Eric Ambler: Siege at the Villa Lipp

If Krom is still reluctant to risk his precious reputation by disclosing in their proper perspective those facts which are known to him, but which he finds inconvenient, then I must do the job myself. Perhaps, too, Connell and Henson will be prompted by their integrity as scholars, to say nothing of common decency, to back me up. If they are not so prompted, well, for once, my own welfare and that of men of more conventional goodwill may be promoted together. For once, it is in nearly everyone’s interests that a whole truth be generally known.

The house-phone buzzed.

‘Paul?’ It was Yves.

‘We have complications,’ he said. ‘Dr Connell has protested at my taking his tape-recorder from him. Said that he had had no intention of using it without permission, and insists that taping is his normal way of setting down case notes. Would be lost without it. Pointed out that he had carried it openly, and after obtaining Krom’s reluctantly-given permission to do so.’

‘What did you decide?’

‘To let him have it, conditionally, because we might find it useful too, if you see what I mean.’

‘I think so. What conditions?’

‘I said that it would be placed in his room and must remain there. He could use it, but no voice tracks were to be made other than his own. I can easily wipe anything we find objectionable later on. Meanwhile, I’ll check it out for added circuits.’

‘Okay. Now, what about Dr Henson’s shoulder bag?’

‘Paul, that is far more serious. The heavy object you observed turned out to be one of those plastic cases which women use now when travelling to carry cosmetics in small quantities. They are fitted with leak-proof bottles and little jars to save weight.’

‘Then why was it heavy?’

‘Because of an arrangement of objects packed in the cavity below the main tray. They included a camera.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! What kind?’

‘Special job, but based, I think, on a body belonging to that small underwater Nikon. Among the accessories with it we have green and infra-red filters and two lenses, one a close-up. A very classy outfit. Must have cost a fortune.’

‘What did Dr Henson have to say for herself?’

‘What one would expect, I suppose. No intention of using it without permission. Indignant when reminded that you had made a point of disallowing cameras in the protocol she signed. Hit back. Tape-recorders were also verboten. Connell was carrying one. Were we going to make an equal fuss about that?’

‘How did Krom and Connell react to all this?’

Yves sound surprised. ‘Oh, they weren’t present. I saw each separately.’ He paused. ‘But, Paul, she had more than just the camera stuff in that compartment.’

‘Not a gun, I hope.’

‘No, something perhaps a little more dangerous. A small aerosol spray. It had a printed label saying that it was a nail-varnish remover.’

‘Which you didn’t believe.’

‘The nail-varnish remover that the women I know normally use comes in bottles, not aerosols. The label didn’t look right either.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I asked her to show me how it worked on one of her fingernails.’

‘And?’

‘Refused. Why should she spoil a perfectly good manicure for my amusement?’

‘But you weren’t impressed.’

‘Paul, she doesn’t have a perfectly good manicure. I think the aerosol’s loaded with that Swedish chemical they are using these days for examining suspect documents like forged cheques, the stuff that reacts with amino acids to bring up latent fingerprints on paper so you can photograph them. They come up purple. Hence the green filter for the close-up lens.’

‘Hence also the fact that she wouldn’t spray it on her fingers. The stuff is called ninhydrin and it’s highly poisonous, even in solution. Someone must have warned her.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. The whole compartment, the whole kit, looks as if it had been thought out and packed in a lab by some police or other intelligence-gathering outfit, for use in the field.’

I sighed. ‘How about Krom? Anything up his sleeves? Radio bleepers? Poisoned darts?’

‘No, he was clean. I’ve got the key of their car, I’m going down now to drive it up.’

He would also search the baggage thoroughly after it had been taken up to their rooms.

‘Where are they now?’

‘Melanie’s giving them soothing drinks.’

‘Let me know when you’ve cleared the baggage. I’ll go down then and introduce myself to our guests.’

With characteristic politeness he had refrained from commenting on the crass absurdity of the words I had just uttered.

There would be no need at all for me to introduce myself to Professor Krom.

Unfortunately, he and I had already met — and more than once.

That was the cause of the whole trouble.

I can still hear him pronouncing what could have been my death sentence, as well as his own.

‘You were too kind, Mr Firman. In future, when one of your employees is called to meet his Maker, I strongly advise you to send no flowers.’

That is what he actually said, not what he now claims that he said. At the time there was none of that rubbish about exploding flowers and blast areas; and the word ‘guilt’ was certainly not used, ‘smilingly’ or in any other way.

What guilt, anyway? Only an idiot would attribute a sense of guilt in this case to me.

I am not the defendant.

I am the plaintiff.

Professor Krom’s account of the events I am describing differs radically from mine; and it does so, I believe, chiefly because his was written while he was still too disturbed by his experiences at the Villa Lipp to think clearly. He is, after all, an elderly man unaccustomed to explosions. It is likely that, in all important respects, my account is the more balanced of the two.

That said, however, his initial achievement remains and should be recognized for what it is: a triumph of chance over all reasonable probabilities and, from his point of view at any rate, evidence that some of his theories may ultimately be capable of proof. His single-minded professional persistence aided by a photographic memory produced a moment at which two apparently dissimilar persons seen in totally different and unrelated contexts were suddenly identified as one and the same.

I was the person thus identified, and news of the identification had been given to me two months earlier during one of the tax-haven seminars organized by Symposia S.A.

The place was Brussels.

That much admitted, the record may now be wiped clean of some of the mud with which it has been so freely bespattered. I wish to state categorically that neither the Symposia group of companies — specifically: Symposia AG, Symposia SA, Symposia NV and Symposia (Bermuda) Ltd — nor its connected consultative body, the Institute for International Investment and Trust Counselling, are in any country or in any way contravening or subverting established law. Not even our keenest competitors in the field of trust counselling have, however eager they may have been to take advantage of Krom’s so-called ‘revelations’, dared to suggest otherwise. The idea is preposterous; and anyone who still doubts this has only to look at the long list of those bankers, trust officers, international lawyers and tax accountants who attended the April seminar, and at the names, all famous in the international business world, of the experts they came to hear. Men of that calibre understand and respect the law. The last thing they wish to do is to consort with criminals.

The subject of that particular seminar was of fairly general interest, a survey of the various pieces of anti-avoidance legislation currently being introduced by some ill-natured western governments, and the number of registrants was high. There were one hundred and twenty-three of them; and anyone foolish enough to suppose that organizing such affairs is in itself a road to riches may like to know that Symposia’s net reward for that week’s work was a mere twenty thousand dollars. Nobody can say that that part of the tax-avoidance business yields high profits. Without its fringe benefits the game would simply not be worth playing. Through organizing these affairs we get to know people and we get to know things.