The Ian Fleming Files (5 page)

Fleming hesitated.
“Let’s hope so. I’m updating our records and our biography of Darlan is
somewhat scant. It’s hard to write a character assessment when we know so
little about the man. Other than that he is a little man. Ha ha.”

“Still stuck in
archives, I see.”

“Do you remember
anything from last night?”

“I remember plenty
but we weren’t discussing French military strategy nor were we preparing
biographies of stunted French admirals. Really, Ian, you have a position at the
Naval Intelligence Department it’s time you stopped milking your mother for gossip.”

Fleming tried a
different tack. “Wasn’t there a new play you wanted to see?”

She jerked her
neck to face him. “Oh, so it’s like that is it? Tit for tat?”

“Try to
think.” 

She sighed. “There
was another Frenchie there, from Petain’s entourage. Maurice? Marcel? Someone
asked him about Darlan and this chap was saying that Darlan was holding out for
the highest bidder. That his ships were for sale to whoever had enough
centimes.”

“Was it Marcel or
Maurice? Try to think.”

She hesitated.
“Marcel.”

“Marcel who?”

“Marcel Proust.”

“Mother!”

“I don’t remember
his bloody name! He’s part of the BCRA. That’s the Bureau Central de
Renseignements et — ”

“I know what it
stands for.”

“I think he said
he was staying at The Ritz. He wouldn’t shut up about the view. ‘Une si belle
vue. Je voudrais mourir dans un lit avec ce point de vue!’ Stupid bloody frog.”

Fleming picked up
his fedora. “Thank you, mother. I knew you had it in you.”

“Where are my
tickets?”

Fleming reached
into his jacket and produced two gilded ducats to Noel Coward’s
Blithe
Spirit
which his mother promptly snatched from him and studied eagerly and
was still fixated on when Fleming discreetly rose from his pew and quietly
exited the chapel.

Fleming, bathed in demonic red light, was studying
developing images with keen interest as they materialized in trays of liquid
emulsion. Behind him, curled negatives and drying snaps hung by clothes pegs on
a shower curtain cord. The dangling black and whites included detailed angles
on
Tigre, Mogodor
and a blurred shot of Admiral Darlan collapsed on his
catwalk in stunned outrage.

Fleming grinned at the candid of the French legend and
exited the bathroom, leaving the current batch of prints to develop.

He entered the living room where the silkily sexy Ann
O’Neill lay stretched out on the divan smoking a low tar Chelsea cigarette
through a cigarette holder and reading
The Power and the Glory
by Graham
Greene.

A slender brunette in her late twenties, Ann had big
brown eyes that had warmth and intelligence and humor. She was wearing a sheer
slip under a cashmere cardigan, with no stockings on and her long, raven hair
was rumpled and her make-up slightly mussed.

Duke Ellington’s album
Sophisticated Lady
blared
from a spring-motor-driven 78 rpm acoustical gramophone, the RCA Victrola 2,
which was housed on a foldout table next to a crackling fire that was the only
source of light in the room. The lamps were all extinguished, as per government
recommendations even though there had not yet been any bombings of English
cities by the Germans.

Fleming, who was wearing white monogrammed boxer
shorts with little dolphins on them and an unbuttoned white cotton shirt, went to
the fireplace to have a closer look at his photographs. His steel blue eyes
blazed in the wavering incandescence. Good old, Henry, he thought, I owe him
one. Pride for his alma mater coursed through him and, feeling puffed up, he
recalled with vainglory the old aphorism “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the
playing-fields of Eton.”

On an impulse he grabbed the telephone off its hook,
blew sharply into the mouthpiece to clear the line and dialed a series of
digits from memory.

“Hello, Sydney? They’re amazing, bloody amazing! I’m
going to show them to Godfrey immediately!” He hung up and dialed a different
number.

A searchlight beam passed through the room as it
scoured the skies for enemy aircraft. Fleming walked with the phone over to the
bay window and snapped the blackout curtains shut.

“Miss Hayes?” he said into the phone. “Tell Records I
want to see all I’m permitted to on Admiral Jean Darlan, D-A-R-L-A-N, yes. And
check with archives. Tell Reginald Withers, I’ll be in shortly and I have an
urgent docket I want to talk to Godfrey about.”

He put the phone away, jittery, and poured himself a
stiff bourbon and water with plenty of ice. The record skipped. He went over to
it, annoyed.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ann.

“This gramophone is rubbish.” He fiddled with it.
“They make such shoddy merchandise these days.”

He gave up. The crackling coal in the fireplace was
the only noise.

He went to Ann and caressed her shoulders, noticing
the abandoned pencil and notepad splayed on the floor beside a pair of very fashionable,
very expensive Herman Delman silk-satin pumps.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Puff piece for the propaganda machine. There’s no
need for a massage, Ian, I know you want to leave me for the office. If you’re
headed in I may go to the pictures with Abigail. I want to catch
Gone With
The Wind
if it’s still playing. Have you seen it?”

“I don’t have time for drivel.”

Ann sipped her Taittinger and scrunched her face.
“This needs ice. It’s not drivel, Ian. The book was wonderful.”

Fleming chuckled.

“Something funny?”

“The thought of you needing ice.”

“Charming.” She went to an ice-bucket and poured
herself some more champagne. The bucket was on a credenza beside a crystal
decanter of bourbon, a tray of ice, a siphon of soda and a flagon of iced water.

Fleming watched her thoughtfully in the dim light as
she fished out some solid ice from amongst the amorphous lumps in the tray. He
wondered why he was still with her. They had been together - if that’s what one
could call their arrangement given that she was still married and they both had
affairs - since January 1939. Almost eighteen months. It was a troubled
relationship, like any other. They argued frequently. She sulked. The
combination of a migraine and listening to her career frustrations often proved
too much and he occasionally lost his temper. Each time they fought she would
withdraw, be cold for about a week and then eventually forgive him.

He knew love at first sight was bollocks but he
believed in unspoken magnetism. When he first saw her she seemed utterly
self-possessed and he was captivated by her indifference. It didn’t take long
to get her into bed. One or two friendly cups of tea at The Ritz while she
poured her heart out about her failed marriage to Shane O’Neill and her
tumultuous affair with the press magnate Viscount Rothermere. Then drinks at
Frascati’s in Soho. Then his place.

She was a reporter at
The Mail
and knew
everyone. They shared information and she was a trusted source. It was a change
from the useless tarts that had absolutely no value beyond the physical. But
there was something missing. (Wasn’t there with every woman?). A year and five
months, he tallied. That should count for something. Laziness, he decided, as
he flicked his eyes over her alabaster body which was slender and hard and
still excited him.

His jaw clenched when he thought about her husband and
‘Teddy.’ He couldn’t help himself. “How’s Viscount Rothermere?”

Ann glowered. “Teddy’s just a friend. Well, my boss,
too, obviously, for the time being. Until you give me the scoop of the century
and I land a column at a paper he doesn’t possess.”

“I’m supposed to save you? He owns half the rags on
Fleet Street. You’ll be playing that boss card forever.”

“There’s nothing going on between us any more if
that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You looked quite friendly together at the races on
Saturday.”

“Says who, your mother?”

Fleming bristled. “My mother?”

“I ran into her at Ascot. Teddy was just saying hello.
Mummy was with her new beau, John Singer Sargent. You didn’t know? Aww,
jealous?”

“Get out!” he snapped. He grabbed her arm and pulled
her roughly off the divan.

“You brute!” She tried to slap him but he caught her
wrist and held her arm in a tight, muscular grip.

She winced. “Let go! You’re hurting me!” He released
her. She scooped up her clothes and headed out when a siren wailed.

“My God! Ian!”

The noise stopped. They waited, anxiously. The silence
was eerie, like a strange hollowness in the ether and then the klaxon boomed
again, but this time on a single sustained note.

“That’s the all-clear,” Fleming said. “They were just
testing.” He walked over to the bar for a refill. She ran to him and clung on
tight. “You need to get out of the city,” he told her. “It isn’t safe. Leave
tonight.”

Ann opened her purse and found a Chelsea, picked up
Fleming’s cigarette lighter and snapped it.

“What about you?”

“I may be traveling this week anyway. To Lisbon.” He
lied. “Conference on Atlantic shipping lanes. A trifling bore.”

“At least you’ll be safe. When are you going into
work? Soon?”

“Not too soon,” he said and moved closer to her.

Fleming’s office was in the three-story, u-shaped
Admiralty building which was referred to popularly as the Old Admiralty and
officially as the Ripley Building. It was the largest of the Admiralty
edifices, a stately red brick affair with white stone detailing in the Queen
Anne style.

Admiralty Quadrangle faced Whitehall, that strip of
road in London from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea lined with government
departments and ministries recognized as the center of His Majesty’s
Government.

Fleming hurried quickly through the West Block
entrance doors, stopping only to present papers to the night guard at the front
desk before continuing down the carpeted corridor to his office on the ground
floor. He was wearing his dark blue uniform which had an emerald green strip of
cloth running between the three undulating ‘wavy navy’ stripes of his rank.

He walked briskly along, not bothering to glance out
the windows that faced the moonlit Horse Guard’s Parade and back of No.10
Downing Street, and made straight for an end room whose outer door was black
and bore a small brass plaque etched with the number “39” in white numerals. He
entered without knocking.

It was late but the interior was still humming. A
dozen of England’s finest minds were at work deciphering secret signals,
translating intercepted recordings and decoding enemy maps. It was a large,
elaborately carved space with a high frescoed ceiling. Sashed windows gazed out
across a square to the Foreign Office. Banks of transmitters and cypher
machines, industrial-sized mimeograph duplicators, magnetic tape-recorders, two
teleprinters and a television were evidence of the sizable wedge of taxpayer
money that was funneled into this one room, the anonymous heart of the United
Kingdom’s security establishment.

The Head of Section 17, Reginald Withers, was standing
over Fleming’s secretary, Miss June Hayes, with a large stack of dockets for
Fleming to process. Section 17 was an internal think tank that met every Monday
to brainstorm ideas and parse all “special intelligence” relating to naval
matters.

Miss Hayes was tall and skinny with green eyes and
natural blond hair, a vivacious, jolly hockey sticks type who seemed to have
boundless energy and was always smiling. She was wearing a checked wool jacket
and medium-full skirt with a hem just below the knee, both by Paul Poiret, a
silk blouse and black suede peeptoe platforms with saucy ankle straps. She was
twenty-two years old.

Withers was in civvies, one of the perks of his
tenured position. Grey herringbone double-breasted wool sport coat, white shirt
with Irish clover cuff-links, rayon tie, slim leg front pleat trousers and a
pair of smartly polished black brogues.

Fleming acknowledged his secretary with a smile as he
took Withers aside. Miss Hayes busied herself with sorting through a stack of
eight inch discs upon which she had recorded pending correspondence using a
Gray Audograph dictation machine.

“Evening, Reg,” said Fleming. “Is Godfrey in?”

Withers was an old pro who took every chance he could
to remind others of the fact. But he was genuinely interesting and often had
valuable knowledge to impart. Fleming liked him.

“This business is ninety percent boredom, ten percent
panic, Fleming. Where have you been all day?”

“On assignment. I need the Chief to read a docket.”

“You and half of Europe. What is it?”

Fleming handed him a black folder with a red star on
it which stood for Top Secret.  Withers looked over the docket, which
included Fleming’s images of the French fleet, and instantly recognized its
importance. “I’m taking this next door right now.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll be in my office,” said Fleming.

Two minutes later, Fleming was listening to
The
Return of Dick Tracy
while he got organized.

“Normally Dick Tracy was a man of few words. Seeing
the 2-Way Wrist Radio was an exception. “It's miraculous!” the square-jawed
detective raved. ‘It both sends and receives!’”

Fleming went to a corner vent in his windowless room
and quietly opened it, carefully listening, took out his cigarette case and
fished out a Morland, sparked it and luxuriously inhaled a huge quantity of
smoke.

“The device weighs a remarkable three ounces, a
marvel of sub-miniaturization.”

Antsy, he sat down with an imported copy of June’s
Life
magazine and opened it to the middle. Betty Grable in snug bathing shorts
peered back provocatively over her shoulders. Fleming’s eyes roved over her
form.