The Ian Fleming Files (27 page)

Kurt felt a wave of nausea wash over him. His legs crumpled with nerves
and he had to steady himself against the stone edges of a recess. Otto, who had
been waiting for his older partner to crack and was frankly surprised that he
had held up this long, helped him to a window for air.

“He’s going to kill us,” Kurt said between deep gulps of air.

“If we don’t do as we’re told he’s sure to.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of course I am. But what can we do?”

Kurt found his sea legs and they continued on down the spooky passageway
to the door. A motion sensor triggered a bolt release which clunked open. The
entrance was pulled inward by a white-gloved servant who bowed and parted a
sumptuous velvet red drape, beckoning them inside.

A Mozart concerto drifted over the wide high-ceilinged space which was
illuminated by firelight and the flashing sheen of sheet lightning. Two figures
at the end of the long vaulted great room were fencing with straight sabers in
a loud passionate bout.

Kurt and Otto followed the servant across an ivory vestibule covered with
rugs of animal hides past mounted trophies, clay masks from Gabon, a
hand-carved ebony billiards table, sub-Saharan deities molded in bronze,
bloodstained Zulu warrior shields, tusks suspended on wires, priceless Yombe
figurines and a collection of shrunken heads. One could almost hear the soft
thud of tribal drums along the banks of the Zambezi.

They entered the main section of the hall which retained the original
stone floor and was redolent with the smell of burning pine. The source of the
woodsy fragrance was a massive open fireplace where Kurt and Otto were
deposited by their silent guide who bowed almost imperceptibly and withdrew. As
the two partners flitted their eyes about the splendidly effete decadence they
noticed an elderly woman sitting in a rocking chair knitting a Panzer wrap with
a pair of ivory-handled knitting needles. Otto stepped closer and smiled. The
rocking stopped.

The deeply-trenched face, its authority conveyed in a single glance,
fixed the young German and made him tremble.

Kurt appeared with a tight smile and pulled his pal back to the middle of
the room. “Fool,” he whispered. “Don’t you know who that is?”

“I didn’t see her sitting there,” Otto hissed.

Kurt shot him a glance. They stood there in the dancing shadows watching
the two figures thrusting and parrying. The section they were in rose to the
full height of the house and was crossed by open beams that also supported a
balcony.

An entire wall was devoted to a matrix of glass display cases that held
bushels of diamonds, every shape and size, from rough octahedral crystals the
size of cue balls to exquisitely cut Asschers no bigger than a fingernail.
Yellow, brown and colorless. Rare hues like blue, green, black, translucent
white, pink, violet, orange, purple and red.

Krupp had instructed his architect to install the complex on the east
wall opposite the room’s biggest window. Whenever the sky over Alderney wasn’t
cloudy and there was a clear sunset, which wasn’t nearly often enough as far as
Krupp was concerned, he would stand before the glass panoply of colored gems
with their million polished planes and contoured facets and wait for sinking
sunlight to strike whereupon he would revel in the multifaceted prismatic
brilliance, a slanting, strobing rainbow spectacle, and imagine that he felt
like the Sun King must have felt each enchanted evening in the hall of mirrors
when he gazed upon the sun-streaked waters of Versailles.

Krupp set his moods by the celestial light-show cleaving to the belief
that the rays had a restorative effect on his weary soul. His doctors scoffed
at the suggestion that light could lift a person’s spirits and attributed his
blue moods to the winter chill. While it had been another harsh unpleasant
season, Krupp’s second freeze over on the miserable rock, it was the brightness
of summer that he craved, not its warmth. The British darkness dogged him with
its oppressiveness. There had been no diamond sunset for months and he was in a
foul mood.

Two years ago Krupp had accepted the custodial position of caretaker
governor. Over time, the wretched islet had become his power base. He liked the
perception of power that came with the job. The day to day running of the camp
was delegated to his able staff and, except for an afternoon of paperwork once
a week, he was free to pursue his own agenda, from a compound safer than the
Wolf’s Lair. But the weather. How he longed for sunshine. His next stop would
be somewhere warmer, he promised himself. His heart hankered for the African
sun that warmed his back as a boy.

He was born thirty-six years ago in a fertile swath of overseas German
territory known as The Kionga Travel which overlaps Tanzania and the Portuguese
colony of Mozambique. His father had massacred Tulus on behalf of Kaiser
Wilhelm and been generously rewarded with enough treasure to allow him to
retire at 25 with a sprawling compound. He imported a wife, a Swiss heiress,
who gave him a son. They lived as a family for a year until Wolfgang’s father
was killed by bandits for the money he had in his pockets.

At 17, Wolfgang traveled to Surat, India where he learned the diamond
trade. By the time he was twenty-one he knew all the main players, where to get
the best stones and how to move them across borders. He made money and got a
taste for the finer things in life. The mansion he built for his mother in
Surat was dubbed India’s most lavish home for a living person by the British
press, a sly reference to the fact that the Taj Mahal was a mausoleum.

It was typical of Krupp’s growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the
first man in Surat to own an automobile. He dispensed with the flag-bearing
footman and barreled through the shanty towns with only a friendly toot of his
horn as warning to scurrying denizens who regarded his gleaming chrome and
black juggernaut as an angry god sent on a vengeful rampage by Kali.

It wasn’t all a bed of roses. Wolfgang lost a young wife in childbirth at
the hands of ill-equipped doctors. For a while he turned his back on the world
and built an oceanfront palace in Dar Es Salaam, only to see it looted during
the Trewali riots of ‘29. After that he roamed with a death wish until he got
into a fight with a gem courier who shot him point blank in the chest. The .45
caliber bullet missed his heart by a centimeter and the resultant scar made it
look like he had a third nipple.

Today that scar was shielded by a metal gorget. Wolfgang Krupp cut quite
the romantic figure in his form-fitting fencing jacket and black breeches with
polished steel-heeled brogues that clattered on the stone floor as he lunged.
His long stringy blond hair was slicked back off his face and bunched in a
knot, revealing a strong patrician forehead sloping down to dark eyes blazing
with intelligence. It was a handsome visage that wouldn’t be out of place in
one of Josef Goebbels’ kitschy productions extolling the virtues of the German
aristocracy.

His fencing partner was Boris Distler a.k.a Boris the Blade, one of the
finest pre-war swordsmen in Bavaria. Famous for his swashbuckling, but too old
for combat at thirty-five, Boris was recruited by Krupp to keep the
industrialist in fighting shape during his tenure on the barren island. Boris
enjoyed his work at first but his master was a quick study and after three
years it was Krupp who was exercising Boris. Maybe Boris had grown rusty as
much as Krupp had improved. Whatever the reason, they were currently at an
impasse: it was impossible to say who was the better swordsman. This impasse
had lasted three months with Krupp eager to better the Bavarian and Boris keen
to maintain his reputation. The sessions were growing more intense, lasting
longer. Neither of them knew how it would end. Boris had dropped all efforts at
servility. They were no longer employer and employee but two men locked in
primal combat.

Kurt and Otto stood anxiously watching. It was hard to tell if the
fighting was real or just spirited sparring. Kurt did his best not to retch.

Wolfgang Krupp was on the offensive, attacking with a cutting action,
trying to provoke a reaction from Boris who prided himself on being hard to
rattle. Krupp thrust, lunging at his implacable foe who edged backwards toward
the window that looked out on the storm.

Krupp taunted him. “I feel your rage, Boris. Try to channel that anger.”

“I’m not angry,” said Boris as he swiped. “I am in complete control of my
emotions.”

Krupp sliced and jabbed. “Complete control? You are deluded!”

Boris swung his sword elegantly and swatted Krupp’s double-edged blade
which was made of the finest hardened steel.

Krupp whirled and took a new position, parried as Boris charged. “Admit
it,” Krupp said. “You want to hack me to little pieces and throw my carcass
into those crashing waves.”

Boris scoffed. “How far would I get if I slaughtered the commandant? Your
guards would cast me into the camp with the Jews and see me gassed.”

“It sounds like you have given it some thought.”

Boris was bold. “I dream about it.”

He slashed at Krupp and forced him to a corner. Krupp riposted with a
counter-attack, hacking at Boris’s sword-arm, drawing a high outside parry.
Boris followed the parry with a high line riposte. Expecting that, Krupp made
his own parry by pivoting his blade under Boris’s weapon, putting his blade off
target, bending his wrist to a curve and then slicing at Boris’s gorget,
severing the chain attaching it to his shoulder. The protective iron chest
plate clanged to the cold stone floor. Neither man paid any heed and fought on.

Boris thrust, extending his front leg by using a slight kicking motion
and propelling forward with his back leg. He slashed at Krupp’s saber to gain
priority and continued the attack. Krupp parried, blocking Boris’s sword,
deftly deflecting it away. Krupp twisted his wrist which turned Boris’s sword
from his hand. Boris caught his sword with his free hand, met Krupp’s thrust
with ease and parried.

Crouched, Boris kept his gaze steady as Krupp made two quick moves,
hooking Boris’s blade out of his hand and sending it flying. Another rapid move
at Boris’s feet forced him back, closer to the open window where heavy rain
slashed in. Krupp eased and allowed him to retrieve his weapon. They clashed
and Krupp sent him back again toward the open hole to the sky and its three
thousand foot drop. Krupp tilted his hilt and the thrice folded steel caught a
lightning fork and dazzled, blinding Boris.

The blade slashed down in a sweeping, arcing movement. There was a clang
as Boris’s sword and gauntlet clattered to the stone tiles. Boris’s face
registered pure shock as he noticed his right forearm still clutching his sword
lying severed on the ground. Blood seeped from his stumped arm as he stared in
stunned astonishment.

Kurt and Otto tried to contain their reactions.

The formidable Frau Krupp set her needlepoint down and came stomping over
in a huff. “Wolfgang what have you done!”

Krupp looked at Boris contemptuously as the one-armed Bavarian knelt
before the window to scoop up his limb and wailed plaintively at the storm.
“Stop whimpering you baby!” he said as he half-filled a small squat tumbler
with whiskey, went over to Boris and knocked the drink back.

“This is not the way to spend leisure time,” groused Frau Krupp.
“Parading about like a pagan emperor. Shall we visit the camp and find some
Jews for you to maim?”

“It was not intentional, mother.”

Frau Krupp put her arm around Boris and escorted him out.

Krupp watched them go and couldn’t resist a jape. “Do you need a hand?”
he cried. He snickered to himself as he removed his protective plates and
donned a silk doublet, revealing what looked like a trinity of papilla on his
torso as he dressed.

The gramophone had stopped grinding out Mozart and was skipping as the
needle scored into the center rings. Krupp returned the stylus to its cradle.
He sheathed his steel in its diamond encrusted scabbard, poured himself another
bourbon and turned to see his two lapdogs standing there patiently by the dying
fire. His face dropped. He had forgotten about his meeting with the two
incompetents. He swirled the amber liquid in the squat square crystal tumbler
and contemplated their fates. He placed a cigarette in a holder and lit it,
took a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it between his teeth with a faint
hiss.

“Let’s not make this complicated,” he said. “I’m a fair man. Only one of
you has to pay.” He gave them both a long cold meaningful look.

There was a moment of stillness while Kurt and Otto processed this. It
didn’t take them long to cotton on. Otto went for his Astra 600 while Kurt
lunged at his throat, wrapped his hands around his larynx and proceeded to
choke the life out of him.

Krupp’s eyes flamed with morbid fascination as he watched the death match
play out.  

A look of twisted satisfaction came over Kurt’s face as he squeezed and
Otto slackened. Otto’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. Kurt finished him
off, tightening his grip. The shot rang out. Kurt’s grip relaxed. A second
blast went clean through Kurt’s neck, spurting blood all over a wall display of
Tanzanian woodwind instruments.

Krupp’s expression went from surprise to annoyance as Kurt’s dead body
collapsed backwards onto a treated lynx hide rug.

Otto stood there panting, out of breath and horrified, the tip of his
Astra still smoking from the two rounds it sent into Kurt.

Krupp poured him some whiskey. “To the victor belongs a stiff drink.
Better take it before my mother sees that rug. Now listen, I don’t have much
time. You are to fly to Cairo and find that Judas and the woman he left with.
You will have a new partner on your mission.” He pressed a button on the
intercom and spoke into it. “Send the brute in, Anike.”