Madrigal for Charlie Muffin (19 page)

‘You want a security guard?’

‘A security van,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a comparatively short distance; little more than three or four kilometres.’

‘I suppose that can be arranged,’ said the manager reluctantly.

It was the turn of the deputy manager to escort Charlie through the rear of the building into a completely enclosed yard. There was a burst of hurried Italian and Charlie saw one of the drivers grimace at the interruption to his routine. The armoured, grilled vehicle had no windows at the rear doors and only a small barred aperture, with a microphone to communicate with the driver. Charlie climbed in and smiled his thanks.

It took less than five minutes to reach the Via Ludovisi, and Charlie was beside the box ten minutes early. From the same pavement table at Doney’s where he had identified the Italian to Leonov three evenings before, Igor Solomatin sipped an espresso and watched. With a minute to go before the arranged time, he raised the copy of
Il
Messagero
, giving the signal to Fantani inside.

To ensure the line had not become blocked, Charlie had entered the kiosk at five to twelve, going through an elaborate performance of consulting dialling-code instructions. The telephone rang promptly at noon.

‘Very good,’ said the voice he recognized from the previous day. ‘You’re alone.’

‘I said I would be,’ reminded Charlie. ‘Do you have what I want?’

‘Do you?’

‘Can’t you see the case?’

‘I don’t know what’s inside.’

‘It’s all there,’ said Charlie.

‘You’ll need a car. To your right is an Avis sign. Once you’ve hired the car, go north out of the city. The autostrada to Milan is numbered Al. Almost as soon as you join, there’s an Agip gas station. Ignore it. Drive on for about fifty kilometres. There is a slip road to your right. Just after the indicator sign is another Agip station. Stop there.’

‘Then what?’

‘Go into the station shop. Be by the telephone there at four.’

Another entrapment precaution. ‘Aren’t we letting this drag on?’ said Charlie.

The response was immediate. ‘We don’t want anything to go wrong, do we?’

A man trained in diplomacy can convey offence as well as avoid it. Billington conveyed it extremely well. He came stiffly forward to meet them, the handshakes a passing formality. He ignored the desk area, leading the director and Naire-Hamilton to part of the embassy office furnished with leather, club-like chairs. Before they sat he said, ‘I consider you have been extremely discourteous.’

Wilson and Naire-Hamilton remained standing. ‘That wasn’t our intention,’ said Wilson.

The ambassador’s face was flushed. ‘There is protocol,’ he said. ‘If you wished to question one of my staff, then I should have been informed in advance.’

‘An unfortunate oversight,’ said Naire-Hamilton.

Belatedly Billington indicated chairs and they sat. ‘Is there anything wrong with Walsingham?’ he said.

‘His wife had some Communist contact, when she was a student in Australia,’ said Wilson.

‘In the thirties flirting with Communism was a popular pastime’ Billington’s sarcasm was pointed.

‘This was in 1969,’ said Wilson. ‘And he didn’t declare it on his personnel records.’

‘I should have hardly thought this justified your coming all the way from London,’ said Billington.

‘There’s also the Summit,’ said Naire-Hamilton.

A secretary arrived with coffee. She put it on a table between them and poured. No one spoke until she left the room.

‘I understood you’d already sent people to look after that,’ said the ambassador. ‘They’ve been here for days.’

‘That was before the robbery,’ said Wilson.

‘What’s the robbery got to do with it?’

‘I thought you might be able to tell me.’

Billington edged forward on his seat. ‘You’re being obtuse.’

‘Was anything more than jewellery taken?’

‘I beg your pardon!’ Billington’s face was getting redder.

‘Work sometimes gets taken home; records show that various members of the embassy travel quite regularly to Ostia. It’s slightly unusual for an ambassador to spend so much time away from the official residence.’

‘Nothing leaves the security vault which isn’t cleared to do so,’ said Billington. ‘I resent the implication of it even being considered. There was not nor has there ever been any authorized documentation kept in my personal safe. It would have been a direct contravention of all security regulations, as you are perfectly well aware.’

‘I’m glad of the reassurance,’ said Wilson. ‘You appreciate, surely, that the inquiry had to be made?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Billington. ‘And I intend to protest most strongly to the Foreign Office about both the manner and implication of this visit.’

As they walked back along the wide corridor towards the main exit, Naire-Hamilton said, ‘What on earth was the point in behaving like that?’

‘There’s no security classification on a complaint,’ said the director. ‘Within half an hour of it being sent, there won’t be anyone in the embassy unaware of our presence. If it isn’t Walsingham we’ve got to cause someone else to panic’

Fantani had emerged from Doney’s by the time Charlie completed the hiring formalities and took a seat beside the Russian. Fantani strained to identify the car, but the rental office was too far away and he gave up.

‘My people know what they’re doing,’ said Solomatin. ‘He’ll be covered all the way. And back.’

‘It all seems very complicated.’ Fantani gently attempted finger exercises with his damaged hand.

‘We’ve got to be absolutely sure there’s no police involvement,’ said Solomatin.

‘I make the next call from the Via Salaria?’ said Fantani.

Solomatin counted out some coins to pay for his coffee, feeling a reluctance to take the man there. It was the first time he had been so closely involved with violence and he was nervous. ‘We’d better go,’ he said.

22

He was having to wave his arms and legs when the strings were pulled, and Charlie Muffin had never liked the puppet’s role: he preferred to be the one in control, the manipulator. He took the car angrily from the link road onto the autostrada, careless of the blare of protest from a Fiat on the inside lane. Charlie knew he was going to get a lot of pleasure screwing that shifty-eyed little sod.

For several kilometres he concentrated upon the cars travelling around him at the same speed, then without warning pulled over onto the hard shoulder. There was another screech of horns from behind but Charlie ignored it. He got out of the hire car and kicked the front offside tyre, as if to check a possible puncture. Appearing satisfied, he got back in, waited for a gap in the traffic and rejoined the motorway. Charlie was confident he would have been too quick for any following vehicle to avoid passing him, so he drove looking for any familiar car that might be waiting ahead for him to catch up. He clocked ten kilometres and detected nothing. Bugger them, he thought.

Charlie saw the service station ahead, indicated and turned smoothly into the forecourt. He was thirty minutes early, so he topped up the petrol and moved the car away from the pumps into the parking area. It was a busy station, cars and lorries and people swirling around. Well chosen, thought Charlie: greater professionalism than he would have expected, in fact.

He found the telephone in the vending area and went to it, the card Walsingham had given him ready in his hand. The security man came curtly on the line, the eagerness obvious in his voice.

‘Something up?’

‘There might be,’ said Charlie. ‘I just wanted to know where I could contact you later.’

‘I’m leaving the embassy now.’

‘Where to?’

‘Home. You’ve got the number. We’re going to be there all night.’

‘Stay there,’ said Charlie.

‘Where are you?’

‘Miles up some bloody autostrada,’ said Charlie. ‘They’re making sure I haven’t got the police with me.’

‘Shall I tell the ambassador?’

‘Not yet,’ said Charlie. ‘If there’s no contact here, it’ll be a waste of time.’ There was always the possibility that Moro would contact the embassy once he knew he’d been tricked at the bank.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Just wait.’

‘Sure I can’t help any more than that?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s not much.’

‘It will be, when the time comes.’

Charlie replaced the receiver and lingered in the sales area, always keeping the clock in sight. Christ, time was going slowly. He checked his watch to ensure the station clock hadn’t stopped and then pushed his hands into his pockets, annoyed at his nervousness. Right to be tense, before a thing like this. But not nervous: nervous people made mistakes. The stone-in-the-shoe feeling came again. He couldn’t have missed anything; there was nothing to miss. It was a straightforward robbery with a straightforward settlement.

He went to the kiosk early, once more to keep the line clear, lifting the telephone at the first ring.

‘You’re doing very well,’ said the voice.

Wait, you bastard; just wait, thought Charlie. ‘Are we going to do it here?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Where?’

‘Back in Rome.’

‘Fuck me!’

There was a moment’s silence. Then the instructions continued uninterrupted. ‘Come back into Rome. Find your way to the Via Salaria. From 19 to 45 there’s an apartment complex. You need 35. Use the centre doorway. It’s facing you on the third floor, at the top of the stairs.’

It was a bloody awful set-up but he didn’t have a choice, Charlie realized. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘What time?’

‘It’ll take you an hour to get back to Rome. We’ll allow fifteen minutes for unforeseen delay. Be there at eight fifteen.’

‘All right.’

‘Arrive alone,’ said the voice. ‘If you don’t, there’ll be no one in the apartment when you get there.’

‘I understand,’ said Charlie. When Moro staged the identity parade he’d pretend to walk by at first, so the smart little bugger would think he’d got away with it.

‘Don’t be late.’ The line went dead.

Charlie dialled again. At the first attempt Charlie got a woman who identified herself as Walsingham’s wife and said he had not yet returned from the embassy. Charlie wandered impatiently around the service area, letting five minutes pass on the slow-moving clock. The security man answered the second time.

‘I’ve got a meeting place,’ announced Charlie.

‘Genuine?’

‘How do I know?’

‘Do you want me to come?’

Charlie calculated thirty minutes for the transfer. ‘Make it eight forty-five,’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘35 Via Salaria: centre door. I’ll be waiting.’

‘What about the ambassador?’

Charlie hesitated. Get the jewellery back to Billington first and then advise Moro. ‘Tell him,’ he said.

‘What about the police?’

‘I’ll do that, when it’s over; it could all still be a hoax.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

‘I’d be wasting everybody’s bloody time, if I did.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Yeah,’ said Charlie.

In his apartment overlooking the Tiber, Walsingham put down the telephone and his wife said, ‘Did you get it?’

‘Of course I got it,’ said Walsingham.

‘You going to tell the ambassador?’

‘Yes.’

‘Watch your back,’ she said. ‘Just don’t forget to watch your back. They’re bastards, all of them. Rotten capitalist bastards.’

The inquiries had been made overnight and, because of the time difference with Australia, the reply from Canberra arrived almost at the same time as confirmation of Walsingham’s salary from London. The information had no outside relevance and Harkness telephoned direct to the Eden, relaying the details to Jackson.

‘After stoppages, Walsingham’s salary is seven hundred and eighty pounds a month,’ said Jackson to Naire-Hamilton and the director.

‘The apartment rental is five hundred and sixty-five,’ reminded Wilson.

‘Which only leaves two hundred and fifty.’ Jackson checked the London information. ‘There’s a housing allowance of a hundred pounds,’ he added.

‘Still an expensive choice,’ said Naire-Hamilton. ‘What about Australia?’

‘Stefan Ericson is still a political activist,’ read out Jackson. ‘He remembers Jill Walsingham, or rather Littleton, as she was then.’

‘What about her?’

‘He says she was quite politically aware.’

‘Why did she quit after only three months?’

‘Nothing to do with her politics, according to Ericson: it was over some row they had, because he became involved with another woman. Jill didn’t want to continue their relationship.’

The telephone sounded again and Jackson answered it. ‘The ambassador,’ he said to Wilson.

The director took the phone.

‘Is Walsingham suspect?’ asked Billington at once.

‘Why?’

‘I think I’ve been rather indiscreet.’ There was an obvious reluctance in Billington’s admission.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve allowed myself to be persuaded that the jewellery stolen from Ostia could be recovered by some sort of ransom. I appointed Walsingham to act as a liaison between me and the insurance assessor.’

‘So?’

‘Walsingham has just telephoned. He’s off to see the man Muffin this evening.’

For several moments Wilson remained silent, the telephone held slightly away from his head. ‘What!’ he demanded. The others in the room were aware of the sudden rigidity of his body.

‘I said Walsingham was going to.…’

‘…
No!
’ shouted the director. ‘The name. What was the name you used?’

‘Muffin,’ said the ambassador. ‘Charles Muffin. He is an insurance assessor from London.’

‘I thought there were going to be others here for protection,’ said Fantani. The nervousness had grown since the conversation with Charlie Muffin on the autostrada. He was moving restlessly around the room, eyes darting about him.

‘For the handover,’ said Solomatin. ‘Any minute now.’

‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’ said Fantani. ‘I mean I gave the instructions properly?’

‘Fine,’ assured Solomatin. ‘You were just fine.’

When he heard a soft knock at the door, the Italian smiled and said, ‘Your people?’