COMMISSAIRE PAUL-EMIL VAUBAN
edited tape interview*
The accident to which you refer occurred at approximately 23.25 hours on Friday, December 16. The Cornavin quarter is within my jurisdiction.
Reports on traffic accidents and other incidents of concern to the police are normally made to the duty officer at the commissariat. A summary of the reports received by the night duty officer is brought to me here in my office on my arrival in the morning. In the case of a serious crime or the suspicion of one, I am, of course, notified by telephone at my home no matter what the hour; but for an apparently minor incident such as this I would not be disturbed.
However, when I saw the name Theodore Carter on the morning summary report of December 17, I at once called for further details of the case. I had, as you evidently know, had a previous encounter with this man, and it seemed to me that an early exchange of information between the judiciary branch and the Bureau for the Control of Foreign Residents might be advisable.
The most serious charges against him at that juncture were those of driving while drunk and dangerous driving. There were, reportedly, three witnesses to the accident, one of whom was nearly hit when the car left the road. A patrol car was at the railway station nearby at the time and arrived on the scene a minute and a half later.
The agent in charge called an ambulance from the polyclinique to attend to the driver, Carter, whom he described as smelling strongly of vomit and alcohol. Blood and urine tests taken shortly after Carter’s admission to the hospital showed alcohol concentrations of 320 milligrams per 100 millilitres in the blood and 440 milligrams in the urine. He had without doubt been drinking heavily. His injuries, which consisted of bruises and multiple facial cuts caused by small fragments of the safety glass, appeared to be superficial. However, he had suffered a period of unconsciousness, and, in view of this, the hospital authorities thought it advisable to detain him there until they could be certain that the concussion would have no after-effects.
On regaining consciousness he had made a number of seemingly irrational statements about the cause of the accident. At first these were attributed to his state of intoxication. When he persisted in them later and then had to be forcibly restrained from leaving the hospital, the possibility of his having suffered serious brain damage was considered. The doctor in charge of the case decided to call in a specialist from the hospital’s neuropsychiatric department for consultation.
In the light of my own experience with Monsieur Carter this seemed to me at the time an appropriate decision. Tasked that I be kept informed of developments in the case.
By this time Carter’s daughter had been informed of the accident and that her father was in the hospital. She did not see him immediately on her arrival there, however, because by then he was asleep.
Later that morning Mlle Carter called on me at my office.
She is, as you are no doubt aware, an extremely personable young woman. It was with profound regret that I found myself unable to comply with her request that her father should be brought before a court that afternoon and released sous caution. She herself, she said, was prepared to furnish the bond.
I reminded her that the charges against her father were serious, that the court would not be in session until Monday morning and that, in any case, her father was now in the care of the hospital. I told her that decisions about further police action would have to await the psychiatrist’s report.
At that she became indignant. It was not an easy interview. The young today have no respect for authority. I tried as best I could to explain the difficulties of my position. In doing so I mentioned, a little caustically perhaps, the fact that her father had attempted to excuse his violations of the traffic laws the night before by pleading that he was being hounded and pursued by agents of foreign intelligence services at the time.
‘And how do you know he wasn’t?’ she demanded brusquely.
As I did not consider that the question required a reply, I merely shrugged.
That seemed to enrage her. ‘Exactly. You don’t know. And now –’ she pointed a finger at me – ‘now he is also being hounded by you the police. I am ashamed.’
‘Mademoiselle …’ I began, but she was not prepared to listen to reason.
‘Yes, ashamed,’ she went on, ‘ashamed that I was fool enough to suggest that he should go to you for help.’
She then declared that she intended to consult a lawyer and left.
In retrospect I can only say that I acted throughout with strict propriety and in complete conformity with established police practices. The case was exceptional, as you know. With insufficient information at my disposal I could only conclude at that point that both Carter and his daughter were a little mad. I consider that the criticisms of my person and conduct subsequently voiced by Mlle Carter have been unfair to the point of scurrility and totally undeserved.
Attractive though she may be, Mlle Carter undoubtedly has in her something of her father’s character.
DR MICHEL LORIOL
written statement†
On the morning of December 17 I was requested, in the absence of Dr Thomas, who heads our neuropsychiatric unit, to examine a patient admitted through the polyclinique during the night. He had been involved in a traffic accident.
The patient was Theodore Carter.
I had a preliminary consultation with the house surgeon in charge and was given the case history, such as it was. The concussion had resulted from what appeared to have been a contre-coup injury. X-rays had established that there was no fracture. Blood pressure and pulse were satisfactory. Treatment had been confined to bed rest and intravenous injections of vitamin B6 to hasten the metabolism of the alcohol in the patient’s blood. He had slept for six hours and was now disintoxicated. Yet he was still, according to the house surgeon, talking in the same irrational way as that in which he had talked when he had been admitted to the hospital. His behaviour was aggressive. He had twice attempted to leave the hospital and had had to be restrained. As he was technically under police arrest he had been moved from the emergency ward to a room in the annex. He had also been denied access to his clothes.
I went to see him.
He was sitting up in bed – a pale, grey-haired man with cadaverous, unshaven cheeks and angry eyes. He had a bruise on the left cheekbone and four of the cuts on his face had dressings over them. He peered at me myopically when I entered.
‘Ah. The young Dr Kildare, I presume,’ he said in English. His tone was distinctly hostile.
I introduced myself and asked if he would prefer that we conducted our conversation in English.
He replied in French that if I were prepared to talk sense he did not care which language was used; otherwise he would prefer not to talk at all. It was not a good beginning.
I said I hoped that we could both talk sensibly.
‘Are you a psychiatrist?’ he asked.
‘I am a member of the hospital neuropsychiatric unit, yes.’ I began to examine him.
‘I think I should tell you,’ he said, ‘that I share André Gide’s view of psychiatry.’
‘He said that “know thyself” was a maxim as pernicious as it was ugly, because the person who studies himself arrests his own development.’
I smiled. ‘I know the passage you mean. He then went on to declare that a caterpillar that set out to know itself would never become a butterfly. Quite untrue, wouldn’t you say? A caterpillar can’t help but become a butterfly. The process has nothing to do with knowing.’
‘He was speaking figuratively of course,’ he said crossly. ‘Anyway, all I was trying to establish with you was that I am neither irrational nor deranged. The padded cell and the strait jacket will not be needed.’
‘I am relieved to hear that, Monsieur,’ I replied. ‘Neither is available at this hospital.’
After that he allowed me to complete my examination in silence. I discovered no residual signs of organic damage.
He peered at me a trifle anxiously as I straightened up. ‘Well, Doctor?’
‘How bad is your headache?’
‘Not too bad now. I’ve felt worse.’
‘Did you lose your glasses in the accident?’
‘I suppose so. They probably got smashed up when I did. I tried to send a message to my daughter asking her to bring me a spare pair. They’re an old prescription, but they’d be better than nothing. However, I doubt if the message was passed on,’ he added sourly. ‘That half-wit colleague of yours probably assumed that “glasses” was a code word and that what I was really asking her to do was smuggle in a hacksaw.’
‘She was here earlier, but you were asleep. I understand that she’ll be coming back. Would you like to tell me about the accident?’
He gave me a shrewd look. ‘You mean what led up to the accident, don’t you? That’s the story that’s causing all the fuss, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I should have kept my mouth shut.’
‘Let’s start with the accident itself,’ I said. ‘Do you remember it?’
He frowned. ‘Well no, I don’t. Not clearly. I remember making a sharp left turn, skidding and hitting a truck. After that … I’m not sure. Is that bad?’
‘Some loss of memory for events occurring immediately prior to a concussion is quite normal. Nothing to worry about. But you’ll have to stay in bed for a couple of days. With a concussion, even a mild one, it is never safe to take chances.’
‘Monday is press day,’ he said. ‘Can I be out of here by Monday?’
‘Possibly, but …’
‘Oh yes, of course. I’m under arrest, aren’t I?’
‘Had you had much to drink?’
‘I’d had quite a bit, I suppose, one way and another,’ he said reluctantly; ‘but I’d thrown up most of it.’
‘When was that?’
‘After I was gassed,’ he said. He was looking at me defiantly now.
I nodded. ‘Tell me about the gas.’
‘I went back to my office to get a file I’d left there. There was someone in the office who shouldn’t have been there. I have reason to believe that it was someone I knew, a man named Schneider. Anyway, he shone a light in my face and then squirted some sort of gas at me. It practically knocked me out and made me throw up.’
‘You say you have reason to believe that it was someone you knew. Aren’t you sure?’
‘It was dark. I didn’t see him. But I smelled him. He uses lavender water.’
‘Did the gas smell of lavender water?’
He drew in his breath and then exhaled impatiently. ‘Doctor, why don’t we just forget the whole tiling?’ he said. ‘Just tell them I’m hallucinating a bit because of the concussion and that I’ll be okay in a couple of days. Right?’
‘I couldn’t very well tell them that,’ I answered reasonably.
‘You see I don’t know that you are hallucinating, as you put it, do I?’
‘Well, you’re not believing a word I’m telling you, are you?’
‘What I believe isn’t important. It’s what you believe that I’m interested in.’ I went on before he had a chance to reply. ‘Do you smoke, Monsieur?’
‘Yes, I smoke, but they took away all my things. I haven’t got any cigarettes here. Why?’
I offered him a cigarette and he took one, but he gave me an amused look as he did so. ‘Oral gratification?’ he remarked with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘A breast symbol to reassure? Is that the idea, Doctor?’
Patients with a smattering of knowledge can be trying. I had not intended to smoke myself, but his interpretation forced me to change my mind. I couldn’t let him feel that he had taken charge of the interview. Fortunately, I still had the cigarettes in my hand. I smiled as I reached for my lighter.
‘Do you think you need reassurance?’ I asked.
‘What I need,’ he replied promptly, ‘is a drink. But I suppose that kind of oral reassurance is out. I’ll settle for the cigarette.’
I lit both our cigarettes and said: ‘Let us go back to this man Schneider. You say that you knew him and that he smelled of lavender water.’
He made a gesture of irritation. ‘Forget the lavender water for the moment. If I’ve got to tell you the whole story I’ll have to go back to the beginning.’
‘Very well.’
‘I edit a newsletter called Intercom, Doctor. Have you heard of it?’
‘I have seen a copy.’ I did not mention that it had been shown to me by a colleague as a classic example of transatlantic paranoia; but the guarded tone of my reply did not escape the patient.
He grinned. ‘I won’t ask you what you thought of it, Doctor. I can guess. Well, a month or two ago Intercom changed hands.’
His story took over an hour to tell. Once or twice, in the earlier stages, I stopped him to ask for clarification of something he had said; I wanted to see what effect interruption would have on his train of thought; but after that I let him go on without interruption. If the patient is willing to talk freely it is as well to let him do so. There was a manic quality about his way of telling it, of course, but after a while I began to suspect that this was to some extent a cultivated mannerism, part of his journalistic stock in trade. I made no attempt at that time to make a judgment about the truth of the story. If it was fantasy, it was singularly well-organised fantasy. On the other hand, it came from a man who, on his own admission, had made fantasy his business and was inclined to be proud of his success with it – a schizoid personality. I would need more evidence before I could formulate an opinion.
When he came to the end I asked two questions.
‘Have you told anyone else about this? I don’t mean here at the hospital, but before the accident.’
‘Val knows some of it.’
‘Val?’
‘My daughter Valerie.’
He had slumped down in the bed and was looking very tired. I decided to postpone further questioning.
‘I’ll look in and see you again later,’ I told him.
‘You do that,’ he said and closed his eyes; but as I reached the door he spoke again.
‘The briefcase, Doctor. I had it with me in the car. I’d like to know it’s safe. And I’d like you to see the file that’s in it. I think the police have what remains of the car.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said.
I found the house surgeon having coffee in the staff common room. He is one of those men who expresses his distrust and ignorance of psychiatry by being facetious about it. He greeted me with an expectant grin.
‘Well, what’s the expert verdict?’ he inquired. ‘Deranged or merely cracked?’
‘Possibly neither.’
He looked at me as if he thought that I was cracked.
‘I’d like to speak to the daughter,’ I went on. ‘Do you know if she returned?’
‘She did. But even if she’s still here you won’t get very much out of her. Very nasty temper she has. Says papa’s been framed by the police and that we’re aiding and abetting.’ His smile became sardonic. ‘I gather she doesn’t think much of your specialty. Better be careful or she’ll have your head off.’
Mlle Carter had evidently made an impression on him. I looked forward to meeting her.
I found her eventually in an otherwise empty waiting room in the main building.
There is something I should explain here. Valerie Carter and I have come to know each other well during these past few months and I hope that we will shortly be married. I mention this because any account I give now of our first meeting is bound to be coloured to some extent by our present relationship. I can only try to be objective.
A nurse introduced me to her.
I saw an extremely beautiful young woman with a pale, clear complexion, dark, almost black hair and her father’s angry eyes. She was wearing a red and black cloth coat. Her response to the introduction was disconcerting.
She gave me a nod and then said crisply, ‘I was told that my father was being examined by a psychiatrist. I would like to see that gentleman.’
I bowed. ‘That is why I am here, Mademoiselle.’
She stared. ‘You are the psychiatrist?’
‘Dr Thomas is the senior physician in charge of the neuropsychiatric unit,’ I said. ‘However, he is at present attending a professional convention in Paris. I am his assistant and I examined your father. Please sit down, Mademoiselle.’
I look younger than I am. I know she wanted to ask me if I were really qualified to conduct a psychiatric examination; but she restrained herself. She would hear what I had to say first. If she did not like what she heard, then she would question my competence. She sat down.
‘His physical condition seems good, but with head injuries one always has to be careful. We will know better by Monday.
‘You say his physical condition seems good. Do you mean that his mental condition doesn’t seem good?’ She had coloured slightly and her eyes had narrowed. I was on dangerous ground.
‘That is what I want to discuss with you.’
She considered me for a moment, then gave a curt nod. ‘Very well. But I may as well tell you, Dr Loriol, that I have already been to see that imbecile Commissaire. He seemed to feel that the statement my father made after the accident should be treated as a joke. If that is your approach, too, any discussion between us would be a waste of time.’
‘My approach, Mademoiselle, is purely medical. I don’t know exactly what your father said after the accident. I wasn’t there. I do know that he had been drinking quite a lot before the accident. It may well be that after it he wasn’t very coherent.’
‘My father is always coherent.’
‘He had suffered a concussion, you must remember, and been found unconscious. A period of confusion would be understandable. However, his earlier statements need not concern us now. What I am concerned with is the statement he has just made to me.’
‘Well?’ She was still very much on her guard.
‘In my opinion it calls for investigation.’
‘By the police, do you mean?’
‘By you and me initially, Mademoiselle, if you agree. Your father told me about a series of incidents, of certain strange things that he says have been happening to him.’
‘Didn’t you believe him?’
‘I believe that he believes that these things happened and that they are interrelated, but that is not the point. I asked him if he had told anyone else about these strange happenings – before the accident, I mean – and he said that he has told you about some of them. Has he?’
‘Of course.’ She looked at me a trifle pityingly. ‘But how does that help you? If my father believes what he is saying, the fact that he tells me what he tells you isn’t evidence that what he is saying is based on reality.’
‘No, but I think that you yourself were actually involved in one incident. You were there when two Americans came to his apartment and questioned him, I understand.’
For the first time the suspicious, defensive look left her. ‘Yes, that’s right. I was there.’
‘Your father says that they were CIA men.’
‘He said that one of them was. They said they were from a news magazine, but they certainly behaved very strangely. It was quite unpleasant.’
‘Would you tell me about it?’
She told me. She also told me about the inquiries she had made concerning the man Skriabin and what she had learned from her friend in the UN library. That was something that her father had omitted from his account. But it fitted in. That was the moment when I began to accept the fact that the story her father had told me, fantastic though it might be, could possibly be true.
I did not immediately say so, however, and that was a pity, in more ways than one. But I was in a difficult position. I had legal as well as medical responsibilities in the case, and extreme caution was indicated. If I concluded that the patient’s account of his experiences represented fact and not fantasy, it would be necessary to defend my findings to the police and probably other law-enforcement agencies as well – for obvious reasons, I already had the federal security service in mind. The police are notoriously resistant to psychiatric evidence when it threatens to contradict their own preconceived findings. I had no reason to believe that the security service would be any easier to deal with. Before I committed myself to an opinion I would have to be certain that I stood on absolutely solid ground. I had Dr Thomas’s reputation and that of the unit to consider as well as my own.
Valerie was watching me with narrowed eyes, waiting for my reaction to what she had told me. I responded as noncommittally as I could.
‘Thank you, Mademoiselle. You have been very helpful.’
‘I also saw the car that was following him,’ she said, ‘the car with the Fribourg plates.’
‘Did you actually see it following him?’
‘Well no, but it was there in the street outside our apartment.’
‘You saw a car with Fribourg plates,’ I said carefully. ‘That isn’t a very rare sight in Geneva, is it?’
She sighed. ‘No. I understand. It isn’t evidence.’
I stood up. ‘I expect you would like to see your father now. He said that he sent a message asking you to bring him his spare glasses. Did you get the message?’
‘Yes, and I have the glasses.’ She too was standing now. She turned to face me. ‘Dr Loriol, you can’t really believe my father is insane, can you?’
The question was both a statement of her own conviction and an appeal to me to share it with her. I regret to say that I replied evasively.
‘I would be most reluctant to believe it, Mademoiselle, I assure you. His room is in the annex. If you will come with me I will show you the way.’
She said no more, but I knew that I had disappointed her. In the annex I handed her over to the nursing sister in charge and then went back to my office.
There I telephoned the police and asked to speak to Commissaire Vauban. He was not available, so I spoke to the duty officer instead. I did not discuss the patient; what I wanted to know about was the briefcase with the Bloch file in it which Carter had said was in his car. The duty officer was helpful but there was not much he could do. The damaged car had been towed to the police garage. It was still there. Nothing had been removed from it and nothing could be removed from it without proper authorisation. The duty officer promised that he would mention the matter to Commissaire Vauban as soon as he could.
Almost twenty-four hours elapsed before I was allowed to examine the contents of that briefcase.
By then the damage had been done.
VALERIE CARTER
transcribed tape interview
At first the day had been frightening. As it wore on it became maddening.
It was at the hospital, where I went after the telephone call from the police, that I learned that my father was going to be charged with drunken driving. Then I saw that cretinous policeman Vauban. From the commissariat I went to Maître Perriot’s office. He was the notaire my father used when he leased the apartment and made his will.
In my confusion I had forgotten that it was Saturday. Of course, Perriot’s office was closed. I found his home number, however, and telephoned him. He was quite helpful until I told him about the drunken-driving charge. Then he tried to back out. I wouldn’t let him; but all I could make him promise was that he would see my father on Monday at the hospital. He insisted that there was nothing he could do before. He may have been right, but I didn’t think so at the time.
I had a sandwich in a café and went back to hospital. I still wasn’t allowed to see my father; instead I saw a pompous fool of a house surgeon who told me about the psychiatric nonsense and gave me the message about the spare glasses. I went and got them from the apartment. When I returned to the hospital for the third time they told me to wait.
I wasn’t disappointed in Michel, in Dr Loriol. I was furious with him. Quite unreasonably, I admit. He was absolutely right to be careful. No, that’s unfair. I was furious because I had tried hard to make him commit himself and failed. I wasn’t in a very reasonable state of mind that afternoon.
If I had been I wouldn’t have helped my father to do what he did.
When I went in he began by being shame-faced and apologetic, but that phase didn’t last long – about two minutes, I would say. Then he told me what had happened the previous night when he had gone back to his office.
I was horrified, naturally, and as angry as he was. We had plenty to make us angry. I told him about Maître Perriot’s weak-kneed reluctance to become involved and about my ridiculous interview with Commissaire Vauban.
He remembered the Commissaire.
‘That fish-eyed phony,’ he said. ‘I might have known.’ He said some other uncomplimentary things about the Commissaire that I won’t repeat.
I suppose we both got very worked up, or depressed and desperate, or all three, if that’s possible. You see, everything looked so black that day. Here were these bogeymen, as my father called them, behaving like gangsters, and all the police did when he told them what was going on was to say that he must be insane and charge him with drunken driving. Things were in such a hopeless mess and there seemed to be no one we could turn to. I didn’t even consider Michel; at that stage I thought of him as one of the enemy. It’s easy to say now that, if we had been patient and wise and waited for the air to clear and the truth to prevail, everything would have been all right. It is as easy – and about as sensible – as telling a person who has just fallen from the top of a high building that, if he had had the presence of mind to relax all his muscles before he hit the ground, he wouldn’t have broken so many bones.
I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m just explaining why it was that, when what looked like a straw came floating by, we both clutched at it.
My father had been wondering aloud if it would do any good to inform Dr Bruchner of the situation, or whether his reaction to it would be the same as Maître Perriot’s.
‘He might know someone in the Federal Assembly,’ I said, ‘or even the Council.’
My father shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t do any good. The police here wouldn’t take any notice of anyone in Bern. What we have to do is go over this fool Vauban’s head to someone who’ll listen.’ He paused, then added: ‘Or someone who can be made to listen.’
‘How can you make someone listen?’ I asked wearily.
‘By raising hell,’ he said and suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘Yes, that’s it. Break the story. Set the dogs on them. Put them on the spot. Make ’em sweat.’
I had to listen to more fighting words and finger-snappings before he could be persuaded to tell me what he meant, but when he did explain I became almost as enthusiastic as he was.
This was the plan. He would use Intercom to break the story of his persecution and harassment, but give the news agencies advance notice of it. In that way both the story, which he would make as sensational as possible, and Intercom itself would receive the maximum publicity. Commissaire Vauban’s superiors would be forced to take notice. Questions would be asked. The authorities would be placed on the defensive.
My part in the operation was that of go-between. First, I had to get him writing materials, and then, when he had written the piece, take it out of the hospital. When I had made typed copies I was to deliver one to Nicole Deladoey with instructions to make it the lead story in the Tuesday issue. This was to guard against the possibility of his being prevented by the police or the hospital from going to the office on Monday. Next, I was to make French and German translations. Finally, I was to telephone a list of those foreign news-agency correspondents whom my father knew personally, plus a man on the Tribune de Genève, and offer them advance copies of the story. I was to start with the American agency because of the six-hour time difference between Geneva and their New York head office.
The writing materials presented no difficulty. I gave him a ballpoint pen I had in my handbag. Before I left I asked the nurse if he could have some magazines to read. While she was getting them I stole a packet of paper towels from a storage cabinet in the corridor.
My father hid the towels under his pillow.
‘It’ll be ready for you first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll show them what’s what.’
On the way out I met Michel.
‘How did your father seem to you?’ he asked.
‘Very naturally annoyed,’ I said curtly, ‘and as sane, Doctor, as you are.’
When we had spoken earlier he had been formal and rather stuffy. Now he surprised me by smiling. It was disarming. I suddenly found myself liking him.
‘I’m sorry about the annoyance,’ he said, ‘I’ll do my best not to add to it. Will you be in to see him again tomorrow?’
‘In the morning if that’s all right.’
‘About ten o’clock would be a good time.’ He hesitated. ‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘About what, Doctor?’
‘I’m sure you have many friends, but I think that, for the present anyway, it might be advisable not to discuss your father’s statement with them.’
‘Because it sounds absurd, do you mean, or because it may be true?’
He smiled again. ‘I’d say those were both good reasons for discretion, wouldn’t you?’
He did his best to warn me, you see, but I was still under my father’s spell and didn’t understand. I thought that he was trying to plant doubts in my mind, and for a moment I was on the point of telling him what I was really planning to do. Then I remembered that he was in a position to upset the plan if he wanted to, and changed my mind. I merely said that I was very grateful to him for his advice and left without saying whether I meant to take it or not.
My father was looking much better when I saw him the following morning. He was still unshaven and the bruise looked horrible, but there was colour in his cheeks and his eyes were bright. The nurse said that he had had a good night.
The moment she was out of the room he brought out a folded wad of paper towels from under the bedclothes and thrust it into my hand.
‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Go on, read it. Tell me what you think.
I unfolded the towels and read.
The story was headed ‘An Unholy Alliance’ and there was a subtitle, CIA’s New Partner in Crime.
It went on:
The Central Intelligence Agency’s deep devotion to the spirits of peaceful coexistence and international brotherhood is well known. It was inevitable, perhaps, that such devotion would lead them occasionally into strange and malodorous by-ways. Even so, the Congress and people of the United States, to say nothing of America’s NATO allies, may well be surprised to learn just how strange and malodorous some of those by-ways can be.
They will certainly be appalled.
In neutral Switzerland, of all places, the CIA has now allied itself with the notorious Soviet Committee of State Security, better known as the KGB, in a joint conspiracy of terror and coercion.
Incredible? One would have thought so. Impossible? One would have hoped so. Unfortunately, it is the squalid truth, and we have evidence to prove that it is.
There is no hearsay about our evidence. It is hard and incontrovertible. And for a very good reason. It is first-hand. The most recent victim of this iniquitous East-West gangster collaboration has been none other than the managing editor of Intercom – this reporter – and his evidence comes to you direct from a hospital bed.
Here are the ugly facts.
My father can make almost any ‘fact’ ugly if he puts his mind to it, and he had uglified these with such gusto that I had difficulty recognising some of them. The interview with Goodman and Rich in our apartment read like an account of a hatchet murder, While he didn’t exactly say that we were both lying in pools of blood on the floor at the end of it, that was impression he conveyed. His description of the session with Morin and Schneider at the Chateau Europa was, of course, horrendous. The attack in, and escape from, the office was a nightmare sequence out of an old German silent film. The car accident became an attempt to silence the voice of Intercom by murdering the editor. I couldn’t help laughing.
He wasn’t offended; he responded by quoting Shakespeare.
‘But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘That’ll shake them up, eh?’
‘It will. But don’t you think it may shake them the wrong way? Don’t you think you ought to tone it down a bit?’
‘This is no time to be pulling punches.’
‘But you do want to be believed.’
He thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘You may have a point. Give it to me.’
He began to edit it. After ten minutes he handed it back. The first part was unchanged, but the ugly facts had changed considerably. They were still ugly, but no longer unbelievably so. He had removed all the wilder adjectives and adverbs.
I put the paper towels in my bag and he gave me another one with the list of people I had to telephone written on it. I promised to return that evening and tell him what the reactions had been.
I must say that Nicole was very kind that day. She hadn’t heard about the accident, of course, but as soon as I told her what had happened and explained about the new lead piece, she volunteered to go and open up the office and help with the typing. As a result I was able to start telephoning early in the afternoon.
The reaction of the American who was first on the list was fairly typical. After I had read the piece to him, there was a silence. Then he said: ‘Ted’s got to be kidding.’
‘He’s really going to print that?’
‘It will go out Tuesday.’
He sighed. ‘Okay, Miss Carter. Maybe they can use a laugh back home. I’ll have the office send a messenger over for the copy. He started to say goodbye, then stopped. ‘By the way, Miss Carter, which hospital is your father in?’
I told him.
They were not all as easygoing as that, however.
My father had omitted some names from the ugly facts. For example, Goodman became ‘a thug masquerading as an American reporter’, Madame Coursaux was referred to as ‘a French-speaking woman agent claiming to be a dealer in rare manuscripts’ and Morin was ‘bullyboy Number Two’. The Frenchman I spoke to wanted the names and was disbelieving when I said I didn’t know them.
The German was even more difficult. He cross-examined me. My father’s assertion that he was the latest victim of the CIA-KGB conspiracy, he said, clearly meant that he knew of earlier victims. Was he implying that Major-General Horst Wendland, deputy chief of West German Intelligence, and Rear-Admiral Hermann Luedke, NATO chief of staff for logistics in Belgium, had been among those early victims?
When I said that I had never heard of those persons, he became sarcastic. General Wendland’s so-called suicide and the murder of Admiral Luedke, he informed me, had been widely publicised events. How could I not have heard of them? He, too, wanted to know which hospital my father was in.
So did the man on the Tribune de Gèneve.
It was six o’clock in the evening when I got back to the hospital.
Then I was told that I couldn’t see my father. I must see Dr Loriol.
I asked why and was told that those were Dr Loriol’s orders. No, there had been no change in my father’s condition.
I asked to see Dr Loriol. He wasn’t available.
DR MICHEL LORIOL
written statement‡
My orders concerning Valerie were misinterpreted. The reason that I was not available was that I was with Commissaire Vauban in his office.
Earlier that afternoon I had been informed by the police duty officer that the briefcase from Monsieur Carter’s car was now at the commissariat and that I could examine the contents there if I still wished to do so.
I went to the commissariat. After I had read the Arnold Bloch file, I telephoned Commissaire Vauban at his home and informed him that, in my opinion, the statements Monsieur Carter had made the previous day to the police, to the house surgeon and later to me had a factual basis. I suggested that they ought now to be treated seriously.
He said that he would leave at once for his office and asked me to wait there. As I was on call at the hospital, I telephoned to them to let them know that I would be delayed. I was informed that two journalists were there requesting interviews with Monsieur Carter.
I gave orders that no visitors, with the exception of Mlle Carter, were to be permitted to see her father. I added, however, that, if Mlle Carter did come to visit him that evening, I would like to see her first. To be candid, I was looking forward to giving her personally what seemed at the moment to be an encouraging piece of news. Unfortunately, some officious person at the hospital misrepresented my request by turning it into a prohibition.
When Commissaire Vauban arrived I reported on my interview with Monsieur Carter in detail and showed him the Bloch file. When he had read it he decided that he would himself take a statement in writing from the patient. He asked me if it could be taken at the hospital that night.
It would, I admit, have been much better if I had immediately agreed. The security service would have been alerted sooner and, although the news agencies already had Monsieur Carter’s version of the story, he would at least have time to withdraw his own publication of it
However, I did not immediately agree; I temporised. What I had in mind, of course, were the charges already pending against Valerie’s father. I thought that by exaggerating slightly the gravity of his condition and recalling the mental strain to which he had been subjected, I might incline the Commissaire towards dropping the charges. I said that if it were absolutely essential to have the statement that night I would not object, but that I would prefer to wait. I spoke of delayed reactions. If the patient’s condition was still unchanged the following day, I added, he would probably be permitted to leave the hospital and complete his recovery at home. It might be better, I said, to take his statements there.
Valerie and her father have said harsh things about Commissaire Vauban. They have been a little unjust, I think. He was genuinely concerned about his too hasty dismissal of the earlier statements and anxious to retrieve his mistake. He was also considerate enough, in spite of his anxiety, to agree to wait until the following morning before taking the written statement. However, he did insist that it be taken before the patient was discharged from the hospital. That, I think, was not unreasonable under the circumstances. The failure at that point was mine. I should have agreed to his taking the statement that night, and I should have had the sense to tell him about the journalists who had been at the hospital seeking interviews. If I had done those things, Valerie’s father might have been saved a great deal of embarrassment.
FROM THEODORE CARTER
verbal communication
‘Embarrassment’ for God’s sake!
I was threatened with a two-year jail term and a fifty-thousand-franc fine. He calls that embarrassment?
I call it something else, Mr L. However, I told you at the beginning that there were some things I still couldn’t talk about, and I meant it. No, not even in confidence, not even off the record.
Look, there used to be a notice on one of the cages at the Paris Zoo. It became famous. You know the one I mean?
‘This animal is vicious; when attacked, it defends itself.’
That about sums up the attitude of the Swiss federal security boys. When I was attacked, I defended myself with the only weapons I know how to use – words – and their reaction was to chain me up and muzzle me.
Well, the chain may be off now, but the muzzle isn’t. As long as I want to live and work in Switzerland, that’s a fixture.
What you’ve had so far from me is a detailed, personal account of events that are, so to speak, in the public domain. I don’t mean that you could have got it from anyone else; my voice is the only authoritative one; I mean that, as far as confidential stuff is concerned, that’s the end of the line. If you’re going to tread on the toes of the bogeymen, don’t ask me to help you.
No, dammit, I’m not being overcautious. If you want to hear what my dear old pals Major X and Captain Y of Bureau H said and did, ask them yourself.
If I were you, though, I’d stick to guesswork, or narrative reconstruction, as you call it. It’s safer.
Okay. On your own head be it, Mr L. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.