The Intercom Conspiracy (19 page)

‘Then you’re just going to do nothing?’

‘There’s nothing to be done.’

‘You could at least call Dr Bruchner and get his advice.’

He didn’t answer that. I don’t think he really heard it. His mind was suddenly somewhere else. I went to get the coffee.

When I came back he was still staring down at his plate.

‘One thing I don’t understand,’ he said.

I refrained from saying, ‘Only one?’ but it was an effort to do so.

‘They didn’t ask me what was going to happen next,’ he went on. ‘If I’d been asking the questions this evening, I’d have wanted to know whether there were any more of these bulletins in the works, and, if so, what they were about. They didn’t. Morin talked vaguely about colleagues who might have further questions to ask and suggestions to make, but that was all. That looks as if their job was simply to identify the source of the bulletins and soften me up a bit for future use. He warned me not to go to the police or the federal security people, and he threatened reprisals if I did. But what he didn’t say was, “Stop publishing those stories that Bloch sends you, or else”. I wonder why.’

‘Perhaps they’re saving that ultimatum for Bloch personally, I said. ‘He determines policy, not you. You told them that. Incidentally,
has
he sent you any more bulletins?’

‘One, yes.’ He told me about the electret thing. ‘I suppose,’ he went on, ‘that when that goes out I’m going to have the British breathing down my neck as well.’

‘Then don’t publish it.’

‘Don’t be silly, Val. Of course I’m going to publish it.’ He got up. ‘Right now, though, I’m going back to the office.’

‘At this time of night? Why?’

He finished his wine and then poured quite a lot of brandy into his coffee. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it has just occurred to me that the only evidence I have that I’ve been telling the truth about all this is in a file sitting in a tray on Nicole’s desk – the bulletins, the correspondence with Bloch, everything. I put it there myself when I left. But after what’s happened this evening, I think I’d sleep better over the weekend if that file was in a safe place.’

‘Would you like me to drive you?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll be back by the time you’ve done the dishes.’

He finished the coffee and brandy before he left.

That was just before ten o’clock. At eleven I started to get ready for bed. The fact that he hadn’t come back by then didn’t worry me. Once in the office, he wouldn’t pay much attention to the time, I knew. He might start working or thinking about working and forget it. By eleven-thirty, though, I was getting tired, so I decided to telephone the office and tell him that I wouldn’t wait up. There was no reply. I assumed then that he had gone to a café for more brandy. There was nothing I could do about that. I went to bed.

It was at seven the following morning that the call came from the hospital.

FROM THEODORE CARTER
transcribed dictation tape

To tell the truth, I hadn’t been completely frank with Val. When I went back to the office it wasn’t
only
in order to put the Bloch file in a safe place; I also wanted to have another look at the electret bulletin before I made up my mind whether or not to publish it.

In spite of my bold words to her on that subject, the idea of inviting the British to join the rapidly growing Let’s-Bug-Carter Club didn’t seem to me a particularly appealing one at that moment. Not that I thought that the British would send bullyboys to slap me around and throw drinks in my face, but their intelligence people are not always as gentlemanly as they like to pretend. They can be vindictive. If they wanted to be nasty and went about it in the right way, they could probably get the Canadian embassy in Bern to rap me over the knuckles.

On the other hand, I wasn’t about to throw in the towel just because things were getting a bit rough. I don’t like being pressured;
it makes me bloodyminded; and, while I didn’t know Bloch, the fact remained that he was paying my salary. So if he wanted his goddam technical bulletins to appear in the publication he owned, who was I to say him nay? As the editor I was entitled to object on policy grounds and, if my objection were overruled
and
if I felt strongly enough about that, to resign. I could also object on legal grounds, if the material sent in for publication was in my opinion libellous or obscene. While I hadn’t cared for the reference to Skriabin, nobody, excepting possibly Mr Schneider of the KGB, had suggested that it was libellous; Goodman hadn’t complained that we had libelled the FG115; and, unless Webster’s Third New International Dictionary had got its wires crossed, there was nothing obscene about electrets.
Intercom
wasn’t in business to win popularity contests. So, until someone with the authority to do so clapped a cease-and-desist order on us, it seemed to me that I had no justification for failing to carry out my owner’s instructions.

I was worried all the same. By the time I arrived at the office I had made up my mind about one thing: if, after rereading the electret bulletin, I decided to go ahead and publish it, I would also exercise my ‘editorial judgment’ and put Bloch’s by-line on the story. Then, maybe, if the British felt like pushing anyone around, they would pick on him rather than me.

At that time of night I had no trouble parking near the building. I had seen nothing more of the car with the Fribourg plates.

Our offices were on the second floor. The mailboxes for the building were in the foyer. More from habit than because I expected to find anything in it, I glanced through the small glass window in the door of our box as I pressed the
minuterie
switch for the staircase lights. There was a telegram there.

I unlocked the box and opened the telegram. It was the one from Dr Bruchner giving me Bloch’s
poste restante
address in Brussels. Aside from assuring me that Dr Bruchner still cared, it didn’t seem of very much use just then. I shoved it into my overcoat pocket and went on up the stairs.

Stopping to open and read the telegram had delayed me for
half a minute or so, and the lights went out while I was still on the stairs. I swore and groped my way up to the
minuterie
switch on the second-floor landing. The stairs were uncarpeted and I dare say I made quite a bit of noise before I had the light on again and my key in the lock of the office door – more than enough noise to warn anyone inside of my approach.

The lock was a pin-tumbler type with a mortice tongue; you had to use the key when you left for the night or anyone could open the door just by turning the knob. I had been, the last one to leave and I was sure that I had locked up as usual. Now I found that my key wouldn’t turn and that the door was unlocked.

My first thought was that the concierge had been in for some reason – he had a master key – and had forgotten to relock when he left. I pushed the door open, went in and felt for the light switch on the left.

The staircase light had gone out again by then and I was still fumbling for the inside switch when I smelled that something was wrong. Most offices have their characteristic smells. Ours was a mixture of mimeograph ink, light machine oil, stationery, the fluid used to paint out mistakes on stencils and Nicole’s French cigarettes.

What I smelled now was lavender water.

My heart jolted unpleasantly and I turned to get out. At that moment a flashlight came on about two arm’s-lengths away from me.

It was a powerful light and I put up my hand to shield my eyes. I think I started to say, ‘What the hell is this?’ but I didn’t finish it. As I opened my mouth there was a phutting noise like that of a beer can being opened and something puffed in my face.

A second later, with the next breath I took, the pain hit.

The stuff wasn’t tear gas. I know what that’s like; I had a dose of it once when I was covering a street riot in Paris. This was ten times worse – some kind of chemical Mace or nerve gas, I would say. It didn’t have any distinctive smell but it acted almost instantly. First there was a tearing pain in the sinuses, then in the throat, then the chest. That was quickly followed by a feeling
that the stomach was coming up fast to get out before something worse happened. It was like an explosion inside. I don’t believe I lost consciousness, but the next thing I remembered clearly was blundering about with my eyes shut, retching and fighting for breath at the same time, and then falling over a chair. I didn’t try to get up. All I wanted was for the pain to stop and to be able to breathe.

I don’t know how long I lay there before the stomach cramps began to go – twenty minutes perhaps – and then I was afraid to move my body in case the cramps started again. I was still in the small outer office. There were no windows there, so I was in complete darkness. After a bit I tried feeling about to see if I could orient myself. I touched the leg of the chair I had fallen over and that gave me some idea of where I was; there was only one chair in the outer office. I waited another minute or two and then crawled in the direction of the landing door. Only when I had found the door frame did I attempt to stand up. The sinuses still felt as if they had been flushed out with molten lead, but the stomach seemed to have quietened down. I found the light switch and pressed it. When I had got used to being upright again and felt that my legs were equal to walking, I skirted the mess on the floor and went to my office.

My desk had been searched, of course; the contents of the drawers were neatly stacked on top of it. The fact that the safe was open was no surprise. It had been the General’s idea to have a document safe, but I had never used it for anything but account books, and, since it was of an inexpensive type designed to protect the contents against fire rather than burglars, I usually left the key in the lock.

I went through into Nicole’s office. Nothing there appeared to have been disturbed. I found the Bloch file in the tray on her desk where I had left it.

A quick check told me that everything was still there. I took the electret bulletin out, put it in Nicole’s typewriter and added a by-line to the caption –
From our Munich correspondent, Arnold Bloch
. Then I ran it through the copying machine and placed the
duplicate in the folder marked
PRESS
which held the rest of the draft copy for the next week’s issue. She would start retyping it all first thing Monday morning so that I could get on with the final editing. I wouldn’t have to think about it again until then.

The original of the bulletin I returned to the file. I took that back to my room. I considered locking it away in the safe and then decided that I would prefer to keep it with me. I put it in an old briefcase I had there.

My next move was to get the bottle of whisky I kept hidden behind
Who’s Who in America
and the shot glass masked by
Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice
and try to remove the metallic taste of the gas from my mouth.

Oh yes, I thought of calling the police. I thought very carefully about it. But what could I have told them that they would have believed? That my office had been broken into? There was no evidence of a forced entry; I had looked that outer door over very carefully. That a thief had been there? But nothing had been stolen. That someone had squirted something in my face which had made me throw up? Well yes, there was evidence that I had thrown up; no doubt something I had eaten had disagreed with me. Gas? Maybe you’ll be feeling better in the morning, Monsieur. I’d have been lucky if they were that polite.

I cleaned up the mess in the outer office as best I could and got rid of it in the lavabo. Then I had some more whisky. By then, I must tell you, I was feeling lousy – cold and very weak at the knees. Delayed shock probably. I definitely wasn’t drunk. All I wanted at that moment was to go straight to bed.

And with any luck I’d have gone straight to bed. I put what remained of the whisky away, picked up the briefcase and switched off all the lights. Then I opened the outer door and switched on the
minuterie
. The ritual of locking up seemed pointless – it was obvious now that anyone who had a mind to do so could open up the place with a paper clip – but I went through with it as usual. To be truthful I was glad of the excuse it gave me to delay my departure another few seconds. You see, I was scared of going out into the street; I was afraid that Schneider
might be waiting for me there with reinforcements. But I had made up my mind to take
that
risk. It wasn’t until I had started down the stairs and saw that CIA bastard Rich with another man I didn’t know coming up towards me that I panicked.

All right, Mr L, I know. You think that I behaved like a clown; you think that I should have stood my ground and told them politely but firmly that I only saw people by appointment during normal office hours. Well, if you think that’s how
you
would have behaved if you’d been in my shoes, lots of luck. If you really mean to stir up the mud you may need it. What you have to remember is, Mr L, that that day had been a pretty traumatic one for me. In the space of a few hours I had been snatched, interrogated under duress, roughed up, threatened, burgled and gassed. After that sort of treatment your thinking tends to become a little over-pragmatic, and when you see anything that looks as if it means more trouble, you don’t wait for second thoughts; you run.

So I ran.

I ran down the stairs straight at them, swinging the briefcase at Rich’s face as I did so. He jerked back to avoid it and cannoned into the man behind him. I don’t know whether or not they tried to grab me as I went by them. Probably not; they were completely off balance and I didn’t give them time to recover. I had hold of the curved handrail by then and I went down the rest of the stairs three at a time.

Rich called something after me – something about only wanting to talk – but I didn’t even think of stopping. In the Chateau Europa, Schneider had only wanted to talk. As I reached the door to the street I heard them clattering down the stairs after me.

The Fiat with the Fribourg plates was right outside and I saw the driver’s face turn towards me as I ran by. My car was up the street on the other side in a zone parking place. As I reached it and opened the door I looked back and saw Rich and the other man come out and start running across the street towards me. Rich shouted my name.