Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

by Brian Freemantle
Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

by Brian Freemantle

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Overview

Charlie Muffin’s new job puts him in the crosshairs of a vicious American drug lordCharlie Muffin has done well since he “died.” He’s been on the run for years from the intelligence forces of Great Britain and the United States when an official declaration of death finally puts an end to their pursuit. Suddenly, Charlie can breathe again. He’s even put a lid on his single malt whisky habit. Now all he needs is a job. He puts his espionage skills to work for an English insurance company, ensuring the security of the Romanov stamps. A priceless collection assembled in the years before the Russian Revolution, the stamps survived only because the Bolsheviks failed to recognize their value. Now the American government means to use them as bait for a brutal drug lord. He wants the stamps, and Charlie must stop him from getting them—even if it means getting “killed” a second time. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Brian Freemantle including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781453226391
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 08/23/2011
Series: Charlie Muffin Series , #4
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 252
Sales rank: 767,759
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most acclaimed authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold over ten million copies worldwide. Born in Southampton, Freemantle entered his career as a journalist, and began writing espionage thrillers in the late 1960s. Charlie M (1977) introduced the world to Charlie Muffin and won Freemantle international acceptance. He would go on to publish fourteen titles in the series. Freemantle has written dozens of other novels, including two introducing Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the Cowley and Danilov series, about an American FBI agent and a Russian detective combating organized crime in the post–Cold War world. Freemantle lives and works in London, England.

Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most acclaimed authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold over ten million copies worldwide. Born in Southampton, Freemantle entered his career as a journalist, and began writing espionage thrillers in the late 1960s. Charlie M (1977) introduced the world to Charlie Muffin and won Freemantle international success. He would go on to publish fourteen titles in the series. Freemantle has written dozens of other novels, including two about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the Cowley and Danilov series, about a Russian policeman and an American FBI agent who work together to combat organized crime in the post–Cold War world. Freemantle lives and works in Winchester, England.

Read an Excerpt

Charlie Muffin U.S.A.


By Brian Freemantle

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 1980 Innslodge Publications Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2639-1


CHAPTER 1

On the day that his attempted destruction began, Giuseppe Terrilli ordered the killing of three people. One had to be allowed to die slowly, as an example to other recruits who were not careful enough. It took five hours, for the last two of which the man became insane. It was a good example.

Terrilli, who was 1,500 miles away on his Miami estate, lunched in his customarily spartan manner; just cottage cheese, salad without dressing and mineral water. Not once did he think of the people who were dying. It was a business matter, being satisfactorily resolved and therefore no longer necessary for any further consideration. Giuseppe Terrilli regarded such detachment as essential for the business he conducted.

The man who set out to be Terrilli's destroyer never discovered the example killings. It would have been difficult, because Dean Warburger was in the Director's office at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington and the murders were in the northern Colombian province of Guajira.

But Warburger had learned that day of something else and his initial excitement was such to prompt a four-martini and lobster au gratin lunch at the Sans Souci. By four in the afternoon, Warburger had a bad headache, and realised that the intake was dangerous as well as premature and the proposal probably impractical. He authorised a feasibility study anyway.

It was the first time, after almost a year of exhaustive investigation, that he had become aware of Terrilli's interest in philately. And Warburger, who was determined to make his directorship of the F.B.I. as legendary as that of J. Edgar Hoover, thought he had known everything that it was possible to uncover about Terrilli. Warburger usually disdained any dictum by which Hoover had ruled the Bureau, but on this occasion he made an exception. Hoover had said that personal secrets were weaknesses. It was the hope that Hoover was right which had caused the early Sans Souci celebration.

It took six weeks to steer the Lady McLeod of Trinidad towards a dealer through whom they discovered Terrilli had bought in the past. Warburger only became really excited when Terrilli made the purchase, because he had ensured that the theft of such a rare stamp as the Lady McLeod had been widely publicised. Having confirmed the weakness, Warburger refused to hurry, recognising it as possibly the only chance he would get. The indictment had to be unbreakable, with Terrilli provably involved in a crime. And that meant the bait had to be spectacular.

It took a further two months for Warburger to determine upon the Romanov and Zarrins Collections. They were unusual enough and their disposal in America between 1926 and 1967 meant they were traceable by the Bureau.

Warburger was an expert in the internal government of Washington, which meant it would have been unthinkable of him to confine the operation only to Terrilli's arrest. There had to be political side benefits and he employed himself in obtaining them while his agents traced the stamps to their scattered ownership. By the time Warburger had the location of nearly every item, he had a senator ambitious to be Attorney-General set up as a front man and therefore the protection of the F.B.I. guaranteed for several years.

It was a full twelve months from the Sans Souci hangover before Warburger was completely happy with the preparations.

'There's nothing I haven't anticipated,' he boasted to his deputy, Peter Bowler.

At that stage it would have been as difficult for him to predict the involvement of Charlie Muffin as it had been to learn of the Guajira killings.

Charlie Muffin, who was a realist and therefore aware of the social gulf between himself and Rupert Willoughby's friends, was curious about the reason for his invitation. He still went to the party, of course; a man officially listed as a dead traitor by the Intelligence Services of both Britain and America and wishing to remain that way doesn't get out much and Charlie liked company, even company which seemed to regard him oddly.

Realist again, Charlie accepted that it wasn't their fault. It had always been the same, whenever he'd worn a black tie. He had hired the dinner jacket and everything that went with it, even the shoes, which pinched. He had expected the discomfort with his feet, because they usually hurt, but he had hoped for more success with the suit. Inside the jacket he had found a raffle ticket for the Henley regatta, with a telephone number on the back. Perhaps there would be some compensation in the reply when he called the number.

Very early in the party Charlie had discarded his champagne, because the bubbles gave him wind and he genuinely didn't want to fart and reduce the chances of his being invited again. But he hadn't realised the combined disadvantages of not having a glass in his hand and looking as he did in a hired outfit.

Since he had entered the two-floored apartment off Eaton Square, in which a smaller party of people had already eaten and at which a larger number of guests were now arriving for an after-dinner party, several people had half turned to him, as if expecting him to be carrying a tray of drinks. Once, rather than interrupt the conversation of an angular, flat- chested woman who had gestured at him. Charlie had taken her empty glass so that she could gesticulate at a frowning man whose photograph Charlie recognised from one of those blown-up displays outside the Young Vic.

Charlie became aware that Willoughby had witnessed the episode with the angular woman and he wandered towards the Lloyd's underwriter, who was standing immediately before the lift from the first floor to receive people as they arrived.

'Sorry about that,' Willoughby apologised. He was much taller than Charlie and stooped, attempting to minimise his embarrassing height. It gave him an odd, hunched-back appearance.

'Doesn't matter,' said Charlie. He looked to where the woman had begun another hand- moving story. 'She's wasting her time,' he added. 'That guy's a poof.'

'So I believe,' said Willoughby. 'Would you like another drink?'

Charlie shook his head. He was quite proud of how well he had conquered the booze habit. It had always been worse when he was bored: and he was very bored now. Sometimes he wondered if it were even necessary still to take precautions against detection. The doubt never lasted long. There was never a moment of his waking life when he could properly relax. His exposure of the incompetence of the British and American services had been too complete and the Soviet propaganda too embarrassing for him ever to believe himself safe.

'Nice party,' he said.

Willoughby smiled at the politeness. 'Clarissa likes these sort of things,' he said, his voice that of a man who knows he is criticised for allowing his wife's indulgences but can't stop permitting them.

As if on cue, the hostess of the party appeared through the crush of people, bright smile attached like a badge, head twisting from side to side in permanent greeting, and chirping cries of apparent delight and surprise at the people she saw. Frequently she stopped, offering her cheek to be kissed. She was not a particularly tall woman and her face was chiselled by perpetual diet. Her hair bubbled in a current style, which tended to accentuate the appearance of thinness and her dress, which Charlie assumed to come from the latest designer to be lionised by the society rich, was layered in tiers of brightly coloured chiffon, which bounced, feather-like, as she moved. She looked like a bird in search of a nest. A slim cuckoo, perhaps. No, more like a bird of paradise.

She greeted her husband as if he were standing alone and Charlie realised that like so many others, she believed him to be one of the extra staff brought in for the evening.

'Millie says the Ambassador is coming. And that he's trying to persuade the Princess, too.'

The scientist who perfected a cancer cure would probably have a matching note of triumph in his voice when he announced the discovery, decided Charlie. He wondered if Clarissa Willoughby would be a difficult person to like; he would try, for her husband's sake.

'Good,' said the underwriter, unimpressed and showing it. He turned, making the woman aware of Charlie.

'This is the person whom you particularly asked to meet,' he said, in introduction.

Clarissa focussed upon him for the first time. She squinted, not frowned, when she was curious, Charlie saw.

'Who ...?' she said doubtfully.

'He helped us over the Hong Kong problem,' enlarged the underwriter. 'Helped' seemed such an inadequate word, thought Willoughby. It was easy for him to understand why his father, when he had been head of the Intelligence Service, had regarded Charlie as the best operative he had ever had. Willoughby doubted if anyone else could have uncovered the liner insurance fraud which would have bankrupted his firm for £6,000,000. Clarissa had openly announced her intention to divorce him if it happened. Sometimes Willoughby wondered if he should have been as grateful to Charlie about that outcome as he was about everything else.

'You're that fascinating man!' exclaimed the woman.

'I represented the company in Hong Kong,' said Charlie, modestly. Clarissa Willoughby was someone who constantly talked in italics. She probably shouted at foreign airport porters who didn't speak English too.

'And were brilliant!'

'Lucky,' qualified Charlie.

'I always think people make their own luck,' said Clarissa.

Italics and clichés, thought Charlie.

'There were some people who weren't quite so lucky,' he said. A whore named Jenny, Charlie recalled. And an Englishman ostracised because he had loved her. Their graves would be overgrown, he guessed. The neglect would offend the Chinese, who attached great importance to their ancestors and to whom cemeteries were places to visit on holidays, like picnic parks. It could easily have been him in that cemetery overlooking the New Territories and the Chinese mainland. He had allowed Willoughby to invoke the loyalty and respect he had felt for the man's father and had come nearer than at any time in five years to discovery by the C.I.A.

Charlie became aware of Clarissa's examination and thought how strange it was that people usually did that, as if in search of something they couldn't understand. Instinctively he started pulling in his stomach and then stopped, annoyed at himself. Bollocks, he thought, relaxing so that the hired suit bulged again. Why should he try to impress her?

'You're very different from what I expected,' she said.

'Shakespeare probably stuttered,' said Charlie.

'What?' she said, frowning.

'And disappointed people who expected brilliant conversation,' said Charlie, laboriously. She would be a difficult woman to live with.

'I didn't say I was disappointed,' she said, coquettishly.

The lift arrived with more guests and she jerked towards it. The ambassador and the princess? Charlie wondered.

'We must meet again, when there are fewer people. Dinner perhaps,' she invited, hurrying away.

'That would be nice,' said Charlie, aware that she hadn't heard. She probably hadn't intended the invitation, either. Willoughby did not go with her.

'I'd like us to meet soon, Charlie,' he said, taking up his wife's remark.

'Why?' asked Charlie. So there was a reason for the invitation, he thought, unoffended.

'What do you know about stamps?'

'Nothing,' said Charlie.

'We've been approached for a rather unusual cover,' said Willoughby. He looked after the disappearing figure of his wife.

'Politician in Washington; his wife is a friend of Clarissa's, actually. They want cover for an exhibition. Value is put at £3,000,000.'

'That's a lot of stamps.'

'It is, as a matter of fact. Unique, too. Nearly the entire collection of Tsar Nicholas II. There are gaps, filled in by part of a second collection created by someone else attached to the court.'

Charlie turned so that he was directly facing Willoughby. There was a look of pained rebuke about his expression.

'I don't think it would be a good idea for me to become associated with anything connected with the Soviet Union, do you?' he demanded.

Willoughby had anticipated the reaction. The inept army generals who had chosen Charlie for sacrifice during a Berlin border crossing had been those who had replaced his father in the Department and had led to the old man's suicide. So he had wanted revenge as much as Charlie. To anyone else, setting the department heads of M.I.6 and the C.I.A. for humiliating Soviet arrest and then even more humiliating exchange for an imprisoned Russian spymaster could only be construed as traitorous. Charlie had been lucky to escape the combined pursuit of both agencies. No, not lucky. Clever. It had cost him a lot, thought. The assassination of his wife. And the permanent uncertainty of being discovered. Willoughby looked at the other man, pityingly. Charlie Muffin might have survived, upon his own terms, but he'd created a miserable life for himself.

'Surely there wouldn't be any harm in discussing it?' said the underwriter hopefully.

'Or purpose,' said Charlie. It was a conversation very similar to this which had sent him to Hong Kong.

'A discussion might help me decide what to do.'

'Haven't you offered cover yet?'

'Yes,' said Willoughby, nodding. 'It's the protection I'm concerned about.'

'We can talk about it,' agreed Charlie, his voice indicating that that was all he was prepared to do.

'How about tomorrow?'

Charlie frowned at Willoughby's insistence. 'All right,' he said. It would be a way of filling another day. Since Edith's death he had been very lonely.

'I'll remind Clarissa about that dinner invitation, too,' said the underwriter.

'Fine,' replied Charlie. He wondered how he would enjoy a concentrated period in the woman's company.

'Tomorrow then?' pressed Willoughby, as if he doubted Charlie's agreement.

'Eleven,' said Charlie. 'But it's only to talk. I don't want to become involved.'

'I understand,' said Willoughby.

He didn't, Charlie decided. He left the party as early as he considered polite. Clarissa Willoughby was at her station by the lift, unconscious of everything except the hoped-for arrival of guests she considered important. From her reaction to his farewell, Charlie guessed she had forgotten him already.

There were taxis going to and from Chelsea and Victoria, but Charlie walked, despite his pinching shoes, more confident of that way identifying any surveillance.

It took him over an hour to reach his flat in Vauxhall. He had searched a year to find it, a high-rise block that loomed permanently black beside the Thames because it was on the windward side of Battersea Power Station and got all the smuts, regardless of what everyone expected from the Clean Air Act. It was the sort of building frequently criticised as socially wrong at inquests upon the people who threw themselves from the top, depressed by anonymity and loneliness. It was precisely because of its anonymity and the fact that nobody was interested in him that Charlie had taken the flat. It was a series of boxes within boxes, a sitting room with a dining annexe, just one bedroom, a bathroom and a toilet. The window to the fire escape was always ajar, winter or summer, for a quick exit.

It was only when the jacket that he pitched towards the chair missed and landed on the floor that Charlie remembered the raffle ticket and the telephone number. He retrieved it, stood gazing at it for a few moments and then shrugged. Why not?

Someone as alert as Charlie should have recognised it, from the speed and professionalism of the answer, but his mind was still occupied with thoughts of stamps and insurance cover arranged through social friends and so he initially missed the husky sensuousness.

'Believe we met at Henley,' he said brightly.

'Henley?'

'Boat races the other week. Remember me?'

There was a pause, for both of them a time for realisation. The woman spoke first because it was her business, after all.

'Same as last time,' she said, briskly. 'If you want to wear that funny cap and striped blazer while we're doing it, it's kinky so it's an extra £5. And the ruler is another £5, too.'

'I need another sort of relief,' said Charlie, for his own amusement. 'I've got aching feet.'

'Try a fucking chiropodist,' said the voice, no longer husky or inviting.

He frequently had, remembered Charlie. The last one had wrapped his toes individually in little cocoons of cotton wool and put an additional £3 on the bill. Perhaps that was kinky, too.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Charlie Muffin U.S.A. by Brian Freemantle. Copyright © 1980 Innslodge Publications Ltd. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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