The Ian Fleming Files (2 page)

The sudden sound
of footfalls and heavy breathing shattered the cathedral silence. A squadron of
moorhens abandoned the river’s surface and exploded into flight. The thudding
and panting crescendoed and Ian Fleming thundered into view, charging along the
embankment in his running clothes, his breath misty in the frigid air.

He accelerated in
an effort to clear his head and shake a gloominess that had enveloped him since
dawn and which always emerged like clockwork following a night of serious
drinking.

He took a quick
inventory of the liquids swishing in his stomach. Four gin martinis at Boodle’s
with Noel Coward (atop a poorly chosen foundation of whiskey sodas at Scott’s
with Henry Cavendish); a small carafe of vodka over dinner at the Grill with
Biffy Dunderdale; a magnum of Dom Perignon 1929 from his resourceful mother’s
private stash in Mayfair and a final lingering, introspective glass of
twelve-year old Armagnac that he consumed with two cups of black coffee at his
flat in Ebury Street.

Chased with
forty-four Morland cigarettes. And what had he gained from this self-abuse
other than a blasted hangover? What had he unearthed? What tidbit of juicy
intelligence did he now possess that would propel him up through the ranks of
the Naval Intelligence Department where he had been languishing for the last
twelve months? From 1939 to 1940. The most exciting twelve months in history
and the dullest year of his three decade odd existence.

And what an odd
existence it was! He was a secret agent who had sworn an oath to keep his work
confidential. Everyone outside Room 39 thought he was a paper-pushing delegate.
A wonk who sometimes advised Admiral John Godfrey on what tie he should wear.
Not that there was anything exciting to talk about, he reflected. Not yet.

His head throbbed.
Migraines were an occupational hazard. He tried to take solace in some advice
he heard once. “An intelligence officer will be at a very definite disadvantage
if he is a teetotaler. A good digestion is also important.” Who told him that?
Some cynical bastard. Some cynical fat bastard. Rickatson-Hatts, his editor at
Reuters, possibly. Now he could drink. Was everyone he knew an alcoholic? Was
he an alcoholic?

He exhaled hard
and turned his besieged brain to sorting through the mental folder that held
all the conversations from last night.

Noel Coward had
nothing to show from his trip to America, other than a dainty pair of Tiffany
cuff-links in the shape of U.S. flags (with glittering pinprick one carat
diamonds representing the stars) and a fashionable suntan acquired during a
five day sojourn in Los Angeles spent taking vacuous meetings with
entertainment industry professionals and ‘doing lunch’ by the pool — or,
Fleming thought, if he did have anything to talk about he wasn’t in the mood
for sharing.

Biffy Dunderdale
spent the entire evening talking about his favorite subject: himself. Fleming
served up several juicy conversation topics with appropriate appetizers of
information but Biffy wouldn’t bite and Fleming’s campaign to wheedle even the
most apocryphal-sounding nugget of intelligence from the competition (MI-5)
fizzled like a firework in a gin fizz.

Fleming’s mother,
Lady Fleming, an impeccable source of Whitehall gossip, didn’t feel like
kibitzingand so conversation was limited to the usual recriminations about not
living up to his dead father’s standards and not being more like his older
brother Peter who was busy being dashing on a dangerous top secret mission to
Norway. Evidently not that secret, thought Fleming.

Mercifully, Henry
Cavendish had just returned from Station F in Paris and was a bubbling miasma
of half-truths, innuendo and wild speculation.

“…I told Morris,
the French won’t risk a humiliation. They still remember the last time a
foreigner brought them to their knees. Do you know who that was? Julius Caesar,
that’s who. Slaughtered a million Franks. It was genocide, really.”

Henry was
jabbering a mile-a-minute.

“Mark my words,”
he continued, having paused to swill some whiskey, “the instant Hitler starts
bombing Paris whichever lilly-livered frog is in charge will sign an armistice.
Soon as the first window on the Champs d’Elysee cracks. I told Morris…”

Fleming tuned
Henry out for a moment and flitted his eyes about the place. Scott’s was a high
ceilinged Victorian opera house that had been converted into a sultry art deco
palace complete with velvet chairs and gilt-edged mirrors. Fleming preferred to
sit at the luxuriously appointed bar over the popular booths which had
telephones at every table so that patrons could proposition one another
anonymously. That was for the kids and he came here to work. NID brass and
Whitehall apparatchiks hobnobbed at Scott’s and there was a certain air of
intrigue about the place. It was well situated, on Coventry Street in
Piccadilly, within a shout of The Dorchester where everyone congregated under
the misunderstanding that the hotel’s steel structure offered superior
protection from Hitler’s bombs.

People dressed to
the nines at Scott’s. Both Henry and Fleming had their hair slicked back and
were wearing tuxedos with curled collars and bow-ties. Henry sported a white
carnation in his lapel slit and Fleming’s waist bore a wine-colored cummerbund.

“The French army
is folding like an overcooked soufflé,” Henry declared, eliciting a wan nod
from Fleming who was listening again. “It’s not a matter of weeks now, but
days.”

Fleming’s mind
whirred. Germany’s blistering invasion of France had commenced a fortnight
earlier and was moving forward trouble-free at a disturbingly rapid pace. The
buzz at Whitehall centered on Admiral Darlan, Head of the French Navy. France’s
army was not putting up much of a fight, it was true, thought Fleming, but her
navy, the fourth largest in the world, was a different matter and the subject
of much speculation. Hitler didn’t have much of a sea force — other than his
Unterseebooten
or U-Boats — and would require an armada to take on the Royal Navy. Without
France’s battleships and cruisers he stood little chance of occupying Great
Britain. Hitler needed those French ships.

“Our Paris office
thinks there’s a good chance Darlan may cede his fleet to us. In return he’d
probably demand sanctuary and some kind of custodial position in the Royal
Navy. Not to mention a lot of lolly.”

Fleming wasn’t
convinced. “You don’t think he’s likely to opt for a plum position within the
new French-Nazi government?”

“Only if he has no
qualms about selling out his country,” Henry said.

“Qualms? He’s a
Frenchman, Henry. They don’t have qualms.”

Henry flagged a
flame-haired cigarette girl who swanned over and sold him a pack of Players.
She caught Fleming’s eye and smiled. He smiled back then coolly looked away,
casting his gaze over a sea of well-heeled Londoners grooving to a brassy jazz
quartet.

“Well my source is
pretty high up in his organization,” Henry said, puffing on a Player, “and it’s
his opinion that Darlan would rather retire to these soggy isles than throw his
lot in with the lunatic Nazi Party. Provided the price is right, of course.”

Fleming sparked up
a cigarette which was a mixture of Balkan and Turkish tobacco made for him by
Morlands of Grosvenor Street with three little gold rings round the filter like
the sleeves of his uniform. “I’d like to bring this to Godfrey’s attention,
Henry. He can get the Treasury to pony up a formal offer to Darlan and purchase
his boats before Hitler gets his paws on them.”

“You’d need proof
the fleet is intact and not scuttled or already under Nazi control.”

“No one knows
where Darlan is,” said Fleming.

“He’s off the
coast of Marseilles. I have the longitudes and latitudes in my hotel room.”

Fleming smiled
like the Cheshire Cat. “Finally, all these drinks pay off.”

Henry didn’t seem
to hear him. “Just don’t mention my name with Godfrey, got it?”

Fleming knocked
back his cocktail and signaled to the waiter for the bill, ignoring the coruscating
platter of oysters on the half shell laid out before him which he now regretted
ordering. “Drink up, Henry, there’s a chap in air reconnaissance I need to
speak to.”

“If you’re
thinking of doing a flyover be careful, you know how Godfrey is about using SIS
loan-outs. Better talk to him first.”

“Before I have
proof? He’ll say no.”

“You’ll never get
a plane and pilot in time. Darlan could be in French Indochina by tomorrow.”

“I know just the
man and just the plane.”

The sharp cry of
an emaciated gull scavenging for breakfast along the frosted embankment snapped
Fleming out of his memory. He swerved to avoid the hungry avian and continued
on, turning to a canal where colorful barges were coming to life.

22B Ebury Street
was in a nice part of town, on the edge of Belgravia. The skinny red-brick
building was Victorian and fronted by two large Doric columns and a portico.
Fleming often paused at the pillared entrance to take it all in. He loved the
swirling concentric loops of the running dog patterned scrolls, the intricately
chiseled cartouches and the ornate, dramatic fluting. The cherubs reminded him
of the ones in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. He even liked the scowling
gargoyles and basilisks. Unit B was the top half which he entered by a steep
set of stairs to the right of the entrance hall.

His flat had a
pleasant, lived-in ambience and was tastefully decorated with handcarved
woodwork, Persian rugs and original pieces of art. It was centered by a large
living room with a sofa and a divan, a black lacquered Japanese screen and a
big brass birdcage suspended from the ceiling filled with Fleming’s collection
of first editions. A high window overlooked Hyde Park and there was a large
marble fireplace where Fleming sometimes burned sensitive documents.
Ostensibly, he had had the place decorated by Rosie Reiss, a young German
refugee who had come to London via Percy Muir’s underground railway and was
beginning to slowly build a reputation as an interior designer. But the concept
was very much his own: a tall, dark, masculine bachelor’s pad loosely based on
the vast downstairs studio at the back of his mother’s Cheyne Walk house.

Fighting a slight
wave of nausea, Fleming peeled off his damp running clothes and stepped
gingerly into a cold shower, dousing his head with the tiny jets, mindful to
restrict the duration of his rinse to the daily wartime ration of two minutes.

Moments later he
was wearing a flannel vest and underpants and pressing a hot washcloth against
his face to soften abrasive beard hair. He squirted a dime-sized dollop of
Burma shaving cream onto his palm and worked it into a lather before slathering
it onto his face in circular motions. Holding his cut-throat razor at thirty
degrees and applying gentle pressure, he proceeded to shave with slow, even
strokes along the grain. Finishing the job in one pass, he rinsed with cold
water, splashed some invigorating L’Aiglon and dabbed a smattering of Palmolive
baby powder to his face — which he found less irritating than the more popular
Sutton Men’s Talcum Powder favored by the majority of his peers (”As swank as a
regiment on parade” went the Sutton jingle).

He entered his bedroom where he quickly toweled off
before donning a pair of white denim overalls and hobnailed boots which lay
waiting on his bed beside a tool box. In the living room, he removed an oil
painting of ‘St. George Slaying the Dragon’ from the wall and opened the safe
embedded in the wainscot behind it. He extracted his carbon steel, nickel plated
Police Positive revolver, emptied its slugs onto a table and slowly spun the
chamber by his ear. Satisfied, he reloaded and placed the weapon in a slot
inside the tool box.

He scooped up his
tarnished cigarette case and lighter and looked outside while he lit up. The
smoke filled his lungs and relaxed him. He rotated his wrist to read the face
of his Panerai Marina Militare diving watch. It was one of only three hundred
watches built by the Florence-based watchmaker for the First Submarine Group
Command of the Royal Italian Navy. The mechanism was held in a large,
cushion-shaped steel case, its numerals and indices were luminescent, and it
featured a hand-wound mechanical movement and a water-resistant strap long
enough to be worn over a diving suit.

Fleming fastened
the strap to his belt loop and slipped the chronometer into the side pocket of
his overalls. He took another drag of his cigarette and blasted the smoke
angrily into the window.

“Eight thirty.
Where the hell is that hayseed?”

He unwrapped two
Alka Seltzers and plopped them in a tumbler of water. The effervescence had
just begun when a Bedford OX lorry rolled up outside and emitted a loud,
neighbor-rattling honk.

Fleming winced.
“Subtle.”

Two more horn
blasts boomed.

“Stupid bloody
Australian.” Annoyed, he stubbed out his Morland, reached down for his tool kit
and motored to the front door.

Roughly ten
minutes south of 22B Ebury Street, a stark sign that read “NO TRESPASSING,
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE” loomed over high electrified perimeter fencing garnished
with curling concertina wire. Battersea RAF base had lookout towers on each
corner housed by guards with Thompson submachine guns. Vickers cruiser tanks
and smaller, Carden Loyd reconnaissance tankettes stood at-the-ready amidst
rows of idling Spitfires and Fairey Albacores.

Disguised as
mechanics, Ian Fleming and Sydney Cotton flashed papers at the guardhouse then
briskly zigzagged across the base, snapping salutes to uniformed personnel as
they approached a hangar complex.

Cotton was thirty-eight,
a flabby, florid Australian ex-bush pilot who somehow radiated charisma. He was
one of the few Aussies officially affiliated with the Air Service and it was
because of his outstanding aviation skills. He also understood technology.