The Ian Fleming Files (24 page)

Ann found a stub and lit it, exhaled through her nostrils.

“Ann?” He laid a hand on her neck and gently squeezed the pale no longer
youthful flesh. “Ann, are you feeling bored with life?”

She looked at him with faintly troubled eyes and said, “No.”

He stepped closer to her, saw her clearly in the faint morning light. He
could see the veins beneath her eyes. “Ann,” he said. “You must tell me what’s
the matter.”

“There’s nothing the matter,” she said.

“Yes, there is,” he said gently. “There’s something on your mind, Ann.
Didn’t we agree to be quite frank with each other?”

“You can’t do anything about it and it will only upset you.”

He stroked her hair lightly. “Never mind, tell me all the same.”

“Well, it’s happened.”

“What’s happened?”

“
It
has happened.”

Fleming made a wry face. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. You know I never get panicky: I’m two months late.”

“Hell!” said Fleming.

“There, now you know what’s the matter,” said Ann.

“I suppose one gets rid of it?”

“Why do you suppose that?”  

The phone rang startling them both. It was his line, the heavy toned
shrill of the direct link to the office. Fleming quickly answered it, his face
betraying little as he listened. “Where?” he said into the receiver. “I don’t
know if I can make it there by — ”

The line went dead. He hung up. Ann tried to read his face.

“What did they want?”

“Me. In a hurry. Must be important.” He crossed the room to a large
gilt-edged mirror which he removed from its hinges.

There was a whistle from the stove. Ann removed the kettle and made tea.
“I take it your leaving then?” she said petulantly.

“No choice.” He twirled open the wall safe and reached inside for his
Browning 9mm, shut the safe and replaced the mirror. “Let’s continue this
conversation when I get back,” he said softly. “No need to make any kind of
snap decision.”

She nodded. He peered outside at two men loitering on the corner, smoking
cigarettes, both wearing black fedoras and putty-colored trench-coats, their
faces partly obscured by folded hat brims and upturned collars.

“How long will you be gone, Ian?”

“Hard to say.” 

“Tea?” He shook his head.

“No time.”

He slapped the Browning into a leather shoulder holster and fixed the
harness over his white cotton shirt.

“We’ll talk more later,” he told her but there was no response. She was
busy scavenging crystallized sugar crusts off the rim of the sugar bowl.

“Ann?”

She nodded. “Toodle-pip.”

He tried to read her tone, gave up, donned his Royal Navy jacket and
checked in a mirror to ensure that the weapon under his arm was not visible.
Then he placed a plain gray snap-brim fedora with a thin black ribbon on his
head and grabbed his Ronson lighter, Dunhill cigarette case and Mark Cross
alligator skin billfold.

He took one last look at Ann but she didn’t look back.

Fleming slinked around a corner, his breath misty in the cold morning
air, the rising sun tossing his elongated shadow onto a brick wall as he
stalked past. He paused, screwed his eyes up in a vain effort to squeeze out
the first throbs of a possible migraine and listened for the telltale footfalls
on the cobblestones that had echoed faintly behind him for two blocks. The
rhythmic steps sounded and ceased.

Fleming continued on, his shadow following after.

A moment later two new silhouettes hit the bricks.

Fleming passed under an archway into a mews that held a row of private
garages. Behind him the two Abwehr agents quickened their pace, trying not to
make a clatter with their boot-heels on the bumpy ground. Fleming slotted a key
into a door and subtly leaned in to see his pursuers reflected back in the
steel. He turned his wrist and opened the garage revealing a curvaceous
vixen-like Alfa Romeo 6C perched dreamily beside a shabby two-seater Buick.

The Germans watched from around a corner. They pondered heading into the
garage where their quarry had vanished when there was a sudden low rumble and
then the Buick peeled out with a loud guttural roar and raced past. The Germans
hightailed it to a souped-up Mercedes, clambered in and screeched off,
fishtailing, causing two passing motorists to collide.

Fleming careened over a roundabout, narrowly avoiding a cream colored
six-cylinder Siddeley Special slowly circling the obstacle. The Nazis followed
Fleming’s path and bulldozed into the Siddeley, crumpling its aluminum alloy
chassis and sending it spinning off wildly. One of the Abwehr agents blasted an
Astra 600 out the window at Fleming as he zigzagged across three lanes of
morning commuter traffic causing chaos. A red double decker scudded onto a
median with a chorus of frightened yells from its startled passengers.
Ricocheting slugs from the semi-automatic pistol shattered storefront windows.

The Merc put on a furious burst of speed. Fleming swerved to avoid an
impact crater and momentarily lost control of the car which slewed through
fluorescent warning cones. He held the shuddering steering wheel and turned
into the skid, easing down the accelerator and maintaining full control as he
maneuvered into a narrow alleyway. The Mercedes jounced over the toppled cones,
skirted the exposed edge of the cavity and nosed down the side street after
him.

A bobby on patrol duty, swinging his truncheon, saw the chase and trilled
his whistle at a police wagon which zoomed across the road to fetch him. He
hopped on the side and with a wail of sirens Scotland Yard joined the pursuit.

A klaxon blared as Tower Bridge started to close for road traffic to
allow a tall river barge to pass. Fleming heard the warning sound and gunned it
for the widening levees as they slowly split apart. He glanced in the
rear-view. A spray of bullets cobwebbed the glass. He crashed through the
bridge barrier, wheels spinning furiously, tires flaming, as the mighty levees
scissored skyward. The Germans gained as he continued full-speed over the gap
and landed deftly on the other side in a shower of sparks. His assailants
braced themselves but the Merc didn’t have enough torque to scale the tilting
levee, forcing the automobile down, its wheels squealing amidst plumes of
burning rubber smoke.

The Nazis saw the policemen headed their way and slammed the car into the
base of the tower, ditched it and dived into the freezing water.

Fleming watched the coppers disperse across the embankment and nab the
two spies. He grinned devilishly, executed a graceful almost balletic U-turn
and zoomed off into the massive morning sun.

BY THE time Fleming was twenty miles northwest of London the unseasonably
sunny sky had become gunmetal grey. A ceiling of slate-colored storm clouds had
rolled in turning daytime into a kind of dull twilight.

He followed the two-lane by-road from the Buckinghamshire village of
Tattenhoe north into Bletchley, continued straight across the small roundabout
in the town square, past the Eight Belles pub and turned left towards the
railway station into Sherwood Drive.

Bletchley Park or ‘BP’ as its inhabitants knew it was a sprawling farm
estate that had been turned into the dispersal location for both the SIS and
the GC&C. The BP department that concerned Fleming was Hut 8 which was
dedicated to deciphering naval Enigma messages and sending them back to the
Admiralty where John Godfrey would decide what action to take. If there was
action, the next stop was the Prime Minister. There had been little action of
late, adding to Fleming’s unease as to why a meeting had been called here.

At a tall wire gate Fleming showed his pass to two sentries wearing drab
green uniforms with red shoulder flashes and appropriate badges of rank on
their sleeves. 

A few minutes later, he was in a smoke filled hut exchanging pleasantries
with colleagues from Room 39 and Bletchley Park reps.

In addition to Admiral John Godfrey who was dressed in his habitual
double-breasted charcoal-grey suit and dark tie, in attendance was Miss Paddy
Blythe, Godfrey’s plain but efficient secretary, clad in a plaid kilt and
cashmere pullover; MP Gilbert Hargreaves, UK Minister of Defense, a slick
career politician still youthful-looking in his late forties wearing a
pin-stripe suit and clutching a black docket with a small red star on the
front; Major Lewis Blake, a uniformed Army officer, his hair shellacked black,
his gaze piercing, like a hawk fixed on a mouse, who still played a mean game
of tennis at 64; and, sitting to one side, a tired and somewhat uneasy 73-year
old Col. Hugh “Quacker” Drake (ret.) who was wearing a brown jacket, starched
collar and cuffs, grey tie, neat striped trousers and patent leather shoes.

The door opened and a Bletchley employee whom Fleming was most eager to
see entered, his old friend and mentor Alfred Dillwyn ‘Dilly’ Knox, 57, who
despite serious ailments was still the nation’s leading genius when it came to
cryptanalysis. Dilly was part of the celebrated team of British code breakers
who had achieved major success in the Great War of 1914-18 by decoding the
famous “Zimmerman Telegram.”

Dilly once possessed as charismatic and shamelessly virile a face as
Fleming could recall. Granted, that was when Dilly was Uncle Dilly, a friend of
his father’s, and Fleming was still in school, but time alone could not account
for the elder man’s ghastly appearance: the jaundiced skin, waxy and ashen
grey, the dark rings of fatigue and pain beneath the eyes. He walked like a
skeleton dragging itself around. He couldn’t speak without coughing. Dilly had
terminal lymphatic cancer.

In Fleming’s mind he would always be the man in the leather flying jacket
and Biggles goggles who landed a Mosquito on the golf course at his father’s
country club. A man who had taught him how to fly and how to repair old
motorcars. If Fleming stopped to think about it he would probably break down
and curse God for being such a callous bastard. But Dilly was still here,
thought Fleming, trying to console himself, and there was still a twinkle
behind the razor-keen gaze.

“Ian Fleming,” Dilly declared. “The man behind the memos. Shouldn’t you
be at your desk dreaming up strategy?” The tone was jovial but the words had
bite.

“Thought I’d stop in,” replied Fleming, “to see if you chaps needed a
hand decoding the Queen’s Christmas speech. I know things have been a little
slow of late.”

Dilly tried to smile but collapsed in a coughing fit. Miss Blythe put her
arm on his back and helped him into a seat.

“More tea?” Dilly asked Fleming. He threw the cozy off an oversized
teapot and sent steaming brown liquid into a mug that featured an emblem of an
anchor on one side and “Dilly” engraved on the other.

“I could use something stronger,” whispered Fleming with a wink.

Godfrey glowered. “I heard that. And don’t think I missed that you were
late, 17F.”

“Ran into a little difficulty with a pair of Germans, sir. They chased me
in an armored Mercedes over Tower Bridge where I gave them the slip when the
levees opened.”

Miss Blythe looked at him curiously. Godfrey’s stare intensified. “Is
that supposed to be funny, Commander?”

“No, sir,” said Fleming. “Not at all.”

Hargreaves loudly set down his tea and cleared his throat. “All right,
everyone here knows each other. Let’s get on shall we?”

Godfrey nodded, sat back and took out a cigar. Miss Blythe cleared the
crockery, shuttered the blinds and switched on extra lights. The other men
aligned chairs so that they were all now facing Fleming like a committee. The
mood had turned gravely serious in an instant. Fleming was now seated before a
panel of the most powerful men in the nation. John Godfrey, Lewis Blake,
Gilbert Hargreaves, Hugh Drake and Dilly Knox. Five individuals who
collectively had the ability to devise, plan and execute any operation with
approval from Downing Street tacit in all they did. Obtaining the P.M.’s seal
for the occasional big ops was a formality that was acknowledged with one or
more of them, usually Godfrey or Hargreaves, selected for the kabuki dance at
Number Ten. They were Churchill’s unofficial war cabal specializing in covert
military operations pertaining to ruses, enemy sabotage and deception.

Fleming and other Room 39 wags referred to them as Churchill’s Boys. The
Bulldog needed them but they never flaunted this fact and were careful to kiss
the ring whenever the circumstances of the latest venture dictated. With
regards to the present matter both Godfrey and Hargreaves had taken care of the
ring-kissing, cigar-puffing and brandy-quaffing at Number Ten late last night
and into the wee hours of the present morning. This was an extraordinary
situation even by the yardstick of what The Boys had been privy to for the past
six years.

Hargreaves looked stonily at Fleming and asked, “What do you know about
Parsifal, Commander?”

Fleming paused. “Parsifal? An opera in three acts by Richard Wagner
loosely based on
Parzival
by Wolfram von Eschenback, a 13th century epic
poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival or Percival and his quest for the Holy
Grail and on
Perceval, the Story of the Grail
by Chretien de Troyes.
It’s also an underground society run by some powerful Nazis said to be
disgruntled with Hitler.”

“Go on.” Hargreaves sat back puffing thoughtfully on his cigar. He liked
this man Fleming. They had spent an evening playing bridge together and he had
fallen under the famous Fleming charm. Hargreaves watched him closely, eager to
see a slip in the mask, a faltering which would expose him to be just as scared
and depressed as everyone else in the room.

“The members of Parsifal are bankers,” continued Fleming,
“representatives of top German businesses like Volkswagen and Bayer, officials
from the Navy and Ministry of Armaments, the list goes on. Rumor has it the
whole movement is funded and led by industrialist Wolfgang Krupp.”