Too Bad to Die

by Francine Mathews

  Then there was the black gown Hudders was required to wear over his morning dress. It went with being a King’s Scholar and set the College boys apart. They were meant to be prepping for King’s College at Oxford, and the gowns were a constant reminder. The rest of the school called King’s Scholars tugs. Ian thought this was because it was so tempting to tug on the fluttering edge of the gown and pull it off, but Peter explained it was from Latin—togati, meaning wearers of gowns. Ian had never liked Latin, and Hudders made a habit of balling up his gown and tossing it in the corner as soon as classes were done for the day. But it was another difference that hadn’t been there at Durnford, and it made them both self-conscious.

  Ian fagged that first year for one of Peter’s friends in Slater’s. Peter was the kind who never allowed anybody to hurt his brothers, and, if forced to choose between his friends and Ian, stood shoulder to shoulder with Ian every time.

  Michael Hudson had no brother. Ian tried to be one when he found Michael waiting in front of Slater’s one January night. He’d been birched by Pop—the Sixth Form boys who made up the exclusive Eton Society—for pinching someone else’s tiffin box from home. Michael never got tiffin boxes. When you were caned by Pop, you knew to go in your oldest trousers because the birch cut through the fabric and left your buttocks bleeding. Michael had made the mistake of wearing his uniform pinstripes.

  “Don’t you have a second pair?” Peter asked incredulously when Ian brought Hudders into his brother’s room and lifted the tails of his suit jacket. The tails hid a sorry mess of torn trouser fabric and dried blood. The birch had cut right through Michael’s undershorts. Ian felt a sickening urge to giggle.

  “They give King’s Scholars the uniform,” Michael said indifferently. He was trying to act as though it didn’t matter if his morning dress was in rags. “I didn’t want to ask for more. I didn’t know if it was allowed.”

  Peter looked at Ian, his brows lifted. The Fleming boys got their clothes on tick at Tom Brown’s in Windsor, where the Eton uniform had been tailored for over a hundred years. They were used to walking down to the High to be measured, and the bills were sent to Eve. Peter pulled at Hudders’s jacket, searching for a label. “It’s Brown’s, all right,” he said slowly. “But it’s too late to go to the shop now. You’ll have to borrow a pair of ours. Maybe you can get leave for Windsor tomorrow.”

  Michael was closer to Peter’s height than Ian’s. Peter rummaged in his trunk for a pair of pinstripes that might fit.

  “No,” Hudders said quietly. “It’s good of you, old man”—he’d been in England four years now, and barely had a Yank accent anymore—“but I think I’ll just wear these.”

  There was a silence. Ian could not look at his brother. Hudders would be caned again if he wore a rubbishy pair of pants to class. It wasn’t allowed.

  “If I get new trousers, it’s as though they’ve won,” Hudders explained.

  “Of course they’ve won,” Peter retorted. “This is Pop we’re talking of. Pop runs the school.”

  Peter would be admitted to the Eton Society when he reached the Sixth Form. He was that sort of boy.

  “It’s okay.” Hudders shrugged. “My tails and gown will hide most of it.”

  He twitched his suit jacket over the horizontal lashings in his seat bottom. He was right, Ian thought—with the black gown thrown over the top, the state of his trousers was invisible. But it was risky, all the same. There were places the gown wasn’t worn. Or the suit jacket. Hudders was bound to be seen and punished.

  Michael’s face was rather pale and he made a point of not sitting down as he lingered in Peter’s doorway. He hadn’t come to Slater’s for trousers, Ian thought, so what was it he’d wanted? Comfort? Salve for his bleeding buttocks?

  No. He’d just wanted someone to tell.

  Slowly, Ian undid his fly and slipped out of his pants. He reached for a pair of scissors on Peter’s desk and before either of the boys could stop him, he drove the points through the seat. The bespoke wool fabric ripped cleanly. He did it again. And again. Then he put the trousers back on.

  “You twit,” Peter said. “Mummy will be furious.”

  “They shan’t win.” Ian’s voice was overloud; he was terrified by the enormity of what he’d done. “Not while we stand together, Hudders.”

  It was a hallowed British hope. One Mokie would have recognized, from his wretched Belgian trenches. Ian had no black gown to hide his sins.

  He was birched the next day. Peter put an unguent on his weals without comment. He ordered new trousers the next time he visited the High.

  Years later, when it was time for their form to be chosen for Pop, it was Michael who made it. Not Ian.

  —

  “I DON’T BELIEVE IT,” Hudson said now, as he sat in Ian’s room at Mena House. “Turing’s off his nut. The Fencer cannot possibly be one of us.”

  They’d managed to break away from the Thanksgiving party without appearing as though they had somewhere better to go, staggering their farewells with a ten-minute interval. Ian had left first. He had the Laphroaig waiting when Hudders arrived.

  “The Prof was absolutely clear. Somebody’s reporting to Berlin in real time.”

  Hudson snorted. “Probably got his intelligence from the Society column in The Egyptian Gazette.”

  “Have they printed the fact that Gil Winant is sleeping with Churchill’s daughter?” Ian took a sip of whiskey. “Or that you’re doing your damnedest to get Pam Churchill to sleep with you?”

  “I doubt even the Gazette would be so fatuous,” Hudson retorted coldly. “Why do you despise her so much, Ian?”

  “Because she wastes people’s time.”

  “I notice she hasn’t wasted much of yours.”

  Ian laughed harshly. “You think I’m jealous? Michael, I’ve known Pamela Digby since her first Come Out, when she was a pudgy wallflower with bad clothes and a spotty face. The years have gilded but not improved her.”

  “She’s an angel.”

  “Fallen angel.”

  Hudson’s mouth twisted, and for an instant Ian thought he might toss his Scotch in his face. His fingers compressed whitely on the glass. He set it down carefully and turned toward the door. “You’re drunk. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Hudders.”

  He stopped.

  “Look—I apologize. I’m a vicious brute. But this is serious. The Fencer is deadly serious.”

  “Agreed,” Hudson said tautly. “But Turing’s talking bullshit. Come on, Ian—look at the candidates! Who’s around that dinner table? FDR and Churchill. A couple of their kids—but I don’t see Sarah or Elliott in the role of Nazi spy, do you?”

  “Elliott’s a colonel in the Army Air Corps, and he commands a reconnaissance wing over Tunisia,” Ian pointed out. “He led his boys in Operation Torch last year and he’s rumored to have developed some interesting night recon techniques. You know he’s popped up as air attaché at nearly every conference we’ve organized, Hudders. He’s up to his ears in secrets.”

  “Because he’s the President’s son,” Hudson retorted dismissively. “And a horse’s ass, in my humble opinion. Who else have we got here at Mena House, Flem? The Generalissimo of China, who’s at war with Hitler’s ally. His wife. Scratch. George C. Marshall and General Lord Ismay. Poor old Harry Hopkins, who’s going to die right in front of us. You and me.”

  “And Pamela,” Ian said quietly. “A kitten if ever I knew one.”

  Hudson stared at him in disbelief. “Jesus Christ. You can’t be serious. The PM’s daughter-in-law? Not even remotely possible.”

  “What if you’re wrong, Michael? What if Turing’s dead-on, and we’ve got a German spy in our midst? How much time do we have to stop him in his tracks? The Fencer isn’t interested in Sarah’s affair or Pammie’s latest conquest. He’s not even interested in Pug Ismay or Bomber Comman
d. He’s here for bigger game. Much bigger game.”

  “Like?”

  “Overlord.” Ian drained his glass. “The Allied invasion of Europe. Two hundred thousand men and six thousand vessels thrown at Hitler’s best. The Nazis will want to know where and when to show up.”

  “Nobody can tell them that.”

  “In a few days, we’ll all know. That’s what Tehran is meant to decide.”

  Hudson frowned at him. “Are you sure, Ian?”

  “It’s an amphibious landing, Michael,” he said patiently. “I handle the intelligence for amphibious landings. Of course I’m sure. I planned the bloody conference.”

  “And if Hitler can find out six months in advance where the blow will fall—”

  “Two hundred thousand men will never get off the beach.”

  Hudson ran his fingers through his short hair, ruffling it absurdly. He looked birdlike, reminding Ian of the kid he’d once been. Craggy thin. The eyes hawkish. “Nobody’s going to believe this. Neither your chief nor mine. You haven’t even got Turing’s intercept.”

  “I know. Which is why we’re not going to tell them.”

  “What?”

  He’d startled Hudders. “Not until we know who it is. And how he’s operating. Not until we have proof.”

  “Where do you propose to get it?”

  “In Tehran.”

  The ghost of a smile played over Michael Hudson’s mobile mouth. “You’re tackling this alone. Without Rushbrooke’s approval. And the entire Allied victory hangs on it?”

  “Well—I had hoped you’d help me, Hudders.”

  “Holy shit,” Hudson said. “Ian Fleming goes commando.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The man in the wheelchair was close to exhaustion that night—the result of his self-appointed role as Thanksgiving host, the necessity of grinning broadly at all and sundry, the difficulty of fending off Winston, admittedly his good friend but increasingly an encumbrance. Winston’s approach to alliance was defensive—he hoped to use the Soviet machine to win the war without giving an inch in return—and he wanted Roosevelt’s word that he would do the same. But Roosevelt saw geopolitics in a cannier way. A more brutal way. It was not about friends. Still less was it about the Old World draining the strength of the New. He’d helped the British as much as possible with his Lend-Lease Agreement—even though he’d had to bludgeon Congress to release a bunch of mothballed American destroyers not worth the dry docks they were rotting in—because England was the last wall standing between New York and Hitler. Once Hitler was dead or defeated, England would be irrelevant. Roosevelt knew the country was nearly bankrupt; the pound was tied to gold reserves that were almost exhausted. It would be a decade, at least, before the British economy recovered—if it ever did.

  He could understand Winston’s obsessive focus on the European theater. Europe was Winston’s world. He was a self-appointed guardian of a way of life that had committed collective suicide in Belgium thirty years ago. But Roosevelt’s theater was the entire globe. His ships and men were drowning in the Pacific, fighting a hydra that formed and re-formed in successive island jungles, with the specter of an eventual land invasion of Japan he could not begin to contemplate. Roosevelt wanted the European war finished, soon, before his men and arms were exhausted, so that he could annihilate the threat in the East.

  That meant a massive Channel crossing and landing in France in the next six months. Stalin needed it, and so did he. A steel hammer blow on Hitler’s western flank, so that the man was surrounded. The landing might fail, of course—it might be a hideous mess of men and machines blown to pieces on the beaches. But if the Allies did it right—with enough force, enough will, and Americans running the show—they’d drive Hitler back into his last Berlin bunker.

  Roosevelt could see the hesitation in Winston’s eyes. The bulldog thrust of his lower lip. The almost childish stubbornness to have his way. He’d watched English soldiers go down in death countless times before, on his orders, and he did not want the most daring attack of the war to end in disaster. Winston’s stakes were high—if Overlord failed, England would be mortally vulnerable. He was pushing an alternative plan: pepper the Nazis with smaller skirmishes all over Europe. Eat away at their edges. Roosevelt knew Winston’s approach would prolong the German war machine for another year at least. He didn’t have time to let Hitler die a slow death. Neither did Stalin. The fate of his Pacific war could not be decided by Winston’s dithering.

  We’re not pulling his chestnuts out of the fire, Roosevelt thought mutinously. It was a pet phrase of his. Because the British Empire is finished.

  The postwar world would fall between two poles—Russia and the United States. Communism and Democracy. East and West. Stalin and whoever replaced Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He could not go on being president forever. He was sixty-one years old, and the job was wearing him out. It was an open question whether he’d run for a fourth term in the spring, but he hated leaving the war unfinished. One more reason Overlord mattered. He might be able to leave office if Hitler was defeated.

  His valet helped Franklin stand and lifted his right leg gently to the level of his waist. Then he slipped a pajama leg over the foot. Elliott could have done this sort of thing for his father, but Elliott was drinking in the salon downstairs with Alex Kirk and John Boettiger. Winston and his girls had gone home for the night. The PM’s bronchitis was worse every day. Even Pug Ismay had caught it now. Roosevelt smiled mirthlessly. He could probably track all kinds of liaisons just by recording who came down with a cough. Espionage was too easy.

  Espionage.

  The valet lifted his left leg into the trousers. Offered Franklin his pajama shirt. He was twitching it over his shoulders, safely back in his chair, when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  Sam Schwartz’s head slid around Roosevelt’s bedroom door. “Just checking, sir, whether you need anything before I head up to the hotel.”

  “I’d like you to read something, Sam.”

  The letter from Stalin was lying in its official envelope on his bedside table. It was typewritten in Russian, but Chip Bohlen, a young Russian expert Roosevelt had brought with him, had translated it. Franklin rolled his chair over to the table, Schwartz carefully following behind. “I want your opinion.”

  Schwartz’s gaze traveled swiftly across the lines of translated text. “Uncle Joe wants you to stay at the Soviet Embassy?”

  “Says the drive between our legation and theirs exposes me to risk in Tehran. From some sort of ‘demonstration.’ He seems to think a Nazi with a gun could wreak all kinds of havoc. Says I’d be more comfortable at his place, too.”

  “Sounds like a lot of hooey to me,” Schwartz said dubiously. “Why’s he want you inside his embassy so bad?”

  “I’m guessing Stalin doesn’t want to make that dangerous drive. The Soviets aren’t too popular in Persia these days.”

  The Secret Service chief returned the pages to their envelope and set it back on Roosevelt’s table. “The British and Soviet embassies are right next to one another in the same walled compound, sir. Ours is only a mile away. I think my fellas can guarantee your safety for a mile.”

  “I believe you, Sam. You’ve never let me down yet. And what’s a German agent or two in Tehran? I bet there’s more than that in Washington and New York.”

  “I doubt the Nazis even know you’re headed to Tehran,” Schwartz said. “I talked to Dreyfus only this morning, and he never mentioned trouble.” Dreyfus was the American envoy to Persia. “But the Sovs and the Brits have been holding down the city between them. Stands to reason their information’s better than ours. Has Mr. Churchill said anything, sir? About that gun placement on the Great Pyramid?”

  “Commander Fleming assures me it’s nothing,” Roosevelt mused. “He spun me a tale about a German fighter plane out of Tunis. I pretended to believe
him.”

  Uncharacteristically, Schwartz began to pace. “I don’t like dropping you in Stalin’s lap, sir. Even if he is an ally. If you need to be closer to the conference, stay with Mr. Churchill.”

  “Winston would love that. But it would alienate Uncle Joe. Both of us landing in Tehran and pitching camp together! He’ll be suspicious as hell before the three of us even sit down at the table.”

  Schwartz simply looked at him.

  “Ever been to Tehran, Sam?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why don’t you leave tomorrow—and check the place out? Go over Stalin’s guest room. Take a gander at ours. Look at Churchill’s if you like. I want us to have every option available.”

  CHAPTER 6

  As darkness swept over Giza, the first flakes of snow began to fall fifteen hundred miles to the east, in the foothills of the Alborz mountains north of Tehran.

  A thousand feet higher, snow already lay deep in the twining branches of the ironwood trees; it had been falling since September. The principal peak, Mount Tochal, rose to thirteen thousand feet, and its height would not be free of ice until June. But here, in the forest at the head of the Jajrood River, they’d been lucky, Skorzeny thought—it was not yet winter when they’d set up camp and begun to fight the Persian leopards for their prey. Those clement days were dwindling as November came to a close.