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‘Come on up.’ (‘Okay I’ll let you in,’ if there were uninvited visitors in the apartment.)
‘How did it go?’ Prentice asked as Anderson tossed his raincoat and overnight bag onto an easy chair.
‘Routine. I had to make a statement for some goddam Senate investigation.’
‘Bilderberg?’
Anderson poured himself a beer. ‘Christ no. I assume we’re clean?’ sitting down and drinking thirstily.
‘Of course.’
‘If it had been Bilderberg I wouldn’t have returned. You don’t return from the dead.’ He grinned. ‘How’s it been going here?’
‘Danzer finally got the girl into bed.’
‘You listened?’
‘Up to a point,’ Prentice said. ‘You can take over if you want.’
‘You’re a cold fish, George,’ Anderson said.
Now, yes. But it hadn’t always been so.
They appraised each other across the small lounge. A working relationship, nothing more. Prentice guessed that Anderson knew a lot about him; how much he didn’t know.
Anderson opened another can of beer and said: ‘I wish Danzer would get the hell out of this town. I feel as if I’m in a cell in San Quentin.’
‘Thanks,’ Prentice said. The cell was his apartment. It was small – two bedrooms, lounge, kitchen and bathroom – but, Prentice believed, tastefully furnished if, perhaps, a little bookish; the lounge with its leather chairs was a study, really, and the bedrooms were used only for sleeping.
‘Sorry, George. You know something?’ Anderson drank some beer. ‘You’re the least likely looking spy I ever did see. But I thought that about Danzer. People’s appearances change when you get to know all about them. Danzer looks like a spy now.’
‘You look like a contender for the world heavyweight title,’ Prentice observed. ‘I always imagine you wearing a red robe waving your fists above your head.’
‘Not the champ?’
‘No,’ Prentice said firmly, ‘the contender.’
‘Let’s see how the champ’s getting on,’ Anderson said, crossing the room to the desk, switching on the radio receiver and slipping the earphones over his head. He listened for a minute, then removed the earphones and said: ‘It’s all over. They’re back in Siberia listening to balalaikas. Give it ten minutes and they’ll be back to politics. Are you political, George?’
Prentice shook his head.
‘But you enjoy our game, huh?’
‘Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it.’
Which was true. The game, as Anderson called it, was all he had.
‘Motives?’
‘I happen to believe in what we’re doing. Just the same as I would have believed in fighting the Germans in 1939. We’re merely fighting an extension of that enemy. One tyranny succeeds another.’
Anderson tapped his forehead with one finger. ‘Do you have a brain or a computer up there, George?’ He picked up the Telegraph crossword. ‘You didn’t do so well here. Ins out a form of art singer. Sinatra,’ Anderson said, filling in the blank squares.
‘What are your motives?’ Prentice asked curiously.
‘Much the same as yours, I guess. Just a little more flamboyantly so. None of that kitchen-sink stuff for me.’
‘You enjoy the game?’
‘It’s the only one I know. But I’ll be glad when this series is over. How much longer, George?’
‘Not long now,’ Prentice said. ‘Do you want to eat?’
‘I assume it’s cold roast beef and …. What do you call that mess?’
‘Bubble-and-squeak,’ Prentice told him. ‘You guessed right.’
‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Anderson said with resignation. ‘We had it the day I left. And the day before. Do you ever eat anything else?’
‘I take it you want some?’
‘I could eat a horse,’ Anderson said. ‘Come to think of it, that would make a pleasant change.’
Prentice went into the tiny kitchen and tossed a mixture of mashed potatoes and cooked cabbage into a frying pan.
From the living-room Anderson said: ‘Three down. You should have gotten this, George. Notice without direction an agent.’
‘Spy,’ Prentice said over his shoulder.
‘How long is not long, George?’
The cabbage and potatoes sizzled. Prentice turned them; they were a little burnt on the underside. ‘When I get access to his bank account.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult for you. You’re the guy with the contacts in Zurich.’
‘It’s not that easy any more. Article 47 of Swiss Banking Law. It sets out the penalties for divulging bank secrets, i.e. the names behind the number accounts. Jail sentences and fines.’
‘So, what’s new?’
‘The banks are getting very touchy since the British Inland Revenue broke the secrecy.’
‘Was that you, George?’
Prentice ignored the question and quoted: ‘ … the banker has no discretion in this matter and, by law is required to maintain silence about his client’s affairs under penalty of heavy fines and even imprisonment. As laid down by the Swiss Bank Corporation, the Swiss Credit Bank and the Union Bank of Switzerland. The Big Three.’ He cut four slices of cold, overdone beef. ‘But it’s Article 273 of the Swiss Criminal Code that worries me. It states that agents …’ He smiled faintly ‘ ….Three down, wasn’t it? Agents can be jailed for trying to break numbered accounts.’
Prentice put two plates of beef and bubble-and-sqeak on the coffee table in the living-room. When Anderson sat down the table looked ridiculously small.
Anderson began to eat hungrily but unenthusiastically Between mouthfuls he said: ‘You’re not trying to tell me that any of this worries you?’
‘I merely have to be a little more cautious.’
‘If he’s stashed away a fortune then we’ve got him. Maybe we’ve got him anyway. We know he was born in Leningrad in 1941. We know he was infiltrated into Berlin in 1945 with his parents. We know they turned up in Switzerland in 1947 with forged German-Swiss papers. We also know, thanks to you, George,’ liberally smearing mustard on a piece of beef, ‘that a lot of the bread that he makes speculating with currency doesn’t reach the coffers of the Soviet Foreign Bank.’
‘We can’t prove that,’ Prentice pointed out. ‘We need that numbered bank account. When you can wave that under his nose then he’s yours.’
‘Ours,’ Anderson said, pushing aside his half-eaten meal. ‘You really enjoy that stuff?’
‘I was brought up on it.’
‘Jesus,’ Anderson said. He washed away the taste with a mouthful of beer. ‘But you haven’t answered my question. How long is not long?’
‘Tonight if I’m lucky,’ Prentice said. He reached for the sports jacket with the leather-patched elbows. ‘See you later.’ He nodded towards the radio receiver. ‘Happy listening’.
As he crossed the Munster Bridge, heading for Bahnofstrasse, Zurich’s Fifth Avenue George Prentice ruminated on Anglo-American collaboration. It worked beautifully up to a point. That point would be reached when he carried out his instructions to kill Karl Danzer.
* * *
The Swiss legalised banking secrecy in 1934. The aim was to conceal the identities of Jewish customers from their German persecutors. Whenever the Swiss are under attack for their fiscal discretion they remind their critics of its humane origins. Then, glowing with self-righteous indignation, they retire to the vaults to tot up the billions entrusted to them by despotic heads of state, Mafia dons, crooked financiers, businessmen avoiding (not evading) the attentions of tax inspectors, oil sheikhs, misers, bankrupts, politicians championing the cause of the impoverished; the spectrum, in fact, of humanity embarrassed by riches.
Numbered accounts have their disadvantages: interest is virtually non-existent and, in some instances, a depositor may have to pay a bank a small sum to safeguard his money; he is, of course, buying secrecy and, unless it can be proved that the money was obtained by criminal means, his anonymity is assured.
Such obsessive reticence naturally arouses curiosity, and in the cities of Berne, Zurich, Geneva and Basle there are many agencies dedicated to undermining the system. Among them professionals described euphemistically as industrial consultants, blackmailers and spies.
George Prentice, recruited to British Intelligence when he was precociously teaching at Oxford, represented all three categories. He knew the identities of sixty-nine eminent personages holding numbered accounts – knowledge which had rubber-stamped his entry into the monied Establishment – and was about to make Karl Werner Danzer the seventieth. Although in Danzer’s case, he was reversing the process: he knew the name but not the number.
The information concerning numbered accounts is known only to two or three bank executives. It was therefore these worthies that Prentice cultivated. Many proved intransigent – it is difficult to bribe a wealthy banker – a few succumbed readily to Prentice’s blandishments.
Danzer banked with a relatively small establishment in a side street near Zurich’s railway station. The modest pretensions of the bank had encouraged Prentice: its officials were likely to be paid less than their counterparts in the big banks, and would thus be more resentful of their customers’ wealth.
Prentice’s contact at Danzer’s bank was Hans Weiss. Weiss, plump, middle-aged and embittered, had lost most of the money he earned gambling with currency. He hated Danzer who gambled similarly but successfully.
Prentice met him in a small café frequented by taxi-drivers and printers. It was crowded and noisy and cigarette smoke floated in shafts of sunlight. Weiss was eating a cream cake and drinking chocolate.
Prentice ordered tea. ‘Well?’ he said as Weiss licked a dab of cream from the corner of his mouth.
‘Have you got the money?’
‘If you’ve got what I want.’
‘It’s here.’ Weiss slid his hand inside his jacket. ‘Where’s the money?’ He glanced around the café nervously.
‘The information first please.’
Weiss stared at him speculatively. Prentice was used to the expression; it was frequently assumed when people first became aware of the hardness in his voice. And when they suddenly realised that, beneath his indifferent clothes, his body was just as hard.
A waiter brought the tea. The tea-bag had been placed in the milk at the bottom of the cup. Prentice added boiling water but it made little impression on the tea-bag.
Weiss said: ‘How do I know you’ll give me the money?’
‘You don’t.’
Weiss sipped his chocolate. His hand holding the cup was trembling. Prentice knew he badly needed the money, two thousand dollars jointly funded by the CIA and MI 6.
‘It isn’t fair,’ Weiss finally said.
The remark sounded ludicrous, the words of a schoolboy negotiating a sale of marbles. ‘No one said it was.’ Prentice pushed his cup aside in disgust. ‘The envelope please.’
Reluctantly Weiss handed it over. Prentice glanced at the contents – a photostat of Account No. YT 43 9/8541. The balance in Swiss francs was the equivalent of five hundred thousand dollars. He asked: ‘How can I be sure this is Danzer’s account?’ and would have forgiven Weiss if he had replied: ‘You can’t.’
But Weiss’ mind was on the money. ‘The letter,’ he said.
Folded inside the photostat of the account was a copy of a letter signed by Johann Beyer, the manager of the bank. It assured Karl Danzer of the bank’s best attention at all times and confirmed the number of the account.
Prentice handed over the envelope containing the money. Weiss snatched it from his hand, ruffled the bills inside with his thumb.
Prentice said: ‘Try pa-anga this time.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The currency of the Tonga Islands. A hundred seniti to one pa’anga. If you’re going to speculate you could do worse. But I know what I’d do with that money if I were you.’
‘What would you do?’
‘Put it in a numbered account,’ Prentice said as he stood up and strode out of the café into the sunshine.
* * *
The cable surprised Karl Danzer. They usually telephoned from the Soviet Embassy in Berne to make appointments. A change of policy, perhaps. The coded message instructed him to report to an address on the Limmat Quai at 10 pm that evening.
Walking to work in the crisp morning sunshine, Danzer considered the immediate implications of the cable. A nuisance, nothing more. He had planned to take Helga Keller to dinner, then to bed. Perhaps not such a nuisance …. He would cancel the dinner and still take her to bed, thus avoiding the boredom of answering her ridiculous questions as she gazed at him across the table like a schoolgirl with a crush on a pop star. In bed Danzer found her ardour and inexperience stimulating; soon, he surmised, she would do anything he asked. Except, perhaps, sleep with other men; in that respect, Danzer sensed, she was different to the other girls.
All in all the recruitment of Helga Keller had been a thoroughly worthwhile exercise. Not only was she an assistant in the Investor’s Club where financial advice was dispensed free of charge but, being the daughter of an eminent Zurich banker, she moved in influential circles. Already she was learning to hate the people with whom she mixed. When she described a dinner party thrown by her father, Danzer reminded her of the starving millions in the Third World countries; when she mentioned some million-dollar deal of which she had heard, Danzer painted word pictures of peasants reaping the harvest in Russia and sharing their wages.
In fact Zurich, with its secrecy, complacency and affluence, was the ideal location to seize a young girl’s confused ideals and give them direction.
Danzer turned into the Bahnofstrasse, glancing appreciatively at the shops filled with gold, jewels, watches and cream cakes. He was really managing his life exceedingly well. He lived well but without excess; he was trusted by his mentors in Moscow; he was accepted at Bilderberg and had been given to understand that he would be invited again; he had salted away enough money to ensure an early retirement, in South America perhaps.
He entered his business premises, discreetly imposing with a brass nameplate and a small, marbled foyer, listened for a moment to the gabble emanating from the room where his staff juggled with telephones and currencies, and entered his own oak-panelled office where his secretary awaited him with the day’s business attached to a clip-board under her arm.
The secretary, middle-aged and homely, knew a considerable amount about the affairs of Danzer Associates. What she didn’t know was that a sizeable proportion of the profits were creamed off into the hard-currency reserves of the Soviet Union; nor did she know that a percentage was also channelled into the secret coffers of Karl Danzer.
The day progressed predictably. Danzer’s sense of well-being swelled as a small fortune was made out of the wobbling dollar and the rock-hard German mark. He took a light lunch and, in mid-afternoon, a sauna.
In the evening he retired to his apartment to change. He had a couple of drinks and set off for the address on the Limmat Quai, blissfully unaware that his euphoria was about to be terminated for ever.
He wondered without any particular concern why the KGB wanted to see him. A development, perhaps, from the information – admittedly sparse – that he had gathered from Bilderberg … a lead on the American team of financiers who had just arrived in Zurich … a progress report on his latest recruit, Helga Keller ….
He stopped outside the guildhouse named in the cable. The moon shone fleetingly from the low clouds that had detached themselves from the mountain peaks to sweep across the lake. From the shadows came a voice: ‘Herr Danzer?’
