The Ian Fleming Miscellany (4 page)

The initial budget was £250. Muir's brief was to collect ‘the milestones of progress in the nineteenth century. This set me to exploring histories of science and sociology and running to earth the original and source material for anything that had affected human outlook and habits, from the atomic theory to the zipp
[sic]
fastener, and from lawn tennis to the Mendelian hypothesis.' As John Pearson, his biographer, points out, Ian had cleverly hit on works of enormous significance that were cheap as chips:

For four pounds they picked up one of the remaining copies of Madame Curie's historic doctoral thesis of 1903 which told the world that she had isolated radium … Other unusual rarities included Sir Humphrey Davy on fire-damp in coalmines, Pitman on shorthand, and Freud on the interpretation of dreams.

Such diversions took you only so far. Fortunately, 1939 was to be the making of Ian Fleming. His tenacity in making his ambitions plain, his obvious ability and his extraordinary network of contacts came together to put him in the position he required in order to further his ultimate aim: to write best-selling thrillers.

Fleming's former career as a journalist was well known to Lance Hugh Smith. His fascination with spying was clear to Conrad O'Brien Ffrench, painter (notably of Jamaica), Russian speaker, veteran of Mons, secret service officer and businessman. O'Brien Ffrench had been working for Claude Dansey's Z organisation, a shadowy outfit that did the work that MI6 was supposed to be doing in the immediate pre-war years. MI6 was underfunded, incompetent and badly led. Dansey had no official paid network of spies but deployed clever locals or expats like Alexander Korda to report from Europe. O'Brien Ffrench's own cover was blown when he telephoned advance warning of the Anschluss in 1938. He saved innumerable lives and got out of Austria unscathed with his family.

A trade delegation was leaving for Moscow at the end of the winter. Lance Hugh Smith, of Rowe and Pitman, told Ian that he would be leaving at that time. He was to join the press pack and write informative articles for
The Times
while ferreting out, behind the scenes, clues to the direction in which Stalin was most likely to jump; on his return to the City he would write a report, in his capacity as a concerned member of the public, to the Foreign Office.

This could lead to something; he knew it.

Russia's railways had been built on the defensive principle of an extra wide gauge. The whole delegation and press corps visited Warsaw first, then travelled to Moscow in the luxurious train normally used by Maxim Litvinov, the foreign minister. It was great fun, and Ian Fleming had a delightful time, despite having to fashion arresting news out of hours spent listening to Mikoyan, Litvinov and the British trade minister nitpicking over the price of fish. Sefton Delmer, who was there for the
Daily Express
, said he spotted the young man right away as a spook because he behaved like one. He even persuaded his new friend to come with him on a wild-goose chase to find Litvinov's flat. But beyond that – no. There were no strange meetings with sinister fellows on park benches, no discussions that began ‘I see it is raining in Minsk tonight'.

Yet when, in March 1939, Fleming's report landed on the desk of the relevant Foreign Office bureaucrat, it was crisp, fact-filled and convincing. The covering note – headed 43 Bishopsgate EC2 – hit just the right note. His points were ‘hastily compiled to correct the impression of some of my friends that the Russian “steam-roller” is the solution of all our problems … I am afraid you will find them very amateurish'. Well of course. No one should think he was hoping to get into the secret service off the back of this. What follows are the report's key points, omitting the figures and the caveats he cited in his text.

Emphasising that he laid no claim to solid knowledge, he pointed out that the Soviet Union's current position was defensive, not aggressive and that the Soviets needed time to grow their industrial base in order to become an effective fighting force. The population was 170 million. The USSR's strategic value to Britain could be considerable. It would lie in diverting hostile forces from the Far East, the Mediterranean and the North Sea and thereby allowing food and fuel to pass.

He reckoned the possible strength of the Soviet army was 5 to 10 million soldiers, currently undersupplied with arms of any kind. Communications along the Western Front (road, rail, radio, fuel dumps and preparation of the people and terrain) were good.

Inside the country, roads and railroads were in poor state, except on the approach to the main cities. Raw materials produced in Ukraine and the north west were accessible.

Russian air power was small by comparison with its army. A supply of better quality fuel was scheduled but maintenance was slovenly. The paratroopers were expert and there were lots of them.

The Russian navy had plenty of nimble light vessels and submarines but too few big ships; they had only one aircraft carrier so far. Large destroyers and cruisers were promised but not yet built.

Morale was low in all the services, industry and the population generally. The purges of 1937 and 1938 had upset people far more than any war.

Russians, including Stalin, would prefer Germany as an ally. Their army had been trained in Germany. They neither liked nor trusted the British. Fleming concluded that if collaboration proved unavoidable, we must sup with a long spoon.

This is a mere summary. The real thing was grippingly written and authoritative, despite the disclaimers. It proved, in the event, right about Stalin's intentions. So who were Ian's sources? If all the figures he cited had been available to a journalist who was presumably under 24-hour surveillance throughout a short stay in Moscow, surely MI6 would have had them already? It is true that MI6 was in a state of near-collapse, but even so – where did he get his information?

The figures may have been surreptitiously provided by more than one person. The foreign diplomatic corps in Moscow at the time was not allowed to leave the capital and any contact with the locals was strongly discouraged. But the Narkomindel, the Soviet Diplomatic Corps abroad, and its foreign commissar Maxim Litvinov, had found it difficult to explain away the horror of the 1937–38 purges. Key Ambassadors were recalled from all over the world – including Washington – and not replaced; others were required to return twice a year. At home, the NKVD interfered constantly. But other than Stalin, Litvinov and his diplomats must have had the closest insight into Russia's foreign policy intentions. Litvinov was old-school Bolshevik and one of Lenin's circle in his lifetime. He had lived in Britain as unofficial Soviet ambassador at the end of the First World War but had been arrested by British Military Intelligence and swapped for Robert Bruce Lockhart, the spy and journalist, in 1918. Litvinov was married to Ivy Low, who was English, and they had children already when he was deported; his family followed him to the USSR later. As an Anglophile and a Jew, he was considered suspect. Stalin's code for that identity was ‘rootless cosmopolitan'.

Throughout the 1930s Litvinov had worked hard through the League of Nations to mend fences with the Allies, especially the Americans. In January 1939, he wrote a worried letter to Stalin about the damage being done to foreign relations by the lack of ambassadors, competent second-tier diplomats or even staff abroad. Stalin was unconcerned. He was preoccupied by Russia's possible co-operation with the Nazi government. He dismissed Litvinov in May of 1939 and encouraged a campaign against him and other Jews in high positions. The dismissal and the campaign were signals to Hitler that he was open to talks.

Wherever the sources of his data, this sober report on Russia's potential as an ally, or quite possibly as an enemy, was Ian's calling card. When the right people read it, doors were held wide for him. About six weeks after he submitted it, he received a mysterious invitation to dine at the Carlton Grill with Rear-Admiral Godfrey, who had recently been made director of Naval Intelligence. Another admiral, Aubrey Hugh Smith (Lance's brother) was there to introduce them.

Admiral John Godfrey, head of Naval Intelligence and Fleming's boss and mentor at NID during the Second World War.
The National Archive

Rear-Admiral Godfrey had not yet taken up his post as DNI, but he had been busy choosing a team of over 100 people from various fields. They must above all be quick-witted and imaginative. They would be given free rein and they need have no service background. A determined, challenging approach – a willingness to think the unthinkable – mattered far more. ‘Blinker' Hall, who had been head of naval intelligence during the First World War, had told him to look beyond the services for people like this, so he did.

He had been particularly struck by the way Mansfield Cumming, ‘C', had relied very much on one able, quick-witted person, his personal assistant, during the First World War. Claud Serocold's tireless support had enabled Cummings to get twice as much work done. Godfrey needed somebody just like that, and he asked around, talking to – among others – Fleming's old editor at Reuters. Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, of all people, confirmed that young Ian Fleming from Rowe and Pitman could do the job.

And behold, it was done. All that sly questioning of friends abroad, all the proof that he could keep secrets, all that suffering over not being good enough for the Foreign Office, all the flattery and charm expended by his mother upon the great and good – and finally, Ian Fleming turned out to be exactly who they were looking for.

Ian had to be provided with a commission and a uniform. He would be in the Special Branch (intelligence and meteorology) of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve – the Wavy Navy, so called because of the undulating stripes that RNVR officers wore on their sleeves. The other requirements of his new employment, which would start in July, were outlined in writing by Rear-Admiral Godfrey. They amounted to gatekeeping, corresponding, knowing everybody who mattered inside and outside the service, communicating what Godfrey wanted, improving his likelihood of getting it, keeping him informed of developments, faultless record-keeping, diary management and being on call at all times. Being, in fact, the motivating engine that drove the wheel.

Fleming was outstandingly good at this. He knew everyone who mattered, or if he did not he could raid his family's combined address books. He had languages. He was ruthless – at least, in this job, ruthless enough. He communicated briskly, on one page wherever possible. He had the urbanity conferred by the City and the air of authority learned at Eton. He spotted details, recorded them, retained them and made links. He was popular, handsome, highly literate and, best of all, he liked testing fantasy solutions to knotty problems that might, or might not, arise; how to make the Germans decide you were going to invade Italy via the Balkans, for instance, or how the British Fleet in the Mediterranean would react if Franco's Spain joined up with Hitler.

By August he was officially installed in Room 39 in the Old Admiralty building overlooking Horse Guards Parade. Here, in a cloud of cigarette smoke, worked Section 17M, a top-secret department headed by Ewen Montagu, reporting to Godfrey. Their job was to interpret intercepts from Bletchley Park and messages from the operations centre across the parade ground in the Citadel. Godfrey had written ‘only men with first class brains should be allowed to touch this stuff'. They were mostly journalists, artists or academics. There was no great demand for practical types or scientists; they were elsewhere, in remote locations working on biological and chemical warfare. In any case the ruling class at the time had been persuaded by their education that scientists had little imagination, rather as women could not drive a tank. It was Montagu's task to interpret the importance of the information flowing through – what the politicians absolutely must know, what could be passed on to other units for decisions about action and so on. Also, the people in Section 17M had to try to turn agents into double agents and invent imaginary agents to confuse the Germans. The fake map idea surfaced again, as a way of driving German ships into minefields around the British coast.