Free Comrade Charlie by Brian Freemantle Page A

target of a hostile pursuit – and raise a stink in all the embarrassing places if he were right. Harkness was going to regret this vendetta.
    Ironically another vendetta was being conceived against Charlie Muffin almost four thousand miles away.
    â€˜We’ve got to start all over again,’ announced Alexei Berenkov, who had sought the encounter with Valeri Kalenin. ‘Part of the Star Wars missile is being made in England.’
    Kalenin shrugged philosophically. ‘We’ve done well enough in America,’ he said. ‘This can only be a setback, surely.’
    Berenkov had come to Dzerzhinsky Square intending to suggest to Kalenin that the English involvement provided an opportunity for a further operation, but abruptly he changed his mind. He shouldn’t involve this man who’d risked so much for him. Berenkov knew he could, on his own, evolve the retribution for all the harm that Charlie Muffin had caused and attempted to cause him. With customary confidence Berenkov decided he didn’t need any help or advice in destroying Charlie Muffin, as the man had sought to destroy him. But failed. Berenkov said: ‘I have the same freedom to operate in England as I have in America?’
    â€˜Of course,’ confirmed Kalenin at once. ‘Do whatever you consider necessary.’
    Berenkov supposed that, by a fairly substantial stretch of imagination, those words might later be construed as permission for what he had in mind. He began planning that day.
    It was Ann’s birthday, her fortieth, so they had to celebrate although Blackstone couldn’t afford it. He made a reservation at a pub just outside Newport he’d heard talked about at the factory and when they arrived discovered it specialized in seafood. Blackstone couldn’t run to real champagne but Ann seemed thrilled enough with a sparkling imitation. He tried to compensate by ordering quite an expensive white wine to go with their fruits de mer , which included lobster as well as crab and shrimp and some chewy shellfish neither had had before and didn’t like: Ann was brave enough to say so first and stop eating them. The wine was sugar sweet, a dessert drink, but neither knew and both thought it was very nice.
    Blackstone waited until they reached the pudding before giving Ann her present, a single-strand chain with a solitary pendant pearl. She put it on immediately and kept fingering it, to reassure herself it was there. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
    Blackstone, who was in one of his ebullient moods, thought it was, too. Ann, who was dark-haired, still without any grey, had a good skin she didn’t spoil with too much make-up, and the necklace was shown off perfectly against her throat. It had cost far more than he was able to afford. He said: ‘The chain’s eighteen-carat gold. And the man in the shop said it was a cultured pearl.’
    â€˜Beautiful,’ she said again. ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much.’
    He shouldn’t, Blackstone knew. He seemed to think of nothing else these days but the expense of running two homes. And it wasn’t as if Ann or Ruth didn’t help. They both worked and each contributed to the housekeeping and neither complained about living in rented accommodation instead of buying their own places, which would well and truly have crippled him financially. Blackstone fought to retain his optimism: at least there was something . Deciding to tell her about it, he said: ‘I’ve applied for a better job.’ He liked impressing both his wives and tried to do so as often as possible. He was a senior tracer at the aerospace factory, although Ann believed him to be a quality control inspector required to tour all their installations in England, which accounted for the time he spent commuting to and from the mainland during the time he spent with Ruth, who trustingly believed the same story.
    â€˜A different one?’ Ann