The Ian Fleming Files (46 page)

“I still have the bruises from the kickback.”

“What?” said Fraser Smith, a hand behind his ear.

“Too much kickback,” Fleming said raising his voice.

“Find a rifle with a stock that you like and band saw this one to match
it, then finish to contour with wood rasps and sandpaper.”

Fleming practiced loading the quarrels into the crossbow’s box magazine.
“Just like a bolt-action rifle.”

“Precisely,” said Fraser Smith too loudly.

Fleming loaded the crossbow and turned to face a target while Fraser
Smith gave more pointers: “Draw the slide back as far as it will go and pull
the forward end down slightly so that the ends of the brass strips on the slide
engage the ends of the runners.”

Fleming located the brass strips and did his best to follow the
instructions.

“This movement,” Fraser Smith continued, “locks the slide in firing
position and a groove cut across the rear end of the slide engages the trigger
sear.” The weaponeer got closer and showed Fleming on the crossbow.
“Simultaneously, the bowstring passes between the first and second quarrels,
and the lower quarrel is automatically nocked ready for firing.” He stood back.

Fleming squared himself and aimed the bow at the huge colored circles at
the end of the range trying his best to maintain a steady hand and eye. There
was a sharp twang and then the quarrel swiftly soared through the air and
landed in a grassy nether region, missing completely.

“Let me try,” said Fraser Smith who took the bow and fired off a five
pack in five seconds, slamming a quarrel into the bull’s-eye each time.

Fleming stared in stunned astonishment. “Crikey, Charlie!” he said. “Or
should I call you Robin Hood?”

“Bloody good?” said Fraser Smith, straining to hear.

“Yes, Charlie.” Fleming patted him on the back, happy with his new
instrument of death. “Bloody good.”

IAN FLEMING stirred and groaned and fought his way up from the depths of
exhausted sleep. Painfully he eased himself up on the metal-framed bucket-seat
and stared out the window at the heart-catching, shimmering Zanzibar
Archipelago lying amid a brilliant medley of emeralds and cobalts and indigos
in the Indian Ocean. It was like a dream; the startling necklace of sun-soaked
islands drifting lazily by, the peaceful putt-putt of the small troop carrier’s
twin engines and the general feeling of warmth and languor that made the world
and the war seem very far away.

As they drifted down over Unguja, dolphins could be seen frolicking in
the rolling surf that lapped at the edges of golden sand. Wooden houses on
poles basked in the warm afternoon wind fanned by towering palms lulled by
waves breaking lazily on the shore. The paradisiacal splendor that welcomed the
six men as they descended through the cloudless blue seemed jarringly at odds
with the cold brutal task which they had come there to perform.

Fleming, Dalzel, Jones, Raines, Dutch and Archer were crammed in an old
crate that had been whitewashed to avoid detection from the ground, a durable
de Havilland Dominie that had seen its summer in the Battle of Britain and was
set for smelting before being commandeered by Q-Branch and modified for its
present purposes. They wore drab tropical khaki battledress with no insignia or
markings, each toting a loaded submachine carbine, at least one other weapon of
choice and a leather infantryman’s backpack holding spare boots, clean shirt
and other items necessary in the field.

The amphibious plane soared over the coastal communities to a British
army post situated beside a soda lake ringed by flamingos. The long-billed
stalkers exploded in a screaming pink haze as the paint-splotched craft skimmed
the placid water that had been mirrored silver by the sun. Fleming emerged
first and directed the small brigade to an unmarked patrol boat moored at the
lake’s edge.

The movements of the base personnel were unhurried. Tanned war-weary
British officers in disheveled uniforms delegated tasks to local Bantu porters
who stood by to assist the landing plane. The natives were naked save for
loincloths. Some lugged items on their heads.

Others used poles to transport sacks of provisions and safari boxes
packed with ammunition. Off in the distance, two very bored, very suntanned
officers, their shirt collars open, sleeves rolled, suspenders loosened, were
shooting skeet using dinner plates as clay pigeons.

Fleming flicked his eyes over the vessel that was to transport them
upriver. It was a PT boat of that there could be no doubt. But it had sustained
considerable though not incapacitating damage to both hull and superstructure.
It was a 78-foot Higgins but its dancing days were over. The sleek hull was a
sharp V at the bow softening to a flat bottom at the stern, a similar shape to
the planing hull of a pleasure boat, made of double diagonal mahogany planking
held together with copper rivets and bronze screws. A ribbed canvas awning roofed
in her stern providing shelter from the torrid heat.

The yanks had sent a couple of dozen PTs over at the start of the war but
Fleming had never seen one. Nimble, light, very fast and heavily armed
apparently. The PT boat squadrons were nicknamed “the mosquito fleet.” “Devil
Boats” to the Japs. This one looked like it had borne the brunt of a hundred
destroyers and lived to tell the tale. She was on her last legs. No one had
bothered to hammer out the dents and give her a fresh lick of paint. The
depth-charge rack was missing but she still had a pair of monstrous twin
fifties.

Fleming had heard that the Higgins PTs were “lively” and pitched and
rolled with a vengeance. Stability probably wouldn't be a factor with the force
of the currents he anticipated. Despite her battered appearance, for the muddy
arteries that they would be sloshing through she would suffice and it was
unlikely that there was any hardware upriver to contend with the 50s.

After they made a temporary camp within the base, snacked and drunk some
coffee, they shoved off following a tributary east to Jambiani. From there they
embarked for the mainland, cruising three hundred miles south along the
jungle-clotted Msasani Peninsula before putting ashore at the mouth of the
Pangani River in the sweltering port of Kunduchi, just north of the far busier
harbor at Dar Es Salaam. Then they pushed inland.

Fleming had a sensation of leaving the world behind as the PT boat
continued on up the swampy river and a profound silence and sense of isolation
descended.

The first night had been an uneventful one anchored against the muddy
banks. They set off at sunrise and four hours later the air was thick and
sluggish as the boat’s low broad stern crawled languidly over a smooth swell.

Fleming was aft studying a topographical map, trying not to let the
diesel fumes turn his stomach. Mike Archer stood guard smoking a cigarette, his
eyes obscured by mirror-fronted shades.

Dutch manned the forward bow fanning himself with a palm frond, his rifle
casual on his shoulder. Dalzel shook a Chesterfield from its pack and stashed
it behind his ear while he checked the ammunition supplies for damp. Jones and
Raines were dozing in the shadow of the tarpaulin catching up on sleep while
garish foot-long dragonflies and other brightly colored winged insects droned
in and out inquisitively.

The torpedo-boat, its engines throttled back half speed, thrust its way
into the rush of criss-crossing currents that signaled a coming delta. Beyond
the edges of brush, on the silvery sand-banks, hippos and alligators sunned
themselves side by side as the naval craft cruised down the widening stretch of
waterway. The trees, lashed together by creepers and countless species of
stringy gauze-like bush, seemed to be the curtains to a secret primitive world
that lay beyond.

His inspection work done, Dalzel rasped a match against his boot sole,
cupped the flame and brought it to his Chesterfield then sent the match
spinning over the gunwale towards the pale gleam of the river where it landed
with a hiss. He darted his eyes to the foliage.

There was a sudden movement in the thicket, the heavy progress of a great
beast feeding. A swatch of grey hide, a flash of ivory, and then the light
brown crown of the mighty
Loxodonta africana
broke the jungle canopy.

Monkeys screeched. An aggressive baboon and a cheetah tumbled from the
vegetation to the banks in locked combat. A curious giraffe poked its mottled
snout skyward through the treetops and sniffed. A lioness, muzzle dark with
blood, sitting in the cool shade of a sprawling mangrove tree, paused from its
ravishment of an eland carcass and looked up at the humans with the blank
lifeless eyes of an automaton.

The boat’s twin diesels kicked up and Fleming and his unit moved further
and faster into the primeval forest.

Later, Fleming was in the wheelhouse with the Captain, a local ex-copper
who once called the river his beat. The lean strong black man with graying
temples kept his beady eyes rooted on the channel discerning the shadows of
hidden banks and sunken stones. His kapok-filled life jacket hid a webbing belt
with a holstered FP-45 Liberator pistol. He had acquired the crude single-shot
American firearm from a black-market contact in Zanzibar City. It was a .45 and
the barrel was unrifled which meant it was useless at anything beyond 25 feet
but that just happened to encompass the length and breadth of his domain.

The Captain was studying the bewitched expression on Fleming’s face. It
was the disconcerted look he’d seen countless times on the enchanted mugs of
white landlubbers — the fascination of the incomprehensible, he called it - and
every time he gave them the same speech.

“A hundred years ago this continent was a vast, dark unknown,” he began.
“Only a few white men, ivory hunters, missionaries, slave raiders, explorers,
risked their lives. Gleaming tusks was the prize and sweating slaves sold by
their own kings and chiefs.”

Fleming tuned the hoary spiel out and strained to see into the dense
jungle, aware of every sound, sweating. He slapped at biting bugs. The brooding
terrain seemed to pulsate back at him defiantly.

Broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands and the PT
butted against shoals until it encountered a hippo-infested inlet. Fleming
watched the behemoths wallowing in the mud as the Captain blithely sailed on
paying them no heed. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a
railway cutting.

The oppressive tranquility was broken by the sound of a capella voices
and intermittent drum beats. They cruised past a sunbaked coffee field where
Bantu children picked beans while surly overseers brandishing whips sat in the
shade sipping water from animal-skin gourds ready to dispense punishment for
the slightest infraction.

Fleming contemplated the wretched sight of child exploitation and fought
the urge to swivel the twin 50s and send a ribbon of lead into the miscreants.
Dalzel saw the look on his face and gave him a simpatico look, shuffled out a
Chesterfield and lit the skipper up.

As dusk settled, the commandos hacked out camp space just beyond the
shore on the edge of a desiccated forest. White skeleton trees stood drained
and stripped of all color with bristle boughs and sapless boles and exposed
roots in dead soil. It was six o’clock at night and still sweltering. The rays
of the setting sun slanted low across the camp.

Fleming helped Archer unspool a roll of tough mosquito netting.

Jones was sitting on a collapsed teak tree pushing a needle steadily
through a patch in a safari shirt. Dalzel brought out a small butane burner and
a tiny kettle and proceeded to boil water. The guys watched in slight
wonderment as he produced a fistful of teabags, looked at them all with a
cheeky grin and said, “Anyone fancy a cuppa?”

They drank from flasks, tin cans, ate spam, smoked cigarettes.

Dutch was the only one who didn’t partake in refreshments but instead
focused on cleaning a specially designed bolt-action rifle with tender loving
care. It was beautifully machined with the stock inlaid.

“This is a killing ground,” he said to Raines who was dropping matches
onto a colony of driver ants devouring rotten bark.

“It’s a petrified forest,” said Fleming.

“There are trees here,” conceded Raines, “but those aren’t branches.” He
indicated to clusters of sharp white fragments scattered about. “Those are
animal bones. This place is cursed.”

There was hiss and spray of venom that splashed onto the dust. A shot
rang out. The king cobra spasmed, tongue extended to full length as its central
nervous system exploded from the bullet’s impact.

Archer holstered his service revolver, his gaze rising up to meet the
steel blue eyes that could be so cold or so compassionate.

“Are you trying to give our position away?” Fleming snarled. “Next time,
use a machete.”

“Sorry, boss,” said Archie sheepishly.

Fleming watched the cruel African sun plummet from a violent purple sky
in swirls of lurid crimson. Strange birds and animals made unfamiliar sounds. A
crocodile surfaced and darted its periscopic eyes about then submerged.

Later, Fleming huddled with the group around the map. Dutch unscrewed a
small silver hip flask, took a nip and passed it around.

“According to our intelligence,” declared Fleming, “Once a month, three
of Krupp’s men leave his encampment to get supplies, meeting traders at this
bartering post on the river delta here.” He indicated on the map. “We don’t
know what they look like but they won’t be expecting us so keep your eyes
peeled. We’ll camp here tonight, head out for the delta at dawn and wait for
them to show.”

The boat was like a sleek steel sea serpent gliding dangerously through
the sunlit mist. It came to a fork in the river, proceeded down a narrow
rivulet and then slewed around a bend until the channel widened into a delta
that fed into a huge still lake. Squadrons of flies swarmed off the unwavering
water and invaded the navy boat.