God's Formula (7 page)

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.”

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 cigar 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.”

Fleming did not respond.

“The formula, Johnny. We want it, but if we can’t get it, we don’t want the Germans to.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hitler is obsessed with it. I’m sure you know what that means.”

“I do. I’ll be careful.”

“Lindemann tells me an atomic bomb the size of an orange could wipe out London.”

Fleming slowed his stride down involuntarily, as if a stiff wind had blown against his chest.

“Yes,” said Churchill, slowing as well, “that would stop a man in his tracks.” They resumed their prior pace, and the new P.m.—whose blood, sweat, and tears speech had gone round the world in a matter of days since he delivered it to his cabinet and then parliament after he was sworn in—took a leather-covered flask from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Stopping, he unscrewed the sterling silver cap and handed it to Fleming. “Cognac,” he said. “Don’t be shy.”

Fleming accepted the flask, and took a long drink. Handing it back to Churchill, he felt the blood returning to his brain.
A bomb the size of an orange
.

“What’s the plan?” Churchill asked, after he had taken a long pull himself, and they resumed their walk.

“We assume the Germans are watching the place,” Fleming replied. “The boys will have to be smuggled out. We’re working on it.”

“Good piece of work, I daresay.”

“No, sir, just luck.”

“But you were alert. Do you know Benjamin Franklin?”

“Benjamin Franklin?”

“The rebel.” Fleming could see Churchill smiling.

“Yes, the American.”

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

“I see. Thank you, sir.”

“I didn’t come just to see you, you know. I’m meeting Reynaud at midnight. Things don’t look good, but I suppose you know that.”

“I do.”

“The Belgians surrendered today in mid-battle.”

“I heard.”

“I’d like to stop at Dunkirk, but my watchers won’t let me.”

“May I ask, sir…?”

“You may. The Germans seemed to have paused. We’re getting our people across.”

“Good news.”

“The only bit, really. After Dunkirk, von Kuchler will turn south.”

“Paris.”

“Yes, of course. If you stay, you must be very careful. There will be a roundup.”

“I understand, sir. Not to worry.” Fleming indeed understood. If the Gestapo were to gather him in, his silly wine-merchant cover would not last long. Spies are debriefed and then executed. Execution was the easy part.

“This de Gaulle fellow is fighting like the devil,” said the P.m., “but it won’t be enough.”

Fleming did not respond. He had heard of the defiant Charles de Gaulle, using his tanks as fighting units, the way the Germans did.

“Imagine the French with no plan B.”

Fleming remained silent. They had circled the hut again , and were now back in front.

“Your friend Tolkien arrives tomorrow morning,” Churchill said. “Fought at the Somme.”

“Sir.”

“Good luck, Ian.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lucien Bunel—Father Jacques—was a tall man, but not strapping. Childhood respiratory illnesses, treated with eucalyptus steam and paste, had kept him rail thin. At six feet tall, he weighed no more than 150 pounds. When he died in the Gusen concentration camp in Austria in 1945, at the age of forty-four, of complications from pneumonia, he weighed less than seventy pounds. He took the first step on the road from Avon to Gusen in September of 1939 when he gave Conrad Friedeman and Karl Brauer shelter from the holocaust he knew was about to descend on Europe. A nun from the Congregation of Notre Dame de Sion in Montparnasse had driven the boys over on September 3rd, the day that France declared war on Germany. One of them is a Jew, she said. They are both being hunted by the Nazis. At first, he placed them with a family in a house across the street from his school, then, when the Werhmacht entered France, in an attic dorm room. Today they would leave.

“Come in,” he said when he heard the knocking on the thick oak door of his small bed chamber.

“Jacques,” said the man who entered, a Jesuit priest, the same age as Father Jacques.

“Alain.”

“Are you really ill?”

“No, but why take chances?” The headmaster was in a nightgown and cotton robe, sitting up in bed, his Rosary beads in his right hand, his missal in the left. A pot of eucalyptus leaves immersed in hot water stood on the night table. The room was fragrant with the pungent aroma of this medicinal plant.

“The boys?” Father Alain said.

“They are in the sacristy. Did you see the car out front?”

“Yes.”

“Something is going to happen soon. We have been surrounded by these men in cars since dawn.”

“I am at your service.”

“What do you hear in Paris?”

“Reynaud wants to fight. Petain to…”

“To what?”

“Surrender. Collaborate.”

“How long?”

“A few days, maybe a week. People are fleeing Paris by the thousands.”

“And you?”

“I will stay.”

“What will you do with the boys?”

“Try to get them transportation south.”

“Thank you, Alain.”

Father Alain nodded. “And you?”

“I will stay and do what I can.”

“Good luck, Father Jacques.”

“
Bon Chance
, Father Alain.”

The Petite College d’Avon, though on the grounds of the Fontainebleau palace, was definitely not in the same luxurious Renaissance style as the main buildings. Far from it. A squat, square, one story structure, set apart from the palace proper, it had likely been a stable or warehouse when first built. Surrounded by a patchwork of hardpan and stunted weeds that passed for a lawn, with entrances front and back, it was easy to watch. Which is what the men in nondescript, drab automobiles at both entrances, members of an Abwehr cell dedicated these past nine months to finding Conrad Friedeman, had been doing since the evening before.

“Here comes the priest again,” said the man in the driver’s seat of the car in front. “They must have said their mass.”

“And the alter boys,” his partner replied. “Still in their costumes.”

“Surplices.”

“What?”

“That’s what they’re called. Surplices.”

“Papist nonsense.”

The two men, both young Frenchmen, both former university students, were members of the PCF—the Parti Communiste Francais. They had hated fascist Germany growing up. What communist wouldn’t? But then Molotov and Ribbentrop had signed their non-aggression pact, and their view had changed. What better way to serve Russia, their true mother country, than to say yes when approached by Abwehr agents at the start of the war? Intellectuals, at least in their own minds, they admired Adolph Hitler’s purity of purpose. Was not the Nazi concept of national socialism strikingly similar to Marxism? Had not Hitler’s brilliant German propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, said repeatedly that all property belonged to the state, to be distributed as it saw fit? And of course they hated all religion, but especially the Catholic Church, which had had its foot on France’s throat for a thousand years.

“Will the police really help us?” asked the young man in the passenger seat.

“They are Petain followers here.”

“French soldiers are being killed only ninety kilometers away.”

“All the more reason for them to cooperate.”

“Hard to believe they could be such cowards.”

“Has Mademoiselle Amethyste ever been wrong?”

“Has a man ever said no to her?”

“A eunuch, perhaps, or a homosexual.”

They both smiled. Neither had met their mysterious cell leader, but they had heard things whispered, primarily things about her great beauty, her great seductive beauty.

The two men watched as Father Alain and two young acolytes walked to the priest’s ancient Citroën parked in the school’s bleak courtyard. Their cell leader had assured them that the local gendarmerie would be arriving at nine to roust the Friedeman boy. They were there to make sure there was no attempt to escape under cover of night. As the priest and the boys drove off, they looked at their watches. An hour to go.