‘I’m sure you have some ideas,’ Gaudin remarked. ‘Only from experience.’ Anderson consulted a notebook. ‘I assume there will be no other guests?’
‘Correct. We had sufficient warning to refuse all bookings for this period.’
‘Okay, heads of state in the best suites. Adjoining spare room for those who bring their own security guards. At Torquay, Helmut Schmidt brought his own German shepherd guard dogs. Do you have kennels, Monsieur Gaudin?’
Gaudin nodded. ‘And stables if anyone brings their own horses.’
Anderson grinned: he and Gaudin understood each other; one of the main hurdles already vaulted.
‘And the former United States Secretary of State travels with his own security. At least he did in Torquay. They fitted the locks with gadgets to stop the hotel keys working and blocked the fire exit. The guards were hopping mad because the British police wouldn’t let them tout their guns around the town.’ Anderson drank some beer. ‘What’s your total staff?’
‘At the moment a hundred-and-twenty-three.’
‘Do you expect it to change?’
‘The figure? No. But hotel employees change all the time.’
‘We can cope with that,’ Anderson said. ‘How many live out?’
‘About fifty.’
‘They live in the village?’
‘About forty of them I should say. The rest in Etampes.’
‘I’d like to know who lives where.’
Gaudin nodded. ‘Very well, it shall be done.’
Anderson made some notes. ‘Now what about entertainment? Anything special laid on for the Bilderbergers?’
‘Nothing much,’ Gaudin told him. ‘They like to keep themselves to themselves. But we do throw a cocktail party. Whenever we have a conference, Jules the barman comes up with a special cocktail. This time it will be the Bilderberg Special. Frankly,’ Gaudin said, ‘I think it’s the same mixture every time.’
‘Like Bilderberg,’ Anderson remarked. He prodded the plan with one finger. ‘Another thing – we’ve got to be diplomatic. Representatives of various countries in blocks if possible. Friends close by and enemies apart. I happen to know some of their likes and dislikes. In a few cases it might be tactful to make their rooms … accessible.’
‘I understand,’ Gaudin said. ‘We French have an advantage in these matters. Or so the world believes. They also believe we are a nation of thinkers. How does that explain some of the drivel that our politicians talk?’ He reached across the desk and poured the rest of Anderson’s beer for him. ‘You seem to have an extraordinary knowledge of our guests’ habits, Monsieur Anderson.’
‘My job.’ Anderson consulted the plan again. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘The most important guests on the west side.’
‘The most expensive side,’ Gaudin commented.
‘Sure – and the safest. Open fields in front of them. Any vantage points for a sniper lie to the east.’
‘Do you think it’s possible that anyone might try?’
‘What amazes me is that no-one’s tried before.’
‘We share the same nightmare.’
‘As for a certain Mr George Prentice,’ Anderson said, ‘you can house him in the east wing. In the most vulnerable position.’
Gaudin looked surprised. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘A private one,’ Anderson said. ‘I just don’t happen to like the guy.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought you were the sort of person to allow personal feelings to interfere with your job.’
‘They don’t. It’s just that if someone’s got to get shot it might as well be Prentice.’
* * *
That afternoon, the man who had once been known as Jacques Bertier, gazed across the meadows from his cosy bachelor apartment above the tabac in the village in the direction of the château and thought: ‘Only six more weeks.’
He could scarcely believe that the time had almost come. For revenge. For the chance to rid the world of the elite of Capitalism. Heads of State, bankers, financiers, heads of family dynasties.
Filth!
Excitement and hatred expanded inside him. He began to shiver and went to the sideboard where there was an array of bottles. He poured himself a rum and tossed it down his throat. Then another; the shivering subsided.
He lit a cigarette and returned to the window. In the sunlight he could just see a corner of the château. A haven for the rich and the privileged. But never again, not after the conference. No-one would ever stay at a hotel where a hundred guests had been killed. And there was no way those guests could escape. No way at all: he had planned their destruction for too long.
From the other window of the apartment he had observed the black American security officer inspecting the village, wandering through the gravestones to the church. He looked dangerous, but there was nothing he could do. No way he could combat the unknown.
Jacques Bertier, snugly established in his new identity, accepted now that his twin brother, Georges, would not have implemented the plan. Poor Georges had been limited to words and violent tantrums. That scene on the road near the hotel in Mégève … Georges and his little band had never stood a chance of reaching the hotel and Georges had known it all along.
Not that Jacques’ new awareness diminished his feeling for his lost twin. Georges had meant well; but he had only possessed one side of their character. His death had been preordained – to rectify the accident of conception that had led to twin births. Now they were one, calculating and controlled.
He crossed the room, furnished with shabby but homely furniture, and went into the bedroom. From beneath the brass-bedstead he pulled the tin trunk. He unlocked the padlock, lifted the heavy lid and surveyed the contents that his brother had looted from the battlefields of World War II.
A German helmet. Luger pistol. Swastika armband. Ammunition belt from an MG 34 light machine-gun. A German flag. The field-grey arm of a jacket perforated by a hole, rimmed with a brown stain.
And the rifle – a Karabiner 98K rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. He stroked the long barrel of the rifle lovingly, thrust the butt into his shoulder and, standing well back from the window, peered through the sight.
In a bedroom in the visible corner of the Château Saint-Pierre, a middle-aged man in a blue dressing-gown opened a window and began to breath deeply.
He pulled the trigger of an unloaded gun. Click! The man in the dressing-gown closed the window and disappeared from sight, unaware that he had just been shot.
That was the only window of the château he could see from the apartment. Not that it mattered. He had found a really beautiful vantage point to be utilised when the time came. He replaced the rifle and caressed the prize trophy that lay at the bottom of the trunk, the long green box. His hand lingered on the box and he smiled.
But before he used its contents he would use the rifle. Just one bullet. A diversionary tactic with a bonus: he would be able to stand back and watch their futile attempts to escape the inevitable. Count the hours, the minutes ….
Tonight he would move the trunk to the cellar of a deserted farmhouse eight miles from the village, in case the police searched premises in the village.
A knock at the door.
He called out: ‘Just a minute,’ locked the padlock and pushed the trunk back under the bed.
He opened the door and a plump woman with impossibly-black hair came in and kissed him – as she might once have kissed Georges.
‘Did anyone see you?’ he asked.
‘Only the old crone in the tabac and she is well paid to keep quiet,’ said the woman, who was the wife of the innkeeper down the street. ‘But it’s a nerve-wracking Business. A little drink perhaps?’ sitting on the sofa.
He gestured at the bottles on the sideboard. ‘You know I always have a good stock. What would you like?’
‘Cognac?’
‘D’accord.’
As he poured the brandy, and another rum for himself, she said: ‘And what have
you been doing with yourself?’
‘Not much.’
‘You never do.’ She swallowed the cognac. ‘Do you fancy—’
He smiled. ‘What do you think?’
In the bedroom she freed her heavy breasts from her brassiere, sighing like a woman removing too-tight shoes. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said as she attended to her slip and stockings. ‘On your days off, before I come up that is, you should find something to occupy yourself. You know, something really exciting.’
‘Funny you should mention that,’ he said, reaching for her. ‘I was just thinking that myself.’
* * *
In his room in the annexe Nicholas Foster wrote out his notes for the day. Starting with the sweep with metal detectors and concluding with his own interrogation by Anderson.
It was his intention to present one newspaper with a complete dossier on Bilderberg and to whet their appetites with a sensational hard news story. He had decided to give his old editor on the Sunday paper first refusal; in a few weeks time he would write to him advising him, without being explicit, that an exclusive story would be on its way. He would also give Lucas a few snippets that might find their way into the columns of the Financial Times.
Lucas had been very helpful. After Lucas had found out the venue of the 1980 Bilderberg they had met in the same old pub near St Paul’s Cathedral. The chimney hadn’t been fixed and a high wind gusting through the streets of the City pumped smoke from the coal fire back into the saloon.
The barman placed two pints of bitter in front of them on the bar.
‘Well,’ Lucas said, ‘did your father fall for it?’ He poured beer down his throat; Foster watched his prominent Adam’s apple bob up and down.
‘He welcomed me back into the fold with open arms. “So you’ve seen the light at last,” he said. “We’ll make a hotelier out of you yet.”’
‘Don’t like him much, do you?’
‘I like him more than I used to. I feel sorry for him; he’s a captive of his own hidebound values. I think he probably got like that after my mother died.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t feel sorry for himself.’
A particularly acrid cloud of smoke billowed out of the chimney enveloping the customers – bank clerks, messengers, detectives from Snow Hill – eating bar snacks washed down with beer or Spanish wine.
Foster said: ‘Anyway, he was delighted that I wanted to learn the hotel trade. And quite happy that I should start in the Château Saint-Pierre. I suppose it wouldn’t have been good for his image to have a greenhorn twenty-eight year-old son in one of his own hotels.’
‘Mmmmm.’ Lucas ordered two more pints. ‘It’s your image you’ve got to work on now. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb and the security police will check you out. You’ll have to shed your journalistic past.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ Foster said. ‘Do you fancy a snack by the way?’ When Lucas shook his head he ordered a plate of macaroni cheese and said: ‘They’ll approach my father, of course. I’ll warn him in time. He’ll be quite willing to forget that I was ever a journalist.’
‘What about the bylines you had when you were abroad?’
‘I’ll have to risk them. I worked for an agency and not many papers used my name.’
‘American papers?’
‘I doubt it. They mostly take AP or UPI anyway.’
Foster began to eat his macaroni cheese. A lot of macaroni, very little cheese.
Lucas ordered two more halves, handing the barman their tankards, both of which were much more than half empty. The barman raised his eyes to the heavens and filled them up.
‘They’ll put you through the police computer, of course, Lucas remarked. ‘Anything there?’
‘Only a couple of fines for speeding. All part of the playboy image.’
‘Credit cards?’
‘American Express and Visa. All paid up.’
‘What about your income tax returns and National Insurance contributions in this country?’
Foster pushed aside his plate of macaroni, half-eaten. ‘I’ve thought about that too,’ he said dabbing his lips with a napkin. ‘There’s not a hell of a lot I can do about them. But we’re talking as two people who knew that I was a journalist. There’s no reason why anyone at the Château Saint-Pierre should ever suspect that I was. If I play my cards right – and my father plays his – they’ll accept that I was a layabout. Anyway,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t be much fun if there weren’t any risks.’
‘Like a bullet in the head from a trigger-happy security guard.’
Foster patted his good leg. ‘Or another one there to even things up.’
Lucas pounced on the remark like a terrier and said: ‘You’ll have to have a convincing reason for that, too,’ and Foster thought what a bloody good journalist he must be and hoped the Financial Times appreciated him.
He said: ‘A motor-cycle accident – when I was speeding.’
Lucas finished his beer, beaky face alive and alert despite all that beer! ‘A scar from a bullet wound doesn’t look much like a scar from a motor-cycle accident.’
Foster drummed his fingers on the bar. ‘Right, as always. How about an accident with a spear-gun while under-water fishing? Part of my dissolute past … somewhere on the Greek islands, perhaps.’
‘Better,’ Lucas said, picking up his briefcase. ‘Much better. You’ll make a spy yet. By the way, as soon as you can get your hands onto a guest list you might let me have a copy. There’ll be the usual crowd, I suppose. Rockefellers, Rothschilds, a smattering of blue-blooded English financiers …. It’s the newcomers that interest me,’ Lucas said as he made for the door. ‘Keep in touch.’
Foster had mailed Lucas a copy of the guest list he had borrowed from Gaudin’s office shortly before he had been interrogated by Anderson. He inserted his own copy into the file containing his notes. The notes were also in duplicate – one copy to be kept in his room, one copy to be posted daily to an accommodation address in London.
He lay down on his bed in the small, barely-furnished room and read through his latest observations.
Suspect members of staff, including myself, vetted by black American Secret Service agent named Anderson – a redoubtable opponent who might have given Muhammad Ali a run for his money. Used some type of lie detector. (Check this out.) Assume I escaped detection because, being a journalist, I was able to anticipate the questions ….
… Other security police arriving for preliminary check. Suspect friction between Anderson and French. Gallic temperament etc ….
As background material, it was adequate. But what I have to do when the time comes, Foster thought, is find out what happens outside the conference chamber.
And to present that credibly he would also have to obtain verbatim reports on the deliberations inside the chamber. There was only one way to achieve that – bugs.
He picked up his ballpoint pen and appended a footnote to his day’s observations. What a story if there was an assassination attempt!
* * *
The following day was a long and tedious one for Owen Anderson. It rained, and the few guests at the hotel stayed in and got in his way and asked awkward questions. Then an FBI agent who had come direct from a course on electronic surveillance arrived and trailed around after him making suggestions, while Anderson, who reckoned that he was, if nothing else, unbeatable in that particular field, found difficulty in controlling his temper.
At 10.30 in the evening he escaped from the guests and the FBI man – he had contemplated planting a bug in his bedroom – and retired to the bar which was empty.
The barman, Jules Fromont, was mixing a cocktail.
Jules was famous for his cocktails. He was a quick, neat man in his late forties and was popular with guests because he adapted to their personalities. He could share the maudlin grief of a man with an unfaithful wife; he could swap stories with the breezy extroverts; he could discuss politics or religion or sport. Or he could keep quiet. His only con
cession to his own personality was a theatrical manner with the cocktail shaker.
Anderson sat down on a stool.
‘What can I get you, m’sieur?’
‘God knows. What’s that?’ pointing at the cocktail shaker in Jules’ hands.
‘A Saint-Pierre Special.’
‘A bit late, isn’t it?’
‘One of the guests asked me last night to mix him one as a night-cap. But you’re very welcome ….’
‘Okay,’ Anderson said, ‘I’ll try it. Add a slug of bourbon while you’re at it.’
Jules looked affronted. ‘There’s already bourbon in it, m’sieur.’
While the barman concluded his act with the cocktail-shaker, Anderson looked around him. It was the first time he had been in the bar. He examined the engraved mirrors behind the bottles and ran his finger along the deep-shining mahogany counter.
‘From a café in the gardens of the Palais Royal,’ Jules said, nodding towards the counter.
‘It’s got style.’ Anderson picked up his drink. ‘Here’s mud in your eye.’ He smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘Is this the Special you’re going to serve to the Bilderbergers?’ ‘Something similar,’ Jules said reprovingly. ‘I have been known to vary the recipe ….’
‘Sorry,’ Anderson said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘I’ll take a glass of Vichy water, m’sieur. I don’t touch alcohol when I’m working.’
‘I guess this conference is going to test your ingenuity,’ Anderson said, taking another sip of his Special.
‘I think I shall be able to cope,’ Jules said.
‘Around twenty nationalities. That’s a lot of different brews.’
Jules Fromont shrugged. ‘Most of them drink Scotch anyway. It’s just a question of knowing the brands. Malt whisky for the English aristocrats, J and B or Cutty Sark for the Americans, a drop of Jamiesons or poteen for the Irish ….’
‘Do the staff drink here?’
‘No, m’sieur, they have their own bar in the annexe.’
‘I’ll take another of those,’ Anderson said, pushing his glass across the bar and, as Jules mixed the cocktail: ‘Many drinkers among them?’
I, Said the Spy Page 20