- -
- 100%
- +
Theoretically. Not in practice. Acutely aware of the lurking threat of the monster in their midst, successive Kremlin regimes had made it their business to dissipate the power of the KGB. Every move, every appointment and promotion, was supervised by a special department created by the General Committee of the Party.
Vlasov pressed his fingertips to his fragile-looking temples, Another debacle like London and he would be toppled from his throne. But not if I have my way, he thought. It had taken too long to be crowned.
His thoughts descended from the mahogany panelled office, from the great desk with its batteries of telephones, to the white-tiled cells of Lubyanka Prison somewhere below him in the same building ….
A knock on the door. ‘Come in.’ Vlasov took the lime-green sheet of paper from the bald-headed man and dismissed him.
The computer had printed eight code-names on the paper. The names were the feedback from information compiled by Vlasov during interludes of free time since September.
Each code-name represented a KGB agent abroad. If the aged computer (a replacement was on order) had done its job, each of the agents was above suspicion. With one small qualification: they all demonstrably enjoyed the Western life style.
Not that Vlasov could blame them – he had served in Soviet embassies in Washington, Ottawa and Copenhagen. No, their weakness was their failure to disguise their enjoyment. These eight men, according to the computer, were the most likely agents to succumb to Western blandishments. Just as Lyalin had done.
Not that any of them would be replaced. Just watched. A fatherly eye.
The eighth name was Karl Werner Danzer.
Vlasov sighed and pushed back the heavy drawer of the filing cabinet. The Americans and British had a saying for it: You can’t win ’em all. Danzer had just been accepted by the powerful elite clique known as Bilderberg: it had been Vlasov’s greatest coup since his appointment as KGB chairman.
He picked up one of the telephones, and when the girl on the switchboard answered, told her to arrange for the central heating to be switched up. He wondered if it also heated the cells in Lubyanka Prison.
* * *
Helga Keller was at first so overjoyed by the rekindling of Danzer’s love that she didn’t notice any difference in his attitude.
‘But why were you so offhand … so cruel that night?’ she asked and was completely satisfied when he replied: ‘A business deal fell through. It would have netted the Cause hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs. I wouldn’t have been good company that night.’
But there had been three more days and nights of misery and she asked him about them, and was again satisfied when he said: ‘I was still feeling bad; I didn’t want to upset you,’ and kissed her.
He was still as eager as ever to hear the titbits of conversation she picked up from her father’s dinner table and the Investors’ Club. Hints of deals, loans, devaluations, market trends ….
He seemed pleased with what she obtained, but she wasn’t naive enough to believe that her contributions were devastatingly important and when he suggested that she accept dinner invitations – particularly from American financiers – she reluctantly agreed.
He seemed particularly impressed by one item she innocently extracted from a drunken banker over a champagne cocktail. Astonished even. She had told Danzer that the banker had been celebrating an invitation to Bilderberg.
‘Did he know the date?’
‘I think it was April 21st.’
‘Where?’
‘Knokke in Belgium.’
‘I didn’t even know that,’ Danzer said as he stood sipping a gin-and-tonic in his living-room.
‘Should you have known, darling?’
Danzer said enigmatically: ‘I thought so.’
He seemed distressed, Helga thought. She wished it was because she had been dated by the American banker who was as rich as Croesus. But she was honest enough to acknowledge that it was the mention of Bilderberg that had upset him.
Danzer was depressed for the rest of the day. And it was only then that she realised how much he had changed since that day when he had stood her up. Like it or not, that’s what he had done. From time to time she saw him in the company of a big black man and an Englishman – attractive in a shabby sort of way – but it wasn’t until much later that she associated them with the change in Karl.
She assumed it was the pressures under which he was working that were affecting him. It was tough enough dealing in currency in Zurich: she could imagine what it must be like when you were double-dealing. And for a goal, an ideal ….
The change in Karl Danzer only served to add another dimension to Helga’s love: she worried for him. Perhaps he was under investigation of some sort; she approached the subject circumspectly once, but he reacted so savagely that she never asked again.
But if he were caught …. She stared into a future as bleak as bereavement.
* * *
The snow had settled on the lower flanks of the mountains and still Danzer had not been bled dry. He seemed to ration his intelligence as though he sensed that, when it ran out, so would his usefulness – although Anderson went to considerable pains to assure him that the West needed him for the purposes of misinformation.
One Saturday afternoon just before Christmas, when Anderson was again in Washington, Prentice drove fifty miles from Zurich to the run-down ski-resort where Danzer owned a chalet.
He strapped skis to the roof of the silver BMW and covered everything, except the tips of the blades, with tarpaulin. Under the tarpaulin, between the skis, he slotted a Russian Kalashnikov rifle fitted with a telescopic sight.
The sky was a metallic blue and the white fangs of the mountains were sharp against it. Prentice took the Berne autobahn. The traffic was thin, the Germans in their Mercedes stoically unconcerned as the French drivers overtook them in their big Citroens. Prentice drove at a steady 40 mph; no sense in attracting attention when your baggage included a sniper’s rifle; Saddler had taught him never to break small laws when you were about to shatter big ones.
Twenty miles out of Zurich he took an exit to the left. The snow was hard-packed and, occasionally, the heavy-duty tyres spun on the polished surface. He stopped two miles outside the ski-resort. To his left stood a house which he had rented for six months under the name of Gino Salvini. It was a modest establishment by Swiss standards, four rooms built over a garage. Covered with snow and gilded by the sunlight, it looked positively chic. Always sell a car in the rain, they said: in Switzerland always sell a house covered with snow.
Prentice opened the doors of the garage. Inside was an egg-shell blue Alfasud bearing Italian codeplates and registered H52870 MI. He turned on the ignition. The engine fired first time and he drove onto the drive beside the BMW.
The house and the drive were hidden from the road, surrounded by low hills spiked with pine trees. He backed the BMW into the garage, removed the ski-rack complete with the skis and rifle, adjusted it and fitted it onto the roof of the Alfasud. Then he locked the garage, took the wheel of the Alfasud and drove back onto the road.
From the road he could now see the village – a few snow-bonneted houses, a church with a needle-pointed spire, a shop or two and an hotel that had once specialised in package deals before a tour operator had made the astounding discovery that the terrain wasn’t a happy choice for sking; the consistency of the snow was never quite right – something to do with a warm wind that nosed through the valley – and the ski-runs were too short.
It wasn’t quite accurate to describe the resort as rundown: it had never got up. Nevertheless, a ski-lift served the slope with erratic rhythms, but it was rarely used.
Prentice surveyed the village, the snow-patched valley and the white battlements beyond. Then he glanced across the valley to a cluster of chalets. One of these belonged to Karl Danzer. Doubtless he would have preferred St. Moritz or Klosters but this served his purpose. It was undeniably low-profile.
Prentice drove in second gear down the hill to the village. Before climbing out he adjusted the neck of his black sweater so that it masked the lower part of his face, and pulled up the fur-lined hood of his jungle-green parka.
He inspected the control cabin of the ski-lift. Like the scarlet cable-cars themselves, it had been constructed with grandiose ideas. But it had a disused air about it and the operator, wearing a plum-coloured uniform shiny with wear, was leaning back in his chair reading a copy of Der Blick.
The operator could, if asked, stop the ascending cable-car half way up the valley, at a platform designed to serve the cluster of chalets on the hillside. He looked as if any request would severely disrupt the tempo of his day.
Prentice made a note of the times of the last three ascents, the list on the wall compiled, presumably, in headier days. He tried the handle of the door. It was open. The operator looked up frowning, indicating with his thumb that Prentice should use the staircase to the platform where an empty car waited for passengers, and returned to his newspaper.
Prentice signalled that he understood. Then he set the stop-watch on his wrist and walked rapidly back to the Alfasud. When he reached the car he climbed in and set the stop-watch again. He drove up the hill, beside the thickly-greased cables, to an observation parking lot with room for about a dozen cars.
There were three cars there. One Swiss, one Belgian and one British, a Ford Granada. The boot of the Granada was open and a middle-aged couple were brewing tea on a spirit stove.
Prentice clocked himself from the village to the observation post. It was 4.37: it had taken him exactly three minutes. He glanced around; the bright colours of the day were fading fast and clouds were curdling on the mountain-peaks. The wind that played havoc with the piste was iced now, and there was a cruelty about the evening.
Prentice set the stop-watch again, put on climbing boots and set off down the precipitous path beside the car-lot. Almost immediately, he was out of sight from anyone above; not that anyone would be able to see much in the gathering dusk.
He reached a bed of flat rocks a hundred yards beneath the car-lot. It was surrounded by stunted pine trees capped with snow. He checked his stop-watch again and lay down on the rocks and peered through the feeble growth, none of the pines bigger than Christmas trees.
Above him to the right, on the far side of the valley, stood the cluster of chalets. Danzer’s was the biggest, made from split pine painted blue with fretted eaves and a balcony on which to drink wine on summer evenings. Prentice had been there several times with Anderson; so, according to the bug in Danzer’s apartment, had the girl. And many other girls ….
The cables jerked suddenly. He restarted the stop-watch. He couldn’t see the descending car but in any case it didn’t interest him. He peered down the valley at the ascending car, lit now by a single naked bulb.
As he had expected, there were two men in the car. One was the attendant who had, if anything, an easier job than the operator. The other was Karl Danzer. Stop-watch off.
Danzer passed him about fifty yards away, standing impassively, staring out of the window wearing a black, Cossack-style fur hat and a grey, waisted topcoat. The scarlet car stopped at the landing half way up the slope and Danzer stepped out.
For the rest of the night, Prentice thought, Danzer would worry. Prentice had called him and made an appointment. When appointments were made and not kept, when you were left alone in a chalet high up among the pine trees, you worried. If, that is, you had been reduced to Danzer’s mental state.
Prentice began to climb the path. A car engine coughed into life. The English couple must have finished their tea.
Prentice timed himself as though he were replacing the rifle between the skis. Then he drove back through the dusk at speed, skidding round the bends as though he were on the Cresta run. At the rented house he swapped cars, locked the garage and timed himself for the last time.
The dummy run was over. Prentice licked warmth back into his frozen lips as he drove the BMW back to Zurich at a sedate pace, and thought of Danzer framed in the lighted window of the cable-car.
* * *
Unbelievably the Swissair jet arrived twenty minutes early at Kloten Airport. A tail wind, according to the pilot. A girlfriend in Zurich more likely, Anderson thought, as he passed through customs and immigration and told a cab driver to take him to the corner of the street where Prentice’s apartment was located.
A lined page from a notebook stood propped up in the bowl of fruit on the table, back at six. They were becoming like the Odd Couple, Anderson thought. The note should have added: dinner in the oven. Bubble-and-squeak!
Anderson took off his topcoat and glanced at his wrist-watch. 5.30 pm. He had half an hour in which to find out what Prentice had been up to during this three-day absence. Searching Prentice’s possessions was always an intriguing process because they gave nothing away. Nothing.
Anderson selected a skeleton key on his ring and opened the old-fashioned desk in Prentice’s room where he kept his papers. Normally you were assailed by a man’s personality when you broke into a desk; an old passport, a key to a forgotten portmanteau, a group photograph – school or Army, perhaps – with the desk’s owner staring self-consciously from the ranks; a shabby wallet containing a happy snap of a long-forgotten girl; letters, bank accounts, cheque stubs …. A man’s imprisoned past clutching at the sleeve of the experienced investigator.
Not in Prentice’s desk. It contained relics from the past but none of them had a message. It was as though Prentice had sterilised his possessions. Anderson glanced at the contents expertly: nothing had been moved since he last inspected them: as if they were as foreign to Prentice as they were to him. The collected trivia of a stranger.
Prentice, Anderson thought, had nothing except his professionalism and that was beyond doubt, its strength being its deceptiveness. With another key, Anderson opened the rudimentary safe in the wall of the bedroom – coded reports on Danzer and himself, left there no doubt for Anderson to read.
As he slotted a third key into the built-in wardrobe, Anderson heard the elevator stop outside the door of the apartment. He froze. Then the scrape of a key being inserted into the lock of the apartment across the way. He turned his own key and peered into the wardrobe. A minimum of clothes, a few pairs of shoes. He wondered what Prentice would look like in a tuxedo; attractive to women without a doubt – it was his remoteness that would appeal, that and the hint of ruthlessness.
Running his hands along the line of hanging clothes, Anderson momentarily experienced a flicker of … what? Shame? He shook his head. It was, as they said, all in the game. But he wished just for that moment that he was playing the game during a time of war, when the excuses were more flamboyantly obvious. But it’s always war, it never ceases.
He stretched out one hand to the rear of the wardrobe where, behind his shabby suitcases, Prentice kept a Russian rifle in a Dunlop golfing bag. The bag was still there. He was about to peer inside when the elevator stopped again. By the time Prentice opened the door Anderson was in the living-room pouring himself a whisky.
Anderson, who was playing black, moved his knight and said: ‘I’m beginning to agree with you about the girl.’
‘What about the girl?’ Prentice also moved a knight.
‘She’s a stupid bitch. She could be sending guys to their deaths with the information she’s passing on.’ He brooded over the board for a moment before moving his king’s knight’s pawn one square.
Prentice made his next move quickly, and then applied himself to the Daily Telegraph crossword.
Anderson thought: ‘Arrogant bastard,’ and, moving a bishop quickly, too quickly, said: ‘You know, the stuff she comes up with. Nothing spectacular but all part of a pattern. Those patterns spell out death sentences ….’
Prentice shrugged. ‘We’re at war,’ voicing Anderson’s earlier thoughts. ‘We’ve got our Helga Kellers. It all balances out in the end. I’ve moved,’ he added, pointing at a pawn.
Anderson castled. Prentice immediately moved a bishop and returned to the crossword puzzle, filling in the squares as quickly as though he were writing a letter.
Anderson pored over the board. ‘She heard about Bilderberg before him. That shook the bastard.’
‘Did he pass it on to Berne?’
‘Of course. All to the good. We want Moscow to go on thinking he’s on his toes. By the way,’ Anderson said, moving a pawn to queen’s knight three, ‘I picked up the guest list in Washington. Danzer’s on it. You’re not,’ he added with satisfaction.
‘I know. I calculate that I’ll be invited every three years. Any new names?’
‘A few …. Have you nearly finished that goddam crossword?’
‘Nearly. One more clue. No way near my record, though.’
‘Tough,’ Anderson said.
‘What are the new names?’
‘How can I concentrate on chess when you want names?’ Anderson took a photostat of the list from the inside pocket of his jacket and tossed it to Prentice.
Prentice moved a pawn down the rook’s file, completed the crossword with a fairly simple anagram and picked up the list.
Anderson moved a pawn, anticipating the sacrifice Prentice intended to make. Prentice took the pawn, offering the sacrifice, a bishop, and said: ‘I see Mrs Claire Jerome is on the list for the first time.’
Should he accept or decline the sacrifice? All his instincts said: ‘Take it.’ You had to be a hot-shot to keep the upper-hand if you were a bishop down. Prentice was good, but was he that good? Anderson took the proferred bishop.
Immediately Prentice moved the pawn another square down the rook’s file. Anderson took the pawn, and for the first time Prentice deliberated over his next move.
He filled in the time by asking: ‘Why Mrs Jerome?’
Anderson leaned back and said: ‘It was about time. She is one of the richest women in the world and it is the age of sex equality. Have you got much on Mrs Jerome, George?’
‘A fair bit.’ Prentice’s hand hovered over the board, then returned to his lap. ‘We have to keep track of arms manufacturers.’
‘We?’
‘The British Government. Paul Kingdon hasn’t so far shown any interest in her companies.’
‘I’m surprised Kingdon hasn’t been invited,’ Anderson remarked.
‘So is Kingdon.’
Anderson wondered how much Prentice knew about Mrs Claire Jerome’s interests. Did he, for instance, know that she was of great assistance to the CIA? And why doesn’t he take my bishop with his rook?
Prentice took the bishop. This time Anderson moved quickly, his castled king.
‘You play a good game,’ Prentice said reluctantly.
‘We play it every day, George.’ He leaned over the board and tapped the list. ‘As you will see, there is another significant newcomer, Pierre Brossard. A lot of clout there, George. One of the richest men in Europe.’
‘And one of the meanest.’
‘I guess that’s how he got rich.’
‘He became rich helping to rebuild Europe after the war.’ Prentice made his move and relaxed a little, regarding Anderson watchfully. ‘Has Danzer got the list?’
‘Nope. Just the invitation.’
‘How much longer do you reckon before he’s told us everything he knows?’
‘About a month maybe.’ I think I’ve got the bastard now, Anderson thought; but you could never be sure with someone like Prentice; you could never be sure of anything with him. He moved his queen imperiously across the board. It looked an obvious move; perhaps it was too obvious. ‘But that doesn’t mean we’ve finished with him. We’ve got to brief him about Bilderberg.’
‘Of course. But you think the interrogation will be over some time in January?’
Anderson looked up, frowned. ‘I figure that, yes. Why?’
‘Check,’ said Prentice moving his queen.
‘Shit!’
Anderson rested his head on one hand and stared intently at the board. It was seven minutes before he moved his king.
Prentice moved his queen again. But this time she didn’t look so regally powerful.
Prentice asked: ‘What made you change your opinions about the girl?’
‘I didn’t change them. I didn’t have any strong opinions. It was only when I knew that she had passed on the venue and date of Bilderberg that I realised what damage she could do. Supposing one of the terrorist organisations working with the KGB got wind of it now. They could plan six months ahead’ – putting his bishop in front of the white queen with a flourish – ‘and hold the whole bunch to ransom.’
‘Or just blow the whole bloody lot up,’ Prentice remarked, frowning at the board. ‘But Danzer would have known within a few days anyway ….’
‘Sure, in this instance. But supposing one day there isn’t any Danzer? She can still pick up that sort of information and pass it on. One thing’s for sure – something’s going to happen at that convention one of these days. All that power, all that bread ….’
‘ … under one roof.’
‘It’s your move,’ Anderson said as Prentice sank back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
‘I resign.’
Anderson felt ridiculously elated by the victory.
Prentice said: ‘I should stick to cross-word puzzles.’
‘I had an advantage,’ Anderson said. ‘I was playing black.’
* * *
Two days later Paul Kingdon telephoned from London. Listening to his Cockney voice snapping over the wires, Prentice smiled faintly: unlike most people he had a soft spot for the whizz-kid. He imagined him now, sitting at his desk overlooking the rooftops of the City of London, wolfish features tense with impatience.
Kingdon said: ‘We need everything we can get on Marks International and its subsidiaries.’
Prentice raised his eyebrows. Marks International was Mrs Claire Jerome, Coincidence? Possibly. Certainly an easy assignment: he already had plenty on Marks International. He knew, for instance, that Mrs Jerome was a good friend of the CIA.
He asked: ‘Who wants to know?’
‘I do.’
‘You and who else?’
‘Does it matter?’
Prentice didn’t reply. Only he was allowed to treat Kingdon like this. After all, where would Kingdon be without him? In jail most likely.
Finally Kingdon said: ‘Pierre Brossard.’
After Kingdon had rung off, Prentice stayed beside the telephone drumming his fingers on the table. Four months to go and already the Bilderbergers were beginning to stretch out invisible hands towards each other.
VI
It took until the second week in January, 1972, to bleed Danzer dry.
On January 11th Prentice and Anderson celebrated the accomplishment with a bottle of Bell’s whisky. At 7 am on January 12th Prentice set out to kill Danzer.
Anderson was still asleep when he left the apartment, having drunk most of the whisky.
Standing on the landing outside the apartment, Prentice heard Anderson laugh in his sleep; laughter from a sleeping man, he reflected, was more eerie than a scream.
He walked down the three flights of stairs and stood shivering in the darkness outside. He wore thick flannels, the roll-neck black sweater and the jungle-green parka; but winter had made a come-back. Ice particles glittered in the glow of the street-lamps, the cold prickled in his nostrils, ice crunched under his feet as he made his way to the BMW.
As he drove towards the autobahn, flakes of snow were peeling from the black sky. He could just make out the outline of the mountains. But he wasn’t sure whether he wanted the snow to thicken. Like a fog, a blizzard can be a Godsend and a hazard to an assassin. He prays for a parting in the veil when he takes aim, then pleads for the veil to be drawn again as he flees from vengeance.