No Dawn for Men (25 page)

“It could be,” said Dowling.

“Let’s go see,” said Fleming.

Suddenly, behind them, they heard the sound of multiple truck engines approaching; then, in quick succession, the slamming of doors and the sound of many harsh voices barking out in German.

“They radioed back,” said Fleming.

The fellowship turned and crouched in unison, and now could plainly see perhaps sixty or seventy soldiers spread out and walking slowly into the tree line, about fifty yards away.

“Spread out,” said Fleming. “Fire on my command.”

Only Fleming, Vaclav, and Dowling had machine guns. Billie had her Luger. Professor Tolkien had no weapon, but as the Germans approached he pulled the small glass vial that Korumak had given him in the car out of his tunic pocket.
Break it on a rock and throw it
, the dwarf had said.

“Fire!” Fleming said.

The Germans hit the ground at this initial burst, some of them dead or wounded, but most of them just taking cover. One or two fired in the fellowship’s direction from their prone positions.

“They can’t see us, we can’t see them,” said Vaclav.

“What’s that?” said Billie.

A rocket had risen from the German line.
A mortar this close,
thought Fleming, but when it burst above their heads he realized it was a flare, its bright light exposing them for several excruciatingly long seconds.

“Look!” said, Billie. “The plane.”

They turned quickly and saw the Avia lumbering out of the woods on the left, heading toward them.

“They’re coming!” said Dowling.

All turned again to see a swarm of German infantrymen charging directly at them through the trees, crouching low, firing their weapons.

Professor Tolkien, remembering the night he failed to go back for Major Val Fleming, remained calm. He broke the vial on a nearby rock and flung it at the oncoming German soldiers. At first it trailed a streak of blue flame behind it, then it suddenly burst into an immense cloud of smoke, a thick gray cloud that covered an area fifty yards in all directions, from the ground to the treetops.

Seeing this huge cloud blinding and disorienting the Germans, hearing them calling out helplessly in its midst, the fellowship, now down to five, rose as one and raced headlong for the plane, which had reached their end of the field and was turning to line up for takeoff. Tolkien was the last one to reach the door in the belly behind the cockpit. Fleming and Dowling grabbed his hands and hoisted him up.

With just a few feet to spare at the end of the field, the plane lifted off, skimmed over the forest, and began to climb.

EPILOGUE

Prague

December 20, 1938, 7:00 p.m.

Ian Fleming stood—scotch in one hand, Morland’s Special in its holder in the other—at the room’s floor-to-ceiling French doors, looking down at Prague in its Christmas glory. The Mala Strana, just below, the Charles Bridge in the mid-ground, and the Old Town Square in the distance, all sparkled like clusters of many-colored jewels on a velvet carpet. In Wenceslas Square, to the right, the gold sheathing covering the equestrian statue in its center seemed on fire as it reflected the white lights that were strung in thickly woven strands all around it. Fleming had walked to Old Town Square in the morning, to a tobacconist’s to pick up his weekly shipment of cigarettes from Morland. The small shop was on a narrow street off the square, more of an alley than a proper street, but nevertheless still garlanded from storefront to storefront on both sides with holiday green and red and gold. He had paused when he saw the grim set of the shop owner’s face, and thought, yes, your last Christmas before you are enslaved. The real madness is about to start.

In Fleming’s jacket pocket was a letter from Professor Tolkien, brought round that morning by the British Embassy courier. Patting his breast, he thought now of Tolkien’s penultimate paragraph.
I did not think I’d make it home, but now that I have, I feel it is the sweetest place on earth, made infinitely sweeter because in England we breathe the air of freedom. I had forgotten the cost of this freedom until our glimpse into the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Though neither young nor spry nor trained in anything useful, I would consider it a great favor if you would contact me in future if you think my services could be of even the slightest assistance, at home or abroad.

Ian Fleming had never taken to the stiff-necked type of freedom practiced by his father and grandfather, both more Scotsmen than Englishmen. Too much responsibility, too much self-denial. Too little fun. No fun, really. But now, recalling the old tobacconist’s face and reading Tolkien’s unabashedly sentimental words, responsibility and self-denial did not seem like such bad things, especially given the alternative of servitude to Hitler and his madmen.

A movement to his left shook Fleming from his reverie. Turning, he was shocked to see Eldridge White standing at the room’s one doorway looking in his direction. He took a step toward White, but stopped when he saw the tall, white-maned, former marine raise his right hand palm up.
Stay put.
There were only three other people in the hotel’s small sitting room, a couple in a rear corner and a waiter in a white waist jacket handing them a bill to sign. When they did and were gone, the waiter as well, White pointed to a set of comfortable chairs near the fireplace.

 
Not to worry, old chap,
Fleming said to himself, as he walked to the chairs.
You’ve met him before; he and your dad were chums.
Still, the chief of MI-6, his identity known to the king, the prime minister, and perhaps a dozen other people in the world, old Ellie White himself, here to see him? Not possible. Must be some other business. They reached the chairs at the same time, shook hands silently, and sat.

“I must say . . .” said Fleming

“You’re surprised.”

“Shocked. What brings you here?”

“You.”

“Me. I daresay . . .”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Couldn’t be better. Waiting for Billie. Hot soak, makeup, you know the drill. Having a smoke and a drink.”

“Fraulein Shroeder.”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Fleming attempted an offhand smile, but he knew he didn’t get it right.
What in God’s name?

“I have some news,” said White, “that I felt obliged to deliver personally.”

 
Mother
, Fleming thought,
Peter, Michael, Richard.

 
“Your family is well,” said White. “It’s not that.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Sorry to frighten you.”

Ian shook his head and smiled a real smile. “Mother’s not quite done molding me yet, you see. They all have their whack at it.”

“You had quite an adventure, I’m told, in Germany.”

“Quite.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I sent a full report.”

“It’s something the Americans have brought up. Something new.”

“I can’t guess.”

“I suppose not. Indeed, I’m delighted you can’t guess.”

Fleming was still a bit confused, but now more confident. His mother and brothers were alive and well. Though he had made no mention of heroics of any kind in his report to Bletchley House, he had been given decent marks by his superiors there, who had said, in effect, that though the occult wasn’t usually their game, all had turned out well. They had even talked, jokingly, of he and Tolkien working together in future. Or were they serious? Old John Ronald had done rather well, they had said, a mad scientist of sorts. Smart, too, well above old Fleming’s rank.

“Well . . .” said Fleming.

“The Americans,” said White. “They’ve been in touch concerning an extraction operation they were supporting in Bremen. Ring a bell?”

“No, sorry.”

“There was supposed to be a Krupp engineer in Magdaberg. Working on a tank coating.”

“Oh, yes,” said Fleming, his brow knitted.

“They passed a number to you, and a contact code.”

“Yes.”

“While you were in the woods in Bavaria, the operation was raided by the Gestapo. Four killed, four took cyanide.”

Fleming had not really been looking at White, the hero of the Great War, the man who in 1928 had infiltrated Mussolini’s inner circle, seduced his mistress, and assassinated the head of his secret police, the infamous OVRA. Not the front man, Francesco Nudi, but the real head, a deeply secret madman even the most hardened fascists were afraid of. It was too much like looking at the sun. You’d go blind. But now he looked, and did not like what he saw.

“Who did you give that number to?” Ellie White asked.

“I gave it to . . .”

“Yes, to whom?”

In Fleming’s pocket was a diamond ring in a small satin and velvet box. He was going to ask Billie to marry him tonight, end his profligacy for good.

“To Billie Shroeder.”

“Thank goodness,” said White. “Washington thought it might be you.”

“
Me
. You mean . . .”

“We told them to bugger off.”

“Here,” White said. He took a brown envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to Fleming.

“What is it?”

“Telegraph receipts, two of them.”

“Telegraph receipts?”

“We sent someone to Deggendorf. The telegraph office is in a chemist’s shop. You know the Germans, how they multi-task. ‘
Poor us, you raped us at Versailles, we have to make a penny go a long way.
’ They’re also efficient to a fault, never throw away a receipt. Your Miss Shroeder sent two telegrams while you were in town, both to Heydrich.”

“I . . .”

“Yes, I know, you’re not sure what to do. Not to worry, we’ll take care of it. Take your time.”

Ian Fleming would never again be at a loss for words, but at this moment he was as silent as death, unable to formulate a coherent thought let alone a sentence.

“Did you ever tell her she was a Jew?” White asked.

Fleming remained silent.

“We’ll take care of that as well.”

* * *

Fleming stood for a long moment outside the door to his room, recalling, with an odd equanimity, as if they really had nothing to do with him, the reports and telegram copies that Ellie White had given him before taking his leave. Coming out of the lift he had passed two waiters he had never seen before, in waist jackets and bow ties, standing idly next to food service carts. Key in hand, he looked over and saw that they were still there. One nodded to him. Finally, he inserted the key and entered the room, his hand on the 20 caliber Beretta he carried with him at all times when not working, the safety off. Billie was on her back on the bed, dead, in her silk robe, one long, beautiful leg exposed, her eyes open. Papers and a brown envelope were scattered on the floor. He picked them up and glanced at them. A birth certificate, copies of the same telegrams he had just read and then burned in the lavatory downstairs, a list of eight people who worked at a textile company in Bremen.

He packed his things carefully, then looked at himself in the room’s tall mirror. He had dressed, not formally, but what he considered
sparsely
, for the occasion of his engagement, his simple, no frills suit a deep charcoal, nearly black, his thin tie the same color, his shirt a snowy white, his cap-toed shoes black and highly polished. Appropriate, he thought, without irony. At the bed he reached over to close Billie’s eyes, but paused first to look into them, now flat and lifeless as glass. “Old Ellie thought he was doing me a favor, Billie,” he said, “but he wasn’t. I wish he had left you to me.” He decided to leave her eyes open. He had read somewhere that the soul had no peace until the dead body’s eyes were closed.

In the hall outside the room were the two waiters he had never seen before. They nodded to him.

“A favor,” said Fleming.

“If we can,” said one.

“Leave her eyes open.”

“That we can do.”

Then Fleming stepped between them and headed to the lift.

About the Authors

James LePore is an attorney who has practiced law for more than two decades. He is also an accomplished photographer. He lives in South Salem, NY with his wife, artist Karen Chandler. He is the author of five other novels,
A World I Never Made
,
Blood of My Brother
,
Sons and Princes
,
Gods and Fathers
, and
The Fifth Man
, as well as a collection of three short stories,
Anyone Can Die
. You can visit him at his website,
www.JamesLeporeFiction.com
.