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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 (#ulink_ece640af-27cb-52c1-9d43-cc7e3bc010d7)
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.
After a few minutes it began to heat up inside the car. Prentice longed for a glass of orange juice followed by a mug of hot black coffee. If he felt like that, what would Anderson feel like when he woke up?
He had told Anderson that he would be driving to Berne early in the morning, usual contact number. But his true destination had been decided by Danzer speaking from his bugged apartment.
‘Let’s go to the chalet tomorrow.’
‘That would be lovely, darling.’
‘I’ve got a few things to do in town. Perhaps you could go on ahead and get the place warmed up.’
‘Put the champagne on ice?’
Stupid bitch!
‘And slip into something exotic ….’
‘Mmmmmmm.’
‘I’ll be a little late. The last cable car probably.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
Seeing the face of Annette du Pont, Prentice had switched off the radio.
Headlights swooped along the highway. He could see the silhouettes of the mountains clearly now, rimmed with pale green light. He took the exit to the left and parked the BMW in the driveway of the rented house. He drove the Alfasud out, substituting the BMW.
Then he went upstairs, drank a glass of orange juice as though he had just staggered out of the desert, made coffee and sat in front of the picture window to watch the dawn flushing the mountains.
He sipped his coffee. The snow was beginning to fall more thickly. He wondered what it would be like by dusk.
* * *
Anderson finally got out of bed at 11.30.
His head ached and he felt sick; it was a long time since he had drunk so much whisky. Prentice, of course, had risen bright and early and gone about his business without an ache in his body. Well, Prentice wasn’t human; thank God they could split up now.
Anderson wandered into the bathroom, dropped a couple of Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and watched them fizz. He tossed back the drink and stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee. Unwashed plates were piled in the sink. No more bubble-and-squeak, Anderson thought. Never.
He took his coffee into the living-room, drew the drapes and stared with disgust at the empty, whisky-smelling glasses. Later, he decided, he would call Washington, then in a couple of days drive to Knokke in Belgium to begin the preliminary checks for Bilderberg.
As soon as he learned the subjects for debate – probably as deceptively dreary as they had been at Woodstock – he would be able to brief Danzer about his leaks to the Kremlin.
Anderson wondered how long they could keep that up. Two or three years maybe if the mixture fed to Moscow was finely balanced, i.e. equal parts of harmless truth and misleading fiction. Finally, of course, the KGB would tumble what was happening …. Danzer was not a good risk for a life assurance policy.
But the information Danzer had provided, blended with the intelligence supplied by Oleg Lyalin, had been dynamite. Trust the British to expel the Soviet diplomats in London. A gunboat in Kensington! Unpredictable as always. Anderson had never believed that the British had been as naive as it seemed with traitors such as Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean; he believed that, like Karl Werner Danzer, they had been used for misinformation. One day, he supposed, all the others – men like Anthony Blunt – would come crawling out of the woodwork; and even when they did, the British would keep up the deception.
George Prentice, Anderson thought, was a classic of Anglo-Saxon unpredictability and deviousness.
The philosophising intensified Anderson’s headache. He went back to the kitchen and fried some eggs and bacon. He stared at the sizzling food for a few moments, then poured the contents of the frying pan into the garbage bucket.
* * *
At the same time that Anderson was disposing of his brunch, Helga Keller was driving her grey beetle Volkswagen out of the drive of her father’s house. She had called the Investors’ Club and told them she was sick.
As she drove through the streets of Zurich, watching the snow peel off the bonnet of the car, she sang to herself. She had with her information that she thought would please Karl – a photostat of the guest list for the April meeting of Bilderberg borrowed, from the American banker. Karl’s name was on it.
After they had drunk champagne and eaten and made love, she would broach the subject that had been on her mind for weeks. She wanted to go to Russia, to see for herself the picture gallery that he had painted in her mind.
Ah, love and shared ideals. I’m so lucky, she sang to herself, as she turned off the autobahn and drove through the swirling snow towards the ski-resort.
From the picture window Prentice could just see the road. He saw the Volkswagen pass by the end of the drive. He glanced at his watch. 1.30. He would give it another three hours.
Anderson showered, shaved and dressed slowly. He could think of only one course of action that might revive him. He picked up the telephone and called a girl named Rita Geiser, whom he had met filling in the Christmas vacation from university at a toy store on the Bahnhofstrasse. The children had been absorbed with the excellent German and Swiss mechanical toys on her counter, and there had been no shortage of fathers accompanying them because she was very well built and her blouse was cut unseasonably low.
Yes, she said, she would be delighted to have dinner with him and, yes, it would be a good idea to have a few drinks at his apartment first. Anderson began to clean up the apartment, moving like an automaton, keenly anticipating the period between drinks and dinner.
His thoughts wandered as desultorily as his movements. When had Prentice received the summons to Berne? Certainly not last night; well, not as far as he could remember ….
