The Intercom Conspiracy (22 page)

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:

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 isn’t 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.