Derek Lambert: I, Said the Spy

‘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.