Siege at the Villa Lipp (9 page)

She avoided locking at Krom, who seemed to be more amused than annoyed by what she was now saying, and continued to talk at, or to, me. ‘The team-leader gathers the brainwashed and compliant subordinates before setting off into the wide, baby-blue yonder. What is different about this adventure? Two things. Journalists working for the established media are to some extent privileged. Unless the casework upon which
we
are engaged happens to confer on us quasi-medical standing we most certainly are
not.
And neither are your collaborators. The only way you could refuse information about these criminal contacts you propose to make, should you be challenged on the subject by a lawful authority, would be by a pretence of ignorance.’

She paused, and then, with a grimace of disgust at the whole recollection, became herself again. ‘His other point made more sense. Reporters on secret-interview assignments are invariably, and for their employers’ as well as their own legal benefit and safety, accompanied by a cameraman, an assistant to fetch and carry and somebody to operate a tape recorder. Even if the person to be interviewed elects to wear a hood or mask, a camera is still there to authenticate the fact that he has done so, and if he chooses to make a voice-track analysis difficult by speaking into a water glass, the tape-recorder will take note of that too. Why is this Mr X so shy? Is it because, and
only
because, he wishes to preserve his total anonymity and all the cover identities with which it is ringed, or is the truth rather more drab? Could it be that Mr X is just another professional incompetent after all, and that, far from being unknown to police anywhere, he is very well known indeed to those forces with access to Interpol files? Only photographs and/ or fingerprints on the subject could establish the truth.’

‘We have a specimen like that who sits on our Board of Regents,’ said Connell. ‘He’s known as The Syllogist.’

‘The conclusion I came to,’ Dr Henson continued firmly, ‘was that I didn’t yet know nearly enough to make even a preliminary judgement. When I heard what Mr X had to say, and formed an opinion of him, then I would review the position. Meanwhile, I would attempt to conceal the camera and ninhydrin spray.’

It occurred to me that for a person who professed to dislike lying to colleagues this was a pretty cool admission. I was about to say so when Krom cleared this throat loudly. Thinking that he was about to deliver the admonition, I let him go ahead.

He didn’t even slap her wrist.

‘I think that answers the question in all its aspects,’ he announced. ‘Our agreement stands.’

‘Of course it stands,’ said Connell. ‘Naturally, with a deal like this there are going to be little misunderstandings which need clearing up.’

Obviously, none of them had the smallest sense of right and wrong. I had one more try.

‘They may be cleared up to your satisfaction, Dr Connell,’ I said, ‘but they are very far from being cleared up to
mine.’

Krom grinned at me. ‘But it’s not
your
satisfaction that has to be considered, is it? If it were, the chairman of the Symposia Group and director of the Institute of International Investment and Trust Counselling called Paul Firman would long ago have disappeared in a puff of smoke, to emerge three or four days later with an entirely different identity in Sao Paulo or Mexico City. We wouldn’t be standing here at all. But we
are
standing here, and we are doing so because Paul Firman can’t afford just to disappear. Time and affluence have done their work. His cover is too well established now and his face too well known. He may even be involved in a pension plan. He is caught between two evils and he has sensibly chosen the lesser of them. Am I not right, Mr Firman?’

I almost gave up, but not quite. I managed, apparently unmoved, to meet his eyes. ‘We’ll see later who is right and who is wrong, Professor,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, dinner will be in an hour. Melanie, perhaps you would be good enough to show our guests to their rooms.’

The listening post Yves had chosen was a storage loft over the garage. It had the advantage of being accessible from inside the house via an inner door to the garage, yet well away from the servants’ rooms.

When I got there the receivers covering the guest rooms had already been switched on and I was in time to hear Melanie telling Connell that she hoped he would be comfortable and to ring if there was anything he needed.

Yves nodded to me gloomily.

‘You handled them well down there, Patron,’ he said, ‘but I think it is hopeless.
Nous sommes foutus.
’

‘It’s only a matter of time. That lot will never be able to keep their mouths shut about anything. They’re supposed to be intellectuals, persons of probity. One feels tempted to treat them as common crooks.’

‘It can do no harm if we
think
of them in that way. In fact it might be a good idea.’

He gave me a sidelong look. ‘When we started here, I had a feeling that there was a lot I didn’t know. Letting your arms be twisted by a party of amateurs, however clever they might be or think they were, didn’t sound like you, Patron.’ He paused. The fact that he was calling me Patron instead of Paul meant that he was really worried. He added a sigh for good measure. ‘You handled them well, as I said, but you handled them carefully and gently. I’d have pushed their faces in and told them to walk home.’

‘If it were as easy as that they’d never have arrived.’ I had been listening to a bumping sound coming from one of the rooms. Now there was a loud scraping noise. I wanted to change the subject anyway, so I asked what it was.

Yves plugged in the earphone he was wearing. This action enabled him to concentrate on the sounds from the room without ceasing to cover the rest. ‘It’s Krom,’ he reported after a moment or two, ‘trying to locate our bug, I think. He’s been dragging a chair from place to place, then standing on it, probably to peer at the cornices through that pocket monocular he had tucked away in his suitcase.’

‘Any chance of his seeing the bug?’

‘Well, if he knew what it looked like he just might spot one end of it, but I don’t think he will. Anyway, he couldn’t get at it. It’s in the chandelier, and you know how high those ceilings are.’

‘He could fall off the chair and break a leg trying to get at it.’

‘He has nothing to try with. I went over the curtain rods and put extra fastenings on them. If he tried to get one of those down he’d make a noise as well as a mess.’

There, in a few words, are summed up several of Yves’s virtues. His vices were not then in evidence.

His versatility was wholly practical and selective. He did not waste time learning how to make amateurish electronic monitoring gadgets; he made sure of picking the most reliable equipment by seeking out the little man near Lausanne who supplies the CIA.

When resourcefulness and imagination could be enlisted to solve unfamiliar problems economically, they were permitted to do so; the curtain rods, which might have been decked revealingly with alarm-bell circuits, were simply fastened more securely to their supporting brackets.

A voice came suddenly from Connell’s room. He was speaking into his tape-recorder.

‘Research project Alpha-Gamma, cassette one, side two. As from Villa Lipp, near Cap d’Ail, France,’ he said. ‘July 13, 19.30 hours. Arrived, accompanied Krom and Henson, at 17.30 approx. having followed route and instructions already noted. Query. Is this room bugged? Casual inspection which says no as likely to be wrong as right. Lacking equipment necessary to make proper check, no point in speculating.’

As Yves nodded his approval of that sensible decision, Connell went on.

‘Our party was met by woman who described herself as Firman’s secretary. Age, fifty plus. First impression that of Madame de Stael pretending, with aid of faded, little girl type prettiness, to be bird-brained. Hair rinse: brunette with approximately one centimetre grey-auburn visible near scalp. Named by Firman as Melanie Wicky-Frey. Rhymes with tray, but I’m not sure of the spelling. Fluent English, but strong accent with mixed American-British usages. Must ask Krom, who has European ear, for his diagnosis of nationality.’

A longish silence. Then: ‘On second thoughts, no. Don’t ask Krom anything. You won’t get a straight answer. He’s a jealous little god about this project. Continue. Secretary Melanie then hands us over to lean and hungry character named Yves Boularis. Expression, mournful yet threatening. Reminded me of that termite-clearance inspector who gave me such a hard time when we were selling house on Cheviot. Diagnosed this Yves as Algerian butler. Wrong on both counts. Not butler, but some sort of right-hand man. Also doubles as security guard. According to Firman, not Algerian but Tunisian. My present disinclination to believe a word the man Firman says - have a suspicion that there’s one who could enjoy lying for its own sake - leaves doubt in mind, however. Who trained Yves to search baggage and frisk? The French? Had big fight to keep this recorder, but sweet reason, or my open fury, prevailed. However, Henson got into serious trouble, and thereby hangs a tale.’

He proceeded to tell it to the recorder, while we listened in turn to Dr Henson taking a bath, and Krom, who had by then abandoned his search for electronic monitoring devices, breaking wind.

When we came back to Connell, he was comparing the British use of men like Langridge in amateur espionage roles with the deeper penetration of the American academic world by US government agencies such as the CIA.

He went on: ‘Have left description of Firman character till last. Reason? Call it insufficient evidence. Just can’t make up my mind. First impressions, all tenuous. Caucasian, yes. Country of origin? Take your pick. Anywhere from the Caspian to Gibraltar, including Cyprus and Malta. Can’t I pin it down a bit? Sure. He has a one-hundred-and-ten per cent British accent. Only other guy I ever met with an accent like it is an American with a Lebanese passport who works for UNESCO and was educated at the English High School in Istanbul before going on to the Sorbonne. He has brown eyes too. Very helpful. Be more specific. Age: mid-fifties, maybe younger. Difficult to judge. Height: two inches shorter than I am, say five-eleven. Looks like weight-watcher, sunlamp-user and wearer of steel-grey toupee. Could also look, with only a little help from the imagination, like ageing movie star who never really quite made it to the top, but who got out at the right time, with self-esteem and investments still intact, to make a killing in California real-estate. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe what I am looking at is a retired con-artist who gets his kicks now out of sticking pins into the pretensions of academic clowns like us. Could be. He’s already needled Krom, and Henson took quite a beating; though she did, after all, set
herself
up for that. Maybe, as old Krom started to say in Amsterdam before the sheer horror of the idea switched it off, he isn’t Firman at all but a covering stand-in. Oh no, forget it. This guy’s no stand-in; he reads the lines too well. Want to know something, Connell? As long as he was a deduced, theoretical phantom of the opera, a conceptual bundle of joy who stuck in the Establishment’s craw, you believed in the existence of Mr X one hundred per cent. Now confronted by a person who says he
is
Mr X, you cop out. You say: “Him? Can’t be. He looks human!” What did you expect? Bela Lugosi? The Man in the Iron Mask? Or hadn’t you given that side of the matter any thought? Ah, well, you’re tired now. So how about a shower and a clean shirt? Then, just watch and wait. Okay? Okay. More anon.’

There was no more then from any of the receivers. After a few seconds, Yves switched both them and our own recording tapes to voice-actuated operation.

‘An observant man,’ he commented.

‘Describing you or describing me?’

‘Both, I thought. And the woman is even more dangerous, Patron. I think we are doing now what you have always said we should never do.’

‘I’ve said that we shouldn’t do many things.’ His gloom was beginning to depress me.

‘But, in particular, you have said that we should never step out into the street without looking up first to see if the woman on the floor above is about to empty a chamber pot.’

‘I have never said anything so crude. I did once say that one should always look carefully where one is walking on certain streets.’

‘Same thing, Patron. If you don’t look, you’re in the shit either way. I think that is where we may be now, and I would like to understand why.’

‘Later, Yves,’ I said. ‘Later, perhaps.’

There was no point in confirming his fears before it became necessary to do so.

We dined on the terrace.

Personally, I dislike eating in the open air at any time, even when there are no insects to plague one; but it was a very warm night and, as Melanie had said, with six at table and the cook’s sister-in-law in from the village to help the husband serve, a few moths fluttering around would be a preferable discomfort to that of the staff body-odour in a confined space.

All three of our guests, advised by Melanie that the most casual clothing would be
de rigueur,
had decided to take her at her word. The white-haired Krom in faded blue slacks with a pink linen sports shirt looked positively elegant.

I gave them a white Provençal wine before dinner. None of them refused it, and the large round table at which we could all sit comfortably made for general conversation. At least we looked relaxed though, of course, there had been no real lessening of tension. Their suspicion of me, only slightly modified by increasing curiosity, still hung over us; but their readiness to be physically comfortable declared at least a kind of armistice.

It did not last long. Refreshed by his shower and change of clothing, Connell had soon forgotten his decision to watch and wait. He was ready for action again.

It took the form of hitching his chair closer to mine and telling me in a confidential undertone that he had been trying to place my accent. ‘I know it’s British, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘but British from whereabouts? I know it’s not Australian or South African. I suppose it could be ... ‘