The Ian Fleming Files (7 page)

The vigorous, feared head of Room 39 was wearing a
single-breasted bespoke check-green tweed jacket which had slanted besom-flap
pockets and notched lapel, a blood-red bow tie with batwing knot, paisley vest
and dark gabardine slacks.

Fleming stood vaguely to attention, not speaking until
spoken to. Godfrey hurled the poker into the corner of the stone fireplace with
a resounding clang and moseyed over to his desk where he picked up his tobacco
pipe and started picking at it deliberately.

Fleming noticed his photographs of the French fleet spread
out before the Admiral, along with the typed contents of his docket.

Godfrey struck a match. “So you want to parachute into
France? Hitler’s about to bomb Paris, for Christ’s sake, the Bosch is all over
the country and you want me to load you up with gold and fly you into this
quagmire, into this shit-filled croissant?”

“Sir — ”

Godfrey cut him off. “I know you enjoy raising the Air
Ministry’s hackles, 17F, but I just spent half an hour on the phone mollifying
an incensed Squadron Leader Winterbotham who wanted to know why his boy Cotton
was on a fishing expedition with one of my agents in the south of France.”

“I received a tip on the fleet’s whereabouts, there
wasn’t time to go through the proper channels. I wanted proof before I
presented my proposal.”

“Proof? Proof of what? We knew the fleet existed. What
we don’t know is what’s in that bloody frog’s mind!”

“Darlan.”

“No, Louis Pasteur. Yes, of course, Darlan! You’re
lucky I don’t court-martial you for this stunt. You and that Australian crop
duster!”

“All I propose is that we attempt to purchase the
French fleet before bombing it to smithereens. When France falls, the Iberian
Peninsula is going to be wide open for U-boats. We could put those French
vessels to work patrolling the Atlantic seaway to protect our merchant ships.
Would you rather see France’s destroyers in the hands of the Germans?”

“Of course not! From what I hear, Darlan is an
unscrupulous egoist who wouldn’t think twice about selling out. That’s why I’m
approving this fishing trip even though the Prime Minister thinks it more
expedient to send a task force after Darlan and sink the bastard.”

“That’s the fourth largest navy in the world. It’s an
absurd waste of resources.”

“Don’t forget, Darlan hates us, we killed his
grandfather at Trafalgar.”

“Great grandfather. At Waterloo,” Fleming unwisely
corrected him.

The cold grey eyes leveled to meet his.

Fleming quickly changed the subject. “It just occurred
to me, sir, that an honorary dukedom might appeal to Darlan’s ego, along with
the two million. He is a legend in France after all. We could give him
somewhere like, oh, I don’t know... Wales?”

Godfrey gawped at him. “Wales? Why not Scotland? Thank
you, Commander, I’ll let you know when I speak to the money people. In the
meantime, report to The Frythe for equipment, weaponry and if you require it a
-- pardon the pun -- crash course in parachuting.”

Fleming turned to go.

“Oh, one more thing,” said Godfrey. “Station Nine
wants to know how you chaps managed to dodge Jerry’s radar planes over the
Channel.”

Fleming spoke matter of factly, as if it were obvious.
“We flew above the patrols.”

“But how? Without your camera lenses frosting up from
the extreme altitude, I mean.”

“I put the lenses by the wing flaps - the heat from
the engine fumes prevented them from frosting over.”

There was a quiet moment as the idea’s brilliance hung
in the air and Godfrey looked at him inscrutably.

”Thank you, Commander.”  

Fleming was
driving to Welwyn, a village about thirty miles north of London, in a snazzy
fire-truck red Jaguar SS 100 3.5 liter Roadster. It was the 1939 model with
blue leather interior and Weslake overhead-valve. The exhaust emitted a smooth,
velvety growl as he took her up to fifty. He loved driving this car. It sure made
a change from his shabby two-seater Buick. The Jag belonged to his pal Ivar
Bryce posted to Station G in Crete who had asked Fleming to watch his motor
during his absence. Fleming was only too happy to oblige. His Buick was fun but
the Jaguar was divine decadence.

The engine purred
as he changed gears and pushed on through quilted farmland. Butterflies
fluttered in the hedgerows. Hills hosted fluffy clumps of grazing sheep and
dark mobs of ruminating heifers. It was early on a Sunday and traffic was light.
The sun was shining in a sky that was blue but for some wispy hairs of cirrus.
Fleming breathed in the fresh air and was happy to be alive. It almost felt
like summer. Perhaps, Fleming pondered, God really did rest on the seventh day
as was implied by this respite from the heaven-sent precipitation that plagued
the British isles constantly.

He swerved left to
exit the main road. Down a winding lane, past farmhouses and into Welwyn’s
center, where he slowed, passing shops, a post office and an Anglican church
with a steeple. The buildings started to thin out and the road tapered off and
became a creaking wooden bridge. The Jaguar rumbled along its uneven planks and
nosed up the winding path beyond. The narrow lane was lined by mighty old thorn
trees, strong and knotty and as broad as oaks.

Fleming followed
the road as it curled and was struck by the blinding sight of The Frythe, a
magnificent white Tudor farmhouse surrounded by dark forest and rolling green
hills.

No rear approach
possible, thought Fleming, as he stopped at the checkpoint and handed a marine
his ID papers while another marine inspected the Jaguar with a metal detector,
peered under the bonnet and inside the boot. Both soldiers wore standard issue
khaki blouse and trousers, cap, gaiters and boots and displayed appropriate
Royal Marine flashes and badge flashes. They waved Fleming on.

He pulled up and
parked between a maroon Packard and a black Cadillac V-16. The Frythe had been
taken over by His Majesty’s armed forces. There were bars on the windows, a
metal detector embedded in the front door jamb and Quonset huts sprawled on the
front lawn which functioned as barracks, labs and workshops. Servicemen and
civilians came and went in what appeared to Fleming to be some kind of
clandestine public-private joint endeavor.

Two men in grey
flannel suits appeared out of nowhere. Agents Miles Sattler and George Strong
could almost be mistaken for identical twins: both were in the same spook get
up and regulation crew cuts with matching blank expressions.

Fleming flashed a
smile. “Good morning, Commander --

“Ian Fleming.
You’re late,” said Agent Sattler.

Fleming was
indignant. “I was told 08:00 hours.”

“It’s 8:04,”
Sattler said. “Follow me please.”

Fleming obliged,
all the while being eyeballed by Agent Strong who was apparently content to let
Agent Sattler do all the talking. Two guards with Alsatians on short leashes
hurried past.

Sattler beckoned
Fleming forward. “Welcome to ISRB, Inter Services Research Bureau. Military
Intelligence to you, sir.”

They crossed the
graveled courtyard to the front door. Fleming unholstered his gun and set it on
a table before passing through the door’s metal detector which beeped. He
brushed the bridge of his nose. “Copper plating,” he explained. “Old football
accident.”

Uninterested,
Agent Sattler gestured to Agent Strong who approached Fleming and frisked him.
Satisfied, Strong nodded to his colleague. Fleming crossed the threshold into
the house.

Sattler pocketed
Fleming’s revolver. “You can have this back afterwards.”

Fleming followed
his two escorts down an empty passage.

Moments later he
was in a sweltering greenhouse annexed to the side of the house. The
temperature on a wall thermometer showed ninety-eight degrees. Fleming coughed
slightly, stifled by the air which had the damp, earthy smell of the jungle
mixed with a sickly sweet perfume. He glanced around. It looked like a typical
hothouse but there was something otherworldly about the flora which had strange
shades and unusual forms.

There were vivid
bursts of rare orchid blooms, coca plants from the slopes of the Andes, wild
strains of
cannabis sativa
, strangler firs which choked the life out of
their host, lichens known to secrete powerful acids that dissolved rock and
countless other exotic plants with shifting iridescent hues of emerald, violet,
indigo and gold. These unusual specimens, Fleming surmised, were being
cultivated for their potential military applications.

He thought of
poppies and the havoc that little flower wrought. Who knew what other deadly
secrets nature held, what drugs and serums could be extracted or synthesized
from the explosion of colors around him and used for analgesic or toxic
purposes, to heal the wounded or to destroy the enemy.

He thought of the
energy enhancing drugs that the German army was rumored to be dabbling with. It
was said that the Nazis dispensed a drug to its troops that was a thousand
times more powerful than caffeine and twenty-five times more potent than the
Benzedrine tablets Fleming was once issued with. He wondered what a powerful
narcotic like that would do to the body over time. The bennies had made him
depressed. Hitler was raising an army of zombies. Junkies in jackboots. Good,
let him continue, thought Fleming as he made his way through the lurid, oppressive
vegetation toward the far end of the glass house where he could hear the echo
of voices.

He was soon in the
company of Major H.Q.A. Reeves and Lord Suffolk. Introductions went around and
they shook hands.

Reeves was a minor
legend who had invented the Welrod, sleeve gun, a silencer for the Sten gun and
fluorescent night sights. Lord Suffolk was a young inventor on the come who had
created a stir recently with a compass hidden in a button that unscrewed
clockwise.

Reeves was in his
fifties and wore a lab coat with bottle-glass spectacles on his owlish face. He
was stout and bearded. Suffolk was in his thirties and draped in hip, well-cut
beige herring-bone tweed. He had a boyish, youthful face with bright shining
eyes that sparkled.

“Welcome to the Ministry
of Supply,” said Suffolk. “Apologies for the meeting place but all the other
rooms are being used. Bit of a mild panic here since Dunkirk.”

“I quite like it,”
said Reeves. “Good for my rheumatism.”

Fleming twisted a
smile. What a strange pair, he thought. Behind them, through the glass panes,
he could see engineers and technicians developing unusual weapons and other top
secret devices for use by agents in the field.

He felt flushed
and dabbed his damp forehead with a handkerchief. The thermometer showed 100
degrees. Fleming blinked at it.

“Pay attention,
Commander.” Suffolk directed his gaze to a Mont Blanc fountain pen which he
opened.

“One twist and
you’re all set for writing home to dear old mummy.”

He wrote “Dear
Mummy” on a blotter.

“Two twists,” he
turned it again, “and the nib becomes pressurized with an inert gas designed to
emit a one inch stream of fluid acid.”

He squirted it at
a piece of aluminum, causing the surface to corrode. “This is technically known
as a gas pistol. Two kinds of cartridge, lethal and non-lethal.” He handed
Fleming the pen and a box of refills.

Fleming was
delighted. “The pen is mightier than the sword!” He studied the modified
writing instrument for a moment before carefully slotting the pen and
cartridges into his shirt pocket.

Reeves produced a
deck of playing cards and suavely fanned them in a circle like a card sharp.

“What’s your game,
Commander?”

“Baccarat,
vingt-et-un. Depends.”

Reeves splayed the
cards out in a row, deftly flipped them over and selected one at random. The
Queen of Hearts.

“Never trust a
woman!” He peeled the card’s face back to reveal a detailed map. “One country
per suit: Diamonds France, Spades Germany, Spain Hearts and Italy Clubs. Each
number represents a different region. Major cities in the court cards.”

“Ingenious!”
Fleming said, taking the cards from him.

The door opened
and a white-jacketed servant entered wheeling a tea-wagon bearing a pitcher of
fresh lemonade. Ice cubes tinkled in the liquid.

Fleming went to
get a drink when Lord Suffolk blocked him, much to his annoyance. “One more
thing, Commander.” He snapped opened up a small tin case and took out a set of
shoelaces.

“Uh, very nice,”
said Fleming. “I don’t normally carry spares but you never know...”

“You never know is
right!”

Suffolk slipped
the protective cuffs off the lace tips revealing tiny saw teeth.   

“Miniature
serrated edges and embedded inside each lace you’ll find a razor sharp
garrote,” said Suffolk.

Fleming narrowed
his eyes at the laces and saw a thin glint of metal buried in the cords.

Reeves turned and
picked up a telephone. Fleming took Suffolk aside. The servant brought over a
tray of lemonades.

“What about these
hollowed-out golf balls used to conceal messages to prisoners of war?” Fleming
asked Suffolk.

“What about them?”

“I play golf and
was just curious.”

Fleming took a
highball of lemonade from the servant and drank thirstily.

“Oh, really?” said
Suffolk. “What do you shoot?”

Reeves, who had
hung up the phone, interrupted them.

“I just called for
the Armorer. Charles Fraser-Smith.”

“The Armorer?”
said Fleming. “Why? I don’t need a gun. I have my service revolver. Or did. It
was just confiscated.”

“The higher ups
have decided that you need something with more heft now that you’re headed into
the fray. I’ll let Charlie talk about it.”