I, Said the Spy

by Derek Lambert

  A cardinal had built the original villa in 1568. Its occupants had included the Sultan of Morocco, the ill-fated Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales and wife of George IV, Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia and, for a couple of days in 1965, Prince Bernhard and his very special guests.

  Owen Anderson booked a suite of rooms. A noble suite of blue and gold with views of the lake which, with its two legs and arched back, has the shape of a flamenco dancer arrogantly poised on the borders of Switzerland.

  Such were the airs and graces of the place that it seemed indecent to check the suite for microphones. But Anderson went ahead and did it.

  When Prentice and Helga Keller arrived within ten minutes of each other, both by taxi from the silk-rich city of Como, he was ready for business. Chairs arranged around an inlaid table on which stood a carafe of iced water and glasses.

  Already Helga had opened a joint numbered account with the United Bank of Switzerland in Zurich and arranged for individual accounts to be opened in other banks in Geneva, Basle and Berne.

  Each of them had made arrangements to adopt a new identity after Bilderberg. (In their profession this presented few difficulties.) And arrangements were in hand to establish their ultimate destination in Rio de Janeiro.

  ‘But,’ said Anderson drawing up a chair, ‘we have to speed things up due to the untimely intervention of Monsieur Brossard. It has to be the next Bilderberg.

  Prentice and Helga nodded agreement.

  ‘Okay, George,’ Anderson said, ‘you first.’

  Prentice began to speak. He was professional, purposeful and his authority was noted by Helga.

  He said: ‘We have agreed that each operation should be conducted in three stages. The initial frightener followed by a lull, the reminder and then the hit. This way the subject becomes malleable; not only that, but he is less likely to respond hysterically.

  ‘I’m lucky in that, in my case, the method of extortion is simple; I’m also lucky that, with a man such as Pierre Brossard, I don’t have the slightest compunction in terrifying and robbing him. We have agreed that the first move should be the delivery of a significant date. Helga,’ nodding at her, ‘will find an opportunity to write or print the date on some of Brossard’s Bilderberg correspondence.’

  ‘A nice touch, George,’ Anderson said. ‘But won’t he immediately suspect Helga?’

  ‘Why should he? As far as he knows the date has no significance to her. At that stage he won’t realise that the object of the exercise is extortion. And when the second message is delivered – in the form of cassettes as we’ve agreed – the voice will be a man’s. Mine.’

  Prentice paused and drank some water. ‘Now, as we all know, thanks to Helga and her employers in Moscow, Monsier Brossard has chosen to complicate our plans. He also wants to retire,’ permitting himself a fleeting smile. ‘It is therefore vital that, having obtained the ransom, we negate the Soviet conspiracy to bring down the dollar.

  ‘Vital not only for our own ends but for the future of our Society,’ he added sombrely. ‘I know that Helga has no idealistic objections to this. But perhaps she would like to elaborate ….’

  For Anderson’s benefit Helga told them how she felt about the beliefs she had held for so long.

  ‘I was once a Communist,’ she said. ‘Passionately, totally dedicated.’ She didn’t elaborate on how this had come about: they both knew. ‘When you’re young and you live in a country where people live Swiss francs and you know about poverty and starvation elsewhere in the world, then you are disturbed by dreams of equality. But gradually – although I kept it from myself – I became aware of another kind of poverty. Poverty of the soul.’

  She drank some iced water. ‘Wherever I travelled in Eastern Europe, in Russia, I felt it. The greatest crime was originality. If you were found guilty of this heinous offence then you were exorcised. In jail, in a camp, in a mental home. It is very sad,’ she said softly, ‘that ideals should be disciplined and converted into doctrines.’

  She paused. A vase of russet-coloured chrysanthemums stood on the table and she could smell their coppery scent. Autumn. Through the window she could see the cold blue waters of the lake and the green hills smudged with gold.

  Then she smiled at them, at Prentice in particular, and said: ‘No, I haven’t got any idealistic objections. I think I’ve earned my retirement ….’

  Anderson said: ‘One thing worries me. Shouldn’t we wreck Brossard’s plan to bring down the dollar right now?’

  Prentice shook his head, lit a cigarette. ‘In the first place Helga hasn’t got the full details yet. Although my guess is that the Russians will dump dollars and Brossard will try and frighten speculators into panic selling. If we act now it will be premature. Just another red-under-the-bed scare which the Russians will deny. The essence is timing – for them and us.’

  Helga said: ‘Don’t forget Kingdon’s part in it.’

  Prentice explained to Anderson that, according to notes scrutinised by Helga, Brossard intended to collaborate with Paul Kingdon. ‘Why we’re not sure. But an educated guess would be that he wants Kingdon’s help – and will tip him off about the attempt to topple the dollar. If Kingdon believes that his money – and the money he hands over to us – is going to be worthless, then he is much more likely to co-operate with us.’

  Helga said to Anderson: ‘Don’t worry about the dollar. George and I are working on it.’

  George and I. She took off her spectacles and experienced an astonishing urge to shake her hair loose from its combs.

  ‘So that brings us to Paul Kingdon,’ Anderson said. He stood up. ‘My own operation based on information supplied by George. And to an extent I’m going to have to enlist George’s support as well as his information. In fact, we’ll all have to mix it a little. You know, black dudes aren’t that common in the City of London. Nor, from what George tells me, are they frequent visitors to Wentworth. So the first warning will have to be delivered by you, George. In Kingdon’s telephone monitor – with a voice-cast, provided by you, Helga, in case Kingdon recognises George’s inimitable voice.’

  He paused while Prentice and Helga nodded appreciatively.

  ‘Kingdon’s strength,’ he went on, ‘is his weakness. His ice, his diamonds. Make the Kingdon Diamond worthless and you’ve emasculated him.’

  Anderson turned to Helga because Prentice knew most of the details. He explained that several companies were concentrating on trying to produce flawless gem diamonds. So far none had succeeded.

  ‘But Kingdon isn’t to know that,’ Anderson told Helga. ‘Although he will have heard of the Jager Formula. This is the one bandied around in the trade as being on the verge of success. And it so happens that George here, being the best industrial spy in the business, has managed to get hold of a copy.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Helga said. ‘If the formula isn’t perfected yet —’

  ‘Hear me out,’ Anderson said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve had to invest some of our anticipated rewards.’

  ‘How much?’ Helga queried.

  ‘A hundred thousand bucks.’

  ‘Peanuts,’ Prentice said.

  Anderson went on: ‘A Dutch diamond merchant named van Wyk is attending the next Bilderberg. He’s not as wealthy as he appears. He’s gay and, as he’s also fat and ugly, he has to pay for his pleasures. He has agreed to accept a hundred thousand. In exchange he will verify the Jager Formula and express consternation that it has fallen into Kingdon’s hands. We will also make a gift of a small diamond to Kingdon – a product of the Jager Formula. In fact, of course, it will be a genuine diamond.’

  ‘I’d like to make a request,’ Prentice said.

  ‘Go ahead, George.’

  ‘I want Kingdon to raise the five million himself. You know, save as much of the poor bloody investors’ money as possible. There’s just a chance that one day a few Honest Johns might take over Kingdon Investments and save some of their cash.’

  ‘Can he raise it?’ />
  ‘If he thinks it’s going to be worthless and he’s got his diamonds he’ll raise it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Anderson said, ‘we’ll make the point.’ He sat down. ‘Helga, your turn.’

  Helga began with an apology.

  ‘I’m afraid the female of the species has come up with the most obvious plan. But, believe me, it will be effective. You see,’ she said to Prentice, ‘Owen has discovered that Mrs Claire Jerome is in love.’

  She tasted the word. Love. She unbuttoned the jacket of her suit, cleared her throat and continued.

  ‘She has fallen for a very unusual man named Anello. She’s currently on vacation with him in the Bahamas. Judging by reports from the servants obtained by Owen’s representative in Nassau, she would break up if he left her. So I’m afraid what I’m suggesting is an old-fashioned kidnap.’

  Neither Anderson nor Prentice looked enthusiastic.

  ‘However,’ she went on, ‘I do have some refinements in mind. A woman’s intuition. I haven’t had time to investigate the possibilities yet but I’ll let you know.’

  ‘A kidnap?’ Prentice’s voice was sceptical. ‘I had hoped we would be able to dispense with marked notes, a secret rendezvous, car chases …. This has to be artistic perfection.’

  If it had come from Anderson she wouldn’t have minded so much.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said coldly. ‘First I have to deliver Mrs Jerome’s note. Anello’s date of birth – cut from an old copy of the Washington Post. Does that upset your aesthetic senses?’

  And when Prentice shook his head she said: ‘Then I think that just about concludes the business of this meeting,’ sat down, buttoned up her jacket and replaced her spectacles.

  * * *

  She would soon be thirty years old and only one man had ever made love to her.

  Ridiculous in this day and age. Pathetic.

  In her room next to the suite Helga Keller stared in the mirror at Hildegard Metz.

  No-one had ever made love to Hildegard Metz!

  Would anyone want to?

  For almost a decade I have been another woman. Behaved like her, thought like her. Is it too late to revert to Helga Keller?

  On an impulse she went into the bathroom and took off her clothes. Removed her spectacles, shook loose her hair and stared into a mirror. And still saw Hildegard Metz.

  Her breasts were firm and full enough, good legs. Good figure, in fact, apart from her waistline which was a little too thick. But she could diet and the plastic surgery on her face had only been minor. Then she would visit a hairdressers and a beauty parlour and throw away her spectacles. But not before Bilderberg.

  But what about George Prentice? Just like Helga Keller he had assumed an identity. Was it also too late for him to change?

  She had admired him while he outlined his role in the operation. But she had been frightened, too. The calculating efficiency. The way he had snubbed her.

  As steam from the bathwater began to blur the image in the mirror her thoughts became confused.

  Helga Keller and the original George Prentice … Hildegard Metz and the original Prentice … Hildegard Metz and this man with an assumed identity ….

  They were strangers twice over.

  She touched her breasts, small pink nipples like those of a young girl, epitomising unfulfilment.

  Since Torquay they had only met fleetingly. She wasn’t sure about his feelings towards her; wasn’t sure about her feelings towards him.

  She imagined him making love to her. Incredibly her body responded to her imagination. After all those years of abstinence.

  Then she considered the possibility that Prentice wouldn’t even contemplate making love to her and the excitement stirring inside her receded.

  She leaned forward and with one hand wiped some of the steam from the mirror.

  For a fleeting moment it was Helga Keller who looked back at her.

  * * *

  George Prentice, too, was unsure of his feelings.

  He was over forty and the character he had adopted had settled upon him. He was like an actor who has played a role for so long that he has subordinated his own personality to it.

  Prentice didn’t know if he could shed the role; it was as hard as a shell.

  He did know that when he was in the presence of Helga Keller he was suffused with a warmth of feeling that he hadn’t experienced since Annette du Pont had briefly intruded into his life and changed it.

  It had been Lake Zurich in that long-ago period, that moment in his life. Now it was Lake Como, sometimes described as the most romantic lake in the world.

  But once again they had no time. And all he had so far managed to do was establish hostility. But, Christ, kidnapping!

  Prentice picked up the telephone in the lounge of the suite and called Helga’s room.

  Half an hour later as she poured him a whisky in her room, she said: ‘Do you call your girl-friends at this hour?’ It was 10.30 pm.

  ‘I wanted to apologise for biting your head off,’ he said as he took in the long hair falling around her shoulders, the swell of her breasts above the pink bath-robe; he wanted to reach out for her.

  ‘I don’t blame you. Kidnapping – it sounds crude. But you’ve got to believe me: it won’t be.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Prentice said. Without spectacles she looked vulnerable; he wondered if she had looked very much different before the plastic surgery.

  She sat down on the chesterfield and crossed her legs. Good legs.

  ‘I wanted to talk about the future,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Our future.’

  ‘The two of us or the three of us?’

  ‘The two of us. Owen Anderson isn’t the type to stay alone for long.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose not.’

  At least, without too many words, he had established a future. Togetherness. Sharing …. Suddenly Prentice wanted more than that. Cried out inside himself and heard his voice echo back through the empty years.

  He went to her and, still standing, put his hand to her neck and slid it down her shoulder; her robe fell away exposing her breasts and she stared up at him with fear and hope.

  He bent and kissed her lips. And then her breasts and what they had both thought would be so difficult proved to be the easiest thing in the world.

  And, as he led her towards the bed, the voice in the past lost itself in its own echoes.

  * * *

  During the next seven months the three of them managed to meet five more times. On each occasion their mood was subtly different as the build-up for Operation Imperial accelerated. Tension was there, but so was an expanding sense of camaraderie. Three agents jointly defecting from their respective mentors, that was the beauty of it; three individuals combining to take on organised intelligence networks – and using the skills imparted by those networks to do it.

  While plans to extort ransom from Brossard and Kingdon proceeded smoothly enough, Helga had to fall back on her reserves of ingenuity to refine the Claire Jerome operation. She had promised them sophistication: they should have it.

  From intelligence gathered by Anderson, it had become increasingly apparent that Anello wasn’t a work-shy gigolo: he was a casualty of war. Helga had in her possession his Army records and reports from various sources about his views on the arms race. The combination presented distinct possibilities; but first she had to gauge for herself the depth of his feeling.

  One warm spring day while Claire Jerome was in New York Helga took the combs from her hair and, posing as an Austrian businesswoman, picked up Anello in a bar in London with an ease that delighted her. She was feminine, she was attractive – even if Anello was a little drunk.

  During their brief association she discovered more about the man than his views on war and those who profited from it: she touched the nerve of his self-disgust.

  ‘So we won’t have to take him by force,’ she told Anderson and Prentice at their final meeting – again at the Villa d�
��Este. ‘Of course he may react violently at first. You, George, will have to take care of that business. We can’t have the American Secret Service,’ pointing at Anderson, ‘leaving the Château Saint-Pierre.’

  They were breakfasting in the same suite of rooms; beneath them the lake sparkled in the early morning sunshine.

  Prentice sliced off the top of a boiled egg and said: ‘It is without doubt sheer artistry. Cunning tempered by rough justice.’

  ‘If it works,’ remarked Anderson buttering a bread roll. ‘If not, then it will have to be an old-fashioned, gun-point abduction.’

  ‘I think it will work,’ Helga told them. ‘It will give Anello a purpose. And the method of operation will appeal to him. You see I know the man,’ she said, finishing her grapefruit segments which, with a cup of black coffee, was all she now allowed herself for breakfast.

  Posing as an anti-armaments group – terrorists in reverse – they hoped to persuade Anello to co-operate in a kidnap. Claire Jerome, he would be told, would be informed that he would be released if she issued a statement announcing that she was pulling out of armaments.

  Anello wouldn’t, of course, be told about the $5 million ransom.

  The previous evening Anderson had revealed that they now had an unexpected ally: Israeli Intelligence who had persuaded Claire Jerome to do a deal with the Arabs for their own ends.

  ‘It’s the catalyst we needed,’ Prentice said, reaching for a croissant. ‘When Anello hears that she’s double-dealing he’ll jump in with both feet.’

  ‘To be fair,’ Anderson said, ‘Mrs Jerome’s motives can’t be faulted.’ He helped himself to another roll. ‘But we have to make sure that Anello gets to know about the Arab deal. Which shouldn’t be difficult as it’s up to me to debug all the rooms in the château. In four rooms – Brossard’s, Kingdon’s, Mrs Jerome’s and Anello’s – I shall be guilty of dereliction of duty ….’