FROM THEODORE CARTER
transcribed dictation tape
The reason that Dr Bruchner was unable to reach me by phone that Friday night was that I was in the process of being kidnapped at the time.
With that in mind, Mr L, I know you won’t be too disappointed when I tell you that your thrilling account of the Herr Doktor’s heroic bargaining sessions with big, bad Bank Schwob doesn’t exactly move me to tears. The same goes for the subsequent handwringing and soul-searching episodes. If the purblind idiot had had the elementary good sense – to say nothing of the decency – to tell me at the time about that crazy bidding for the shares, I would have told him what was happening at my end. Between us we might have made sense of all those goings-on and maybe stopped the horseplay before anyone got hurt. But no.
‘Carter was in an excited state and at times barely coherent.’
Wrong on two counts, Mr L. I merely used some idiomatic English that he didn’t understand. I was not in the least excited; what happened was that his stupidity finally made me hopping mad. When I phoned him that Wednesday morning, you see, I had just received another memorandum from Mr bloody Bloch and another SESAME bulletin, and I was worried sick. If you’d been in the spot I was in you’d have been worried, too, believe me.
I have been called a lot of things in my time, but nobody has yet suggested that I am a simpleton. I will admit that in the beginning I did kid myself a little about those bulletins; I did so by trying to explain them away in terms of Bloch’s own declared intentions, but that phase didn’t last long. I mean if you could go on believing that the SESAME bulletins were nothing more than harmless little efforts to drum up trade with the button-pushers in the Pentagon and elsewhere, you’d have to be feebleminded. After the CIA-scripted ham act put on by Goodman and Rich, I couldn’t even pretend to believe.
So what was I to believe instead?
It’s all very well for you, Mr L. You know the score. I didn’t then. And it’s all very well for Val to be so wise. By the way, she would never have talked about me in that cold-blooded, pseudoanalytical way before she started going around with that psychiatrist. Never. She’s not the same any more.
Where was I? Oh yes. What was I to think?
Well, this’ll make you laugh, Mr L, it really will.
I had begun to have a nasty suspicion that the business that Herr Bloch and his mysterious clients were engaged in was not peddling arms but peddling secrets. Isn’t that a laugh? I suspected that what they were doing with Intercom was to use it as a shop window. Why not? Calculated indiscretion. ‘You want the juiciest secrets, we have them. Here’s a sample of our wares to show you that the quality’s right. Send for our free booklet today or call Arnold Bloch Associates direct.’ There are lots of smart cookies operating on the fringes of the intelligence racket. The introduction of modern sales methods in the world’s second oldest profession may be overdue.
How was I to know that what they were really peddling was silence?
All right, let’s not get rhetorical. Let’s forget about what I thought or didn’t think. This is what I did.
That night, after Goodman and Rich had left and Val had told me what she had found out about Comrade Skriabin, I decided that the first order of business next day would be to get hold of Arnold Bloch and ask him what the hell he was playing at. I decided, too, that until I had seen him, and until he had satisfied me both that my suspicions were unfounded and that there was a good reason for publishing this weird stuff he was sending me, I was going to hold back on it.
Then, when I got to the office the following morning, there was this second memorandum from Bloch.
| TO: | Theodore Carter, Geneva |
| FROM: | Arnold Bloch, Munich |
| SUBJECT: | Security |
CONFIDENTIAL
Publication of the SESAME bulletins in recent weeks has, I am glad to tell you, had a most satisfactory effect on the markets in which my associates are primarily interested. For your private information I can state that the bulletins have been instrumental in securing important business for our French friends and in opening up avenues of approach which we had previously been obliged to consider closed. The prospects for the future appear to be excellent. Needless to say, your cooperation and strict attention to the letter of your instructions have contributed substantially to this desirable state of affairs. You may be sure that this contribution will not go unrewarded.
As was to be expected, however, our associates’ competitors have sought to counter the thrust of this novel promotion policy by attempting to discredit it. We have been reliably informed that efforts have recently been made to persuade certain western government agencies, including, it is said, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), to bring pressure to bear upon us to discontinue publication of technical information, on the extraordinary grounds that by openly breaching Warsaw Pact security controls we are inviting reprisals by the Soviet authorities.
It will be immediately apparent to you that submission to such pressures would be quite inconsistent with the traditional anti-communist, anti-Soviet-bloc policies of Intercom. Should any approaches of this kind be made to you in your capacity as editor you should reject them immediately in those terms. You should point out also that you yourself have, in any case, no discretion in the matter. You implement a policy laid down by the owners of Intercom Publishing Enterprises A.G. If pressed you should at once refer the person or persons making the approach to me. I need not remind you that any interference with a Swiss business enterprise by any foreign government agency of the kind mentioned above would not be tolerated by the Swiss security services. It may be necessary, however, to remind others of this fact should the occasion arise.
I would appreciate prompt reports to me by telegram of any such approaches, so that steps may be taken to prevent their repetition. The agency concerned should be identified simply by its nationality (e.g., German, American, British, etc.) and the nature of the argument used discreetly stated. The circumstances of the approach and the manner in which it was made should also be briefly described.
The importance of maintaining our independent position and our absolute right to publish technical and scientific information of interest to our readers ‘without fear or favour’ cannot be too strongly emphasised. We must show no weakness, display no disposition to compromise and refuse to be intimidated. Firmly held, our position is unassailable, and both our competitors and those dubious allies whose aid they have solicited will soon learn to recognise the fact.
I enclose SESAME Bulletin Number Six for inclusion in next week’s issue. Bulletin Number Seven, which will discuss in detail current NATO purchasing policies, should reach you in a few days. It may be expected to arouse considerable international interest and controversy.
Bloch
By the time I had finished reading that I was really confused. That memorandum threw me for a loop. I reacted more or less as Dr Bruchner reacted when he received the telegram from Bloch quoting his asking price for the Intercom shares. I began to wonder if Arnold Bloch and his associates were quite sane.
I looked at Bulletin Number Six.
It was headed ‘Electrets Employed Successfully in New Torpedo Guidance System’.
All I was able to get from the bulletin itself was that the Royal Naval Scientific Service (sic) of the British Ministry of Defence had come up with a torpedo, for use by antisubmarine submarines. with a novel guidance system employing ceramic electrets in the timing and memory-storing elements. The rest was a page of technical gibberish.
I didn’t even know what an electret was. Since the Royal Navy evidently did know, I tried looking it up in the thirteen-volume Oxford dictionary. It wasn’t there. I found it, though, in the big Webster. An electret is, I quote, ‘a dielectric body in which a permanent state of electric polarization has been set up’. If that means anything to you, Mr Latimer, congratulations.
All it meant to me was that Bloch was apparently still convinced that his associates’ interests were best served by blowing military secrets and that he didn’t seem to mind whose secrets he blew. The NATO boys were having the pin pulled on them just as often as the Warsaw Pact lot. As a way of making friends in high places, unless the high places you happened to be thinking of were in Red China or the Organisation of African Unity, I couldn’t see it. If Arnold Bloch weren’t a complete nut, he obviously had to know something I didn’t.
I turned to the memorandum again and, as I reread it, became more and more confused. I also became angry. It was that paragraph of exhortation that needled me.
I know, Mr L, you say that that’s why it was put there – to needle me into acting against my better Judgment. Well, I disagree. Don’t forget, I’ve met your ‘Colonel Jost’, and he didn’t strike me as having the kind of subtlety you claim for him. In fact, what needled me about that paragraph was the crude impertinence of it. ‘We must show no weakness, display no disposition to compromise and refuse to be intimidated.’ Pompous bastard! For me, remember, this was Arnold Bloch speaking, and that was the thing that really stuck in my throat. I may not have always been Mr Valiant-for-Truth, but I wasn’t taking lectures on the freedom of the press and the obligation to publish without fear or favour from a bloody PR man.
Rereading that memorandum didn’t change my mind about a thing. It only made me more determined than ever to meet with Bloch personally, or at least talk to him. There were questions I meant to have answered. I also wanted his reaction to the news that it was the CIA and not the BND (West German intelligence to you, Mr L) who were after our blood, and that I, for one, was beginning to see their point.
That’s when I started telephoning.
When I found that I couldn’t raise Munich, I drafted a telegram.
MEMORANDUM RECEIVED TODAY. APPROACHED YESTERDAY BY AMERICANS QUERYING SESAME SOURCES ON GROUNDS BULLETINS AGAINST U.S. INTERESTS. MANNER OF APPROACH OFFENSIVE AND TRUST MY REFUSAL REVEAL SOURCES EQUALLY SO. HOWEVER, WHILE NATURALLY REMAINING UNRESPONSIVE PRESSURES OF THIS OR ANY OTHER KIND MUST EXPRESS MY CONCERN SEVERAL ASPECTS OF BULLETIN CAMPAIGN INCLUDING PROBABLE ADVERSE EFFECT ON MAJORITY READERSHIP AND SUBSCRIPTION RENEWALS. CONSIDER MEETING DISCUSS FUTURE POLICY WITH YOU THIS WEEK ESSENTIAL. PLEASE NAME TIME AND PLACE.
CARTER
Polite but firm, I thought. I had made it plain (a) that his pious admonitions were not only belated but also unnecessary, and (b) I had served notice on him that, although I had so far obeyed his orders without asking too many questions, I was not prepared to go on doing so indefinitely.
When I had given Nicole the telegram to send off I felt better.
Lunch is my main meal of the day and usually I go to a brasserie near the office in the rue du Rhône. The food there is good, it is not too expensive and there is no formica or chromium plating visible. At lunchtime it is patronised mostly by businessmen with offices in the quarter; not the Chase Manhattan–Du Pont–Chrysler set, but middle-income managerial Genevese with growing families and houses in the south-bank suburbs. It is not a hangout for newsmen. I was surprised then when I saw Emil Stryer come in, and even more surprised when, catching sight of me, he came across and asked if he could join me at my table.
Stryer has an Austrian passport but is said to have been born in Pomerania. He first came to Geneva to cover the 1963 Disarmament Conference for the Bulgarian Telegraphic and Radio News Agency. He had returned, after covering the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signing in Moscow, to head the agency’s small Central European bureau and had since then supplemented his income from that source by acting as a stringer for several East German, Austrian and Italian newspapers. He takes a keen interest in East-West cultural exchange programmes and has been responsible for inflicting on patient Swiss audiences a troupe of Bulgarian folk dancers, a Ruthenian puppeteer and an East German string ensemble. At the time I am speaking of he was regarded by most other members of the foreign-press corps in Geneva as something of a joke. He is a skinny little man with dark brown eyes, sallow pendulant cheeks and the perplexed, insecure look of an elderly dachshund. I did not regard him as a joke; I did, though, find him personally a very tiresome bore and generally tried to avoid him. His belief that I was an enthusiastic ideological adherent of the American imperialistic hyena Novak had helped to keep him at a distance, and I always tried to foster it.
As he sat down I said: ‘The General may no longer be with us, Stryer, but his soul goes marching on. Isn’t it rather dangerous for you to be seen hobnobbing with me?’
He gave me an uneasy smile. ‘Hobnobbing?’
I paraphrased it for him in German.
He looked reproachful. ‘Several of our colleagues,’ he said, ‘have felt that since your proprietors death you have been avoiding them. There has been concern for you lately, and many solicitous inquiries.’
‘Well, that’s nice to know. As you see, I’m still managing to eat.’
‘The hope was expressed, and more than once, that you would return to news work of a more conventional kind.’
‘Less disreputable you mean? More respectable?’
‘The words are yours, but, since you have employed them, why not? You have many good friends in the profession.’
‘But as it is, while I may not be very respectable, I am still virtually my own boss.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Are you indeed? That is interesting. There has been much curiosity about your late proprietor’s successor.’
The waitress came up at that moment to take his order and I wondered if the interruption would break his train of thought. I didn’t really expect it to do so – once started on the subject bores can never let go – but one always hopes.
He ordered Bundnerfleisch, a choucroute and beer and returned to the charge. ‘Nobody seems to know anything about him,’ he said.
‘About who?’ I wasn’t going to help him out.
‘I speak of Arnold Bloch, of course.’
It didn’t surprise me that he knew Bloch’s name. Reporters gossip amongst themselves and, since Novak had died in Geneva and Intercom, disreputable though it might be, was published there, curiosity about his successor would be natural. Goodman’s knowledge had disconcerted me because he had obtained it the hard way by going to Bâle and interviewing Dr Bruchner. He could probably have learned as much over drinks in the Intercontinental bar.
‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing very much to know. He’s a PR man.’
‘Public relations? Is that all?’ He sounded disappointed.
‘Industrial public relations. Offices in Munich, Paris and Rome.
‘I see,’ he said and nodded thoughtfully.
I was glad he saw, because at that point, Mr L, I was beginning to feel rather like you described Dr Bruchner as feeling when Goodman was quizzing him – reluctant to admit that I didn’t know a thing about the man I was supposed to be working for and acutely conscious of the fact that I hadn’t even spoken to him on the telephone. Dr Bruchner had at least done that.
I was wondering how best to field the next batch of questions when Stryer suddenly began waving frantically across the room as if he had just caught sight of a long-lost friend.
I looked up. A man and a woman had entered the restaurant and now, seeing Stryer, they headed towards us.
Okay, Mr Latimer, I know. It was a planned encounter, a put-up job. Stryer had gone to the brasserie knowing that he would find me there (he probably followed me from my office to make sure) and for the express purpose of introducing those two persons to me under circumstances which would make them appear inoffensive and harmless.
The attempt was only partially successful. Stryer made mistakes. For example, when he first came in he asked me if he might join me before he sat down. As I was alone at a table for four I couldn’t very well say no. But when those two came over and joined us, he didn’t even think of asking. Maybe he was nervous, too eager to get the job over and done with. Suddenly it was his table and he was the host. I remember thinking that, if it was going to be his party, he could bloody well pay for my lunch as well. However, the real snag from his point of view was the woman. Nothing he could have said or done would have made her appear inoffensive and harmless where I was concerned.
Madame Coursaux was somewhere in her forties, a junoesque welterweight with greying black hair, a muddy complexion and the smouldering eyes of a martinet. Her mirthless smile issued the challenge, her tip-tilted nose was poised to detect the answering smell of fear and her overdeveloped jaw muscles proclaimed that any attempt to defend yourself would be mercilessly punished. She wore a military-looking blue cloth coat with massive brass buttons and she walked like a grenadier. A ball-crusher if ever I saw one.
Pierre Morin, the man with her, was a burly fellow with an untidy brown beard, half-glasses and a heavy deposit of cigar ash on his waistcoat. In one large freckled hand he carried with ease a bulging pigskin briefcase which shook the floor when he dumped it beside my chair. He had bushy eyebrows, long, tobacco-stained teeth and an expression, which seemed permanent, of amused disbelief.
Both of them spoke Parisian French.
‘Madame Coursaux,’ Stryer explained breathlessly when he had performed the introductions, ‘is the distinguished French expert on rare and ancient manuscripts.’
She cooed at him as she removed her gloves. ‘You must try to get it right, Emil dear.’ Her eyes shifted to me. ‘Monsieur Carter, is it? Well, Monsieur Carter, Emil is maintaining his reputation as a journalist. Only three errors of fact in one sentence.’
She ignored Stayer’s whimpers of protest. She was zeroed in on me now.
‘Unhappily,’ she went on, ‘I cannot claim to be an expert. The expert is Pierre Morin here. I am only a poor dealer. And the manuscripts I deal in mostly are not ancient. That is, of course, unless you call the nineteenth century ancient.’
Morin joined in the game.
‘While when you speak of rarity,’ he said, ‘you introduce a contradiction in terms. A book can be rare, a piece of fine porcelain can be rare. But a holograph manuscript can never be. If it is genuine it is unique, whether it was written yesterday or a hundred years ago.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t let us spoil your lunch, Monsieur. Emil is used to our nonsense, eh, Emil?’
Stryer was beaming as if they had been paying him compliments. ‘I am always willing to be educated. But tell me –’ he lowered his voice – ‘have you been successful in your mission? Or is too early yet to say?’
Madame Coursaux frowned repressively and her eyes flickered in the direction of the waitress hovering behind them with menus. ‘We have hopes,’ she said curtly.
They ordered enormous meals and a Valais wine. I asked for coffee.
The moment the waitress had gone Stryer returned to the subject of the Coursaux–Morin mission.
‘Carter is a journalist, as I am, but he too knows how to be discreet,’ he said. ‘May I tell him about your mission in Geneva, Madame? It is fascinating. A detective story.’
His persistence seemed suicidal to me, but it earned him no more than a light cuff.
‘If you tell it, dear Emil, I am sure that none of the essential facts will be correctly stated. No discretion on Monsieur Carter’s part should be necessary.’
He sniggered ingratiatingly. ‘Then correct me if I am wrong, Madame. As I understand it, you heard a few months ago and from a confidential source here in Switzerland of the existence of a hitherto unknown correspondence between the nineteenth-century anarchists Alexander Herzen and Sergei Nechaev. Such a correspondence –’
‘Herzen was certainly not an anarchist,’ Morin broke in sharply, ‘and Nechaev can only vulgarly be so described. Herzen was a liberal socialist and the founder of Populism. Nechaev was many things – a terrorist, a criminal, an idealist and a mountebank – but you cannot compare him with such men as Proudhon, Bakunin and Malatesta.’
‘I did not mean to compare them. I only wished …’
He got no further. Madame Coursaux took over again. ‘The importance of this correspondence, if it is genuine,’ she said, ‘is the light that it purports to throw on the true authorship of the Revolutionary Action Programme of eighteen sixty-eight. That is also the year of this alleged correspondence. And I say “alleged” advisedly. Morin has his doubts about it. I, too, am undecided. True, the correspondence between them which survives and which we know to be genuine is of a very different character, but Nechaev was a man with many faces. For you, Monsieur Carter, it is doubtless difficult to understand the historical importance of a few old letters written by men of whom you have probably never heard, but to scholars and –’
I wasn’t taking any more of that; I interrupted her. ‘What about Herzen’s memoirs?’ I asked. ‘In eighteen sixty-eight he was working on them here in Geneva. He kept a diary too. I know he didn’t think much of Nechaev. He even warned Bakunin that the man was a crook. But if this correspondence that you’ve found is as important as you say, I can’t believe that Herzen would have made no reference to it. You’ve checked, of course?’
She gave me a deadly smile. ‘Of course,’ she said. But I had stopped her. It was Morin who picked up the ball.
‘Herzen’s memoirs were extensively edited after his death,’ he said, ‘and family feeling influenced much of that editing. There was reason at the time for deleting references to Nechaev, especially friendly or respectful references.’
‘Because he had seduced Herzen’s daughter, you mean?’
‘Tried to seduce her.’ He grinned. ‘Nechaev was rarely successful in his undertakings. It was amusing in a way.’
And he went on to give the details. I had always thought it a sad and rather nasty story, but he seemed to find it funny. Stryer, of course, laughed his head off. I decided that I had had enough of them and called for my bill.
As I got up to go Madame Coursaux became unexpectedly effusive.
‘It is so interesting,’ she said, ‘to encounter a journalist with a feeling for history. We will be here for several more days. Perhaps we shall meet again. If so, I hope we will be able to tell you the results of our researches.’
I mumbled something or other and left. As I walked back to the office I decided that for the next few days I would give the brasserie a miss.
The envelope containing Bloch’s latest memorandum and bulletin had been postmarked Brussels, so I did not expect an early reply to my telegram. As there was nobody in the Munich office to answer the phone, I assumed that the telegram would remain unopened until he returned. But I was wrong. He must have had someone checking his mail every day.* The reply came the following morning and from Brussels:
INTERCOM FOR CARTER. YOUR TELEGRAM RECEIVED AND ALL CONTENTS NOTED. REGRET MEETING THIS WEEK IMPOSSIBLE. AS POLICY UNCHANGED CONSIDER MEETING IN ANY CASE UNNECESSARY AT THIS TIME. ALSO UNNECESSARY YOU REMAIN UNRESPONSIVE TO OUTSIDE PRESSURES WISHING DISCLOSURE SOURCES. OFFENSIVE ATTITUDE YOUR PART UNDERSTANDABLE BUT INAPPROPRIATE THIS CASE. YOU ARE HEREBY AUTHORISED TO NAME ME AS SOURCE ALL SESAME BULLETINS UPON REQUEST AT SAME TIME OFFERING PUBLISH CORRECTION OR RETRACTION IF OTHER PARTY PREPARED SUPPLY WRITTEN EVIDENCE IN JUSTIFICATION. YOU ARE ALSO AUTHORISED TO ADD BY-LINE MY NAME ALL FUTURE BULLETINS IF YOU CONSIDER THAT COURSE ADVISABLE BUT DECISION TO DO SO OR NOT IS SUBJECT YOUR EDITORIAL JUDGMENT. ACKNOWLEDGE.
BLOCH
I didn’t like it a bit. I had counted on my suggestion that we were losing subscribers and circulation to lure him into a meeting. Most owners would have reacted sharply and with yelps of alarm to that particular stimulus. He had simply ignored it. At the same time he had deprived me of the only good excuse I had for holding back on the bulletins – and rather cunningly too. What he had left to my editorial judgment was not the exclusion or inclusion of the bulletins but merely the presence or absence of a by-line. He was exercising his authority as owner while relieving me, if I chose to be relieved, of some share of the incurred responsibility. And why was it ‘inappropriate’ to maintain the traditional editorial right to protect news sources? I tried to draft a reply which would let him know that his evasions had been recognised as such and make it clear that my acknowledgment of the message was not to be construed as passive agreement with and acceptance of its contents; but I found it impossible to be brief without sounding a good deal snottier than is proper, or wise, for an editor addressing an owner. What I really needed, I decided finally, was a heart-to-heart talk with the man. Meanwhile, I would write him a letter setting out the problems as I saw them, let him know in my telegram of acknowledgment that a letter was on the way and keep on trying to reach him by telephone.
In the hope that he would have returned from Brussels by then, I tried again on the Friday morning.
I, too, had a chat with the Munich police.
I didn’t think much about that at the time. Offices do sometimes get broken into, usually by small-time thieves looking for typewriters, desk adding machines and petty cash. We know now that there was nothing in Bloch’s Munich office worth stealing, but I’ll tell you who I think it was that did the breaking and entering.
In my opinion the BfV were responsible.
Not to be confused with the BND, Mr Latimer. The BND is the West German CIA and used to be known as the Gehlen Bureau. The BfV (Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz, or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) is the West German equivalent of the FBI in its spy-catching role, the British MI5 and the French DST. That bulletin about the FG115 plane must have put them in a real tizzy, though the timing rather suggests that they were prodded into doing something about it by the CIA.
It goes like this. On Monday, December 12, Goodman and Rich interview Dr Bruchner in Bâle and discover that Bloch is the owner of Intercom. They are told, however, that I do all the work and am responsible for the letter’s content. So on the Tuesday they interview me. I won’t talk, so they think about Bloch again.
This bit is guesswork, but I believe that on the Wednesday they went to Munich to try to see him. When they failed to do so, I would say that Rich talked things over with the Bonn CIA people, who advised consultation with the BfV. Probably the BfV had already done some checking on Bloch and found that nobody, including the Munich police and the bank, really knew a thing about him. It must have puzzled them. When the CIA started pressing for information they would feel that they had to act. I think they staged the burglary so that they could take a quick look through Bloch’s private files without alerting him to the fact that he was being investigated. They wanted him back there for questioning.
Of course, they had no reason then to suspect that Arnold Bloch did not exist, that he was only a voice and a name; a voice calling long-distance from unknown places; a name posing as an identity on a set of false papers, a few bank record sheets and a series of expendable accommodation addresses.
I had no reason to suspect either. I spent most of that Friday afternoon writing to him.
It was a masterly piece of work, Mr L. I stated the problems thoughtfully and in temperate language, went on to a cogently reasoned discussion of the solutions I proposed and wound up with a suggested agenda for a summit meeting. However, since the whole letter was predicated on the naïve assumption that the person I was addressing was a man and not a ghost and on my belief that he was more interested in our staying in business than in getting away with murder, I won’t bore you with it.
I left the office just before six and stopped for a drink at the café on the corner. I had done the same thing on the two previous evenings. Since the Goodman–Rich interview I had been edgy, and, having been tailed home once before, I wanted to know if and when it happened again. Have you ever been followed, Mr L? Probably not. If you have, though, you’ll know. It gives you the willies.
From that particular café you could see along three streets. You could also enter and leave by different doors if you wanted to. I’ve been told that there is no simple way of evading a really determined surveillance by trained personnel, but that the subject who knows or suspects that he is being tailed can make the job difficult if he wants to. I wanted to make it as difficult as possible. As I say, being followed gives you the willies, but, unless you happen to have an unusually guilty conscience, it also makes you mad.
I don’t know for certain that I was followed when I left the café to walk to my car that evening – I had spotted the Fiat with the Fribourg plates purely by accident and at a time of night when the streets in that quarter were virtually empty – but in view of what followed I am pretty sure that I must have been. I am equally sure that I gave the bastards trouble – not as much trouble as they gave me, of course, but it’s nice to believe that I wasn’t a complete pushover.
When I had had my drink on the glassed-in terrace, I left the money for it on the table and stood up as if I were about to leave. Then, instead of leaving, I turned and went inside past the service counter and downstairs to the telephone booths. I didn’t stop there, but went on past the lavabos and up the staircase leading to the small restaurant section back of the terrace on the far side. There was a door to the street there. Outside I turned right, instead of left as I would have done if I had been going directly to my car. It was a narrow, one-way street and I was walking against the traffic towards an intersection where the lights were just changing. The moment they went to green and the cars started coming, I crossed the road quickly in front of them and cut down an alleyway that led to the river near the Pont de la Machine. Then I went into a bar and had another drink before taking to the streets again. It was just before seven when I reached my car.
It was a rear-engined Renault Dauphine – not, I admit, the most glamorous thing on wheels, but good enough for my workaday needs and Val’s ski weekends, and generally reliable.
Well, I unlocked it, got in, did the usual things and found it wouldn’t start. The starter was okay, the battery was okay, the meter showed that the tank was half full, but it still wouldn’t start.
I’m not very good with cars, but some things about them I do know. I know, for instance, that gas-tank meters have been known to stick. I got out, raised the hood, undid the filler cap and rocked the car until I could hear the gasoline sloshing around inside. I replaced the cap.
If I had been left to my own devices, my next ineffectual move would have been to get a flashlight from the glove compartment and see if there was anything visibly wrong with the engine; but at that moment the headlights of a car turning the corner by the church dazzled me. Then, as the lights swung away and I started to go round my car, a Citroen DS skidded to a halt right beside me and a door opened.
‘Trouble, Monsieur Carter?’ The voice was that of Madame Coursaux.
As she spoke the rear door of the Citroen opened. Even if I had thought of running it would have been difficult to do so. I was boxed in by the two doors and the side of my own car.
Roof lights had come on in the Citroen. Morin was at the wheel with Madame Coursaux beside him. Another man sat in the back.
‘We caught sight of you as we turned the corner,’ said Morin. ‘Do you need help?’
‘I can’t start it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what the trouble is’.
‘Battery?’
‘No, and I’ve plenty of gasoline. It just won’t start.’
‘You need a mechanic. Get in and we’ll take you.’ The man in the back moved over to make room for me.
‘That’s very kind of you, but there’s a garage just down the hill. It’s not far. I can easily walk.’
‘Nonsense. Get in.’
So I did. The garage was only three blocks or so away, but when someone offers to save you even a short walk like that, it’s easier to accept than refuse. As I sat down beside the man in the back, though, I remembered something.
‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘I’ve left the ignition key.’
Morin flapped a hand impatiently. ‘If the car won’t start nobody is going to steal it,’ he said. ‘Besides the mechanic will need the key.’
As he spoke, the man beside me reached across smartly and pulled the door shut. Then he put out a meaty hand and introduced himself.
‘Schneider,’ he said.
He pronounced it as a Frenchman would, but I didn’t think he was French. He smelled too strongly of lavender water. I couldn’t see him very well, but the impression I got was of a heavy-bodied young man in dark clothes with a doughy, lopsided face and slicked-down sandy hair. He pressed my hand briefly and without undue force.
Morin was speaking over his shoulder as he drove off. ‘There is a Renault agency near our apartment. We’ll telephone them and ask them to send a mechanic.’
I don’t like being managed. ‘There’s no need for that,’ I said; ‘if you’ll just drop me off at the bottom of the hill that’ll be fine.’
He ignored me completely and at the next corner made a left turn.
‘Look …’ I began.
‘Ah no, Monsieur Carter.’ The woman had turned right around to coo at me over the back of her seat. ‘Leave it to Pierre to do what is best. There is a cold wind tonight. Why stand about in it when you could be enjoying a glass of whisky and some friendly conversation? We met so briefly the other day and one cannot speak of serious things with that imbecile Stryer present.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but I am expected home for dinner.’
‘But you cannot drive to your home until your car is repaired. As soon as we have arranged for the mechanic you can telephone your daughter and explain that you have been a little delayed. It will be so much simpler.’
I didn’t answer. Until then I had only been irritated by what seemed to me to be high-handed behaviour on Morin’s part. Suddenly things were different. When a man of my age says that he is expected home for dinner, the casual acquaintance normally assumes that he is expected by his wife, not by his daughter. These acquaintances knew too much about me to be casual. That was the moment when I began to get worried.
I glanced at Schneider. He had a sociable grin on his face. It broadened as our eyes met. He began speaking English.
‘A little of what you fancy does you good,’ he said, ‘eh, Mr Carter?’
He had a London accent, but not a very convincing one; bogus BBC out of Berlitz. I stared at him blankly.
He was still grinning. ‘That is what the British say, isn’t it?’ he persisted.
He seemed to expect a reply, so I gave him one. ‘I’m a Canadian, Mr Schneider. I think that under the circumstances I’d be more inclined to say “phooey”.’
He laughed heartily. Morin chuckled. Even Madame Coursaux managed an appreciative little snicker.
For a moment or two there we were the best of friends.
I knew the Chateau Europa, the apartment building to which they took me. There are one or two others like it in Geneva, featureless stacks of boxlike service flats, all furnished exactly alike and most of them used just as pieds-à-terre – by tax-dodging foreigners technically domiciled in the canton who need a legal place of residence in it, by itinerant businessmen who need a staging area where they can keep the spare suit and the change of underwear, and by local pillars of society who need a place outside the home in which to entertain their girl friends. The few tenants who live permanently in such apartments keep themselves to themselves; they are interlopers in a community of absentee occupants, transients and sometime lovers. The rooms are as impersonal as, and not much larger than, the cubicles in a public lavatory – though, when you are inside one with the door shut, rather more secluded. In an apartment at the Chateau Europa there is no attendant to hear if you shout for help.
They took me to a two-roomed apartment on the fourth floor.
I say they ‘took’ me because that’s the way it was. Nobody uttered threats or held a gun on me, but their whole attitude, their decisive movements and air of confidence, made it unmistakably plain that any further attempt on my part to reject their hospitality would be regarded as ill-mannered and ridiculous and firmly overridden.
As Morin pulled up in the Chateau Europa parking lot, he whipped out of the car like an attentive chauffeur and came around to open the door beside me. As I got out, Schneider slid out too. From that moment until we reached the apartment, I was between them with Madame Coursaux bringing up the rear. None of them touched me, but they kept very close. Going through the swing door Morin moved ahead and Schneider dropped back behind me. The same thing happened when we went into the elevator. It was as ordered as a drill manoeuvre. And all the way from the car to the elevator, Madame Coursaux chattered incessantly like an overanxious hostess at the beginning of a dull party.
‘Hotels are such unfriendly places to stay in, don’t you think? Always when I travel – and I have to travel so much in connection with my work – I try to avoid staying in hotels. A little apartment is so much better, a place where one can entertain one’s friends in comfort and privacy. I know that some of my business colleagues never leave their offices. They wait for others to bring them the properties, the so-called professional finders. I will never employ such persons. Some are dishonest, most of them know so little that they are useless. I have always been my own finder and so accustomed myself to travel. But how one travels, ah, that is the important thing …’
As camouflage it was curiously effective. Nobody we encountered on the way could have suspected that I was being taken anywhere against my will. If we left any impression at all behind us it was one of three luckless men dogged by a large woman who never stopped talking.
She did stop, though, and abruptly, as soon as we were inside the elevator. Her job was done. Morin took charge from then on.
He closed the inside gate and pressed the fourth-floor button.
‘But,’ he said, ‘it is our friend Carter’s work that interests Monsieur Schneider here.’ His disbelieving smile enveloped both of us. ‘Did you know that he is one of your most faithful readers, Carter? But of course you didn’t. How could you know?’
‘And knowing, why should he care?’ Schneider inquired affably. ‘I am one of many, many thousands.’
‘Eight thousand to be exact,’ I said.
Now that he was in a strong light I could see that he was not as young as I had thought and that his face had skin grafts and scar tissue over most of the left side. It was that that gave it the lopsided look. I had seen faces like that on ex-fighter pilots and ex-crew members of burnt-out tanks. The association made the smell of lavender water that billowed around him oddly disagreeable.
‘If we were to measure a publication’s influence by the size of its circulation,’ Morin was saying, ‘we would be driven to some strange conclusions.’ The elevator stopped at that moment but he went on talking as he wrenched the gates open and led the way out and along the corridor. ‘Ask yourself. Which newspaper had the greater impact upon events, the greater historical importance, in France during the occupation? The great Le Matin in the hands of the collaborators, or the little Résistance, which the Nazis could silence in the end only by killing its editor? Ah!’
The exclamation was one of satisfaction. Madame Coursaux, acting in her new, subordinate capacity, had nipped ahead smartly as we approached apartment number 423 and already had the door open and the lights on. Morin flung off his topcoat and waved it like a cape to usher me inside.
In the cramped passageway that connected the two rooms of the apartment Schneider helped me out of my coat. Morin was already at a small built-in refrigerator extracting bottles and a bucket of ice.
‘First things first,’ he said to me. ‘Whisky-soda?’
‘Thank you, but I’d like to do something about getting my car fixed too.’
He snapped his fingers as if in vexation at his absentmindedness.
‘These garagistes take more notice of a woman,’ Madame Coursaux put in quickly. ‘What is the number of the car?’
I gave her the number. She repeated it once and then went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
‘Everything under control,’ Schneider said, airing his English again. He motioned me to go ahead of him into the living room.
It had wall-to-wall carpeting with one of those mixed-mucus-and-mud patterns that are supposed to prevent stains showing. The furniture consisted of tubular steel armchairs – the kind without rear legs that make people look as if they are sitting on air – a tile-topped table with a wrought-iron base, a unit bookcase and a blue divan with little red cushions on it. The radiator was extremely efficient and the atmosphere was stifling.
Schneider pressed me into a chair and sat himself down on the divan. Morin bustled in With a tray and began to mix drinks on the bookcase.
Except for the clinking of ice cubes in glasses there was silence for a moment. Then Schneider leaned forward with a smile.
‘Monsieur Carter,’ he asked softly, ‘has anyone ever tried to kill you?’
I stared at him blankly. The plastic surgery on his face had evidently done something to the nerves on the left side because only the right side smiled. The effect, when he looked directly at you, was disconcerting.
‘I was thinking,’ he went on, ‘of what Morin was saying just now about the editor of Résistance who was killed by the Nazis.’
‘Not only the editor, in fact,’ said Morin. ‘They murdered the whole of the staff, including the printers. Not unnaturally the paper ceased publication.’
He put a large drink into my hand.
Schneider shook his head sadly. ‘Swine,’ he said.
Morin shrugged. ‘Oh yes, they were swine. Who can deny it? But consider.’ He brought over two more drinks and handed one to Schneider. ‘Look at it from their point of view.’ He lowered himself into the chair facing me. ‘That paper was publishing things they didn’t like, things that endangered their security. What could they do? The only way to censor it was to kill those who produced it. It was natural enough in the circumstances.’
Schneider nodded. ‘That was why I asked Monsieur Carter if there had ever been attempts on his life. After all, he publishes many things that must be objectionable to those with important interests. I would say that in some quarters he must be a highly unpopular person.’
‘Highly unpopular, yes,’ echoed Morin.
They were both looking at me expectantly now, as if they were waiting for me to reply to a toast. I took a drink and choked slightly; it was neat whisky.
‘If everyone who was highly unpopular qualified for assassination,’ I said, ‘we’d have the world population problem solved in no time.’
They both laughed so heartily that for a moment I thought that I must have said something funny; but, of course, they would have laughed at anything I had said just then. I’m told that they always go into the jollyboy, all-smiles routine before they get to the real arm-twisting; the idea, an erroneous one in my experience, is that it lulls the victim into a sense of false security.
In the middle of the knee-slapping Madame Coursaux came in, grinning in response to the sounds of merriment, and helped herself to a drink.
‘A mechanic has gone to your car,’ she said as I stood up.
‘I am most grateful to you, Madame.’ I put my drink on the table. ‘In that case I had better be getting back to it myself.’
‘Quite unnecessary, Monsieur. They will telephone to let us know when it is ready.’
When I hesitated Morin reached out a freckled paw and tamped me down. ‘Oh, we can’t let you go yet, my friend,’ he said. ‘Finish your drink, finish your drink. Then we’ll see.’
His grin had worn thin and there was an edge to his voice now. For a moment I considered telling him to go to hell and walking out; but, I’ll be frank with you, Mr L; I didn’t have the guts to try it. You see, I was pretty certain by then that in that room I was no longer a free agent, but also too scared to put the matter to the test. I thought that it would be easier to play along with them and pretend that I wasn’t scared.
With a shrug I sat back again.
‘That’s better.’ He pushed my drink across to me ‘Now, Monsieur Carter, tell us all about this dangerous life you lead.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Morin raised his eyebrows mockingly and looked at Schneider. “He asks us what we want to know. What could be more generous than that?’
‘What indeed!’ Schneider got up from the divan and perched himself on the edge of the table. ‘I shall take him at his word. As Morin says, Monsieur, I am a faithful reader of Intercom, but I had not realised until a few weeks ago that you, Monsieur Carter, were a person with scientific training.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Surely you are being modest.’
‘Just stating a fact.’
‘Then you must have someone on your staff who is trained.’
‘No.’
‘So? Then how do you evaluate this scientific information you have taken to publishing recently?’
‘It comes from usually reliable sources.’
Morin sneered. ‘Ah, that precious journalistic cant! Usually reliable sources. How good it is to hear it from the actual lips of an editor. What are the others? An unofficial spokesman? A source close to the government? Yes? A presidential aide? A confidential report seen by our correspondent?’
‘That last one would be a bit amateurish.’
‘Amateurish?’ he snapped.
I had used the word because I had guessed that it would wound him and it clearly had; but I should not have tried to rub salt in.
‘You’d make a poor editor, Monsieur Morin,’ I said. ‘I should have thought it was obvious. If your correspondent has seen a confidential report, naturally you don’t reveal that fact. You say that he is unofficially but reliably informed, or mention an informant who does not wish to be identified. In that way you avoid compromising the person who leaked the report and at the same time cover yourself in case the leak was a calculated one.’
There was a three-second silence, then Schneider pounced.
‘But you are a good editor, eh, Monsieur?’
‘Competent, I think.’
‘Then why do you not practise what you preach?’
‘I usually do.’
‘You must be joking. Is it usual practice to avoid compromising an informant by publishing his name?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘But that is what Intercom does, isn’t it?’ He leaned forward. ‘If I were a member of a Soviet trade mission who had spoken to you of confidential matters and then saw my name published as your informant, how would you answer my accusation of betrayal?’
I decided that the only thing to do was grasp the nettle firmly. ‘I take it that you are referring to a man named N. V. Skriabin,’ I said. ‘He has made no complaint to me.’
‘That is no answer,’ said Morin. ‘Do you know this Skriabin? Have you ever met him?’
‘I know of him.’
‘Then if you know of him you must also know that he would under no circumstances give out the information you attributed to him.’
‘Why not?’ I knew that I was losing my grip, so I said the only thing I could think of. ‘As a senior officer of the KGB he would probably have access to it.’
I saw the back of Schneider’s hand coming, but I had no time to protect myself. It caught me on the side of the head just above the cheekbone and almost knocked me out of the chair. For a moment I didn’t quite know what was going on. Pain thudded through my head and I couldn’t see clearly. Then my ears began to sing, my eyes started to water and I realised that my glasses were in my lap along with most of my drink.
Automatically I put my glasses on again and found that the frame was bent.
Schneider was looking down at me balefully. ‘If I were Skriabin,’ he said, ‘that would be only a beginning. Since I am not Skriabin, but only one of your readers with a special need to know the truth, you may, however, take it as a warning not to talk nonsense. Who was the person who gave you that information?’
‘About the seismograph?’
‘We will start with that,’
I decided that the time had come for me to take Bloch at his word and let him shoulder some of the responsibility.
‘It didn’t come directly to me,’ I began. ‘You see …’
I saw Schneider’s hand start to move again but Morin’s moved at the same time to restrain him.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I don’t think our friend Carter yet understands the position.’ He turned to me. ‘You must believe that we are not asking these questions merely to satisfy a casual, private curiosity.’
‘Oddly enough,’ I said, ‘that idea had got through to me. You could have come to the point very much quicker and without all the preliminary hocus-pocus.’
He ignored that. ‘As Schneider says,’ he went on earnestly, ‘we have a special need to know the truth. You had better accept the fact that we intend to have it.’
There was a mouthful of whisky left in the glass, so I finished it off. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I accept the fact. But when I’m dealing with thugs I like to know who they are. It’s less boring that way. Your cover is French, so you probably aren’t from SDECE. That leaves the CIA, the KGB and the BND. As a matter of interest, which are you?’
Madame Coursaux sighed gustily and came over with the whisky bottle.
‘Our dossier on you, Carter, states that you are an intelligent man,’ she said as she refilled my glass. “If you want to get home to that excellent dinner your daughter is preparing, and in a fit state to enjoy it, now is the time to behave like one.’
Morin nodded. ‘Sound advice, Carter. We understand your need to bolster your courage by making these childish little verbal gestures and we have been very patient so far. You now have a headache perhaps, but only a slight one. Drink some whisky, start giving responsive answers to my friend’s questions and you will probably feel better.’
‘The other way you will certainly feel worse,’ said Schneider grimly. ‘Now, you say that the information described as coming from N. V. Skriabin did not reach your directly. Then how did it reach you? What was the source?’
‘The owner of Intercom, Arnold Bloch.’
‘Who obtained it from whom?’
‘I don’t know.’ Schneider’s face started to tighten up, so I repeated it louder. ‘I tell you I don’t know. I received the whole story just as you read it. Not a word was altered, though I did in fact request permission to alter it.’
‘Why? In what way alter?’
‘I wanted to omit Skriabin’s name. That would be in line with our established policy of not naming sources. I wired Herr Bloch in Munich for permission to edit the name out and he replied refusing that permission.’
‘Did he give any reason?’
‘No. I was just told to publish the story exactly as it was.’
‘Have you proof of this?’
‘I have the correspondence in the office, yes, though why the hell I should have to prove anything to you …’
He waved me into silence.
‘You say you received it. How?’
‘By mail from Copenhagen. But on Bloch’s Munich paper.’
‘Any address in Copenhagen?’
‘No. The stamps were Danish and Copenhagen was the postmark on the envelope.’
‘You made a statement just now to the effect that N. V. Skriabin is a senior officer in the KGB. That suggestion is not in the item you published. Did that come from Bloch also?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, you had another source then. Who?’
‘The United Nations reference library.’
‘No more jokes, Carter.’
‘I’m not joking. As I told you, I was reluctant to publish Skriabin’s name. I was unhappy about doing so. I had someone check on him. Through a contact in the UN library this person dug up some biographical data on him, education, career, honours, that sort of thing. The KGB connection was deduced from the fact that his appointment to a minor trade mission was inconsistent with his earlier service record. The trade-mission job was evidently a cover.’
He looked at me steadily for a moment, then nodded. ‘We will accept that for the moment. Now, the item you published on November twenty-ninth about Operation Triangle. What was your source for that?’
‘The same. Arnold Bloch.’
‘But you knew what Operation Triangle was.’
‘No, I hadn’t the faintest idea. I still haven’t.’
‘Did you not ask?’
‘It wasn’t my business to ask.’
‘You, the editor? Not your business?’
‘I was publishing technical and trade information bulletins on instructions from the owner, Herr Bloch.’
‘If you had been told that Operation Triangle is the code name for the first stage of an anti-ballistic missile system radar network and that it is on the NATO secret list, would you still have published that item?’
‘I can’t say what I would have done. That would have depended on who told me and whether or not I believed him.’
‘You may believe me, Carter.’
‘Then NATO ought to tighten up on its security procedures,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably do a piece on the subject, though without quoting you, of course.’ He started to tighten up again, so I went on quickly. ‘Look, Monsieur Schneider, you’re wasting your time pushing me around. Arnold Bloch is the owner of Intercom. He controls it. He is also an industrial public-relations consultant. Both these information bulletins you’ve been talking about, as well as others you haven’t mentioned, were published on his instructions in order to promote the business interests of certain of his associates.’
‘What associates?’
‘French and West German, I was told. I know nothing else about them. As for the contents of these bulletins, in most cases they have been meaningless to me. I accepted them for publication from Herr Bloch on the understanding that they would be of interest to at least a section of our readership. Apparently I was not deceived. They seem to be exciting considerable interest, and you seem to know why. That’s more than I do.’
There was another silence, then Morin leaned forward. ‘Can you really be as innocent as you pretend, Carter?’
‘Innocent of what?’ I retorted. ‘Are you suggesting that something illegal has been done, that an offence in law has been committed by the publishers of Intercom?’
He shook his head wearily, not in denial but as if in despair at my folly. ‘You asked us who we were. Remember? And you asked in a particular way. Why, if you have nothing to hide and have committed no indiscretion, should you expect to be interrogated by members of foreign intelligence services?’
‘Because, as Madame was kind enough to remind me, I am not a fool, and because this is not the first time this week that I have been badgered by complete strangers asking the same sort of questions.’
He nodded. He did not seem surprised. A telephone had begun ringing in the next room and he waited until Madame Coursaux had gone to answer it before he went on.
‘The CIA, was it?’
‘Presumably, though I didn’t ask them. Their methods,’ I added, ‘were less crude than yours, but they did intimate that cruder methods might be resorted to if I continued to be uncooperative. That is why I asked if you, too, were CIA. I see now that I was wrong, of course.’
‘Why?’ demanded Schneider sharply.
‘The CIA couldn’t have cared less about Comrade Skriabin. They were more concerned over a story I published about a NATO fighter-reconnaissance plane.’
‘Did that item also come from Arnold Bloch?’
‘Yes it did. Is that significant? He also supplied the story about defective Soviet rocket fuels. You could put that in your report as well.’
Casually he tossed the remains of his drink into my face. A piece of ice slid down my tie to join the whisky already soaking through into my underpants.
‘Now tell me about Bloch,’ he said. ‘And no more insolence.’
‘There’s not much to tell. I’ve never set eyes on him. I’ve never even spoken to him. All our communications have been by letter or telegram. If you want to know any more you’ll have to ask the man himself. In fact, he expressly instructed me by telegram today to refer inquiries about these bulletins you’ve mentioned – all inquiries from whatever source – to him personally. His address is …’
‘We know his address. If we were to go with you to your office now, could we see this telegram of instruction that you say you received?’
‘You could.’ I flicked the piece of ice from my leg to the floor. ‘You could also have the address of Dr Bruchner, the Swiss director of the corporation which owns Intercom. He is in Bâle. After that I could show you a memorandum from Herr Bloch reminding me that any interference by foreign intelligence agents with a Swiss-based business enterprise would be viewed with serious disfavour by the federal security services. When you’d thought that over maybe we could call the police.’
Schneider threw up his hands as if words had at last failed him and went to get another drink. Morin laughed. ‘But what would we tell the police, eh, Carter? That your car broke down? That we happened to be passing and invited you in here for a drink while your car was repaired? That while you were here conversing amicably with us you accidently upset a glass of whisky over yourself? I don’t think that the police would be very much interested in that information, do you?’
Madame Coursaux had come back into the room. ‘His car is ready,’ she said.
‘Good, good. Morin chuckled waggishly. They had no trouble, I take it, fixing the plastique, the bomb. Does it explode when he opens the door or when he switches on the ignition?’ He raised a hand suddenly in mock alarm. ‘No, no. Better not say. Let it be a surprise.’
I got to my feet. He stood up with me.
‘Going?’ he said.
‘How much do I owe?’ I asked Madame Coursaux.
‘For what, Monsieur?’
‘For having the rotor arm put back. I presume that that was what you had taken out, wasn’t it?’
She stared at me blankly. Morin made a tut-tutting sound.
‘My dear,’ he said to her, ‘his experiences at the hands of the CIA have given him strange ideas.’ He glanced at Schneider. ‘We must be understanding, eh?’
Schneider surveyed me coldly for a moment. Then he said: ‘There will be no charge, Carter, not this time.’
He gave me a nod of dismissal. I went into the passageway followed by Morin. As he helped me on with my overcoat, he spoke softly to me.
‘A word of friendly advice, Carter. There may well be a next time. We have colleagues who may have further questions to ask and suggestions to make. Don’t, I beg you, compromise yourself further by going to the police or the Swiss security service. They cannot help you. You will only endanger your own interests and those of others. Remember instead what we were speaking of earlier, the fate of the men and women who worked for Résistance. It was not only the editor who died. You understand?’
‘I understand.’ I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
He smiled and opened the door. ‘Bon appétit’ he said cheerfully.
I went.
My legs were very shaky, but once I got into the outside air again I felt a bit better. I started to walk back to my car.
I was three blocks away from the Chateau Europa and the headache was beginning to go when I saw the Fiat with the Fribourg plates cruise past me and park near the next intersection.
* He had. The Anglo-American Stenographic Bureau, a Munich secretarial agency, had a key to his mailbox in the foyer of the office building. ‘Bloch’ used to telephone the Bureau every weekday at 5.00 p.m., when letters and telegrams picked up earlier would be opened and read to him. This service was paid for monthly by cheque on Bloch’s Munich bank.—C.L.