The Ian Fleming Files (51 page)

"Sorry about the French girl, ma
cherie," she said with mock sincerity, kicking off the flirtation. "I
heard you quite liked her."

Fleming was taken aback. "One night
overseas and everyone in the office finds out. What happened to 'loose lips
sink ships'?"

"Well maybe if you kept you lips less
loose there'd be less to talk about, hmm?"

"I'm a secret agent with no
secrets." 

Paddy winked. "Welcome to Room 39."

"Godfrey is right," Fleming said
dryly. "I have no private life."

"Godfrey's always right," Paddy
affirmed as she removed her light pale pink anorak revealing a becoming summer
dress ensemble that drew Fleming's interest.

"The French girl turned out to be
German," he said wanly, his eyes fixed on Paddy's hem which revealed a
sliver more leg than the typical London gal did these days.

"Ah," said Paddy, following his
gaze appreciatively as she sat down and crossed her stockinged thighs tightly
together. "Nicht gut."

"No, dear Paddy. Nicht gut at all."
He found a perch on her desk and leaned in. "I never was one for German
girls, even when I studied languages in Munich."

Paddy craned her neck to meet his lowering
face. "Too aggressive?"

"Bad liars." He moved his mouth
closer to hers. The scent on her neck was redolent of strawberries. He hadn't
noticed the ripeness of her lips before. They were full and juicy. "I
prefer the classic English rose type." His voice was soft. He went to kiss
her. Their mouths were about to touch when a light winked on the intercom and the
grill squawked with Godfrey's voice: "Miss Blythe, kindly remind your
boyfriend that all internal memorandums should be of a readable length i.e. a
page or two, not the bloody
Forsythe Saga
!" He clicked off.

Paddy felt her cheeks flush. Fleming planted
a kiss on the back of her hand instead, stood up with a business-like air,
fetched his fedora from the hat-rack and with a parting smile swept gallantly
out the door.

Paddy watched him go and sighed, "Au
revoir!"

***

A SILVER BELLIED four-engine BOAC monoplane
lowered its landing gear over Croyden Airport causing onlookers to gawk skyward
in rapt astonishment just as an old chocolate-brown Austin cabriolet pulled up
to the main terminal and Ian Fleming stepped out with a nonchalant demeanor,
keeping his steel blue eyes fixed furtively on his immediate surroundings,
having evidently seen more commercial aircraft come and go than the gathering
of less worldly wide-eyed Londoners around him.

He paid the two shilling fare and tramped to
a sign that said 'Customs,' past military personnel flocking the taxiway and an
idling black police van filled with four of London's finest. He recognized one
of the coppers and exchanged hellos through a cracked window. At the concourse
entrance, he flashed his credentials to army security guards and continued on.

A short pretty brunette in a starched uniform
and too much make-up recognized him and brightened. "Hello,
handsome," she purred.

"Good morning, Gloria," Fleming
responded with cool detachment glancing at the ring on her finger. "How's
your old man?"

"Still in town. Let you know when they
send him somewhere." She lifted a chain allowing him to pass.

In the mail room Fleming spied Muriel
"Mu" Wright, 26, stuffing a leather mail bag with letters. He paused
in amazement as he usually did upon seeing the raven-tressed siren. Beneath her
tight uniform, he could make out the curves of her body, the narrowness of her
waist, the exquisite contours of her perfect chest. For a moment, he believed
he could even smell her perfume, though it was more likely the scent of cherry
blossoms blown by a faint breeze across the concourse. 

Before the war, Muriel Wright was one of
England's highest paid fashion models, one of the first British girls in the
profession. With her perfectly symmetrical features and tall slender frame -
not to mention her voluptuous bosom and long satiny blue-black hair - Mu made
an enviable living parading down the grand staircases and flower-strewn foyers
of Parisian fashion houses in backless evening gowns and other
au courant
creations from the likes of Elsa Schiaperelli and Madeleine Vionnet. Her placid
beauty graced the cover of
Harper's Bazaar
and many color print
advertisements for the likes of Vapex, Lucky Strike and Dewar's. And then there
were the racy black and whites for whom she flashed her gams and pert derriere
in one-piece swimsuits earning enough to put her through design school and
support her family. Now, less than two years later, Muriel Wright, like so many
Londoners, led a new and decidedly less glamorous existence.

She paused from sorting, having sensed a
presence.

"Muriel, my love," Fleming chirped
rakishly behind her. "I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes
on."

She spun round to face him. Her thick, dark
hair spilled over her shoulders, stopping just above her breasts. She fixed
Fleming with her smoldering green eyes.

"I like your uniform," Fleming
said, unnerved by the emerald gaze.

"It's the Invisible Man," she
snapped. "And don't remind me about this uniform, you know I hate wearing
it!" She brushed straight past him, knocking his shoulder with her hefty
satchel.

He hastened after her. "Wait, Mu! You
know I don't keep regular hours," he pleaded.

"Hours, my foot! You got what you wanted
and then bolted in the middle of the night. As if you'd stolen something!"

"Let me make it up to you," he
implored.

"Bugger off!" She stomped out a
side door leading to a parking area for dispatch riders. Scrawny pigeons cooed
and scattered at her feet. She unlocked her motorcycle, a lovingly battered
fire-engine red BSA M20 with a cushioned seat custom made for a money-making
behind that its owner hoped might still be marketable in the postwar years. 

Fleming watched appreciatively as Muriel
gracefully mounted her ride and donned a rather masculine-looking leather
helmet.

"And the bonnet makes the look
complete," Mu said wistfully as she gloved up. "I told two Yanks the
other day that I was a model before the war and they laughed. They thought I
was lying."

"Well they haven't seen you naked,"
Fleming grinned.

"Cheeky!"

He stepped closer, eyeing her mail bag.
"Lunch?"

Mu cranked the throttle on her BSA.
"Sorry, darling. Duty calls!"

His hand lurched out and killed the engine,
eliciting a scowl but before Muriel could protest he was giving her the hard
sell. "When was the last time you luxuriated, Mu? I have a suite at the
Ritz. We could have caviar and champagne sent up." He touched her arm.

"But..."

"Shh!" He interrupted, touching his
finger to her lush bee-stung lips. "Think of yourself for once," he
intoned seductively.

Mu watched the pigeons scrapping for crumbs. 

He took his finger away. His voice was a
velvet whisper."Nice hot bath, massage, anything you like."

Mu's bewitching eyes went from the starving
skinny birds to the dark, chiseled features of the tall handsome man
propositioning her.

Fleming felt a spare helmet shoved into his
chest. "Better make it a quickie," Mu said, flicking the engine back
on and revving it.

Mu rode like a hellcat through the city's
narrow arteries and higgeldy-piggeldy lanes, threading around red double
deckers and shiny black taxis, oblivious to the danger of the recently
rained-on streets as she deftly negotiated the serpentine traffic-choked
thoroughfares of Piccadilly and Marble Arch. Fleming held on to her waist as
they zoomed past fallen masonry and ruined edifices, piles of rubble and entire
blocks cordoned off for demolition, the results of 50,000 tons of high
explosive dropped by the Luftwaffe.

As they whizzed past Regent's Park, Mu
hollered back over the rattling 4-stroke engine, "All right if I drop this
mail at the American Embassy on the way?"

"After," he boomed. "I have an
appointment at three."

She nodded. "This war better end soon or
I'll be too old to be photographed in my underwear for a living!" 

He smiled, hugged her tight, glanced at the
mail bag.

***

Mu collapsed onto Fleming, breathless, pulled
a sheet over herself and snuggled up next to him, kissing his neck.

The remnants of a decadent room service
feast, complete with chilled champagne and profiteroles, lay scattered about
the suite amid strewn clothes and motorcycle attire.

Fleming reached across Muriel for his
cigarette case and lighter. Mu pecked his cheek. "Be right back," she
purred. He watched her undulate to the loo, an unbelievable sight.
"Blimey, it's nice in here!" she cried out, admiring the plush Art
Deco furnishing.

"It's been in my family for
decades," he said, losing interest mid-stream and lowering his voice.

"What did you say?" hollered
Muriel.

"Nothing!" He let a second or two
pass and then leapt like a jackal for her mail bag and rifled it. Amid the many
items bearing stamps with eagle emblems and FDR's likeness he discovered a
cylinder embossed with "US NAVY SURVEY DEPARTMENT" addressed to Alan
Morrison.

"Bingo!" he whispered.

The toilet flushed behind him. Fleming
quickly weighed the situation. The bathroom door handle rattled. Fleming
stuffed the cylinder into his briefcase just as a trickle of plaster spilled down
from the ceiling, a pane of glass cracked and the whole room began to rumble.

"What's happening?" said Mu in
alarm.

A shrill air raid siren pierced the night.

Fleming looked out the window.
"Bombers," he said after studying the heavens. "Get dressed, we're
leaving."

Mu blanched. "A raid? I thought they
stopped!"

"War's not over yet, love. Hurry
up!" he insisted, pulling up his trousers.

Her voice trembled. "Where are we
going?"

The siren was on full roar. Fleming grabbed
her by the wrist and scooped up his briefcase as they headed for the door and
the dreadful mechanical clarion competed with the drone of invading aircraft.

Within half an hour Fleming and Mu were
safely underground in Battersea air raid shelter. He had left her in the throng
of an admiring circle of servicemen and snaked off to the dank, unlit
lavatories. Huddled in a stall he was studying unfurled US Navy charts of the
Pacific from within Mu's mail cylinder by the glow of his Ronson lighter. Of
special interest was a cluster of ship symbols in the South Pacific.

"Too many troops in one place," he
muttered. He brought the map up nearer and held his lighter close to the text
to see the name of the island group around which the vessels were crowded. The
legend "Hawaii" could be clearly made out. Fleming snapped shut his
Ronson but not before the flickering flame caught the bright flush of
adrenaline in his eyes. "I'll give you an X you bastard!" he cried.  

CHAPTER TWO                THURSDAY             SEPTEMBER
1

Prinz-Albrecht Straße in Berlin runs east-west
from Wilhelmstrasse to Stresemannstraße near Potsdamer Platz, forming the
border between the districts of Mitte and Kreuzberg. The street was laid out in
1891 and named for Prince Albrecht of Prussia, son of King Friedrich Wilhelm
III, who had owned a large house called Prinz-Albrecht-Palais on the corner of
this street and Wilhelmstraße. Fourteen years later, in 1905, an extension
building of the Museum of Decorative Arts was erected adjacent to the
Martin-Gropius Bau on Prinz-Albrecht Straße 8. This was to house the School of
Industrial Arts and Crafts. Instead, from 1933 the entire southwest corner
block of Prinz-Albrecht Straße and Wilhelmstraße – every building including the
museum, the school and the grandiose Prinz-Albrecht palais, former seat of the
Prussian regent – became the headquarters of the Gestapo. This corner block of
terror also housed the base of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and in
September 1939 developed into a center for the Reich Main Security Office.
Heinrich Himmler himself operated out of the building from an office on the top
floor, thus making #8 Prince Albrecht Street the default headquarters for the
entire SS.

Directly below Himmler resided SS-
Oberführer
Willy Panziger in a  spartan office with nothing in but a small iron desk, a
threadbare oval rug to warm the feet of visitors and a tray with an
earthenware  jug of water and four glasses on it. The room's one concession to
decoration was a framed campaign poster of Hitler with a slogan underneath that
read: 'It is not truth that matters, but victory.'

The ambitious young Willy - he had just
turned twenty-seven - felt the view afforded by his large bay window was
sufficient visual stimulation and that anything else, any kind of personal
baubles or bric-a-brac, was a sentimental distraction. Work was the great
passion of Willy's young life and he attacked it with appropriate relish, with
classic National Socialist missionary zeal. Willy was a rising supernova in the
SS. Himmler's boy. At the outbreak of war he was a Kriminalkommissar in Section
9 of the Reich Main Security Office and automatically ranked as a full
lieutenant in the SS. Over the summer of 1941 he had assisted with the
organization of mass-execution squads and shared in the notoriety of having
assisted in the slaughter of over 30,000 men, women and children, most of them
Russians from 'White Russia', the occupied area of Russia, captured soldiers
and helpless citizens officially classified as political prisoners. Willy had
put the hours in, had acquired the reputation of being suitably amoral not to
say borderline depraved and, most importantly, he looked the part and wore it
well. Fair-haired, eyes of Alpine blue, in every gesture and mannerism to the
manor born, Willy Panzinger was the Gestapo's golden boy. He possessed all the
classic Aryan features exalted by the party with high cheekbones, a strong
jutting chin and thin red lips that split like a wound whenever he smiled which
wasn't often.