Siege at the Villa Lipp (4 page)

‘Stop yammering. Where are they?’

‘There’s only one, the man in three-two-six. But . . . ‘

‘Name?’

‘Dopff. He is over in the corner by the big flower arrangement, and he is watching us speak. I beg you, Mr Firman, please . . . ‘

I did not wait to hear what he was begging me to do, or not do, but turned and walked straight across to where the man was sitting.

My memory for names and faces is good, very good, but it has its limits. I could remember that a person named Dopff was registered for the seminar and that he was from Luxembourg, but I couldn’t recall his profession. That meant only one thing: whatever he was - lawyer, banker, amateur tax-evader, or government spy - he had been checked out as a potential client and, as such, found wanting.

As I approached, I recognized him; he was the elderly man who had been sitting in the middle of the third row an hour or so earlier, listening with rapt attention to my introduction of the main speaker. I had noticed him partly because he had actually seemed interested in my ritual listing of the speaker’s qualifications - they were all there printed in the official programme he had in his hand - but mostly because he appeared to wear a permanent smile. The smile, I had noted later as we were all leaving the conference room, was an optical illusion which vanished when you came closer to him. It was produced by the combination of an upper lip shaped like a circumflex accent and a mouthful of large, very white teeth, the kind that look like cheap dentures even when they are not.

He was showing them to me now as I approached him; only this was no illusory smile; it was a blatantly triumphant grin. Had I not needed badly to know who he really was, what he wanted and what sort of threat he constituted, I would have walked straight on past him just for the pleasure of watching the result through the mirror on the adjacent wall. I took refuge instead in courtesy. The really heavy-handed, old-world stuff can make it possible for one to discharge an enormous amount of anger without the object of the anger becoming fully aware of it. He may suspect but he cannot be certain. With luck, one will cause him considerable unease without giving him any excuse to take offence.

Unfortunately, with a man as sure of himself as Krom, this form of attack can never be wholly effective.

The common language of our seminar has always been English, so it was in English that I addressed him.

‘Mr Dopff, is it? I understand that you wish to see me.’

To the grin he added an insolent stare. ‘No, Mr Firman, that is not at all what I wish. I have already seen you, clearly and unmistakably, before. That was in Zürich five years ago when you were calling yourself Oberholzer.’

‘My name is Firman, sir.’

He went on as if I had not spoken. ‘So, I have seen you twice. What I intend to do from now on is to talk with you.’ He patted the arm of the empty chair beside him. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

I remained standing. ‘I am sure that you will understand that I am a busy man, Mr Dopff. I simply came to tell you that the receptionist here gave me a strange message, from you he tells me, about two persons of whom I have never heard. It seemed proper and sensible to let you know that the message was either garbled or misdirected. That is all.’

He showed his teeth again. ‘That garbled message brought you pretty quickly, Mr Oberholzer.’

‘The name, I repeat, is Firman.’

‘At the moment it is, yes. But it used to be Oberholzer, and I have no doubt that there have been, and still are, a great many other identities in your repertoire. How annoying it must be for you to realize that this time you can’t just run for it.’

I gave him my little bow. ‘Except to escape the acute boredom of this conversation, Mr Dopff, why on earth should I run anywhere?’

He was unruffled. ‘You ran in Zurich. Here, as you have obviously realized, you must try to bluff your way out. No head-start possible, no suitable cut-outs available and no inconspicuous exits handy. Agreed? So why not sit down and join me in a little whisky? In spite of your impressive outer calm, I am sure that you would find it helpful.’

At that moment I had almost decided that he was some sort of private detective, a retired fraud-squad type. Anyway, it was time to counter-attack.

I sighed and sat down in the chair beside him. ‘Very well, Mr Dopff. You want to talk. May I suggest a subject?’

‘Why not?’ He snapped his fingers for the waiter. ‘We can always change it.’

‘Then, since the subject of identity seems to interest you so much, why don’t we have a look at the one you’re using?’

‘By all means.’

The waiter came then and took the order for more whisky. It was given in what sounded to me like Flemish.

‘For a start,’ I said, ‘I don’t think you’re a Luxembourger.’

‘Absolutely right!’ Beaming smile. He might have been playing a guessing game with a favourite grandchild.

‘And your name is not Dopff.’

‘Right again. My good friend Maurice Dopff, who lives and works in the Grand Duchy, registered for this affair and then found himself unable to attend. He kindly allowed me to come in his stead.’

‘Do you really expect me to believe that?’

‘Of course I don’t. He allowed himself to be used as cover.’ He fished out a visiting card and handed it to me. ‘Permit me to introduce myself formally. The name is Krom.’

I knew at once exactly who he was. In the tax-avoidance game our coverage of legal and financial publications of all sorts and nationalities is as comprehensive as we can make it. The Institute and Symposia between them employed a multilingual, and very expensive, full-time research staff of eight as well as numerous part-timers. With us, good intelligence is as essential for survival as discipline and foresight. Our coverage of specialized technical journals dealing with law enforcement at policy-making levels is extremely thorough. Krom’s allusions to tax avoidance and evasion in the published version of his Berne lecture had been sufficient to ensure its being brought to my attention flagged with a red sticker. Even if he had not initiated our acquaintance by playing games with dead men’s names, I would have known enough about Krom to be wary of him.

My first ploy, then, was to pretend that I knew nothing while working to find out more.

I gave the card a perplexed look. ‘Well, Professor, this is all a bit surprising. As you can imagine, we get lots of peculiar characters at these seminars of ours, all sorts of nosey-parkers, including, I have to say, some of our competitors in the tax haven area. We don’t object. If we can teach them something, well that is what we are here for, to teach. It
is
though a trifle irksome, I admit, when they make fools of themselves by wearing disguises.’ I contrived a sudden look of anxiety. ‘You really
are
Professor Krom, I hope? This –’ I held up the card - ‘is not, by any chance, a disguise within a disguise?’

He had been watching me intently and with a certain air of disbelief. Now he shook his head slowly. ‘No, I am Krom. Why? Were you hoping that I wasn’t?’

‘On the contrary, I was hoping that you were. You see, this is the first time we have had the pleasure of entertaining a Professor of Sociology. This is an occasion. Still – ‘ perplexity again - ‘I’m afraid I don’t yet see the connection between your field and ours. Unless, that is, you are seeking advice on how best a good Dutchman may avoid those onerous Netherlands taxes.’

He suddenly grinned again and clapped his hands softly. ‘An excellent performance,’ he said, ‘really excellent. Just for a moment there you nearly made me forget. Forget Oberholzer and Kramer, I mean. You see, Mr Firman, my field is criminology.’

It was time to show
my
teeth. I said: ‘You’ll find no able criminals here, Professor Krom.’

He positively giggled. ‘From defence to attack, eh? The pretence of ignorance is abruptly discarded in order to disconcert. Splendid impertinence!’

I went on as if he had not spoken. ‘So I’m afraid your little fishing expedition will have to be written off as a waste of time. Sorry.’

Protesting hands. ‘Oh, but it has got off to a most successful, a most promising, start!’

The drink arrived just then. I was glad of the diversion. The man was proving hard to handle, and I needed time to think. I could have done with more. It was necessary to find out from him what he considered success without actually asking, and I made a complete hash of it.

When the waiter had gone again I said: ‘Then you must be easily satisfied.’

He read me instantly. ‘I can well understand, Mr Firman, that you are curious.’

‘I’m surprised, certainly.’ No point in letting the adversary
see
your discomfiture even if he must have sensed it. I kept going. ‘You bait your hook with some mysterious substance labelled Oberholzer and Kramer, and catch an empty beer can. If you think that’s good fishing, naturally I’m surprised.’

The teeth flashed triumphantly. ‘You’ve missed a trick, Mr Firman!’

‘I am sure that you intend to tell me which.’

‘Of course I do. You fell into the trap of failing to ask yourself an obvious question.’

I smiled. ‘How do you know what questions I ask myself, Professor?’

‘I know you haven’t asked yourself this one because you haven’t asked me for the answer. Consider. You are told that Oberholzer and Kramer are waiting to see you. Correct?’

‘I am told that two persons of whom I have never heard are waiting to see me.’

An upraised forefinger flicked the quibble aside contemptuously. ‘Yet, in your anxiety to set eyes instantly upon the person who uses these unknown names, you quite overlook the oddity of the channel of communication he has chosen to use.’ He paused before going on. ‘Do you usually in this hotel receive messages about visitors from the receptionist? Doesn’t the concierge’s, the hall-porter’s, department function here?’

I managed, not without difficulty, a careless shrug. ‘It functions, yes, and quite efficiently. I presume you thought that a busy receptionist was less likely to remember your face than the concierge who gives you your room-key and who might also be unsympathetic to practical jokes.’

He gave me a kindly look. ‘Not bad for a spur-of-the moment invention, but it won’t do, will it? Hindsight content far too high. If you had never heard of Oberholzer and Kramer why would the possibility of a practical joke occur to you? No, you failed to ask yourself why I had gone to the receptionist because the questions uppermost in your mind just then were - who is this joker, what does he want and how dangerous is he?’

I drank some whisky. I had begun to need it. As if to humour him, I put the question: ‘Well, why
did
you use the receptionist to send me your message?’

He gave me a nod for good behaviour, but no immediate answer to his question.

‘In spite of his being one of the more active members of your private espionage organization,’ he said, ‘I think I may know more about that receptionist than you do. Naturally, all your known associates have interested me for some time. Where possible J have built up dossiers on them. However, once I had decided that the birthplace of our collaboration would be here in Brussels, work on all your local contacts was intensified.’ A peculiar twitching of his facial muscles began as he added: ‘The possibility of an abortion occurring was, to this fond parent, a totally unacceptable risk.’

As his face went on twitching and he gazed at me expectantly, I realized that he thought he had said something funny and was waiting for a laugh.

When all he got was a blank stare, the twitching ceased and he said tolerantly: ‘Perhaps you would find a military analogue more to your taste.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Well then, this was the kind of operation in which success can only be won by immaculate preparation leading to the achievement of tactical surprise. A note delivered to your room, or left in your mail-box downstairs here, would not have worked. You would have had time to think, time to investigate and prepare defences, possibly time to make arrangements for my discomfiture. Or even,’ he added coyly, ‘not knowing of the precautions I had taken to safeguard myself, time to organize my removal from the scene.’

I looked suitably offended by the insinuation. ‘For a criminologist you have a somewhat lurid imagination, Professor.’

‘I was not, of course, being entirely serious, Mr Firman.’ The teeth made a jovial showing, but the wariness in the pale-blue eyes told a different story. He believed not only that I was an able criminal but also a person capable of murder. I made a note of the fact. That sort of belief, senseless though it may be, can sometimes be quite useful.

‘But,’ he was saying, ‘you are right about one thing.’

‘Good.’

‘The concierge might, as you say, have found the verbal message strange. There could have been several possible consequences of his doing so. You might, as we have seen, have been in some way forewarned and thus forearmed. Even more important, he might, without thinking, have talked, gossiped, and so compromised the entire operation. I had long perceived, you see, that if our collaboration was to be fruitful, absolute secrecy, in the early stages especially, was essential.
That
is why I chose the receptionist to deliver my message. He will not, I assure you, repeat a word of it, or of your subsequent questioning of him, to any third party. The poor fellow is far too frightened to disobey me.’

‘I noticed that he had been frightened. What did you threaten him with?’

‘Threaten him, Mr Firman? It wasn’t necessary to threaten him.’ He found the accusation quite astounding. ‘As I told you, I have done, and had done for me, much intensive work on your people. This man spied on you, so it occurred to me to wonder if, perhaps, he spied, or had once spied, for someone else. I was simply looking in a routine fashion, you understand, for parallel associations. Well, I
have friends in Bonn who are interested in my work and they have access to the BND and its archive of Nazi SD files. And what do you think? During the Nazi occupation here our receptionist avoided forced labour recruitment by becoming an SD informer. Naturally, since he had never been exposed here - the victorious Allies couldn’t be bothered with the non-German small fry and the Belgian Resistance never had free access to the files - he had come to believe that the past, or that little bit of his particular past, was buried for ever. Did you know about it?’