by Ian Fleming
The grey box, turning slowly in the air, hit the first steep slope below the rock face, bounded another hundred feet and landed with an iron clang in some loose scree and stopped. Major Smythe couldn’t see if it had burst open. He didn’t mind one way or the other. The mountain might as well do it for him!
With a last look round, he went over the edge. He took great care at each piton, tested every handhold and foothold before he put weight on them. Coming down, he was a much more valuable life than he had been climbing up. He made for the glacier and trudged across the melting snow to the black patch on the icefield. There was nothing to be done about footprints. It would only take a few days for them to be melted down by the sun. He got to the body. He had seen many corpses during the war, and the blood and broken limbs meant nothing to him. He dragged the remains of Oberhauser to the nearest deep crevasse and toppled it in. Then he went carefully round the lip of the crevasse and kicked the snow overhang down on top of the body. Satisfied with his work, he retraced his steps, placing his feet exactly in his old footprints, and made his way on down the slope to the ammunition box.
Yes, the mountain had burst open the lid for him. Almost casually he tore away the cartridge-paper wrappings. The two great hunks of metal glittered up at him under the sun. There were the same markings on each – the swastika in a circle below an eagle, and the date, 1943 – the mint marks of the Reichsbank. Major Smythe gave a nod of approval. He replaced the paper and hammered the crooked lid half-shut with a rock. Then he tied the lanyard of his Webley round one of the handles and moved on down the mountain, dragging his clumsy burden behind him.
It was now one o’clock and the sun beat fiercely down on his naked chest, frying him in his own sweat. His reddened shoulders began to burn. So did his face. To hell with them! He stopped at the stream from the glacier, dipped his handkerchief in the water and tied it across his forehead. Then he drank deeply and went on, occasionally cursing the ammunition box as it caught up with him and banged at his heels. But these discomforts, the sunburn and the bruises, were nothing compared with what he would have to face when he got down to the valley and the going levelled out. For the time being he had gravity on his side. There would come at least a mile when he would have to carry the blasted stuff. Major Smythe winced at the thought of the havoc it would wreak on his burned back. ‘Oh well,’ he said to himself almost light-headedly, ‘il faut souffrir pour être millionaire!’
When he got to the bottom and the time had come he sat and rested on a mossy bank under the firs. Then he spread out his bush shirt and heaved the two bars out of the box and on to its centre, tying the tails of the shirt as firmly as he could to where the sleeves sprang from the shoulders. After digging a shallow hole in the bank and burying the empty box, he knotted the two cuffs of the sleeves firmly together, knelt down and slipped his head through the rough sling, got his hands on either side of the knot to protect his neck, and staggered to his feet, crouching far forward so as not to be pulled over on his back. Then, crushed under half his own weight, his back on fire under the contact with his burden, and his breath rasping through his constricted lungs, coolie-like, he shuffled slowly off down the little path through the trees.
To this day he didn’t know how he had made it to the jeep. Again and again the knots gave under the strain and the bars crashed down on the calves of his legs, and each time he had sat with his head in his hands and then started all over again. But finally, by concentrating on counting his steps and stopping for a rest at every hundredth, he got to the blessed little car and collapsed beside it. And then there had been the business of burying his hoard in the wood, amongst a jumble of big rocks that he would be sure to find again, and of cleaning himself up as best he could and getting back to his billet by a circuitous route that avoided the Oberhauser chalet. And then it was all done and he had got drunk by himself on a bottle of cheap schnapps, eaten and gone to bed and to a stupefied sleep. The next day, MOB ‘A’ Force had moved off up the Mittersill valley on a fresh trail, and six months later Major Smythe was back in London and his war was over.
But not his problems. Gold is difficult stuff to smuggle, certainly in the quantity available to Major Smythe, and it was now essential to get his two bars across the Channel and into a new hiding place. So he put off his demobilization and clung to the privileges of his temporary rank, particularly to his Military Intelligence passes, and soon got himself sent back to Germany as a British representative at the Combined Interrogation Centre in Munich. There he did a scratch job for six months during which he collected his gold and stowed it away in a battered suitcase in his quarters. Then on two week-end leaves he flew to England, each time carrying one of the bars in a bulky briefcase. The walk across the tarmac at Munich and Northolt and the handling of his case as if it contained only papers required two benzedrine tablets and a will of iron; but at last he had his fortune safe in the basement of an aunt’s flat in Kensington and could get on with the next phase of his plans at leisure. He resigned from the Royal Marines, got himself demobilized and married one of the many girls he had slept with at MOB Force Headquarters, a charming blonde Wren called Mary Parnell from a solid middle-class family. He got passages for them both in one of the early banana boats sailing from Avonmouth to Kingston, Jamaica, which they both agreed would be a paradise of sunshine, good food and cheap drink and a glorious haven from the gloom, restrictions and Labour Government of post-war England. Before they sailed, Major Smythe showed Mary the gold bars, from which he had chiselled away the mint marks of the Reichsbank. ‘I’ve been clever, darling,’ he said. ‘I just don’t trust the pound these days, so I’ve sold out all my securities and swapped the lot for gold. There’ll be over twenty thousand pounds’ worth there if I play it right. That should give us a fair slice of the good life, just cutting off a chunk now and then and selling it.’
Mary Parnell was not familiar with the ramifications of the currency laws. She knelt down and ran her hands lovingly over the gleaming bars. Then she got up and threw her arms round Major Smythe’s neck and kissed him. ‘You’re a wonderful, wonderful man,’ she said, almost in tears. ‘Frightfully clever and handsome and brave and now you’re rich as well. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.’
‘Well anyway we’re rich,’ said Major Smythe. ‘But promise me you won’t breathe a word or we’ll have all the burglars in Jamaica round our ears. Promise?’
‘Cross my heart.’
Prince’s Club, in the foot-hills above Kingston, was indeed a paradise. Pleasant enough members, wonderful servants, unlimited food and cheap drink, and all in the wonderful setting of the tropics that neither of them had known before. They were a popular couple and Major Smythe’s war record earned them the entrée to Government House society, after which their life was one endless round of parties, with tennis for Mary and golf (with the Henry Cotton irons!) for Major Smythe. In the evenings there was bridge for her and the high poker game for him. Yes, it was paradise all right, while, in their homeland, people munched their spam, fiddled in the black market, cursed the government and suffered the worst winter weather for thirty years.
The Smythes met all their initial expenditure from their combined cash reserves, swollen by wartime gratuities, and it took Major Smythe a full year of careful sniffing around before he decided to do business with the Messrs Foo, import and export merchants. The brothers Foo, highly respected and very rich, were the acknowledged governing junta of the flourishing Chinese community in Jamaica. Some of their trading was suspected to be devious in the Chinese tradition, but all Major Smythe’s casually meticulous inquiries confirmed that they were utterly trustworthy. The Bretton Woods Convention, fixing a controlled world price for gold, had been signed and it had already become common knowledge that in Tangier and Macao – two free ports which, for different reasons, had escaped the Bretton Woods net – a price of at least one hundred dollars per ounce of gold, ninety-nine fine, could be obtained compared with the fixed world price of thirty-five doll
ars per ounce. And, conveniently, the Foos had just begun to trade again with a resurgent Hong Kong, already the entrepôt for gold-smuggling into the neighbouring Macao. The whole set-up was, in Major Smythe’s language, tickety-boo. He had a most pleasant meeting with the Foo brothers. No questions were asked until it came to examining the bars. At this point the absence of mint marks resulted in a polite inquiry as to the original provenance of the gold.
‘You see, Major,’ said the older and blander of the brothers behind the big, empty, mahogany desk, ‘in the bullion market the mint marks of all respectable national banks and responsible dealers are accepted without question. Such marks guarantee the fineness of the gold. But of course there are other banks and dealers whose methods of refining,’ his benign smile widened a fraction, ‘are perhaps not quite, shall we say, so accurate.’
‘You mean the old gold brick swindle,’ said Major Smythe with a twinge of anxiety. ‘Hunk of lead covered with gold plating?’
Both brothers tee-heed reassuringly. ‘No, no, Major. That of course is out of the question. But,’ the smiles held constant, ‘if you cannot recall the provenance of these fine bars, perhaps you would have no objection if we were to undertake an assay. There are methods of determining the exact fineness of such bars. My brother and I are competent in these methods. If you would care to leave these with us and perhaps come back after lunch?’
There had been no alternative. Major Smythe had to trust the Foos utterly now. They could cook up any figure and he would just have to accept it. He went over to the Myrtle Bank and had one or two stiff drinks and a sandwich that stuck in his throat. Then he went back to the cool office of the Foos.
The setting was the same – the two smiling brothers, the two bars of gold, the briefcase, but now there was a piece of paper and a gold Parker pen in front of the elder brother.
‘We have solved the problem of your fine bars, Major,’ (‘Fine’! Thank God, thought Major Smythe) ‘and I am sure you will be interested to know their probable history.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Major Smythe, with a brave show of enthusiasm.
‘They are German bars, Major. Probably from the wartime Reichsbank. This we have deduced from the fact that they contain ten per cent of lead. Under the Hitler regime, it was the foolish habit of the Reichsbank to adulterate their gold in this manner. This fact became rapidly known to dealers and the price of German bars, in Switzerland, for instance, where many of them found their way, was adjusted downwards accordingly. So the only result of the German foolishness was that the national bank of Germany lost a reputation for honest dealing it had earned over the centuries.’ The Chinaman’s smile didn’t vary. ‘Very bad business, Major. Very stupid.’
Major Smythe marvelled at the omniscience of these two men so far from the great commercial channels of the world, but he also cursed it. Now what? He said, ‘That’s very interesting, Mr Foo. But it is not very good news for me. Are these bars not “good delivery”, or whatever you call it in the bullion world?’
The elder Foo made a slight throwaway gesture with his right hand. ‘It is of no importance, Major. Or rather, it is of very small importance. We will sell your gold at its true mint value, let us say, eighty-nine fine. It may be re-fined by the ultimate purchaser, or it may not. That is not our business. We shall have sold a true bill of goods.’
‘But at a lower price.’
‘That is so, Major. But I think I have some good news for you. Have you any estimates as to the worth of these two bars?’
‘I had thought around twenty thousand pounds.’
The elder Foo gave a dry chuckle. ‘I think, if we sell wisely and slowly, you should receive more than one hundred thousand dollars, Major – subject, that is, to our commission, which will include shipping and incidental charges.’
‘How much would that be?’
‘We were thinking about a figure of ten per cent, Major. If that is satisfactory to you.’
Major Smythe had an idea that bullion brokers received a fraction of one per cent. But what the hell? He had already as good as made ten thousand pounds since lunch. He said ‘Done’ and got up and reached his hand across the desk.
From then on, every quarter, he would visit the office of the Foos, carrying an empty suitcase. There would be five hundred new Jamaican pounds in neat bundles on the broad desk and the two gold bars, that diminished inch by inch, together with a typed slip showing the amount sold and the price obtained in Macao. It was all very simple and friendly and highly business-like, and Major Smythe didn’t think that he was being submitted to any form of squeeze other than the duly recorded ten per cent. In any case he didn’t particularly care. Two thousand net a year was good enough for him, and his only worry was that the income tax people would get after him and ask him what he was living on. He mentioned this possibility to the Foos. But they said he was not to worry and, for the next two quarters, there was only four hundred pounds instead of five on the table and no comment was made by either side. ‘Squeeze’ had been administered in the right quarter.
And so the lazy, sunshiny days passed by and stretched out into years. The Smythes both put on weight and Major Smythe had the first of his two coronaries and was told by his doctor to cut down on his alcohol and cigarettes and take life more easily. He was also to avoid fats and fried food. At first Mary Smythe tried to be firm with him; then, when he took to secret drinking and to a life of petty lies and evasions, she tried to back-pedal on her attempts to control his self-indulgence. But she was too late. She had already become the symbol of the janitor to Major Smythe and he took to avoiding her. She berated him with not loving her any more and, when the resultant bickering became too much for her simple nature, she became a sleeping-pill addict. Then, after one flaming, drunken row, she took an overdose ‘just to show him’. It was too much of an overdose and it killed her. The suicide was hushed up, but the resultant cloud did Major Smythe no good socially and he returned to the North Shore which, although only some three miles across the island from the capital, is, even in the small society of Jamaica, a different world. And there he had settled in Wavelets and, after his second coronary, was in the process of drinking himself to death when this man called Bond arrived on the scene with an alternative death warrant in his pocket.
Major Smythe looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after twelve o’clock. He got up and poured himself another stiff brandy and ginger ale and went out on to the lawn. James Bond was sitting under the sea-almonds, gazing out to sea. He didn’t look up when Major Smythe pulled up another aluminium garden chair and put his drink on the grass beside him. When Major Smythe had finished telling his story, Bond said unemotionally, ‘Yes, that’s more or less the way I figured it.’
‘Want me to write it all out and sign it?’
‘You can if you like. But not for me. That’ll be for the court martial. Your old Corps will be handling all that. I’ve got nothing to do with the legal aspects. I shall put in a report to my own Service of what you’ve told me and they’ll pass it on to the Royal Marines. Then I suppose it’ll go to the Public Prosecutor via Scotland Yard.’
‘Could I ask a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘How did they find out?’
‘It was a small glacier. Oberhauser’s body came out at the bottom of it earlier this year. When the spring snows melted. Some climbers found it. All his papers and everything were intact. The family identified him. Then it was just a question of working back. The bullets clinched it.’
‘But how did you get mixed up in the whole thing?’
‘MOB Force was a responsibility of my, er, Service. The papers found their way to us. I happened to see the file. I had some spare time on my hands. I asked to be given the job of chasing up the man who did it.’
‘Why?’
James Bond looked Major Smythe squarely in the eyes. ‘It just happened that Oberhauser was a friend of mine. He taught me to ski before the war, when I was in my teens. He was a wonder
ful man. He was something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Major Smythe looked away. ‘I’m sorry.’
James Bond got to his feet. ‘Well, I’ll be getting back to Kingston.’ He held up a hand. ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll find my way to the car.’ He looked down at the older man. He said abruptly, almost harshly – perhaps, Major Smythe thought, to hide his embarrassment – ‘It’ll be about a week before they send someone out to bring you home.’ Then he walked off across the lawn and through the house and Major Smythe heard the iron whirr of the self-starter and the clatter of the gravel on the unkempt drive.
Major Smythe, questing for his prey along the reef, wondered what exactly those last words of the Bond man had meant. Inside the Pirelli his lips drew mirthlessly back from the stained teeth. It was obvious, really. It was just a version of the corny old act of leaving the guilty officer alone with his revolver. If the Bond man had wanted to, he could have telephoned Government House and had an officer of the Jamaica Regiment sent over to take Major Smythe into custody. Decent of him, in a way. Or was it? A suicide would be much tidier, save a lot of paperwork and tax-payers’ money. Should he oblige the Bond man and be tidy? Join Mary in whatever place suicides go to? Or go through with it – the indignity, the dreary formalities, the headlines, the boredom and drabness of a life sentence that would inevitably end with his third coronary? Or should he defend himself – plead wartime, a struggle with Oberhauser on the Peak of Gold, prisoner trying to escape, Oberhauser knowing of the gold cache, the natural temptation of Smythe to make away with the bullion, he, a poor officer of the Commandos confronted with sudden wealth? Should he dramatically throw himself on the mercy of the court? Suddenly Major Smythe saw himself in the dock, a splendid, upright figure, in the fine bemedalled blue and scarlet of the ceremonial uniform which was the traditional rig for courts martial. (Had the moths got into the japanned box in the spare room at Wavelets? Had the damp? Luna would have to look to it. A day in the sunshine if the weather held. A good brushing. With the help of his corset, he could surely still get his forty-inch waist into the thirty-four-inch trousers Gieves had built for him twenty, thirty years ago.) And, down on the floor of the court, at Chatham probably, the Prisoners’ Friend, some staunch fellow, at least of colonel’s rank in deference to his own seniority, would be pleading his cause. And there was always the possibility of appeal to a higher court. Why, the whole affair might become a cause célèbre. He would sell his story to the papers, write a book … Major Smythe felt the excitement mounting in him. Careful, old boy! Careful! Remember what the good old snip-cock had said! He put his feet to the ground and had a rest amidst the dancing waves of the nor’-east trades that kept the North Shore so delightfully cool until the torrid months, August, September, October, of the hurricane season. After his two pink gins, skimpy lunch and happily sodden siesta, he would have to give all this more careful thought. And then there were cocktails with the Arundels and dinner at the Shaw Park Beach Club with the Marchesis. Then some high bridge and home to his Seconal sleep. Cheered by the prospect of the familiar routine, the black shadow of Bond retreated into the background. Now then, scorp, where are you? Octopussy’s waiting for her lunch! Major Smythe put his head down and, his mind freshly focused and his eyes questing, continued his leisurely swim along the shallow valley between the coral clumps that led out towards the white-fringed reef.
