Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

Now, by turning her head to the left, Ulrike could see her prize, set out with the other things on the table in the alcove just as you got off the elevator. Truth be told, it was the focal point of the place. When she looked back at the screen, she noticed the You Have Feedback link was highlighted, and she clicked on it. Someone in Russia was asking about the Bible. She smiled as she typed in her reply.

Yes, the Hitler angle had made all the difference.

This is the last of my six cylinders and, fortunately for you and your typists, Robert, the finish line is in sight.

Lara looked at her watch; it was nearly six. Her mind was all over the place. Concentrate on what Coward’s saying, dammit.

By the middle of August, 1940, the Battle of Britain had moved inexorably—as you know—from a few German strikes at our Channel convoys to wholesale bombing of our ports and airfields to “dogfights” (forgive the vulgarism) in full view of the population.

In September, five weeks after Anthony had let loose the hounds… all right, insects… I was telephoning him every day, some days more than once, to try to hurry things along.

The very afternoon that Blunt informed me the “simulacrum” was finished, I was told by Churchill’s people I had ten minutes on the morrow, whilst they were setting up for a Cabinet meeting, to hand over my supposed “anniversary present” for Winston and Clemmie (though the actual event was weeks off). As I had already cast the remaining actor in our little farce, we were ready to beard the lion in his den.

I remember we were standing in an antechamber just off the vestibule in Downing Street, a little room with a table and four chairs, when the Prime Minister spotted me. A year earlier he was appointed Honorary Air Commodore for the County of Surrey auxiliary Air Force, and so was entitled to wear the RAF uniform. Now, at five foot seven inches, the blue-grey cloth seemed to swaddle the Great Man in all directions.

He started right in. “Noël, are you here to entertain the Downing Street Brigade? How delightful.” Then he spotted Blunt standing there, holding the Bible wrapped in brown paper with string round it. Shifting gears, he said, “Who’s your friend, and is that something for me?”

I introduced Anthony, who wordlessly placed the parcel on the table in front of Winston with something of a thud. While his secretary stood against the wall, Churchill took the chair near the window and started working on the string. Acutely conscious, at six feet tall, of looming over the Prime Minister, I took the chair across from him. The secretary pursed his lips and glared at me; apparently one does not sit in the Buddha’s presence. To compound matters, Blunt also took a seat because I had.

As the Bible emerged from the wrapping, I found myself trying to re-create the Kennedy boy’s pitch to me that night in New York, being careful not to say the actual word “Kennedy,” lest the mention of the American ambassador’s name spoil everything. I don’t know how much sense I was making, so I switched over to describing the manner in which we would plant the article where the Germans would be sure to find it.

“Sir, with your permission, an associate will take that parcel with him by boat over to Flanders under cover of darkness and, in the guise of someone they trust, present himself to the German checkpoint at Antwerp before making his way to a certain monastery we know their army of looters will visit, and leave it there in plain sight.”

The PM looked up at Anthony, dubiously, and then over at me. “Is he your ‘associate’?”

I had to laugh. “Not quite. It’s your godson, Ian.”

Surprised, Churchill left off what he was doing to look me in the eye. “Why on earth would the Germans trust Ian Fleming? I’m not sure I trust him.”

“Because, sir, I intend to have him show up in Antwerp as Sir Oswald Mosley.”

“You say Ian will be behind enemy lines, dressed up as the leader of the British Union of Fascists?” He seemed troubled. “I don’t know…”

“He’s already agreed to do it, sir.”

Churchill still appeared troubled. “Of his courage I have no doubt, but… there’s a problem: Don’t the Boche know Mosley’s safely tucked up in Holloway Prison?”

“That’s why I need you to release his wife, Diana, from the women’s gaol. When Ian shows up with her, they’ll have to believe he’s Mosley and that he’s been exchanged for British prisoners.”

Churchill was still considering the thing when an aide ducked his head in the room and said, “We’re ready for you, sir.”

The leader of the armed forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth rose from his seat, so we stood as well. I thought he was going to leave without approving our plan, but he returned his attention to the Bible, now exposed to the air.

Anthony produced a pair of white cotton gloves from his jacket pocket and, still without a word, handed them to the PM. He was eyeing the French inscription Anthony had done. Pointing to the last quatrain, he said “There shouldn’t be an ‘e’ at the end of sabre au claire . C’est un mot masculin, non?”

Oh my God, a spelling mistake! I was glaring my best glare at Anthony when the PM allowed himself a chuckle. “Well, I suppose they hadn’t dictionaries back then. Possibly this Nostradamus you speak of couldn’t spell any better in his language than we can in ours.”

Ice broken. Winston was about to poke his little finger into the punctatum ’s freshly chewed hole into the ink when Blunt uttered his only two words of the interview. His “No, don’t!” was probably a little louder than absolutely necessary.

With a baleful look at the man, the Prime Minister picked up his “gift” and dropped it back into Anthony’s grateful hands. Churchill’s aide came back again. All he said was, “Sir” as he pointed to the watch on his wrist.

Winston looked me square in the eye. “Do it.” He shook my hand as he walked through the door to the meeting. “Just don’t let him get caught. Ian’s the only godson I’ve got.”

Before I conclude my “testimony” as to events of the late summer of 1940, it occurs to me I’ve neglected the most important duty of a character witness—for that is certainly what I am: to attest to the nature of the man standing in the dock.

Either I’m the worst possible such witness or the best: I just don’t like Anthony Blunt. I don’t know anyone who does. So, when I defend Anthony, it’s certainly not out of friendship… he has no friends. The man’s insufferable, a prig and a snob (and I should know). I’m quite certain if we passed in the street this afternoon, he would keep on going without the least sign of recognition.

But what I do know is, when our lads were up against it after Dunkirk, when we were all up against it, it was Anthony who saved our bacon. When the Croupier called, “ Les jeux sont fait ,” Anthony rolled up his sleeves and placed all his chips on the spin of the wheel. Even though he was a Soviet spy and we were sending all those tanks and planes against the workers’ paradise.

You see, Anthony and his handlers believed that, with proper advance warning, Stalin and his generals would be ready for Hitler. That his five-million-man army would lie in wait for the Austrian paperhanger and deliver the knockout blow once he crossed the border. But Uncle Joe didn’t believe them. He doesn’t believe anyone… especially the people who work for him.