Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

She showered and examined her body in the mirror. She was slimmer, no doubt about it. She thought about Prentice and smiled; it was extraordinary how sensual their love-making had become. Her only criticism was its infrequency. But that would soon be remedied; they had a lot of catching-up to do.

She dressed quickly. Then checked in her handbag to make sure that the message she had dispatched to Mayard on the Telex the previous evening was there. The message would be on the machine in the newspaper office now waiting for him when he got to work.

She went downstairs, crossed the darkened gardens and climbed into her grey Renault 18.

Ten minutes later she was on the auto-route to Paris. Traffic was light and she drove at a steady 60 mph.

Thirty-six hours… but hazards were materialising. First the shooting which raised the possibility that the gunman was contemplating a mass killing.

Now the discovery that Nicholas Foster knew the number of the account in Zurich and suspected a conspiracy.

Anderson had acted with his usual authority. When he was checking out the village, he had come across the derelict building in the main street; in the rear was an outhouse that had been used to store vegetables; the owner was in the south of France.

Anticipation, Helga thought, was the key to success in such operations. The hallmark of the professional.

Anderson, who knew all the tricks, had also taken the precaution of driving around the countryside for fifteen minutes to give Foster the impression that he was several miles away.

But Anderson didn’t think Foster was the gunman. He was patently what he claimed to be, a journalist and a remarkably enterprising one.

Helga Keller had reached the outskirts of Paris. It was still dark but the city was waking. She imagined she could smell baking bread and coffee. She had enjoyed Paris in an introspective sort of way; but for her it had been a retreat. Difficult to believe now that she had dismissed the stories of tyrannical abuse of power in Communist countries as Western propaganda. Would she have treated the banishment of Andrei Sakharov to Gorky, the invasion of Afghanistan, similarly?

Not that she now believed totally in the political structures of the West. How could anyone accept a system that allowed such men as Pierre Brossard and Paul Kingdon to prosper? The point was that you had to equate one system against the other.

One day, perhaps, the equation would be solved. She had made her contribution towards its eventual solution; the time had come to take her just rewards and start being a woman.

She looked back at her ideals with affection but without sentiment.

She took the east fork of the Autoroute de Sud and drove onto the periphique, the great roaring highway that encircles Paris. Already, as the first greenish light of dawn began to glow on the skyline, the traffic was building up. She left the highway at the Porte de Vincennes and five minutes later pulled up outside a café optimistically called Le Gourmet.

A tattered awning hung outside and the grimy windows were covered with steam. Most of the customers sitting at the plastic-topped tables looked as though they had been there all night. One or two were asleep, heads resting on their folded arms.

The bearded shop assistant was sitting in one corner eating a croissant and drinking coffee. When she sat down opposite him it was exactly 7 am.

She ordered a black coffee from the unshaven proprietor. When he had placed it in front of her, coffee spilling into the saucer, she spoke quietly and urgently to the bearded man for several minutes.

Then she passed him a top copy and carbon of the Telex message she had sent to Mayard, concealed inside the pages of the previous day’s Le Monde.

Less than two hours later she was back at the Château Saint-Pierre.

At eight o’clock that morning, while Helga Keller was on her way back from Paris, a telephonist at the château dealt with an incoming call that destroyed the illusions of any Bilderbergers who thought the shooting might have been an isolated incident.

She plugged into the call and said, ‘Good morning, Château Saint-Pierre. Can I help you?’

A man’s voice said: ‘Do you have a pencil and paper?’

‘ Oui , m’sieur. Do you wish me to take a message?’ The girl picked up the stub of a pencil and waited.

‘Take this down.’ The voice was gruff as though, she later realised, he was trying to disguise it. ‘By tonight…. Have you got that?’

‘Oui, m’sieur .’

‘By tonight they will all be dead.’

‘I’m not sure….’

‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes, but….’

The line went dead.

The girl stared at what she had written for a moment, then ran to reception. She was ushered into Gaudin’s office.

Gaudin, who was enjoying his first coffee of the morning, stared at the message.

‘When did you receive this?’

‘Just now.’

Gaudin shook his head wearily. To think that he had regarded the decision of the steering committee of Bilderberg to stay at the château as the greatest accolade of his career.

He told the girl to sit down and called Inspector Moitry and Anderson.

Anderson studied the note, then handed it to Moitry who looked at it and said: ‘We have to treat it seriously.’

Anderson said: ‘I agree. But short of evacuating the place, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do. What is this guy going to do? Drop an atom bomb?’

Moitry spoke to the girl.

‘Was it a local call?’

‘I think so but I can’t be sure. It sounded very clear.’

‘Was he a Frenchman?’

‘I don’t know. He said very little and his voice sounded… strange.’

Anderson thanked her. Moitry told her to get back to the switchboard. ‘If you get another call like that try and keep him speaking and call Monsieur Gaudin. Tell the other girls.’

Gaudin said: ‘Forgive me asking, gentlemen, but have you made any progress?’

Moitry said: ‘I think you should address your question to my colleague here.’ Anderson didn’t blame him.

He told Gaudin: ‘We have a few fingerprints on the photostats we found in the church. We checked them out in Paris and came up with something very odd. The prints belonged to a man with a criminal record. He was a political agitator but small-time.’

Gaudin looked at Anderson expectantly. ‘So you think he’s here?’

Anderson shook his head. ‘He died in 1974. His name was Georges Bertier. So our assassin is not only crazy, he’s a magician… as you probably know, no two people have the same finger-prints. Or so it was always believed.’

Gaudin turned to Moitry. ‘What do you think, Inspector?’

Moitry, who was by now happy to have as little connection with a possible massacre as possible, said: ‘I don’t think anything. Monsieur Anderson is in charge of thinking.’

‘What about this man Anello?’ Gaudin asked. ‘I understand he’s disappeared.’

‘He’s in Paris.’ Anderson lied with conviction. ‘I checked him out there. He and Mrs Jerome quarrelled and he took off.’

‘So what now?’

‘God knows. One faint hope is that the priest may be able to help when he regains consciousness. He may be able to tell us who could have had access to the church. We’re also double-checking on members of your staff who live in the village.’

‘You did that weeks ago,’ Gaudin reminded him.

‘Sure, and they were all clean. But I don’t believe the guy we’re looking for has a criminal record. He’s a freak, a weirdo.’

When they had gone Gaudin sipped the remains of his coffee. It was cold. Grimacing, he picked up the telephone and asked the telephonist to call Room Service and order some more. He also asked the girl to locate Nicholas Foster and send him to the office because he was late reporting for duty.