The route he always took skirted the church. Today he paused in the shadow of a woody old yew tree. On the other side of the narrow road stood a hedge with a hole tunnelled through it by children taking a short cut through the graveyard to the shops.
He consulted his wrist-watch. Three-twenty-nine. Surely nothing could have gone wrong ….
One second later the small charge of explosive, attached to a crude timing device that he had fastened during the night to a gravestone on the far side of the cemetery, exploded.
Such planning. Such timing.
He heard the running footsteps of the gendarme on the other side of the church. He ducked through the gap in the hedge and, keeping low, made for the small door at the rear of the church leading to the vestry.
Six months earlier, while Mass was being celebrated, he had nipped into the vestry and stolen the spare key. He inserted it into the lock; it turned easily.
He moved swiftly through the vestry and the nave of the church. He took the stairs leading to the belfry two at a time. By now the priest would be on his way home for his afternoon nap. He was safe.
It was as he was sliding the rifle out of the canvas container that he heard the footsteps creaking on the stairs.
* * *
At the same time that Jacques Bertier was descending the stairs prior to drinking a rum in the village inn, two men met by arrangement in a room in the west wing of the Château Saint-Pierre.
The subject to be discussed: the extortion of $15 million from three guests – Claire Jerome, Pierre Brossard and Paul Kingdon.
One man was code-named King, the other Prince.
The man code-named Prince was wearing head-phones when his partner knocked on the door. He had been listening to a wire-tap installed in the telephonic control system in Pierre Brossard’s room. The systems in each of the subjects’ rooms had been sabotaged – phone-taps instead of tap-defeats.
Prince took off the head-phones, listened carefully to the series of knocks on the door – three short, two spaced out, two short – then opened it.
While he locked the surveillance equipment in a suitcase, the newcomer swept the room with an electronic bug alert equipped with visual and audio signals. Neither spoke as he meticulously carried out the search. Walls, ceiling, light fittings, every article of furniture.
The search was an unvariable preliminary to conversation.
Finally, the newcomer, King, grinned and said one word. ‘Clean.’
‘Our own control system?’
‘I don’t think anyone else would be bright enough to bug an anti-bug gadget.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’ll check.’ Again he said: ‘Clean.’
Prince glanced at his wrist-watch. It was 3.19. The third conspirator was four minutes late.
When he pointed this out, the man code-named King said: ‘A minor unpredictable. There will be plenty of those around. Minor and major. Now let’s get on with it. Time is what we don’t have. How is Brossard reacting?’
‘Like a dream. I heard him on the wire-tap making arrangements for the five million dollars to be transferred to Zurich. He sounded as though he was giving blood.’
‘Likewise Kingdon. The beauty of it is that both Kingdon and Brossard reckon the money won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. But for once in his life Midas is going to be wrong.’
‘So what we’re missing is the reaction of Subject No. 3, Mrs. Claire Jerome,’ the man known as Prince said.
‘She’ll pay. She won’t even miss five million dollars.’
‘I’d like to know for sure.’
There was a knock on the door. Not the knock. They waited in silence. The door-handle turned but the door was locked.
A pause. Then footsteps retreating down the corridor.
‘Probably the maid,’ said Prince who occupied the room.
His companion said: ‘I’m going to call the room.’
He held the receiver away from his ear. Together they listened to the phone ringing in another room in the west wing. No-one answered it. He recradled the receiver.
‘I can’t wait any longer,’ Prince said.
‘Give it another couple of minutes. We meet again in three hours, right?’
His companion nodded. ‘I wonder if anything’s gone wrong ….’
‘Nothing can have gone wrong. We’ve plotted every detail. It’s been a long, long time ….’
Footsteps in the corridor.
They stopped outside the door.
Three short raps, two spaced out, two short.
‘You’re late,’ they both said as the third conspirator, codenamed Vixen, entered the room.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ as the door closed. ‘I had to call Paris. But everything is going according to plan.’
The tension dissolved.
The three smiled at each other.
Owen Anderson.
George Prentice.
Helga Keller.
PART FOUR
XXV
As Owen Anderson had remarked, it had taken a long time.
Ever since the 1977 Bilderberg conference – the first that Helga Keller, alias Hildegard Metz, had attended as Pierre Brossard’s secretary.
George Prentice had first seen her sitting alone in the Regency lounge of the Imperial Hotel in the sedate English resort of Torquay in Devon.
He hadn’t taken any particular note of her. Nor had he realised that he was looking at a woman whose whole faith had recently been destroyed ….
Prentice had arrived in Torquay several days before the conference to complete his ground-work. So had Owen Anderson. (Six weeks earlier he had carried out a preliminary security check.) So had Helga Keller – to prepare the way for Brossard.
Prentice had been exploring the hotel ‘patronised for more than a century by the Royal Households of Europe.’ He found it to his liking. The ornate chambers, the air of dignified affluence that drew upon the past splendours of Paris, Vienna and Imperial Russia; the sense of the past brought up to date by the sauna, indoor and outdoor pools, conference room equipment with duplicators, spotlights, translation equipment and health and beauty parlour providing anything from ultrasonic diathermy to a seaweed bath.
As usual Bilderberg had chosen well.
Debating what to put in his first report to Ballard in London, Prentice made his way to the Regency lounge where, beneath a maroon ceiling, you could relax to the accompaniment of a small fountain splashing in one corner.
Prentice sat down and ordered a whisky and soda. It was 6.30 pm. There were about a dozen guests in the lounge. By the time the conference opened on April 22 they would all be gone except for a handful of permanent residents.
He stretched out his legs, sipped his drink. Tried to imagine the scene in the days when, so it was said, Edward VII had dallied there with Lillie Langtry.
After a while he became aware of the woman sitting two tables away from him. He should have noticed her earlier; part of the training was to assess men – or women – sitting by themselves: they were usually waiting for someone, and that someone was sometimes yourself. But, as he had acknowledged to himself more than once recently, he was becoming careless. Too old for the game.
He looked at her more closely. She wore a dark grey two-piece and a white blouse; her hair was severely styled and he decided that her eyes behind her spectacles would be blue-grey.
He was assailed by a vague sense of familiarity.
Who had arrived in advance of Bilderberg? Of course, Hildegard Metz, secretary to the Gallic pillar to miserliness, Pierre Brossard.
Why should I think I know Fraulein Metz?
When she took off her spectacles, Prentice noted that she didn’t blink or squeeze the bridge of her nose as people who needed glasses did as they re-adjusted their vision. Plain glass?
Prentice frowned but was saved from further puzzlement by the woman who walked over to his table and said: ‘Mr George Prentice?’
Prentice stood up, nodded. ‘I don’t think I —’
‘I�
�m sure you do. I’m Hildegard Metz, Pierre Brossard’s secretary.’
He pointed at a seat and said: ‘Please sit down.’
‘Thank you.’ She sat down, pulled her skirt down over her knees and regarded him through blue-grey eyes that had never needed spectacles.
And now it was coming back: he was poised on the brink of revelation. Not Hildegard but ….
‘You once knew me as Helga Keller,’ she said.
He stared at her. Time was spinning and there framed in the sights of his rifle was Karl Danzer.
He began to speak: ‘I didn’t—’ but stopped himself. He picked up his whisky and soda to gain time.
She said: ‘Mr Prentice, how would you care to take a walk with me? It’s not a particularly pleasant evening but I think the fresh air would do us both good.’
And walk into the sights of a rifle?
She understood and said quietly: ‘There’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. It was all a long time ago ….’
He stood up and said: ‘Yes, of course,’ and thought that, if he did get shot, it would be a fair and just penalty for becoming old and careless, affected by the tears in a woman’s eyes.
It was dusk and a light rain was sweeping in from the sea, polishing the evening and stinging their cheeks. Across Torbay where Napoleon had sojourned on his way to exile in St. Helena, they could see the lights of Brixham, green and orange.
Seagulls flew low across the water crying about loneliness.
Prentice and Helga Keller wore raincoats and they walked with their hands thrust deep in their pockets. For a little while neither spoke.
Below them, as they descended the hill, small boats jostled each other in the inner harbour. Torquay is a resort for the retired; retirement, Prentice thought, must be infectious because the Strand was deserted, everyone at home settled in front of television.
He said: ‘I didn’t kill him you know.’
He had to listen hard to her reply as the wind grabbed her words. ‘I know,’ she said.
Silence, except for the sound of the water and the hiss of tyres on the wet surface of the road.
He asked her: ‘Have you always known?’
She shook her head. ‘For eight years I’ve done nothing but hate.’
He thought about his own hatred and what it had done to him. ‘When did you find out?’ he asked.
‘Two months ago.’
‘But you’ve always known about me?’
‘Ever since Karl died, yes.’
They rounded the inner harbour and walked along the promenade beside the deserted Abbey Sands.
‘We assumed you did,’ Prentice said. ‘But, of course, you disappeared.’
‘I wanted to kill you. Ever since that day I wanted to kill you.’
‘You understand that I intended to shoot Danzer?’
‘You and Anderson.’
‘Oh no,’ Prentice said. ‘Anderson didn’t want to shoot him.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he asked: ‘Have they always known about Anderson and me?’
‘Ever since Zurich,’ she said. ‘I told them. You command considerable respect. They’ve never known quite what to make of you ….’
‘I’m flattered. But now,’ as the rain drove at him and found its way inside the collar of his raincoat, ‘you must tell me. You once wanted to kill me. Why not now?’
As they walked back towards the hotel she told him.
When she visited Litvak in Moscow it was obvious that he had little time left.
He was alone in his small poorly-furnished apartment near the United States Embassy. A pathetic place to die, she thought as she glanced at the crudely-made furniture, the newspaper stuck around the windows to keep out the knife-blade of cold, the shelf of dull doctrinaire books ….
He was sitting on a sofa, a blanket drawn up to his chin. Death had already touched him: his eyes were yellow and the skin was tight over his cheek bones.
He touched her hand and she felt his coldness reach her.
‘I was glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Are you here on business?’
‘I would have come anyway,’ she told him.
She went into the minute kitchen and made tea, squeezing lemon into each cup. Litvak could barely lift his.
Outside flakes of snow touched the window. The street below, separating two apartment blocks, was covered with black ice.
She found it difficult to talk because they both knew he was dying.
After a while he said: ‘There is something I must tell you.’ A pause while he gathered his breath. ‘You’ve always known how I felt about you?’
She leaned forward and held his icy hand. ‘I guessed,’ she said, remembering the day beside the river.
‘Maybe I should have told you then. Except’—he began to cough and it was a few moments before he recovered—‘that you wouldn’t have believed me.’
She frowned. ‘Believed what?’
He pointed across the room at a dossier lying on the sideboard beside a bowl of plastic fruit. ‘Could you please bring me that over here?’
Still frowning, she picked up the worn grey file. On the top were two words: KARL DANZER. She began to tremble because she knew that something indescribably terrible was about to occur.
‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘I should have told you then. But I thought I would be destroying you. Now I know better. I am dying and I know better, and I know that everything behind me has been empty. You mustn’t let that happen to you, my Helga.’
She moved her chair away from the sofa. ‘Please … tell me ….’
The voice issuing from between his lips was like a voice on a scratched old gramophone record. Or a voice from the grave.
‘Karl Danzer,’ he said, ‘was a traitor.’
‘No!’
He waved his hand at the dossier. ‘It’s all in there. He was cheating the Soviet Union out of millions of dollars.’
Again she cried: ‘No,’ as the dying man continued to destroy the years behind her.
‘The American and the British – this man Prentice —’
‘He killed Karl —’
‘No, we killed Karl Danzer.’
An alarm clock on the table beside the sofa ticked away Litvak’s life as the snow flakes pressed against the window.
Litvak went on: ‘The British and Americans found out about the money in a numbered account and they blackmailed him. He told them everything he knew about the KGB operation. Moscow decided to eliminate him. An agent from Department V – or 13 as it used to be called – was dispatched to Zurich. The obvious time to kill him was when he was on the way to his chalet. It so happened that the British thought along the same lines. It wasn’t Prentice’s bullet that killed Danzer – it was one of ours ….’
She felt faint and pressed her head down towards her knees. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I obtained the dossier.’
She raised her head. ‘Why did the British want to kill him?’
‘Because he had sent many of their agents to their deaths.’
The ticking of the clock seemed to be louder.
She picked up the dossier but he said: ‘Not now.’ He reached out his hand once more and she took it, and he said: ‘I’m sorry ….’
She said: ‘How do I know whether this dossier is genuine?’
‘I have no reason to fake anything. I have my contacts in Dzerzhinsky Square. They obtained it for me. Has it occurred to you why I wanted you to know?’
She shook her head.
‘Because your life has been founded on hatred. I don’t want to die knowing that it is going to continue that way.’
He sipped his cold tea, spilling some on the blanket. She took the cup from him.
‘Go now,’ he said, ‘and come back when you’ve read it.’ He managed a smile that momentarily lit his face. ‘And one more thing. Always remember that afternoon beside the beach. We were close then, my Helga ….’<
br />
She took the dossier. She read it, Then she burned it and all the horror it contained.
When she returned to Litvak’s apartment, the door was locked and a neighbour told her that he had died during the night.
‘At first,’ she told Prentice as they retraced their footsteps, ‘I was numb. And then, little by little, I began to think about everything I had seen in Russia. I realised that Karl’s beautiful dreams were nightmares – not, of course, that he ever believed them himself. I was just a pathetic little dupe. One of many, according to the dossier.’
Prentice took her arm; it was the only thing he could think of to do.
‘I thought of Budapest and Prague. I thought of the millions enslaved and I realised that I must have been crazy. But, of course, they caught me young …’ And Prentice knew that the tears had returned to her eyes and were mingling with the rain.
Still he didn’t know what to say. After a while he said: ‘So what are you going to do now?’
The rain was easing off. A tiny rent appeared in the clouds. A sliver of moonlight.
‘I’m not sure. I knew that to stand any chance of survival I had to go on playing it their way. Then I saw you. It was, of course, inevitable that we would meet at Bilderberg. You were the symbol of my hatred and I knew that the hatred had been a wasting and I knew that I had to talk to you …’
The rain had stopped; far out across the bay the moonlight silvered the water.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you would have dinner with me. We have a lot to talk about.’
* * *
The plan was seeded that night without either Helga Keller or George Prentice realising it. It was clinched the following day by Owen Anderson.
XXVI
For Owen Anderson the day began well.
He breakfasted in his room gazing across the bay, which this morning was as blue as the sky. He opened the window and smelled rain-washed air and spring blossom. An English sort of day. Anderson enjoyed England – its unruffled ways, its touches of faded elegance, its sense of the ridiculous.
Perhaps, he reflected later, it was the English ambience that was partly responsible for the momentous decisions that were taken that day.
I, Said the Spy Page 31