The Ian Fleming Files (29 page)

There was a slight reverberation in the room and then the gun parts
scattered to the ground as everything shook from an underwater shockwave. The
walls buffeted around Fleming and he was thrown to the floor. He hoisted
himself up and tried to get his bearings, left everything as it was and exited
his stateroom to go investigate.

The passageway was crammed with frenzied personnel. Dive bells clanged.
Crewmen worked with hurried but galvanic precision. Bulkheads cracked under the
pressure as
Tantalus
plummeted further from the reach of torpedoes.
Another shockwave confirmed Fleming’s suspicions: they were under attack. The
sub jerked violently and he floundered, quickly grabbed a handrail and held on
through the violent tremors.

He continued to make his way aft, weaving through the dark labyrinth as
sailors hurried between stations in either direction past the sonar shack which
he peered into but was shoved away. He dropped down a ladder into a small
compartment beneath, wriggled through a hatch and down a second ladder to the
pressure hull of the submarine. The bow trembled. He clutched an overhead grab
bar, squeezed his way down the after hatch and dropped down more metal rungs
into the control center where the atmosphere was tense.

No one noticed him. He flicked his eyes around. To the right was a
communications room and next to this a station with a big chart table. In the
center were the huge mast encasings and, farther on, the periscope stand with
its twin periscopes. Every square inch of bulkhead space was taken up with
modular racks housing jumbles of equipment and machinery. Wrapped around the
perimeter was a gantry of convoluted cables, colored wires and a spaghetti
junction of pipework.

Fleming positioned himself near the starboard bulkhead and observed
Mackenzie who had his face glued to the scope’s eyepiece. A young ensign bent
over a glowing greenish radar screen looked up and saw Fleming’s bewildered
expression, took pity on him and tersely explained: “Italian corvette, position
zero nine degrees twenty-five north, ninety-four degrees twenty east, seaplane
about twelve miles away.”

“Have they seen us?” Fleming asked but didn’t get a response.

The ensign had noticed that the revolving scanner-line had picked up a
white spot immediately to the left of center of the screen. His face paled.
There was a loud vibrating rumble and a valve exploded, blasting him in the
face with scalding water. He leapt to his feet, screaming.

Fleming wrenched a first aid pouch off the wall as Mackenzie barked orders
behind him: “Stay on target! Come left three degrees. Make your course
three-four-zero. Sonar, let me know when we pass fifty fathoms.”

The whole frame of the ship trembled. Fleming felt her accelerate like a
living thing as she drove forward. He found gauze and scissors and helped the
boy who was shivering in shock.

Mackenzie bellowed at the dive officer: “Return to periscope depth and
slow her down! Our wake can’t be visible to the seaplane!”

Someone cried, “Ballast pump!”

Mackenzie swung the periscope around. “Corvette about a mile astern to
the westward with smaller escort further off on the same bearing.”

The periscope broke the surface of the sun dappled Mediterranean,
trailing a small wake. The sky was clear. They had lost the plane. The Italian
corvette and a frigate lay to the west.

Commander Mackenzie turned to his perspiring but highly capable Sub
Lieutenant Fitzroy Hemmons. “Set torpedoes at 35 knots.”

Hemmons repeated the order down to the bombers in the aft of the ship.
“Torpedoes at 35 knots!”

A young torpedo man, no more than nineteen, covered in grime and sweat,
hollered back from the bomb bay. “Torpedoes one and two ready!”

Mackenzie kept his eyes on his scope. “Maneuver for attack!”

The control room was silent while the skipper peered through his scope
and then yelled, “Spread shots… fire!”

Fleming had finished bandaging the ensign and watched anxiously as
Hemmons moved to face the firing panel, an elongated metal box with a series of
glass windows in its cover through three of which red lights glowed, and below
the lights a group of switches. Beneath the firing panel was the firing key, a
plunger topped with a round brass plate curved to fit the palm of one's hand.

Hemmons reached up to the firing panel, turned the first of the line of
switches, pressed the firing key. “Fire One!” he said into the phone. He held
the firing key down for a perceptible instant, then released it, flipped the
first switch upright, and turned the second switch to the horizontal position.
He waited another instant and then pressed the firing key once more. “Fire
Two!” he announced into the phone. “Fire Three!”

In the murky depths, the bomb hatch opened and three G7Es were deployed
by a winch and sent spinning forth into the abyss. On the surface, three
torpedo tracks diverging slightly fanned out toward the corvette’s bow.

Fleming felt three solid jolts when the trio of warheads went spinning
away and shouted, “Have we fired the flare?” to no one in particular, drawing a
stony stare from Mackenzie.

“Fire the flare!” Mackenzie bellowed.

Inside the boat, the air was thick. To miss was to reveal one’s location.
Every man’s life was at stake.

Hemmons broke the silence. “Torpedoes running.”

Mackenzie took his stopwatch out. His eyes went from the periscope lens
to his chronometer as he counted down. There was an echoic blip of sonar.
Mackenzie peered through the periscope to see the Italian ship torched on the
horizon. A direct hit.

“Bull’s-eye,” Mackenzie declared, snapping shut his viewer.

The crew cheered. Mackenzie hoisted up the periscope and headed off down
the narrow galley.
Tantalus
went deep and retired to the eastward.

Mackenzie’s log would later read: “0544 hours - Dived in position
10°06'N, 93°49'E. 1852 hours - Surfaced in position 10°00'N, 93°27'E and set a
course for Port Said. Sustained minor damage to hull and winch alignment.
Ensign William “Billy” Barnes received third degree burns when a saltwater relief
valve failed sending a stream of boiling liquid into his face. There was
initial concern about damage to his eye but it looks like he will make a full
recovery. Ensign Barnes was assisted during the incident by Commander Ian
Fleming of the NID and RNVR (Special Branch).”

Lacking pure Teutonic blood Colonel Martin Zeiss appreciated purity that
much more. Zeiss loved the Übermensch even though neither he nor his son could
ever be classified as one. He was a bulky thick-necked German, his powerful
torso taut in his field-gray tunic, and he had beady black eyes that took
everything in and gave little back. The hair was thick and dark, the curling
hair of a Greek or an Italian and he had none of the classic northern European
features. A grandfather from Genoa was to blame.

An extreme right-winger from a family of landed gentry, Zeiss would never
claim to be only carrying out orders and was a zealot of the first order, an
ardent defender of the tenets of National Socialism who believed in Wagnerian
determinism, aggressive anti-Semitism and the natural supremacy of the German
people. In only one aspect had he lost faith; in the infallible rule of the
Führer. For Colonel Zeiss, Adolf Hitler had become a blight on the cause that
needed to be eradicated.

Captain Franz Stransky was a lean and bony, languidly
aristocratic-looking Nazi, habitually smoking, with a general louche,
dissipated air about him. He was dressed in the uniform of a captain in the
German Army and wore an Iron Cross at his throat. Like many of his peers,
Captain Stransky used his position to bed as many women as possible. His carnal
appetite was prodigious. Not only did he bed the customary French, Dutch,
Czech, Polish, Spanish and even Estonian women but he also ravished blacks,
Slavs, Jews and Gypsies. A one-man progressive movement anticipating the League
of Nations, all creeds and colors were welcome between Captain Stransky’s
sheets.

In the abstemious culture of the Reich, his licentiousness labeled him
weak and were it not for the public adoration shown to him by the man whose
life his father had once saved, General Erwin Rommel himself, Stransky would
have been posted to a Siberian outpost sometime in late 1939. As it was, he was
Captain of the 7th Army, a plum position, and Krupp’s link to Rommel, the
presumptive heir if Parsifal’s ambitions were to be realized, which meant Krupp
(and others) had to tolerate his tales of lechery, his limited intellect and
lackadaisical attitude. Shooting him in the head the minute Hitler was gone was
a high priority for Krupp.

During a skiing weekend in Stadt, Krupp and Zeiss had buttered Stransky
with American whiskey and local prostitutes and by Monday morning they had
convinced him that Hitler’s days were numbered, that Rommel was more popular
with the troops and that he, Captain Franz Stransky, would be exponentially
more powerful - and thus in an even better position to get laid - with his
mentor Rommel as Chancellor.

It was after midnight when the three heads of Parsifal finished supper in
the dining hall of Fortress Alderney and shifted to three leather armchairs by
the fireplace in the great room where brandy snifters, Cuban cigars and
expensive Belgian chocolate had been set up on a low oak table for their
post-prandial pow-wow.

Silent staffers flitted in and out behind them as they confabbed. Frau
Krupp gently rocked back and forth in her corner while she worked on an
elaborately patterned lacelike webbing. The gorgeous Anike Asplund was at hand
to take dictation. The svelte beauty wore a simple but becoming pencil skirt
and blouse ensemble that drew the appreciative glances of the men of power as
they quaffed and puffed.

Colonel Zeiss cleared his throat to say something important but Krupp
beat him to the punch and kicked off the meeting.

“There are two considerations, gentlemen. The first: how to kill the most
protected man in history — ”

“He is not a man, he's a lunatic,” Zeiss cut in.

“Second,” Krupp continued, “how to kill this man in a manner that does
not incite rebellion from the armed forces and the people of Germany.”

“The people of Germany,” garbled Captain Stransky between mouthfuls of
chocolate, “will follow the leader. The real concern is the army. While Rommel
certainly has their respect, no general can compete with the Führer for popularity.
Even as his fundamental appeal wanes he is still loved by millions.”

“Not by the soldiers on the Eastern Front,” griped Zeiss. “Nor the seamen
in the Pacific, the men trapped on the sea and under it.”

Krupp tried to be patient with the two career militarists who saw the
world in tunnel vision. “Far flung detachments are of no consequence. It is the
forces on the ground in Berlin. If we are to do away with him, they must not
suspect military involvement. We, or rather you two gentlemen along with the
Desert Fox, must be seen to be the saviors of whatever evil swooped down and
snatched the life of our beloved fearless leader.”

Krupp paused a moment to let this sink in. The scratching sound made by
Anike’s pencil continued for a few seconds after he stopped speaking. Zeiss
swilled his brandy thoughtfully. Stransky explored Anike’s hem and stockinged
thigh and thought about what lay beyond.

The steady knocking of Frau Krupp’s chair was the only noise. The devious
matriarch examined her stitching and waited for her son to hit the two officers
with his big idea.  

“Foreign plots,” Wolfgang began, “used to exist solely in the speeches of
demagogues but even as we speak gentlemen Great Britain and the United States
of America are planning the invasion of Europe. Is it such a leap to posit that
they might also have engineered the assassination of Hitler?”

“It is a natural and credible explanation,” agreed Zeiss. “Does such a
plot exist that we might commandeer and make our own?”

Krupp shrugged. “There are no doubt covert Allied efforts at bringing
about his demise but as to whether or not a specific plan is in play we can’t
be certain. They are as aware of the limitations as we are: that he is too well
protected and erratic. The Allies are focused on winning the war one battle at
a time. Even if there were an operation underway and we were to claim it as the
cause for Hitler’s murder the Allies might deny it.”

“No one would believe them,” pronounced Stransky definitively, the way he
said everything, which irritated Krupp.

Krupp fixed him with a stony stare. “With the details I have here,
Captain, there will be no doubts. It still doesn’t change the fact that
Hitler’s almost impossible to kill. Regardless at whose feet we lay the blame,
how are we to achieve the near impossible?” Krupp turned to Anike who handed
him what looked like a violin case.

“By playing Vivaldi?” scoffed Stransky.

Krupp sighed. “No, Captain. Not by playing Vivaldi.” He carefully set the
case down on the low oak table, snapped the brass clasps back and flipped the
lid to reveal the component parts of a precision rifle snugly embedded in
velvet cushioned compartments.

Zeiss’s eyes widened.

“Allow me to present the latest in weapon technology,” said Krupp
extracting the gun parts and assembling them. “7.62 x 54 millimeters.
Telescopic sights. Built for optimal level of accuracy. It’s based on the Mosin
Nagant but twice as powerful.”

“Twice as powerful?” said Stransky skeptically. “Who makes it?”

Krupp smiled. “I do. This was crafted to my specifications by a team of
designers at my factory in Bern. They worked with highly skilled gunsmiths for
six months. This instrument in the right hands should deliver reasonable
accuracy over half a mile.”

He paused for effect. The gun lay partially constructed in his lap.

Zeiss scoffed. “Impossible.”