God's Formula (16 page)

Philippa Esclarmonde and Ian Fleming sat in a grove of tall pine trees on the southern flank of Foix Mountain, their backs against a rock shelf. They had emerged into this grove from the catacombs via a set of rough underground steps that led to an opening in the forest floor, an ingenious stone trap door covered by a foot of pine needles. Fleming put his glasses to his eyes and did a one-hundred-eighty degree scan of the scene below. The thickly forested foothills of the Pyrenees stretched a mile or two before rising to quickly form the great and towering range that divided France from Spain.

“Can we go around to the other side?” Fleming asked.

“No,” Philippa replied, “the Germans on the towers can see every movement on all sides of the mountain. This is one of the few concealed spots.”

“Are you all right?” the Englishman asked. “That was quite a climb, and that slab of stone was heavy.” He had noticed Philippa’s deep breathing when they first sat down, the swell of her breast as she took in the fresh mountain air. Their climb had not been as fearsome as the night before, but it had been dark and cramped and traction had been difficult in the ascending tunnel whose steps were either too smooth or too crumbly. She had slipped on some loose stones and the knot in her skirt had come undone, exposing a section of calf and knee and lower thigh that was heart-stopping even to a man who had seen many female legs in many circumstances.

“Yes,” Philippa answered as she gathered the ends of her torn garment and set about studiously re-tying them. She had not seemed to notice that he was staring, albeit discreetly, at her exposed flesh. Nor at her swelling breast for that matter. Or had she? She was wearing the same clothes as last night, except for a peasant’s rough-hewn sweater, which she was smart to bring as the mountain air was quite cool at this hour. The red and yellow kerchief she had on her head last night she now wore around her neck, with her long hair tied back in a pony tail.

“What did you see?” Philippa asked.

“Forest, then mountains. They rise so abruptly.”

“Yes, a wall built by God. There is only the one road up and through.”

“I saw it. It is heavily guarded. There must be footpaths.”

“There are secret passages into Spain that have been used for a thousand years,” Philippa replied. “There is even an underground river that empties into a gorge and then goes back under the mountain.”

“Do you know these mountains?”

“I have been roaming them all my life.”

“Any place to land a small plane?” Ian Fleming asked. “Flat and perhaps a hundred meters long?”

“No, nothing like that. We will lead you out on foot.”

Fleming put his glasses to the mountains again. Craggy peaks everywhere. An airplane’s graveyard. “On foot,” he said, shaking his head. “We’d never make it. Just think how delighted Franco would be to hand us over to his pal Adolph.”

“Actually,” said Philippa, “there is one place that might serve. It would be very dangerous.”

“Can you take me there?” Fleming asked.

“Your pilot will have to be very good, and very brave.”

“They’re all good, all brave.”

“We will go tonight. The Germans patrol at night, but we will avoid them.”

Philippa’s breathing had returned to its normal rhythm. She sat serenely with her hands wrapped around her knees. “You know the boy Conrad is not well,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He is ready to break apart, his heart to burst.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Your Mademoiselle has asked to see him. She says she is worried about him. Shall I allow it?”

“No.”

“Is she not your colleague?”

“We met by chance in a war zone.”

“She is not French.”

“Yes, Professor Tolkien tells me you do not trust her.”

“Do
you
trust her?”

“I’m not sure, but I plan on finding out.”

“I am having her watched.”

“She is very clever. And deadly, I might add.”

“My people are invisible.”

“Don’t have a man follow her.”

For the first time since they’d met, Philippa Esclarmonde smiled, a smile so beautiful and so inviting that Ian Fleming, despite his secret looks at her body, allowed himself for the first time to think explicitly of bedding her. To have that smile all to himself, to have those eyes gaze upon him with desire, with desperate need…
there
was a prize worth fighting for, worth whatever effort it might take to win.

“You are aware of her charms,” Philippa said.

“As I am aware of yours.”

“Ah, Monsieur Fleming,” said Philippa, “what you may think of as my charms are not of this world, or for this world.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I have taken a vow.”

“Are you a nun, then?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand. Surely you must have suitors. The men here seem dull, but they’re
men
, and they’re not blind.”

“You are a handsome man, and very confident.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

This brought on another smile, which, to his surprise, took the Englishman’s heart a little out of its rhythm, a little to the side, so to speak.
Two smiles, old boy
, he said to himself,
get a hold of yourself
.

“Conrad.” John Tolkien stood in the timber-framed doorway of Conrad’s rough stone chamber. The boy, resting on his cot, turned his head to see who was calling his name, and sat up. “I thought you were my father,” he said.

“You must miss him.”

Conrad nodded, his mouth grim. “Where’s Karl?” he asked.

“Outside, talking to Claude.”

“Why have you returned?”

“To ask about…”

“Yes? About what?”

“Your epilepsy.” The professor had at first thought to sugarcoat the reason for his return, but why? The boy had come early to his crossroads, but so had many others even younger. Choosing was not the same as dying.

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re lucky,” said the professor.

“Lucky?”

“My father died when I was three. I have no memory of him.”

“
You
’
re
the lucky one.”

“I felt self-pity once,” said Tolkien. “I was forbidden to see or communicate with the woman I loved. Then I saw it for what it was.”

“What was it?”

“Cowardice.”

“You think I’m a coward?”

Tolkien pulled a footstool over to the cot and sat. “I knew an epileptic boy once,” he said.

Conrad, his lips still tightly shut, his eyes bright with what Tolkien hoped was anger and not the beginning of a seizure, stared across at him.

“My brother and I,” the Englishman continued, “used to play at a mill that ground animal bones for fertilizer. There was a big sluice wheel and a sandpit next to the riverbank. A boy from the slums used to join us sometimes. One day he fell into a sink hole in the sand pit. When we pulled him out, his arms and legs were twitching uncontrollably, his eyes had rolled up into his head. We ran into the mill for help.”

Silence.

“He was a street urchin. He could count, but nothing else. After his seizure, he was a mathematical genius. It was in the newspaper. He could do impossible sums in his head in an instant. He was killed at Gallipoli.”

Silence.

“You said you were good with numbers, Conrad.”

“I am.”

“You remember the page numbers of my book.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a knack for memorizing things?”

“Yes.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it indiscriminate? Do you remember
everything
you see and hear?”

“No. I would go insane. I choose what to memorize, and then I…I push a button in my brain.”

“A button in your brain?”

“I started doing it when I was very young. I can’t remember when it started. That’s ironic, isn’t it? It’s a game I played in my head as a child.”

“So it’s not just numbers?”

“No.”

“But did your father have you memorize any numbers or sets of numbers before he sent you away?”

“No.”

“Did he have you memorize
anything
?”

“No—nothing important, just a poem for my grandfather. A birthday poem.”

“You never got to recite it.”

“No.”

“You love your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

Tolkien reached for his pipe—a pull or two would make failure easier to bear.

“It’s in elvish,” Conrad said.

The professor had struck a match and was about to set it to the bowl of his Meerschaum. “Elvish?” he said, stopping in mid-air and letting the flame flicker out.

“Yes.”

“How…?”

“My father said he invented it just for the poem.”

“Invented it how?”

“From the elvish words in The Hobbit.”

“There are only a few.”

Conrad shrugged. “I tried to decipher it the night before I left, but I fell asleep.”

“Can you recite it now?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve found the formula,” said John Tolkien.

“What?” said Ian Fleming. “What did you say?” He had been toying with his food, thinking about Philippa Esclarmonde.
Get your head out of your arse, old boy.

“Conrad thinks it’s a poem his father had him memorize before he left, in elvish.”

“Memorize?
Elvish
? I say, professor…”

Fleming looked at the chunk of bread in his hand, and put it back on the wooden slab that one of the younger Esclarmonde sisters—he believed it was Claude, but they looked so much alike he could not be sure—had used to bring him his breakfast when he and Philippa returned from their outing.

“That’s why I’m needed, you see,” said Tolkien.

“Do I?”

“I’ve worked out the first two verses.”

“Memorized, you say? It’s not on paper?”

“No, it’s in Conrad’s head.”

“How can that be? I imagined it filled with mathematical and chemical gobbledygook. Pages of incomprehensible mumbo jumbo.”

“It is, once you translate it.”

“It must have taken the boy hours.”

“No, he has an eidetic memory.”

“What’s that?”

“Photographic. He looked at it once, and
presto
, he memorized it, word for word, mathematical symbol for mathematical symbol.”

“All those squiggly lines and x’s and y’s and square roots and whatnot?”

“Yes, and more. Letters, dashes, brackets, subscripts, superscripts.”

“All in elvish?”

“Yes, so only
I
could translate it.”

“Brilliant.”

“I daresay.”

“I take it you invented this elvish language?”

“No, Walter Friedeman did, but he knew I’d be able to figure it out. It’s based on a few words in The Hobbit.”

“And you
have
? Figured it out?”

“As I said, the first two verses, so to speak.”

“Have you put it on paper?”

“Not yet.”

“How long would it be?”

“Probably ten pages.”

“Don’t write it down.”

“Why ever not?”

“If you’re caught, the Germans will get it.”

“I see. Quite.”

“Does the boy know what he has in his head?”

“Not specifically, no, but he’s probably surmised by now that it’s not just a birthday poem. I went into it rather deeply with him. I had to. He’s not stupid. Everyone he’s come across has asked him about a formula. He’ll put two and two together if he hasn’t already.”

“Can the Germans do a translation?”

“It would take them a while, but I daresay they could.”

“We must get the boy to England.”

“Post haste. How do we go about it, I feel compelled to ask.”

“I’m going up into the hills tonight to look for a likely landing strip. When I find one, I’ll radio the coordinates to London. We could leave tomorrow night.”

“I didn’t know we had a radio.”

“We don’t, but Philippa’s people do.”

“What did you see topside?”

“Germans everywhere, looking for the entrance to the secret caves. The three towers manned around the clock. They can see everything happening from up there in all directions.”

“Will they find us?”

“Philippa thinks not.”

“
Philippa
. So you’ve graduated.”

“Professor…”

“Is that why you’ve been poking at your food?”

Fleming smiled as his mind flashed back two years to a dark night in the Bavarian Forest, when it first occurred to him to wonder what role exactly John Tolkien was playing in his life, and how it was that he had come to fill it. He looked at the mug of coffee he had barely sipped and the untouched bread and cheese on the wooden slab resting on the stone ledge between him and the professor that served as their table. “This is my second breakfast,” he said.

“She’s not one of us,” said Tolkien.

“Not one of us?”

“The world we live in.”

“That’s odd,” said Fleming. “She told me much the same thing.”

“Were you listening?”

“Professor, I’ve had
some
experience of women.”

“You weren’t, more’s the pity. She could conquer
you
, you know.”

“I somehow don’t think you mean that in its traditional sense.”

“Are you falling in love with her?”

“My dear professor…”

“Are you?”

“I don’t think I’ll fall in love again, not after Billie Shroeder.”

“The triumph of experience over hope.”

“Something like that.”

“Then you’ll miss the whole point.”

“The whole point of what?”

“Of life.”

Now Ian Fleming remembered the insight he had had in that German forest.
John Tolkien the surrogate father
. His own father barely remembered, his brothers with their stiff upper lips. The old don, nothing in it for him, unabashedly conveying life lessons.
Makes one pause, of course, must admit that much.

“And neither is our Mademoiselle Archambeau part of our world,” said John Tolkien.

“Excuse me?” Ian Fleming replied. “I must say, my dear Professor Tolkien, you are full of surprises today.”

“I don’t think we should tell her about the formula.”

“I disagree.”

“Why?”

“She may reveal her true intentions.”

“Or bring hell upon our heads.”

“What is her state of mind?”

“She does not like being guarded, stealthy though it might seem to be.”

“Have you transferred your affections?”

“I never had any affection for Madamoiselle.”

“Nor she for you.”

“Perhaps when we return to England you can start writing an advice to the lovelorn column. I happen to know the publisher of the
Daily Mirror
. Get you a spot on the staff.”

Tolkien smiled. “I’d have to use a pseudonym. The Holy See at Oxford would frown, you see.”

“Take one of your hobbit names. Bucky Periwinkle or some such.”

“So you’ve taken a glance?”

“Read the whole thing. Brow knitted.”

“Good. It couldn’t hurt to know why I’m such a famous children’s author.”

“I expect more from you next time.”

“And I from you.”

“Referring to my love life.”

“No, your moral compass.”

“Of course. What else. Assuming there is a next time.”

“Quite.”