The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  “So it’s a little hard making ends meet in this country?” he asked Dudley.

  “It is not simple, sir.”

  “Here,” Anders said, digging in a pocket. “I’ll pay you three weeks in advance.” He handed Dudley three crisp fifty dollar bills and thought he detected a gleam in the eyes of the Jamaican.

  “It is not necessary, sir. I trust you.”

  “Good. I trust you, too. So take the money….Now, how’d you like to make another five hundred dollars?”

  “Very much, sir. My automobile is rapidly deteriorating.”

  Anders cleared his throat. “All right. As I said, I trust you. And I think we understand each other.” He gestured back toward the chalets. “Mrs. Anders has become very difficult. Impossible, in fact. She is a confirmed inebriant.” Anders withdrew a wallet from his jacket. He extracted five one-hundred-dollar bills. “These trails are treacherous. I suspect that right now we are looking across a gorge that is at least a thousand feet deep. Could there not be an accident?” He handed the bills to Dudley.

  Dudley glanced over both shoulders. His face was impassive as he accepted and pocketed the bills.

  “Such things, I do not do myself, sir. But this does not eliminate the possibility of hiring an—ah—trustworthy assistant.”

  Anders smiled. “Good. One other thing. Are you acquainted with Señor Cabrera at the Cuban consulate?”

  Dudley nodded. “Many times I have been his chauffeur.”

  Again, Anders smiled. “This afternoon, you will drive down to Kingston. I will write a note. In this note, I will advise the señor that I wish to meet him in a secluded spot to deliver some important papers. Do you know of such a spot?”

  Dudley nodded. “The Harbour House. There is a back entrance to private rooms.”

  “Fine. Give me a report tomorrow.”

  “Very good, sir,” Dudley said. He walked rapidly away and vanished in greenery—almost, Anders thought, like an Indian.

  Anders expected, upon his return to the chalet, to find Linda passed out on a bed. Instead, the warm bath and relaxation apparently had had a sobering effect.

  “Hi,” she said nonchalantly. “I feel like stepping out. I’d like to take a ride to the top of Old Smokey.”

  “Go ahead,” Anders said flatly. “I want to bathe, shave, and sack out. Ring the big bell and Dudley will appear.”

  She laughed. “You trust me alone with Belafonte?”

  “I trust you alone with no one.”

  “Diplomat, where is your charm?”

  “It stumbled over a cliff, darling.”

  “Too bad it left you behind.” She walked out the front door.

  Five minutes later, as the old Chevrolet struggled up a steep incline, Dudley said to Linda, “The road does not entirely reach the peak of the mountain, mistress. It becomes too hazardous. The last half-mile must be on foot.”

  “That’s all right,” Linda said. She was sitting on the front seat beside him. “You can stop right here, Dudley.” She smiled.

  “I beg your pardon, mistress?”

  “I said to stop here.”

  He complied.

  “How would you like to make a thousand dollars, Dudley?”

  He shrugged. “Money is always useful.”

  She reached into a pocket of her shorts and withdrew five one-hundred-dollar bills. She handed them to Dudley.

  “Arthur, my husband, will ask you to drive him down to Kingston in a day or two. After a conference, he will expect to return here with his attaché case loaded with money. However, he won’t return here. There will be—well—some sort of an accident. You will return with the attaché case and receive an additional five hundred dollars. Agreed?”

  “Such things,” Dudley said, accepting the bills, “I do not do myself, mistress. But I feel confident it can be arranged.”

  “Good. Now take me back to the chalet. I need a drink.”

  * * *

  —

  Late that afternoon, Dudley drove alone down to Kingston. He parked in front of the Cuban consulate. Then he walked, slowly and carefully, using several back alleys, to the United Kingdom trade commissioner’s office in the Royal Mail Building. He entered by a back door and walked up a flight of stairs. In a private-room, he filed a report with a middle-aged man who had guileless blue eyes set in a rare-roast-beef-red cherubic face.

  “Describe the attaché case, Dudley,” the man ordered.

  Dudley did so. The man strolled over to a locker, extracted an attaché case and showed it to Dudley.

  “Something like this one?”

  “Almost identical, Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Good.” Mr. Bartlett stuffed the case with newspapers and locked it. He smiled as he lit a cigar.

  “Late tonight, Dudley,” Mr. Bartlett said, “you will make a substitute. How is your problem. Then bring Anders’s attaché case here. I will advise the United States consular representative and we shall meet here about midnight. Thus far, Dudley, good show.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  * * *

  —

  People rarely locked their windows or doors in the chalets at Casa Carib because the night breezes were soothing and the establishment had an excellent reputation. It was comparatively simple for barefooted Matilda to exchange attaché bags while Anders and his wife were sleeping that night. However, as she closed the door, it made a slight thump and she heard Linda say in startled tones, “Arthur, Arthur—wake up! I heard something.”

  Anders muttered, “Go back to sleep. It’s the mangoes. They fall on the roof.”

  At exactly midnight, British and United States Government authorities opened and examined the contents of Anders’s attaché case while Dudley stood by.

  “By Jove!” Bartlett said at one point. “Have a look at this. An authentic Pentagon report on the exact positions of all your Minutemen silos, latest developments on your Titan, Atlas, Hound Dog, and Sergeant missiles, the operational data of SAC, the positions of your ocean-bottom radar detectors, the most recent report on deployment and positions of Polaris-equipped submarines, the areas covered by your picket ships—and more. Gad!”

  “It is highly disturbing,” the man from stateside said.

  “Good work, Dudley,” Mr. Bartlett said. “We’ll take it from here, never fear.”

  Dudley fumbled in a pocket. “I have the thousand dollars for you—the money they gave me for destroying one another.”

  Mr. Bartlett smiled. “Put it in the bank. I have discussed that matter with Scotland Yard. We all agree you’ve earned it.”

  “Thank you very much indeed, sir.”

  About nine the next morning, Dudley reported to the Anders’ chalet.

  “Good morning, Dudley,” Anders said. He appeared to be in excellent humor. “Mrs. Anders and I have decided to do a little island hopping. Preferably off the beaten tourist tracks. Can do?”

  “I’ll have the car ready in half a mo’, sir,” Dudley replied.

  They drove for nearly an hour over wild and wonderful mountain trails and finally reached a weird, barren area, out of which rose fantastic pyramids and cones of limestone and thick forests.

  “We are in Maroon country,” Dudley explained quietly. “This is known as the Cockpit country of Trelawny, near Accompong. It is said the Maroons were originally slaves who fled from their Spanish masters. They have their own government and tribal chief. They are rarely seen, even by our natives.”

  “Are they dangerous?” Anders asked.

  Dudley smiled a little. “It all depends. They seek peace. But the Maroons are most perceptive. They instinctively recognize evil and deal with it in accordance with their own laws.”

  He stopped the old car and opened the doors. “Come,” he said. “I will show you the oldest and largest cotton tree on the island. Few tou
rists have seen it.”

  They trailed him up a sharp incline, through a forest of cassias, coconut palms, and cedars. Anders, who was puffing, glanced at his wrist watch. They had been walking for about forty-five minutes. He looked at Linda. She, too, was breathing hard.

  “Dudley,” Anders said sharply. “I think we…”

  He looked all around. Dudley had vanished.

  “Me Jane, you Tarzan,” Linda said.

  “Very un-funny,” Anders said. “Sit down. I’m tired.”

  * * *

  —

  The following midnight, Dudley met again with the British and United States Government men in the back room of the Royal Mail House. Mr. Bartlett spoke severely.

  “Somehow, Mr. and Mrs. Anders have escaped from the island,” he said. “You should have contacted me immediately, Dudley.”

  Dudley smiled. “They have not escaped. The Maroons have them.”

  Mr. Bartlett frowned. “We shall have to go after them.”

  Dudley shook his head. “I would not advise it, sir. The kill backra is blooming near Accompong. It is said the Maroons have an epidemic among them.”

  “Good God, man!” Mr. Bartlett said. “If yellow fever is rampant among the Maroons, we must send them medical aid.”

  Dudley shook his head. “A doctor might not return, sir. Nor would our medicines be used. The Maroons have their own medicine men. And betrayal, sir, deserves betrayal.”

  “Highly irregular,” Mr. Bartlett said, coughing. “You should have advised me. What about their landlord, Mr. Chalmers?”

  “I have advised Mr. Chalmers,” Dudley said evenly, “that Mr. and Mrs. Anders were suddenly recalled stateside. I shall bring their baggage to your office, sir.”

  Mr. Bartlett arose. He addressed his friends. “Insofar as I am concerned,” he said, “this confidential matter is closed. I assume, of course, that a coded cablegram will be sent to the Pentagon. That will be all for now, Dudley.”

  Back in his old cab, Dudley sang a song as he drove up the mountain:

  Down the way where the lights are gay,

  And the sun shines daily on the mountaintop…

  After a night’s rest and a day’s relaxation he would take Matilda to Montego Bay for a dancing date in the Square. They might even attend the cinema. There was a stateside film showing which he had long wished to see. It was entitled “Counterespionage.”

  FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

  IAN FLEMING

  CBS, AFTER IT HAD ENJOYED so much success with a television adaptation of Casino Royale (1953) for an episode of the series Climax! in 1954, made contact with Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908–1964) in an attempt to get him to create a series based on his James Bond character, asking him to write thirty-two episodes over a two-year period. Fleming came up with seven new story ideas plus recycled episodes based on his previously published novels. However, stating that he didn’t want to have to go under contract to “writing episodes or otherwise slaving,” the series never came to fruition.

  Later in the year, apparently having difficulty coming up with plots for new books, Fleming pulled the ideas from original episodes together for a collection of stories; “For Your Eyes Only” was one of them. For the TV series, it had been tentatively titled “Rough Justice” but, when adapted for print, it was first called “Death Leaves an Echo,” then “Man’s Work,” before Fleming settled on the current title. The red “Eyes Only” stamp that appears internally and on the dust jacket of the first edition, lifted straight from the author’s naval intelligence experience, was used on secret documents.

  Fleming, born in London, began his career as a journalist and, while officially a correspondent in Moscow for the London Times, he unofficially worked for the Foreign Office. Although he wrote other books, notably the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964), it is for the creation of James Bond, the most famous spy in literature and probably the most famous literary creation of the twentieth century, that he is best known. He wrote twelve books about the charismatic 007, beginning with Casino Royale, and enjoyed modest but not spectacular success until President John F. Kennedy publicly expressed his fondness for the books.

  “For Your Eyes Only” was originally published in the June 1, 1960, issue of Weekend magazine; it was first collected in For Your Eyes Only (London, Jonathan Cape, 1960).

  FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

  IAN FLEMING

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BIRD in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamer-tail or doctor humming-bird. The cock bird is about nine inches long, but seven inches of it are tail—two long black feathers that curve and cross each other and whose inner edges are in a form of scalloped design. The head and crest are black, the wings dark green, the long bill is scarlet, and the eyes, bright and confiding, are black. The body is emerald green, so dazzling that when the sun is on the breast you see the brightest green thing in nature. In Jamaica, birds that are loved are given nicknames. Trochilus polytmus is called “doctor bird” because his two black streamers remind people of the black tail-coat of the old-time physician.

  Mrs. Havelock was particularly devoted to two families of these birds because she had been watching them sipping honey, fighting, nesting, and making love since she married and came to Content. She was now over fifty, so many generations of these two families had come and gone since the original two pairs had been nicknamed Pyramus and Thisbe and Daphnis and Chloe by her mother-in-law. But successive couples had kept the names, and Mrs. Havelock now sat at her elegant tea service on the broad cool veranda and watched Pyramus, with a fierce “tee-tee-tee” dive-bomb Daphnis who had finished up the honey on his own huge bush of Japanese Hat and had sneaked in among the neighbouring Monkeyfiddle that was Pyramus’s preserve. The two tiny black and green comets swirled away across the fine acres of lawn, dotted with brilliant clumps of hibiscus and bougainvillaea, until they were lost to sight in the citrus groves. They would soon be back. The running battle between the two families was a game. In this big finely planted garden there was enough honey for all.

  Mrs. Havelock put down her teacup and took a Patum Peperium sandwich. She said: “They really are the most dreadful show-offs.”

  Colonel Havelock looked over the top of his Daily Gleaner. “Who?”

  “Pyramus and Daphnis.”

  “Oh, yes.” Colonel Havelock thought the names idiotic. He said: “It looks to me as if Batista will be on the run soon. Castro’s keeping up the pressure pretty well. Chap at Barclay’s told me this morning that there’s a lot of funk money coming over here already. Said that Belair’s been sold to nominees. One hundred and fifty thousand pounds for a thousand acres of cattle-tick and a house the red ants’ll have down by Christmas! Somebody’s suddenly gone and bought that ghastly Blue Harbour hotel, and there’s even talk that Jimmy Farquharson has found a buyer for his place—leaf-spot and Panama disease thrown in for good measure, I suppose.”

  “That’ll be nice for Ursula. The poor dear can’t stand it out here. But I can’t say I like the idea of the whole island being bought up by these Cubans. But Tim, where do they get all the money from, anyway?”

  “Rackets, union funds, Government money—God knows. The place is riddled with crooks and gangsters. They must want to get their money out of Cuba and into something else quick. Jamaica’s as good as anywhere else now we’ve got this convertibility with the dollar. Apparently the man who bought Belair just shovelled the money on to the floor of Aschenheim’s office out of a suitcase. I suppose he’ll keep the place for a year or two, and when the trouble’s blown over or when Castro’s got in and finished cleaning up he’ll put it on the market again, take a reasonable loss, and move off somewhere else. Pity, in a way. Belair used to be a fine property. It could have been brought back if anyone in the family had cared.”

  “It was ten thousand acres in Bill’s grandfather’s day.
It used to take the busher three days to ride the boundary.”

  “Fat lot Bill cares. I bet he’s booked his passage to London already. That’s one more of the old families gone. Soon won’t be anyone left of that lot but us. Thank God Judy likes the place.”

  Mrs. Havelock said “Yes, dear” calmingly and pinged the bell for the tea things to be cleared away. Agatha, a huge blue-black Negress wearing the old-fashioned white headcloth that has gone out in Jamaica except in the hinterland, came out through the white and rose drawing-room followed by Fayprince, a pretty young quadroon from Port Maria whom she was training as second housemaid. Mrs. Havelock said: “It’s time we started bottling, Agatha. The guavas are early this year.”

  Agatha’s face was impassive. She said: “Yes’m. But we done need more bottles.”

  “Why? It was only last year I got you two dozen of the best I could find at Henriques.”

  “Yes’m. Someone done mash five, six of dose.”

  “Oh dear. How did that happen?”

  “Couldn’t say’m.” Agatha picked up the big silver tray and waited, watching Mrs. Havelock’s face.

  Mrs. Havelock had not lived most of her life in Jamaica without learning that a mash is a mash and that one would not get anywhere hunting for a culprit. So she just said cheerfully: “Oh, all right, Agatha. I’ll get some more when I go into Kingston.”

  “Yes’m.” Agatha, followed by the young girl, went back into the house.

  Mrs. Havelock picked up a piece of petit-point and began stitching, her fingers moving automatically. Her eyes went back to the big bushes of Japanese Hat and Monkeyfiddle. Yes, the two male birds were back. With gracefully cocked tails they moved among the flowers. The sun was low on the horizon and every now and then there was a flash of almost piercingly beautiful green. A mocking-bird, on the topmost branch of a frangipani, started on its evening repertoire. The tinkle of an early tree-frog announced the beginning of the short violet dusk.