The Intercom Conspiracy (5 page)

‘A carefully planned job,’ commented Brand, ‘but much too elaborate. I wonder where they got the tear gas. Stolen from an army depot, I suppose.’

‘Clearly the police had a tip-off.’

‘Not a very detailed one, though, by the look of things. Five men got away. What is a power-lift truck?’

‘I think they are used for delivering heavy objects – machines, refrigerators, things like that. The tail board is power-driven and can be raised and lowered vertically like an elevator. Presumably that was going to be used to load the bullion.’

‘Gold bars worth half a million sterling, it says.’ Brand thought for a moment. ‘That would weigh about eleven hundred kilos. Yes, eight men would certainly need help if they expected to load that in a hurry. What idiots!’

‘Nothing idiotic about half a million sterling.’

‘But idiotic to try to take it in gold.’

‘I don’t see why. There is always a market for gold and no need to pay a fence. Any crooked fool can sell gold if he goes to the right places.’

‘And if he can take the gold with him to these places, yes. Eleven hundred kilos!’ Brand snorted. ‘If I decided to get rich quickly I would choose something lighter to take to the market.’

Jost smiled. ‘Half a million in used banknotes would be lighter, but they would make an awkward parcel.’

Brand did not reply immediately. His eyes wandered around the empty room and then returned to Jost. He spoke very quietly now. ‘For those of us who have access to knowledge,’ he said, ‘there are surely other negotiable commodities.’

There was another pause. Jost was aware of a sensation in his stomach that he recognised very well, but a sensation with which he had for some years been unfamiliar. He was in the presence of danger again. To reassure himself, to make sure that his friend was joking, he invoked the old formula.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I am as eager as the next man to supplement my pension,
but
–’ he sighed regretfully – ‘isn’t the special knowledge of the kind we have much too unstable to travel? On such a difficult, dangerous road I would feel safer with liquid nitroglycerine.’

Brand did not smile. ‘There is much special knowledge that
with careful handling can be made safe,’ he said, ‘knowledge, moreover, that raises no issues of conscience.’

‘Oh. Play material, you mean.’ Jost was relieved but also slightly disappointed. ‘Play material’ was the jargon phrase used to describe the low-grade classified information fed back to the enemy through double agents. It wasn’t like Brand to talk nonsense.

Brand shook his head. ‘No, not play material. Much better than that.’ He leaned forward. ‘Hard stuff, but hard stuff that is possibly already shared.’

‘And therefore probably useless? Oh, I see.’

‘Useless but not valueless.’ Brand did smile now. ‘Just like gold, some might think.’

Jost was aware again of the danger sensation, but it was not unpleasant now. ‘Like gold, perhaps,’ he said, ‘but without the market that there is for gold.’

‘A market could be found, no doubt.’

‘Can you see us looking for one?’

‘No.’ Brand shrugged. ‘Perhaps for that sort of commodity the market has to be made.’ He picked up the evening paper again. ‘Eight men on the job,’ he commented, ‘and there were doubtless as many again involved in the planning and preliminaries. No wonder their security was bad. No wonder the police had a tip-off.

That was all that was said then.

The expected reorganisation took place and official occasions for their private meetings became rarer. Over a year passed before the subject of ‘access to knowledge’ came up again between them. This time it was Jost who raised it.

They were dining at a restaurant in Rome.

Towards the end of dinner Jost said casually: ‘I heard the other day of a strange commodity sold in an even stranger market.’

He saw Brand’s eyes flicker over the other tables to see if there was anyone near enough to overhear them, and knew that his friend had not forgotten the earlier conversation. The words
commodity
and
market
had worked as he had hoped they would. Brand’s eyes were on his now, still and intent.

‘In Mexico,’ Jost went on, ‘there is a forger. He is an old man
but still very skilful indeed, and he has been practising his craft successfully for years.’

‘Successfully? You mean he hasn’t been caught?’

‘In Mexico he has committed no offence.’

‘Forgery is not an offence there?’

‘Forgery of banknotes, yes. Forgery of bond certificates, of cheques, of other valuable documents of that kind, all those are serious offences, of course. But this old man does not commit them. He forges something different, documents without any face value at all – rare postage stamps with their overprints and cancellations.’

Brand raised his eyebrows. ‘No value, you say?’

‘No
face
value. Rare stamps, the very valuable kind, have usually been cancelled by a postmaster and have therefore lost their face value. They are not valid for postage. Their value to international collectors and to those who invest in them lies in their rarity. You know, I dare say that there are large sums invested in rare stamps.’

‘Yes.’ Brand shrugged. ‘I can see that this would be an amusing and profitable racket for a forger working in Mexico, but I don’t quite see …’

Jost raised the palm of one hand. ‘One moment. You don’t yet know how profitable it has been for him, nor how amusing.’ He paused for effect. ‘The United States Treasury Department has just cooperated in the business of buying him out.’

Brand stared. ‘Are you serious?’

Jost smiled. ‘It surprised me too. What happened was this. The international stamp dealers had been worried for years by this man’s activities. You see, many of these extremely valuable rare stamps are valuable because of the overprints and surcharges superimposed on them. Overprints and surcharges are very much easier to forge than, say, a modern banknote. So, when you get a really skilful man at work, the forgeries are very difficult to detect. That means not only that for the big dealers there has been what amounts to a debasement of their currency, but also that they have been obliged to spend large
sums in tracing and exposing the forgeries. They must if they are to protect their own and their clients’ investments. Naturally, they, and particularly the Americans, have wanted for some time to do something about the Mexican. But what
could
they do? They had no legal position. When they heard that he was thinking of retiring – he is seventy-six now – they had a new fear. Supposing he sold his plates and equipment to a younger man, or to a group? What then? It didn’t bear thinking about. So they decided to pocket their pride and buy him out themselves.’

‘Where did the Treasury Department come in?’

‘Forgery in the United States is a matter for the Treasury Department. The dealers had to have Treasury blessing before they could take what they were buying back into America. An arrangement also had to be made with the U.S. Customs.’

‘And the blessing was given?’

‘Certainly. A secret negotiating committee went down to Mexico to meet with the old man. They not only bought his plates and dies and equipment and records, they also persuaded him to sign an agreement, enforceable in a Mexican court, that he would retire for good. That was for their protection, of course, but it cost them a lot of money. I asked a stamp dealer at home about the case. He told me that it is not unique. A similar thing happened in fifty-three when the British Philatelic Association bought out a French stamp-forger named Sperati. Interesting, is it not?’

Jost finished his wine. Absently, Brand reached for the bottle and refilled Jost’s glass. With the bottle still poised in the air he looked across the table.

‘Nuisance value,’ he said.

‘Precisely.’

They said no more until they were back in their hotel; but both had been thinking and they spent the rest of that evening talking of ways in which the lesson of the Mexican forger might be applied by those having their own particular skills and resources. They agreed in the end that there was only one way that could be considered relatively safe. Before they went up to their rooms that
night they amused themselves by mapping out a plan of campaign.

Colonel Jost says that he has no idea when the decision to put the plan into action was made.

This was not, I think, an evasion on his part, an attempt to shift the ultimate responsibility onto Brand. In a collusive relationship such as theirs, commitments and decisions are often made obliquely, without discussion, and without anything having been said directly. It is possible, too, that no
formal
decision was ever taken. Theirs was a long-term plan and, in its initial stages certainly, neither of them was called upon to do anything obviously illegal or suspect. A tacit understanding could have carried them to a point of no return, or at any rate to a point at which return would have seemed to them anticlimactic and ridiculous.

So, the moment when the private joke turned into a conspiracy passed unnoticed by those who conspired. They were not given to self-examination. All they knew, or cared, was that in Rome that year they had found a new game to play and that it would be more stimulating, perhaps more profitable, than the old.

As the steamer left the quay at Vevey, Brand came out of the saloon and went to the upper deck.

Jost was sitting near the rail. After a moment or two Brand strolled over and sat down beside him.

For a full minute they stared out at the lake in silence. A casual observer would have put them down as respectable business or professional men in their late fifties; a perceptive one might have guessed from their clothes that they were foreign to Switzerland, but not from the same country; nobody would have thought it odd that they should start talking to each other rather than look at the scenery. On that cold, windy day the beauties of Lac Léman were not much in evidence.

‘What is your cover in Evian?’ It was Jost who spoke first.

‘The best.’ Brand stared out at the slate-grey lake. ‘There is a doctor in Evian who specialises in diseases of the kidneys. I had reason to consult him.’

‘My friend, I’m sorry. I hope he has given you good news.’

‘Not good. Not quite as bad as I had expected, but not good. I am afraid that our business has now become a matter of urgency.’

Jost turned to look at him.

‘In three months I must retire,’ Brand said.

‘For reasons of health?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is a sad blow.’ Jost drew his coat collar closer around his neck. ‘Personally, I detest sympathy. I would think that it is the same with you.’

‘Yes. I did not propose this meeting merely to talk of trouble. I have more interesting news. Fortune appears at last to be smiling on us.’

‘Fortune?’

Brand slid a hand into his overcoat breast pocket. ‘I think we can now take the steps necessary to activate our joint investment.’

His hand reappeared with a slip of paper. He passed it to Jost.

Jost saw that it was an obituary clipped from the European edition of an American news magazine. It read:

Jost passed the cutting back. He hid his disappointment behind a polite nod.

‘I had heard that Novak was dead,’ he said; ‘but the newsletter is controlled by this foundation, surely.’

‘That is what I thought,’ Brand replied; ‘but it is so exactly the sort of thing we had in mind, that, with my time running out, I thought it was worthwhile to make further inquiries. What I found was interesting. The foundation is run as sort of a hobby by three wealthy, rather stupid men who think they are fighting world communism. They subsidise the making of documentary films, recorded radio and television programmes for free distribution, and the writing of unreadable but expensive-looking books and pamphlets. They pay the wages of a staff working on anti-communist research, whatever that may be, and they retain a firm of public-relations counsellors. They paid Novak a salary and expenses for his work as organiser of the foundation. But they do not own the
Intercom
newsletter. That was Novak’s personal property. He started it, after he resigned from the American Army, with money left to him by his wife. He used up most of that inheritance.
Intercom
lost money for several years, and, in spite of its circulation and notoriety since, it has never done better than break even. He had his army pension, of course, but, until he met these rich idiots who backed the foundation, most of his income came from lecturing.’

‘Then who owns
Intercom
now?’

Brand gave his friend a sidelong look. ‘I hope that we do.’

Jost drew a deep breath. ‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I doubted.’

‘I know.’ Brand smiled. ‘I have not often surprised you. I was tempted to try. I say I
hope
it is ours. It should be by next week if all goes well. The position is this. Intercom Publishing Enterprises A.G. is a Swiss corporation registered in Zug and directed, in order to conform with the Swiss code, by a Swiss national. He is a lawyer in Bâle. The shares, ninety-seven per cent of which were owned by Novak, are now part of his estate. This goes to a married daughter living in Baltimore in the United States.
Through our cut-out I have made an offer for the shares of ten thousand dollars. Since the only assets are the lease of an office suite in Geneva, one Addressograph and two duplicating machines, two typewriters and some highly questionable goodwill, ten thousand is about twice what the shares are worth. I heard two days ago that the daughter in Baltimore is likely to accept the offer. Pending confirmation of her acceptance, the
Intercom
lawyer has undertaken to see that the Geneva staff salaries are paid and that publication continues.’