God's Formula

by James Lepore

  “Not quite yet,” replied Ian Fleming. “But it’s coming. You’ve seen the papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite a day,” said Fleming.

  “My son,” said Rickie, hesitating, “he was in Reims, but I hear he may be at Dunkirk. It is chaotic, to say the least.”

  The banner front page headline that morning in Le Figaro had read, Reims Falls. It was a scream of pain, really, not a headline. Below the fold was a piece reporting on the talk in the defense ministry of declaring Paris an open city. Reims was only ninety miles to the northeast. In a few days, the Wehrmacht would roll triumphantly into an undefended City of Light. Fleming had listened to the BBC on and off that afternoon and evening. The reports from Reims were of a city nearly destroyed by German air and armored forces, with heavy French casualties preceding a disorganized retreat. The only good news, also on Le Figaro’s front page, was the massive evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.

  “What will you do?” the Englishman asked.

  “I will stay. La resistance has begun. I will join it. And you?”

  “I am not a wine merchant on a work visa,” replied Fleming. “But, of course, you know that. I will await orders.”

  Frederique de la Croix had been working at Maxim’s since coming home from the first world war in 1918. He had a jagged welt on the right side of his neck, from ear to collar bone, the result of a fumite bomb detonated by his own squadron just before a charge from their trench. Something had caught fire and the smokescreen had turned to a wall of flames ten feet high. A buried bomb had gone off. Others less fortunate had burned to various degrees of crisp or been killed instantly. Rickie, as Maxim’s regulars called him, had been stumbling blindly when a piece of burning shrapnel glanced off his neck. He had had his eyebrows singed off as well, but they had grown back. He raised them now, slightly.

  “Not too surprised, I take it?” Fleming asked.

  “Only that you’d acknowledge it.”

  “We may need each other, now that Hell is empty.”

  “My son…?”

  “What unit?”

  “First Moroccan. They were at Dyle before Reims.”

  “I will try.”

  “Your man,” said Rickie, nodding a silent merci, “is at his usual table.”

  “I see him,” said Fleming. “Thank you for calling me.”

  “There’s an American at the table tonight,” said Rickie.

  “Yes,” the Englishman replied. “The movie star. In harm’s way.”

  “Stuffing his face.”

  Fleming let this pass. Rickie was angry at the Americans for not helping defend France. He had been obsessed lately with what he called the blood oath his country had had to sign to get a line of credit from Roosevelt to buy airplanes from the Americans, airplanes that would have saved France, but that were not scheduled to arrive until 1941.

  “Rickie,” said Ian Fleming, “who is that dazzling young thing in the corner?” Change the subject, old man. “She could be Mademoiselle Leigh’s sister,” he went on, when he saw Rickie’s half smile.

  The L-shaped bar at Maxim’s took up a spacious alcove off of the restaurant’s rectangular main salon. It was separated from the dining room by only a few yards of thick maroon carpet and a line of gilded stanchions strung with red, velour-covered rope. Its plush maroon velvet stools were trimmed in gold epaulettes, a row of little headless Napoleons at attention at the walnut paneled bar. The Englishman, tall, thin, and darkly handsome in his trademark dark blue suit and striped knit tie, sat on one of these as he and Rickie chatted. Three large mirrors in swirling ormolu frames hung over each of the bar’s two walls, surrounded by shelves filled with exquisitely labeled bottles of liquor. The mirrors were admirable additions to the Versailles-like opulence of the famous Maxim’s, but they were also useful. From any seat at the bar, one could survey the entire restaurant, a good thing—for jealous lovers, the occasional police detective—and spies, like Fleming, who could chat casually with Rickie and still be working. And drinking, of course.

  “Miss Leigh?” Freddie replied.

  “The actress. Gone With The Wind. Come on, Rickie.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rickie said. “L’affaire d’Olivier. A Frenchman, non?”

  “English, Rickie, but you know that. Who is she?”

  “The mistress of Monsieur Malle, the president of the Banque de France. He always arrives thirty minutes after her.”

  “Young.”

  “Oui, twenty-five, twenty-six.”

  “New?”

  “Yes, perhaps three weeks. Maison Lacloche Frères is very happy.”

  They both eyed the ruby and diamond butterfly broach at the nether region of the raven-haired beauty’s ample décolletage, and the cleavage thus revealed, it goes without saying.

  “It could be glass,” said Fleming.

  “No, I think not,” said Rickie. “Value for value. Look at her.”

  They not only looked, they stared.

  A second or two later, their trance was broken abruptly by the sound of roaring laughter at a large round table at the far end of the room. Another beautiful woman, this one fair, also in her mid-twenties, was dabbing at her ample bosom with a napkin. Her face was bright red, but her smile self-deprecating, even naïve, as she beamed across the table at a handsome, sandy-haired man in his forties. The woman sitting next to this man, her face angular, her black hair severely cut, was not smiling.

  “If looks could kill,” said Rickie quietly, pretending to be looking elsewhere.

  “Or seduce,” said Fleming, his eyes on the young woman.

  “You think she’s an agent provocateur?”

  “She’s been laughing at David’s stupid jokes all night.”

  “This is what comes of having kings and queens,” said Rickie.

  Fleming did not answer. Instead, he turned to survey the room frontally. He had an excuse. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s table. Coco Chanel, who usually sat at table number five, was there, sitting next to a sternly handsome middle-aged man who looked suspicious to Fleming, which meant, of course, German. The English playwright and actor Ivor Novelo was at the table, as was an American movie star whom Fleming could not place, a tall, dashing man with devil-may-care eyes and a mustache. The fair young beauty with the wet breasts was sitting between them. From the snippets of conversation that Fleming could hear, he gathered that each was handing her a glass of bubbly when they collided at just the right spot. Or wrong spot. One could not say for sure

  “Should we slice their heads off then?” Fleming asked, turning back to face the bartender. His tone was not heavy, but not quite lighthearted either. He did not, in fact, like the turn the conversation had taken. First the Americans and now the Brits. His family of bankers, and the Windsors, as the royals had been known since 1917, moved in the same intersecting circles—military, finance, and politics—the three national playing fields that had been dominated by the British aristocracy since the nation began. And though he thought his former king a thorough fool, Fleming could not bring himself to be disloyal in public, and to a Frenchman no less. The fool was his fool. Hence the quiet warning he intended to convey by a certain undertone in his voice.

  “No, mon ami,” the bartender replied.

  “Or line them up, like the Bolsheviks did?” Again the Englishman’s tone was half serious, half lighthearted.

  Rickie did not answer.

  At the round table, the man sitting next to Mademoiselle Chanel had risen and handed a fresh napkin to the young lass with champagne dripping down her chest. A tall, haughty waiter, in traditional evening dress, was pouring her a new glass. The laughter had quieted. The Duchess was now smiling graciously. No green monster there, Fleming said to himself as he watched all this unfold in the nearest mirror.

  “Quite right,” Fleming said, finally, smiling, filling in the long silence, having kept Rickie waiting long enough, “to refrain from answerin
g rhetorical questions.”

  “We are sympatique, you and I, no?”

  Back to normal, Fleming said to himself, as Rickie, noticeably relieved, nodded and smiled. The scarred bartender’s country is about to be overrun by the Hun. And his son is missing in action. And he probably wants that weekly thousand franc note I give him to continue. Such complex creatures, we humans.

  “Another?” Rickie asked, nodding toward Fleming’s glass.

  “Mais oui.”

  As Rickie mixed Fleming’s gin and tonic, the maître d’, also in evening clothes but with a cutaway jacket and black tie to denote his very high level of importance, led a well-fed, balding, middle-aged man, a stunning brunette in a red satin dress on his arm, into the room and toward the celebrity-laden round table at the far wall.

  “What have we here?” Fleming asked Rickie, who lifted his head for a second to follow the couple.

  “They’re new to me,” Rickie replied.

  The maître d’ held the brunette’s chair, while her paunchy escort waited at his for her to be seated. Both had their backs to Fleming, but he could see their faces clearly in the gilded mirror on the wall behind them. The woman was taller than the man by six inches at least, and thirty years younger. She stood erect, her eyes very focused, as she was introduced to the former King of England and his American wife, refusing to acknowledge, except for a slight nod of the head, that she was in the presence of anyone better than her. Proud, Fleming thought, and then on impulse he asked Rickie to send over a bottle of the 1928 Krug he had asked Maxim’s to store for him for very special occasions. He watched a few minutes later as the sommelier, also in evening dress, but with a red vest, popped the cork and poured out the champagne with just the right mix of Gallic flair and arrogance. All at the table, including the Duke and Duchess, looked his way and raised their glasses to him before they drank.

  “I’ll be back momentarily,” he said to Rickie, after acknowledging them with his own raised glass.

  Fleming locked the men’s room door behind him and turned off the lights. In the dark, he slipped a film canister the size of a fat centime from the deep recesses of his wallet, unscrewed the top of one of his simple round gold cufflinks, inserted the canister and replaced the top. He flipped the lights on, peed, flushed, and washed and dried his hands.

  Back at the bar, he watched Maxim’s come to life. Half empty only an hour ago, the restaurant was now filled to capacity. At the corner table, the national bank president had arrived and was sharing intimate conversation with his Vivien Leigh look-alike. Except for this, and one or two other tucked-away tables with similar Mai-Decembre patrons, the restaurant was a bustling and merry place. The sommelier and the wait staff moved with all deliberate speed distributing food and drink, and more drink, around the large room. Crystal tinkled, women in beautiful gowns and shimmering hair-dos tittered and smiled behind gloved hands, men in white tie guffawed. The chandeliers and gold fixtures sparkled, the brass lamps on every table glowed, and mirrors on virtually every wall reflected it all, including those in the room using these same mirrors to assess the goings on at other tables.

  The perfect place for a spy, of which, Fleming was sure, there were at least one or two besides himself casting trained eyes on Paris’ crème de la crème enthusiastically ignoring the barbarians at their gates. Not a bad strategy, he thought, maybe they know something I don’t. I give the Germans five days to get here. Perhaps they give them ten.

  Chapter 4

  Avon, May 28, 1940, 5:00 p.m.

  Subjects Marlene Jaeger, SS, Kurt Deibner, nuclear physicist. Very interested their movements.

  This typewritten note on blank paper Ian Fleming had read earlier and burned in an ashtray in his hotel room. Walking now with Father Jacques Bunel across one of the lawns of the fabled Fontainebleau palace, the Englishman marveled at the speed at which MI-6 could do things. The negatives of the pictures he had taken last night of the late-arriving couple had been flown to London, processed, printed, matched with pictures on file, and the cryptic note flown back, all within a half day. Fortunately, he had been assigned Ms. Jaeger. Another agent, a member of a Parisian cell completely unknown to him, was watching Deibner.

  Bunel—tall, thin, balding, perhaps forty, in a simple brown cassock with a braided hemp sash at the waist—took long strides, which the Englishman was forced to match. Ahead he could see a field on which soccer sides were going at it in the golden late afternoon sun. Green shirts versus blue shirts. As they got closer to the unfenced perimeter, grunts could be heard from the field, shouts of encouragement from the sidelines. The greens were attacking the blue goal at the far end of the field. A defender deflected a pass, and another kicked the ball upfield. As the players raced after the cleared ball, Father Jacques pointed to a boy in blue with a mop of unruly brown hair and a gangly, colt-like gate. Unathletic, awkward, though trying hard, he trailed his frantic teammates by several meters.

  “Him,” the priest said.

  Fleming, in a light navy blazer and bow tie, looked carefully, using his right hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun. He started to turn to Father Jacques, then turned back. The boy was jogging past him now, only a few feet away. He watched him go by.

  “Thank you, Father,” Fleming said. “I am much obliged.”

  Chapter 5

  Orly, May 28, 1940, 10:00 p.m.

  Ian Fleming, waving a kerosene lantern above his head, stood on the hardpan apron in front of a dilapidated signalman’s hut at the end of one of the airport’s outermost and least used runways, watching the converted B-24 Liberator taxi slowly in his direction. Painted entirely black, he had never seen the huge plane approach, or even heard it above Orly’s steady, sibilant wind and general din. The runway lights had been lit for the landing and were now off. His lantern was the pilot’s sole guide. When the aircraft finally came to a stop, Fleming, following orders, placed the lantern on the ground and his hands high in the air. He watched the fuselage stairway unfold and two men in all black step down, guns drawn, and approach him.

  “Out strolling?” one said after reaching him.

  “Trolling, rather,” Fleming replied.

  The other man shone a torch in Fleming’s face and smiled. “Ian,” he said.

  “Chief, I—”

  “No time,” said Eldridge White, turning to look behind him. A portly man in a three piece suit, an army parka thrown over his shoulders, and a bowler hat, was casually approaching.

  “Leave us,” the man said on his arrival. Then, to Fleming, “Let’s walk. The damned airplane. No place to get comfortable.”

  “Prime Minister,” said Fleming.

  “You’ve heard.”

  “Of course. Where shall we walk?”

  “Let’s circle this little hut. Do my guardians good to see me out of sight for a few seconds.”

  As they turned to walk, Winston Churchill, who a few days prior had been named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, immediately upon Neville Chamberlain’s resignation, stopped abruptly, and said, “Let me look at you.”

  Fleming turned to face him. The new P.m. took the unlit cigar from his mouth and moved in closer. “Johnny,” he said.

  “Sir.”

  “You’ve grown up.”

  “Sir.”

  “I’ve been neglectful, I’m afraid. Your mother is well?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your brothers are both hard at work. You here. I’m told you’ve found your metier.”

  “It’s not boring, sir.”

  “Quite. Why don’t you take a salary?”

  “A salary?”

  “Yes, Johnny, a salary.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same, Prime Minister.”

  “Not the same?”

  “Not as much fun.”

  “A real job, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Humph.” But Fleming could see the old man smiling. The eyes of both men had adjusted to the dark by now. Churchill put his ciga
r back in his mouth, clasped his hands behind his back, and they started walking.

  “Lindemann tells me this formula just might be the real thing.”

  Silence. Fleming knew who Frederick Lindemann was. It was the formula he was thinking of, hidden somewhere in a teenage boy’s simple dormitory twenty miles away. The Americans had ridiculed it, and he himself had been skeptical, even dismissive. But Churchill here…

  “He advises me on scientific matters,” the new P.m. said, interrupting these thoughts.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sure it was the boy?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “The German woman?”

  “The priest said she was there to place refugees, German Jews. Also looking for runaway children. She asked about boys in that category at the school. Very casual, a professional. Inquired about the son of a friend who had run away. She produced a list of missing boys, with photographs. Very concerned. Good actress.”

  “And the priest did not give up the Friedeman boy?”

  “No. He said the Nazis are about to eliminate Europe’s Jews. He used a strange word. ‘Genocide.’”

  “Why did he trust you?”

  “I told him the truth, that the boy was carrying something that would get him killed, that the German woman was a spy, that she and others would be back, and very soon. That I would get the boy to England.”

  “There’s another boy, I understand.”

  “Yes, the priest insisted he be part of the deal.”

  They had made one full turn around the hut. Passing the front door, the P.m. waved to Ellie White, who was standing with the second MI-6 man at the foot of the stairway. “I see you’re not smoking,” he said to Fleming.

  “No, sir.”

  “Security, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think I may have made a decent spy, but that’s another story.”