standing in the doorframe. A floppy canvas hat hid his brown curly hair, and his eyes seemed to search the two men now, sounding them out as he walked slowly into the room. It was Seventeen F, Fleming himself. It would be years before he would use his wartime experience to write his James Bond novels, but for now he was writing the script for a new operation.
“I’m the man you’ve been talking about,” he said quietly. “And yes, we’ve got something really interesting for you, gentlemen, and no one is going to cancel the party this time if I can help it.”
“Well, Commander, you move like a cat,” said Haselden. “I can see why they look for your sort in the darker corners of Whitehall.”
“Yes,” said Fleming getting a whiff of Sutherland’s pipe. It smelled good, and he reached into his own shirt pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sutherland was quick to offer his Ronson lighter.
“The business at hand, gentlemen, does indeed come from one of those very dark corners. So dark, in fact that even my sort stub their toes and bump their noses trying to get around the place. Now then…Only a very few men will ever know what I am about to tell you next. You may have heard the rumors, caught the occasional reference whispered by the men with gold hatbands and thick cuff stripes, and felt the distinct tinge of heat that soon found any man who was too loose on the matter. I’m talking about Geronimo.”
The silence invaded the space, with an uneasiness that was clearly evident, for both Haselden and Sutherland had heard the word whispered about, though they did not know what it referred to—only that it was very hush, hush, and the sort of thing that would land a man in hot water if he ever spoke openly about it. To hear the word spoken so brazenly by this man from the cubby holes of Naval Intelligence in Whitehall was somewhat of a shock.
Fleming saw the look of bemused surprise on the faces of the other men, and pressed his advantage. You don’t walk in on men like this without an edge, he knew, and he had the one thing they lusted after more than anything else—information—knowledge of the missions they were set to perform. Yes, they were good soldiers, both of them, which is why Fleming had selected these men, but they often fought in the darkness of unknowing as well as the thickness of the night when they landed from submarines on a moonless sea and slipped ashore on black rubber rafts. More often than not the real aim of the mission they were tasked to perform was on a ‘need to know only basis.’ Today Fleming decided they needed to know.
“Gentlemen, you’ve heard that word, and now I’m to tell you what it’s about. Geronimo is a ship—a very dangerous ship. And on that ship there are men—very dangerous men. One of these men slipped ashore near Cartagena last month, and was trying to work his way west out into the Atlantic on a steamer bound for Cadiz. A German mine and a sharp eyed Royal Navy destroyer captain conspired to bring this man in, and we had him under the Rock of Gibraltar for a time… then he gave us the slip. We don’t know how he did it, or who helped him make good his getaway, but we will soon enough. Leave that bit to me. Now we know this man may have headed east through Istanbul on a Turkish freighter, and then slipped into the Black Sea on a Soviet trawler. To be brief about it, we want him back, and you two gentlemen are going to go after him and bring him back…” He paused, taking a long puff of his cigarette, and sizing the two men up again. “That failing,” he said with finality, “you will die trying.”
Chapter 23
In September of 1942 the German Army was reaching its high water mark in the war. The Allied forces had been pushed back, slowly strengthening their resistance like a bow string pulled taut, and soon the arrows of their long counteroffensive would begin in earnest. But that month the outcome of the war was by no means certain, and the world still sat in breathless fear that the mighty Wehrmacht could not be stopped. Rommel had pushed the British all the way to the Egyptian border and was haggling for supplies to