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Anderson yawned and activated the cassette that had been recording Danzer’s conversation in his apartment. The tiny tape whirred smoothly but without sound, Anderson pressed the playback button.
‘Let’s go to the chalet tomorrow.’ (Today)
‘That would be lovely, darling.’
Anderson listened to the end. So he wasn’t the only one planning recreation for the evening …. He frowned: there was something disquieting about the tape. What was it? He played it again. Then he had it. It wasn’t the end of the conversation. Prentice had abruptly terminated it. As though he had made a decision.
Anderson stood in front of the window watching the snow pouring from the sky. The disquiet persisted. He consulted his address book in which the digits of all telephone numbers were shuffled. He found the contact number Prentice had given him months ago in Berne. He reshuffled the digits, called the number and asked for Kimber, Prentice’s code-name.
‘Who’s calling?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Parsons.’ (Apparently a man named Parsons compiled the crossword in the Sunday Telegraph, Somewhere, well hidden, Prentice had a sense of humour.)
‘I’ll see if he’s available.’
Then a man’s voice, wary: ‘Who is it?’
‘Parsons.’
A pause. ‘I’m afraid Mr Kimber isn’t here.’
‘But I thought —’
‘Thought what, Mr Parsons?’
‘Wasn’t he summoned?’
A lengthier pause. ‘Not so far as we are aware. Would you care to leave a message?’
‘No,’ Anderson said, staring at the receiver in his hand, ‘no message.’
Anderson paced around the living-room. Unease gnawed at him. He tried the handle of Prentice’s bedroom; it was locked. He took the skeleton key from his ring and opened the door. The room was tidy except that the bed was unmade.
Anderson crossed the room to the built-in wardrobe. Locked. He opened it with another key. There was the Dunlop golfing bag. Even before he had opened it he knew ….
Empty!
Holy shit! The disquiet splintered into panic. He grabbed a sheepskin jacket, shoved a Magnum pistol in the pocket and ran out of the apartment.
His rented white Mercedes 450 SE was parked in a side-turning. It looked like an igloo. Anderson swept the snow from the windshield and windows with his arm.
The starting motor whined. Come on, you sonofabitch! The engine fired, faltered, then roared the third time. The clock on the dashboard said 4.48 as the Mercedes took off, rear wheels spewing snow.
Rita Geiser would have to buy her own dinner tonight.
Prentice slipped a Walther automatic, two lengths of wire and a roll of masking tape into the pocket of his parka and left the rented house in the blue Alfasud at 4.40 pm. It was still snowing and already the day was assuming the sullen textures of an early winter evening.
He drove slowly, watching the snowflakes charge the windscreen before veering away. He stopped at the brink of the hill leading down to the village. There was a light burning, in Danzer’s chalet, the girl warming the nest. The other chalets appeared to be unoccupied.
The cables were motionless and Prentice doubted whether the cars had been in use that day. He drove on down the hill and parked the Alfasud across the empty square from the control cabin.
The windows of the car began to steam up. Good. He adjusted the neck of the black sweater and pulled the hood of the parka forward. A little girl ran across the square pulling a puppy behind her. Otherwise the place was deserted. Forgotten. Preserved in snow and ice.
Here and there lights from the windows of the old-fashioned village houses lit the falling snow. He could hear a choir singing in the church. It was possible, Prentice thought, that the cable-car operator might confer with the two attendants – one stuck at the top of the mountain, poor sod – and decide to call it a day. In which case Danzer would have to walk up to the chalet through the pine trees; he would still die, but the execution wouldn’t be so neat ….
Prentice remembered the colour photograph of the Hun garian whose body had disintegrated. He felt many things as he recalled the weals, the bloody swellings, but compunction was not among them.
He consulted his watch. 5.20. the light was fading. An orange Porsche drove into the square and stopped. A man climbed out, locked the doors and began walking towards the control cabin. It was Danzer.
At least he knew the way. Had driven to the chalet half a dozen times before to interrogate Danzer.
Anderson left the autobahn too fast, skidded, drove into the skid and straightened out onto the side road.
What was it with Prentice? Anderson pressed his foot down on the gas-pedal. Danzer had said something about the last ski-lift. Well, that would be about now give or take a few minutes.
The wheels spun on the hard snow beneath the day’s fall, then gripped again.
Anderson assumed that Prentice intended to kill Danzer when he reached the chalet. Which means that I’ve got to catch that last lift.
The Mercedes reached the top of the hill. Below lay blurred lights. The village. Anderson steered the car down towards the lights. The snow poured down from the darkening sky.
Danzer walked briskly across the square. He felt elated, truly elated, for the first time since Anderson had stopped him that nightmarish evening. The interrogation was finally over; if he behaved shrewdly – and he always did – then the rewards of acting as a double-agent should be handsome.
Ahead lay a bottle of champagne on ice, a good meal and a mistress who was attentive if not practised. Tonight I shall teach her a few tricks, Danzer decided.
He vaguely noticed an Alfasud parked beside the cobbled sidewalk. Italian registration. He wondered what an Italian tourist was doing in this dump. Unloading lire probably. He forgot the Alfasud and rapped on the window of the ski-lift control cabin.
The slovenly-looking controller was buttoning a torn parka over his plum-coloured uniform preparatory to leaving. He looked aggrieved, then recognised Danzer who had in the past made a habit of tipping him well. He smiled. Danzer pointed upwards with his thumb and the controller nodded. No great favour, Danzer thought, because they had to bring the attendant at the top down to earth again.
He climbed the slippery steps and told the attendant to go home: he was perfectly capable of negotiating the doors at the platform adjoining his chalet. Rules were made to be broken and tonight he would enjoy breaking any rule in the book. He wondered if Helga Keller loved him enough to ….
He rubbed his cold hands together as the scarlet car jerked and, swinging a little from side to side, began its last ascent of the day.
Prentice waited until the homeward-bound attendant had got half way across the square. Then he walked swiftly to the glass-door of the control cabin. It opened as it had opened before. The controller swung round in his seat and stood up.
Prentice prodded the barrel of the Walther in his stomach and said: ‘Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt. When I tell you to stop the cars stop them. Understand?’ He spoke with a thick Italian accent.
‘But —’
Prentice jammed the gun deeper into the flabby belly. ‘Understood?’
The controller nodded, sweat already glistening on his lumpy face.
‘Good. Then I’m going to put this round your mouth just to make sure you don’t shout, and this,’ tossing the two lengths of wire onto the panel of dials, ‘round your wrists and ankles.’
Prentice stared up towards the cable-car, barely visible in the falling snow. He consulted his stop-watch, in thirty-five seconds the car should be opposite the rocks nestling among the little pine trees.
‘What controls the lights in the cars?’
The controller pointed at a switch to Prentice’s right.
Prentice nodded towards a grey fuse-box with one red and one green button on it. ‘Does that affect the lights in the cars?’
The controller shook his head and a few beads of sweat fell on the flickering dials.
‘Right. Now!’
The controller pulled a lever. The cables stopped. Shuddered. Prentice pulled the grey fuse-box from the wall. Sparks showered around him.
He told the controller to turn round. He put down the gun and stuck the masking tape round his mouth. ‘Now lie face down with your hands behind you.’ It took Prentice less than a minute to bind his ankles and wrists.
Then he locked the door from the outside and ran across the square to the Alfasud. As he drove up the hill the outline of the cable-car became clearer. Danzer was standing with his hands and face pressed against the glass. Suspended in space, facing the firing squad.
Anderson saw the lighted cable-car hanging motionless in the gorge and thought: ‘Christ, what a target!’ But, because his attention was concentrated on negotiating the road down to the village, it was a couple of seconds before he stamped on the brake. The Mercedes slewed first to one side, then the other, before stopping. Anderson jumped out and ran back up the road.
The snow had thinned out and the figure of Danzer was quite clear. A standing target. There was one car in the parking-lot, an Alfasud. Anderson glanced inside. On the front passenger seat lay a newspaper thickly folded so that only a completed crossword puzzle was visible.
Where was he?
Anderson stared wildly around in the fading light. To the right a pathway. Freshly kicked tracks in the snow. Anderson drew his Magnum and charged down the path.
With the night field-glasses, which Karl had used more and more frequently since the change in his personality, Helga Keller stared down the valley.
She saw him enter the cabin. Happiness expanded inside her. She smiled. Her hand went to her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them again the cable-car had begun its ascent bringing him to her.
She could see him quite plainly through the powerful glasses. She stretched out a hand as though to touch him.
Then the cable-car stopped.
Helga saw the frown on his face.
She focussed the field-glasses on the control cabin below to see if she could find the cause of the stoppage. There didn’t appear to be anyone there.
An avalanche higher up, perhaps. Her hands shook a little as she traversed the length of the cable with the field-glasses. On the far side of the valley, directly opposite the stationary car, she noticed a movement.
She refocussed the glasses. A man. One of the men she had seen with Karl … He was holding … a rifle …. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound issued from her lips.
Another figure entered the picture. The big black man whom she had seen with Karl ….
This time the scream found its voice – at the same time as the crack of the rifle shot. Two of the windows of the cable-car shattered, the figure of Karl Danzer disappeared.
Helga Keller, wearing the low-cut evening gown that she had bought especially for this evening, ran into the snow. Still screaming.
And it wasn’t until she saw the blood splashing on the broken shards of glass still attached to the window-frame, that she collapsed in the snow and the screams were stilled.
‘Hold it, you stupid fuck!’
Anderson aimed the Magnum at Prentice’s head. But he hadn’t recovered his balance from his headlong descent down the path. He slipped and Prentice, kneeling, swung at him with the butt of the rifle, catching him on the shin. Anderson fell into the snow, dropped the pistol.
He gazed down – into space. They were on the brink of a precipice. The last echo of the rifle-shot lost itself in the mountains; the wind whined through the jagged holes in the cable-car windows.
And then Prentice, who had discarded the rifle, was on him. Hard and wiry. Instinctively, Anderson began to employ the unarmed combat that he had learned a long while ago; his movements were brutal and measured but his instincts were out of control: he wanted to kill.
They rolled nearer to the edge of the drop. Anderson got his knee into Prentice’s groin and thrust upwards; Prentice catapulted backwards, teetered on the brink, then fell forwards towards Anderson.
As Prentice tried to get up, Anderson went for his throat. And realised, too late, that his instincts had taken over from his training. Prentice twisted to one side and chopped at Anderson’s neck with the side of one hand. Pain leaped up Anderson’s neck into his skull ….
Then Prentice was free, crouching, coming at him with both hands slicing and chopping. Anderson put up a hand to defend himself but he couldn’t fend off those hands. Like the blades of a machine, he thought, as one of them caught him just below the ear and he fell back unconscious in the snow.
Prentice picked up the rifle and started up the hill. Before climbing into the Alfasud, he gazed briefly at the cable-car suspended in the darkness below and wondered who had killed Danzer: it certainly hadn’t been him.
The Swiss are never over-anxious to publicise violent death within their country: it is very bad for their image. Better to bury the details beneath the snow which so perfectly represents their façade of pristine correctitude. Inevitably the killing of Karl Werner Danzer attracted some publicity but, with the intelligence organisations involved reluctant to become overtly involved, the stories soon drifted down-page, leaving behind the impression that jealousy had been the motive for the shooting of the womanising financier.
The cable-car was repaired; fresh snow settled in the valley.
In certain more esoteric circles no such calm was discernible.
In Washington, William Danby, head of the CIA, considered recalling Anderson and assigning the plum Bilderberg assignment to another agent. But, even if he had screwed up the perfect opportunity to feed Moscow with inspired misinformation, Anderson was still the man for the job. He was established.
Nevertheless, Danby did not refrain from informing Anderson, recovering in hospital from a dislocated vertebra in his neck, of his views on the loss of the turned Russian spy. Even more explosively, he made his views known to Leonard Ballard, head of MI6, effectively shattering Anglo-American co-operation in the field of Intelligence.
Helga Keller disappeared completely from Zurich. George Prentice gratefully accepted the offer of an extended leave, completed his investigations on Mrs Claire Jerome for Paul Kingdon, closed up his Zurich apartment and flew to Rio de Janeiro.
Lying in a hospital bed with his neck in a cast, Anderson reflected that he was lucky to have kept the Bilderberg job – any job, for that matter. And, because he had been told to relax as much as possible, he tried not to think about George Prentice (who ludicrously claimed that it wasn’t he who shot Danzer) or Helga Keller who had unwittingly lured Danzer to his death.
To assuage the anger that boiled inside him when he thought about either of them, he comforted himself by reflecting that the Russians certainly hadn’t succeeded in infiltrating any other agents into Bilderberg.
In that assumption he was entirely wrong.
PART TWO (#ulink_7af215db-8b3f-5fca-b1ba-fff9e05a36cb)
VII (#ulink_d02df335-6cea-5550-9ff5-9d7bc4a373d4)
Bilderberg, according to an article in The Times of London, ‘is best known for the fact that no one knows anything about it.’ Not strictly true, of course. A lot of people know a lot about Bilderberg; but they keep it to themselves.
Among them was Owen Anderson. Sitting up in bed in his apartment (now paid for) in New York, doing his homework for the 1975 Bilderberg at Cesme in Turkey, Anderson gained little satisfaction from his inside knowledge. As always, it seemed to him that they were setting themselves up to be destroyed.
It was only a matter of time. The American way of death. Clandestine manoeuvring followed by suicidal, well-publicised soul-baring. Like the God-awful Watergate mess ….
What the American people didn’t seem to realise, Anderson brooded as he swung his legs out of the paper-littered bed and made his way to the kitchen to make coffee, was that by over-indulging the democratic processes they were destroying democracy. Playing into the hands of tyrants who sat back and enjoyed the suicidal ceremonies ….
Could anyone imagine Leonid Brezhnev being served with subpoenas for refusing to release Kremlin tape-recordings?
Anderson tightened the belt of his white robe and drank some coffee, hoping it would drown the disillusion. He gazed out of the window at the windswept February morning. Far below, office-bound crowds strode the sidewalks, heads ducked into the wind blowing in from the East River. Not one of them, Anderson was willing to bet, was aware that in two months time a hundred or so men – and a couple of women – would meet secretly to discuss policies that would control their lives ….
So, in a way, by protecting those who attended the convention, he was protecting the people on the sidewalks beneath him. If the logic was flawed, then Anderson chose not to analyse it. He returned to the bedroom with his coffee, sat on the edge of the bed and began to read what little had been written about Bilderberg.
* * *
