Charlie checked the mirror until the traffic eased and then got out of the car, pulling the case behind him. Instinctively he looked both ways along the road, squinting to see into the parked vehicles; it looked safe enough, but in a place like this it was impossible to be sure without back-up.
The middle door, he remembered. He pushed gently against it, feeling it give at once beneath the pressure, and eased through into the darkness. He barked his knuckles against the time switch but was grateful for the light. Somewhere in the distance he heard a baby’s cry, long and protracted. Charlie realized he was sweating, the handle of the case slippery beneath his fingers. The light clicked off before he reached the first landing, so that he had to make the last few steps in darkness.
The baby’s cry was louder and he wondered why somebody didn’t do anything about it: the Italians were supposed to love kids. He found the switch again and continued cautiously upwards. Somewhere above a door opened and closed and he waited for footsteps but none came. The second landing was as empty as the first. Charlie lighted the way but didn’t begin the final climb. He put the case between his feet and wiped his hands along the sides of his trousers. The baby had stopped crying; he hadn’t been aware of its happening. There wasn’t a sound now in the whole building. Only Charlie’s laboured breathing. He saw the apartment the moment he pressed the third-floor switch. The door was ajar. He went past 35 and found the link corridor into the next building; it was deserted. He came back to the door, listening against it. And then pushed it wider, not attempting to enter. He saw Walsingham’s body first, on his face and spreadeagled, and then the hand of someone else.
Every nerve, every instinct, every memory of his basic training, screamed at Charlie not to go in. He did.
The Italian was staring glazed-eyed at the ceiling: there was a lot of blood on his chest where the artery had burst, and it was difficult to see the exact wound.
Charlie noticed a Gucci bag near a side table and was stretching towards it when he saw the gun, partially concealed beneath Walsingham’s body. He recognized it at once as a Russian weapon. There was a second of numbed shock then a voice behind him shouted, ‘Stay where you are!’
There were three men just inside the door, fanned out so they had him in a twenty-five-degree arc of crossfire. They were hunched in standard marksman position, legs bent, pistol arm fully extended, the other hand clamped to the wrist to minimize the recoil.
Behind the gunmen was an elderly, wisp-haired man. He said, ‘Any move, no matter how slight, and they’ll fire. Not to kill you; it’ll be into your legs, to cripple you.’
He waited, appearing to expect a response. Then he said, ‘We’ve got you, Charlie Muffin.’
The ambassador and Naire-Hamilton listened grave-faced for the intelligence director to finish the explanation and then Naire-Hamilton said, ‘It’s a nasty one. Very nasty indeed.’
‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Billington.
‘Recover as best we can,’ suggested the Permanent Under Secretary. To the ambassador he said, ‘I think you’d better contact the Italian government right away.’
25
The preparations had begun before their arrival, but men were still working when Charlie was led down the stairs into the main storeroom of the embassy basement. An area about twenty feet square had been cleared, the boxes and containers pushed against the far wall and stacked into a floor-to-ceiling barrier. Charlie expected the questioning to start at once, but he was pushed into an annex, below ground and without any windows. Against the far wall there was a cot with one blanket, and beside it a bucket to pee in. Henry Jackson followed Charlie into the cell and snapped his fingers.
‘Let’s have them,’ he said.
Charlie thought, fleetingly, of feigning ignorance but then dismissed it as pointless; everything would be pointless from now on. He bent, extracting the laces from his shoes, and handed them to the man, together with his tie and belt. Jackson pointed towards the bed and said, ‘Everything in your pockets on there.’
Methodically Charlie began unloading. There was a comb in his top pocket, passport and travellers’ cheques inside his jacket, his airline ticket with the baggage label still attached, a crumpled sponge of Italian paper money, a pen, the keys to the Battersea apartment, a driving licence and one neatly folded square of toilet paper.
‘Linings.’
Dutifully Charlie turned all the pockets inside out. He stood in front of the man, clutching his trousers and aware of the barely subdued hostility.
‘Watch.’
Charlie unstrapped it from his wrist.
‘Know what I’d like to do?’ said Jackson.
‘What?’
‘I’d like to kick the shit out of you.’
Charlie had been waiting for the beating. He tightened his body against the attack and the man sniggered.
‘The name’s Jackson,’ he said. ‘Remember it. I’m going to be the first.’
He scooped Charlie’s belongings into a plastic envelope and closed the door. There was only the sound of a single lock and Charlie didn’t think the woodwork looked particularly resistant. He dismissed the speculation as academic. He was not going anywhere any more.
The seizure at the apartment house and the bundled drive, with his hands manacled painfully behind him, had been too hurried for him to examine his situation with any detachment. But, alone in his rectangular box smelling of decayed, abandoned paper, Charlie confronted the realization that, after seven years of middle-of-the-night wakefulness and gut-heaving at casual glances, they’d got him. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness settled over him. The muscles in his thighs began jerking in involuntary spasms and he sat down quickly upon the cot, wrapping his arms around his legs. The man… what was his name? Jackson… Jackson had said there’d be a beating. Why not at once? Maybe the standard technique, complete solitude, to let the fear seep in, and make sure there was no sleep to complete the disorientation. Scalpalomine maybe. But why? That was standard procedure to break someone, to erode a false cover or deceit. They knew who he was. And what he’d done. He didn’t have a cover story to destroy: he had no one to protect.
Charlie rolled sideways onto the bed, keeping his knees in a foetal ball under his chin. He didn’t want anything to happen to Willoughby. Clarissa either. Particularly Clarissa. He tried to put her from his mind and concentrate on his surroundings. Was this what he could expect from now on? An eight foot by twelve existence, with a cot and a bucket, and water dripping down the walls?
From outside tame the sound of heavy things being shifted and scraped across the floor; twice there were footsteps seemingly right outside and Charlie raised his head apprehensively. Both times they receded. He looked at his wrist, before remembering the watch had gone. A time check was one of the first things to establish, according to the resistance technique: something else he’d forgotten. An hour, Charlie estimated: maybe longer. He closed his eyes against the light. ‘ Trust me, Edith. We’ll beat the bastards’. He hadn’t. Not in the end.
Charlie reckoned it was another hour before they came for him. He managed to swing his legs to the floor before they reached him. There was another man with Jackson. Charlie blinked at them, gritty-eyed even though he hadn’t slept.