The Ian Fleming Files (15 page)

“What is your
name, Lieutenant?”

“Herr… Lieutenant
Dieter Jodl, General.”

“Did you
understand everything Captain Speer just said?”

“Yes, Herr
General.”

“Do you remember
the details?”

“Yes. We drew up
the plans, together, General.”

“Good.” He drew
his pistol and shot Speer in the head.

“Carry on,
Lieutenant.”

A chill wind
whipped up as Fleming and Denise clambered over the crest of a steeply sloping
ridgeback and emerged atop a summit, shivering. Twice he tried to ignite a
cigarette and twice it sputtered to extinction in the drifting snow.

“Where are we?”
Denise asked.

“Hard to say
exactly. We're six thousand feet up. Maps never give details at this altitude.”

She pointed to
something in the distance. “Oh, thank God!”

A small log hut
was visible off in a yonder copse of trees, half buried in scrub pine and
powder.

They shunted down
the side of the mountain.

Fleming and Denise
tentatively pushed open the door and entered to discover an empty private ski
lodge. The furniture was all covered in cloth until next season. A rat darted
across the floor and escaped via a hole in a wall. Fleming went to the cavity
and blocked it, looked about the place and took a quick inventory.

His eyes zeroed in
on a radio beside a rack of rusting ski gear. He tried it but got nothing,
checked the wiring and jostled switches but soon came to the limit of his
wireless knowledge.

Denise found a
cobwebbed pouch with two fasteners on the front. She handed it to Fleming who
looked inside at battle dressing sealed in cellophane; a 7 c.c. tincture of
iodine; 50 Atabrine tablets; a package of 8 sulfadiazine tablets and a
tourniquet.

“This might be
useful,” he said, noticing an iron hunter’s trap. He fiddled with the rusty
mechanism, pulled the spring back and... SNAP! The old device appeared to work.

There were bamboo
ski poles which he looked at, checking the canes and tiny leather baskets for
damage, a pair of old leather ski boots, a coil of rope, a hat, a cloth
backpack, small binoculars, a parka, and other odds and ends. He examined the
skis which were definitely usable despite being clearly neglected (they were
bunched in a corner like walking sticks rather than each one being in a press
or spreader).

Denise, who had been ransacking the small kitchen area,
tapped him on the shoulder. “Look what I found,” she said. He swiveled to see
her happily clasping a bottle of Spanish red wine. “A 1938 Marques de Riscal,”
he said with interest. “Pity it’s not a ‘37. Still, all we need now is the main
course. Let me finish with these skis and then I’ll set the trap.”

There were two sets of skis. The first was worn and had
simple toe units that were designed to allow a bit of safety release by
allowing the toe of the boot to pop out during a fall. Fleming knew from
personal experience that this was not a reliable release. One of the skis was
missing a small section of metal edge on the base.

The second set was
more sophisticated. Ridgetop wood skis with crafty through-rivets that
reinforced steel-edge joints. The maple planks were beautiful and in good
condition, about seventy nine inches long. Fleming could tell they were
Austrian from the Tyrolia bear-trap bindings which he decided were perfect for
the long cross-country tour he had in mind for tomorrow. It would be difficult
to lose a ski with that foot-clasp and there could be some acrobatics in store
if things got hairy. He found a small nub of wax and got to work.

“We can light a
fire later,” he said to Denise who was removing sheets and trying to make the
place habitable. “Too risky right now.”

“I want to help,”
said Denise.

“Try and organize
some water. Gather a lot of ice that we can boil.”

She mock-saluted
him and headed out.

Fleming waited
until she was gone before stashing the haversack behind the radio. “Look for a
stream,” he hollered to her through the open door. She nodded and took off.

Fleming scavenged
for dry wood on the sheltered forest floor amongst the detritus of dead scrub
pine. The sun was gone and a keen wind sprung up from the east. Snow continued
to fall. It looked like being a bad night, Fleming thought. But a night that
reduced visibility to near-zero and kept people indoors was what they wanted.
 

An hour later, he
returned with an armful of logs. The cabin was empty. He threw the lumber down
and looked around. Denise was nowhere. He cried out.

Silence. He
crossed to the corner of the cabin and checked behind the radio.

The haversack was
still there. He looked inside to see the gold.

A voice startled
him. “That’s not much of a hiding place.”

He turned to see
Denise holding a bucket of ice shards.

“Where were you?”
he asked.

“How do you say in
English?” She searched for the word. “Reconnoitering.”

It was late. Black
clouds scuttled across the moon.

Flickering
firelight revealed the remnants of a small game bird roasting on a spit near a
half-empty bottle of Riscal and two cracked tea cups. Fleming and Denise were
sitting close to the fire. He was bare chested, revealing his toned, taut
torso, and she was nursing his recent facial injury as well as his other
abrasions and contusions, dipping cloth in water and applying iodine. There was
definitely something romantic about the tableau.

He put a finger to
her mouth and shushed her.

“What?” she said.

“I thought I heard
something.”

They both listened
a moment. Fleming stretched his neck and took a gander out the window.
Snowflakes fell silently outside, glittering like diamonds in the moonlight as
they floated. The only sound was the sighing wind.

Fleming absently
fingered the ancient medal dangling around his neck. It was a cross and in its
center, within a wreath of laurel, enameled green, was the Imperial Crown in
gold upon a red enameled ground.

Denise looked at
it. “Why do you wear that dirty old thing?”

“This thing is the
Distinguished Service Order. Awarded posthumously to my father.”

“I see. What did
he do to deserve it?”

“In May 1917, he
and his company were under heavy bombardment from the Germans. My father and
another officer were trying to crawl their way between two trenches when they
were hit by a shell and killed instantly. Churchill wrote his obituary and,
well, the medal was something they gave him.”

“He earned it
dying for his country,” she said thoughtfully. “That makes our mission personal
for you.”

“How so?”

“Your father was
killed by a German shell. You are gallantly avenging his death.”

Fleming shrugged.
“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. You French are so dramatic.”

Denise’s face
darkened. “I lost my father too when I was young. Both my parents.”

It was silent a
moment. There was an unspoken feeling that perhaps the conversation was getting
too intimate. They both looked at each other, feeling the tug between them.
Neither one sad anything.

The fire popped
loudly.

She considered the
man before her. Tall, lean and muscular with clear blue eyes and sharply-edged
features. Half-naked in her arms!

He flashed a
smile, as if to snap the spell.

She flitted her
eyes at the fire.

“What are you
thinking?” he asked.

“What I’ll do when
the war ends. If it ends. Who I’ll be. Where I’ll be. I graduated from the
military academy two months before war broke out. I had planned on traveling
the world, so I think I’ll start with that. What about you? What will you do?”

“I haven’t given
it much thought.”

“Do you like being
a secret agent?”

“Ask me again when
this is all over.”

She leaned in
close to wipe some dried blood from his chin. His eyes searched her face for
imperfections but found none. Her full, pouty lips glistened.

“What is the
English phrase? ‘Why don’t you take a picture?’ Is that what you Brits say when
someone stares?”

“How did a girl
like you get involved with the Resistance?”

“I repaired
fishermen's nets in my uncle’s shop at Mont Saint-Michel which had been taken
over as a German submarine base.”

“In Normandy?”

“Don’t pretend
you’ve heard of it!”

“Mont
Saint-Michel, the tidal island? It’s tiny.”

“I’m impressed.
Well, German submariners got into the habit of bringing their new life jackets
into my uncle’s ship for fitting and their old life jackets for repairs. While
chatting with customers, I was able to learn the number of the U-boat on which
each of them served. So when there was a sudden rush by a certain U-boat crew
to obtain their jackets, I knew that submarine was going out on patrol. I
passed this information on to Gil - Remy who was always kicking around the
local tavern. At first I thought he wanted to sleep with me but later I
realized he appreciated the useful position I was in to overhear things. He
radioed some of what I told him to London. He said there was a submarine “kill”
as a result of my efforts.”

“He recruited
you?”

“I wanted to get
away. It hasn’t been much of anything until now. Most of my time is spent
obtaining radios and deciding where they go, finding secure letterboxes or
“drops,” double-checking information. This is the first mission I’ve been on.
Is that what this is, a mission?”

“If you like.
Having fun?”

“I admit it’s
frightening but I feel very alive. It’s exciting.”

Her eyes blazed in
the firelight.

“Is there a Mrs.
Fleming?”

“Yes,” he said
solemnly. “She’s seventy-two and has a boyfriend but she hasn’t gone by that
name since the Great War.”

“Your mother?”

“The only woman in
my life,” he lied. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you and
Remy…?”

“I’m not about to
get emotionally involved with a man who might be dead in a week,” she said
without any hint of bitterness as she reached for the wine and refilled their
tea cups.

He was staring at
her again.

“If you are trying
to read my mind, I am thinking that you are a liar Commander Fleming. I refuse
to believe that there is no little woman waiting for you back in merry
England.”

“One or two
perhaps. But none as beautiful as you.”

“That I believe, I
have seen your English women. Why do they dress like that? Is it because of the
rain?”

She dabbed cloth in
water and wiped some blood from his lips.

“The climate is no
excuse,” she said. “Look at Russia. It’s freezing as all hell but the women
don’t dress like frumpy school marms.”

He laughed. They
sipped their drinks.

“You really are
quite gorgeous,” he said.

“Beware, I never
mix business with pleasure.”

“Neither do I,” he
said and leaned in to kiss her on the mouth. She demurred and fought the
impulse, but then relented.

Later, it was the
middle of the night and Denise was fast asleep, shirtless under the blankets
with her face tucked in Fleming’s chest. She was wearing his medal around her
neck. His right arm was wrapped around her. She had woken him twice already
with soft caresses, saying nothing, just reaching for his body.

His eyes suddenly
opened. He had his Colt in his left hand. He looked around then lay back down,
but he kept his eyes open and the gun remained firmly in his clutch.

It was a scene of
fantastic beauty as the Spanish sky went from grey dawn to brilliant sunlight.
The majestic Pico de Aneto looked down regally over the valley like a queen
beholding her subjects, all eleven thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight feet
of her, her dazzling whiteness caught in the morning sun, her crown wreathed in
clouds. She jutted proudly from the Spanish massif's high summit ridge, a
position she shared with several peaks, including the massif's namesake, Pico
de la Maladeta. The second highest Pyrenean peak, Pico de Posets, knifed the
sky a few miles to the west in the middle of a ridgeback string of sierras.

The log shelter
was perched half way up a slope in a polished blue gully. In the distance,
there was the glint of a railway track and a sliver of a funicular line which
was frozen with the cab stopped midway up the mountain pass.

It was the morning
of June eighteen. The weather on the east slopes of the Pyrenees had calmed.

Ian Fleming was
asleep on his back with his new American pistol flat against his chest. Above
his head, through the frosted window pane of the bedroom window, a squadron of
snow-camouflaged Nazis could be seen scaling uphill toward the snowed-in
shelter, moving at a slow, steady pace as they swept the terrain. They seemed not
to have noticed the half-buried log cabin a mere few hundred yards ahead of
them.

Fleming woke with
a start and cursed himself for passing out. He instinctively looked out the
window and saw the patrol. He got to his feet with cat-like speed. Denise’s
hand covered his mouth. She was already up and dressed and burdened with
ski-gear. The tunnel in the snow that blocked the front door entrance had taken
her twenty minutes to clear. Shafts of bright sunlight poked through.

Fleming got ready
quickly and took stock of the equipment they had. The boots for Denise were too
big but would do. He gave her the better skis, the ones with the bear trap
bindings that would help keep her feet secure in the oversized boots. She was
holding a piton and had found two pairs of goggles. She handed a set to Fleming
who took them eagerly.