by Bob Cook
He took a taxi to the Banque Internationale Descartes, 53 Rue Pascal, and was shown into the manager’s office. Monsieur Georges Piaget was an impeccably polite cadaver with a limp handshake and an antiseptic voice.
“Good afternoon, Mr Ryle,” he said to Wyman. “What can we do for you?”
“A great deal, I hope,” Wyman said. “I am acting on behalf of another party who wishes to open an account at this bank. The gentleman concerned is also not a Swiss national, and for reasons of discretion he wishes the account to be numbered. For the time being he wants me to act on his behalf in the matter of depositing and withdrawing sums from the account.”
“I see,” Piaget said. “That should present no difficulties, Mr Ryle. Nevertheless, since neither you the contracting party, nor the beneficial owner of the account are Swiss nationals, a certain amount of documentation is required.”
“I appreciate that,” Wyman said.
“Splendid. You are probably aware of what is required, but I will go through it all in case of difficulty. To begin with, Mr Ryle, we need documentation of your own identity—your passport would suffice.”
Wyman drew out the false passport and handed it to Piaget.
“Splendid,” Piaget repeated, noting down the passport number. “We will also need several specimens of your signature, and details of your place of residence. And of course, we need to know certain details about the beneficial owner of the account.”
“Yes,” Wyman said. “I think you will find all you need here.”
He produced a typewritten document and placed it on Piaget’s desk.
“This,” he explained, “gives the gentleman’s full name, and his place and country of residence. There is also a letter of introduction from a reputable European bank. As you can see, it confirms the gentleman’s address and certifies the specimens of his signature given below.”
“Excellent,” said Piaget.
He studied the documents carefully, and if any of it surprised him, his face did not show it.
“This is more than sufficient,” he added. “There are one or two standard documents we must request you to sign, and I will introduce you to the official who will be responsible for this account. You will appreciate, of course, that once the agreements have been signed, we will require a period of forty-eight hours to complete our own formalities.”
“Of course,” Wyman said. Piaget was really saying that the bank would need two days to make its own private inquiries about the bona fides of the beneficial owner of the new account.
“As a matter of fact,” Wyman said, “I expect this account to remain unused for a week or two yet.”
“Indeed,” Piaget said.
“Yes. We then expect a very large lump sum to be paid into the account, and we expect it to remain there for a minimum of eight months.”
“I see,” said Piaget. “What sort of figure should we expect to receive, if the question is not an indelicate one?”
“You will find it written on the back of the page giving details of my client.”
Piaget glanced at the sheet and slowly looked up at Wyman. Years of experience had taught Piaget to avoid expressions of pure greed, but there was a remote hint of it in his voice.
“This is quite a sum,” he said.
“It is,” Wyman agreed. “But I am sure you are perfectly capable of dealing with it.”
“Quite so,” Piaget said. “Perhaps your client would like us to manage his account for him. The Bank provides an excellent service—”
“The possibility has occurred to my client,” Wyman said, “and we shall probably discuss it at a later date. For the time being I am simply interested in establishing the account.”
“I entirely understand,” said Piaget, picking up his telephone. “Perhaps I can introduce you to M. Barthes. He will be responsible for your client’s account.”
Three minutes later Wyman was shaking hands with a pin striped suit inhabited by M. Barthes and M. Barthes’ last dozen meals.
The three men sat down and the remainder of the formalities were completed. Wyman signed the standard Form A of the Swiss Bankers’ Association, entitled “Declaration for Opening an Account or Depositing Securities”. In doing so, Wyman was declaring that he, Edmund Ryle, was merely the contracting party, and that the beneficial owner was someone else.
He then signed the formal agreement establishing the account, giving the name of Ryle and that of the beneficial owner. Appended to the agreement was a long list of general conditions.
Finally, because Wyman was opening a numbered account, he had to sign yet another document which was ponderously entitled “Special Agreement Completing the Contract for Opening an Ordinary Account and Deposit”. This was supposed to indemnify the bank against any risks arising from using a code-number instead of a name in the account. The code G2H-17-493 was entered on the agreement, and that was that.
It was explained to Wyman that deposits and withdrawals would be made exclusively by means of this number. Despite the elaborate secrecy of this procedure, Swiss banks still regard numbered accounts as more vulnerable than “ordinary” ones, and so further precautions are insisted upon.
Wyman was told that cash withdrawals could not be made over the counter. To release any sum of money, Wyman would have to see his account manager in person, and M. Barthes would withdraw the cash under his own signature. The lowly cashier was far too untrustworthy to be allowed to handle numbered accounts.
Once the formalities had been completed, M. Barthes left, and M. Piaget gave a cigar and a glass of brandy to his new client. He expressed his delight at being able to do business with an Englishman.
“The English are such gentlemen,” he enthused.
“Yes,” Wyman said. “Perhaps that’s why they get foreigners to handle their money for them.”
“Perhaps,” said Piaget. “The English have the most… unfortunate banking system. Your desire for privacy in domestic and social affairs is most laudable. It is a pity that it does not extend to your commercial affairs.”
“Indeed,” Wyman said. “This is because the English obsession with privacy is outweighed by the English obsession with tax.”
“Quite so,” Piaget remarked sadly. “It is most unfortunate.”
“Do you really think so?” Wyman asked.
Piaget’s face creased into a frozen smile.
“Of course not,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
EDGAR P. RAWLS STRAIGHTENED his knitted-wool necktie as he walked along the corridor to his boss’s office. He knocked on a door marked “293: NAGEL ”. From behind the door came a noise that sounded like the belch of a laryngitic duck. The noise bore a vague resemblance to “Come in”, so Rawls opened the door and went inside.
Rawls was forty-one years old, though like most CIA men he could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty. His jagged face had no laugh-lines on it. A pair of dead-blue eyes stared grimly at the world through his tinted spectacles, and his expression was one of sardonic indifference.
He had joined the CIA early in 1965, where he was employed in the Special Operations Division. In the following year he worked in Vietnam under William Colby (who was later the Director of the CIA) in Colby’s Provincial Reconnaissance Units programme. The PRU had been set up to infiltrate the Communist areas for the purposes of disruption, intimidation, interrogation, abduction, terror and murder. Rawls excelled in all these fields.
In 1967 Rawls became involved in Colby’s “Phoenix” programme in South Vietnam. Essentially, the work consisted of remorseless elimination of Communist spies, assassins and terrorists. In its first thirty months of operation, the Phoenix programme cost the Vietcong over 20,000 casualties. Of these, at least 3,000 were directly attributable to Rawls.
After this, Rawls was transferred to the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA’s Clandestine Services section. From November 1970 he worked in Chile towards the overthrow of Salvador Allende Gossens, who led that country’
s first democratically elected Marxist government. Once again, Rawls did his job with surgical efficiency.
Between 1975 and late 1977, Rawls was transferred to the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, and he worked as a liaison officer between the CIA and the US National Security Agency at the American Embassy in Bonn. He was involved in the exposure and capture of Lothar-Erwin Lutze and his wife, Renate, both of whom had worked in the West German Defence Ministry. During his inquiries, Rawls discovered that the Lutzes had passed on NATO’s secret defence plans for West Germany to the KGB, along with a great deal of research data and top secret communications. Rawls gave the news to the BfV, West Germany’s counter-intelligence agency, and the Lutzes were subsequently brought to trial.
Rawls’ extraordinary career did not end there. Between 1977 and 1980 he continued in the CIA/NSA liaison, but this time he was based in the US Embassy in Moscow. By then, however, the KGB had amassed a large and disturbing file on Rawls, and it was decided that an agent of such alarming efficiency could be tolerated no longer. In September 1980 Rawls was expelled from Moscow, and he returned to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
Rawls had now become something of an embarrassment to his masters. Clearly he was one of their top field operatives, but his usefulness at home was another matter. He could no longer be placed in embassies abroad without exciting comment, and he was becoming too old for the kind of spectacular clandestine work in which he had once excelled.
He was therefore put into the tender care of Milton K. Nagel, the head of Anglo-US Intelligence Liaison. Nagel’s official brief was to ensure the free flow of intelligence between the CIA, the NSA, MI5 and MI6. Unofficially, his job was simply to extract the intelligence that the UK preferred to hide from the US. To do this, Nagel exploited every goodwill mission made by American officials to Britain, and he tapped every British phone call that the NSA could unscramble.
Rawls did not like his boss. Nagel was a loud-mouthed slob who ate hamburgers instead of taking baths. Unlike Rawls, he had a coarse, resonant sense of humour, and he was entirely open about his contempt for “smart-assed prima donnas”, of whom Rawls was one. He was short, fat and sweaty, and he disliked Rawls’ penchant for vigorous efficiency.
“Good morning,” he said, as Rawls closed the door. “Take a seat.”
Nagel leaned back in his swivel-chair and put his feet on the desk, knowing that this would irritate Rawls.
“Got a job for you,” he said.
Rawls nodded.
“Some two-bit hood by the name of Grünbaum got himself arrested and killed in the DDR. It seems that this boy ran a Brit-sponsored network over in Thuringia, or somewhere like that.”
“So?”
“So people are asking questions about it.”
“What people? What questions?”
“The Brits have put some guy named Wyman onto it. For some reason they’re worried by Grünbaum’s getting blown, and they want to know how it happened. Christ knows why they’re so upset. This kind of thing goes on all the time, and nobody gets screwed up about it.
“Funny thing is, instead of making the routine inquiries, Wyman’s been avoiding the Firm altogether. Six days ago he got in touch with Frank Schofield in Rome.”
“Who?”
“Frank Schofield. Old-time Kansas newspaper hack. Did some work for us during the war, and after that he used to help us out from time to time. He’s retired now, but he still knows a lot of the old crowd, so he’s still a good vehicle for discreet inquiries into the Company. Or so Wyman thinks.”
“What happened?”
Nagel gave a frog-like smile.
“Schofield got in touch with one or two people over here, hoping that everything would be nice and quiet. In fact, our people gave him virtually nothing, and then they told me what was happening. Wyman was taking a stupid risk asking Schofield for help. He should have known that we’d find out about it.”
“Who is this Wyman? How come he knows Schofield?”
“Wyman is a typical English cocksucker. I think he’s a professor of philosophy, or something like that. He’s pretty amateur, even by Brit standards, and that’s saying something. Anyway, he met up with Schofield in Rome in the mid-fifties when he worked at the British Station. They’ve been good buddies ever since.”
“Okay,” Rawls said. “So what do I do?”
“If Wyman is avoiding routine lines of inquiry, it means something funny is going on. If something funny is going on, I want to hear the joke. I mean, if you want to know why some op. has just got burned in Germany, you don’t normally go running to some old fossil in Rome. If you want Company help, you ask the Company, right? So why doesn’t Wyman want us to know what’s going on? I want you to find out.”
Rawls frowned.
“Sounds as if I might be chasing my own ass.”
“Sure you might,” Nagel said.
“Yeah.”
Nagel grinned evilly.
“What’s the matter, boy? You don’t look too happy about it.”
“That’s because I’m not. I’ve got one old idiot in London, another old idiot in Rome, and some prick in Germany who doesn’t know how to run a network properly. What kind of network was this, anyway?”
“Don’t know,” said Nagel. “You’ll have to find out. We do know what kind of stuff he was sending back.”
“Go on.”
“This is an old network.” Nagel referred to some notes. “It never produced a regular supply, but there’s stuff been coming over since ’57 that we know about, and it’s probably even older than that.
“Most of the stuff’s chicken-feed. Troop movements, stuff like that. There was only one moment of glory, back in ’70. If you remember, Brandt met Stoph at Erfurt for the first time, and this guy Grünbaum got the word on it nice and early. That gave us time to act.”
“Yeah,” Rawls said. “I remember.”
The occasion Nagel was referring to was the Erfurt meeting on March 19, 1970, between Willy Brandt, the West German Chancellor, and Willy Stoph, Chairman of the East German Council of Ministers.
It was the first official meeting between East and West Germany, and it resulted in diplomatic relations between the two nations. That in turn led to the four-power Berlin Agreement, which allowed full international recognition of the DDR.
The success of the Erfurt meeting largely resulted from Grünbaum’s work in February 1970. By obtaining advance warning of the meeting, the Western powers were able to ensure its success by judiciously spreading rumours throughout East Germany. Normally, the DDR’s Politburo had to use hired mobs to greet visiting foreign dignitaries. But on this occasion the East Germans came out spontaneously in their thousands to welcome Willy Brandt.
The whole affair was something of an internal embarrassment to the Politburo, and it finally convinced them of the public demand for diplomatic relations with the West. It was also Grünbaum’s moment of glory, as Nagel expressed it. For perhaps the only time in his sordid career, the German had achieved something worthwhile.
“What you’d better do,” Nagel said, “is get over to England and see this guy Wyman. Figure up a good excuse for being there and get clearance from the Firm. You’ll find that Wyman’s working in some third-rate sub-department somewhere in London. Find out what it is he does, and use it as an excuse to meet him. See what you can get out of him without letting on that we know about his trip to Rome, and we’ll see about what to do next. Think you can do that?”
“Of course I can,” Rawls snapped.
“Great. I’ll send you all we’ve got on Wyman and the Krauts, and you can go as soon as you like.”
“Okay,” Rawls said, as he left the office.
Nagel knew that Rawls felt deeply insulted that a man of his proven ability should get a dreary assignment like this. That was precisely why Nagel had given it to him. A fat smirk crept across his face as Rawls left the room.
“Smart-assed prima donna,” he chuckled.
Chapter N
ineteen
THE LONDON SKY WAS CLOUDLESS and crisp as Wyman strolled into Percy Street at 4.00 P.M. He entered the building, received another religious pamphlet from Mr Berkeley, and was greeted by Mrs Hobbes’s vast backside as she bent over to switch on her vacuum cleaner at the top of the stairs. This gave Wyman an unfortunate view of her faded floral underwear and shattered stockings.
“Afternoon, Dr Wyman,” Mrs Hobbes called out from between her legs. “How was your holiday?”
“Most refreshing, thank you, Mrs Hobbes,” Wyman said, bravely ignoring her monstrous rump.
He climbed the stairs hurriedly and made straight for Owen’s office.
“Good afternoon,” Owen said, though his expression belied his words.
“Good afternoon.”
“Well, how did it go? Did you make any progress?”
Wyman nodded.
“Things are going quite well.”
He sat down and drew out a file from his briefcase. He opened the file and referred to it as he spoke.
“As far as anyone knows, the Germans are sticking to the notion that all the arrests were routine criminal affairs. There is no suggestion from the DDR that anyone is being detained on espionage charges. This would imply their determination that no one should know how the network was blown. Reichenbach was tried recently and jailed for two years for currency offences. No other trials have been announced yet, but we may expect similar news in due course.
“The difficulty in investigating this case is obvious. The only way we can find out what happened in Erfurt is by digging around in official circles. Of course, the only way this could ever be achieved was by using the Dovetail network.”
“Yes,” Owen said impatiently.
“The task has therefore been to find another source for the same information. Luckily, I have found one.”
