‘If you could spare the time,’ Kingdon said, ‘I should be grateful if you would have a look at this.’
Gerard held the folder in one hand as though it was infectious. ‘What precisely is this, Mr Kingdon?’
Kingdon told him.
‘But we have already looked into your prospects, Mr Kingdon.’
‘This crystallises them. There are some new ventures which might interest you.’
Gerard handed the folder back to Kingdon. ‘I think not, Mr Kingdon. We have made our decision. If you must know, we came to the conclusion that some of your claims did not quite measure up to the facts.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and change for dinner.’
Kingdon returned the folder to his brief-case. A salesman with a door slammed in his face! In his early days he had produced a booklet setting out the pitch which a salesman should use to close a deal. Number one: Never give up. But Gerard was already walking swiftly away.
A voice intoned over the Tannoy: ‘Would Mr Paul Kingdon please call at reception.’
Suzy Okana was waiting there. ‘They won’t let me in,’ she said. She was shielded from reporters by a black security guard.
‘Okay,’ he said to the guard, ‘I’ll vouch for her.’ He and Suzy walked across the lobby to the elevator.
In his room he paced up and down the carpet while Suzy sat in an easy chair watching him.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.
‘A Perrier water, please. I had too much local plonk at lunch-time.’
‘Call Room Service then.’
She stretched her long legs, the slits in her yellow dress reached to the top of her thighs. When the mineral water had been delivered she said: ‘What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve lost a tenner and found a fiver.’
‘I’ve just been talking to a member of the aristocracy. An aristocratic pig.’
‘You mean he wouldn’t do what you wanted him to?’
‘If what I think is going to happen does happen, he’ll come to me on his knees.’
Suzy sipped her Perrier water. ‘And what’s that?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She shrugged. ‘When is this thing going to happen?’
‘At the end of the conference.’ He stopped pacing and sat down on the bed opposite Suzy. ‘You remember what I said?’
‘About staying together?’
‘Stay with me and you’ll live like a queen.’
‘I’m not very regal,’ she said.
‘I’m very fond of you, Suzy.’
‘At film premieres,’ she said.
‘More than that.’
‘I wish,’ she said frowning, ‘that I knew what you were talking about.’
‘You will.’ He leaned forward. ‘How about it, Suzy?’
She shook her head. ‘Let’s just stick to our bargain. We agreed that either of us could pull out when they felt like it.’
‘And you feel like it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I’m going to live in Switzerland,’ Kingdon said abruptly.
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Why?’
‘If I told you that the financial structure of the world is going to change, would you believe me?’
‘I wouldn’t believe you and I wouldn’t disbelieve you.’
‘And Switzerland will be about the only place to be for a year or so. Or somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, but I can’t see myself sharing my roubles. I never did believe in equality.’
‘Is this what you’ve been hinting at?’
Kingdon nodded.
‘And how is the financial structure going to change?’
‘Just take it from me that it is.’
‘And I assume you’re going to make a fortune out of it’
‘Of course.’
‘And other people will lose millions?’
‘Including Alex Gerard.’
‘Who’s Alex Gerard?’
‘The pig I’ve just been talking to.’
‘And ordinary small people …. They’ll lose fortunes – or what seem to them to be fortunes?’
‘It’s never been any other way.’
She digested this. ‘I suppose you’re right. They don’t even have any say in wars, do they?’
‘I’m not responsible for what’s going to happen,’ Kingdon said.
‘But you could prevent it?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘You could try. Paul Kingdon’s name still means something.’
‘Then I would be finished.’ He tried to take her hand but she snatched it away. ‘If I tell you something in confidence, will you promise not to tell anyone?’
‘I suppose so,’ draining the glass of mineral water.
‘I’m being blackmailed.’
Her hand jerked as she was replacing the glass on the bedside table and she knocked over the bottle. It shattered on the tiles between the carpet and the wall. She knelt and began to pick up the shards of glass. ‘Blackmailed? By whom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What sort of blackmail?’ She swore as she cut her finger on a piece of broken glass.
‘No details,’ he told her. ‘I just thought I’d tell you. They want five million dollars,’ he added, handing her a silk handkerchief to staunch the bleeding.
‘Is that a lot of money? You know, I realise it’s a fortune. But businessmen make and lose sums like that in a day. In a way that sort of money becomes pointless, doesn’t it. I’ve known men who deal in millions and resent taking their wives for a week’s holiday in Brighton. Pierre Brossard for instance.’
‘What do you know about Brossard?’
She sucked her finger, wrapped the handkerchief round it. ‘Only what I’ve read. He’d pick his own pockets. His appearance confirmed it when I met him at your house. A lecherous old sod, too.’
‘Five million dollars is a lot of money to anyone,’ Kingdon said. ‘I can raise it all right, but hell, why should I?’
‘That’s right,’ Suzy said, ‘why should you? You haven’t told me yet.’
‘I have your promise?’
‘You have my promise.’
‘They claim they can make my diamonds worthless.’
‘Make them worthless? Diamonds? They must be out of their tiny minds.’
‘Oh no they’re not,’ Kingdon said.
And he explained why.
* * *
That evening reports of a violent quarrel between three unlikely protagonists spread among the staff of the hotel and reached one or two of the guests.
The quarrel was first heard by a chambermaid who was making her way from room to room along a corridor in the east wing removing the bedspreads, turning back the sheets and punching the pillows into shape. She stopped outside the door and, pressing one finger to her lips, beckoned to another chambermaid to come and share the entertainment. Together they lurked in a doorway across the corridor.
They were joined by a whistling pageboy who, after he had been forcibly quietened, also listened. It was he who spread the word but, because neither he nor the two maids had been able to understand much of what was said, it was an embroidered and garbled account that reached the chefs, kitchen-maids, waiters, porters, assistant managers and finally Monsieur Gaudin himself.
The room in which the quarrel took place was occupied by the English professor, Monsieur George Prentice. According to the pageboy, a woman’s voice had been heard screaming abuse. Suddenly the door had been flung open and the security officer, Owen Anderson, had stormed out.
At this point the trio listening in the doorway dispersed, but not before they had glimpsed Prentice and the girl – identified by one of the maids as Hildegard Metz – facing each other, shouting. Fraulein Metz’s hand was raised, said the pageboy, as though she was about to strike the Englishman.
Waiters later noted that both Anderson and Prentice arrived late for dinner in the banqueting hall when the brandy and li
queurs were being served. Prentice sat with Paul Kingdon, Anderson by himself; both appeared tense and distracted.
When Gaudin heard about the affair, he called Anderson into his office and said: ‘Monsieur Anderson, no one would dispute that normally quarrels are private affairs.’ His voice hardened. ‘But not when they are aired so noisily that they become public. I do not like such scenes in my hotel. You of all people should not get yourself involved in such situations.’
Anderson apologised.
‘I seem to remember,’ Gaudin said, ‘that you once indicated that you didn’t care for Monsieur Prentice.’
‘I guess he doesn’t care too much for me either,’ Anderson said.
‘And Fraulein Metz …. How did she become involved in the quarrel?’
Anderson said quietly: ‘It was something that happened a long time ago. Fraulein Metz has good reason to dislike both Prentice and myself. I’d rather not go into details ….’
‘Very well, but I should be grateful if you would restrain your enmity until you have left my hotel. You do have rather more important matters to deal with, Monsieur Anderson. Tomorrow morning the President of my country and the former American Secretary of State are due to arrive here.’
‘I’m truly sorry,’ Anderson said.
‘Very well. We’ll say no more about it.’
They shook hands and thereafter acted as though the matter had been forgotten.
* * *
By 11.30 p.m. the château was quiet.
Because the delegates had to be fresh for the morning session, most of them had retired early. They lay in their beds stripped of the outward trappings of wealth, as vulnerable in sleep as the poor. From time to time one or the other would cry out as, in their dreams, a market crashed or a government toppled.
In one or two rooms, deals were clinched that had little to do with the avowed purpose of the conference. In Pierre Brossard’s room, for instance, where three financiers attending the conference discussed dollars. Billions of them,
But, by and large, the guests were in the cradle of the great equaliser, sleep.
In the stone-flagged kitchens below, where herbs hung in bunches from the oak beams, grills and pans and saucepans, freshly scoured, stood in readiness to provide a hundred or so breakfasts of astonishing variety.
Room service was still alert; the night porter was checking his list of early calls and requests for newspapers; occasionally a dozing telephonist would awake with a jerk and place a call to a distant city where, in daylight, business was still being transacted.
The journalists had called it a day. In the grounds, guards patrolled in the moonlight as the clock in the village church tolled the hours across the fields.
In the bar, the last drinker finally gave up and went to bed.
As Jules was drying the last of the glasses Anderson walked in; Jules had expected him. ‘A nightcap, Monsieur Anderson?’
Anderson shook his head wearily. ‘Anything for me, Jules?’
‘Nothing much. In fact, I don’t really know if you’ll be interested in what I’ve heard. It’s only gossip ….’
‘Shoot,’ Anderson said.
‘A couple of investment bankers were talking about dollars?’
‘So?’
‘I got the impression that they were planning some sort of coup.’
‘Aren’t they always?’
Jules shrugged. ‘I only heard snatches of the conversation. You know how it is. In any case they would hardly go into details at the bar ….’
‘Who were they?’
Jules gave him two names and Anderson jotted them down on the back of an envelope.
‘Okay, it isn’t really anything to do with security but I’ll bear it in mind. Anything else?’
‘Not really. And I wouldn’t bring this up except that you mentioned the trainee manager, Nicholas Foster. He went to the village this afternoon. Did you know that?’
‘I knew it.’
‘Did you see him come back?’
Anderson shook his head.
‘Well I did. You can see the lane from the French windows. He came back with that Chinese girl, the friend of the Englishman, Paul Kingdon.’
‘Did he now.’ Anderson made another note on the envelope. ‘Lucky bastard. Anything else?’
‘Not really, m’sieur ….’
‘Come on,’ Anderson said, ‘out with it.’
Jules picked up a glass and began to polish it. ‘There really is nothing,’ he said.
‘What you mean is that the best gossip you’ve heard concerns me.’
Jules shrugged. ‘I heard there had been some sort of difference of opinion.’
‘The understatement of the year. But it proves that you’ve got your ear to the ground. Keep it there, Jules.’
As Anderson walked out of the bar, he gave a mock salute to the French intelligence officer who was coming in for a nightcap. A Saint-Pierre Special.
XXII
The newspapers were deposited outside bedroom doors at 6.30 am, by which time many guests were showered and shaved and drinking their first cup of tea or coffee.
Outside Rooms 203 and 207 in the west wing and 82 in the east wing, the newspapers were accompanied by manilla envelopes of varying size on which were printed the occupants’ names and one word: URGENT.
In Room 82 Pierre Brossard was awakened by an early call a quarter of an hour later than usual; but the benefit was cancelled out by the fact that he had hardly slept He shuffled into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror; his age was showing; these days he needed his sleep.
He cleaned his teeth, doused his face with cold water and returned to the bedroom as a maid knocked and entered bringing him his tea; he barely noticed the pout of her lips or the expanse of leg as she bent to pick up the newspapers and envelope outside the door.
‘Will there be anything else, m’sieur?’
Any other time, perhaps. Not this morning.
He glanced at the Wall Street Journal and the pink pages of the Financial Times, rushed from Paris to the château by courier service. Then he noticed the bulky envelope.
He opened it with trembling fingers.
Inside was a sheaf of papers, copies of old documents. All German. Some were signed by low-ranking Gestapo officers serving in France during the Occupation; one was signed by Reinhardt Heydrich, head of the RSHA which incorporated the Gestapo, and one by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who took over when Heydrich was assassinated in Czechoslovakia. All incriminated Brossard as a traitor.
The trembling spread from Brossard’s hand to his entire body.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment staring at the photostats. Then he picked up the typewritten letter stapled to the first copy. It was in French.
You will see from the attached documents that the evidence against you is comprehensive. Arrangements are in hand to distribute further copies of these documents to the Préfecture de Police in Paris, the offices of Le Monde, and the appropriate authorities in Belgrade.
These arrangements will be instantly cancelled when we receive confirmation that five million dollars has been deposited in Account No. CR 58432/91812 in the United Bank of Switzerland, Zurich, before the close of Swiss banking hours the day after tomorrow, April 24th.
We realise that you may harbour doubts as to whether all the evidence will be destroyed. You have only our word, but we would point out that five million dollars is sufficient for our needs and we would hardly repeat the risks involved in this operation.
We would also point out that you have no choice.
The letter was unsigned.
Brossard went into the bathroom and vomited.
He returned to the bedroom and copied the number of the Swiss account into an address book. Then he burned the photostats and the letter in the bath and washed away the charred paper with the hand-shower.
Five minutes later he made a phone call to Paris.
* * *
Claire Jerome awoke groggily in Roo
m 203. She had taken two sleeping tablets before going to bed and the drugs were still in her bloodstream. Daylight entered the room gently through the blue curtains.
The telephone rang beside her.
‘Madame Jerome? It’s seven-thirty.’
She put down the receiver and pulled herself up onto the pillows as her memory returned. ‘Pete, she whispered, ‘where are you?’
She pulled back the sheets and went to the bathroom where she put on a shower-cap and let cold water sluice over her. Then she stared at herself in the mirror and thought: ‘Look at you, you poor bitch.’
Ten minutes later a maid brought coffee and fresh orange juice. She put the tray on the table by the window and drew the curtains; light flooded into the room. She placed the newspapers on a chair beside the table, envelope beneath them.
Claire decided to drink her juice and coffee, put a face on and go into Anello’s room to explain about the arms deal. He would probably still be asleep; some bodyguard, she smiled.
She glanced at the papers. Fuel. The dollar. Iran, Afghanistan …. She picked up an English tabloid. On an inside page was a story about whizz-kid Paul Kingdon whisking Oriental model Suzy Okana from the clutches of Bilderberg security and transporting her to his bedroom.
She put on bra and panties and returned to the bathroom.
The sleep and the drugs had lulled the fear. The blackmail threat was the work of a nut; when she explained the arms deal to Pete he would understand. And he would understand that she had to pay off Brossard because any publicity would wreck it.
She applied a foundation, attended to her eyes and mouth and slipped into a black cashmere sweater and a cream gaberdine two-piece. Round her neck she hung a rope of pearls.
She tidied the newspapers – and saw the envelope.
Her hand went to her throat.
With one scarlet fingernail she slit the envelope.
In case you are thinking otherwise, Mrs Jerome, our threat was quite serious. If you wish to see Mr Peter Anello alive again please deposit five million dollars in Account No. CR 58432/91812 in the United Bank of Switzerland, Zurich, not later than the conclusion of Swiss banking hours the day after tomorrow, April 24th.
I, Said the Spy Page 29
