James Bond: The Authorised Biography (16 page)

But during these early months of 1940, the secret-service world was changing rapidly. Whole new branches were sprouting – MI5 and MI6 were taking on fresh personnel. Fleming was off to Canada. It was a bad time for Lieutenant Bond. He was considered ‘frivolous’, and when he applied for transfer to active service his request was swiftly granted.

*

Bond loved the navy and the fourteen months he spent as a seagoing sailor are among the happiest of his life. He trained at Devonport and was seconded to destroyers. Just before Dunkirk he joined his first ship, H.M.S.
Sabre
, as a lieutenant. He was at Dunkirk.
Sabre
was bombed but still managed to bring back three loads of British troops from the beaches. After repairs, she went on convoy duty in the North Atlantic.

It was a novel life for Bond. He had never known the daily hardships of a serving officer, nor had he had to face the cramped togetherness of life below decks in a narrow ship. He was regarded as distinctly “odd”. He was considered something of an intellectual and a puritan. He was reserved, swore rarely, and never discussed his women or his family. The men found him meticulous about duties and they respected him, the old hands in particular. His fellow-officers soon found that he was not a man for liberties. He had a sharp tongue, a strong sense of
amour propre
and could drink anyone beneath the wardroom table. He was admired and popular but had no particular close friends. This used to worry him. Everyone thought him self-sufficient, whereas he was really nothing of the sort: his natural reserve, the life that he had led, made him unfitted for close human contact.

Even so, life aboard the
Sabre
did a lot to thaw him out. One night ashore in Kingston, Jamaica, he became the hero of the ship. He was in charge of the liberty party. The men were due back aboard at midnight but there was a bar brawl with the crew from an American cruiser, so that Lieutenant Bond found himself in the middle of a pitched battle. Bottles and knives were being used. His men were getting much the worst of things. Bond was very calm, telling his men to get outside. Most of them did but a drunk heavyweight U.S. petty officer kept up the battle.

He had already knocked out several British ratings and threw a bottle at Lieutenant Bond. Bond saw it coming, ducked, then, grabbing the American, threw him across his shoulders. The man landed with a crash of broken glass against the bar. Bond hit him once as he tottered to his feet and the fight was over. Bond's men were safely back on board by midnight.

The incident worked wonders for Bond's prestige, and it was really after this that he began to feel that he belonged aboard his ship.

The shared dangers and discomforts of the mid-Atlantic helped Bond become more human, and he enjoyed his freedom from the tensions of the undercover world. Those lonely battles of the past were over. The enemy was open and straightforward, and he was fighting now with men he trusted. Bond preferred that. He became brawnier and put on weight. He could sleep anywhere and any time. For the first time for years he was devoid of worries or ambitions. Then it all changed.

*

During this time afloat, Bond lived a life of almost total chastity. This too was a relief. After his past involvements he enjoyed a pause from the demands of sex. There had been moments of brief indulgence in the Bahamas or New York, generally with married women who regarded the servicing of good-looking Allied personnel as essential patriotic war-work. Perhaps it was, but it left Bond depressed. He enjoyed sex, but not impersonally. He liked his women to be something more than animated text-books of the sexual act. He was also slightly prudish or, as he would have said, romantic. He liked to think that there was at least the possibility of love before he clambered into bed with anyone.

This attitude and long months of seaborn abstinence meant that, by spring 1941, Bond was becoming vulnerable. His teenage cynicism was behind him, and as he became more human so it appeared inevitable that he should fall in love. He duly did – sentimentally and quite predictably with the sister of a brother officer. Her name was Muriel. Her brother was the second-in-command. Bond got to know her from her photograph in her brother's cabin. The smile was Claudette Colbert's, and the nose Greer Garson's. The second-in-command assured Bond that she was ‘a thoroughly good sort’. He was quite right. Bond met her briefly during leave that Easter. They saw a show together, had supper in a Corner House. Bond kissed her – that was all – but promised he would write. He did.

The photograph had flattered her. It was not quite Miss Colbert's smile – nor for that matter quite Miss Garson's nose – but she was a thoroughly nice, well-nurtured, English miss. Daddy was army. The family lived near Pulborough in Sussex. She was twenty-two, pure as they used to be in those days, and she had never met anyone like Bond before.

Late that July, H.M.S.
Sabre
steamed home from the West Indies for a refit at Birkenhead. Bond had leave and traveled down to London with the 2i/c. Some three weeks later he was happily engaged. It was all terribly conventional – visits to Kent to introduce Aunt Charmian (she raised her eyebrows but said nothing), visits to Sussex relatives of Muriel, visits to London. Bond seemed happy. Muriel adored him, and for the first time in his life he was conscious of doing what Brother Henry always called ‘the proper thing’.

It even seemed the proper thing when Bond, on one of their last nights together, rang up the Dorchester Hotel, asked for the manager, and ordered a double room. Muriel agreed, for, after all, they were engaged and she was nearly twenty-three.

For the first time in his life with any woman, Bond felt nervous. She was quite lovely, and most understanding; they dined discreetly in the restaurant and prepared for bed. But the fact was that Bond simply had to have a drink. When he explained she understood quite perfectly. Daddy, she said, was just the same. She'd wait for him upstairs.

Bond was ordering his favourite martini – the bar, to his surprise, had Gordon's gin – ‘And do make sure,’ he told the barman, ‘that it is …’

‘Shaken, not stirred,’ a voice behind him said. Bond turned, and there was Fleming.

Bond thought that he had aged. The sombre face had grown more lined, but otherwise he seemed exactly as Bond remembered. For some reason, he felt relieved to see him. Bond offered him a drink explaining that he was just engaged; Fleming roared with laughter.

At first Bond was angry, but Fleming's laughter was infectious. They drank. They talked. They had another drink. Fleming recalled the Wangerooge affair and hinted at the secret work his department was engaged in. Bond tried to talk about his life aboard the
Sabre
, but it all sounded just a little flat.

‘Pity you left,’ said Fleming.

Bond said nothing.

‘Things have changed in D.N.I. We could do with you. The Admiral said as much the other day.’

‘He did?’ said Bond, and Fleming nodded.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we should have a bottle of champagne to celebrate – our meeting, your engagement.’ Champagne was all but non-existent in wartime London, but the barman was a friend of Fleming's. He produced a bottle of vintage Clicquot. Fleming had become didactic, as he often did with alcohol.

‘You should be back with us – not playing sailors.’

Bond argued, Fleming was persuasive, and it was well past midnight before they parted. Muriel was fast asleep; Bond just a little drunk.

This time they trained James Bond thoroughly – first at a house in Hertfordshire at a course for saboteurs, then out in Canada. Bond was a prize trainee, winning high marks for fitness, unarmed combat, weaponry and personal initiative. In Hertfordshire he was given an A-plus mark and privately commended to the D.N.I: in Canada he gave a judo instructor mild concussion and took the range records at small arms and on the sub-machine gun.

The Canadian establishment was at a place called Oshawa, on Lake Ontario. It had been founded, late in 1940, by Sir William Stephenson as training ground for his American agents, and at the time it offered the most rigorous and thorough training of its sort anywhere outside the Soviet Union. Bond learnt a lot.

As an inventor in his own right – much of his fortune came from his prewar inventions in radio photography – Sir William was a technocrat of sabotage. It was from him that Bond became acquainted with the whole armoury of the modern agent – cyphers and electronics, explosives and radio and listening devices. The trainees used the lake for underwater exercises, and it was here that James Bond trained as a frogman, learning evasive tactics, underwater fighting, and techniques with limpet mines. Bond spent three months at Oshawa. When he returned to London, D.N.I. had already received a confidential report, commending his success and ending with a single statement – ‘The agent is a lethal weapon of the highest calibre.’

Had Bond known this, he would have been more wary when Fleming took him out to lunch soon after his return. Bond had enjoyed himself in Canada. Muriel had seemed a little sullen when he left – despite the
débâcle
at the Dorchester they were still officially engaged – but out in Oshawa he had found it hard to worry too much on her behalf. Now he was looking forward to some active service and Muriel agreed that it would be wrong to rush ahead with marriage. Fleming seemed relieved when James Bond told him this, for as he explained to Bond, there was ‘an element of risk’ in the small assignment the Service had in mind for him.

Fleming had chosen Bertorelli's Italian restaurant in Charlotte Street for their meeting – a change from Scott's: none of those silver tankards of black velvet, no grilled plaice. They had the
plat du jour
, an ambiguous wartime stew called
spezzatino
, and half a bottle of Valpolicella. It was a strange background in which to be asked to kill a man. Not that Fleming used the word ‘kill’. He said, ‘deal with’. It was all arranged and shouldn't be too difficult. But there must be absolutely no mistakes. There was a fearful lot at stake. Fleming poured himself the last of the Valpollicela and started to explain his task.

‘The man's Japanese. He's called Shingushi and he's in New York. Officially he's with their consulate-general – he has an office on the thirty-sixth floor of a sky-scraper on Lexington Avenue. But unofficially the man's a cypher expert – probably the greatest in the world. We've been studying him, and now we know for certain what he's up to. For several months we've known that the Germans have been getting detailed information of Allied shipping movements from New York, and it appears that this has been relayed from their friends in Tokyo. The question was how the Japanese were getting it. Now Stephenson's found out. The Japanese have been intercepting all our messages, to and from the Atlantic convoys, and little Shingushi has been busily decoding them.’

Bond still remembers Fleming's cold impassive face as he sat there, chain-smoking his Morlands Specials.

‘So what do
I
do?’ said Bond.

‘Dispose of him, dear chap. This is war. It must be done. One just can't be a softy in these matters. It will be like shooting an enemy in the front line – except that this little fellow must be worth a good three top-rank divisions.’

‘Isn't there someone in America who can do it? Why bring me in?’

‘America's not in the war but she is giving us a lot of help. There must be nothing that could create a diplomatic incident. This must be what gangsters call “an outside job”. Officially no one in New York will know you. If anything goes wrong, you're on your own.’

Bond could not refuse. This was the sort of operation he had trained for. He knew its logic, but wished it didn't have to seem quite so like cold-blooded murder. Fleming was smiling. ‘I envy you New York,’ he said. ‘Take my advice and buy some shirts from Abercrombie's while you're there.’

Bond travelled light. He took no weapon and no identifiable possessions. There was a certain urgency about his mission so he was booked by air, flying to Lisbon where he caught the morning clipper to New York. It was a ten-hour flight – which gave Bond time to brood. But at the same time he felt that lift which always comes at the start of an assignment. Nothing could ever equal it.

Bond's sense of excitement was increased by his first sight of New York, for he loved the city. It was evening and all the sky-scrapers of Manhattan were guttering with light as if inviting him to some enormous celebration. After his nights in blacked-out London he was suddenly alive. He had to remind himself that he was here to kill a man.

He had booked in at the five-star Volney Hotel, because he heard that Dorothy Parker lived there. It had the right degree of comfort and respectability and Bond had the sense of being something of an honoured guest: it was a long time since he had known the luxury of a good hotel, the pile of towels in the bathroom, the well-made bed, the discreet air-conditioning. He rang for a double bourbon on the rocks, shaved and then bathed luxuriously. At 8.15 he rang Sir William Stephenson's private number.

As head of British Intelligence in North America, Sir William was a busy man, but he arranged to meet James Bond that night at 10.15 at Murphy's bar on 45th Street. Bond dined alone – off T-bone steak and ice-cream in the drug-store round the corner – and walked to his appointment.

Bond had never met the quiet Canadian before, but was impressed at once by his efficiency. He liked the down-to-earth approach of this small energetic man, the way he bought the drinks, asked Bond if he had eaten, and then got down to settling his task.