I, Said the Spy

by Derek Lambert

  Prentice said: ‘Tell me something, Helga, do you feel a little sorry for Mrs Jerome?’

  Anderson cut in: ‘Why should she? It’s the sort of lesson she needs. Up to now she’s always been in the driving seat. Omnipotent, impregnable. Not her fault, maybe, but her values are all screwed up. Maybe one day she’ll be grateful to us.’

  Helga said: ‘He’s right, of course. But,’ looking steadily at Prentice, ‘yes, I do feel a little sorry for her.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Prentice said.

  PART FIVE

  XXVIII

  The first of the unpredictable elements anticipated by Owen Anderson, was the discovery of the primitive bugging device planted in the microphone in the conference chamber of the Château Saint-Pierre.

  The second was the attempt on Pierre Brossard’s life.

  It occurred at 3.43 on the afternoon of the first whole day of the conference.

  As far as Brossard was concerned, the debates were now entirely superfluous. He had retired to his room to continue making arrangements for the transfer of the five million dollars to the bank in Switzerland and to make final revisions to his column. The financiers he had primed were poised to sell dollars on a vast scale, so was the Foreign Trade Bank of the Soviet Union and Brossard had recovered his poise since reading the ransom note. Five million worthless dollars. Not only that but two million of the ransom had been provided by Claire Jerome and would be transferred tomorrow from his account in Monaco to the numbered account in Zurich. It really was rather piquant.

  He stood for a moment in front of the window, arms folded, gazing across the gardens. It was true that the cheaper rooms on the east wing weren’t blessed with as much sunlight as those on the west wing. But why pay for sunlight? In any case the weather had changed and the sun shone only fleetingly through low clouds racing across the sky.

  Brossard was in the middle of a yawn when the bullet shattered the window and spun him round. At first he had no idea what had happened. A stone? There was no pain. Merely an icy coldness in his shoulder, then warmth as blood began to course down his arm. He felt the hole in the cloth of his jacket with one hand, felt the wound, and understood. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the splinters of broken glass.

  He was reaching for the telephone when someone pounded on the door and a man’s voice shouted: ‘Are you all right, Brossard?’ The door opened and the security guard came in.

  ‘I’ve been shot,’ Brossard said.

  Anderson sat beside him, saw the blood oozing through the hole in the sleeve. ‘Okay, I’m going to call the doctor.’

  There were shouts in the garden and the sound of running footsteps along the corridor.

  An FBI agent stuck his head round the door. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘A shooting is what’s going on,’ Anderson said.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘Now let’s get the hell out of here before he takes another shot.’ Anderson said to Brossard: ‘Can you make it into the passage?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The FBI agent helped Brossard to crawl out of the room while, keeping away from the window, Anderson told the switchboard operator to send up the house doctor. Hugging the wall, he edged into the corridor.

  He tried a door on the other side of the corridor. It opened and he helped Brossard to a bed.

  He said to the FBI agent: ‘Tell the French cops but tell them to keep a low profile.’ He shook his head. ‘I might have guessed it,’ as the church bells began to chime.

  ‘Guessed what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You stay here with Brossard.’

  As Anderson ran down the passage, other plain-clothes police were rounding the corner. Grabbing a British Special Branch officer he said: ‘Seal off the corridor. Someone just took a shot at Brossard. If anyone asks what the noise was, tell them it was a jet crashing the sound barrier. Tell them anything you like but don’t say anything about a shooting. Understand?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ the Special Branch man said.

  In the lobby Anderson slowed down to walking pace in case there were any reporters there; he was lucky – the reporters had departed to file stories about the arrival of the former American Secretary of State and the French president.

  Gaudin stopped him near the reception desk. ‘What happened?’

  Anderson told him. ‘Stall everyone. But none of that “No comment” stuff. That’s as good as confirming it.’

  He ran to the car-park, gunned the black Chevrolet Caprice on loan from the American Embassy in Paris. At the gates he sounded his horn; a gendarme peered at him, opened the gates.

  Anderson reached the village in three minutes, knowing it was too late. He parked the car in the street outside the church. A small crowd had gathered in the graveyard. The doors of the church were open, the recorded bells were still chiming.

  He ran up the steps leading to the belfry. The uniformed gendarme who had been guarding the church was kneeling beside the priest. The priest was unconscious. His bleak face was ashen and there was an ugly purple swelling on the side of his head; a little blood seeped from it.

  The gendarme said: ‘I’ve sent for an ambulance.’

  Anderson knelt beside the priest and felt his pulse. It was beating faintly and irregularly.

  ‘What happened for Christ’s sake?’ he asked the gendarme.

  ‘I don’t know. There were two explosions in the graveyard. And in between them the sound of a rifle shot. I didn’t know what was happening. I realised too late that the explosions were diversions. Whoever it was got in by the back door. And left the same way ….’ His voice tailed away.

  Anderson stood up, noticed an object gleaming in the dust below the small window that he and the priest had discussed. A cartridge case. He examined it and said: ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ It had contained a standard 7.92 German rifle bullet. Standard, that was, in World War II.

  On the ledge of the window he found a handful of photostats. Copies of the Bilderberg guest list with crosses marked against certain names.

  Through the window Anderson saw the ambulance arrive. Before running down to direct the stretcher-bearers, he switched off the record-player: the peeling of the bells was a joyous sound but there wasn’t a lot to celebrate.

  * * *

  When he had heard the footsteps on the stairs, Jacques Bertier had flattened himself against the wall. As the priest entered the belfry, and stood hesitating between the door and the railing encircling the great bells hanging from the domed ceiling,’ he hit him from behind with the butt of the rifle.

  Then he crossed to the window, opened it and gazed down the barrel of the rifle. His hands were shaking; he had to control them; he only had two minutes before the second charge exploded in the graveyard.

  The trembling subsided as he fought it.

  Peering through the gunsight he traversed the château. There were plenty of targets in the grounds and in some of the rooms. It didn’t really matter who he shot but he was interested in one particular room occupied, according to his information, by the French millionaire Pierre Brossard.

  Brossard had been at the conference at Mégève when Georges had been dispatched to a lingering death. What sweet, beautiful justice if Brossard materialised in the sights.

  One minute had passed.

  He thought he detected a movement in the room. Come on, you bastard. You filth. Another bout of trembling. In a few seconds he would have to line up the sights on another target.

  Then Brossard walked into the sights, stood there yawning, and Jacques Bertier shot him.

  He was exultant but calm as he stowed the rifle away in the canvas container. As he left the belfry, he stumbled over the body of the priest and fell against the record-player.

  The bells began to chime.

  Then the crack of the second explosion in the graveyard.

  Bertier was out of the rear entrance, across the graveyard and through the hedge while the gendarme, and anyone else at
tracted by the first explosion, raced to the second detonation.

  He rounded the church and walked down the main street in the direction of the tabac. He looked as theatrically nonchalant as any fisherman who has caught nothing.

  When the inn-keeper’s wife arrived at the apartment he thrust her into the bedroom and made love with savage abandon.

  Just like rape, she thought in astonishment. But her only real complaint was that it was over too quickly.

  * * *

  Before the shooting Nicholas Foster had put on sports coat and blazer and headed into the village to keep his appointment with Suzy Okana.

  His hopes were not centred on Suzy. He hadn’t so far learned anything that would stop the presses, and the bug he had planted in the conference room had been tossed out by Anderson.

  As he limped along the lane he admitted to himself that he would see Suzy irrespective of whether or not she had any information for him. It seemed to him that they had released in each other forces of which neither had been aware. Or perhaps that was how it seemed to every man she met. Suzy Okana had been around.

  She was standing outside the inn smiling at him. She was wearing a dark green skirt – no slits today – and a pale green sweater and carrying a jacket over her arm.

  At the Post Office he posted his notes. Then holding hands, they walked past the inn in the opposite direction to the château.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘There,’ pointing at a gap in the hedgerow.

  On the other side of the hedge was an orchard. They sat down in the long grass and watched petals of apple-blossom falling in the breeze.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘how’s it going?’

  ‘Bloody awful. Did you find out anything?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and no.’

  ‘Let’s have the “yes” bit first.’

  ‘I spoke to Kingdon.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s going to live in Switzerland.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s found a corner in cuckoo clocks.’

  ‘And he said something about the financial structure of the world changing.’

  Foster frowned. ‘Was this connected with Bilderberg?’

  ‘I think so. He was speaking as if everything was going to happen right now.’

  Foster whistled. ‘I wonder what the hell he was getting at. The dollar’s pretty shaky at the moment. I wonder if he knows about some decision in Washington.’ He sat back, hands around his knees. ‘Did he say anything else? I mean did he mention dollars or marks? Or gold?’

  ‘He said he was going to make a fortune,’ Suzy said, plucking a blade of grass and nibbling it. ‘And he said that the only other place he could go apart from Switzerland would be behind the Iron Curtain. But, of course, that wouldn’t be for him, would it?’

  ‘Then someone’s plotting a run on currency,’ Foster said thoughtfully. ‘Kingdon makes a killing and quits. And why?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Because he’s got diamonds, the only stable currency if the financial structure of the world, as he puts it, changes. So it must be some sort of bear raid on a vast scale. Culminating at Bilderberg,’ Nicholas said excitedly. ‘Who has he been mixing with?’

  ‘No-one in particular. But he did meet Pierre Brossard before the conference. I got the impression that they were plotting something. I had to leave the house.’

  ‘Pierre Brossard … Midas. Brossard writes a financial column under the name Midas,’ Foster explained. ‘He’s the most influential financial journalist in Europe. Anyone else?’

  ‘He met a man named Gerard. He called him a pig.’

  ‘The London end of the banking family,’ Nicholas told her.

  ‘He said it – whatever it is – would ruin Gerard.’

  Foster was silent.

  ‘And there was something else,’ Suzy said, ‘and this is why you’re going to hate me and I’m sorry but,’ with a shrug, ‘there it is.’ She plucked a fresh blade of grass. ‘I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even you I’m afraid,’ looking away from Foster.

  Somewhere in the orchard a thrush began to sing.

  Suzy said: ‘You see, whatever you may think, I do have my own rules ….’

  Nicholas tilted her chin and kissed her.

  Then he lay back in the grass and pulled her close to him and, leaning on one elbow, looked down at her face as the breeze moved her black hair and the sun reached into the depths of her eyes.

  ‘I want to tell you about why I am what I am,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to … I want you to know everything now. You know, so it doesn’t all come out one day when we have a row. Not that there’s anything dramatic about it. No mitigating circumstances. In fact,’ said Suzy, looking at him and searching his face, ‘it’s all pretty squalid.’

  ‘I said you didn’t have to tell me.’

  ‘There was a man once. There always is, isn’t there? He had an MG and he used to take me around in it. I thought he was the greatest thing since Roger Moore, but when he dropped me outside the house in Cardiff he used to roar off like a bat out of hell. He used to like slumming, you see, but he didn’t fancy one of the neighbours putting his boot through one of the headlights. What I didn’t realise was he was going back to his mates and telling them about the slant-eyed little bitch he’d picked up in the gutter. Anyway the usual happened, you know—’

  ‘I can guess.’ Foster was vaguely aware of bells chiming.

  ‘I told you it was pretty squalid. But let’s get it over with.’ She hurried on. ‘I came up to London to get the usual job done. He paid for it to give him credit but after that there was no sign of the MG.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Foster asked.

  ‘Eighteen. I had a few lousy jobs in London, then I answered an ad for this escort agency. Real money at last! You see the clients seemed to get a kick out of being seen with your actual Oriental. Trouble was,’ smiling hesitantly at Nicholas, ‘they always took me to Chinese restaurants. You know something? I never want to see a bowl of chop suey again for the rest of my life.’

  Foster tried not to think about what her duties had entailed. Sanctimonious bastard, he thought; this is the age of liberation.

  And because his thoughts were reflected in his face, she said: ‘I warned you. But there isn’t much more to tell. Anway you probably know most of it.’

  ‘I read the papers,’ Foster agreed.

  ‘I left the agency because I didn’t need them any more. I moved into High Society. Occasionally Royalty, would you believe. Some of the men I met were all right, some of them were sods. But none of them were very demanding; they were more interested in power and money and being seen in the right places with the right girl. A few even wanted to marry me. But somehow none of it meant anything to me. I remember thinking, when a photographer was taking a picture of my hat at Ascot, that I’d rather have been eating winkles at Southend.’

  ‘Then why the hell didn’t you get out?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said flatly. ‘No bloody reason at all. I was sort of dead. Just waiting for something to happen ….’ She turned her head away from him. ‘It matters, doesn’t it? It matters to you.’

  ‘Of course it matters,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’ He turned her face towards him and saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Does it matter … a lot?’

  He was silent for a moment. Something was different. The bells had stopped ringing.

  ‘You know I don’t give a damn really,’ she said. ‘I can always go back to Paul. He’s not so bad really. He’s always been straight with me.’ And then: ‘For Christ’s sake, say something!’

  ‘You gave him your word that you wouldn’t repeat what he told you, didn’t you.’

  She closed her eyes, nodded.

  ‘That’s what matters. You kept your word,’ as he drew her to him again and held her close as the pink and white petals fell around them.

  Five minutes later he
glanced at his watch and said: ‘And if I’m going to get this bloody great exclusive story I’d better get back.’

  ‘In a way I hope you don’t,’ she said as she stood up beside him. ‘But for your sake I hope you do.’

  He kissed her. ‘You stay here for a few minutes. We’d better not be seen together too much.’

  As he walked back through the village he saw an ambulance pull away from outside the church. Then a black American limousine with Anderson at the wheel.

  Journalistic instincts aroused, he walked swiftly – almost ran – back to the château.

  * * *

  Anderson went first to Gaudin’s office. Gaudin was speaking on the house telephone. ‘I’m very relieved to hear it,’ he said, and to Anderson as he put the receiver down: ‘That was the doctor. Brossard’s all right. A small flesh wound. Apparently he’s worried about the possibility of publicity.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is, Anderson thought. ‘How many people know about it?’

  ‘Myself, you, the doctor, about four guards …. That’s all I know of. But I shall, of course, have to tell the President and the other delegates. I can’t suppress the fact that there’s a gunman on the loose from guests.’

  ‘I guess not. But tell them to keep quiet about it. That shouldn’t be any sweat – they’ve kept their mouths shut for twenty-five years.’

  ‘Have you an idea?’ Gaudin asked. He discussed the attempted murder as though he were discussing a fault in the plumbing. And they talked about the Gallic temperament!

  ‘Nothing much. The shot was fired from the church belfry.’

  ‘Didn’t you check that out?’

  ‘Of course. I posted a gendarme outside. But the gunman was too clever for him. Clever and yet not clever. I don’t think he gave a damn who he shot …. The situation I’ve always feared. Monsieur Gaudin, I think we’ve got a homicidal nut on our hands.’

  ‘The irony,’ Gaudin said, pressing the tips of his fingers together, ‘is that if Brossard hadn’t objected to the price of the room on the west wing he wouldn’t have been shot.’