Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

‘What was that all about?’ Foster asked.

‘You got yourself a story,’ Anderson said. ‘Trouble is you’ve just blown it,’ as he drew a .32 Cobra pistol from his shoulder holster and pointed it at Foster’s head.

They told Foster to walk in front of them and head for the car-park. If he met anyone he knew, he was to acknowledge them politely and keep walking.

Anderson slipped the pistol into his jacket pocket. ‘Try anything and you lose your head.’

Behind him Foster heard them talking in whispers. The rapport between the black security officer and the professor of economics baffled him.

Wasn’t Prentice connected with Paul Kingdon in some way?

Intuitively Foster knew that he wasn’t being taken to the French police. What he had told Anderson had changed everything. In particular the numbered account in Zurich.

Half way between the annexe and the car-park they met Suzy Okana.

She smiled at him. ‘I was just coming to see you.’ She ran towards him. ‘I’ve just left Kingdon.’

‘Good evening, Suzy,’ he said.

‘Nicholas, it’s me!’

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t got time to talk at the moment.’

She stopped. She looked as though he had hit her across the face with the back of his hand.

‘Nicholas….’

‘Some other time, Suzy.’

He walked on. He thought it was the worst moment of his life.

Prentice climbed into the driving seat of the Chevrolet.

Anderson opened the rear door, prodded the gun through the cloth of his jacket and said: ‘Get in.’ He sat in the back beside Foster.

The Chev took off without lights. At the gates Anderson lowered the rear window and spoke to the gendarmes. They opened the gates.

The Chev accelerated down the lane, its headlights suddenly carving light in the darkness.

Anderson said: ‘Now lie on the floor face down.’

‘But—’

‘Move it.’

Foster calculated that they had been driving for about fifteen minutes when the car stopped. Prentice climbed out and opened the boot. He handed Anderson a rag through the window.

Anderson tied the rag round Foster’s eyes. It smelled of oil and petrol.

‘Okay,’ Anderson said, ‘now get out.’ He prodded the barrel of the pistol in Foster’s back.

Foster heard a key turn in a lock. Anderson pushed him forward. Foster smelled rotting vegetables.

Anderson said to Prentice: ‘Put the blanket down there, George.’

Foster said: ‘Do you mind telling me what the hell’s going on?’

Prentice said: ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you.’

‘The fact is,’ Anderson said, ‘you’re too smart. We under-rated you.’ He whispered to Prentice, then said: ‘Okay, now take your jacket off and lie down.’

Foster felt the needle of the syringe slip almost painlessly into the vein on the inside of his arm. His last conscious thought was about Suzy. And how he had hurt her.

Then nothing.

Suzy Okana stood for a moment watching the retreating figure of Foster, followed by the black security officer and another man in a leather-elbowed sports jacket.

At first she couldn’t comprehend what had happened. Nicholas, who a few hours earlier had been kissing her, understanding, had walked past her as though she were an overnight whore he wanted to forget.

But had he understood? Why should he? It was a dreary and sordid story. But I had to tell him. We had to begin with honesty. Perhaps even then he had only wanted to get away from her. To escape without fuss.

She began to walk towards the gates. Strips of light shining through slits in the curtains made zebra-skin patterns on the grass.

How could he behave so cruelly? It wasn’t in his nature. But it happened, Suzy Okana.

Ahead of her, an American limousine with its lights doused sped down the gravel drive. It stopped at the gates; then the headlights came on as it accelerated in the direction of the village.

Suzy walked slowly along the lane between the hedgerows, so high in places that they formed a tunnel in the night. A few hours of hope, that was all she had been allowed. And somehow in the previous years she had always known that it might happen like this: that what she had been doing then might erase her one chance.

But her way of life had been predestined. Just like her meeting with Nicholas. There was a pattern and you conformed and she would return to the regular symmetry of that pattern, and one day she would marry a rich man and never again would she come alive.

She went up the stairs to her room in the inn. In the morning she would pack and return to London, because she never again wanted to meet Nicholas Foster. First she would call Paul Kingdon; perhaps she would settle down with him; perhaps it was written.

She went to the window to close the curtains and noticed the American limousine parked down the street. She pulled the curtains, undressed and climbed into bed.

Once in the melting moments before sleep, she called out Nicholas’s name. Then she slept unaware that, three doors away, he lay unconscious on a car blanket, his jacket draped over his chest to keep him warm.

Because of the presence of the French President, dinner that evening was more of a banquet.

The château specialised in recreating great meals from the past. Tonight it was the Dinner of the Three Emperors, served at the Café Anglais on June 7th, 1867, to guests including the Czar of Russia, Alexander II, the Czarevich who became Alexander III and the King of Prussia, later Emperor William I.

Among the courses: hot quail paté , lobster à la parisienne, canapes of duckling, aubergines à l’espagnole, iced bombe and fruit The wines were chosen to correspond as closely as possible to the originals – Château-Yquem 1847, Château-Latour, 1847, Château-Lafite, 1848….

But there were no speeches. There had been enough of those for one day.

The President sat between the former Secretary of State and Bilderberg’s Honorary Secretary General for Europe. Also at their table were the Austrian Finance Minister, the German Chancellor, the Icelandic Prime Minister, the Foreign Ministers of Ireland and Portugal and a member of the British Labour Party’s Shadow Cabinet.

The tubby American statesman ate frugally, the slender French President tucked in with enthusiasm.

Observing the Frenchman demolish his iced bombe , the American said: ‘Mr President, you must let me into your secret. How do you contrive to eat with such obvious relish and at the same time retain your figure?’

The President considered the question. He was due to leave the château after the cocktail party the following evening. After the shooting he had been urged to leave earlier. He had refused because it was undignified to run away and, if he took notice of every threat on his life, he would spend the rest of his term of office taking evasive action. The shooting, however, had affected him more than he cared to admit. No-one seemed to have noticed it, but he and Pierre Brossard did look uncommonly alike.

He sipped his wine and took his time about answering the American. Then he smiled and said: ‘As a matter of fact I normally eat very little. But I am a Frenchman and I do enjoy my food. And, you see, there is a possibility that this could be our last dinner. Bon appetit, my friend.’ He finished his glass of wine and turned his attention to the fruit.

April 23rd. The last full day of the conference.

Helga Keller’s travelling alarm clock awoke her at 4.30 am. Thirty-six hours before they would know if they had pulled the coup off.

But a more immediate deadline was 7 am. That was the time she had to be in Paris.