Read The Intercom Conspiracy Online
Authors: Eric Ambler
The Intercom Conspiracy (27 page)
‘He had a short list of four companies whom he suspected of having acted as agents for the real buyers. However, Swiss security impounded his records, so I don’t know the names. Who, in fact, were the buyers?’
The smile became pained. ‘My dear Mr Carter, I was hoping that you could tell me. Brand thought it must have been the KGB. My belief is that it was the BfV using CIA funds. But I don’t know. It is most annoying.’
‘Why!’ I asked. ‘You have the money. What does it matter now where it came from?’
He looked surprised. ‘Naturally it matters. The operation was ours, Brand’s and mine. We planned it and we executed it. It was superbly successful. Not to know exactly how it succeeded, not to have all the information in one’s hands, is intolerable. I shall find out eventually, of course. These things can’t be hushed up indefinitely. Sooner or later somebody talks.’
As we went through to the front door he suddenly gave a snort of amusement. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘for all his shrewdness, Latimer had his blind spots. He was completely wrong about one thing – completely and utterly wrong. Neither Brand nor I was ever in the least bit arrogant. Ambitious, yes, but never arrogant.’
Once past the gateway to Latimer’s villa I enjoyed the walk back to the inn.
Eric Ambler was born in London in 1909. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked at an engineering firm, and wrote copy for an advertising agency. His first novel was published in 1936. During the course of his career, Ambler was awarded two Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and a Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain, named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers Association of America, and made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to his novels, Ambler wrote a number of screenplays, including
A Night to Remember
and
The Cruel Sea
, which won him an Oscar nomination. Eric Ambler died in 1998.
Books by Eric Ambler
The Dark Frontier
Background to Danger
Epitaph for a Spy
Cause for Alarm
A Coffin for Dimitrios
Journey Into Fear
Judgment on Deltchev
The Schirmer Inheritance
State of Siege
Passage of Arms
The Light of Day
The Ability to Kill and Other Pieces
(Essays)
A Kind of Anger
To Catch a Spy
(Editor)
The Intercom Conspiracy
The Levanter
Doctor Frigo
The Siege of the Villa Lipp
The Care of Time
Here Lies Eric Ambler
(Autobiography)
The Story So Far
E
RIC
A
MBLER
BACKGROUND TO DANGER
Kenton’s career as a journalist depended on his exceptional facility with languages, his knowledge of European politics, and his quick judgment. Where his judgment sometimes failed him was in his personal life. When he finds himself on a train bound for Austria after a bad night of gambling, he eagerly takes an opportunity to earn money helping a refugee smuggle securities across the border. He soon discovers that the documents he holds have more than monetary value, and that European politics has more twists and turns than the most convoluted newspaper account.
Fiction/Suspense
CAUSE FOR ALARM
Nicky Marlow needs a job. He’s engaged to be married and the employment market is pretty slim in Britain in 1937. So when his fiancée points out the Italian Spartacus Machine Tool notice, he jumps at the chance. After all, he speaks Italian and can endure Milan long enough to save some money. Soon after he arrives, though, he learns the sinister truth of his predecessor’s death and finds himself courted by two agents with dangerously different agendas. In the process, Marlow realizes it’s not so simple just to do the job he’s paid to do in fascist Italy on the brink of war.
Fiction/Suspense
A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS
A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel who has a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of menacing political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a story line for his next book, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of murder, espionage, drugs, and treachery.
Fiction/Suspense
JOURNEY INTO FEAR
Returning to his hotel room after a late-night flirtation with a cabaret dancer at an Istanbul nightspot, Graham is surprised by an intruder with a gun. What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies.
Fiction/Suspense
JUDGMENT ON DELTCHEV
Foster is hired by an American newspaper to cover the trial of Yordan Deltchev, who faces charges of treason. Accused of masterminding a plot to assassinate his country’s leader, Deltchev may in fact be a pawn and his trial all show. But when Foster meets Deltchev’s powerful wife, he becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy that is more life-threatening than he could have imagined.
Fiction/Suspense
THE LIGHT OF DAY
When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with the city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson riffling through his wallet for traveler’s checks. Soon Simpson finds himself blackmailed into driving a suspicious car across the Turkish border. Then, when he is caught again, this time by the police, he faces a choice: cooperate with the Turks and spy on his erstwhile colleagues or end up in one of Turkey’s notorious prisons. The authorities suspect an attempted coup, but Harper has something much bigger planned.
Fiction/Suspense
PASSAGE OF ARMS
Greg and Dorothy Nilsen had wanted to go on an adventurous trip, but their cruise is turning out to be a bore. So when the gracious Mr. Tan asks Greg to go to Singapore to resolve a bureaucratic detail involving a consignment of small arms, Greg is surprisingly receptive. All he has to do is sign some papers, he’s told, and he’ll be paid a handsome fee. And everything does go smoothly, until it comes to getting a check cosigned by the rebel leader.…
Fiction/Suspense
THE SCHIRMER INHERITANCE
George Carey, former WWII bomber pilot and newly minted lawyer, was given the ignoble task of going through the tons of files on the Schneider Johnson case, just to make sure nothing had been overlooked. But as luck would have it, Carey discovered something among the false claims and dead-end leads that made this into more than just another missing-heir-to-a-vast-fortune case. And what he found would connect a deserter from Napoleon’s defeated army to a guerrilla fighter in postwar Greece, and lead Carey into a dangerous situation where his survival would depend more on what he learned in the army than anything he learned in law school.
Fiction/Suspense
STATE OF SIEGE
After a three-year stint in the former Dutch Southeast Asian colony of Sunda, Steve Fraser is looking forward to going home. But Sunda is newly independent, and a fundamentalist Islamic faction is set on overthrowing the provisional government. So instead of enjoying his last weekend in the capital, Fraser finds himself dodging bullets as well as the shifting loyalties of the coup’s lieutenants.
Fiction/Suspense
FORTHCOMING FROM VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
The Ability to Kill
The Care of Time
The Dark Frontier
Doctor Frigo
Here Lies Eric Ambler: An Autobiography
The Intercom Conspiracy
A Kind of Anger
The Levanter
The Siege of Villa Lipp
This Gun for Hire
Waiting for Orders
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
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