by Mitch Silver
By a piece of luck, Thelma had been invited to a boring society dinner at the Hotel Pierre in New York and was seated next to the young Lothario. Before the sorbet they left the table for the suite upstairs that Thelma had taken for the evening. In the morning, she extended her stay for a fortnight. One can only imagine the nocturnal good fortune that led her to delay her return to the “Little Man,” as she derisively spoke of the Prince, temporarily replacing him with the inviting presence of a lover whose notorious staying power had caused him to be compared with Father Christmas. “Each comes but once a year.”
Thus buffed to a high gloss, Thelma, all fox stole and long legs, arrives at Fort Belvedere for lunch on Good Friday to find Wallis sitting in her place beside the Prince. While they wait to be served, he helps himself to a piece of lettuce from the salad bowl, at which point Wallis spanks his hand hard enough to make him drop the leaf on the table, saying, “Next time, use a knife and fork.” The Prince gives everyone a caught-in-the-cookie-jar schoolboy grin. Thelma looks across the table at Wallis, who returns an icy stare of triumph. Vivat Regina! After that Sunday’s Easter service, Thelma packs her bags and leaves, never to return.
And that’s how Wallis became the queen bee who would be Queen. But this is also a history of how and why she wouldn’t be Queen. And why her vassal wouldn’t be King. That’s where I come in.
Chapter 17
PROVENANCE
Here’s all you need to know about me: it’s the bit above that I lifted from Jack London and had Mary Goodnight pronounce over James Bond at the end of You Only Live Twice. Now for a little of my CV: Though I was schooled for a while at Eton and for a while at Sandhurst, I owe any education I actually absorbed to the Forbes-Dennises and their little school in Kitzbühel in the Austrian Alps. Childless themselves, they had the idea to create a kind of idealistic establishment for boys of good English families (and good English money) who had made a dog’s breakfast of their previous education. Ernan was a tall, aristocratic Scot who had been badly wounded in the war. Phyllis was a Quaker with heaps of prematurely white hair who, as Phyllis Bottome, had been a novelist of some repute.
They had taken a large chalet halfway up the mountain called the Tennerhof. It had apple trees and a great interior space that could be adapted to classroom work, dramatic production, or evening soiree. I was consigned to their care by my mother for the summer of 1926, when all else had failed.
So, one bright July morning, I stepped off the Arlberg Express and found myself in a sleepy little Tyrolean market town in the shadow of the Kitzbühler Horn and the Kaiser Mountains, that awe-inspiring range of giant stone teeth that give Kitzbühel its threatening northern horizon. In the mid-1920s, the travel agents and the downhillers and the “glitterati” had yet to discover it, and what visitors there were—mainly the snob set from Vienna—took no notice of the Forbes-Dennises.
What notice Forbes-Dennis took of me on the platform that morning I can only imagine. I was tall for sixteen, tall enough to look him in the eye. I was trying to be cool but probably came off as arrogant, what the French call difficile. I had come to the right place: the reason Forbes-Dennis and his wife, and therefore I, were in Austria at all was their total belief in the application of Freudian psychology to education. In the conviction that neuroses grow from the early struggle to assert one’s personality against the environment of home and family, Ernan and Phyllis set out to create a second, more loving home and family for their students. I can honestly say my life with the two of them is one of my most cherished memories.
Ernan gave me something to shoot for, a career in the Foreign Service. Encouragement came in a hundred conversations over dinner, in walks amid the apple blossoms and long hikes up and down the Kitzbühler slopes. Along the way, I became impeccable in German, fluent in French, and even passable in my native English—all of which I used to practice regularly on the Mädchen who frequented the Café Reisch in town.
Unlike the English girls I had known up to then—the great unwashed, literally—in Kitzbühel the most amazing girls were available in abundance for the tall, presentable English boy from the Tennerhof. Where girls in England were prudish or mercenary, boring or too much trouble, with no idea how to properly make love, in the looser moral climate of Kitzbühel there were no hovering mothers to worry about, no families to offend, no moral codes to outrage, and no entanglements that could not be forgotten by breakfast time. I don’t know if it was the mountain air or me, but I could look at an Austrian girl and she would fall into my lap.
By the time I was twenty, I was enjoying two separate existences. One was up at the school, learning to love German literature. And the other was swimming and skiing and climbing and bedding German-speaking fräuleins. It was this second life that led me to meet Wallis Simpson.
In the years after graduation, it had become my habit as a young working man in the City to return as often as I could to the Tyrol to pay my respects to Ernan and Phyllis and renew acquaintances with as many of the young ladies as I could crowd into a skiing vacation or bank holiday. By February 1935, the thing was fairly routine. I would work quite hard for a month or two and then hop the Channel, jump in a car, and motor down from Normandy. I would ski in the morning, have something to eat, and then wander about a bit and see what developed.
I was doing my wandering on the terrace of the Grand Hotel one afternoon when a grating American voice stopped me. “Was that you skiing past the hotel an hour ago? You’re quite good.” I saw a woman of about forty, playing bridge with three other women. She said, “I seem to have mislaid a prince. Have you seen one schussing about?”
As it happens, I had seen the Prince of Wales skiing that morning. He was terrible. I had watched two young Frenchwomen trying to overtake him. The three of them had veered off into a snowbank, the Prince by accident and the mademoiselles on purpose. Better play dumb.
“I haven’t had the pleasure. My name is Ian Fleming.”
She looked dead into my eyes with hers, a blue that later became known as Wallis blue. “And I’m currently Wallis Simpson.”
So. Here was someone who put her cards on the table. She turned to her bridge group. “Excuse me, ladies, but I’m going to trouble Mr. Fleming to find me a Campari.”
The woman who was dummy pointed to the glass Wallis had left on the table. “But you already have one.”
Without looking back, Wallis replied, “One always desires something fresh. Do you not find it so, Mr. Fleming?”
I walked Wallis into the bar next to the terrace, and Wallis walked me right through it and out into the hotel lobby. We passed a very satisfactory, and rather athletic, hour in the Prince’s suite.
When I returned to London ten days later, a note was waiting for me on my desk at Rowe and Pittman in Bishopsgate. It was from Lancelot “Lancy” Smith, one of the firm’s senior partners, requesting my immediate presence in his office. Feeling every bit the schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s rooms, I walked in to find two men I didn’t recognize waiting for me with Lancy. I took the hot seat across Lancy’s desk from the three of them.
“This is our young Mr. Fleming, gentlemen. Ian, may I introduce Sir Edward Peacock of the Bank of England. And Mr. Conrad O’Brien-ffrench of…well, more on that later.”
Mr. O’Brien-ffrench, being the nearer, shook my hand. “Two small efs,” was all he said. Sir Edward remained in his chair. He wasn’t of the Bank of England. He very nearly was the Bank of England.
“Am I overdrawn?” was all I managed.
They took me for a wit and laughed. “Actually, it’s rather the other way round,” said Mr. Two-Small-Efs O’Brien-ffrench. “We think you have an untapped asset of considerable value.”
My face must have looked as blank as my mind. Sir Edward spoke up. “Your ability to get on.”
The three men looked at me as if that explained everything. I looked at them as if I understood nothing. I was the more convincing. Mr. O’Brien-ffrench actually blushed when he said, “
With the ladies.”
Top-level business meetings were more interesting than I had been led to believe. It was impossible to tell if I was being chastised or elevated to partner.
It was neither. Lancy got up and came around to me. “Ian, I’d like you to come down to Hampshire for the weekend. Very informal. A bit of shooting, a chance to talk. No dressing for dinner. Just a few friends.”
He shook my hand. Sir Edward was too intrigued with his cuticles to bid me good-bye. Mr. O’Brien-ffrench looked up and nodded to me, his face a roseate hue. Three proper Victorians in the presence of a great libertine. I found the whole thing amusing.
Chapter 18
Have you decided, Dr. Greenberg?”
Amy looked up. The first round of movies was over. The flight attendant was looking at her expectantly, clipboard at the ready. “Your entrée?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t—”
“Boneless breast of chicken à la Galway, boeuf tenderloin, or our vegetarian selection, which today…” Siobhan Farrell—here in business, the plastic nametags were a nice gold color—was a tall black woman with a full-blown Irish accent. There must have been a look on Amy’s face as she tried to match the way the woman looked with the way the woman sounded, because the attendant said, “Yes, I’m Irish. Black Irish.” And then she smiled. “It’s a joke. I get that look all the time.” And then she turned her attention back to the clipboard. Amy watched her flip pages with extraordinarily long fingers. “Our vegetarian choice today is pasta primavera. County Cork vegetables in a—”
“Thanks. I’ll take it.”
Ms. Farrell seemed pleased that her clipboard work had hit pay dirt. “We’ll be coming around with lunch shortly.” She turned to the big man sitting next to Amy. “And for you, Mr….”
Again, pages were flipped. And flipped back. He took mercy on her. “Kaltenbrunner.”
Amy must have gasped or something, because they both looked at her. She covered the moment with a cough. Ms. Farrell was writing. “2B…Kaltenbrunner. Forgive me. You ordered the vegetarian meal as well?”
Amy looked at the man. Could you get that big just by eating your vegetables?
Kaltenbrunner, if that really was his name, glanced at Amy before replying. “No, that was my colleague. He gave up his seat to me at the last moment. I’m a meat and potatoes man all the way. Give me the beef.”
Siobhan Farrell made a notation and turned to the people across the aisle. On cue, Amy’s seatmate turned to her. “Is Doctor really your first name?”
She laughed despite herself. “It’s Amy. Is Kaltenbrunner really your last name?”
He extended a huge paw. “Harvey. Harvey Kaltenbrunner.”
It was like shaking hands with a bear. “You’re the second Kaltenbrunner I’ve met this morning.” What are the odds of that? she thought.
He read her mind. “It’s a ten-million-to-one shot. Of course, in Germany it’s like Williams or Brown.”
Brown. Scott Brown. Her fiancé Scott Brown. She’d forgotten to see if he’d sent her his daily e-mail. Amy undid her seatbelt and reached down for her ThinkPad. It was under the shopping bag with the scarf she’d bought for Scott in a last-minute, Brian Devlin–inspired guilt trip to the duty-free shop.
There comes a point in a transatlantic relationship when you either break it off or you’re committed to four more hours of small talk. Harvey Kaltenbrunner took the hint and put on his headphones. Looking over, Amy could see he was scrolling through the audio choices. While she booted up, Amy wondered if she could send e-mails from the plane. She didn’t see one of those places to plug in on the console. At least she’d be able to read anything she’d received before she’d checked out of the hotel.
Her home page showed she had mail from Scott. It said, “Miss you. Hurry home. From New Haven with Love, Scott.” He’d fallen harder for Ian Fleming than she had. A second message was from [email protected]. A dating service? She clicked on it.
You’re in danger. Don’t get on the plane. They know. Page 3 of tomorrow’s Irish Independent. Your hotel phone is bugged. Wait for us at the airport. We’ll explain. Whatever you do, don’t get on the plane.
Amy shut her ThinkPad without waiting to turn it off. The message had been sent at 10:36 last night. For twelve hours, it had just been sitting there. Who were “they”? And what did they know? And what could it have to do with her? She didn’t know anything. If it was about her having the manuscript, what was the danger? Robbery? On an airplane?
Kaltenbrunner. A last-minute passenger…He must be one of them. “They.” Was he waiting for her to doze off? Maybe when the second movie was on and the cabin was dark. With those huge hands around her neck, she’d have no chance. Got to move. Don’t let on.
She stuffed the manuscript and her laptop into the duty-free shopping bag. “Excuse me, Mr. Kaltenbrunner. Harvey.” He still had the headphones on. A look of something like annoyance crossed his face. Then he heaved himself out of his seat and stood in the aisle.
Amy said her “Thank you” without making eye contact. The sign on the forward lavatory said Vacant. But she wanted to put as much distance between them as she could, so she headed toward the one in the back of the business section. A man was waiting next to the Occupied sign, reading Newsweek. She stood next to him and gazed back at her fellow passengers. People were reading or sleeping or listening to music. Siobhan Farrell was four feet away in the galley, preparing lunch. She could easily get her attention, but what would she say? That someone she didn’t know had sent her an e-mail warning her of danger from other people she didn’t know?
A very literal shiver started up her spine from the small of her back and ran up to her neck and right on out through her hair. The fact that fear could become an actual physical sensation was terrifying all by itself. Amy grabbed hold of the nearest partition. She thought she might pass out standing up.
When she didn’t, she opened her eyes and saw she was holding on to one of the built-in racks where they kept the reading material. The magazines were at eye level, the newspapers farther down. She knelt to look at them. The Financial Times, Barron’s, the Times of London, and the Guardian. No Irish Independent. Then she got a break. The couple in 5C and 5D had dozed off, and they had dropped a couple of newspapers on the floor. The Daily Express and, under it, the Independent. Amy helped herself to their paper and, realizing the bathroom had become vacant, locked herself in.
Chapter 19
Two die in fiery crash on the Rathmines Road.” The headline ran the full width of page 3. The picture, four columns wide, showed the charred wreckage of a car that had slammed into the back of a truck in a Dublin suburb around nine the night before. Witnesses told different stories. A teenager insisted that two men on a noisy motorcycle had passed a small foreign car on the left, just before there was a flash of blue-white light. He had particularly noticed that the man on the back of the motorcycle had on bulky goggles. An older woman who had been standing at a stoplight said the crash was caused by a lorry that backed out of a side street at high speed, directly into the path of the car.
The third paragraph caught Amy’s eye. “Police pulled two bodies, a man and a woman, from the 1997 Fiat 124, which is registered to a Mrs. Colleen O’Beirne of Dunsmere.” An inset photo showed Mrs. O’Beirne from the bank, smiling in happier days.
It was a good thing Amy was in the bathroom, because now she had to throw up. She lifted the toilet seat and let the sick feeling take over. Then she ran the water in the sink and soaked a paper towel. At least they hadn’t yet served lunch.
The cold water felt good on her face. She looked in the mirror. A scared, serious-looking woman looked back at her. How had she gotten here? And into so much danger? Hadn’t she, just a minute ago, been the little dark-haired girl playing hide-and-seek with her grandfather? They’d play in the Yale rare book library after closing hours. Her favorite place to hide was out in the open on the upper floor, behind the pedestal that held the Gutenberg Bible in its glass
case. He’d always find her in the closets and storage areas but never under the Bible, right there in plain sight.
There was mouthwash next to the sink, and paper cups. She used them and sat down on the seat. Her hands were trembling. The next wave hit her so hard, it was all she could do to keep the bile from coming up past her throat. She’d never known fear before. Everything—the Space Mountain ride at Disney World, her dissertation orals in front of the faculty—were things she knew would have a beginning, a middle, and an end. She could tell herself, “In ten minutes or two hours, for better or worse, this will be over,” and mentally project herself on the far side of them. But a death threat, or whatever this was…There might not be a far side.
“Don’t get on the plane.” Too late for that. She looked down at the manuscript. What could be so dangerous about a handful of pages that somebody—Kaltenbrunner?—would kill people for them? And if the O’Beirne woman was killed in a car crash yesterday, how could she have upgraded Amy’s ticket this morning? And if not her, who? She had to find out.
Someone tried the bathroom handle. Amy knew she’d call attention to herself if she stayed here. She flushed the toilet to buy a couple more seconds, then ran some water in the sink. She had to find a place where she could read the Fleming story and know what he had wanted her to know. And then maybe she’d know what to do about it.
When she finally opened the door, three people glared at her. Sorry. She looked toward the front of the plane and saw the big form of Kaltenbrunner blocking her return to her seat. So she turned in the other direction and walked briskly into coach.
Row 39, the last three seats in the tail of the plane, was empty. Amy sat down next to the window. Now no one could come up behind her, and any passenger who meant her harm would have to show his face coming down the aisle. With fingers trembling a little, she opened the manuscript and started in again.