Siege at the Villa Lipp (8 page)

Melanie stopped talking instantly and stood up.

Krom rose more deliberately and pointed at me. ‘This,’ he said to his witnesses, ‘is Mr Paul Firman.’

I waited one more moment, until they were all on their feet, then I went forward with my most charming smile to greet them.

Connell made an instinctive movement as if to shake hands, but I ignored it and let one formal little bow serve them all. The sooner they were reminded that they were uninvited as well as unwelcome guests the better.

‘Welcome,’ I said. ‘So glad you had a safe journey. This, as you have no doubt gathered, is my secretary, Miss Melanie Wicky-Frey, but - ‘ I broke off and threw a reproachful glance at Melanie - ‘I see that your glasses are empty.’

Krom was the first off the mark. ‘Thank you, Mr Firman, but we are travel-weary. What I think we would all like at the moment, if you will be so kind, is to be permitted to go to’ our rooms.’

‘That is,’ said Connell tartly and in pretty fair French, ‘if his Algerian truffle-hound has finished snuffling through our bags.’ He went on quickly as I opened my mouth to reply. ‘And if, Monsieur Firman, you could spare us the protestations of injured innocence, we’d appreciate it. We are, as the Professor says, tired.’

I gave him the thinnest of smiles. ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to protest, my dear sir, though Mr Yves Boularis might do so if he heard himself described as an Algerian. He is Tunisian. Of course your luggage has been searched, and most thoroughly. I must remind you that, even though you seem to speak French quite well, the language agreed upon for this conference was English. Am I not right, Professor?’

Krom cleared his throat. ‘Yes, quite right, Mr Firman, though I think Dr Connell has a point. We all submitted with good grace to a body search, but is it really necessary that we should be treated with such deep suspicion, almost as if we were policemen in disguise?’

‘Yes, Professor, I am afraid it
is
necessary.’

He gave an exasperated sigh as I went to the sideboard and poured myself a drink. Then Connell started again. My not shaking hands had rattled him.

‘I suppose you’re referring to that little tape machine of mine,’ he began, and drew breath to continue.

I shut him up by turning to Dr Henson.

‘What do you say?’ I asked her. ‘Am I being unreasonable, or are you forgetting that you signed a paper agreeing to abide by a set of rules while attending this conference?’

On closer inspection, she was an attractive woman with delicately structured facial bones, fine eyes and a mouth which suggested all sorts of possibilities. Not all of them would be agreeable, however; that brief marriage of hers must have been a harrowing affair. At that moment she was wondering how she might convincingly convert her embarrassment into anger and failing to find an answer. Finally, she just shrugged.

‘You are not being unreasonable, Mr Firman. I haven’t forgotten the paper I signed.’

‘Thank you, Dr Henson. Now, do you mind telling me and your friends here whether it was your own idea to photograph and fingerprint the persons you were to meet in this house, or someone else’s?’

Krom let out a kind of yelp.

Connell started a protest. ‘Now wait a minute! Are you accusing Dr Henson of ... ‘

But Dr Henson preferred to take care of herself. ‘No,’ she broke in crisply, ‘he is not making an accusation. He is asking an awkward question about the special cameras and other equipment found concealed in my handbag.’ She surveyed us challengingly. ‘The answer is that it was
not
my idea. The camera and other things were given to me, with instructions, by the head of my faculty, Professor Langridge.’

Krom yelped again. ‘Langridge! You mean that you told
him
about this conference?’

‘Of course, I was taking a leave of absence. Short, yes, but at a time when I was expected to be present. Ought I to have disappeared mysteriously and drawn public attention to myself?’

‘You told Professor Langridge
where
you were going and on what errand? Couldn’t you have accounted for your absence in some other way? Was it necessary to be so indiscreet?’ Krom was becoming very angry indeed.

‘I don’t make a habit of lying to colleagues, Professor. Besides, I didn’t
know
where I was going until lunchtime today.’

It was time for plainer speaking. ‘You told Professor Langridge that you were going first to join these two gentlemen in Amsterdam?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know, when you told him, that he often does little jobs for British intelligence?’

She flushed. Connell muttered, ‘Jesus!’ She still had the empty glass in her hands and for a moment I thought she was going to throw it at him. Instead, she put it down carefully.

‘I knew,’ she replied, ‘that he did some work for the government. But there’s nothing remarkable about that. Scholars of most disciplines sometimes accept research commissions from ministries or sit on official department committees. I had always assumed that what he did for the Home Office, or whoever it was, had something to do with his long-term study of the European probation service. A reasonable enough assumption, I think.’

‘When did you discover that it had been a false one?’

‘About a week after I told him that I was proposing to take this time off. One day he called me in and showed me the camera and other stuff.’

‘You didn’t object?’ This was Krom again.

‘Of
course
I objected!’ Dr Henson was nearly as angry as he was by now. ‘We had a flaming row about it, if you must know. An extremely unpleasant argument, anyway.’

‘Which he evidently won,’ said Krom bitterly. ‘How?’

‘He began by asking, yet again, what our exact intentions were. By “our”, he meant those of us who have concerned ourselves with investigations of the able criminal. What was our object? Did we intend merely to establish his existence, in the way, say, that a microbiologist might, having established the existence of a dangerous viral mutation, simply record the fact? Or did we intend to make use of any knowledge or proofs we might acquire about such persons to assist others in eradicating them?’

Connell grunted sympathetically. ‘Yes. I’ve had that one. What did you reply?’

‘That I didn’t know, that the question was in any case both premature and hypothetical as well as grotesquely unfair to microbiologists. He then said that his “masters” - he actually used the word “masters” like some pompous senior official - that his masters were already convinced of the existence of this new kind of offender and were determined to eradicate him.’

‘Did he say what evidence they had?’ Krom was almost boyishly eager now. The tidings of yet another band of converts to his private religion had quite dissolved his anger.

‘Naturally, I asked, but I soon realized that he didn’t really know much. He did, though, make two statements of interest. This wasn’t a Home Office matter any longer because conventional police forces hampered by rules and restrictions were helpless in these areas. Not much in that. But he also said that for the less-inhibited forces acting on Treasury orders,
and
in concert with foreign counterpart services where collaborative relations existed, it would be a different story.’

She paused. ‘And then he threatened me.’

‘Sounds a sweet guy,’ Connell remarked.

‘He said that if I refused to co-operate, that is endeavour to get photographs and prints and report fully and secretly on my return, his so-called masters would place me under surveillance of a kind which would frustrate the whole exercise. It’s not as stupid as it may sound. He knows, you see, how I feel about our work in this field.’

‘I suppose he was talking about harassment, men in trench coats breathing down your neck.’

‘And your neck too, I imagine, Dr Connell.’ She turned to me. ‘What about it, Mr Firman? How far would we have got? Turin?’

‘No farther, certainly,’ I replied. ‘Naturally, the possibility of one or all of you being under surveillance had to be considered, and not necessarily surveillance of the obvious kind with which Dr Henson was threatened in order to ensure her co-operation. Professor Langridge’s masters had other options available to them. I had you very carefully watched all the way.’

Connell snorted disbelievingly.
‘All
the way, Mr Firman? Taking that amount of trouble to cover yourself costs money.’

‘Yes, the overheads on an operation of this sort can be quite heavy.’

‘Of
this
sort? I thought this operation was supposed to be one-off, unique.’

‘It is.’ I gave him the needed rap over the knuckles. ‘But I was speaking in general of operations involving inexperienced persons, for whom, or from whom, one needs protection. Naturally it is expensive, but you don’t have much choice. Either you accept the expense when the need for it arises or you resign yourself to the prospect of being very soon - what was Professor Langridge’s word for it? - oh yes, eradicated.’ I turned and looked Krom in the eyes. ‘A serious question must now be asked,’ I went on. ‘We have breaches of security on your side and also gross breaches of good faith. How, under these circumstances, can we possibly continue our conference as planned?’

I did not really expect him to throw in his hand; he had too much at stake for that, but it was worth a try. The more defensive he was forced to become the better.

He responded shakily at first. ‘I agree that you have cause for complaint, Mr Firman, but no damage has yet been done. Has it?’

‘No damage? I don’t understand. To me, the whole situation now seems completely compromised.’

He rallied. ‘Why? Thanks to your own caution, security has been completely preserved. As for good faith, Dr Henson has admitted that she erred and satisfactorily explained the dilemma that led her to do so. You have the apparatus given her by Professor Langridge. What has been lost?’

‘Trust, Professor.’ In Brussels I had used Mat’s phrase about trusting on Krom. I had also used it several times on myself. I used it again now. ‘So far I have done an awful lot of trusting. In return I have been rewarded with deception and equivocation. As things stand at this moment, it seems to me that I
have less to lose by telling you the deal is off and that you can do what you like with your researches to date, than by continuing to accept bland assurances that your side of the bargain will be kept because you are honest folk, and that it is only I and my associates here who are villains.’

He showed his teeth. ‘Oh no, you don’t, Mr Firman. Who is deceiving or attempting to equivocate now? We on one side have been completely open and frank. Stop overstating your case.’

I laughed shortly. ‘You’re bluffing, Professor. Shall
I
ask Dr Henson or will you? When she took that apparatus and agreed to use it, what did she intend? With whom did she mean to keep faith when she brought it here? Professor Langridge and his masters or you and me?’

Connell said, ‘Oops!’

Krom thought it through, then glowered at Henson.

From her came a shrug and an exasperated spreading of the hands. ‘Several answers,’ she said, ‘all of them muddled. My first thought was simply to leave the camera and other stuff behind in England, but then I realized that leaving it would create complications.’ Another spread of hands. ‘Where was I to leave it? In my flat where it could be found by the friend with whom I share the place? She works for Langridge and adores him. Ought I to have tried explaining the whole situation to her? And how could I be certain, that even though I’d promised to co-operate with these people, they wouldn’t send someone to watch me anyway? All things considered, it seemed sensible to go through the motions of co-operating by taking the box of tricks with me. Does anyone mind if I smoke?’

She started fumbling in her satchel, but Melanie was there so promptly with cigarette box and lighter that any respite Dr Henson may have been hoping for was brief. When she saw that we were all just waiting for the more crucial parts of her explanation and that no one felt disposed, at that stage, to assist her by making any sort of comment, she continued.

‘In Amsterdam the only place I could have left it safely was in the airport consigne. But if I was being watched, and I still don’t know whether I was or not, that would have given the game away completely. How could I have returned with my lie about having failed to use the camera through lack of opportunity, when they knew that I’d ditched it at Schipol Airport? So I put off doing anything about it and waited to see where we were going. It was after Turin when I first began to wonder if perhaps I had been making a mistake, if perhaps I’d allowed my personal dislike of Langridge and his Secret Service nonsense to cloud my judgement, or distort it sufficiently for me to reject any and every argument that he put up without even pausing to consider it. However, it turned out that whether I liked it or not, one of his arguments, along with some of the phrases he used to advance it,
had
stuck in my mind.’

Connell said, ‘Aha!’ an exclamation she ignored.

‘Professor Langridge said‘ - and she ran her fingers through her hair again in the way I
had seen from the terrace - ‘he said that this conference as I had described it, seemed to have more to do with journalism than with scholarship. And not even investigative journalism of the socially useful kind. It sounded to him more like one of those exercises in sensationalism currently favoured by the popular press and the seamier television channels. A news or TV feature is manufactured out of interviewing at a secret rendezvous some notorious terrorist or other wanted criminal.’

She began now to stride about, slicing the air with the edges of her hands as she spoke. It was obvious that she had begun to reproduce Professor Langridge’s physical mannerisms along with his rhetoric.

‘And what is the object of these journalistic antics?’ she demanded at the ceiling. ‘I will tell you. For the new media which indulge in them the object is readier access to the eyes and ears of audiences of cretins. For the crooks and thugs who are the star performers the reward is a big jar of the most marvellous cosmetic ointment of all - free publicity. Smeared with that stuff even the most odious of men and the most detestable of causes can enlist a measure of popular sympathy and support. Many distinguished politicians as well as eminent divines have become involved in such tawdry enterprises, so why not an ageing Dutch professor of sociology?’