James Bond: The Authorised Biography

by John Pearson

  When he reached the little square, the house was in darkness. This time Bond was careful to stay out of sight – Svenson or the girl might well be watching for him. Instead he tried the street behind the house. There was an alleyway, a wall, a window he could force, and he was in. He found a staircase and then, gun in hand, set out to explore. The house was silent. Bond's first thought was that Svenson and the girl had fled. Then he heard voices from above. Tiptoeing he reached a landing. There was a bedroom door with light beneath it.

  Bond called out, ‘Svenson,’ there was no reply, but the light inside the room went out.

  ‘Svenson, I'm coming after you,’ he shouted, then kicked the door in. There was a shot – a bullet hit the woodwork by his head, and spun off down the stairs. Bond was expecting this. He had dodged back and fired twice towards the source of the shot. This seemed as good a way as any now of killing Svenson. It would be less like murder – more of an equal fight.

  Bond waited, holding his fire. He could see nothing in the room, but somebody was moaning. Bond paused in readiness to shoot again.

  ‘Svenson,’ he called softly.

  ‘For God's sake hold your fire,’ said a voice, Svenson's voice. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  ‘You know why,’ said Bond.

  ‘James, just wait while I put the light on. Don't you know you've hit her?’

  Bond realized it was a woman moaning. The light went on.

  Svenson was sitting up in bed. He was much fatter than Bond remembered and sat clutching the bedclothes to his chest. He was unarmed and white with fear. Sprawled across the floor lay the girl Bond had seen that morning. She was naked. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole below the breast. In her hand she still held a small silver automatic.

  There was not much that Bond could do for her. The violet eyes were already closed, the knees drawn up against the slender belly. She tried to speak, then slumped against the floor. Bond knew that she was dead.

  Svenson was trembling. He was moaning now.

  ‘Let me explain,’ he said. ‘You are my friend, James. You must understand.’

  ‘I understand too well,’ said Bond.

  It was a pathetic business. Bond had never witnessed the effect of total fear before. He would have liked to have shot Svenson where he lay, but couldn't. Instead he heard his terrified confession followed by the inevitable plea for mercy. Bond was revolted – as much by himself now as by Svenson. War is a dirty business: but some men's wars are dirtier than others.

  When Svenson realized that Bond was quite implacable he begged him one last favour – to be allowed to shoot himself – and Bond agreed. He took the gun from the dead girl, left one bullet in the chamber, and threw it on the bed.

  ‘I'll wait outside,’ he said. ‘Get it over quickly.’

  Bond waited several minutes but there was no shot. When he went back into the bedroom, Svenson was still lying in the bed. He had the girl's gun in his hand and fired at him, as Bond knew he would. Svenson's gun-hand trembled when he fired. Bond's didn't.

  *

  Bond was commended for the Stockholm mission. After Svenson's death there were no more casualties in the Baltic circuit – nor were there any diplomatic repercussions.

  The Stockholm police apparently were satisfied that the death of Svenson and his mistress was a crime passionel by an unknown person. Such crimes are common in the north: the dossier was closed.

  For Bond, the irony of the case was that it confirmed him in the last role that he wanted – that of a ‘hard’ man, a remorseless killer. But luckily his talents were employed on ‘cleaner’ assignments for a while. Towards the end of 1943 he was back in Switzerland, organizing the escape of two important Jewish scientists from Germany across Lake Constance. He had a period behind the lines in Italy, helping the partisans attack the big Ansaldo naval works at Spezia. Later he was attached to the naval task force liaising with the French resistance in the Channel ports before D-Day. But Bond's big assignment came at the end of 1944, during the crucial German offensive into the Ardennes.

  This has long baffled the more attentive readers of Ian Fleming's books. For Fleming was involved in this as well, and mentioned the affair in passing, thus giving rise to Mr Kingsley Amis's pained query, ‘what was a commander of naval intelligence doing in the Ardennes in 1944?’

  Fleming himself did hint at the answer in his short story From a View to a Kill where he mentioned ‘left-behind spy units’ set up by the retreating Germans in the Ardennes. In fact these units at one point looked like becoming a menace to the Allies, and it was largely thanks to James Bond that this was averted.

  Throughout the summer of 1944 there had been reports from Allied agents that the Nazis were preparing a full-scale resistance movement against an Allied victory. It was known that in Berlin an entire S.S. department, based in big offices off Mehringplatz, was concerned with nothing else. It was commanded by a full-ranking S.S. general named Sender, and already Goebbels was planning to ensure that the Nazi myth survived defeat in war.

  Already he could see that a full-scale Nazi resistance movement was now the immortal Reich's best hope of immortality. And in London the Joint Chiefs of Staff set up a small committee to contain it. As something of a German expert, Fleming was a member. It was through him that Bond became involved.

  During the autumn the committee's chief concern was the Ardennes. Nobody doubted that the Fuehrer's massive armoured offensive to win back lost German conquests here would ultimately fail. But our agents were reporting that one of the secret aims of the offensive was to gain time to plant a self-contained resistance set-up here for the future. It would have arms, underground headquarters and carefully disguised command points for its troops. It would include the so-called ‘Werewolf Movement’ but in addition have a fully equipped and trained ‘secret army’ to harass the advancing Allies from the rear. According to well-confirmed reports, the S.S. general from Mehringplatz was personally in charge, and Himmler had paid a two-day visit to the area.

  Information had suddenly become crucially important, but no Allied agents had succeeded in penetrating the area. Nazi security throughout the battlehead was strict, with a virtual black-out of all information within forty miles of the salient. Fleming suggested Bond as one of the very few men who might discover what was going on.

  Bond was summoned to a house in Knightsbridge where he was briefed by an owl-like man called Grunspan. He was a former history professor from the University of Munich and one of the few Jews ever to have escaped from Auschwitz. Later Bond learned that it was here that he picked up his appalling stammer.

  Bond did his best to listen patiently as he struggled to explain what he wanted.

  ‘Commander Bond,’ he said. ‘We must have information we can act on. We know that Himmler plans this as a showpiece. If it succeeds it could provide a pattern for the future.’

  ‘What do I have to look for?’

  ‘The centre of this secret army.’

  ‘Won't it be fairly obvious once we've reconquered it?’

  ‘Obvious? My dear Commander, do you know the Ardennes? Perfect guerilla country.’ He pointed to the map. ‘Miles upon miles of forest. Why, you could hide the Wehrmacht there and nobody would be much the wiser.’

  ‘Where do you suggest I start then?’ Bond asked.

  ‘There's not a lot to go on, but perhaps you could start here – a place called Rosenfeld. It's now some twenty miles behind the front line and we know it was one of the places Himmler visited. We also know that there are strong concentrations of S.S. in the district.’

  ‘And what about this S.S. general, Semler?’

  ‘You're well informed, but I'm afraid he's something of a mystery man. We've no photographs of him – only reports that he's being tipped as Himmler's successor. Already he seems to see himself as something of a saviour of Nazi Germany.’

  Just two days later Bond heard the rattle of German Spandaus firing across the narrow no-man's-land to the west of
a town called Haslach. He could see nothing, but the Armoured Corps captain with him pointed towards the line of woods where the firing came from.

  ‘They've got their armour concentrated there. A division of Panzer Grenadiers, equipped with Mark Two Tigers – what you might call the cream of the cream. We know they're grouped back through the forest. We'll have to see if they attack again.’

  For the past two weeks the armies had been locked in battle. On one side was the massive power of the Allies – on the other the desperation of a Wehrmacht launching its final bid to save the Fatherland. The German heavy tanks had broken the Allied advance, but now they in their turn were halted. This forest land was witnessing the power of steel and high explosives as the Allied armies picked up their momentum towards Berlin.

  Bond knew that his mission was somewhere behind that line of forest. Rosenfeld lay five miles to the east. It was a daunting prospect to attempt to infiltrate the enemy's front line, but there seemed no alternative. That night James Bond was dropped by a low-flying British aircraft into a wooded area close to Rosenfeld. Rather than risk a parachute, he used a reinforced container known as a ‘coffin’ which had been invented to land men and arms for the French resistance. He landed safely, rolled clear, and did his best to hide the coffin in the undergrowth. Just at this moment hell seemed to burst around his ears. Bond had never been on the edge of an artillery bombardment before. The whole forest seemed to rock and the night was lit up with the flashes of the German guns firing back. Bond smiled to himself – the artillery were certainly on time with the diversionary cover they had promised. The shells were dropping half a mile to the west, but nobody was going to challenge Bond as he picked his way to his objective.

  This was a wooded rise to the east of Rosenfeld. According to the photographs from aerial reconnaissance it commanded most of the village. Bond reached it and then did his best to conceal himself in undergrowth. The guns were still nagging at each other in the west, but finally they stopped; Bond started his uneasy wait for morning.

  He had been luckier than he expected. For half a mile or so there was a gentle slope of scrubby heathland skirted by a road, which led to Rosenfeld. The edge of the wood where he was lying seemed uninhabited, but further to the left was a long line of entrenchments. Further on there was a coppice.

  As he looked he could gradually make out seven or eight Tiger tanks concealed beneath branches and long swathes of camouflage netting. Mechanics were at work. Bond could faintly hear their voices in the still morning. Gradually the village came to life. Parts of it had been badly shelled, but it was evidently still full of troops. A dog was barking; smoke rose from mobile kitchens; through his binoculars Bond watched half a dozen grey-clad men saunter along the street for breakfast.

  Bond spent the morning watching but saw nothing unusual. Troops moved through the village up towards the front. Two of the tanks moved off. Twice he saw Allied aircraft but their targets lay elsewhere. Then Bond noticed something.

  On the far side of the valley was a hospital – a long, low, modern building. The flat roof had a large red cross – so did the walls. So far these red crosses had done their work, the hospital appeared unscathed. What had caught Bond's attention was the steady flow of lorries to and from the place. They had gone on all morning, and Bond started counting them. There were fifteen in slightly less than an hour. What hospital could need quite so much transport? There was only one way to find out.

  There was a narrow bend in the road a mile or so back, and as the German army driver changed down to take it, he saw a figure in British army uniform leap towards the cab. That was all he saw of Bond as the door swung open and a jarring blow caught him below the ear. The lorry stopped. There was a brief scuffle in the cab, and three minutes later when it drove on there was a different driver in the German's uniform – James Bond. Propped up unconscious by his side was the German, now in British uniform.

  Bond drove fast, with tyres screeching through the village and up towards the hospital. When he arrived he parked the lorry behind several others, slung the unconscious German over his shoulder and dragged him inside. From now on everything depended on how long he could sustain the bluff. It was the British uniform that did the trick. Bond began shouting about British troops being in the forest. Orderlies were running, an alarm was sounded and everyone was suddenly yelling orders. The unconscious man began to stir. The pandemonium increased, and Bond was free to slip away. He had seen enough.

  Someone did ask where he was going. In a thick Hamburg accent Bond replied,

  ‘I must just back my lorry up.’

  But instead of backing it, he turned it and drove full pelt towards the village. Nobody stopped him and he abandoned it on the corner where he had ambushed the driver. Soon afterwards the bombardment started and Bond hid in the woods. He was hungry now and very tired. When darkness came he slept a while and after midnight started the hazardous trek back to the Allied lines.

  It was ten days before the German panzers cracked and the retreat began. By then the whole German salient had been blasted by Allied guns. Much of the forest was a wasteland, but, to Bond's surprise, Rosenfeld appeared to have survived. Apart from shattered windows, the hospital on the hill appeared intact. Bond had made sure to be included in the advance party that occupied the village. He also made sure that his first call was to the hospital. It was full of German wounded and humming with activity. Some of the wounded men were lying on mattresses in corridors. A young doctor showed him round. Bond was accompanied by a British brigadier, an upright, very typical regular soldier with a moustache and double D.S.O. He was obviously impressed by what he saw.

  ‘Can't help admiring Jerry, can you? They're an efficient bloody lot, even when they're beaten.’

  Bond nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘That doctor in charge – the tall one with the monocle. Couldn't take his eyes off you. Ever met the man before?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bond, ‘I have. Ten days ago. He was in uniform.’

  ‘Uniform? What sort of uniform?’

  ‘An S.S. general's. His name's Semler. Some people think that he'll be Himmler's successor, but somehow, after today, I doubt it.’

  It took the Allied field security three days to check the hospital. Some of the cases were quite genuine – so were the doctors. But a lot more of them were S.S. personnel. The cellars of the hospital were crammed with arms, and a command post had contact with Berlin and with resistance points throughout Germany. Thanks to James Bond the rising the S.S. planned from Rosenfeld Hospital never materialized, and without it the German Nazis were truly doomed.

  7

  Scandal

  I HAD AN idea that there had been some scandal hanging over Bond at the end of the war. Urquhart had mentioned what he termed ‘a spot of trouble’, and from chance remarks of Bond's I gathered that he still felt bitter over how he had been treated. When I asked him, his first reaction was to shake his head.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he said briskly.

  ‘But you left the Secret Service.’

  ‘So did a lot of others. The war was over. I'd had enough.’

  ‘Enough? Enough of what?’

  ‘Oh, for God's sake. Can't we just leave it there? I was bored, you understand.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  I had not seen Bond furious before. It was quite daunting. The jaw clamped tight, the face went slightly pale. I sensed the violence just below the surface. He breathed deeply, checked himself and then said very softly,

  ‘Just say that I was anxious for a change. And now, if you'll excuse me …’ He rose abruptly, nodded me good-day and strode off to the hotel. It was to be two days before I so much as caught sight of him again.

  During this time I had a chance to ask Sir William Stephenson about this period. He was distinctly cagey too.

  ‘There was a row with M. He'd only just taken over as head of the Secret Service. There were mistakes on both sides, and Bond received a good deal less than
justice. He should have got the decoration he was recommended for, but he was very stupid too. He made it difficult for M.’

  ‘But how?’

  Sir William smiled. He is a shrewd old man.

  ‘It would be wrong for me to try and tell you. I'm afraid that's something you must get from Bond himself.’

  I was not over-keen to bring the matter up again; in the event, it was Bond who mentioned it quite calmly of his own accord. This was two days later after dinner. He was sitting in the bar alone and called me over. He was quite affable and made no reference to our earlier contretemps. He even seemed eager to talk, and turned the conversation back to the war's end.

  According to what he said, he had been uncertain what to do in peacetime England. Officially, he was still on the establishment of the Volunteer Reserve of the Royal Navy. Finding himself with a fortnight's leave, he went back to spend it with Aunt Charmian.

  ‘I was hoping I could think things out. It was the one place where I thought that I could come to terms with myself.’

  Instead he found this sudden contact with his family unsettling. Aunt Charmian was full of gossip; Henry was married now and in the Treasury. ‘Just the place for him,’ said Bond. A week or two before, Aunt Charmian had met Bond's ex-fiancée in Canterbury. ‘She was looking very settled. She had two children with her – told me her husband was in fertilizers. She was most interested to know what you were doing.’

  Later, Aunt Charmian talked about the Bonds: Grandfather Bond had died the year before – aged ninety-two – and Uncle Gregor had inherited the house in Glencoe. ‘It should have been your father,’ said Aunt Charmian. ‘It would have suited him. Instead your uncle's drinking more than ever, and often talks of selling up the place.’ Aunt Charmian was horrified at the prospect. To his surprise, Bond found he didn't care.

  Nor did he care about the past. In his old room he found a locked drawer-full of letters – most of them from Marthe de Brandt and other women long forgotten. There were some photographs as well. He burned the lot. The Bentley was still in the garage where he had left it at the beginning of the war; the tyres were very flat, the metalwork was rusty. Bond locked the garage doors. Wherever else the future lay it wasn't here. That night he told his aunt that he would probably be staying in the Service.