Table Of ContentCharlie’s Apprentice
Brian Freemantle
For Mike and Helen Jackson,
with great affection.
Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Copyright Page
Oh, laugh or mourn with me the rueful jest,
A cassock’d huntsman with a fiddling priest!
William Cowper,
‘The Progress of Error’
One
This title was more pompous than most – today’s Foreign Office offering was
‘The New Reality of the Future’ – but the contents were the same, just
reconstituted and served up differently: mincemeat from previously left-over
scraps.
Charlie Muffin preferred his own title. Bullshit. Which was how he’d judged
every other analysis and thesis interpreting the dissolution of the Soviet Union
into its uncertain Commonwealth of suspicious republics which was supposed to
lead to a New World Order. All bullshit. He’d said it, too, although in language
more acceptable to civil servants in the response arguments he’d had to make, to
every woolly-minded exposition. He’d say it again, of course, about this effort.
And be ignored, as he appeared permanently to be ignored these days.
Charlie sat in his favourite launch position, chair tilted back, legs splayed over
withdrawn bottom drawers to support awkward feet, the waste basket propped in
the far corner of his rabbit hutch office. He sighted, minutely adjusted the
trajectory, and fired the dart carefully crafted from the last page of what he’d just
read. Lift-off looked good, all systems go, but then abruptly the missile dipped,
early impetus gone, to crash among the other failures already littering the heel-
chipped floor largely uncovered by the minimal square of frayed, Ministry grade
III carpet. It put the final score at three in, seven out. Bad. Or was it? On the
recognized scale for intelligence operations three out of ten was a bloody good
success rate: remarkable even, considering the cock-ups that inevitably occurred
along the way and usually, and more importantly, to him. But then he wasn’t
assessing an intelligence operation. Just the hit rate of a paper dart made from
yet another document circulated throughout Britain’s clandestine agencies,
setting out guidelines for intelligence gathering after the momentous political
adjustments and realignments in Europe and what once had been, but was no
longer, the Soviet Union.
Charlie sighed, lifting his feet to bring his chair more upright. Charlie realized
that on a scale of ten he’d so far awarded zero to every assessment he’d been
called upon to review. Which would upset people, particularly those whose
assessments he’d dismissed as a load of crap. But then he often seemed to upset
people, even when it wasn’t intentional. Which it wasn’t here: he was just being
honest.
Charlie rose and scuffed around the desk, the spread-apart Hush Puppies even
more spread apart by his having loosened the laces for additional comfort:
launch directors don’t need tight shoes. Charlie carried the waste basket to the
shredder first, before collecting the darts which had run out of impetus.
What about his own impetus? What was the New Reality for the Future for
Charlie Muffin? He wished he knew: was almost desperate to know.
The personal upheavals and uncertainties exceeded all those international
changes he’d been professionally commenting upon, for all these months. And
been a bloody sight more difficult to assess. Impossible, in fact. Some still
remained so: always would, he supposed. The familiar – almost daily –
recriminations came and he accepted them, the remorse still sharp.
Where was she? Alive? Dead? Happy? Sad? Hating him? He stopped the run
of questions at the one he thought he could answer, the one he always answered.
Natalia had to hate him, if she’d survived. She had every reason. He’d been
insane to let her go. However dangerous it had appeared – however dangerous it
had undoubtedly been – he should have kept her with him. Found a way. Instead
of like this, in a permanent vacuum.
He didn’t have any doubt – there couldn’t be any doubt – that she’d been
allowed out of Moscow under those now long-ago emerging freedoms to be the
bait, personally to trap him. But she hadn’t been part of it: not known the
purpose or the direction of whatever had been set up against him. He was sure of
that, after so much mental examination. More convinced than he’d ever been of
anything he couldn’t positively prove in a professional life where so much had
lacked proof. She couldn’t have been part because she wouldn’t have been part.
Because she loved him. Or had done, then. What about pressure upon Eduard?
The freedoms had only just begun and Eduard was in the Russian army,
vulnerable to every threat and pressure. Charlie supposed she would have
compromised to protect her son, even though during their brief reunion in
London she’d despaired at how the army had coarsened and brutalized the boy,
turning him into the mirror image of the womanizing, drunken husband who had
abandoned her.
So OK, she might have been part. Just. And reluctantly, if she’d been forced
to cooperate. But she would have warned him. There had been opportunities,
difficult though it had all been, and she would have taken one of them to sound
an alarm, if she had known what it had all been about.
What about himself? Charlie demanded. Simple. He’d failed her. He’d been
unable to go the last mile – the last inch! – to ignore the instinctive self-
preservation to keep the rendezvous: an escape rendezvous he’d seen her keep,
but not left his concealment to complete.
Not just failed her. Lost her.
For what? The job? Charlie slumped back behind the desk, snorting the
