Читать книгу I, Said the Spy - Derek Lambert, Derek Lambert - Страница 17
ОглавлениеBilderberg, according to an article in The Times of London, ‘is best known for the fact that no one knows anything about it.’ Not strictly true, of course. A lot of people know a lot about Bilderberg; but they keep it to themselves.
Among them was Owen Anderson. Sitting up in bed in his apartment (now paid for) in New York, doing his homework for the 1975 Bilderberg at Cesme in Turkey, Anderson gained little satisfaction from his inside knowledge. As always, it seemed to him that they were setting themselves up to be destroyed.
It was only a matter of time. The American way of death. Clandestine manoeuvring followed by suicidal, well-publicised soul-baring. Like the God-awful Watergate mess ….
What the American people didn’t seem to realise, Anderson brooded as he swung his legs out of the paper-littered bed and made his way to the kitchen to make coffee, was that by over-indulging the democratic processes they were destroying democracy. Playing into the hands of tyrants who sat back and enjoyed the suicidal ceremonies ….
Could anyone imagine Leonid Brezhnev being served with subpoenas for refusing to release Kremlin tape-recordings?
Anderson tightened the belt of his white robe and drank some coffee, hoping it would drown the disillusion. He gazed out of the window at the windswept February morning. Far below, office-bound crowds strode the sidewalks, heads ducked into the wind blowing in from the East River. Not one of them, Anderson was willing to bet, was aware that in two months time a hundred or so men – and a couple of women – would meet secretly to discuss policies that would control their lives ….
So, in a way, by protecting those who attended the convention, he was protecting the people on the sidewalks beneath him. If the logic was flawed, then Anderson chose not to analyse it. He returned to the bedroom with his coffee, sat on the edge of the bed and began to read what little had been written about Bilderberg.
* * *
It was born in the early ’50s when a Polish philosopher, Joseph Retinger, and an American, George W. Ball, approached the urbane Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and asked him to preside over a series of conferences.
The aim amounted to an attempt to re-unite European-American relations that had been thrown out of gear by the Cold War. Not everyone agreed that the intent was so innocent ….
The first meeting was held at the Bilderberg Hotel, near Arnhem, in Holland, from May 29–31,1954. And one of the first critics to voice an opinion about the Bilderbergers, as they were subsequently called, was the syndicated American columnist Westbrook Pegler.
Pegler picked on the fifth conference at St. Simon’s Island, off the coast of Georgia, after a reader had told him that an almost deserted hotel there was crawling with FBI and Secret Service. Pegler immediately compared the meeting with a conference held on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in 1908 when the currency of the United States and the world was secretly ‘manipulated’. Pegler claimed that at the 1908 meeting, convened by Senator Nelson W, Aldrich, of Rhode Island, the Federal Reserve System was secretly hammered out.
Anderson knew about that meeting. It had been chronicled in a book by B. C. Forbes, former editor of Forbes magazine, in a book Men Who Are Making America published in 1917. And it was true that a new currency system had been written on the aptly named Jekyll Island. A government outside the government …. Just what the critics claimed Bilderberg was.
Of the 1957 Bilderberg, Pegler wrote: ‘The public knows substantially nothing about the meeting nor even who selected the company to attend or on what qualifications.’
Well, the guest-list was drawn up by an international steering committee, and Bilderberg had a Secretariat located at Smidswater 1, The Hague, Holland.
The bedside telephone buzzed and Anderson reached for it.
‘Mr Anderson?’ The nasal voice of the janitor.
‘Speaking. What is it, the bathroom?’
‘ ’Fraid so, Mr Anderson, another complaint from the folk underneath.’
‘How many times is that?’
‘About ten, I guess.’
‘Well fix it, goddam it,’ Anderson said with the full authority of a man who owned a property. He cradled the phone, drank some cold coffee and picked up a sheaf of ammunition supplied by the Liberty Lobby.
The Liberty Lobby, with offices at 300, Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington D.C., was the sworn enemy of Bilderberg. Over the years they hadn’t achieved much; small wonder when they were pitted against the power-elite of the West. But they were a thorn in the sides of Prince Bernhard and the other participants.
Anderson ran one finger down the list of Bilderberg meeting places ….
1955 – Barbizon, France, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; 1956 – Fredensborg, Denmark; 1957 – St. Simon’s Island and Fiuggi, Italy; 1958 – sleepy little Buxton in England; 1959 – Yesilkoy, Turkey; 1960 – Burgenstock, Switzerland; 1961 – Quebec, Canada; 1962 – Saltsjobaden, Sweden; 1963 – Cannes, France; 1964 – Williamsburg, Virginia; 1965 – Lake Como, Italy ….
Anderson, who hadn’t become the Bilderbergers’ guardian angel until 1971, was sorry he had missed that one. They had stayed, of course, at the best hotel, the baronial Villa d’Este, said by some to be the best hotel in Italy. And the guest list had, as always, been impressive. Among those present, the Duke of Edinburgh, George W. Ball, one of the two innovators and Under-secretary of State, David Rockefeller (a regular), Lord Louis Mountbatten, Denis Healey, Britain’s Minister of Defence and Manlio Brosio, secretary of NATO.
Writing about the Lake Como get-together, Walter Lucas of The Christian Science Monitor, had commented: ‘But there is nothing mysterious or sinister about it all.’
A good Christian conclusion, Anderson thought. If a little naive ….
1966 – Wiesbaden, Germany; 1967 – Cambridge (surely a dangerous location!), England; 1968 – Mont Tremblant, Canada; 1969 – Copenhagen, Denmark; 1970 – Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.
Then Woodstock, followed by Knokke in Belgium – a golden opportunity to screw the Russians sabotaged by George Prentice, Saltsjobaden once again, Megeve in France and now Cesme.
He thumbed through the documents supplied by the Liberty Lobby, stopping at an extract from the Congressional Record dated September 15, 1971. John R. Rarick, of Louisiana, had once again raised Bilderberg in the House of Representatives – his fifth foray that year.
Rarick asserted that he had tried, so far unsuccessfully, to get the U.S. Attorney General to take action against Bilderberg on the grounds that it violated the Logan Act.
He also inserted into the Record a revised article by two authors, Eugene Pasymowski and Carl Gilbert, which first appeared in the Temple University Press. The article was the most comprehensive Anderson had come across.
It drew attention to the preponderance of members of the Council on Foreign Relations, among the American participants. It also underlined the ties with NATO and the big bands of the West.
But even these two writers, who had obviously exhaustively researched their subject, had failed to discover what was actually said during discussions on such subjects as the ‘contribution of business in dealing with the current problems of social instability.’
They should have access to my little bugs, Anderson thought.
The critics, of course, claimed that Bilderbergers schemed outside the conference chamber. Claimed, for instance, that after the Woodstock meeting, American speculators dispatched billions of dollars to West Germany – and made billions when Richard Nixon devalued the dollar a few weeks later.
Well, only the mentally-retarded would believe that fluctuation in currencies, in gold and silver, was outside the interests of Bilderbergers; that they didn’t concern themselves with political manipulation, the removal of unfriendly regimes, supplies of armaments and raw materials to the right people ….
The few Bilderbergers who had ever discussed the meetings – albeit uncommittally – had agreed that contact was everything. Only a simpleton would accept that they didn’t profit from that contact.
The Vietnam War that had ended for America on January 23, 1973, had undoubtedly taken up much of their time – Henry Kissinger frequently attended the meetings …. Soon the Prince Bernhard scandal would break. Would the fact that their illustrious chairman had accepted bribes be the end of Bilderberg? Anderson doubted it: that sort of clout could ride any storm.
One of the most succinct comments in Anderson’s file was made by C. Gordon Tether in the London Financial Times. On July 10, 1974, he ended an article with the words: ‘It might be added that, if those foregathering at the Bilderberg shrine want to demonstrate that there is nothing questionable about their “humane activities”, they could with advantage go to more trouble to avoid fostering the opposite impression.’
Anderson considered the list of participants at the meeting to be held at Cesme. Even if Bilderberg secrecy was undented, changes were being wrought: sex equality had touched its calculating soul.
Among the women invited was Mrs Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Opposition in Britain. Which, Anderson thought, was a happy omen for Mrs Thatcher. The Western world’s leaders, so it was said, were drawn from the ranks of Bilderberg. Gerald Ford was a relatively unknown member of the House of Representatives when he attended.
Anderson yawned and stretched. Not for him to pass judgement on the deliberations of the Brotherhood. It was his job to stop them being spied upon – or killed.
He turned his attention to two stacks of dossiers piled up beside the bed. One contained the computerised background on newcomers to the conference; the other, material on regulars which had been substantially revised.
He began with the second stack and picked up the top two files. Mrs Claire Jerome and Pierre Brossard. He decided to study Mrs Jerome first: not only was she prettier but she had an appointment later that day with the President of the United States.
* * *
In a penthouse two blocks away from Owen Anderson’s apartment, Claire Jerome was luxuriating in a bathtub gazing at a building which may or may not have been the Taj Mahal. In a blue pool in front of the building a muscular young man was swimming energetically in pursuit of a girl who looked not unlike Dorothy Lamour in her prime. It had so far taken him five years to catch her; perhaps, Claire pondered lazily, she should recall the painter and shift the young man a little nearer to his goal on the mural.
She lay back in the black marble bath, toyed with the foam and breathed the perfume rising from the water. The bathroom really was decorated in atrocious style. Which was just how she wanted it. For fifteen minutes every day she escaped from convention. Black back (gold taps), white-tiled floor, a multitude of steam-proof mirrors and the wall-painting, which looked like a still from an early colour movie, was just about as vulgarly unconventional as you could get.
Claire adored the place. She glanced at the Philip Patek watch on her wrist: she still had five more minutes left in which to let her thoughts roam away from board meetings, executive decisions, business luncheons, scheming colleagues ….
She stretched out one leg and squeezed a sponge over it. Why did girls advertising baths or bath-salts always do that? Four minutes left …. Her thoughts drifted into the future; recently this was the direction they had been taking, accompanied by a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Unfulfilment? Now she was becoming her own psychiatrist. Perhaps she should restrict her therapy to ten minutes.
She stepped out of the bath and surveyed herself from every angle in the mirrors. Pushing thirty-eight, not bad. Full firm breasts, flat belly; the figure of a woman ten years younger. And yet there was something unfulfilled about it. You’re getting neurotic, she told herself; she towelled and anointed herself, removed her shower cap and let her jet black hair fall over her shoulders.
The unease dispersed.
Mrs Claire Jerome, fifth richest woman in the world, de facto head of Marks International, the multi-national corporation founded on armaments, strode into the bedroom and gazed dispassionately at the man propped against the pillows in the big round bed reading a copy of Time magazine.
‘I see we made it again,’ he remarked, tapping the magazine with one finger.
‘We?’
‘Okay, you.’ He yawned. ‘Are you always crabby like this in the morning?’
‘I enjoy my privacy.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me to get out last night?’
‘I thought I did,’ said Claire, sitting in front of the dressing-table and beginning to apply foundation cream.
‘I’m sorry. I guess we both fell asleep.’
Claire observed him in the mirror. Crisply handsome and physically in good shape, age only beginning to show in that tautness of the facial muscles peculiar to men who had knifed their way to the top, and knew that other blades were flashing behind them.
Well, almost to the top. Stephen Harsch was in his early forties, an age when you could still be described as ‘an up-and-coming young executive.’ Forty-five and you were a middle-aged fixture. Harsch was No. 4 in the Marks hierarchy and was anxious to become No. 3 as quickly as possible.
Which, Claire knew perfectly well, was why he was in her bed. Ostensibly he was at the moment very pro Claire (No. 2) and her father, the titular head of the business. A proxy vote was looming and Harsch was marshalling the stockholders behind father and daughter. When he had won that round, Harsch would be agitating against them.
The knowledge didn’t disturb Claire. She understood the Harschs’ of the world: she was their female counterpart. And her reasons for wanting Harsch in her bed were equally calculating: sexual satisfaction. And to have someone beside you, an unsolicited voice whispered.
Angry with herself, she smudged her lipstick.
Behind her Harsch began to read aloud from the Time article in the Business and Economy section headed ARMS AND THE WOMAN. It struck her, as she erased the smudge with a tissue, that the article contained exactly the sort of ammunition that Harsch would direct against her when/if he got the No. 3 job.
When is an enemy of Israel not an enemy? When he’s a Persian, according to U.S. arms dealers assuaging their consciences about the destination of their weaponry in the Middle East.
Few armaments manufacturers would overtly clinch deals with states committed to anti-Israel policies. But for a long time Pentagon officials have succeeded in the not-too-daunting task of persuading them that the pro-West Iran falls into a different category. That by strengthening Western clout in the Middle East they are, in fact, helping the cause of the beleagured Israelis. In 1974 a staggering $3.9 billion of the total $8.3 billion arms sales went to Iran.
Currently facing the dilemma of whether or not to help satisfy the Shah’s insatiable appetite for the most sophisticated arms is Mrs Claire Jerome, 38, head, in all but title, of Marks International, the California-based conglomerate. Mrs Jerome is Jewish and she has in the past proved to be intransigent on her Middle East policy to supply only the Jews. But this time the Shah from his Peacock Throne is dangling a $1.5 billion carrot. Can Mrs Jerome, bearing in mind the interests of stockholders and employees, afford to disregard it?
‘Well,’ Harsch asked, ‘can she?’
Claire Jerome began to brush her shiny hair. ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ she said. ‘And Stephen ….’
Harsch looked up inquiringly.
‘I think I did tell you to get the hell out of it last night. Would you oblige now please?’
‘Okay, okay.’
‘And shower in the other bathroom, would you. This is strictly private.’
Harsch gathered together his crumpled clothes and headed for the door. In the circumstances, Claire thought, he managed to muster a little dignity.
At the door, shielding his nakedness with his clothes, he turned and said: ‘You know you’ll have to make up your mind about that order from Iran pretty damn soon.’
She said: ‘I’m flying to Washington today to discuss it.’
Harsch frowned. ‘Who with?’
Claire Jerome enjoyed her moment. ‘With the President of the United States,’ she told him.
Happier now, she put on a dark-grey, two-piece suit and red cashmere roll-neck sweater, fetched her mink and went down in the elevator to the lobby, where the driver of her Rolls Corniche was waiting for her.
* * *
1.43 pm. The Oval Office of the White House.
Claire Jerome entered nervously. The President rose to greet her. It was odd, she reflected, that a couple of years ago she would have been quite composed in the presence of this man; now because he was President by default she was agitated.
The President, tall and hefty and a little gangling with pale thinning hair, did his best to put her at her ease. He wagged his pipe at her. ‘Do you mind this?’
She managed a smile and shook her head. ‘But I don’t care for cigar smoke.’ He probably smoked them in secret.
‘I wish,’ the President said, ‘that every business tycoon I met looked like you.’
Claire began to relax because he was so relaxed.
‘I want you to meet Bill Danby,’ the President said. He corrected himself. ‘Although I think you two know each other already.’
Danby inclined his head and smiled. ‘We have met.’
The last time had been in Danby’s office on the outskirts of the city, when she had assured him that she intended to continue Marks International’s policy of collaborating with the CIA.
A steward in a red jacket served coffee. Claire declined and the President said: ‘Bill will have your cup. He lives on the stuff. Would you prefer tea?’
Claire, who would have preferred a beer, shook her head. So did the President; perhaps he would have liked a beer too. Danby sipped his coffee – contained and watchful as always but not as omnipotent as he seemed in his own office. The Oval Office did that to people.
As Claire glanced around the room, history enfolded her. Oil-paintings of Lincoln and Washington resurrected the past; so did the furniture – an antique chest of drawers, a grandfather clock loudly ticking away the present into the past.
The President – or his wife – had taste.
The Presidential desk and its environs, however, were an island on which the man’s own personality was stamped. Behind his swivel seat, between desk and the gold-draped windows, was a table on which stood photographs of his family; on the desk was a pennant bearing the name of a College baseball team.
The President relit his pipe and said: ‘It’s been Cambodia day today. Do you think we should cut aid, Mrs Jerome?’ He peered at her through a cloud of smoke.
‘It’s in my interests to say no, I guess. But to be truthful, I don’t think it’s going to do much good. The Government will fall however much we send them.’
‘I’m afraid you’re right. But we can’t reduce our commitment. Never let it be said that the United States has been niggardly.’ He pointed his pipe at Danby. ‘Bill, I think agrees with both of us.’
‘That’s how I keep my job,’ Danby remarked. His spectacles glinted in the light pouring down relentlessly from the ceiling. The only hint of human frailty about him was the suspicion of a quiff in his hair, a relic of innocence. ‘In fact, I do agree with both of you. Yes, we should stick to our commitment, no it won’t do any good.’
The President traversed the Asian continent and said: ‘I hear you’ve been offered the opportunity to provide aid where it might do more good, Mrs Jerome.’
Claire noticed clips from Time, Newsweek and a couple of newspapers on his desk. ‘I’m not so sure about the latter part of your remark, Mr President.’
‘Indeed? Why not, Mrs Jerome?’
‘I believe our commitment’ – their phraseology was infectious – ‘in Iran is becoming gross. The Shah hoards arms like other people hoard gold. He needs advice, not guns.’
‘Well, Bill,’ the President said easily, puffing on his pipe, ‘what do you say to that?’ ‘Simple. No prevarication this time. I think Mrs Jerome is wrong. The Shah needs us, we need the Shah. According to our information, he’s in a strong position and we need to keep him that way. What’s more,’ Danby added, ‘I don’t think Mrs Jerome is being totally honest with herself.’
Claire Jerome understood Danby’s resentment: it was the first time since her father had agreed to sell arms to U.S. Intelligence customers that she had questioned the Agency’s judgement.
She said: ‘I presume you mean the fact that I’m Jewish. Well, of course, you’re correct up to a point. In the Middle East I’ll only sell to Israel. One day Iran could become actively hostile to the Jews.’
‘I rather doubt that,’ Danby remarked, reaching for the cup of coffee intended for Claire.
Claire said: ‘I think you rather underestimate the power of Islam. Come to that, so does the Shah.’
Danby said: ‘The Iranians are not in the same bracket as Libya or Syria.’
‘They worship the same God,’ Claire said. ‘And as you probably know,’ wondering if he did, ‘Persia was conquered by the Arabs in 671 A.D. and their principal language, Farsi, is written in Arabic script.’
The President grinned. ‘I’m learning,’ he said. ‘Does it amount to this, Mrs Jerome, that irrespective of the pros and cons about Iran, you have no intention of doing business with the Shah?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘I wonder,’ Danby said, taking off his spectacles and polishing them with a white handkerchief, ‘what your stockholders will think about losing one and a half billion dollars worth of sales.’
The President’s manner became less easy-going. ‘That’s a private matter for Mrs Jerome,’ he said. ‘Doubtless she will be able to handle it and doubtless some other company will be only too pleased to accommodate the Peacock Throne. I hear,’ he said to Claire, ‘that you will shortly be visiting one of the Shah’s neighbours.’
Claire looked at him sharply. She realised suddenly that this was the reason for the summons to the White House, not Iran. ‘You mean the Bilderberg convention in Turkey, Mr President?’
‘Exactly. Bilderberg worries me, Mrs Jerome.’
‘But —’
He held up one large, well-manicured hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say. I’m an old Bilderberg hand myself. Well, that’s true enough. It would have been very stupid of an obscure politician to refuse their invitation, now wouldn’t it.’
‘I guess so,’ warily.
‘You are in an extremely advantageous position, Mrs Jerome. You are not, as yet, a member of the clique. You haven’t completely thrown your hand in with them.’
Did he want her to spy on them? If so, why hadn’t Danby made the approach? She glanced at the Director of the CIA; he had replaced his spectacles and his face was expressionless.
‘I am suggesting, Mrs Jerome, that you are in a unique position to be able to report back to me any … any extracurricular activities. Trends in the sale of the commodities in which you specialise – and anything else which you think would be in the interests of the United States.’
‘But surely —’
The President cut in: ‘I will, of course, receive many reports. One of my assistants is attending. But your contacts will be rather special, Mrs Jerome.’
‘But surely Mr Danby has such matters in hand.’
The President said: ‘I don’t doubt that Mr Danby is also represented at Bilderberg. I do doubt that his representative – or representatives – will operate in the same circles as yourself, Mrs Jerome.’
For the first time Claire Jerome sensed hostility between the two men. The President wanted an end to intrigue outside his authority. And he wanted Danby to know that he wanted it.
She said ‘You know, of course, that there is a gentleman’s agreement not to divulge anything that happens at Bilderberg.’
‘I know that very well, Mrs Jerome. But you are not a gentleman. You are a woman. And, if I may say so, a very attractive one.’
The President’s heavy-handed charm reached her; what saved it, was its apparent sincerity. Flattery will get you everywhere. ‘Mata Hari, Mr President?’
He smiled. ‘Everything hinges on your priorities. Which is more important: Bilderberg or the United States of America?’ He swivelled round in his chair and Claire caught a glimpse of the President’s responsibilities – in his family photographs. Wife, children, dogs … millions of them.
She asked: ‘What worries you about Bilderberg?’
He answered promptly: ‘Their power and, paradoxically, their vulnerability. Can you imagine what a temptation they must present to the enemies of the West?’
He stood up, towering over them. ‘Lunch-time, all fifteen minutes of it. Bill has got to be on his way too – to decide whether or not his organisation ever contemplated assassinating Fidel Castro.’
Danby stood up unsmiling. ‘Not to mention the Kennedys, John or Robert, take your choice.’
The President clumped him on the back, a considerable clump. ‘Don’t be bitter, Bill. All I seek is a little honesty. God knows we need it.’
Danby said tersely: ‘I’m sure the Russians agree with you,’ and walked swiftly to the door.
As the President escorted her out of the office, Claire said: ‘Do you mind if I ask you just one question?’
‘Fire away, Mrs Jerome.’
‘Do I gather from our conversation that you believe that Bilderberg constitutes a greater authority than the Presidency?’
‘A good question, Mrs Jerome. Perhaps you will help me to answer it.’
The door closed behind her.
* * *
The Golden Dolphin Hotel – or holiday resort as the management prefers it to be called – is located in the Turkish village of Cesme overlooking the Aegean Sea. It is a modernistic complex of buildings, boasting 900 rooms and private moorings for those guests who own yachts.
On Friday, April 25, it was virtually a fortress. Armed Turkish troops and police stood guard, and the casual visitor – if he were allowed to get that far – might well have assumed that terrorists were holding a bunch of wealthy guests as hostages. (Had this been so, the captors would have been in a position to demand an astronomical ransom; what’s more they would probably have got it.)
The prisoners were, in fact, there by choice. A wise choice because Cesme is remote, and ‘easily accessible’ is not a phrase that lightens the hearts of Bilderbergers gathering in force.
Sitting in the sun on one of the balconies, a middle-aged Frenchman with a long lean body and sparse hair combed into grey wings above his ears, was disputing a bill for a bottle of Perrier water with a waiter. The host country picked up the tab, but Pierre Brossard queried all financial transactions on principle.
The waiter who, like the rest of the hotel staff, hoped to make a killing in tips, gazed with astonishment and chagrin at the Frenchman who, he had been told, was one of the richest men in Europe.
Brossard, clad only in a pair of briefs, his disciplined body glistening with sun-tan oil, ignored the waiter and concentrated on his pocket calculator while he converted Turkish lire into French francs. ‘Preposterous,’ he finally remarked in English.
The waiter looked stunned; even he could just about afford a bottle of mineral water at the Golden Dolphin.
‘I shall take it up later with the management,’ Brossard told him and dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
Well satisfied with the one-sided exchange, Brossard leaned back in his canvas chair, contemplated the sparkling blue sea, and considered the good fortune that inexorably came his way these days.
His empire was flourishing. New office blocks were shooting up in Paris, Marseilles and Montreal; his oil tankers hadn’t yet lost any cargoes through the fuel crisis; the circulation of his financial newspaper published in Paris was climbing steadily, thanks largely to its prestigious columnist, Midas.
Pierre Brossard found this particularly satisfying; Pierre Brossard was Midas.
He applied more sun-tan oil, feeling the whippy muscles on his body. He had just completed a course at a health farm and he was trim after ten days of starvation and exercise. Brossard planned to eat well at Cesme, at other people’s expense.
He slid a plastic protector over his nose to prevent it peeling and turned his attention to his less publicised enterprises. Brossard acted as middleman in oil and armaments deals. He represented many countries, Israel included, but not, to his regret, the hard-line Arab states who dealt exclusively through the debonair Mohamed Tilmissan and Adnan Kashoggi.
At Bilderberg there was much business to be negotiated.
He sipped his Perrier water. What a target we represent, he thought. On the charter plane from Zurich to Izmir, fifty miles from Cesme. Here at the hotel, despite the security.
Brossard didn’t want any harm to come to the Bilderbergers. And not merely out of consideration for his personal safety. If the rumours were to be believed, he was about to be asked to become a member of the steering committee. Brossard calculated that, when he was on the committee, he could expect to be present at the next five conferences. Then he would retire – from Bilderberg and business life. After a coup, already burgeoning in his mind, that would shatter the financial structure of the Western world.
The bell on the door to the hotel room rang and Brossard called out: ‘Who is it?’
‘Mrs Jerome.’
Brossard removed the nose-protector, slipped on a Navy blue sports shirt and let her in. ‘Right on time,’ he said leading her onto the balcony. ‘But in my experience Americans are usually punctual.’ He moved a seat into the shade for her. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Why not? It’s on the house. How about some tea?’
Brossard called Room Service and sat down opposite her. She was wearing a white skirt and a pink silk blouse with a rope of pearls round her neck. With her black hair shining in the sun, she looked attractive and ten years younger than her age.
But not my type, Brossard thought. During sex she would be passionate and practised but at the same time watchful, looking for weakness. Like so many successful American women.
Not my type at all. Pierre Brossard thought of the blonde girl in the black corselette in Montmartre, whose apartment he had vacated prior to catching the plane to Izmir. The pain had been truly delicious, the weals beneath his shirt and briefs there to remind him of it.
Claire Jerome would interpret such sexual behaviour as a sign of decadence, weakness. Why? He remained strong and purposeful and his preferences hurt no-one; no-one but himself that is.
The waiter served the tea, glancing nervously at Brossard. Brossard signed the bill without looking at it and the waiter fled.
Claire Jerome added sugar and lemon and said: ‘Don’t you ever tip them?’
‘I presume service is included,’ Brossard said.
‘You certainly live up to your reputation.’
Brossard smiled thinly. ‘You flatter me. Have you just arrived?’
‘No, yesterday. I stopped off at the Efes Hotel in Izmir to see how Bernhard handled the Press.’
‘And how did he?’
‘Effortlessly. He told them that they hadn’t got a hope in hell of getting into the Golden Dolphin and that’s about all he told them. But it was hilarious really. As you know, the United States imposed an arms embargo on Turkey this year because they invaded Cyprus. The Turkish journalists think that’s why we’re all here.’
Brossard stretched and winced; the blonde girl had perhaps been a little too zealous. ‘I have no doubt the arms embargo will be discussed,’ he remarked. He picked up an agenda. ‘What have we here? The Economic, Social and Political Consequences of Inflation. Well, I think we all know the answer to that – things become more expensive.’ He shifted his position in the chair; odd that the residue of pain gave no pleasure, only its infliction. ‘And here’s another item. The Arab-Israel Conflict. A titillating subject, Mrs Jerome.’
‘Stop sending arms to the Arabs,’ Claire Jerome said. ‘That would resolve it.’
‘And stop sending them to the Israelis?’
‘The Israelis are under siege.’
Brossard shrugged. ‘Anyway, this is a pleasant setting in which to do business.’
‘Bilderberg always seems to choose well.’
‘Shall we go into the bedroom, Mrs Jerome? Our voices may carry out here ….’
In the bedroom he wiped the oil from his face with a towel, and said softly: ‘Have you come to a decision about the Iranian deal, Mrs Jerome?’ adding: ‘I’m assured that the rooms have all been debugged.’
‘You know I have. Frankly I don’t know why —’ But Brossard interrupted her: ‘One and a half billion is a lot of money, Mrs Jerome.’
‘And a lot of commission.’
‘You make it sound immoral. I don’t think an arms dealer should ever sound moral, do you,’ and, walking across the room, he said: ‘Will you excuse me a minute.’
In the bathroom he examined the weals. They were really quite painful. But how could he ask anyone to bathe them? He managed to sprinkle talc on his back, then slipped into a soft, towelling robe.
‘Well, Mrs Jerome?’ he said when he returned to the room. He glanced at his watch. ‘I haven’t much time. I have other interested parties. That’s what’s so convenient about these get-togethers.’
‘The only Middle East country I sell to is Israel.’
‘Then I can’t fully understand why you bothered to come up here.’
‘I thought you might have other business to discuss.’
‘I might have had. But there are other Dealers in Death ….’
‘And there are other middlemen dealing in death.’
She picked up her purse and strode out of the room.
In the lobby Claire noticed a big black man immaculately turned out in a pearl-grey lightweight suit. Vaguely familiar … something missing … the waistcoat and the watch-chain … the American head of security at the Knokke conference.
He smiled at her and said: ‘Howdy, Mrs Jerome.’
She smiled back. ‘You looked naked without it,’ she said.
‘Come again, Mrs Jerome?’
‘The vest – and the chain.’
He relaxed. ‘You’re very observant, Mrs Jerome.’
‘And you have a very good memory, Mr —’
‘Anderson, ma’am. Take care,’ as she walked towards the reception desk to see if there were any messages.
One. Please call Mr Stephen Harsch.
To hell with Mr Stephen Harsch, directing the anger aroused by Pierre Brossard at the Marks International executive in New York.
In the corridor leading to her room, she heard a whistle. She swung round. The only other occupant of the corridor was a diminutive pageboy with an angelic face.
The anger subsided. If pageboys whistled at you in your 39th year, things couldn’t be all that bad. Suddenly she hadn’t the slightest doubt that she could handle the stockholders.
She advanced upon the pageboy who stood staring at her, terrified. ‘Here.’ She handed him a five-dollar note. ‘Go and buy yourself a new whistle.’
* * *
For three days Pierre Brossard listened attentively to what the Bilderbergers had to say in their debates. They sat alphabetically and they were allowed five minutes to air their views – longer if Prince Bernhard, who exercised control with red and green lights, thought they merited it.
At cocktail time Brossard stayed in his room making notes. Then he adjourned to private chambers and suites to meet government ministers, bankers, industrialists, financiers, heads of family dynasties, men even richer than himself …
He suggested deals, clinched deals. He heard many secrets. From Western hawks and doves; from the EEC and NATO (in particular the intent of Turkey which had closed four of America’s bases and listening posts in reprisal for the arms embargo); from men juggling dollars, marks, francs, yen, pounds …. He heard about sanction-busting in Rhodesia, diplomatic overtures in China to counter Soviet expansionism … about arms and oil – or lack of it – which were his specialities.
