The Ian Fleming Files (49 page)

Fleming trod tentatively across the splintered deck, his crossbow
forward. He paused before the dimly-lit structures, took a couple of thoughtful
breaths and ventured inside. He was startled by the inside.

Even in the dimness of one oil lamp, the strange, extraordinary nature of
the room rushed up at once. It was a virtual shrine to Frau Krupp. There were
photos of her all over the room, on every available surface and her image was
even embroidered onto a lamp-shade.

Fleming spied a shadow, the outline of a figure standing in the doorway.
He jammed his body against the door and someone groaned. He pulled the door
back to reveal Boris, his face splotched with dark green paint. Boris attacked,
pummeling Fleming’s gut with the end of a six foot long stave. Fleming
sidestepped and decked his shoulder with a judo punch.

Boris recovered and swung his heavy stick but Fleming hooked him with a
jab, sent him staggering backwards and smashing through the rotten door to
outside. Like an uncoiled spring, Boris bounced up, flinging a handful of dirt
into Fleming’s face, blinding him.

Fleming winced in agony as he tried to balance and level his bow. He
fired in the general direction of Boris and sent a quarrel into his gut. The
Bavarian teetered on the river bank, lost balance and toppled backwards into
the water, got caught up in the violent flow and was sucked into a whirlpool.

Fleming heard the footfall and turned as the abominable sight of Frau
Krupp whirling like a dervish rushed up at him. She screamed and threw liquid
in his face. He turned in time to deflect the acid with his arm and take the
brunt of it on his forearm skin which sizzled and burned. He ducked as she
charged him and threw her headfirst into the river. She screamed for help as
she fought a rapid river eddy.

Krupp heard her cries and appeared. Fleming checked his weapon. Two
quarrels left.

Krupp appeared in camouflage and saw his mother thrashing about, ran to
the edge of the water. Fleming took careful aim, waited until he was certain
and fired at him. The quarrel missed! Krupp dived into the filthy river and
submerged. He appeared without his mother, flopped out a short distance from
Fleming and picked up a stashed sword.

Fleming slugged Krupp hard in the jaw and something went flying, landed
on the ground and sparkled in the sunshine. Krupp felt his cheek as blood
dribbled out. He jiggled his jaw. Fleming kicked Krupp’s head like a football.
He thrust his boot out into the German’s stomach and winded him. Krupp rolled
and groaned with the blows.

Fleming loaded the last quarrel into the bow. There was a sudden flash of
silver and Krupp’s blade came out of nowhere shattering the bow. Fleming tossed
the useless splintered weapon and swiped Boris’s stave up from the ground. He
twisted and lunged to his full extent, thrusting his stave forward in the
groove of his left hand. The tip caught Krupp hard on the breastbone and flung
him backwards but he hurtled back and came confidently forward, swishing his
sword like a scythe.

Fleming aimed at Krupp’s right arm, missed and had to retreat. He was
concentrating on keeping his weapon as well as his body away from the whirling
steel, or his stave would be cut like a matchstick, and its extra length was
his only hope of victory. Had he use of both legs it would be one thing, but he
was trying to fight without moving his position which put him at a huge
disadvantage.

Krupp suddenly lunged, expertly, his right knee bent forward. Fleming
feinted to the left, but he was inches too slow and the tip of the sword
flicked his left ribs, drawing blood. But before Krupp could withdraw, Fleming
had slashed two-handed, sideways, at his legs. His stave met bone.

Krupp cursed, and made an ineffectual stab at Fleming’s weapon. Then he
advanced again and Fleming could only dodge and make quick short lunges to keep
the enemy at bay. Fleming screamed in agony as he was forced to use his right
leg. Krupp pounced like a jackal. Fleming slipped sideways, put his weight on
his good leg and gave a mighty sweep of his stave. It caught Krupp on his
forearm with a force that broke bone. Krupp howled in excruciating pain. His
main sword arm!

Fleming pressed forward, lancing again and again with his weapon and
scoring several hits to the body, but Krupp switched hands and parried almost
as well with his left hand as he normally did with his right, caught the stave
and cut off that one vital foot of extra length as if it had been a candle-end.

Krupp saw his advantage and began attacking, making furious forward jabs
that Fleming could only parry by hitting at the flat of the sword to deflect
it. But now the stave was slippery in the sweat of his hands. Krupp suddenly
executed one of his fast running lunges to get under Fleming’s guard.

They had come to the fuming fumaroles. Fleming’s skin flinched at the hot
sticky surface of the mud underneath. The scalding geysers made both men sweat
as they stood there panting waited for the other to strike. There was a sudden
blast of grey mud which jetted out of an opening with the force of a fire
hydrant. Fleming used the screen of steam to hobble backwards behind a protuberant
geyser hole. The spray of mud continued for a few seconds. Fleming wiped the
water from his bow.  

When the mist had cleared Fleming could see Krupp had staggered back to
the lakeside and was making a run for the PT. Where was the Captain, Fleming
wondered, worried for the man’s life. He limped down as fast he could and when
he got there it was to discover that the river-man had finally used that
Liberator pistol of his at close range but evidently it hadn’t been enough. The
Captain’s lifeless body lay there inert. Fleming touched the man’s neck to
confirm what he already knew.

The tussle had bought Fleming some time and explained why the PT was
still moored.

Krupp’s sword slashed at the tow-rope and the PT started to pull away.
Fleming dragged his broken leg with great pain to the boat. Krupp turned from
the wheelhouse to see him clamber onto the deck.

Krupp’s sword jabbed but Fleming moved in time, stooped to reach Krupp’s
legs and shoved him across the deck. Fleming hauled in the tow rope, crawled
over to Krupp who lay crumpled in the corner and bound him to the flagpole.

“What are you doing?” demanded Krupp. “Let go of me!

Fleming gave him a look. “There’s an old saying Krupp. What’s yours is
yours and what’s mine is mine. Mine. Get it?”

“What are you babbling about? Untie me!”

Fleming pulled himself painfully to the bulwark, noticed a kit bag in the
PT and grabbed it on his way, dragged himself to the edge of the gunwale and
painfully vaulted overboard.

Krupp screamed after him. “Where are you going? What are you doing? Untie
me!”

Fleming swam to shore. When he tried to stand upright on the muddy bank
all the shooting leg pain came searing through his nervous system.

The PT floated downstream, veering with the current.

Krupp managed to unravel some twine after biting it to shreds and started
unwinding the coils of rope.

Fleming ransacked the kit bag and felt something inside that made him
smile with joy. An emergency cigarette safely stored in a large caliber
ammunition casing with a flint. He sparked a flame and sat back for the view
with his lit cigarette. For a moment, he had forgotten about the main show and
then turned back to face the river.

The PT made lazy loops, turning itself around 360 as it floated into the
area Fleming was waiting for. He sat on the river banks with his cigarette and
waited.

Krupp freed himself and staggered to the wheelhouse, got a hold of the
wheel and managed to pull himself up with one hand. His eyes went to the
controls. He strained to move the wheel with his one good arm.

Forty feet below him, the fiberglass hull brushed against the wine keg.
The wooden barrel jostled but its contents remained intact.

Suddenly, the side of the hull slammed into the casket. Krupp was leaning
on the wheel with all his strength in an effort to right the vessel. But the
effect was to push it against the mine.

KA-BOOM! There was a terrific fireball explosion. The PT was ripped apart
spectacularly, a nebulous mass of burning flames shot heavenward, and then the
flames plumed into a mushroom of sooty black smoke and flaming detritus
cascaded in fiery flotsam across the lake.

Fleming watched the wreckage raining down. The battered old PT had been
splintered into driftwood. There was nothing left but charred hunks of mahogany
which flamed brightly before sinking into the muddy depths. Within minutes, it
was if Krupp and the patrol boat had never been there.

Fleming gathered his items, drew a deep breath and began the weary task
of vectoring a path out of the wilderness back to civilization.

Something caught his eye. A tiny object sparkling in the mud. He
staggered over to it. One of Krupp’s dental caps. He picked the brilliant-cut
stone up, rinsed it in the river and held it to the light. As he turned it
between his fingers, all the colors of the spectrum flashed back at him from
its mesh of facets until his eye was tired with the dazzle.

Fleming didn’t think he would see the Mediterranean again so soon but two
weeks after his African adventure he was on the forward deck of
HMS Lion
in the shallow sun-dappled waters off Crete. The blue of the sea rivaled the
deep shade of his crisp Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (Special Branch) uniform.
He was bandaged and set in bone-splints but felt lucky to be alive as the ship
bells rang the traditional “Changing of the Guards.”

Fleming peered to his left to see a stoic Godfrey in his peaked cap and
naval whites. Quacker, Blake, Hargreaves and many other familiar faces were
crowded together in their most formal attire.

The Anglican priest and his clerks appeared from aft and met the corpse
which was lying atop a mess table sewn into a sail shroud, weighted with two
cannonballs at the feet and wrapped in heavy steel chains.

The Anglican priest’s words carried clearly over the still sea air. “I am
the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die.”

Fleming drowned him out and turned his eyes to something that he couldn’t
quite look directly at. The object was out of focus, in the corner of his eye
and he was avoiding it because there were too many people here that he knew and
he didn’t want to break down. He listened to the priest.

“He brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry
nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name
of the Lord.”

Fleming flicked his eyes and looked directly at the object he had been
avoiding. It was a blown up photograph of Dilly in his aviator gear posing
before his Mosquito, his smile brilliant, his hair thick and coiffed, his skin
youthful and radiant, a handsome young man and his flying machine ready to take
on the world. Fleming stared long and hard at the smiling face and felt
nothing.

He switched his gaze to the amorphous mass wrapped in shrouds atop the
board where the priest was standing. As part of the burial party, Fleming
approached the entryway when the Boson cried, “Ship’s Company … Off hats.”

Everyone removed headgear and the priest read Psalm 39. When he was
finished, Fleming and the rest of the party upended the mess table and tilted
it until the body slid off it into the sea. As it was dropped into the deep
there was a stony air of silence. The words of the liturgy washed over Fleming:

“We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption,
looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea shall give up her dead,
and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his
coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body,
according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to
himself.”

It was a rare warm Sunday morning in the middle of March. Ian Fleming and
Ann O’Neill were punting on the Isis. The bells of Christ Church College
cathedral chimed in delightful concert with chirruping chaffinches and
twittering larks. Oxford’s dreaming spires spiked up to meet a cloudless azure
sky. Earlier in the day, Fleming and Ann had gone out for a romantic lunch and
they were both dressed to the hilt.

Ann had dispensed with slacks and gabardine and had on a very becoming
summer dress that was light and revealing and in its own simple way seemed to
Fleming to herald the coming of a new dawn. Fleming looked like a character in
a P.G. Wodehouse novel - straw bota, cream blazer with three gold rings on the
cuffs and sharply pressed cricket slacks.

Fleming steered them to a weeping willow tree and brought them to a halt.
He tugged on a cord that extended into the water, pulled up a bottle of
Champagne. He touched it, popped it open and poured two glasses.

“Cheers, Ann.”

“What are we celebrating?”

“Being alive. Take hold of these glasses.” He felt the outside of his
trouser pocket for something. There was something different about him; a
maturity, a cool inner peace. He reached into his pocket and took something
out. It sparkled in the sunlight. It was a 2 carat emerald cut diamond fitted
to a platinum band.

Ann’s face fell. She gasped.

“I don’t want to spend the winters in Jamaica by myself,” he said. “What
do you think?”

“Winters in Jamaica? What are you talking about?”

“Do you want to get married, Ann?”

“Oh, Ian.” She threw her arms around him and cried. “Yes, yes, a thousand
times yes.” She pulled back and extended her left hand and ring finger.

He gently slid the jewel on just below her knuckle. “It’s beautiful.
Where did you get it?”