I, Said the Spy. Derek Lambert
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had experienced sex before, but never anything like this ….
They drove through slumberous green valleys in his silver BMW; they picnicked in forest glades, explored castles, ate and slept and loved in village inns. And shared.
It lasted four days. Then Prentice had to return across the Rheine to attend to the demands of his employers, Paul Kingdon and British Intelligence. As they neared Zurich, Prentice toyed with the idea of proposing marriage.
But how could he? You couldn’t ask a girl to share her life with a man whose business was espionage. Or, more specifically, he couldn’t conceal his calling from her because a marriage threatened by such subterfuge was no marriage at all.
There were two alternatives, Prentice decided, as he parked the silver BMW 2002 outside the apartment block. He could confide in Annette or he could find another job. He hoped that the latter wouldn’t be necessary because, unlike most of the spies he read about in modern fiction, he enjoyed his work.
He decided to fly to England to seek advice. As it happened there was a cable awaiting him, summoning him urgently to London. He told Annette that he would have to leave her for a couple of days; she kissed him and told him that she understood and, in the single bed that had never known anything more orgiastic than the weekly disarray of the Sunday newspapers, they made love with abandonment.
For the last time.
When Prentice arrived at the offices of MI6 in Northumberland Avenue, between Trafalgar Square and the Thames, he was immediately aware that there was something wrong. It showed in the embarrassed greetings from a colleague, in the diffident attitude of Ballard’s secretary.
Leonard Ballard was a man in his sixties with the stamp of the Navy about him, but none of an old sea-dog’s geniality. Ballard had once been a submarine commander and during World War II he had been deputy chief of the Admiralty’s Operational Centre, housed beneath the hideous, bunker-like building in Horse Guard’s Parade, known without affection as Lenin’s Tomb. Ballard had been in charge of the destruction of U-boats; as an ex-submariner he knew the sort of death to which he was dispatching men; it had seemed to affect him not at all.
To Ballard the pursuit and extermination of the enemy was everything. Now as then. But whereas he was normally urbane, the sophisticated skipper of a clandestine crew, he was today cold and brusque.
‘Sit down, Prentice.’
Prentice sat down and nervously assimilated the trappings of the office – seafaring charts, propellers of a ship, a brass compass shining in a shaft of dusty sunlight.
‘You look uncommonly dapper,’ Ballard remarked.
Prentice didn’t reply; there was no reply.
‘Dressed to kill?’
‘Not as far as I am aware, sir,’ regretting the grey lightweight suit and the slightly jazzy tie that Annette had bought him.
‘Appropriate for a fond farewell at Kloten Airport?’
A cold finger of apprehension touched Prentice as he said: ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.’
‘Don’t you? Then I shall enlighten you. You were driven to the airport by a Miss Annette du Pont, were you not?’
‘As it happens I was. But I don’t see —’
‘That it’s any of my business? I’m sorry to disillusion you. The companions favoured by my employees are always my business.’
Prentice was silent.
Ballard picked up a glossy photograph on his desk and tossed it on Prentice’s lap. ‘That is Mademoiselle du Pont, I believe.’
Prentice looked at the photograph. Annette looked back at him, smiling. Admiring the tie, he thought foolishly. The apprehension froze into fear. For Annette, for himself, for the future that he had glimpsed in a green field scattered with flowers. He said yes it was Mademoiselle du Pont.
‘A student of economics, I am told. I’m sure you were able to teach her a lot ….’ Ballard picked up other photographs and rifled through them. ‘Not that she needed much teaching.’
‘I don’t think —’ but Ballard interrupted him again: ‘You should have thought before. You disobeyed instructions. You know perfectly well that you should have checked out anyone who made such a direct approach to you.’
But she approached me for help, stayed with me because she loved me.
Ballard went on: ‘I believe you know a man called ‘Karl Danzer?’ And when he didn’t reply: ‘I asked you a question, Mr Prentice.’
Prentice looked up. ‘Karl Danzer?’ He found it difficult to concentrate. ‘Yes, of course I know Karl Danzer. He’s a currency speculator. Not very big, but big enough. He also handles the Russians’ hard currency for them. I’ve mentioned him in reports.’
Ballard said crisply: ‘He’s more than a Soviet bank-master: he’s a spy employed by the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. We’ve just cracked him through a turned KGB operative in the Soviet Embassy in London.’
Hope surfaced briefly. ‘Is that why you brought me to London?’
Ballard sat down behind his desk and faced Prentice. ‘We had intended to bring you to London to brief you about Herr Danzer, yes. Now the matter has become more urgent.’
The hope began to die.
Ballard picked up a silver paper-knife bearing a Royal Naval crest and pointed it at Prentice. ‘I assume that by now you realise in what direction this conversation is leading.’
‘I consider Miss du Pont to be above reproach.’
‘Do you now. Very gallant. I’m afraid I shall have to disillusion you.’
Prentice searched for his cigarettes but decided against lighting one, and sat with his hands clasped tightly together.
Ballard sorted through the photographs, selected one and stared at it expressionlessly for a moment. ‘Miss du Pont,’ he said after a while, ‘has been associating with Karl Danzer for at least six months.’
Prentice wanted to protest, but there was no point. He watched the specks of dust spinning in the sunlight as despair settled upon him.
Ballard turned the photograph so that Prentice could see it, saying at the same time: ‘You will appreciate that I don’t enjoy this. Here, take it,’ as though it were soiling his hands.
Prentice took the picture and gazed at Annette’s lovely face. At the beautiful, full-breasted body that he now knew so well. And that expression of languorous contentment – as she gazed into the eyes of Karl Danzer lying naked beside her.
Prentice dropped the photograph on the floor.
‘The photograph,’ Ballard said, ‘was taken in her room in Basle a week ago after Danzer had been blown.’
Annette had driven back to Basle a week ago – to fetch some clothes, she had said.
Ballard said: ‘The only question that remains – and I am prepared to take your word on it – is, did you communicate anything … indiscreet?’
‘Of course not. I had intended to seek your advice.’
‘And what do you think I would have advised you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It matters now. The liaison must cease.’
‘Of course,’ Prentice said dully.
‘According to our information you were approached merely in your capacity as an industrial consultant. You have made quite a name for yourself in that particular field, Mr Prentice. Apparently she has no idea – or didn’t have a week ago – that you also work for us.’
So they had bugged her room in Basle.
‘One