The Ian Fleming Files (12 page)

A twig snapped
behind him. He spun round, still crouched on his soles, his pistol drawn, and
nearly unloaded into a rabbit. He holstered his gun, gathered his breath and
began the grim task of reburying Nichols. The job took twenty minutes by which
time he had decided to abandon the drop zone and head in the direction of the
border. The closest place that had a telephone. He got ready to take off. He
looked regretfully at the stark, unadorned grave and crossed himself.

Fleming bolted
like a hart through dense forest. He thought about the terrifying efficiency of
the German war machine and shuddered. Did he make a mistake? Had he told
someone something he shouldn’t have? When? There was no time. He didn’t know
where the drop zone was until they were flying over it. No, he decided, the
leaky ship was a French one, not English.

He paused, having
heard a sound too heavy to be a rabbit or anything small. He drew his weapon
and scanned the landscape. Creeping quietly over the crispy ground, he
positioned himself behind a tree and peered downhill.

Nothing. Then…
something. The outline of a figure about two hundred yards back. Fleming spied
a small outcropping of boulders. He crept closer and scrambled quietly up it
until he was looking down over the path he had taken. He waited for the
stranger. It took about five minutes for the tracker to appear. A man with a
rifle.

Fleming timed it
right, leaped down and yanked the person around to face him in one swift,
sudden motion which somehow included kicking the rifle away.

The stranger's hat
fell off and long red hair cascaded out.

A woman in a
French accent cried “Don’t kill me!”

Fleming pressed
his Colt into her protuberant, downy chest. “Identify yourself!”

“Let me go!”

“Who are you?”

“Denise Astier. FR
Force 136. Sent to take British operative codename ‘17F’ and radio man,
codename ‘Mercury,’ to Admiral Darlan in Montbazon. Don’t you recognize my
face?”

He did but he wanted
to be sure and was enjoying the situation. “What is the code word?”

“Binnacle.
Montbazon is a cover. The real meeting place is elsewhere.”

He released her.
She felt her chest where his pistol had been and retrieved her rifle. He was
excited and unable to take his eyes off her. She was wearing a practical outfit
that showed off her shapely figure and she had a slightly raspy, throaty voice
with an accent that placed her somewhere from western France, possibly
Brittany, thought Fleming. On her head she wore a red Basque beret and, at her
side, a leather hip holster holding a St Etienne (MAS) 7.65mm Modele
1935A/1935S pistol.

She whistled
sharply and from a nearby thicket three Frenchmen emerged. They were Maquis,
Resistance fighters. Each of the saboteurs wore an armband sewn with the Cross
of Lorraine, the symbol of the Free French Army.

They had Ruby
pistols, Lebel and Berthier rifles,
Fusil automatiques
and a Chauchat
light machine gun.

The most
charismatic of them stepped forward. He was tall and tough as teak with a
tattoo of a shark on his bulging biceps. He brandished a small,
slender-barreled Ruby in his hand and the muzzle was pointed at Fleming.

This was Colonel
Remy
née
Gilbert Renault. He was 35 and the shark emblem indicated that
he was a gangland assassin. He was wearing a cotton button-up without a collar,
moleskin trousers and a cloth ‘newsboy’ cap. Colonel Remy had a sort of
dangerous, edgy charisma. Very modern and cool, thought Fleming, like a movie
star.

Eddie Watteau née
Edward Kandinsky, the forger, was small and cunning with alert, eager eyes. A
budding artist in his youth, he became a counterfeiter for purely humanitarian
reasons once he discovered that he could produce authentic-looking blank
passports capable of saving many French Jews from certain death. He also
furnished left-wing underground organizations with stacks of fake
identifications papers.

Rouben Melik,
unkempt, big and husky, was a tough-looking poet who studied at the Sorbonne
and was a member of the French Communist Party. He was a champion marksman who
had been short listed for the rapid fire pistol and 50 meter rifle prone
Olympics teams four years ago but was forced to withdraw in party solidarity when
Russia boycotted the 1936 games in Berlin.

Melik was the
philosopher of the group who made them all believe that what they did mattered,
that they were an inspiring example of the patriotic fulfillment of a national
imperative, countering an existential threat to French nationhood. Melik
studied law and was born to argue. He would dispute with anyone, at any hour of
the day, on almost any subject.

He was wearing a
linen button-up shirt without a collar, wide-ribbed corduroy pants and British
ammunition boots.

Fleming thought
that the men all had a slightly wild, feral look about them, like wounded
animals on the run.

Colonel Remy
lowered his weapon and spoke. “Our plane was hijacked by the Germans. Sorry
about your friend, English. Darlan is in Mont Valier, in Ariège, over the
border. We take you to him now.”

Fleming introduced
himself in flawless French and went to extend his hand towards Remy when Eddie
roughly shoved him against a rock and frisked him.  

The FR truck
ripped by revealing a road sign stenciled “Mont Valier -- 24 KMS”.

Colonel Remy was
at the wheel, smoking a Gitane, while Denise rode shotgun. She turned and
looked through a peephole at Fleming who was in the back of the truck.

The rear was a
mobile control room. Fleming and Eddie were consulting a list of frequencies,
call signs and code. Melik, who was also the demolitions expert, was examining
an unarmed explosives device with kid gloves. He set the mechanism down and
snapped open his tobacco tin, rolled a long, thin cigarette with one expert
hand and studied the British agent with his dark, thoughtful eyes.

A survey map of
the area was tacked to a panel. There were piles of Free French literature
scattered about; guns and ammo; emergency waters and a draped sheet with the
words ‘Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite’ painted on it.

Eddie extended a
ten foot telescopic aerial, adjusted a preselected call-up and cranked a
handle. Fleming leaned into the speaker. “17F calling Hotel Charlie. 17F
calling Hotel Charlie. Over.”

They waited but
got nothing. Fleming was about to repeat himself when the speaker burst to life
with an English voice.

“Hotel Charlie,
calling 17F,” said the communications tech. “Stand by for Uncle John.”

Another voice came
over. Godfrey’s. “This is Uncle John, 17F. What is your present position
please? Over.”

“Spanish side of
the border, heading to Caligula. Arriving at dawn. Mercury dead. Repeat Mercury
dead. Over.”

“Was Mercury
killed accidentally? Over.”

“No. Over.”

“By the Germans?
Over.”

“Affirmative.
Over.”

Silence. The
signal came in and out, was faint and intermittent, but just comprehensible.

“Caligula has left
Mont Valier. German dive bombers attacked Ariège. Caligula disappeared in the
direction of Bordeaux. Over.”

Fleming searched
the map. “Should I change course? Over.”

“You’ll have to
hurry. France is overrun. There’s a million refugees passing through Bordeaux.
In twenty-four hours the Nazis will be in total control. Do you still have the
package? Over.”

Fleming hesitated.

“17F, come in.
Over.”

Fleming’s mind was
racing.

“17F, this is
Hotel Charlie. Do you still have the package? Over.”

Fleming turned the
radio off.

Ten minutes later
they were debating the situation. The truck was parked discreetly up a dirt
path so as not to be visible from the road by passing patrols.

Melik was
speaking. “How did those Nazi pigs know about the drop zone?”

“How did they know
Darlan would be in Ariège?” said Denise.

“Because the
telephones in the NID are tapped,” said Remy. “How do you chaps put it? ‘Leaky
ship.’”

Fleming was
defensive. “If the leak was my end, my people will find it, plug it and deal
with it accordingly. We know the only safe message can be sent by naval cipher,
so even if our phones were compromised they wouldn’t learn much.”

“What do you know
about it?” said Remy. “You’ve been behind a desk for the war. Ever fire that
thing under your shoulder? Or is it a fashion accessory? Get you laid in
London, eh English?”

Fleming was about
to riposte when Denise intervened.

“I say we abandon
this adventure before we all get killed.”

“I agree,” said
Eddie. “Darlan has left. Bordeaux is two hundred miles from here. Because the
circumstances have changed, this feels unsanctioned and unsafe. I vote we see
the Englishman to the nearest embassy and go home to await instructions.”

“Go home?” said
Remy in an outraged tone. “Our orders were to see him safely in the hands of
Admiral Darlan.”

Fleming spoke.
“Without that gold there can be no purchase of your navy. Either the French
sailors and ships will be sunk in harbor by British bombers or Hitler will add
your country’s ships to his arsenal and be unstoppable.”

Remy stepped
closer and Fleming got a first real close-up of his face, all stubbled and
scarred. A warrior’s face.

Remy stared at him
and lit a Gitane. He offered the burning cigarette to Fleming and lit another
one for himself.

“I have to get
that gold back,” said Fleming, taking a quick drag. “If you won’t help me, at
least take me to General Bock.”

Remy coughed on
smoke as he laughed. “One Englishman against the entire Ninth Army!”

Fleming didn’t
back down. “Yes or no?”

“I said we would
still take you to Darlan but go after a German General? That’s martyrdom.
Non,
merci
.”

Fleming tried a
different tack. “Does someone need to give you permission?”

“People don’t tell
me what to do,” said Remy. “I tell them.”

Denise rolled her
eyes. “Enough of this machismo!”

“How would we find
Bock?” added Eddie.

Fleming pointed to
the relevant area on a map. “The Germans took over an estate here two weeks
ago. There’s no other base for miles. Bock will be heavily guarded but there’s
four of us. Five with the girl.”

Denise flared.
“Thank you for including me as a person.”

“We also have the
element of surprise,” said Fleming.

“And stupidity,”
said Remy. “You want revenge on your friend’s assassination, that’s
understandable. But my orders are to take you to Darlan. That’s it. Sorry,
mate.”

“This isn’t
personal,” countered Fleming. “Bock has the gold. No gold, no deal with Darlan
and bon voyage to two thousand French sailors.”

Fleming’s ardor
was definitely having an impact on the Maquis but they remained skittish and
wouldn’t commit.

The switchboard
crackled. “17F, this is Hotel Charlie.”

Fleming looked at
Remy as if to say “Well?”

Remy weighed the
decision.

“17F, this is
Hotel Charlie. Come in. Over.”

Remy killed the
radio. “Terrible reception around here.”

Fleming smiled.

Later, Fleming was
taking his turn at the wheel. He looked at the beautiful red-headed French
woman curled up in the passenger seat beside him and contemplated what they
were doing. The demon of doubt darkened his visage. Was it madness?

He drove on,
looking out warily through the windshield at the lugubrious weather. The
afternoon sky was becoming dark and overcast, lending the surroundings a menacing
quality. Fleming snaked up a snow covered mountain pass, one of the old Roman
roads, and took a sharp curve to see Bock’s hulking airship moored in a valley
over the next peak.

The sun was
getting ready to set, bathing the world in warm amber, dramatically outlining
the jagged peaks of the Pyrenees against an orange-black sky.

Fleming and his
new comrades were discussing the plan of attack. They were bivouacked in an
abandoned church, long since claimed by nature, with trees growing out of
shrines, crosses tilted and broken, mossed headstones half sunk into the
ground. The low sun filtered through the smashed stained glass casting strange,
multicolored light. Wild rosemary and jacaranda grew among the ruins adding
perfume to the air.

Melik and Eddie
wore desolate expressions as they disguised the truck with tree branches and
listened to the radio:
“...Petain accepté. Presque deux millions soldats
prisonnier.”
The two patriots looked at each other anxiously. They were
officially outlaws now and the penalty if captured by the SS, Abwehr, Gestapo,
Kripo or any Nazi for that matter would be steep.

Their next chore
was to do some reconnaissance work. They were back in two hours. Bock’s H.Q.
was a compound, complete with perimeter fencing, checkpoint and armed patrol.
Fleming recognized the set-up they described from the Wehrmacht building
blueprints he had studied in Room 39.

He listened
patiently to Remy’s detailed proposal for a full-frontal assault delivered with
what the Colonel probably thought passed for rousing gusto but which to Fleming
seemed hopelessly romantic, quixotic even. In a word, French.

After Remy’s
eloquent call to arms, Melik, Eddie and Remy embraced and celebrated their
upcoming victory over the Germans while Denise looked on and Fleming waited,
carefully weighing his words. He looked dead straight at Colonel Remy and tried
to sound as deferential as possible. “There may be a less riskier way,” he
began.

He proceeded to
systematically break down Remy’s proposal with comments such as “If that’s like
any other Wehrmacht camp the perimeter fencing will be hot. Try cutting or
climbing that wire and you'll be cooked to a crisp in nothing flat. It’s
probably their standard design which has a current of 2,300 volt, single-phase
like the American electric chair.” He told them his plan which spoke for itself
in terms of being the far safer strategy. Strangely, the last thing he said on
the matter was “All I need to pull this off is a dinner jacket.” Fortunately,
Eddie knew of a patriotic tailor not far from them and was back in an hour with
something tasteful.