The Ian Fleming Files (16 page)

“Nice job on the
eye shields. I don’t think we’ll need pitons.”

“Weapon,” she said
with a wicked smile.

“Good idea. I have
six rounds left and one spare magazine. What about you?”

“Three rounds, no
spares.”

He threw a snow
smock over his head, zipped it and followed her out, hauling the haversack and
ski gear. They shuffled unseen up the slope using the hut and trees as cover.
The ground was crisp and crunchy beneath them. They made it as far as they
could before there was nothing left to obscure them from the paratroopers, no
rocks even, just a steep swath of freshly carpeted snow narrowing to a peak.

They were in plain
sight of the paratroopers who were practically upon the hut. It would only take
one of them to look up to see the two spies on the incline above the shelter.
There were eight paras in total, two wielded machine-carbines and there were
also, not on leashes, four dogs. The hardware was on loan from the
Alpenkorps
.
Supplies were carried by sled and they were wearing snow anoraks and helmets
streaked with white paint.

Fleming and Denise
hurried to the summit as a ripple of German voices drifted up. Fleming stopped
and strained to make out the words. Denise urged him on. “Come on! We’re almost
to the top!”

There were urgent
cries from below. The gig was up. They crawled over the summit as gunfire
erupted and looked down in awe at the steep, almost vertical drop on the other
side. It was a sheer wall of ice.

With no time to
hesitate, Fleming helped Denise kick her boots into her ski grooves and locked
her in before quickly affixing his own skis. He tied a silk scarf tight across
his face and Denise pushed her head through a balaclava that had slits for her
eyes and mouth. Bullets skidded off the ground at their feet as they dug poles
into the powder and shoved off.

They slalomed down
over glistening snow blanketing a 45 degree drop, carving a lazy ‘S’ down the
slope and schussing at a pulse-raising speed. Fleming saw the path narrow and
got down in a low crouch to spurt ahead of Denise. Behind, there was a flare of
gunfire as the Germans rappelled over the peak and plunged after them. The
paras skied well, some of them with one hand, while the other hand held a
blazing firearm. Bullets spat after Fleming and Denise in streams as the two
spies dug in and whizzed down the slope at a dizzying speed.

The ground became
slick and Denise lost her footing but managed to correct herself in time. A
volley of lead created a shower of ice chips at her feet. She dug her sticks in
and schussed down the gradient which narrowed further. To her right was a four
thousand foot deep chasm.

She emerged from
the bottleneck to where the path widened and Fleming was just ahead. The valley
was bowl-shaped, open to the north, hemmed in by a jagged blade of mountain to
the east and west, closed off by the towering bulk of the Pico de Aneto to the
south.

The steep-sided
slopes began to flatten out northwards into the head of the valley where a
smattering of civilization could be seen. Fleming indicated to the distant
signs of life and hollered “Head for the road!”

He advanced left
while Denise rocketed down the right fork.

A para soared over
a gap in the gorge and landed inches to her left. He steadied himself and
hoisted up his Mauser when… WHAM! There was a quick blur of an arm, a flash of
steel and the trooper’s chest sprouted a piton. He collapsed over the edge,
clasping onto the stake in his heart and screaming as he fell. Without losing a
step, Denise dug her poles in and shunted on.

Fleming whisked
past a sign that said “DANGER - GLACIER!” in ten tongues and skirted the lip of
a deep crevice as the Germans encroached and started to gain.

The best skier
amongst the paras took a daring leap off a canopy-like ridge and landed
perfectly within a few feet of Fleming.

The British secret
agent turned and unloaded his pistol at a ceiling of icicles hanging like
stalactites from the roof of the mesa. One of the frozen spikes broke off the
shelf and plunged into the German, gruesomely skewering him.

The fork was
ending and Denise was about to catch Fleming when Lieutenant Jodl swerved to
her left flank from out of nowhere and aimed a Luger square at her. She ducked
to avoid the ensuing blast but the move made her lose her balance and she
stumbled, rolled several times head-over-heels and landed in a jumbled heap in
a fluffy bank of snow.

Fleming swerved to
a stop and provided cover as the rest of the pack descended. He exchanged fire
with Jodl while Denise fixed her skis and then they were off again, spurting
headlong at thirty miles an hour into a wide white glade between stands of pine
trees which they zigzagged around at the best pace they could manage.

They sped down a
gradient with two determined assailants gaining and firing when a seismic
shudder shook the ground.

Fleming turned to
see the source of the eruption. His eyes went wide. The shuddering was not an
avalanche, but a Panzer VI tank caterpillaring over a low crest, flanked by
infantry.

Inside the Panzer,
General Bock looked mean and determined as he folded the periscope and nodded
to his Tank Commander.

“Fire at will,
Felix.”

General Bock was
in a hooded oak-pattern camouflage parka worn over a heavy wool greatcoat. His
Knight's Cross and rank insignia could just be seen in the neck of the padded
reversible parka and his matching over trousers were confined by canvas anklets
above a pair of
Gebirgstruppe
mountain boots.

His infantrymen
were wearing white winter helmets with regulation green "V" pattern
stripes for the
Gebirgsjäger Division
(Mountain Troops) and wielded
G/K-43 Walther semi-automatic rifles which were equipped with rarely-seen
25-round ‘banana’ clips instead of the standard 10-round magazine.

The Tank Commander
was Bock’s brother, Captain Felix Bock who was famous in Berlin for his Panzer
exploits. He displayed the gold-and-silver Panzer Assault badge denoting at
least seventy five Panzer missions in various units. His uniform consisted of a
grey 'wrap-over' jacket with shoulder straps of grey rayon. On his head he wore
the standard issue black wool Panzer sidecap or
Schiffchen
complete with
rose pink waffenfarbe, bevo cockade and eagle.

There was a whine
of machinery as Felix Bock turned a spur gear in the hull which rotated the
turret until Fleming was in the line of fire.

Fleming slalomed
down tricky undulating ground and looked back to see a shimmy of muzzle flash
from the tank nozzle. Denise was descending to the side of him on a parallel
gradient.

The shell streaked
past him and blasted into a cairn of snow-capped boulders which it blitzed to
smithereens, the shock wave sending Fleming tumbling down the slope. Thinking
fast, he snapped a ski pole in half and dug the sharp end into the ground to
glissade down the incline as the frozen ground fissured beneath him.

He came to a rough
landing at the very edge of an ice shelf, paras shooting down at him as he
clung to the slippery precipice. Bullets shattered the ledge, sending ice
shards flying. Pop! Pop! Pop! The shelf splintered then collapsed, taking him
down with it onto the mountain road, just as a BMW R75 Abwehr motorcycle
rounded the bend and squealed to a stop inches from his face.

He looked up to
see Denise straddling the bike. She grimaced. “Out of my way!” she yelled as
she leveled an MAS-38 and unleashed it on the ribbon of Nazis above them while
Fleming scrambled into the sidecar with the haversack.

Denise set the MAS
down and before Fleming could say anything she jerked the throttle and they
sped off down the crooked mountain road. He looked behind him at the empty
slopes. There were no vehicles about, no signs of life anywhere.

She noticed his
vexed visage. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s too quiet,”
he said.

“Relax. We made
it!”

Fleming kicked
back and let the bracing air cool his hot brow.

They turned a
corner and Denise skidded to a stop. The way was blocked by a barricade manned
by a dozen German soldiers.

Jodl held up a
gloved hand and smiled a rictus grin.
“Guten tag!”

Fleming looked
behind them. “Reverse!” Denise revved but they were hemmed in by a roadblock
swiftly assembled by Jodl’s men.

“Get out,” Fleming
said. “Take the gold and run for it.”

“What about you?”

A spray of lead
perforated the bike.

“Go!”

Denise hauled the
haversack and skittered up the ridge, scurrying through the snow toward a
crevice in the mountain. She hustled into the natural chimney and was unseen by
a pack of Nazis as they stormed past yelling into walkie-talkies.

Fleming stepped
out of the sidecar as Jodl approached and brutally pistol-whipped him, sending
his world into darkness.

The sun was
setting and there was a fragrant smell of orange blossom and honeysuckle in the
air. A kaleidoscope of finches chirped in the treetops providing the perfect
musical accompaniment to the end of day. The harmonious concord was rudely
shattered by an ominous rumble which shook the hedgerows causing the avian
music to abruptly stop. Flocks of birds took off in flight as the grind and
clatter of machinery made itself known.

A slow moving
convoy of Wehrmacht vehicles was snaking its way up the low lying hills
overlooking the dazzling Cote D’Azure. The procession was led by an
eight-wheeled armored Büssing-NAG GS car and included a Swiss Berna, a hulking
four ton Skoda H, two
leichter zugkraftwagen
, a small, unmarked armored
personnel carrier and a pair of Zündapp KS 750 motorcycles bringing up the
rear.

Fleming came to in
the back of an open-roofed troop truck and stared straight into the sinking
sun. He was bleeding from a gash on his temple and was experiencing one of his
famous migraines. He instinctively went to jostle the copper plate in his nose
but found his hands were lashed by leather straps. The next realization was
that he was gagged. He looked up to see a grinning Lieutenant Jodl sitting
hunched over him like a Bavarian eagle. The German thwacked a black riding
quirt of plaited leather against his jackboot and cackled. “Behold, the mighty
British Secret Service!”

Fleming roved his
watery eyes about behind Jodl in an attempt to get a handle on the topography.
He scanned the environs for any familiar landmarks.  

The cortege slowed
to a halt before a shuttered winery in a sprawling, abandoned vineyard. The
complex was situated on a desiccated hillside turned brown from lack of
irrigation. Flaccid, yellow vines displayed small, deformed fruit shriveled
from neglect.

WHAM! Fleming’s
head flopped back from the punch. He was in a dank dungeon of a room, bound
securely to a chair and stripped to the waist. His face was swollen with two
black eyes. Bock, Jodl and several gun-toting goons lurked in the shadows of
massive wine kegs and huge, empty storage tanks. The air was fetid with stale
fermentation. Light came courtesy of two stark fluorescent strips.

“I know who you
are,” said General Bock. “What you are and why you are. I know everything about
you. You are a minnow swimming with barracudas. John Godfrey’s secretary on a
diplomatic mission playing at being big brother. A civilian! Special Branch?
Bah! Admit it, you are out of your depth ‘Commander’. Tell me what I want to
know and I might let you experience a pain free death. I will ask you for a
second time, there will not be a third. Where are your accomplices?”

He pulled the gag
from Fleming’s mouth.

Fleming sat up,
found the strength to lift his head and flashed a smile. “What? No small-talk?
No chit-chat? My name’s Fleming, Ian Fleming. General Bock, I presume?”

Bock’s eyes
flared.

“Wit in the face
of adversity! How brave! How British!”

In a blur, Bock
swiped a soda siphon from a nearby trolley of pain-making tools, reached for
some ground chili peppers and squirted the soda and the pepper up Fleming’s
nostrils.

Time stood still.
White lightning rattled Fleming’s skull.

Bock made a tight
gloved fist and delivered a roundhouse slam to Fleming’s nose, sending bolts of
pure pain jolting through every atom of his soul. Fleming attempted to
internalize the shock wave but the pain was searing and absolute. His body made
small, involuntary twitches. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, a sort of
coppery aftertaste mixed with blood. Adrenaline kept him conscious.

“Feel free to
scream,” said Bock.

Fleming coughed up
bile and oozed red-tinted saliva.

“I deplore
brutality,” Bock said with a weary sigh as he wiped down his glove. “It’s not
efficient and rarely yields meaningful results. Had I more time, I would break
you psychologically.” He poured himself a tumbler of whiskey, took a quick pull
and hurled the remainder into Fleming’s face.

It was a stinging
stiletto jab between the eyes. Fleming made a horrible, low groaning sound and
had blurred double vision.

Bock leered. “No
comeback? No riposte?”

Fleming smiled,
revealing blood-stained teeth.

“You hit like a
girl.”

Bock dropped his
bantering tone and looked at Fleming sharply and venomously. He turned and
called to someone lurking in the dark recesses. “Leo!”

There was a
shuffling of feet. The room darkened as a monster of a man stepped forth and
blotted out the light over Fleming. The ogre was Neanderthal ugly with the
Semitic features of an Arab and two small, utterly pitiless eyes. He was
protected from gore by a full leather apron and he wore steel gauntlets on his
massive, meat-hook hands. A dedicated sadist, thought Fleming.