The Ian Fleming Files (38 page)

For two days, Fleming endured a battery of interlocutors. The
undercurrent was that he might have been captured and made a plant of Parsifal.
Fleming appreciated their position and tried not to take it personally. His
main concern throughout the ordeal was that his mother might hear of it and
throw one of her famous snits and embarrass him on a level that was above
Godfrey even. Her powerful friends were useful but the thought of her
complaining to them about her son being considered a potential Nazi
collaborator — even though they hadn’t actually come out and said it -
terrified him more than anything the boys in blue could come up with in
forty-eight hours.

When it was all over he was summoned to see the Chief. It was six thirty
and the sun was beginning to set casting strange wheeling shadows in the
windswept London lanes.

Admiralty HQ had been shuttered since the Germans began bombing the
capital and although there had been no raids for over eighteen months, Rooms 38
and 39 were still quartered in the cramped but less vulnerable Citadel building
across the road. Security had been boosted for the umpteenth time since the
start of the war. There were now three checkpoints and no matter how many times
Fleming greeted the spotty kiosk sentries by their first names he was still
obliged to produce his identity papers thrice per visit. He smiled mechanically
this time, politely proffered his credentials before being asked and hurried
through the doors and across the carpeted hallway. He peeked into the
switchboard room and waved to a row of girls with steel helmets and gas masks at
the ready manning the communications boards, plugging and patching thousands of
calls.

He had not seen or spoken to Maria who remained sequestered in an
undisclosed location. He tried to put her from his mind as he crossed the empty
hallway to a closed door with a discreet plaque that said “Room 39.”

Paddy Blythe turned from a filing cabinet holding a file as the door
opened and a hand tossed a hat at a hat-rack where it landed perfectly on a
hook. She was sitting in her usual place, typing away at the usual routine
correspondence. She got to her feet.

Fleming flashed a smile.

“Your tie’s crooked,” she said and came up to him and pulled it straight.
“And your hair’s a catastrophe. Here, use my comb.”

Fleming took the comb and ran it absent-mindedly through his hair. He
said, “Who’s he in there with?”

On the other side of the green baize door Admiral John Godfrey, his
shoulders hunched inside a square-cut blue suit, was standing by the window
looking out across the immaculate acre of Horse Guards Parade. A column of
household cavalry in impeccable order trotted across the gravel towards Pall
Mall and on in the direction of Buckingham Palace.

“The double agent remains the most prized, the most feared, and the most
unreliable weapon in the espionage armory,” he said without turning to face
Quacker Drake who sat perched on small red leather sofa with his face buried in
a rumpled copy of
The Times
.

Quacker thought a moment before saying, “Sun Tzu.”

Godfrey turned triumphantly. “Has Mister Tzu ever been wrong?”

Quacker curled his lip. “Hard to be wrong when you speak in vague
aphorisms. See Nostradamus.”

Godfrey looked at him sourly.

Back in Paddy’s cubby-hole, Fleming was perched on the corner of her
desk, looking rather alarmed at something when the intercom buzzed and the
voice of authority spoke from the grille:

“Send 17F in Miss Blythe. Kindly curtail the customary flirtation.”

A set of lights on the entry to the connecting office changed from red to
green signaling Fleming to enter.

“Time to face the music,” said Paddy.

Fleming looked at the padded door as if it were going to give him an
electric shock, tentatively reached out for the door handle and walked through.

As a New Year’s resolution and in an effort to get through the day on his
meager tobacco allotment, John Godfrey had recently exchanged his pipe for
cigars. The immediate effect, as Fleming perceived it, was an increase in
Godfrey’s grouchiness.

The admiral was fiddling with a new cigar cutter, a desktop guillotine
presented to him by Paddy who refused to see her boss suffer the indignity of
chewing the tips off.

Fleming stood vaguely to attention before the vast desk across which he
had so often received his marching orders.

The antique ship chronometer on the mantelpiece chimed.

Fleming didn’t really notice that he was being ignored. His mind was
still racing from the conversation he had just had with Paddy. Apparently,
there was a plan afoot that involved using Maria Lustbaden as some kind of
double-agent. How exactly this would play out and how he might be involved or
not involved crowded his thoughts as he stood there impassively listening to
the old sea clock finish its carillon.

“Sit down, 17F,” said Godfrey without looking at him. He spoke with an
ill-concealed irritation.

Fleming took his usual place across the desk from Godfrey’s tall-armed
chair. Godfrey came over and sat heavily down in the chair and looked across at
him. He said, “By the look on your face, I’d say you’ve already got wind of the
Big Idea.”

Fleming feigned innocence. “I try not to listen to gossip.”

Godfrey grimaced. “Don’t let me catch you saying that again. Gossip’s our
livelihood. Do you know or don’t you?”

Fleming broke eye contact, studied his shoes. There was a swift chopping
sound and then when he looked up Godfrey sat back with a newly circumcised
Cohiba, rasped a match on his desk’s strike pad and puffed vigorously as he
touched the flame to the tip.

Quacker coughed pointedly as he flapped the pages of his paper. “Devoted
to the cause, six letters, something ‘A’,” he said apropos of nothing.

“Martyr,” said Fleming after a couple of seconds.

Godfrey gazed intensely at him.

“Yes, I heard,” confessed Fleming.

“Well that wasn’t hard!” declared Godfrey. “Let’s hope the Gestapo
doesn’t capture you and guilt you into talking like I just did! So what do you
think?”

“Sending a frightened girl to do the work of an experienced operative?”
said Fleming. “Well, it just isn’t cricket.”

“You’re damned right it isn’t cricket,” said Godfrey. “This is a lot more
serious. That frightened girl is our only link to Parsifal since you failed to
bring her boyfriend back here.”

Fleming went to speak but Godfrey was undeterred. “I read your report,”
he continued at a blistering pace. “A simple meet and greet and the guy loses
his head while you’re tooling around on a camel. Then you blew your cover on
the train to Cracow.”

“Why are we discussing the past?” asked Quacker.

“Apparently 17F needs a history lesson,” said Godfrey.

Fleming tried not to sound petulant. “Even if she were to pull it off and
prove loyal, she could spend a week with Krupp and not learn anything useful.
By then Parsifal may have struck.”

“If you have a better idea let’s hear it,” said Godfrey.

“Whistle up a Pathfinder squadron of Lancasters with ten-ton blockbuster
bombs and blow Fortress Alderney back to the Stone Age,” said Fleming.

“Don’t waste my time being facetious,” bellowed Godfrey. “Your
reservations have been duly noted. Kindly focus on the hand that has been dealt
us. Things could be worse. We will have someone inside Krupp’s organization,
someone in his confidence.”

“Someone in his bed!” said Quacker with a chortle, eliciting a clenched
look from Fleming.

“You’re hoping he’ll confide in her?” asked Fleming, his face full of a
meld of righteous indignation and devotion to duty. “How long will that take?”

“I’m hoping for more than that,” said the admiral. “She’s no daisy, she’s
been around the block, she knows what they are up to.”

“She’s got no training for this kind of thing.”

“Sleep with a man and lie to him?” said Quacker. “She’s a woman. Those
skills are inherited at birth.”

“They’ll interrogate her,” countered Fleming.

“She’s brave,” said Godfrey.

Fleming didn’t back down. “We already ran her through the ringer. She’ll
go through a whole new battery of interviews.”

“She has no choice,” said Godfrey. “It’s the only way she’ll get to
America.”

Fleming gazed steadily at the great grey face with its unwinking slate
eyes. “Bit of a desperate move.”

“Thank you for pointing out the obvious. We are out of options. If
Parsifal is planning a strike soon we need to get to the root of it. We’re
asking her to resume a prior relationship, not do anything she hasn’t already
done.”

“I don’t think I can get her to do it,” said Fleming.

“You mean it will be difficult,” corrected Godfrey.

“How will she communicate with us? It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re not being objective. She wants asylum and we want her to spy for
us. Without asylum, whether Krupp takes her back or not, she’ll be on the
losing side within a year and she knows what that means. Can’t get someone more
loyal than a person bargaining for their life.”

“Has anyone told her?” asked Fleming.

Godfrey put his cold cigar down and reached for a match. “What do you
think you are doing here?”

“Why me?”

“You are going to have a very special relationship with Maria Lustbaden.”

Fleming remained poker face. “Oh?”

Godfrey turned to Quacker. “You read all the spy novels, Hugh, what’s the
word I’m looking for to describe 17F?”

Quacker thought for a moment. “Idiot?”

They both laughed.

“You know what I mean. The name for the person who oversees the spy,
receives drop offs, meets with them for updates.”

“Handler.”

“That’s it.”

Fleming scrunched his face. “She’s going to telephone from Alderney?”

Godfrey snarled. “Really, I’m not sure what has gotten into you, Fleming.
What is the cause for this resistance? Have you grown attached to this
Fraulein? Are you genuinely concerned for her safety?” He gave 17F the benefit
of a long and speculative look.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Fleming. “They’ll question her as a matter of
routine and she’ll fold. Then what? She’s dead possibly tortured and we’re in
the same position.”

The words had little impact on Godfrey who said, “We need her inside that
fortress to find out what’s going on.”

Fleming’s voice had an air of resignation. “When do I inform Miss
Lustbaden of her new role?”

“She’s downstairs in the interview room,” said Godfrey, relaxing a
little. “An MP is keeping her company. Well run along. You know better than to
keep a woman waiting.”

Maria Lustbaden sat alone in a bare windowless room reading a magazine.
She looked tired and aged. The door opened and Ian Fleming entered unhurriedly
and with a neutral expression. She sprang up and ran into his arms.

“Oh, darling,” she said with deep affection. “I missed you so much.”

She moved her mouth to his and he avoided the kiss by pulling her in for
an embrace. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did they feed you? Do you need
anything?”

“I ate but I want to eat a meal with you. Take me away from here. Is
there somewhere we can go and be together?”

He found his cigarette case, snapped the lid. “Cigarette?”

“I’d prefer something else touching my lips. Like yours?”

He put a cigarette in her mouth, lit them both up.

“Let’s not go anywhere to dinner,” she said. “I will cook for you.”

“We’ve got a job to do,” he said stonily.

She studied his face. By the time he had finished explaining and
reasoning it through there were no cigarettes left in his case and his pocket
handkerchief was damp and sullied with her mascara.

“I suppose this was your idea?” she said, stiff with outraged dignity,
her face rutted with tears and shocked.

He ignored her testy remark. “Try to memorize the names of all the people
you see there. Dates, places, meetings, anything out of the usual that you
overhear. Don't ask any questions. Just use your eyes and ears. They're a
pretty keen and desperate bunch. Don't underestimate them.”

“I’m no Mata Hari. Did you say anything? I mean, that maybe I wasn’t
capable of being a double-agent?”

Fleming looked away.

“Do you want me to do this?” she asked.

“It’s up to you,” he said unemotionally. “You want asylum. This is your
way out of the rubble. Do this for them and you get a one-way ticket to
anywhere you like. They’ll probably throw in enough money to get you set up
quite comfortably in Pennsylvania.”

“What about us?”

“You fly out tonight.”

“I don’t deserve this. It isn’t fair.”

“You’re right. It isn’t. I know it’s asking a lot. Spying on your own
people.”

Maria’s jaw hardened. “I told you before they are not my people. And
certainly not after what they did to Peter. It’s not that I mind helping you…
I’m just scared.”

She gave him a look that would burn itself into his consciousness for a
long time.

Maria Lustbaden was flown to Paris where she was met by a contact in the
Vichy government, a double-agent with ties to the NID, who brought her to the
Gestapo. Word got to Krupp fast and within ten hours she was landing on a
military airstrip for the second time in a week, this time on the island of
Alderney, with swastika decals on the idling planes and German words emblazoned
on the apron.

Krupp sent a driver in his Maybach to collect her. Maria stiffed a smile
at Boris, blanched slightly when she saw the hook on his right hand but wisely
said nothing and stole into the back of the luxurious automobile as lightning
flashed from a brewing thunderstorm overhead.

As the big black command car wended its way up the circuitous road to
Fortress Alderney, Maria sat placidly in the back, her stomach doing
somersaults. It was all she could do not to open the door and jump out. But
then she saw the waves dashing against the jagged rocks and realized that
escape was no longer an option. Her best move would be to get into character
and play her part well.