The Intercom Conspiracy (23 page)

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.

NARRATIVE RECONSTRUCTION

December 19 to 23

Theodore Carter’s refusal to run the risk of again incurring the displeasure of the Swiss counterintelligence service was not unexpected; his indignation at having incurred it in the first place, however, is harder to understand. Few foreigners who have lived and worked in Switzerland, and certainly no foreign journalist living and working there, could be unaware of the Federal Republic’s extreme sensitivity on the subject of espionage within its borders, nor of the reason for that sensitvity. Espionage activity, even when Swiss security is not threatened and no Swiss nationals are involved, is considered objectionable because it violates the Republic’s neutrality.

It is certain that, for a time, Carter was seriously threatened with prosecution under article 301 of the Swiss Criminal Code. This article states that any person ‘who carries on an information service for the benefit of one foreign state and to the detriment of another foreign state anywhere within the territory of the Federal Republic of Switzerland, or who recruits for such services or who assists them in any way’, may be punished by imprisonment or a heavy fine. It was under Article 301 that Rudolph Rössler, that remarkable World War II spy who used the code name ‘Lucy’, was tried in 1953. The prosecution held that, in acting contrary to the interests of the United States, Great Britain, France, West Germany and Denmark, through his work in Lucerne for Czech intelligence, he had violated Swiss neutrality.

Carter, of course, was never engaged in espionage activity of that kind, but he was certainly carrying on an information service within the meaning of Article 301; and, though the beneficiaries were not foreign states, those who suffered detriment were. No doubt he claimed that he acted inadvertently and unintentionally,
that he had been unaware of having committed an offence; and since he was never brought to trial, his explanations were evidently accepted in the end. But it must have been difficult to accept them. He admits himself that by the time he received the fourth bulletin, he already suspected that
Intercom
was being used to peddle secrets. In the light of that admission his indignation appears both unwarranted and disingenous. The true basis for it, probably, was anger at his own folly. Having become involved in a conspiracy he did not understand, he had at first lost his head and then gone on to commit what he knew to be a monumental indiscretion.

The Swiss do not like being reminded that their country is one of the most spy-infested in the world; and, unless Swiss national security is directly involved, espionage cases are rarely reported at length. Spy scandals that would be given front-page coverage in other Western countries are mentioned briefly, if at all, on an inside page in Switzerland. The subject is distasteful there. Nothing could have been better calculated to prejudice the police and counterintelligence investigators against Carter than the commotion he aroused in the international press. The investigators, used to working quietly and secretly behind security barriers, were suddenly exposed to the nagging importunities of foreign reporters and the glare of publicity.

They had other difficulties. Carter’s wild allegations about a CIA-KGB terrorist plot had been taken seriously by one or two French and German newspapers with circulations in Switzerland. Diplomatic protests and denials were soon being bandied about. As a consequence, the investigators, too, were obliged to take the allegations seriously.

While it is easy to dismiss a story as nonsense on the grounds that it is against all reason, it is often quite hard to
prove
that it is nonsense; and, even when the proof is forthcoming, there will always be the credulous few who refuse to accept it. The trouble with Carter’s story, of course, was that bits of it were true. He
had
had disturbing encounters with representatives of both the CIA and the KGB, and for reasons that had a common origin – the
SESAME
bulletins he had been publishing. It was perhaps inevitable that, in a moment of stress, a man with his kind of imagination should have began to suspect that the CIA and the KGB might be collaborating with each other. It was reckless of him, however, to broadcast his suspicion in terms that presented it as a demonstrable truth. The men from counterintelligence who questioned him assumed, naturally, that he knew more than he would admit to. As a result, it took them some time to disentangle the facts in his story from the embellishments.

His cooperation in the process was less than whole-hearted. According to the Canadian consular official who was permitted to interview Carter in the police commissariat six days after the accident, he did not tell the investigators of his secret arrangement to publish the allegations about the CIA-KGB plot in
Intercom
until late Tuesday night. By then, of course the December 20 issue was in the mails and out of reach.
^*
He said nothing at all about the electret bulletin, which also appeared in that issue, and when confronted with it he claimed airily that he had forgotten to take it out.

As we have seen, his indiscretion with the press had already antagonised the investigators. This further demonstration of his intransigence and irresponsible readiness to deceive certainly toughened their attitude towards him. The decision to arrest him, however, probably sprang as much from their determination to keep him away from the foreign reporters who were plaguing them as from the desire to teach him a lesson.

He was arrested on the Wednesday morning and arraigned in the afternoon. The judge ordered that he be held in custody for questioning. Bail was refused. The judge also granted warrants to search the
Intercom
offices and Carter’s apartment.

Although Carter did not know it then, that day, Wednesday, December 21, was his last as the editor of
Intercom
.

Dr Bruchner, too, has to be careful what he says about the
Intercom
scandal. However, some of the essential facts concerning the events of that week are matters of public record, and others can be deduced.

On Monday, December 19, Dr Bruchner received a second offer from Bank Schwob for the shares of Intercom Publishing Enterprises A.G. This offer he transmitted to Arnold Bloch by telegram, using the Brussels
poste restante
address which he had been given three days earlier. The following day Bloch replied, also by telegram, accepting the offer and giving instructions for the payment of the purchase price. The instructions were that the money should be paid into a numbered account with the Bâle correspondent of a Lebanese bank.

Dr Bruchner at once reported the acceptance of the offer to Bank Schwob.

No Bâle newspaper that morning had made any reference to the Carter imbroglio or to the events in Geneva; but in the late afternoon one of Dr Bruchner’s law partners drew his attention to a column in an American newspaper published in Paris. This particular paper had chosen to ridicule Carter’s allegations, and the task of reporting them had been delegated to the staff humorist. He had gone to work with a will. General Novak’s controversial career had been recalled in hilarious terms.
Intercom
was described as ‘the Batman of the funny-farm set’ and its editor as ‘the Lone Ranger of the lunatic fringe’. The allegations were dismissed by listing some of the more preposterous of
Intercom
’s earlier excursions into ‘cloud-cuckoo land’. It was an amusing and destructive piece of work.

Dr Bruchner’s response to it was curious.

It must be remembered that he had had a disturbing two days. The second offer from Bank Schwob had astounded him, and its acceptance had flustered him. He had managed to discuss the arrangements for payment and transfer with Dr Schwob as if the transaction were a perfectly ordinary one; but it had been an effort to do so, and he had ended the conversation with the feeling that he had been imagining the whole thing.

The price that had been put on the
Intercom
shares was two million francs, almost half a million dollars. That had made Dr Bruchner’s head spin. What happened when he saw the column from Paris was that his head began to spin in the opposite direction. The man unable to believe the evidence of his senses was transformed suddenly into a man with a deal slipping through his fingers, a man selling a property valued at two million francs which has just been publicly labelled as worthless.

Dr Bruchner called the
Intercom
office, spoke to Mlle Deladoey and learned that Carter was out of hospital and apparently none the worse for his experiences. Thereafter, Dr Bruchner forgot all about Carter and the allegations. He devoted the rest of his day to praying that neither Dr Schwob nor his client read the English-language newspapers and to preparing the share transfer documents. He airmailed them to Brussels that night. If the deal was still on, he was determined that not a moment should be lost in consummating it.

Dr Bruchner had some bad moments the following morning. Both the Radical Democratic and Independent newspapers carried pieces about
Intercom
. They said much the same thing. The Geneva police and the federal attorney-general’s office were investigating complaints made by Theodore Carter, editor of the
Intercom
newsletter, that he had been assaulted by representatives of certain foreign intelligence agencies and that those agencies were conspiring together to suppress the publication of news. One paper added noncommittally that Carter, a Canadian national, had recently been involved in a traffic accident in which he had suffered a head injury.

Dr Bruchner was certain that, even if Dr Schwob had not read these stories himself, someone in the bank would have drawn his attention to them; but at their meeting that day neither Dr Schwob nor his procurator made any reference to Carter. The meeting was businesslike and brief. At the end of it a very relieved Dr Bruchner left with a draft for two million francs, which he immediately paid into an escrow account. As soon as he received the signed share transfers from Bloch he would pay the money into the
Lebanese bank, record the transaction in Zug and report back to Dr Schwob. He expected then to learn the identity of the client for whom Bank Schwob was acting as nominee and, since he was still the sole director of the company, receive the new owner’s instructions. He was looking forward to that moment.

The share transfers, signed by Bloch, arrived back in his office on Thursday. He delivered them personally to Dr Schwob together with the share certificates. The transaction was completed.

‘When,’ Dr Bruchner asked, ‘may I expect to hear from the new proprietors?’

‘I shall continue to act on their behalf,’ said Dr Schwob. ‘My present instructions are that they plan a reorganisation of the company’s affairs. As a first step in this reorganisation they wish to discontinue publication of the newsletter
Intercom
. They would like this decision to take effect immediately.’

Dr Bruchner was for a moment too bewildered to say anything. Dr Schwob went on.

‘The staff, including Carter, may be given two months’ wages in lieu of notice. You should dispose of the lease on the Geneva offices as best you can and sell the contents. However, all
Intercom
records together with the mailing list – that is very important – and the Addressograph plates should be taken into your own custody and stored for the time being. You will receive further instructions about them later.’

The only further instruction that Dr Bruchner received was given three weeks later. It was to the effect that Intercom Publishing Enterprises A.G. should be placed in liquidation. No explanation was given. However, by then Dr Bruchner had no need of an explanation. By then he had been interviewed by counterintelligence.

A great deal of nonsense is talked, and written, about Swiss banking secrecy. True, it is an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment for a Swiss bank employee to disclose a client’s business; and he may be punished even for revealing the existence of an account without the owner’s permission; but that secrecy
is by no means inviolable. When there is reason to believe that it may be protecting a person who has committed a felony punishable under the Swiss Criminal Code, a court order may be obtained empowering a banker to disclose information.