The Ian Fleming Files (13 page)

Eleven miles away,
an ancient Basque village sat perched in the foothills. The lights were on at
the local tavern and the lilting melody of a Spanish guitar solo drifted over
the idyllic scene. Thirty minutes out of town, the entrance to a sprawling
farmhouse could just be glimpsed halfway up a slope hidden in a cluster of
leafy elms. The main building and surrounding outhouses had been converted into
a Nazi lair, complete with hoisted swastika flags, serious-looking
stormtroopers, slobbering Dobermans on tight leashes and ten-foot walls topped
with razor wire. There was a checkpoint at the barricaded gate manned by a
gateman and patrolled by two guards.

A Mercedes limo
appeared from around a corner and squealed to a stop. General Bock emerged
chewing an unlit cigar, flanked by a pair of imposing khaki-clad bodyguards
armed with hulking, vaguely sci-fi looking black 7.9mm all-purpose MG-42
machine guns.

Captain Speer and
Lieutenant Jodl appeared last and filed in after Bock. Guards and staffers
acknowledged the celebrated general’s arrival as he strode into the main
building, snapping salutes and bowing.  

Bock didn’t bother
to look at Speer when he spoke. “The Ninth Army is the largest division in the
Heer, Captain, and you can’t find one British spy?”

Speer tried to
sound confident. “We have him cornered, General. It won’t be long now.”

“I hope so for
your sake. Find him or I will find a new Captain. What are all these people
doing here?”

“The Spanish
Defence Minister’s brother is throwing a party in your honor, Herr Bock.”

“What a frightful
bore,” said Bock.

Fleming and Denise
strolled toward the compound dressed like two locals. He was kitted as a
rambler in a wool cape and beret with a gnarled walking stick and haversack
slung over his shoulder. Denise looked alluring in a short wool skirt and
knee-length leather boots. Her face was heavily made up with eye shadow, pale
foundation and blazing red lipstick. A young French couple on a post-prandial
jaunt through the dusky foothills.

“Stand closer to
me,” he whispered, keeping an innocent look on his face as they neared the
guardhouse.

“I’m not that
cold,” she said with a smile, shivering.

He put his arm
around her as they came to the gate.

The two checkpoint
sentries saw them approach, looked lively and brandished their weapons. The
gateman peered out from his small heated guardhouse, gave the visitors the once
over and then returned to his German edition of
Reader’s Digest
.

The first guard
barked at them.
“Wer bist du? Was willst du? Dies ist privates Eigentum des
Dritten Reiches!”
He flashed the muzzle of his Mauser in Fleming’s face.

The British secret
agent tried to look unaware as he lifted up his hands. He spoke cheerily in
flawless French without any hint of an English accent.
“Bonsoir. Notre
voiture est panne.”

The soldiers
looked back dumbly so he repeated it in German and then they both relaxed. They
spoke to each other out of earshot. One of them nodded at Fleming and proceeded
to follow him and Denise down the road with a grin on his face as he checked
out Denise from behind.

They had walked a
few yards when a thin wire noose dropped over the guard’s head and he looked up
too late to see Eddie perched in a tree give the loop a murderous pull. The
Nazi choked and grasped at the wire as he was lifted off the ground and asphyxiated.
The thin sharp cord cut into his throat, spraying a fine mist of blood over
Eddie’s face.

Eddie cursed as he
tugged the garrote which had penetrated the cloth in his hand and was slicing
his palm. “Merde!”

Fleming saw the
other guard’s gaze go from Denise’s derriere to his struggling friend and as he
ran to help him Fleming stepped behind him to the now unguarded, vulnerable
checkpoint and with a silencer screwed to his Colt put a bullet in the back of
the gateman’s head.

The guard aimed a
rifle into the trees above his struggling friend and was about to fire when he
was lassoed around the neck by Melik who sat by Eddie wielding an identical
wire noose.

The German gasped
and kicked helplessly. Melik took the opportunity to demonstrate to Eddie a more
effective use of the garrote. He wrapped his arm around the long wire and
yanked it upward at a sharp angle to dislocate his victim’s throat and collapse
his windpipe for a cleaner, quicker kill.

“Comme ca!”
Melik said as he retrieved his evil steel coil and wiped it down.

Eddie, all
splattered in crimson, looked at him sourly.

“Fuck you.”

Fleming and Denise
hopped over the gate and zipped past security light beams sweeping the grounds.

They looked back
to see Remy rendezvous with Eddie and Melik who were stripping the guards of
their uniforms. All three Maquis were changed and ready at their posts in time
to wave back to a sentry in a corner watch-tower who was just able to make out
their profiles against his searchlight.

Fleming and Denise
hurried along toward a gaggle of party guests crowding the courtyard. Denise’s
pistol was visible at her side and flashed in the moonlight. It caught the eye
of a passing servant girl carrying two pales of milk. The senorita gasped and
dropped her load. Denise bolted to her and spoke in Spanish, pointing to the
moon. When the girl looked skyward Denise made a knife with the side of her
hand and slammed it down on her neck, knocking her unconscious. Fleming helped
Denise hide the girl in the shadows. They paused, took a breath and then turned
to face the main entrance to the house. Denise balanced on tiptoes and kissed
Fleming on the lips.

“What was that
for?” he said.

“Luck.”

She scampered off,
entering the building via a servant’s door to the side. Fleming crept to the
high stone wall of the house and pointed a very bulky pistol at its top and
fired. A rope flew out of the pistol’s barrel and soared to the roof.

A grappling hook
at the end of the rope snagged the inside of the wall. The roof guard tossed
his cigarette and walked forward to examine it, reaching for his Luger. He
leaned down and picked up the hook, craning his neck over the roof edge to see
the rope dangling from it. There was no one there. He looked confused.

During this time,
Fleming had managed to shin up a drainpipe on a side wall and quietly rush the
guard from behind. He jerked the Nazi’s neck backwards until it snapped then
whipped off his belt and used it to securely bind his wrists.

Fleming retrieved the
grappling hook and rope and put them in the haversack. He took out a tube and
squeezed white jelly from it onto the wall. He carefully reached into his bag
and extracted a timer with wires leading to a primer.

His Panerai Marina
Militare diving watch showed 11:55. He set the timer to 12:20. It started to
tick loudly. He pressed the primer into the jelly on the wall. Working quickly
and surely, catlike in his balance, he maneuvered down to a balcony where he
shed his rustic Frenchman garb to reveal a white tuxedo and black bow-tie. He
took a squished carnation from his jetted front jacket pocket and straightened
it before slotting it into his lapel. He peered into the house through a set of
French doors.

There was a slit
of light beyond as a door opened inside the house. Denise appeared and unlocked
the balcony entrance.

“What took you so
long?” said Fleming.

Denise was in a
stunning evening dress.

“How was I to know
which room had a balcony?”

“That’s quite an
outfit out of nowhere,” he said.

“Don’t ask me what
I had to do to get it. There was a woman my size entering the house — ”

He silenced her
with a kiss. “We have to find the gold and get out of here.”

She touched her
chest and winced at the feel of cold steel. Fleming apologized and adjusted his
pistol which he had placed in his inner jacket pocket.

He squired her out
of the room and across a landing and down a curving grand staircase toward the
packed and lively foyer where a party was in full swing.

“Wie ist Ihr
Deutsch?”
he whispered.

She looked back at
him blankly.

“Never mind,” he
said. “Just keep quiet and stay close to me.”

Nazi banners
covered everything. Jewels flashed and champagne flowed. Haughty Germans pumped
with victory were mingling with obsequious, opportunistic Spanish politicians
and their diamond encrusted wives. Liveried staffers wearing felt white gloves
waltzed silently amongst the guests bearing trays of cocktails and canapés like
well-oiled troops.

Fleming swiped two
flutes of bubbly as they floated past, handed one to Denise and sipped the
other thoughtfully, like a connoisseur. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated this
General Bock. Any man who drinks Dom Perignon ‘32 can’t be all bad.”

Denise glanced
about the place, taking it all in. “How are we supposed to find the gold?”

“Look in the
obvious place,” he said, polishing off his tipple. He led her to an unpopulated
corner of the throng next to a wing of the house that had been discreetly
cordoned off with velvet rope.

“I think you need
to adjust your lipstick,” he told her, nodding to the people headed their way.

She turned to see
Bock, Speer and Jodl approaching. Bock was trying to act charming as he walked
and talked with a beautifully begowned French woman. His assistant Masha
flanked him and was watching her boss with keen interest.

“We are about to
have dinner, won’t you join us?” said Bock to the alluring French lady who
smiled politely then wriggled away. Bock was about to turn in Fleming’s
direction when Denise strode enticingly toward him, garnering enough attention
for Fleming to quietly lift the velvet rope and saunter off down the empty
passageway unseen.

Atop a small
wooded hill overlooking the property, marksman Melik got to work assembling a
high calibered single-shot AR-7 sniper rifle while Remy and Eddie dotted the
road leading from the farmhouse with anti-personnel mines. Melik positioned the
AR-7 on a tripod, which had a triangular base with a jack at each leg for
leveling the gun, removed a bulky, flashlight-like infra-red telescopic scope
from a wooden box, mounted it and cracked open a box of cartridges.

A twig snapped.
Remy spun round to see a German guard approaching and took him out with two
silenced slugs from his Ruby. Pfft! Pfft!

Fleming was
opening doors and scoping what lay beyond. The third room he tried appeared to
hold some promise. He entered and turned on the lights then thought better of
it and decided to use the soft glow of the moon.

It was a
gentleman’s study. Ancient weapons, family photographs and dour Old Masters
decked the walls. Fleming was looking for something out of the ordinary. His
blue orbs settled on a dartboard hanging incongruously amongst the oil
paintings of dead Spanish aristocrats. He spied a dart propped on a bookshelf,
picked it up and aimed it at the center of the board. With the accuracy that
comes with a thousand and one pints, the arrow propelled through the air with
swift assuredness and landed smack in the center of the bullseye. A spring-lock
mechanism clicked as the dartboard dislodged from its nook to reveal a
cylindrical wall safe beyond.

A voice startled
him. “Mis-spent youth?”

Fleming turned to
face Denise.

“Came to check on
you,” she said.

“Watch and learn.”

He pulled a flat
box, about the size of a paperback, from the back of his cummerbund, attached it
to the safe and pushed a button. Numbers rolled down on a counter, eventually
resting on three digits which Fleming used to open the safe. He peered into the
safe’s interior.

“Keep a look out,”
he said.

From inside the
wall cavity he extracted the gold sovereign strips and stacked them inside the
haversack while Denise went to the window and searched the shadows for the spot
where her comrades were situated.

On the hillock,
they were almost ready. Melik finished calibrating the sights and pulled back the
rifle bolt to load a single, oversized bullet. Remy and Eddie stood guard
behind him as he pumped the tripod levers then swiveled the high powered rifle
and searched through its scopes. He licked a finger and raised it, testing the
wind, held his breath and concentrated.

Through the
crosshairs he could see into an illuminated dining hall, a huge baronial room
festooned with priceless Catalonian tapestries and gleaming suits of armor,
centered by a large lit stone fireplace.

At the long,
ancient oak table, Bock and his retinue were quaffing brandy and smoking cigars
while a pretty servant girl nervously tended to them, trying to avoid their
eyes.

“My enemies are
everywhere, Captain,” Bock declared. “A British spy could very well be a
British assassin. This is an unacceptable breach of security. How can you
expect me to complete my orders in these conditions?”

“He will be in our
hands by morning,” said Speer.

“Tell me, Captain,
what have you learned about this elusive Englishman? I’ve read Berlin’s file on
him so don’t tell me he’s just a wonk. The man who can dominate a London dinner
party can dominate the world.”

Jodl handed Speer
a dossier which he opened and read aloud from.

“Ian Lancaster
Fleming. Born London, 1908. Gemini. Father died a war hero in 1916 as the
result of a German shell blast...”

In a different
wing of the house, Fleming gently cracked the door of the study and peered both
ways before he hastened out toward Denise who was waiting beyond the other side
of the velvet rope.

He had made it a
few yards when an armed guard appeared from around a corner.
“Was Sie hier
sind?”
the guard said. He nudged Fleming to return to the party.
“Folgen
Sie mir!”