Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

“Love of country” sounds dashed peculiar when one speaks of an admitted spy. So I’ll just say this: four years ago, he and I and the others who helped us accomplished something no battalion or even division could have done. My proof? That the jackboot has not yet trod this earth, this realm, this England.

Now, with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare, I end my tale with a bit about how we planted the Bible where the Hun would find it. And here I wish to make a request: do not allow anyone but yourself to listen to what I’m about to read into the record; dismiss the typists for the afternoon. A woman’s reputation, such as it is, is at stake, and I would not want this part read out in open court or gossiped about in the Ladies’ Room.

Ian Fleming, Peter’s brother and the “fill-in” at table for Marlene’s party that evening in 1939, is, as you know, serving in Naval Intelligence with the rank of Commander. He heads up a little group called 30 Assault Unit, a band of what they’re calling “commandos” these days. When I was writing In Which We Serve , I thought I might use Ian’s bit of stealth as one of the officers’ flashbacks whilst the men from the torpedoed ship were in the water, so I prevailed upon him to set down in detail those first few days of September 1940. Here is what he sent me:

“Noël, for several weeks after I agreed to pass as Oswald Mosley, I began cultivating a moustache like his. Now, the day before departure, I darkened my hair with dye, brilliantined it, and brushed it straight back instead of giving it my usual part. We had the passport chaps take a few snaps and do their usual magic with stamps and visas and lo!—I was now Sir Oswald, fresh out of Holloway.

“At least I was a fair enough approximation of the man—about the same height and weight—that I might hope to pass under the eyes of some functionary at the Wehrmacht checkpoint. Especially if I should have Lady Mosley with me in the flesh.

“What did they call her in the papers when the bastard was courting her? ‘Diana, Goddess of the Chase.’ But a black-and-white photo fails her… the blond hair, the small, rosebud mouth, and those eyes, the colour of perfect star sapphires.

“Of course she refused to do it at first. I mean, the woman is every bit the Fascist her husband is; married in the home of Joseph Goebbels, weren’t they? With Hitler in the wedding party! But she had to be my laissez-passer through the German lines so, as you suggested, I told her we’d hang Mosley if she didn’t go along. Winston would have done it too.

“Anyway, once we did get through German security at Antwerp, it took us three days to make our way down to the Ardennes, doubling back every so often to make sure we weren’t followed and staying each night in some out-of-the-way auberge . I insisted Diana keep up the pretense of my being Mosley, acting affectionate during the day and sharing rooms with only one bed at night.

“Speaking man to man, she adjusted quite well to the part. She was trapped and she knew it. Another thing we both knew: Diana was no debutante. She’d left her first husband in the lurch to take up with Mosley. And she’d spent the last two months in prison. Sorry, Noël, if I’m being rather indelicate, but you asked how it really was, didn’t you?

“I was thinking, afterward, standing there in the clearing amid the towering birches and pines with the monastery behind me and the moon overhead, a man could make a very nice life for himself in wartime, provided he wasn’t actually killed. There was, first and foremost, the adrenaline rush of the operation itself, the release that a few minutes or hours brought after long, boring days and weeks of planning and rehearsal. Almost as good as sex.

“Speaking of which, I’d brought a perfume sprayer with me, filled with Blunt’s age-old dust and dust mites, that I’d sprayed all over the place—the books, the shelves, but mainly on myself. I began to have this fit of sneezing standing there in the clearing, loud enough to wake the old boys just up the road. Diana was very good about using her hands to work the dust off my monkish robe. And then under my robe, where I don’t think there was any dust.

“It was quite dark under the trees, and I have this mental picture of her, later, shaking two cigs out of her box of Benson & Hedges. She lit the match and, when we put our heads together for the flame, it came back to me again how amazingly beautiful she is.

“Exhaling, she blew out the match, casting us both back into darkness, and we stood there smoking in the night, the glowing tip of Diana’s cigarette barely coming up to my chest. Now that the job was over, I was thinking of the name you once called me. “Shamateur,” remember? I can’t shoot straight or operate a wireless set but I get to run my own operations behind enemy lines because I’m the PM’s fair-haired boy.

“You were right too: You don’t get to pluck the wife of ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’ out of gaol so you can travel incognito with her on his passport unless Winston Churchill gives you the high sign.

“In my own defense, this whole business—Dietrich to the American to you to Blunt to Winston to me—none of it would have been worth a farthing if I hadn’t been the perfect one to take the ball, the winger who cut back inside when they weren’t expecting it and went in, untouched, for the try.

“So I’m asking you now, Noël, to think of me not as a ‘shamateur’ but as a true English amateur, a lover of the game. I believe I’ve earned it.”

There you have it, Robert old man. As I watch your man Nigel prepare to put this final cylinder in the valise and lock the whole business onto his wrist for the long journey home, I’m at a loss over what to make of it—several magical California evenings wasted, so I might help you defend a man who would cut me dead in the street.

Ah well, what do they say? “Bedfellows make strange politics.” Or is it the other way round?

It had been a long day and it was only going to get longer. The G20 session had gone well, everyone said so. Now he just had time to take a quick shave and get ready for the state dinner. The protocol officer had carefully instructed him to toast the Russians every time they toasted him, tit for tat. Did that go for the French, too?

The call came in on his wife’s Samsung Galaxy. No surprise; he’d thrown his own phone against the wall and the backup governmental one with the scrambled lines was next door with his chief of staff. He walked over to where she was reading the Wall Street Journal and took the call.

“Carl! What’s up?”

He listened for about thirty seconds before saying, “Carl, two things. One, it’s your problem. Two, you’re fired.”

When he handed the phone back, she gave him the one raised eyebrow thing. He said, “Anger management in action: If I threw yours too, how would I tweet?”

An hour later, on the other side of Red Square from her flat, Lara was standing before the lemon-yellow façade of the Moscow Botvinnik Chess Club, familiarly known as the Central House of Chess. In the 1920s it housed Russia’s Supreme Court; now a few aging kibitzers lounged on the raised bench, gazing down and judging the play. Strange, the places you go to have questions answered.

In the ’50s, back in Botvinnik’s day, the House of Chess would have been packed to the rafters to watch a world champion play. Or tie his shoes, for that matter. Even an ex-champion like Garry Kasparov. Chess then was a Russian obsession.