The Ian Fleming Files (11 page)

Fleming saw the
eye of the propeller as its draft sucked him in. He lunged his knife down at
the ropes but missed. The cords lashed further around the rotor stem, drawing
him closer to the props. He raised the knife as far back as he could and
slashed.

SNAP! Two strands
gone! The last frayed cord brought him within inches of the prop blades which
almost grazed his face when he heard a sharp twanging sound. The twine split
under the strain and Fleming was violently jerked away, vanishing into the
ether. Jones peered down through a cloudburst and watched as Fleming descended
too fast then disappeared.

Fleming tugged on
his rip cord as he tumbled through the howling air. Spiky snow topped trees
started to materialize below. He was moments from impact when... WHOOSH! His
canopy deployed and he was hauled skyward at a hundred miles an hour.

The wind pulled
fiercely at his chute as he steadied himself and began drifting to a stand of
spruce pines situated on a slope, jutting up and stabbing the sky like
stalagmites. They were rooted against a cluster of giant rock buttresses on a
broad massif and just beyond the trees there was a narrow strip that seemed to
offer the best prospect of a smooth landing. He steered for the clearing, using
the trees as a guide, deftly manipulating his chute’s riser straps so that he
sailed over the pines toward the level plateau. But his approach was too fast
and he was about to bypass the massif into the mouth of an icy gulch.

He kept his cool,
eased up on the straps and made a running stop, skidding, landing a mere inches
from the gulch lip. He tried to stand but slipped on the slick ledge. Rooted to
the spot, he caught his breath and slowly peered down at the jagged rock
pinnacles beyond the precipice. He grinned at his luck when a rogue gust of
wind caught his chute and lifted him off the ground. He scrambled to hook his
legs around a boulder and quickly disconnected his equipment.

Fleming watched
his chute sail over the frozen gorge, took a deep breath and looked up. The sky
was empty. The Airspeed had vanished.

It was 21:00 hours
G.M.T. in the control tower. Three hours since the Airspeed had departed.
Godfrey was playing cards with Hill. Miss Hayes and Miss Blythe were drinking
tea and gossiping.

The radio squawked
with life. It was McGhee, the Airspeed pilot.

“Hotel Charlie,
this is Foxtrot One. Over.”

Godfrey grabbed
the control mike. “Foxtrot One, this is Hotel Charlie. Uncle John here. What is
your status? Over.”

“Package
delivered. Mercury got out all right. Slight mishap with 17F… he’s probably
fifty miles or so of course. Over.”

Godfrey glowered.
“Did you say fifty? Over.”

“Affirmative.
Over.”

“What happened?
Where the bloody hell is he? Over.”

They waited for
the voice to respond but heard only static.

“Foxtrot 1? Over.”

The line went
dead. Godfrey turned to a tech who was seated at a communications booth with a
headset on.

“Well?”

“Nothing's coming
in from 17F, sir,” said the tech.

Godfrey clicked
the mike off and went over to a large perspex map connected to machinery and
scrutinized it with his arms on his hips. He looked confused and angry.

“Why can’t I see
Fleming’s homing device on this board? Or the gold’s for that matter?”

“It’s an audio
monitor, sir, I have to trace his transmission first before giving you a
visual. And right now he seems to be... well, it’s not quite clear.”

“There’s
supposedly a radio in his flight suit. Where is Suffolk? Somebody get that
idiot in here!”

“His suit
transmitter may have been damaged on impact. Also there’s a lot of mountains in
that area which interferes with radio. He’s, uh, definitely somewhere near the
French Spanish border.”

“This is what we
pay you for?! Don’t just sit there gawking! Get me a precise reading of 17F’s
whereabouts!”

The young tech
scurried off.

A different tech
approached. “Good news, sir! Looks like Nichols hit the drop zone. We’re
picking up a faint signal from him.”

Godfrey scowled.
“Good news my arse! He’s no use without Fleming! How’s he going to negotiate
with Darlan? Nichols speaks French like I play the trombone!”

He punched the
perspex map with his fist, smashing it.

Fleming was in a
flat saddle of forest on the gradient of a frozen mountain somewhere in the
Pyrenees. He took a deep, sore breath and tried to get his bearings, wincing as
he felt the injuries from his plane battering. Frozen blood matted his forehead
and a necklace of rope burns ringed his throat. His flight suit was destroyed.
A torn shoulder pad hung by its threads, revealing the mangled mechanism of the
embedded transmitter which Fleming decided was wrecked beyond repair.

He collapsed his
chute, pulled it in, rolled it and buried it in the snow. His kit was gone. The
Colt M1 had survived the drop. He checked it and then began to gather scattered
playing cards and looked for the one with the map of where he was. Badly
shaken, in obvious pain, he made a swift 360 sweep of the horizon but there was
nothing to be seen, no landmarks, nothing but white mountains for miles.

The mid-June sun rose to a cloudless sky and stretched
its tendrils over the dewy meadows at the foot of the Pyrenees.

Nichols was using his flight shovel to dig a hole for
his pack and chute in an empty pasture where a crude airstrip was marked. It
was private land that belonged to a patriotic beetroot farmer whose name he
would never know. The strip was under a mile long and had relatively clear edge
markings and reflectors for landing at dusk.

Nichols had retrieved his radio pack by shinning up a
spruce and lugging the pack back down. He located the gold’s location via its
radio beacon. It was easy. He had made it to the drop zone on time and
contacted H.Q. Not a foot had gone wrong. With a proud mug he stopped to take
in the rustic beauty of his foreign surroundings. It was stunning. Dew
glistened on the grass. The war felt far away.

He smiled as he thought of his young wife and kid and
the big hero’s homecoming. From inside his flight suit, he produced a rumpled
cigarette which he straightened out and lit with a red-tipped match struck on
the back of his size twelve boot.

A slight breeze whipped up across the barren farmland,
blowing out his light. Three crows flew past in perfect single file and cawed
loudly. Nichols looked perturbed and crushed his cigarette in his hands.
Feeling a slight chill, he glanced at his watch and wondered where Commander
Fleming was. He resumed digging, soon decided that the ground he had excavated
was sufficient and proceeded to toss his articles into their grave.

“Piece o’ cake!” he said with a chuckle as he patted
the ground flat. There was a putt-putt sound in the skies. He looked up to see
a small, unmarked plane extend its landing gear. “Frogs on time? This is a
first.” He finished smoothing the ground with his shovel and hurried to the
aircraft, whistling as he went.

Fleming took out a hip flask from inside his suit,
shook the flask pensively, unscrewed the cap and glugged down its contents. He
felt the warm sting of the alcohol journey through his system and was numbed.
He lit an emergency cigarette and took several long, satisfying drags. The
smoke and alcohol had a calming effect.

He reached into his pocket and extracted an unusually
thick coin and slid its surface apart to reveal a compass within. From among
the scattered cards, he had eventually located a one-eyed Jack of Hearts and
now he peeled it back to reveal a map of the area. He held the compass against
it and started vectoring a path. “Ten miles or so north of the drop zone,” he
muttered. After committing the map to memory, he started off down the
wind-ravaged slope, shunting at an angle to give his feet some grip in the
fresh powder.

He scrambled down at an even pace for several minutes.
Far ahead lay a gently-sloped valley with scattered farm cottages and small,
cultivated fields. Halfway down the slope, he stopped and listened. He
shrugged, kept going. The base of the peaks were a few hundred yards away.

Before long, the ground flattened out and he was able
to quicken his pace and run more efficiently. He was anxious about the mis-drop
but he would be at the rendezvous in less than one hour. Running was one of two
or three things that he was extremely good at. Before he was booted out of Eton
he had done enough to ensure an indelible mark on the school’s athletic
records. He was still, fifteen years later, the only person to win the Victor
Laudanum Athletics Prize two years in a row and his 1500 meter record of 3:58
stood.

Nichols waited with the gold capsule and his shovel as
the small French aircraft taxied toward him, props spinning.

Its doors opened and a hydraulic ladder slowly
collapsed out.

Now that the plane was closer, Nichols could see the
damage it had sustained. The blue camouflage paint of the after fuselage and
tail-planes was riddled with bullet and cannon shells, an aileron was shredded
and the port outer engine burned out and saturated in oil. The cabin canopy was
shattered and starred in a dozen places.

The smile on Nichols’ face abruptly vanished.

Six German Special Forces troopers descended from the
plane, in lockstep unison, moving like a single organism. They were elite paratroopers,
part of the Luftwaffe
Fallschirmjäger
, literally “parachute hunters”.
Over their field-blue Luftwaffe tunics they wore a camouflaged
knochensack
(jump smock). Their M-38 helmets had the German national tricolor shield decal
and Luftwaffe eagle emblem. Two wielded Bren Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, the
rest carried Polish-made K98 Mausers and each man was equipped with an
anti-tank “sticky bomb” and the famous
LFM
gravity knife
,
a
sliding blade inside a metal gripframe.

Nichols was paralyzed with fright.

The grim paratroopers were followed by their
Sturmscharführer
Lieutenant Gil Jodl, who was in his late twenties, and, lastly, Captain Speer
himself emerged. Jodl was a tall, cadaverous man with eyes sunken into their
sockets and taut facial skin that gave the impression of a skull.

Nichols managed to snap out of his rigor mortis in
time to draw his revolver but before he could pull the hammer back the German
soldiers leveled their K98s and Jodl screamed
“Halten Sie!”

Nichols felt his legs weaken. He hoisted up his arms
and dropped his weapon which fell with a pathetic clatter to the tarmac.

Jodl turned to Speer with a wicked smile. “Look, he
even brought along his own shovel!”

Speer’s face remained deadpan.

Jodl barked at Nichols, no longer smiling. “Dig!”

Fleming was running at a clip, his eyes going to his
compass periodically. He stopped and lifted his head like an animal scenting
the wind.

Half an hour later, post-interrogation, a bruised and
battered Nichols was busy digging, observed by two guards. Behind him, Jodl’s
minions dismantled the missile-shaped auto deployment capsule and opened it to
see the tightly packed strips of gold sovereigns.

Speer emerged from the plane with a sour face.

Jodl saluted. “We have the gold secured.”

Speer examined the gold then looked at Nichols.

“Did you question him?”

“He knows nothing.”

Speer scanned his cold eyes over Nichols who was
standing, out of breath, before a gaping, lozenge-shaped hole.

“Very good, Lieutenant,” said Speer. “We are finished
here.”

Jodl coldly unholstered his sidearm and pointed it at
Nichols’ head.

“Please,” said Nichols, quivering. “I’m not a spy. I
just send messages. I’m a radio man!”

BAM! The slug landed in the center of his forehead,
sending his body toppling backwards into the dirt. Two guards immediately began
filling in the grave. Speer spat on the ground and took an unsatisfied survey
of the scene. Something was nagging him.

Jodl tried to raise his spirits. “Herr Bock will be
pleased!”

Speer snarled at his toadying adjutant. “If this man
was a radio operator he must have had a partner. Find him!”

Jodl clicked his heels together and departed.

Speer tossed the radio pack into Nichols’ grave and
sent a round into it from his Luger. He opened his binocular case and focused
his powerful 12x50 Russian military binoculars at the white mountain forest in
the distance and carefully panned the foothills, the slopes and everything
beyond.

Fleming heard the
blast of Speer’s pistol echo across the valley and stopped running. Using a
last reservoir of strength, he sprinted the rest of the way and ten minutes
later he arrived at the drop zone. The plane had departed and there was no
reception committee in sight. Fleming snapped his eyes about. He saw the
imprints of jackboots in the ground and the two mounds of fresh soil by the
airstrip.

He started to the
larger dirt pile fearing the worst. His mind pieced it together as he took his
flight shovel out and knelt to dig. He unearthed the radio first which he saw
had been wrecked by a Luger slug. About to resume digging, he spied the size
twelve boot jutting out. He cursed and hauled Nichols’ body out to see the
bullet hole in its head. He stared unflinchingly at the lifeless face of the
cocky young soldier. A fly buzzed nearby and landed on the rotting flesh.

Before Fleming
could summon any pity his survival instincts kicked in. So the Germans had
known about the drop point. Had he not been blown off course he would be dead
now. They had the gold and were probably tracking him. How long before they
doubled back to this spot?