I, Said the Spy

by Derek Lambert

  Suzy sipped the coffee and relived the terrible moments of the previous evening. ‘Good evening, Suzy … I’m sorry I haven’t got time to talk just now … Some other time, Suzy ….’

  Nicholas would never have talked like that unless …. And she hadn’t even questioned his attitude. Had instantly believed that he had snubbed her. So much for her trust.

  She tried to think methodically. He had been walking purposefully as though …. Two men had been behind him. Anderson, the security guard, and another man.

  She closed her eyes tight and concentrated on their images. The other man was vaguely familiar. Where had she seen him before? At Paul Kingdon’s?

  Anderson’s image was unforgettable. Tall, black, commanding, immaculate …. But one of his hands had been in the pocket of his jacket. Awkward ….

  It was then that Suzy realised that he had been holding a gun.

  Somewhere Nicholas was a captive. If he was still alive. Shock broke up Suzy’s reasoning and it was a few moments before she was able to concentrate once more on the sequence of events the previous evening.

  Nicholas had been walking towards the car park with the two men behind him. She had waited for a few moments, then headed towards the gates.

  Something had occurred on the way to the gates. Something only faintly printed on her consciousness.

  Tyres crunching on gravel. A car. That was it. A car without lights on the drive. She saw its outline mistily. A big car, an American car. And it must have left the car park at roughly the same time that Nicholas reached it.

  After it had passed through the gates, its headlights had been switched on. And then from the window of her room she had seen the same car ….

  Suzy put down her coffee cup. The rain was sluicing down outside. She went upstairs and fetched her raincoat and tied a scarf over her hair.

  The car had been six doors away. Which didn’t necessarily mean Nicholas was behind that particular door. It was, in fact, the door to the bakehouse; a man with flour on his hands was standing in the doorway as she walked past.

  He smiled at her and asked if she wanted to take shelter. She shook her head, crossed the street and surveyed the buildings. The rain was bouncing on the cobblestones; her scarf was saturated and water ran down her back.

  Bakehouse, greengrocers, inn, tabac …. In the terrace, between bakehouse and greengrocers, stood a derelict house, its windows boarded, a wooden plank nailed across the door. Beside the house was a passage like a narrow tunnel.

  Suzy recrossed the street and entered the passage. It was dry to start with, beneath the roofs of the adjoining houses, and Suzy paused. Should she inform the police? Then she thought: ‘Anderson is police’ and walked on into an overgrown garden. On one side was a dripping stone wall.

  At the end of the garden, in which fresh green weeds were pushing through the dead tangle of winter, she saw an outhouse. She walked cautiously forward.

  There was a padlock on the door. It was undone and hung loosely. She opened the door. The light inside was poor and on the floor were a few rotting vegetables.

  She stepped inside. Nicholas was sitting to her left, his hands and feet bound by rope. His eyes seemed to be trying to warn her ….

  Simultaneously she felt a gun barrel in her back and a very English voice saying: ‘Please don’t shout or move, Miss Okana.’

  * * *

  Paul Kingdon was puzzled by Suzy Okana’s decision to return to London but not perturbed. She had served her purpose, helping him to retain his image by bringing a girl ‘of dubious reputation’ into the château. The Establishment had trembled. (Nothing compared with the bloody great shudders when they read Brossard’s column and realised the extent to which he had got out of dollars before them!)

  So there was no further point in her staying in France. He would meet her in London and they would fly together to Switzerland, where he was already negotiating the purchase of gold from the traders on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse and Paradeplatz. A compact, private fortune with a glittering core of diamonds.

  The price: $5 million. Blackmail, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had clinched deals through methods which weren’t far removed from extortion. Five million worthless dollars, he reminded himself.

  And if anything went wrong with Brossard’s grandiose scheme, then he would go public and fight as he had fought before, because Paul Kingdon always hedged his bets, and when he’d won the fight he would get Prentice to recommence his investigations into the London branch of the Gerard banking family and uncover some deal that would put the flabby shit in the dock at the Old Bailey.

  He invited Brossard to his room for lunch. They ate lobster and drank a bottle of fine dry Sancerre. Kingdon had considered checking the room for bugs but remembered that Anderson had swept all the rooms that morning; a thorough man Anderson.

  Brossard picked at his lobster, took sparrow sips of white wine.

  Kingdon said: ‘All set, Pierre?’

  Brossard nodded. His wounded arm lay on the table beside him. Like a cumbersome piece of cutlery, Kingdon thought. ‘The column appears tomorrow. But some of it will be leaked tonight to catch the markets in different time zones.’

  ‘And the Russians?’

  ‘As I told you, they are poised to sell on a massive scale.’

  ‘And the speculators?’

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ Brossard said.

  ‘What if the OPEC countries renege on their decision to cut off oil supplies to America? If that part of your story’s true ….’

  ‘It will be too late to save the dollar.’

  Kingdon cracked a lobster claw and said: ‘How did you get all this information about the Russians’ intentions, Pierre?’

  ‘You don’t imagine I’ll tell you?’

  ‘Do a bit of work for the Russians on the side, do you?’ ‘I didn’t accept your invitation to lunch to be interrogated.’

  ‘Never answer a question, do you, Pierre?’ Kingdon poured himself more wine.

  ‘Not stupid ones.’

  ‘Funny thing is, back in England you had me by the short and curlies. Now it’s the other way round. You can’t back out of a bleeding thing.’ Kingdon drank some wine. ‘You know what I think, Pierre?’

  ‘I don’t really care what you think.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone was trying to kill you yesterday. I think you work for the Kremlin. I think they were just giving you a little warning. Balls this one up, Comrade Brossard, and we won’t miss next time.’

  Brossard pushed his plate away as though he had lost what little appetite he had possessed.

  * * *

  Anderson pushed open the door of the outhouse, stared at Suzy Okana and said: ‘How the hell did she get here?’

  Suzy was sitting next to Foster; they were both bound hand and foot.

  Prentice said: ‘I left the door open because I didn’t want anyone hammering on it and raising the whole village. And look what walked in,’ he added smiling at Suzy.

  ‘Double trouble,’ Anderson said. ‘What shall we do with you?’ he asked Suzy.

  ‘Let us both go,’ Suzy said. The fear had left her now that she was with Nicholas. ‘We can’t do you any harm. I don’t even know why you’re keeping us prisoners.’

  ‘Unfortunately Mr Foster here does.’

  ‘The bank account number I presume,’ Foster said.

  ‘What bank account number?’ Suzy asked.

  ‘Just a number,’ he told her. ‘It seems to mean a lot to these two gentlemen. And maybe to Hildegard Metz.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Anderson exclaimed.

  ‘Well I’ve been thinking,’ Foster said. ‘Maybe Anello isn’t involved.’

  ‘And what brings you to that conclusion?’

  ‘Just a little theorising. You see, I remember you making damn sure that Mrs Jerome was given a room up at that end of the corridor. So let’s assume that there’s a connection between you and Mrs Jerome.’

  ‘Go on,’ Anderson said.


  ‘I know that there’s a connection between Kingdon and Prentice.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s only a hunch but to complete the pattern there should be a third connection. And the person most closely connected with Brossard is Fraulein Metz.’

  ‘Bright as a button,’ Prentice said.

  Anderson knelt beside Prentice who was sitting on a pile of sacking. He carried a Pan-Am flight bag with him. He wore a dark blue raincoat and water dripped from it onto the floor.

  He said: ‘Really, I’m not kidding, you two could wreck everything.’

  ‘What? Blackmail?’

  ‘Do you have strong suicidal tendencies, Mr Foster?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’

  Suzy said: ‘I don’t understand, Nicholas ….’

  Anderson said to Prentice: ‘Just in case there was any doubt, I compared the prints on the photostats with the prints on a drinking glass in Foster’s room. They don’t match up.’

  ‘So we haven’t got the gunman.’

  ‘I never thought we had. But now Foster’s been reported missing, Moitry and company reckon Foster’s the guy they’re looking for. A weird situation – I want the guy with the gun found so that he doesn’t louse things up for us but I don’t want Foster found because he’ll do likewise.’

  ‘One thing’s certain,’ Prentice said, moving the submachine-gun as water began to drip through the roof, ‘we’ll have to shift both of them out of here because it’s only a matter of time before someone else comes through that door. One of Moitry’s men, for instance.’

  ‘There’s only one place we can logically shift them to,’ Anderson said, ‘because we don’t have time to take them some place else. But this time it’s completely sealed off and I have the keys.’

  ‘The church?’

  ‘The bell tower.’

  Foster noted that the bantering note had disappeared from both their voices. They spoke briskly and coldly as though each had cast off a disguise. Suzy shivered and Foster pressed his body close to hers.

  There would be no difficulty, Anderson explained, in spiriting them inside the church: he was in charge of security and the armed guards at either end of the church would carry out his orders. All he had to do was to instruct the guard on the far side to take a break while he took over for half an hour.

  Anderson left first.

  Prentice gave it five minutes before cutting the rope binding their ankles with a pocket-knife. He waved the muzzle of the machine-gun at them. ‘Carry on down to the end of the lane where Anderson parked the Chev. Move!’

  They walked swiftly through the wasteland on the other side of the outhouse. Prentice told Suzy to get in the back of the Chev. With the knife he slashed the rope round Foster’s wrists and said: ‘Get in, you’re driving.’ When Foster was behind the steering wheel, he climbed in the back aiming the gun at Suzy.

  He said to Foster: ‘Drive round to the back of the church and don’t try and be clever because if you do Suzy will suffer.’

  Raindrops spattered on the bonnet. Foster switched on the ignition and the wipers began to switch across the windscreen.

  He drove along the muddy lane, emerging at the end of the main street.

  ‘Now turn right,’ Prentice told him.

  ‘Stop here,’ Prentice said. They were behind the Church beside a gap in the hedge. ‘Through there,’ Prentice said.

  As they went through the hedge ahead of him, Prentice heard them whispering. He was crouching, pushing his way through the gap, when they made their move.

  Suzy ran to the right, Foster to the left.

  Prentice swore. They could only be a few yards away from him but they were hidden by gravestones.

  He shouted: ‘I know you can hear me. You can’t both make it. If one makes a break then the other gets it. Got that?’

  No reply.

  Lightning barbed the sky to his left. A second later a crack of thunder. Rain streamed down the mossy gravestones and collected in puddles.

  A movement to his left. He caught sight of Foster’s sodden black jacket and squeezed the trigger of the sub-machine-gun, aiming wide, at the same time moving towards the gravestones hiding Suzy Okana.

  The bullets thudded into a leaning gravestone, chipping away an already-eroded date so that only the deceased’s birth-date remained.

  Another flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous crack of thunder.

  Prentice spotted a patch of blue in the dank grass at the foot of a gravestone. The dress Suzy Okana was wearing under her raincoat was blue. He made a crouching run for the gravestone – and picked up the blue wrapping from an ice-cream.

  Another blurred movement to his left. Shit, he thought, they’re getting away with it.

  He straightened up and looked round as Foster reached an elaborate marble tomb where three generations of one family had been interred.

  Foster wormed his way round the tomb and rested beside a sad little inscription recording the death of Albert Jadot at the age of eight months. What about Suzy? The thing to do was to run towards the road, visible and therefore drawing Prentice’s fire, but shielded by the tomb with its towering, black-marble cross.

  He rounded a corner of the tomb and stared into the barrel of Anderson’s .32 Cobra. ‘Man, I really underestimated you,’ Anderson said. ‘Now stand up.’

  Prentice saw them standing beside the marble tomb and shouted to Suzy: ‘You can come out now, We’ve got Foster.’

  She stood up, three gravestones away.

  They continued on their way to the church, entering it through the rear entrance.

  ‘You really are a couple of smart-asses, aren’t you?’ Anderson said, closing the door.

  Foster shrugged and put his arm round Suzy who had begun to shiver again.

  Anderson led the way down the aisle, past the empty pews, with Prentice bringing up the rear. They went up the staircase leading to the belfry.

  It was dry and dusty up there, and there was a chalk mark on the floor where the spent cartridge had been. The great bells hung motionless on the other side of the railing.

  Anderson unzipped the flight bag and took out six sets of handcuffs. ‘Courtesy of the FBI,’ he said.

  ‘They’re going to die of pneumonia,’ Prentice said.

  ‘Go and see if you can find anything, George.’ Anderson waved the Cobra at Foster and Suzy.

  Prentice returned with a couple of black robes and some thick old curtains that puffed dust when he threw them on the floor.

  ‘Okay,’ Anderson said to Foster and Suzy, ‘strip off those wet clothes.’

  Foster and Suzy stared at each other. Foster shrugged. They stripped to their underclothes. Anderson and Prenticelooked appreciatively at Suzy but said nothing. She wrapped one of the robes around herself.

  From the flight bag Anderson took a red Thermos flask and some white plastic containers. He poured coffee into the screw cup from the Thermos and handed it to Suzy. He opened the containers in which he had stuffed remnants of the cold lunch buffet.

  Foster ate hungrily, washing down the food with hot coffee. Suzy said she wasn’t hungry. When Foster had finished, Anderson locked the cuffs round their wrists and ankles.

  Prentice spread one of the curtains on the floor. He went downstairs and returned with two worn hassocks. He placed them on the curtain as pillows and said: ‘Now lie down.’ He placed two more thick curtains over them. With the remaining two pairs of cuffs, Anderson locked their feet to the railings.

  Anderson said: ‘You can make as much noise as you like, no-one will hear you. And as for that scene when, back to back, one undoes the other’s cuffs, forget it. I’ve got the keys,’ as he dropped them into the pocket of his raincoat.

  Prentice said to Anderson: ‘Did you bring the other gear?’

  Anderson nodded. From the flight bag he took a portable radio and a tape recorder.

  He said to Foster: ‘I presume it was you that put the bug in the mike in the conference
room?’

  Foster nodded.

  ‘Not exactly a pro job. But full marks for initiative. And guts,’ he added thinking about the graveyard. ‘Do you want to take over, George?’

  Prentice said: ‘I gather you’re a journalist and you’ve been preparing for this for a long time.’

  ‘And, by Christ, I’ve got a story,’ Foster said.

  ‘If anyone will publish it. If anyone believes it.’ Prentice switched on the radio to see if it was working, switched it off again. ‘Well, we have decided that you deserve a story. You see at Torquay I discovered a way by which Bilderberg can be penetrated. It’s ridiculously easy and anyone can do it. All you need is a small radio with a VHF wave band.’

  Foster watched him intently.

  ‘You know, of course,’ Prentice went on, ‘that with VHF you can pick up all sorts of radio messages. In particular police messages.’

  ‘But if you act on them you can be prosecuted,’ Foster said. ‘They sometimes broadcast phoney messages and when a reporter turns up to cover a fictitious robbery or something, they nick him. But I can’t see how any of this applies to Bilderberg.’

  ‘Think about it,’ Prentice urged Foster.

  ‘The interpreting apparatus!’

  ‘Got it in one. You see ever since Bilderberg first employed the instantaneous translation system, any journalist could have picked up all the debates. You just fiddle with the tuner on the VHF waveband and, Voila!’

  An English male voice issued from the portable radio. Precise and unemotional.

  ‘A translation of the Swedish Prime Minister if I’m not mistaken,’ Prentice said. ‘Later on you’ll hear me. “I rise in our defence” – that’s my opening line.’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Foster said. ‘All that secrecy all those years ….’

  Anderson said: ‘Think what a spy could have found out.’

  ‘And there’s a lot of those around,’ Prentice said.

  ‘So what we do,’ Prentice said, ‘is switch it up nice and loud, and at the same time switch on the tape-recorder. And there, you have a complete transcript of what’s left of the Bilderberg conference.’