,’ said Walsingham. ‘There’s a lot of time left.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Jackson. It was the sort of remark the other man would expect. ‘I’ve brought five people with me. I want to move them into the embassy tomorrow.’
‘What for?’
‘Familiarize themselves with the working of the place,’ said Jackson. ‘Find out where the lavatories and the different departments are.’
‘I think I should advise the ambassador.’ Walsingham was a man who always deferred to a superior officer.
‘Of course.’
‘What exactly will they be doing?’
‘Poking around the cipher room and vaults mostly.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve told you,’ said Jackson patiently. ‘It’s from there all the stuff will be going back to London. Don’t want any embarrassments, do we?’
Indignation showed upon Walsingham’s face. ‘There is nothing wrong with the security at this embassy,’ he, said stiffly.
‘I’m sure there’s not,’ said Jackson, at once placatory. He spread his hands, entering the charade he was sure the other man would accept, ‘Not my decision, old boy. You know what it’s like at Whitehalclass="underline" they still use initials instead of proper names for the director and talk about moles and daft stuff like that.’
There was a complete surveillance operation upon Henry Walsingham and Richard Semingford when they left the embassy that evening. Walsingham went to his apartment overlooking the Tiber and remained there. Semingford met Jane Williams at a cafe on the Via Condotti. They had a drink, walked a short distance to a restaurant where they ate early, and went back to her apartment. Semingford was still there at midnight and all the lights were out.
‘Why the hell didn’t one of the bastards react!’ demanded Jackson irritably, when the reports were brought back to him at the Eden. ‘I was supposed to have made one of them nervous.’
Kalenin used the best calligraphist but, even so, limited the entries to initialled notations in Charlie Muffin’s name and to the signatures against the bank authority. There were four genuine messages of top-secret classification which he had received from the British embassy in Rome re-copied on paper brought in from Italy to satisfy any forensic test. The reference to the earlier meeting with Charlie Muffin in Washington the previous June was provably upon Russian foolscap and he hesitated, looking down at it. They had identified Charlie in Florida on 15 June, but, from the checks later, Kalenin knew the stamp exhibition had been in New York from 8 June. From New York it was easier to reach Washington than from Palm Beach, just an hour on the shuttle. It was the sort of detail that was important; 10 June was perfect. He put it with the other documents, then another Russian foolscap containing all the information about the combination and security precautions at Billington’s Ostia villa. The final, fittingly cosmetic, touch was ten thousand dollars in American currency.
Kalenin had just addressed it for diplomatic transport to Igor Solomatin in Rome when the message arrived from London about the previous shipment. The hidden compartment had been fixed below the base of a bedroom closet and all the material placed in it. They were confident it would be found, but only after a rummage search.