Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

Danby shook his head. No, that was crazy. And yet Anderson was a level-headed agent who had weathered the storm when he had been under investigation, apparently without rancour.

Danby had sympathised with Anderson; the self-righteous patriots were hell-bent on destroying their own country’s defences. Nor had he been surprised when Anderson asked to be relieved of the Bilderberg assignment: Danby fully expected his resignation from the Agency to follow.

Who could blame him?

In fact Danby had also decided to quit. But he wanted an honourable discharge, not a resignation forced upon him by a debacle at Bilderberg.

He glanced at the clock on the wall of his office. It was 10.15 am, mid-afternoon in France. Another twenty-four hours until the conference broke up.

Danby asked his secretary to bring him another cup of coffee. Then he called the President of the United States because, irrespective of whether he was campaigning to remain in office, it was necessary to inform him about the threat to the government-outside-the-govemment.

In addition to Mayard, one other person tried to contact Brossard that day, a man named Yuri Shilkov, a second secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Paris.

Shilkov contemplated driving to the Château Saint-Pierre. But what chance did a Russian have of being admitted to Bilderberg? As much chance as an American being admitted to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union!

Instead he telephoned and Telexed Brossard. Both messages were intercepted by Helga Keller.

On the telephone she told Shilkov that Brossard had confirmed to her orally that he had cancelled his column. She also said that Brossard was in a deep, drug-induced sleep from which he could not be awoken.

Which was true because she had dissolved three barbiturate tablets in his after-lunch coffee.

At 3.30 pm George Prentice sat at a desk in his room putting the final touches to the speech he was shortly to deliver.

But his concentration was impaired by the knowledge that, provided a madman didn’t find some way of liquidating the nucleus of the Establishment, he would soon be a millionaire.

He shuffled the papers in front of him. In a way the speech was his credo. The crystallisation of what he had learned from his professional life.

He was not against the Capitalist system. Far from it – as his address would avow. The delegates would doubtless listen with the soporific detachment reserved for speakers such as himself, invited for the sake of the Bilderberg image.

Until his closing remarks – the last paragraph on the last sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him. George Prentice smiled to himself as he imagined the impact those last few sentences would have.

‘I rise in our defence.’

‘Listen,’ said Foster as the spool of the tape-recorder whirred, ‘that must be Prentice.’

‘Is it?’ Suzy pressed her almost naked body against his. He could feel the small breasts against his chest, the hardness of her nipples.

‘I’m trying to concentrate,’ Foster told her.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s important.’

‘But it’s being taped.’

Foster didn’t reply. If they hadn’t been bound hand and foot by steel bands he would have left Prentice to the tape.

‘Nicholas Foster, you’re a hypocrite,’ Suzy said.

‘And a liar!’

She kissed him, and for a few moments he lost the trend of what Prentice was saying.

‘Not merely in the defence of Bilderberg,’ Prentice said, ‘but in the defence of Capitalism.’

The delegates sitting at oak tables arrayed in front of the lectern, regarded him with ill-disguised boredom, their faces as expressionless as those of the ancestral portraits on the walls. The rain which had thinned to a drizzle, trickled down the windows overlooking the gardens.

‘And in the defence of Communism.’

Those delegates who had heard him frowned. The grizzled features of the German industrialist who had just been appointed chairman contorted in dismay, and his hand reached for the button which lit the red light signifying that a speaker had consumed his allotment of time.

‘You,’ nodding towards the Bilderbergers, ‘have all endured your share of criticism because you have committed the crime of acquiring riches either by inheritance or endeavour. Few of those who attack you have ever paused to consider the employment you have created or the enrichment which your products have given to the deprived.’

The chairman’s hand withdrew from the button.

‘Few who indict our system have ever paused to consider the alternatives. Blinded by the zealot’s barb, they ignore the repression and the erosion of human dignity that has always accompanied the practical application of Marxist ideals.’

A few delegates nodded. Most of them looked puzzled: hardly a defence of Communism.

‘I believe that the majority of those assembled here today go about their business honourably and for the benefit of our Society. There are, of course, exceptions such as those who, in the guise of philanthropists, persuade the relatively poor to invest in their enterprises; in these exceptions the only beneficiary is the benefactor.’

Paul Kingdon stared at him coldly and said: ‘May I suggest that the speaker gets to the point.’

‘I am about to. I am suggesting that we have reached a watershed in history. I am suggesting that the future of this small globe of ours is as bright as any star in the firmament.’

He raised his hand as though warding off objections to such an unfashionable philosophy.

‘I said I would also defend Communism. By that I meant its origins and ideals. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Working men of all countries , unite! I don’t have to tell you that I am quoting from the Communist Manifesto. And could any of you here today really say that there was anything reprehensible about such a rallying cry at the time it was made?’

No-one spoke. The chairman glanced at the clock on the wall.

‘The point is that from the extremes of their conceptions both ideologies have been set on course to meet at the apex of a triangle, of which the base was – was, I remind you – inequality and injustice. That meeting is imminent. And that meeting, to quote your parlance gentlemen, will be a merger.’

Paul Kingdon stood up, bowed to the chairman and said: ‘I’m afraid I cannot listen to any more of this drivel, Mr Chairman.’ He walked out of the conference chamber.

Prentice went on: ‘The evidence is all around us. In the West the trade union members – the true Socialists – are beginning to realise that militancy preached by some of their leaders leads only to self-deprivation. Instead, the enlightened are now choosing to accept the benefits of profit sharing.

‘Within the Communist bloc a measure of free enterprise is now permitted. And we have witnessed the visit of a Pope to a Communist country. The Soviet Union has traded with the West and the control of arms has been discussed.’

Prentice held up one hand, anticipating objections. ‘We all know that detente has apparently taken a battering over the past few months. It had to happen – two heavyweight pugilists do not fall into each other’s arms – and it is surely all to the good. The United States has realised that it must be seen to be strong: the Soviet Union has realised that there is a limit to appeasement in the West.

‘Detente, gentlemen, is far from dead but the merger needs a catalyst. It is just possible that we have such an instrument because we have an energy crisis. I said a watershed: a drought might have been more appropriate. Not so long ago, in terms of evolution, Man made a grave mistake: he struck oil and decided that it was his lifeblood. If he had raised his eyes to the heavens and looked at the sun, as his primitive ancestors once did, he might have perceived that salvation lay not beneath the soil but in the sun. I believe that the sun was always intended to be our source of energy and that within a hundred years it will have been harnessed.