I, Said the Spy - Derek Lambert

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then that she realised how much he had changed since that day when he had stood her up. Like it or not, that’s what he had done. From time to time she saw him in the company of a big black man and an Englishman – attractive in a shabby sort of way – but it wasn’t until much later that she associated them with the change in Karl.

      She assumed it was the pressures under which he was working that were affecting him. It was tough enough dealing in currency in Zurich: she could imagine what it must be like when you were double-dealing. And for a goal, an ideal ….

      The change in Karl Danzer only served to add another dimension to Helga’s love: she worried for him. Perhaps he was under investigation of some sort; she approached the subject circumspectly once, but he reacted so savagely that she never asked again.

      But if he were caught …. She stared into a future as bleak as bereavement.

      * * *

      The snow had settled on the lower flanks of the mountains and still Danzer had not been bled dry. He seemed to ration his intelligence as though he sensed that, when it ran out, so would his usefulness – although Anderson went to considerable pains to assure him that the West needed him for the purposes of misinformation.

      One Saturday afternoon just before Christmas, when Anderson was again in Washington, Prentice drove fifty miles from Zurich to the run-down ski-resort where Danzer owned a chalet.

      He strapped skis to the roof of the silver BMW and covered everything, except the tips of the blades, with tarpaulin. Under the tarpaulin, between the skis, he slotted a Russian Kalashnikov rifle fitted with a telescopic sight.

      The sky was a metallic blue and the white fangs of the mountains were sharp against it. Prentice took the Berne autobahn. The traffic was thin, the Germans in their Mercedes stoically unconcerned as the French drivers overtook them in their big Citroens. Prentice drove at a steady 40 mph; no sense in attracting attention when your baggage included a sniper’s rifle; Saddler had taught him never to break small laws when you were about to shatter big ones.

      Twenty miles out of Zurich he took an exit to the left. The snow was hard-packed and, occasionally, the heavy-duty tyres spun on the polished surface. He stopped two miles outside the ski-resort. To his left stood a house which he had rented for six months under the name of Gino Salvini. It was a modest establishment by Swiss standards, four rooms built over a garage. Covered with snow and gilded by the sunlight, it looked positively chic. Always sell a car in the rain, they said: in Switzerland always sell a house covered with snow.

      Prentice opened the doors of the garage. Inside was an egg-shell blue Alfasud bearing Italian codeplates and registered H52870 MI. He turned on the ignition. The engine fired first time and he drove onto the drive beside the BMW.

      The house and the drive were hidden from the road, surrounded by low hills spiked with pine trees. He backed the BMW into the garage, removed the ski-rack complete with the skis and rifle, adjusted it and fitted it onto the roof of the Alfasud. Then he locked the garage, took the wheel of the Alfasud and drove back onto the road.

      From the road he could now see the village – a few snow-bonneted houses, a church with a needle-pointed spire, a shop or two and an hotel that had once specialised in package deals before a tour operator had made the astounding discovery that the terrain wasn’t a happy choice for sking; the consistency of the snow was never quite right – something to do with a warm wind that nosed through the valley – and the ski-runs were too short.

      It wasn’t quite accurate to describe the resort as rundown: it had never got up. Nevertheless, a ski-lift served the slope with erratic rhythms, but it was rarely used.

      Prentice surveyed the village, the snow-patched valley and the white battlements beyond. Then he glanced across the valley to a cluster of chalets. One of these belonged to Karl Danzer. Doubtless he would have preferred St. Moritz or Klosters but this served his purpose. It was undeniably low-profile.

      Prentice drove in second gear down the hill to the village. Before climbing out he adjusted the neck of his black sweater so that it masked the lower part of his face, and pulled up the fur-lined hood of his jungle-green parka.

      He inspected the control cabin of the ski-lift. Like the scarlet cable-cars themselves, it had been constructed with grandiose ideas. But it had a disused air about it and the operator, wearing a plum-coloured uniform shiny with wear, was leaning back in his chair reading a copy of Der Blick.

      The operator could, if asked, stop the ascending cable-car half way up the valley, at a platform designed to serve the cluster of chalets on the hillside. He looked as if any request would severely disrupt the tempo of his day.

      Prentice made a note of the times of the last three ascents, the list on the wall compiled, presumably, in headier days. He tried the handle of the door. It was open. The operator looked up frowning, indicating with his thumb that Prentice should use the staircase to the platform where an empty car waited for passengers, and returned to his newspaper.

      Prentice signalled that he understood. Then he set the stop-watch on his wrist and walked rapidly back to the Alfasud. When he reached the car he climbed in and set the stop-watch again. He drove up the hill, beside the thickly-greased cables, to an observation parking lot with room for about a dozen cars.

      There were three cars there. One Swiss, one Belgian and one British, a Ford Granada. The boot of the Granada was open and a middle-aged couple were brewing tea on a spirit stove.

      Prentice clocked himself from the village to the observation post. It was 4.37: it had taken him exactly three minutes. He glanced around; the bright colours of the day were fading fast and clouds were curdling on the mountain-peaks. The wind that played havoc with the piste was iced now, and there was a cruelty about the evening.

      Prentice set the stop-watch again, put on climbing boots and set off down the precipitous path beside the car-lot. Almost immediately, he was out of sight from anyone above; not that anyone would be able to see much in the gathering dusk.

      He reached a bed of flat rocks a hundred yards beneath the car-lot. It was surrounded by stunted pine trees capped with snow. He checked his stop-watch again and lay down on the rocks and peered through the feeble growth, none of the pines bigger than Christmas trees.

      Above him to the right, on the far side of the valley, stood the cluster of chalets. Danzer’s was the biggest, made from split pine painted blue with fretted eaves and a balcony on which to drink wine on summer evenings. Prentice had been there several times with Anderson; so, according to the bug in Danzer’s apartment, had the girl. And many other girls ….

      The cables jerked suddenly. He restarted the stop-watch. He couldn’t see the descending car but in any case it didn’t interest him. He peered down the valley at the ascending car, lit now by a single naked bulb.

      As he had expected, there were two men in the car. One was the attendant who had, if anything, an easier job than the operator. The other was Karl Danzer. Stop-watch off.

      Danzer passed him about fifty yards away, standing impassively, staring out of the window wearing a black, Cossack-style fur hat and a grey, waisted topcoat. The scarlet car stopped at the landing half way up the slope and Danzer stepped out.

      For the rest of the night, Prentice thought, Danzer would worry. Prentice had called him and made an appointment. When appointments were made and not kept, when you were left alone in a chalet high up among the pine trees, you worried. If, that is, you had been reduced to Danzer’s mental state.

      Prentice began to climb the path. A car engine coughed into life. The English couple must have finished their tea.

      Prentice timed himself as though he were replacing the rifle between the skis. Then he drove back through the dusk at speed, skidding round the bends as though he were on the Cresta run. At the rented house he swapped cars, locked the garage and timed himself for the last time.

      The dummy run was over. Prentice licked warmth back into his frozen lips as he drove the BMW back to Zurich at a sedate pace, and thought of Danzer framed in the lighted window of the cable-car.

      *

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