I can pinpoint the exact time I changed my mind. It was a cold February day, and I was delivering a lecture to third-year historians on the Soviet/American nuclear arms race of the early 1960s. I started talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of the students put up her hand. ‘How did the Americans know that the Russians had nuclear weapons on Cuba? They only saw photographs taken from thousands of feet up. What if the Russians had just been bluffing, in an attempt to broker a deal with Kennedy that would result in America withdrawing its missiles from Turkey?’ I felt as if I had been hit on the head by a spade. My aunt’s 1962 journal had given me the answer to the student’s question, but I couldn’t reveal that, and even if I did I had no way to back up what I was saying. Suddenly I knew that the diaries had to be made public. The information contained in them would have to be released. I would do it, and, as a nod to the student who had asked about Cuba, I was going to start with 1962.
The events of 1962 were dramatic, but barely touched upon by Fleming. Presumably he, or his informant, thought them too sensitive. The stories he relates are among the more unusual adventures undertaken by Bond – events that are so far from our normal experience as to be plausibly fiction, and their publication of minimal security risk. My aunt’s diaries, however, reveal a more gritty reality – and, in 1962, one of the most important contributions made by SIS, and indeed Bond, towards safeguarding world peace.
The decision to publish was easy to take on an intellectual level. I could justify it from almost every direction. There would be Official Secrets issues – my aunt had signed the Act on the day she entered the service, and even in death she was theoretically covered by it. But a colleague in the Cambridge law department advised me that the government would probably be reluctant to take issue with the diaries, particularly after the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, for fear of appearing to confirm their authenticity and with an eye to the negative publicity that would surround the suppression of information. I decided that I would take the risk, publish, and hopefully not be damned.
What was harder, however, was to rationalise the side effects of publication. The Moneypenny Diaries are not only a record of the inner workings, the key decisions – and deceptions – of a very secret organisation, they are also a private account of a private life. At the same time as I had been on an intellectual quest into the validity of received history, I had been making a personal odyssey – into the thoughts and dreams of someone I loved and admired. To reveal the first to the world would entail betraying the second, the secret history of my own family.
My aunt, Jane Vivien Moneypenny, was born in 1931 in Nairobi, Kenya. She had an apparently carefree early childhood on her parents’ farm until the beginning of the Second World War, when her father, Commander Hugh Moneypenny, was recalled to London. A year later he was declared missing in action, presumed dead. A little over a decade after that, their mother was trapped in the crossfire between warring tribal groups and Jane, then twenty-one, and her younger sister – my mother, Helena —were orphaned and moved to London. Within months of arriving she had joined the Secret Intelligence Service.
As I discovered from her diaries, one of the main quests of her life was to find out the exact circumstances of her father’s presumed death. It came as a revelation to me – from my mother I had always understood that my grandfather was a straightforward casualty of war. Over half a century later, my aunt – through her diaries – was able to lead me towards the truth. And that, in a sense, was thanks to him, my grandfather, who had sent Jane the first diary, along with his last letter.
That is the image I have in my eye now, of a young girl sitting in the lower branches of an acacia tree on the shore of an African lake. She carefully unwraps a brown-paper parcel to reveal a journal. It has soft leather covers and pale-blue pages. There is a letter from her father tucked inside, postmarked Aberdeen, in which he urges her to ‘write down everything you see, every animal, bird and insect, and when I get back, we’ll discuss them together’. She takes out a new pencil, licks the lead, and writes her name on the flyleaf: JANE VIVIEN MONEYPENNY. It is 18 October 1940. In one week her father will be reported missing in action in Europe. But for the next fifty years she will not forget his words.
Cambridge, 2005
1962
January
By the end of 1961 the world was precariously balanced on a political see-saw, with the USA and the Soviet Union vying to load greater weight on to either end. The Berlin Wall was newly erected, Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space, and both superpowers were furiously devising, building and testing nuclear weapons. In his first year of office, John F. Kennedy had deployed nuclear missiles in Turkey, presided over a disastrous attempt to invade Cuba via the Bay of Pigs, and, in response to an escalation in Communist guerrilla activity, announced an increase in the number of ‘military advisers’ in South Vietnam. In political terms, everything was seen through the prism of the Cold War. It was either West or East; there was no middle ground.
This was the framework of my aunt’s working life and the backdrop for The Moneypenny Diaries. It was in 1962 that Miss Moneypenny first stepped out from behind her typewriter to play a more active role in the service of the organisation for which she had worked, by that time, for nearly a decade. It also marked an important turning point in her ongoing search for the truth behind her father’s presumed death, twenty-two years earlier.
The events leading up to 1962 were well documented by Ian Fleming in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (London, 1963). Where his account ends, my aunt’s 1962 diary begins, in the closing stages of a Bond mission to track down and eliminate the elusive Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (SPECTRE) and long-standing foe of the British secret service. From OHMSS — and my aunt’s diary for the previous year – I was able to get a fairly comprehensive overview of the operation code-named Corona. Secondary corroboration, however, was harder to obtain. The SIS has not, so far, declassified operation files such as this; the bulk of the treasure trove of agent reports, assessments and signals traffic remains in the jealously guarded Records section at its Vauxhall Cross headquarters. It didn’t take long to piece together parts of the story from contemporary newspaper reports, both in England and in Switzerland. Background and colour emerged from a fascinating meeting with the Chief Herald, the ‘Griffin Or’ of the College of Arms, a charming man with the improbable name of Sable Basilisk, who had himself briefed Bond on the heraldic aspects of his mission back in 1961. But there were still significant gaps. It was only some time later that it occurred to me to search the Ministry of Agriculture files. Here, at last, I found the corroboration I sought: the entire history of Operation Corona, including facsimiles of top-secret SIS documents and reports.
After many months on Blofeld’s trail, Bond had learned that his quarry was living on the top of a remote Swiss mountain, with a new name and a new face. The self-styled Comte de Bleuville, keen to legitimise his title, had contacted the College of Arms in London. His request was passed to Basilisk, then a young herald, whose correspondence with the Count’s lawyers was intercepted by the Foreign Office. When the similarity between the phoney count and Blofeld was noticed, Basilisk and Bond conceived a plan to infiltrate Bond into Bleuville’s establishment in the guise of an heraldic emissary.
On 22 December 1961 Bond flew first class to Zurich on a Swissair Caravelle. The name on his passport was Sir Hilary Bray. He was met at the airport by the Count’s secretary, Irma Bunt, and taken by helicopter to Piz Gloria, an Alpine research station dedicated to investigating a possible cure for allergies. There, between genealogical sessions with the Comte de Bleuville, Bond stumbled on a plot to bring Britain to its knees by wiping out the agricultural industry. This was to be done, unwittingly, by Bond’s fellow guests, a dozen young farmers’ daughters, former allergy sufferers. Each girl had been supplied with a deadly biological weapon, particular to the area of farming in whi
ch her family was involved, and, under hypnotism, had been taught how to administer it. All believed themselves to be working for the greater good, whether that be increasing the fertility of chickens or the yield of potatoes.
Bond managed to win their confidence and to compile a list of their full names and home counties, before his cover was blown and he was forced to escape. He fled down the mountain on skis, pursued by Blofeld’s men. Bond evaded their fire and, at the bottom of the mountain, literally fell into the arms of his girlfriend, Tracy di Vicenzo (née Draco). Back on home turf, he delivered his report to his chief, M, before returning to Switzerland on an unofficial mission to flush out Blofeld, with the aid of Tracy’s father. At the culmination of what turned out to be an incendiary affair, Bond chased Blofeld down a bobsleigh run, but failed to prevent his escape, returning instead to Tracy in Munich.
What Fleming does not record is the part played by my aunt in Operation Corona and its tragic consequences. From her diaries, it is apparent that Jane Moneypenny was far more closely involved in the life of the real secret agent whom Fleming named Bond than the books relate. Fleming changed the agent’s surname as a security precaution, but otherwise his portrayal was remarkably accurate, from the thin scar that ran down his right cheek, to his licence to kill. In order to avoid confusion I have called him Bond throughout the published Moneypenny Diaries, though in the originals my aunt referred to him as James or the Commander, or by his number, 007. Despite my best efforts, I have thus far been unable to determine his real name.
Reading The Moneypenny Diaries, it is clear that my aunt was acquainted with every step of the operation to thwart Blofeld’s scheme. She booked Bond’s ticket to Zurich, and waved him goodbye on his mission. She welcomed him home on Christmas Day, when he returned briefly to get M’s blessing before departing on the next stage of the operation. She deciphered his signals, filed the requisite fatality forms, and sat up half the night waiting for him to report the final results of the mission. And she was back in the Office on New Year’s Day, when the news came in that there had been some appalling aftershocks.
Tuesday, 2nd January
My heart breaks for James. Yesterday, within a few short hours, he became first a husband and then a widower. I hate to confess that I found both equally shocking. That it all happened on top of ten days of more than the usual fire-crackers did not dull the impact. He has certainly made it a festive season to remember, and although I am not too sure that the legions of policemen, civil servants and general mop-up people will thank him for ruining their mince-pies and Auld Lang Syne, the country has reason to be grateful.
My New Year’s Eve had passed quietly. R1 had taken me to dinner in a small pub on the river and we were driving back when the church bells started ringing. It felt apt, somehow, to be in motion while all around us clocks and calendars were clicking into a new cycle – a metaphor, perhaps, for us? I wonder. We swept by a succession of firework displays and glimpsed parties seeping out from between the chinks of backlit curtains. It was like a different world, one that I can’t imagine rejoining. After a week like we have had, it was all I could do to kiss R goodnight on the doorstep and clamber up the stairs and into bed. He understood – what a wonderful man.
M2 had been invited to New Year’s lunch with Prime Minister Macmillan at Chequers and I had promised Bill3 that I would come in to catch up on the mountain of paperwork, which had been put aside while we dealt with the fall-out from 007’s clash with Blofeld. I was at my desk, filling in the collateral fatality forms from 007’s incendiary adventures – he managed to dispatch a grand total of seven of Blofeld’s men over his two visits to Piz Gloria – when Bill walked in, waving a cable and chuckling. ‘Penny, you’re never going to believe this,’ he said. ‘It’s from Head of Station M [Munich station chief, Lieutenant-Commander Percival Savage]. Just wait until the Old Man reads it.’
He passed me the cable. It started in the standard fashion:
PROCOS EXMUNICH. NEW YEARS GREETINGS TO YOU FROM STATION M AND THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE FRATERNITY OF HUSBANDS STOP THIS MORNING EYE STOOD BESIDE 007 AS HE WAS BETROTHED TO ONE COMTESSE TERESA DI VICENZO AKA TRACY DRACO4 DAUGHTER OF MARC-ANGE DRACO COMMA CAPO OF THE UNION CORSE5 STOP BOTH BRIDE AND GROOM APPEARED SPECTACULARLY HAPPY AND I AM SURE YOU WILL JOIN ME IN WISHING THEM MANY YEARS OF CONTENTED DOMESTICITY STOP HE ASKS IF YOU C0ULD BREAK THE NEWS TO M GENTLY AND WILL REPORT BACK AFTER TEN DAYS OF PASSIONATE LEAVE STOP AM OFF TO TOAST THIS MOST UNEXPECTED PLEASURE IN FINE MUNCHEN BREW STOP SIGNED 410
I must have looked quite as surprised as I felt, as Bill started laughing again. ‘How did he manage it, Penny? Only a week ago he was down at Quarterdeck6 persuading the Old Man to let him stage a commando raid on Blofeld’s mountain fortress, and now he’s married to a girl we’ve barely heard of. She must be quite a cracker, but somehow I still can’t see 007 settling down to two-handed whist and cocoa before bedtime.’
Despite my current situation with R, I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. I know 007 is a professional flirt, but I have always had a soft spot for him. He is not a man to lose one’s heart to – though it is not hard to imagine how one could. He is tough on the outside, but I’ve always thought surprisingly vulnerable within. He’s funny too, the original Devil-May-Care – with the emphasis on the Devil. I look forward to our irreverent banter and the occasional illicit swirl around my office. There has never been a married 00 agent; I am not sure M would countenance it. He has enough problems with girlfriends ‘hanging on to one’s gun arm’; surely a wife would jam the magazine altogether? But 007 with a desk job? He wouldn’t last the week. Why did he do it – was marriage perhaps for him the ultimate gamble?
Now he’ll never know. Poor, poor James. It was only hours later that HoM [Head of Munich] telephoned through on the direct line. He sounded uncharacteristically agitated. ‘There’s been a terrible accident… No, not our man. His wife. Car smash. She took a sharp shock to the heart, died instantaneously… I’m going to the scene now. Don’t know any details, but I’ll report when I can.’ Wham – I felt the second fist land on target. But I knew that 007 wouldn’t appreciate the luxury of sympathy when what he needed was action. I was connected straight through to M at Chequers, who said to send Stoker Smith7 to bring him to the Office. Then it was a matter of waiting to hear back from Munich.
M appeared unruffled, working through the signals tray with his usual efficiency. Perhaps he clenched his pipe a little more firmly between his teeth, puffed with increased urgency, but it was nothing that someone who was not sensitive to his every gesture would have noticed. However, when the signal came through, late that night, he almost snatched it from my hand.
It transpires that Tracy had been driving them from their wedding in her white Lancia. They were on the road to Kitzbühel when they were overtaken by a couple in a red Maserati, wearing white dust coats and linen helmets, their faces obscured by large, dark-green goggles. As they passed, 007 heard a shattering roar as the windscreen was blown out. The car careered off the road and smashed into a tree. A young patrolman found him cradling the lifeless Tracy in his arms, her blood staining his shirt. 007 looked up at him and said, ‘It’s all right. She’s having a rest. We’ll be going soon. There’s no hurry. You see, we’ve got all the time in the world.’ I cannot bear to think of that brave, proud man being hit at his most vulnerable spot.
It took HoM a good twenty minutes to prise him away and then only with the promise that he could accompany her in the helicopter to hospital. Once there, he was given a strong sedative and eventually allowed HoM to take him back to the Consul-General’s house.
As soon as M had read Munich’s report, he told Bill to organise a RAF transport plane to stand by to take him to Munich. Perhaps there is some of the milk of human kindness in the OM after all?
Thursday, 4th January
There was a postcard from 007 waiting on my desk when I got in this morning. It was dated 31st December, the day before disaster struck. I almost c
ouldn’t bring myself to read it. ‘Dear Penny,’ he had written. ‘I’ve given up waiting for you to accept my proposals. By the time you receive this, I will be married – I’ll wager you never thought that would happen, did you? Seriously, I am as happy as a man could be and I know you are going to love Tracy almost as much I do. We will be back in a couple of weeks and I look forward to introducing you then. Wish us luck. PS. I wish you could be here tomorrow to hold my hand.’
I wish I could have been there too, and I wish I could be with him now.
Saturday, 6th January
M back and opaque on the subject of 007. He came straight from the plane and shut himself in the Office with the red light on.8 An hour later, he called me in for the signals and sent out a couple of his own: to Tanqueray at Station WB [West Berlin] and Muir in Zurich. They were identical, both marked highest priority:
EXMAILEDFIST EYES ONLY MOST URGENT WANTED FOR MURDER OP FRIEND STOP MALE AND FEMALE BELIEVED TO BE BLOFELD AND BUNT9 LAST SEEN DRIVING ACROSS GERMAN AUSTRIAN BORDER IN RED MASERATI STOP DESCRIPTIONS TO FOLLOW STOP USE ALL POSSIBLE RESOURCES TO APPREHEND AND BRING TO HQ STOP
He ordered them to be sent by Triple X10 via Geneva and Rome – two of our most secure routings. I waited for him to say something about 007, but he didn’t. Mary11 ambushed me outside the powder room, desperate for news. It wasn’t until the OM had gone for the day that I was able to ask Bill. ‘James is devastated, keeps blaming himself, says it should have been him, he should have been driving. He wanted to go after her killer but M’s grounded him, temporarily suspended his licence. Accompanied him personally to Royale, where James insisted on taking Tracy’s ashes to scatter in the sea. I imagine her father was there too; unsurprisingly, considering his position, M made no mention of it. Now he’s given James a month’s leave, with the proviso he takes it out of Europe. He brought him back to London himself, drove him to his flat and sat there puffing on his pipe while James packed a case. Then M almost frogmarched him on to a plane headed for Jamaica. I met them at Heathrow. He’s given Ross at Station J12 strict instructions to let him know as soon as he’s landed. I sent Ross a cable to make sure he has someone to look after him.’
Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel Page 2
