Inscrutable Charlie Muffin by Brian Freemantle & Freemantle Brian

Author:Brian Freemantle & Freemantle Brian [Freemantle, Brian & Brian, Freemantle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9780099254607
Google: NRRCPgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 12916424
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 1979-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

The reception area was enormous and everywhere there were pictures of L. W. Lu.

Charlie examined them with the professionalism of his teenage training, appreciating the care that had gone into their taking and selection. The biggest, a gigantic enlargement occupying nearly the whole wall behind the desk of identically uniformed girls, showed the millionaire with two American Presidents and another, only slightly smaller, with Henry Kissinger. Along another wall were a series showing Lu individually and then in groups with all the British Commonwealth leaders during the Singapore conference. And the area to the left was given over to a pictorial history of Lu’s charity work, showing him at the two orphanages he had established for Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon and touring wards of the hospitals which were maintained entirely by the charitable trust he had created.

‘Christ,’ said Charlie mockingly, moving forward and looking for the lift he had been told would bypass the other eighteen floors of the skyscraper block from which Lu Industries were controlled and take him direct to the penthouse office.

He located it by the guards. Both were armed, he saw. A separate receptionist, male this time, sat behind them at a small desk.

‘You have an appointment for eleven o’clock with Mr Lu?’ he said, before Charlie could speak.

‘Yes.’

‘We were told to expect you.’

The lift door opened by some control which the man obviously operated but which Charlie could not see. As he entered, he saw the man reach for a telephone to announce his arrival above. Predictably, there were more photographs lining the lift panels, this time showing Lu at the launchings of his various tankers and passenger ships. The facing wall had pictures of the Pride of America leaving New York, another of its Hong Kong arrival and a third showing Lu in a small boat alongside the destroyed hull. John Lu really did resemble his father, thought Charlie, studying the photographs. Except for the smile. The younger man was a miserable-looking sod. Charlie paused, considering the judgment. Not really miserable, more apprehensive.

Despite the obvious entry he could have expected from the Willoughby company name and the warning from the increasingly distracted underwriter in a hurried telephone call earlier that morning that Lu’s London office had made contact to establish he had directorial authority, Charlie had still been intrigued at the speed with which the millionaire had agreed to see him. He’d anticipated a delay of several days instead of the instantaneous agreement.

Another man, uniformed like his colleague on the ground floor, awaited Charlie when the lift doors opened.

‘Please,’ he said, inviting Charlie to follow.

This time the photographs around the walls were of world leaders. Charlie identified the nearest as President Giscard d’Estaing and Pierre Trudeau. And on easels this time because the wall area was entirely glass, giving a 180 degree view of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the mainland beyond.

There were uniformed and armed guards in the corridor and even in three outer offices through which they had to pass to reach the door to Lu’s personal suite.

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