The Intercom Conspiracy (16 page)

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:

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.