The tubby American statesman ate frugally, the slender French President tucked in with enthusiasm.
Observing the Frenchman demolish his iced bombe, the American said: ‘Mr President, you must let me into your secret. How do you contrive to eat with such obvious relish and at the same time retain your figure?’
The President considered the question. He was due to leave the château after the cocktail party the following evening. After the shooting he had been urged to leave earlier. He had refused because it was undignified to run away and, if he took notice of every threat on his life, he would spend the rest of his term of office taking evasive action. The shooting, however, had affected him more than he cared to admit. No-one seemed to have noticed it, but he and Pierre Brossard did look uncommonly alike.
He sipped his wine and took his time about answering the American. Then he smiled and said: ‘As a matter of fact I normally eat very little. But I am a Frenchman and I do enjoy my food. And, you see, there is a possibility that this could be our last dinner. Bon appetit, my friend.’ He finished his glass of wine and turned his attention to the fruit.
XXXI
April 23rd. The last full day of the conference.
Helga Keller’s travelling alarm clock awoke her at 4.30 am. Thirty-six hours before they would know if they had pulled the coup off.
But a more immediate deadline was 7 am. That was the time she had to be in Paris.
She showered and examined her body in the mirror. She was slimmer, no doubt about it. She thought about Prentice and smiled; it was extraordinary how sensual their love-making had become. Her only criticism was its infrequency. But that would soon be remedied; they had a lot of catching-up to do.
She dressed quickly. Then checked in her handbag to make sure that the message she had dispatched to Mayard on the Telex the previous evening was there. The message would be on the machine in the newspaper office now waiting for him when he got to work.
She went downstairs, crossed the darkened gardens and climbed into her grey Renault 18.
Ten minutes later she was on the auto-route to Paris. Traffic was light and she drove at a steady 60 mph.
Thirty-six hours … but hazards were materialising. First the shooting which raised the possibility that the gunman was contemplating a mass killing.
Now the discovery that Nicholas Foster knew the number of the account in Zurich and suspected a conspiracy.
Anderson had acted with his usual authority. When he was checking out the village, he had come across the derelict building in the main street; in the rear was an outhouse that had been used to store vegetables; the owner was in the south of France.
Anticipation, Helga thought, was the key to success in such operations. The hallmark of the professional.
Anderson, who knew all the tricks, had also taken the precaution of driving around the countryside for fifteen minutes to give Foster the impression that he was several miles away.
But Anderson didn’t think Foster was the gunman. He was patently what he claimed to be, a journalist and a remarkably enterprising one.
Helga Keller had reached the outskirts of Paris. It was still dark but the city was waking. She imagined she could smell baking bread and coffee. She had enjoyed Paris in an introspective sort of way; but for her it had been a retreat. Difficult to believe now that she had dismissed the stories of tyrannical abuse of power in Communist countries as Western propaganda. Would she have treated the banishment of Andrei Sakharov to Gorky, the invasion of Afghanistan, similarly?
Not that she now believed totally in the political structures of the West. How could anyone accept a system that allowed such men as Pierre Brossard and Paul Kingdon to prosper? The point was that you had to equate one system against the other.
One day, perhaps, the equation would be solved. She had made her contribution towards its eventual solution; the time had come to take her just rewards and start being a woman.
She looked back at her ideals with affection but without sentiment.
She took the east fork of the Autoroute de Sud and drove onto the periphique, the great roaring highway that encircles Paris. Already, as the first greenish light of dawn began to glow on the skyline, the traffic was building up. She left the highway at the Porte de Vincennes and five minutes later pulled up outside a café optimistically called Le Gourmet.
A tattered awning hung outside and the grimy windows were covered with steam. Most of the customers sitting at the plastic-topped tables looked as though they had been there all night. One or two were asleep, heads resting on their folded arms.
The bearded shop assistant was sitting in one corner eating a croissant and drinking coffee. When she sat down opposite him it was exactly 7 am.
She ordered a black coffee from the unshaven proprietor. When he had placed it in front of her, coffee spilling into the saucer, she spoke quietly and urgently to the bearded man for several minutes.
Then she passed him a top copy and carbon of the Telex message she had sent to Mayard, concealed inside the pages of the previous day’s Le Monde.
Less than two hours later she was back at the Château Saint-Pierre.
* * *
At eight o’clock that morning, while Helga Keller was on her way back from Paris, a telephonist at the château dealt with an incoming call that destroyed the illusions of any Bilderbergers who thought the shooting might have been an isolated incident.
She plugged into the call and said, ‘Good morning, Château Saint-Pierre. Can I help you?’
A man’s voice said: ‘Do you have a pencil and paper?’
‘Oui, m’sieur. Do you wish me to take a message?’ The girl picked up the stub of a pencil and waited.
‘Take this down.’ The voice was gruff as though, she later realised, he was trying to disguise it. ‘By tonight …. Have you got that?’
‘Oui, m’sieur.’
‘By tonight they will all be dead.’
‘I’m not sure ….’
‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes, but ….’
The line went dead.
The girl stared at what she had written for a moment, then ran to reception. She was ushered into Gaudin’s office.
Gaudin, who was enjoying his first coffee of the morning, stared at the message.
‘When did you receive this?’
‘Just now.’
Gaudin shook his head wearily. To think that he had regarded the decision of the steering committee of Bilderberg to stay at the château as the greatest accolade of his career.
He told the girl to sit down and called Inspector Moitry and Anderson.
Anderson studied the note, then handed it to Moitry who looked at it and said: ‘We have to treat it seriously.’
Anderson said: ‘I agree. But short of evacuating the place, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do. What is this guy going to do? Drop an atom bomb?’
Moitry spoke to the girl.
‘Was it a local call?’
‘I think so but I can’t be sure. It sounded very clear.’
‘Was he a Frenchman?’
‘I don’t know. He said very little and his voice sounded … strange.’
Anderson thanked her. Moitry told her to get back to the switchboard. ‘If you get another call like that try and keep him speaking and call Monsieur Gaudin. Tell the other girls.’
Gaudin said: ‘Forgive me asking, gentlemen, but have you made any progress?’
Moitry said: ‘I think you should address your question to my colleague here.’ Anderson didn’t blame him.
He told Gaudin: ‘We have a few fingerprints on the photostats we found in the church. We checked them out in Paris and came up with something very odd. The prints belonged to a man with a criminal record. He was a political agitator but small-time.’
Gaudin looked at Anderson expectantly. ‘So you think he’s here?’
Anderson shook his head. ‘He died in 1974. His name was Georges Bertier. So our assassin is not only crazy
, he’s a magician … as you probably know, no two people have the same finger-prints. Or so it was always believed.’
Gaudin turned to Moitry. ‘What do you think, Inspector?’
Moitry, who was by now happy to have as little connection with a possible massacre as possible, said: ‘I don’t think anything. Monsieur Anderson is in charge of thinking.’
‘What about this man Anello?’ Gaudin asked. ‘I understand he’s disappeared.’
‘He’s in Paris.’ Anderson lied with conviction. ‘I checked him out there. He and Mrs Jerome quarrelled and he took off.’
‘So what now?’
‘God knows. One faint hope is that the priest may be able to help when he regains consciousness. He may be able to tell us who could have had access to the church. We’re also double-checking on members of your staff who live in the village.’
‘You did that weeks ago,’ Gaudin reminded him.
‘Sure, and they were all clean. But I don’t believe the guy we’re looking for has a criminal record. He’s a freak, a weirdo.’
When they had gone Gaudin sipped the remains of his coffee. It was cold. Grimacing, he picked up the telephone and asked the telephonist to call Room Service and order some more. He also asked the girl to locate Nicholas Foster and send him to the office because he was late reporting for duty.
The girl said: ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Gaudin, we have been trying to locate Monsieur Foster but he is not answering his telephone.’
* * *
The subject scheduled for discussion that morning was the fuel crisis. But, inevitably, the resurgence of the Cold War following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan intruded into the debate. And the American hostages in Iran.
Hawks sharpened their talons and raised contingency plans for military action to safeguard oil supplies in the Middle-East. And the cooing of doves was heard not at all.
Some of the delegates listened to the speeches through headphones supplying instant translation into French and English. Some scarcely listened at all, their minds on the threat hanging over the conference.
One or two founder members considered the possibility, tentatively discussed outside the chamber, that the gunman was a guest – and rejected the possibility as preposterous.
Gaudin had told Roland Decker about the telephone call that morning. But Decker had decided not to make an announcement. Members knew that a threat existed. They had all agreed to stay and there was no point in dramatising the situation. In their time most Bilderbergers had received threatening calls.
Brossard did not make an appearance. The conference was told that he was ‘still shaky’. Helga Keller told the switchboard not to put any calls through to his room; any urgent messages were to be diverted to Hildegard Metz.
In the kitchens, preparations for the dinner that night after the cocktail party got under way. This time it was to be a Burgundy-style feast. Rich and spicy. Escargots, veal braised in varieties of Dijon mustard, wine from the Romanée-Conti vineyard. For those who would find such a menu unacceptable the head chef, who presided over twenty-five cooks, had on the advice of the Secretariat devised other meals, volubly expressing his disgust.
Lunch would again be a buffet, accompanied by a choice of wines from twenty-five vineyards.
As the day got underway, the switchboard dealt with an increasingly heavy load of international calls. The three Telex machines chattered unceasingly. Security officers again swept the hotel from cellar to attic.
During the morning the weather changed. Bruised clouds hung heavily from the sky. And, as the conference broke up for the mid-morning break, the first heavy spots of rain fell. Then the deluge.
The rain spattered mud as high as the ground-floor windows; it filled the gutters and devastated the clumps of daffodils; it drowned the splashing of the fountains and in the water-gardens the carp rose to the surface.
Claire Jerome attended the opening session of the conference. Members agreed that she looked exceptionally attractive – dressed in lime-green with gold hooped earrings — but a little drawn. Which was understandable: the announcement of her resignation from the board of Marks International had been in most of the European newspapers that morning.
There was considerable speculation about the reasons for her resignation among the guests – as there was in the Press. Why had she chosen to synchronise the announcement with the convention? It only served to strengthen the hand of those who accused Bilderberg of intrigue and manipulation.
Perhaps it was connected with the disappearance of her bodyguard. A lovers’ tiff …. How old was Claire Jerome anyway? ‘God knows,’ murmured one delegate to another. ‘But if my wife looked like that at her age I wouldn’t be spending tomorrow night in Paris.’
When they adjourned for coffee, Claire went to the porter’s desk to pick up her key. In her pigeon hole was a bunch of messages, all requests for her to contact the media – the New York Times, NBC, CBS and ABC television networks, Time and Newsweek magazines ….. She tore up all of them except one: A Mr Tilmissan called. Please telephone him immediately in Beirut
She went up to her room and placed the call to the number he had given her at their last meeting.
While she waited for the call, she lay on the bed and watched the rain streaming down the window. It was typical of the middleman that he had reacted so swiftly to the announcement.
Before the men holding Pete Anello!
She closed her eyes. In the announcement she had fulfilled all their demands. Surely they should have released him by now? Unless he was one of the conspirators ….
In which case everything had been taken from her. The man she loved and the purpose in life which had sustained her before she met him.
The phone rang; she picked up the receiver attached to the control system.
Tilmissan said: ‘Is it true?’
‘It’s true.’
‘What about our deal?’
‘Marks International doesn’t renege on contracts. Your merchandise is on its way.’
‘And future deals?’
‘You’ll have to consult Mr Stephen Harsch.’
‘What surprises me,’ Tilmissan said, ‘is the abruptness of your decision. The timing. It’s almost as if someone was standing behind you holding a gun.’
‘One of mine, I hope.’
‘Why, Mrs Jerome? Why?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.’
‘You weren’t thinking about it the last time we met.’
‘As I recall it, we didn’t discuss my personal life. You were dealing with Marks International then and you can continue to do so. You’ve got your million bucks, Mr Tilmissan. Just leave it at that.’
A million dollars, she reflected as she hung up the receiver, and an appointment with death in the shape of a ship-load of flawed weaponry.
The phone rang again. The telephonist said: ‘A call for you from Washington, Madame. The gentleman on the other end of the line insists that he’s not from the Press and says it’s very urgent.’
‘Put him on.’
In Washington it was barely dawn. Bein or Eyal?
The voice on the phone was flat and disciplined and dangerous. Bein. She imagined him not in Washington but in the desert wearing combat fatigues speaking into a field telephone, which was where he would probably prefer to be.
He said: ‘I heard your announcement on the radio. I just wanted to know if this changes anything.’
‘It changes nothing.’
‘May I ask why, Mrs Jerome?’
‘Personal reasons.’
‘Then I respect them. Thank you for what you have done, Mrs Jerome. On behalf of my country.’
Then she was alone again in her room that was a cell, staring through the raindrops shivering on the window-panes before streaming down the glass.
* * *
There was a bus into Etampes at midday with a connection to Paris. Suzy Okana was packed and ready to leave by 10 am.
Da
wn had been a bleak and hopeless experience. But now her despair was rasped with anger. No-one treated Suzy Okana as though she were dirt, as though she had been paid and dismissed for services rendered.
Watched suspiciously by the wife of the owner who had disturbed her packing, she walked to the public phone booth in the village.
The rain was just starting to fall. She called the château and spoke first to Paul Kingdon.
She said: ‘I’ve been thinking about your proposition.’
‘And?’
‘Why not? I’ve got nothing to lose.’
‘Your enthusiasm overwhelms me.’
‘I haven’t changed. It’s just an extension of our relationship. Right?’
‘I hope our relationship will change when this is all over.’
‘Are they —’
‘Not over the telephone,’ Kingdon interrupted her. ‘But nothing’s changed. I have to pay the … the fee. Then we settle down in Switzerland.’
‘I’m going to London first,’ she said.
‘Why the hell are you doing that?’
She said: ‘It doesn’t matter why.’
‘As you wish. I’m going back tomorrow evening before flying to Geneva. I’ll see you in London, Goodbye, Suzy.’
‘Goodbye, Paul,’ she said.
The anger was still there. She called the Château again and said: ‘Put me on to Mr Nicholas bloody Foster.’
‘Pardon, madame?’
‘Mr Foster. One of your managers.’
‘I’m afraid Mr Foster isn’t available.’
The smug bastard. ‘Make him available. This is his sister. There’s been a death in the family.’
‘You don’t understand. Mr Foster isn’t in the hotel. We’ve been trying to contact him all morning.’
A whisper of apprehension. ‘Have you tried his room?’
‘D’accord. His bed has not been slept in.’
Fear pushed aside her anger.
The telephonist said: ‘I’m putting you through to the manager. He asked —’
Suzy replaced the receiver.
The rain was thickening but Suzy was hardly aware of it. She went back to the inn and ordered a coffee. The woman served her in the bar and stuck out her hand for the money.
I, Said the Spy Page 38
