The Ian Fleming Files (19 page)

He revved it and
bore down from starboard, on course to ram her. At the last possible moment,
Denise spun the wheel to avoid him and swerved to port. Fleming turned and
continued after her at full speed.

Denise dived
overboard as her boat became a ramp, launching Fleming’s subchaser into the
air! He soared over her with an almighty throttle roar and landed successfully.

Denise fished
herself out of the drink and hauled herself back on board. She fired a flare,
signaling to Bock’s airship which was visible overhead, improbably hanging in
the sky like a giant, floating whale.

The mighty silver
Zeppelin belched blasts of fire as its engines powered up.

Denise steered her
shattered, limping vessel under it as Fleming spun his boat back around.

Above them, Darlan
was sitting with Bock and Jodl watching the skirmish from the airship’s viewing
deck.

“Should we
assist?” asked Jodl.

Bock was
distracted. “I have just received news that British destroyers are en route,”
he said to Darlan.

“We knew about
this,” said Darlan dismissively.

“I have promised
the Fuhrer your full fleet. There will be nothing left!”

“Aging battleships
and one slow carrier. The real prize is in Algiers.”

Bock looked at him
quizzically. “What are you talking about?”

“All will be
revealed,” said Darlan cryptically. He snapped open the haversack of gold
revealing its golden contents.

“I hope this buys
me some time.”

Bock sighed, gazed
out at the churning, noisy tussle in the sea below them and gave an order to
Jodl. “Put a sniper in position.”

Fleming released a
set of flame canisters which ignited and created a wall of fire between Denise
and the airship as it lowered down to snatch her. A Nazi airman appeared in the
gondola and slung a rope ladder over the edge. Another German positioned
himself securely in the corner behind him with a Karabiner 98 and searched
through the rifle’s telescopic sights for Fleming.

Denise found a
bolt-action Mauser in her craft’s armory and leveled it at Fleming who veered
back defensively, allowing her to get closer to the dangling rungs. She got a
hold of the ladder and proceeded to hoist herself up and scramble into the
swaying gondola. The motion rocked the sniper who fired off a round at Fleming
that missed wildly. He cursed and reloaded the single-shot Karabiner.

Fleming swiveled
the ZKs skyward but couldn’t angle them high enough to target Denise. He
steered under the rope ladder and with split second precision jumped and
grabbed the last rung! He pulled himself up, unholstered his Colt and aimed at
the airship’s fuel tank.

Denise begun
shooting at him over the edge of the gondola. Fleming swayed and returned fire.
A bullet from the sniper obliterated the rung in his hand. Fleming hung on and
leveled his gun at the fuel tank. Denise leaned over and -- swish! -- a
serrated blade sprung forth from her sleeve which she used to slice at the rope
ladder, sawing it, shredding the twine which snapped.

Fleming lost his
grip and fell, firing up at the silver behemoth as he tumbled to the sea but
the ship was soaring too fast.

Fleming
splash-landed, plummeting to the seabed then bursting forth, breaking the
surface, catching his breath to see Denise and the airship vanish into the
clouds. Lightning shimmied. Fleming took a gulp of air and began swimming to
shore. It was pouring with rain.

It was still
raining four hours later when a bedraggled Fleming hopped out from the
hedgerows and thumbed a ride from a passing farmer. The local Frenchman kept
his eyes on the hazardous wet road and didn’t bother his passenger who was
wrapped in a blanket now but still bitterly cold and drenched from his swim and
the heavy rain. They drove down a wending coastal byway with no sound save for
the rhythmic swiping of wiper blades.

Fleming looked out
as they took a bend past the “BIENVENUE A TOULON” sign to see that things had
gotten progressively worse for the would be evacuees. Recent bombing had
cratered the beachfront where the persecuted masses cowered, dreading the
return of the German planes.

It was a harrowing
scene. The quayside by the wide River Garonne was now a heaving sea of
displaced persons fighting for survival. Some, armed with bricks and wooden
slats, were brawling with military police. Others languished in a tent city
teeming with the dispossessed. Children huddled in fear. A pack of teenage boys
armed with sharpened sticks were chasing a plump rat. Everyone was absurdly
over dressed in their Sunday best (they were ordered by their oppressors to
retain just one suitcase and the clothes on their backs). Crying mothers
clutching babies roamed the beach in torn Chanel. Men fought cops with diamond
cuff links on. A lot of the older generation wore their furs and were
suffocating in the broiling heat.

Two hours later it
was eight o’clock and Fleming had changed into dry clothes and was standing out
on the estuary, beyond Point Verdon, with Remy, Eddie and Melik, watching seven
or eight moonlit vessels starkly outlined on the horizon. “The
Barham
should
have shown up by now,” a disgruntled Fleming said as he looked through a pair
of mini binoculars. “Blast. I better speak to someone.”

Inside the
besieged consulate, Fleming shouted into a phone: “17F for Uncle John. Hello,
sir? I’m in Toulon with over two thousand British citizens and another five or
six thousand non-Brits. The radio’s down and there’s no sign of the
Barham
.”

Godfrey was
surrounded by techs and government men.

“
Barham
was
torpedoed en route,” he said into the mike. “No survivors.
H.M.S. Rochester
is being prepared and should set sail by evening.”

A burst of
interference frazzled the line and the connection was lost.

“17F?”

Fleming tried the
line but couldn’t get through.

Remy hung up a
phone and looked pleased. “Good news, English. I have spoken to friends in Barcelona.
We can be across the border by morning.”

“I’m not going
anywhere.” Fleming grabbed his binoculars, scanned the shoreline and stopped on
a weatherbeaten old fishing skiff bobbing in the bay. He trained the binocs on
the horizon, on the commercial vessels just a few miles out. “Who do you think
those ships belong to? Italians?”

Remy shrugged.
“How should I know? It’s too dark to tell.”

Fleming grabbed
some official British Consulate stationary and ran a sheet of paper through a
typewriter roll.

“You need to get
me to those ships,” he told Remy who was about to say something sarcastic but
thought better of it.   

Half an hour
later, two Sicilian sailors saw the skiff cutting a wake toward them with
Fleming at the helm and Remy at the rear, on guard. The old crate pitched and
lifted with monotonous regularity as it thrust its way into the long, gentle
swell from the freight carrier.

Fleming and Remy
boarded the carrier and after some perfunctory exchanges with the two helmsmen
were ushered to the Captain, a portly, bearded man with shrewd little eyes. The
Captain stroked his whiskers pensively and consulted with a lieutenant while
Fleming produced a laminated sheaf of papers and pressed them into his
oil-smeared paws.

“This contract
guarantees a hundred pounds per passenger from his Majesty King George and the
British government,” Fleming said in perfect, inflection-free Italian.

Remy shook his
head in amazement at Fleming’s bluff. The Captain’s eyes bulged.
“Cento?”

The evacuation
began from the little harbor at Point Verdon under Fleming’s personal control.
Many of the British were well-to-do expatriates who had stayed on in France
when war broke out, hoping for the best. Their Bentleys and their Rolls Royces,
crammed with their most precious belongings, were abandoned on the quay, and
 had surrendered themselves to the orders of the handsome British naval
officer who had stationed himself at the top of the narrow stone steps leading
down to the water where the tenders were waiting.

There was no time
for a general scrutiny of passports or papers. The rules were all ad hoc. There
were tears from some of the women when Fleming ordained that no one could take
aboard more possessions than they could carry in his own two hands.

It went on
throughout the afternoon and into the long summer evening. As each small
boatload pushed off and headed out across the estuary to where the ships were
anchored, the grimy refugees shouted their goodbyes, and Fleming, impassive at
the top of the stone stairs, gave just the faintest nod in return. From time to
time German bombers came, but nothing stopped the evacuation, and by dusk
nearly all the refugees were away.

At 18:00 on July
3rd, Force H, a British naval task force led by Admiral James Somerville,
opened fire on the French fleet. The largest concentration of French warships
was at Oran, on the coast of French Algeria, in the port of Mers el Kébir.

The Royal Navy's
ships were in open water and could maneuver themselves into a perfect firing
position. Despite the approximate equivalence of force, the British had several
decisive advantages. The French were essentially leaderless, having been
abandoned by Darlan, and they did not expect an attack. None of the captains
were prepared for battle. The main armament of the
Dunkerque
and
Strasbourg
was grouped on their bows and could not immediately be brought to bear. The
British capital ships, with their 15-inch (381 mm) guns, fired a heavier
broadside than the French ones and the French had a weakness in anti-aircraft weaponry,
anti-submarine equipment, and carrier aviation. The French were in the confined
space of a harbor. Their ships were modern but most were lacking in radar and
sonar.

Before
negotiations with Admiral Darlan were formally terminated, British Fairey Swordfish
planes escorted by obsolete Blackburn Skuas were dispatched from the
Ark
Royal
to drop magnetic mines in the path of the French ships' route to sea.
This force was intercepted by French Curtiss H-75 fighters. One of the Skuas
was shot down by the French fighters and crashed into the sea, killing its
two-man crew, the only British fatalities in the action.

The third salvo
from the British force and the first to hit resulted in a magazine explosion
aboard
Bretagne
, which sank with 977 of her crew dead at 18:09. After
some thirty salvos, the French ships stopped firing.

The
Dunkerque
was also hit and damage to her boiler room took away her power so that she had
to drop anchor in harbor. The
Provence
was struck and beached by her
captain to prevent the ship from sinking with subsequent loss of life. In the
confusion and disguised by the extensive smoke, the battleship
Strasbourg
managed to leave Mers el Kébir and somehow avoided the mines at the harbor
entrance.

After a thirteen
minute bombardment, Somerville ordered an end to the firing and Force H
returned to Gibraltar. On July 4th, planes from the
Ark Royal
were
ordered to return to Mers el Kébir and finish off the
Dunkerque
as it
was believed that the ship had only sustained minor damage. The attack led to
the deaths of 150 men and put the
Dunkerque
out of action for one year.

The French
scuttled seventy ships. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,297 French
servicemen, the sinking of a battleship and the damaging of five other vessels.
When it had all ended, the survivors of the French Fleet served under Allied
command: two incomplete battleships, the old carrier
Bearn
, ten
cruisers, and about 115 lesser vessels, all in varying states of disrepair.
Other ships captured included two obsolete battleships,
Paris
and
Courbet
,
the destroyers
Triomphant
and
Léopard
, eight torpedo boats, five
submarines and a number of less important ships.

Two days later,
the
H.M.S Indomitable
, a 3,300 ton British frigate, was surging through
the glassy water 55 miles northwest of Algiers through the expanse of water
between Gibraltar and Morocco known as The Pillars of Hercules, where the
Atlantic meets the Med.

Fleming was
crammed in a cramped cabin with a small porthole being questioned by NID
interrogator Aubrey Hugh-Smith.

“There’s a section
of your report, Commander, that I keep wondering about. It has to do with
Denise Astier a.k.a. Violette Szabo a.k.a. Lotta von Laue a.k.a.
Untersturmführer
Adela Dietrich of the Waffen SS. Tell me about her.”

“Isn’t that my
report you’re holding?”

“Yes, but I want
to hear it from you.”

He pressed record
on a tape-recorder.

Later, Fleming was
in the captain’s quarters with Godfrey and Hill who had just finished listening
to his verbal debrief.

“Marshal Petain
has surrendered,” said Godfrey as he cleared his pipe. “General de Gaulle has
fled to England and is now the leader of free France. Darlan refuses to declare
his allegiances and is officially a man without a country.”

“There’s only
place he can be. Algiers,” said Fleming. “All I need is ten men.”

“His location
isn’t the issue. We know where he is. It’s too dangerous,” said Godfrey who
struck a match and lit his bowl of tobacco. “According to our reconnaissance,
his Algerian vessels include something we haven’t seen before.”

Godfrey showed him
photographs of a large, futuristic gun battery. It looked like a four-barreled
tank atop a mini submarine, with the nozzles on the surface and most of the craft
submerged.