Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

Claire Jerome walked in the gardens.

The air was chill but she didn’t notice it. She hadn’t eaten and her head ached.

She had paid off Tilmissan and Brossard; she was negotiating payment of the ransom money. A fortune disposed of in a few days.

But it wasn’t money that she was thinking about. She wanted Pete Anello beside her. That was all she wanted, all she had ever wanted since she met him.

She ached for him.

She leaned on the wall of the water-gardens and stared down. Fat carp moved lazily in the mossy depths.

Supposing he was implicated in the plot. If he returned to her, she would never question him. So much for pride. There had been too much of that in her life: it could shrivel your soul.

She walked back to the château, past the maze and the fountains. In the lobby, detectives wearing earphones were searching for bombs with portable detectors that reacted to explosive vapours and the tick of timing devices. The Press had been banned from the building and the grounds.

She collected her key and went up to her room.

On the table was a vase of daffodils and narcissi arranged with maiden-hair fern. An envelope was propped against the vase.

She ripped it open. It was Pete Anello’s hand-writing. She felt faint and sat down.

Dear Claire,

I am being held by a group called LAW – the League against Weapons. They say that they will release me on condition that you resign from all companies connected with the manufacture and sale of arms.

They insist that you make a public announcement in the media to this effect. The announcement must also urge:

(1) resumption of arms-control talks with the Soviet Union

(2) a total ban on the manufacture of sophisticated weapons of horror, such as the concussion bomb.

These people are not, I can assure you, freaks. They plan to pressurise arms dealers both outside and inside the Communist blocs.

Nor are they so naive that they expect your announcement to have any immediate effect. But, they say, it is a beginning.

As soon as your announcement is published I will be set free. The decision is yours.

P.S. I can’t help wondering if the gun pointing at my head at the moment is one of yours.

A wave of joy swept through her. He was alive.

Beside her the telephone rang.

‘Mrs Jerome?’ The same woman’s voice.

‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Did you receive the note with the flowers?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Act on it, Mrs Jerome. For your own sake act on it.’

The line went dead.

Claire Jerome picked up the note. The P.S. was pure Anello. She smiled.

When the first wave of euphoria had passed, the problems began to present themselves.

She could hardly quit the armaments business and continue directing the other businesses. Marks International was armaments and it was the cornerstone of the whole empire.

Furthermore, what would happen to her father if she resigned?

But she had to obey the instructions in the note; of that there was no doubt. She picked up the telephone and called Stephen Harsch in New York.

Over there it was mid-morning. Harsch sounded surprised to hear from her. ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘how’s it going?’

Cutting through all such niceties, Claire said: ‘I’m quitting, Stephen. Provided you agree with a few formalities you are, as from now, No. 2 at Marks International, which as you and the rest of the world knows means in effect No. 1.’

A long pause. Claire pictured Harsch staring at the telephone in his hand and wondering, because humour wasn’t his strong point, whether she was joking, a frown on his tight, watchful features.

Finally he said: ‘Are you kidding, Claire?’

‘I want you to listen, Stephen. Tape what I’m saying.’ As if he wasn’t doing so already. ‘I’m quitting on one condition – that you make provision for my father. He stays as President, right?’

‘Sure, but—’

‘I want you to sign an affidavit to that effect and I want you to promise me right now that you’ll carry him whenever he gets a little lost…. It won’t be for long, Stephen,’ Claire said, ‘we both know that.’

‘Why, Claire?’

‘Private reasons. I’m going to issue a Press release the usual way through Hartman and Wilson. Your appointment will have to go to the board, of course. But you won’t have any trouble there; you’re the right guy for the job. My father thinks so, even I think so.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Harsch said.

‘You don’t have to. One more thing, Stephen…. Has that deal with the Pakistanis gone through?’

‘The one you made on the side? Sure it has. The stuff’s on its way to the East Coast now.’

‘Thank God.’

‘Does it matter so much?’

‘My last deal with Marks International. Of course it matters. And Stephen…. Don’t try too hard.’

It took her half an hour to compose a Press release which she telephoned to an executive of the PR firm of Hartman and Wilson, who was so astonished that he asked permission to call her back and confirm it.

Two more formalities remained. To instruct the switchboard not to put any Press calls through to her – and to tell her father what she’d done.

It was a long time before Nathan Marks understood. When he did his thin old voice was incredulous. ‘You’re leaving me in charge? Are you out of your mind, Claire?’ ‘No, papa. I’ll explain when I get back to New York.’

‘But I can’t carry it without you, Claire, You know that.’

She imagined his small, hunched body clad in the old dressing-gown sitting in the chair in front of the television. She knew that he was frightened;’ that this was one set-back that he couldn’t turn to his advantage.

She tried to comfort him. Told him that he would have Harsch behind him and that she would always be close at hand.

Perhaps, she thought, she should persuade him to retire with her, but he answered her thoughts: ‘Okay, okay, so maybe I can handle it. But why, Claire. Why?’

‘Because it’s time for me to get out, papa.’

‘Tell me something, is it hot out there? Are you suffering from the heat, Claire?’ She could hear his rapid, bird-like breaths. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘No, papa, I’m not out of my mind. Everything is going to be fine, I promise you. Now I have to go. Turn up the television again. Is it Citizen Kane?’ And when he said it was: ‘Take care, papa, take care….’

So it had been as easy as that. A few phone calls and all that endeavour, that crusade begun when only men reigned in the kingdoms of industry, was terminated.

But she felt elated, and it was only later that evening that she found herself wondering whether Pete Anello had known about the demand for $5 million when he wrote the note.

Just before 6 pm that evening Pierre Brossard received a telephone call in his room. The President of France requested his presence in his suite on a matter of vital importance.

A request was a command. Brossard wished he hadn’t drunk so much. He tried to get in touch with Hildegard Metz but she wasn’t in her room.

He managed to slip the jacket of his suit over his shoulders, then, swaying slightly, made his way down the corridor towards the elevators.

When Brossard was safely inside the elevator, Nicholas Foster made his way to his room and opened the door with the pass-key. The Telex message: every journalistic instinct told him that was the key to the mystery.

Brossard’s briefcase was beside the bed. And it was unlocked. He was rifling the compartments when he heard a key slide into the doorlock.

There was the tape, no time for the sheets of copy. In one movement he removed the tape, slipped it into his jacket pocket and closed the briefcase. As Hildegard Metz walked into the room.