“Bourbon and branch water, dear,” he said.
“Rum and Coke,” I said.
She beamed at Fleming, fluttering elaborate fake lashes, and he granted her another little smile.
“As you may have guessed, Mr. Heller, I’m taking an extended layover in Nassau to…shall we say, keep tabs on the Oakes case.”
“Why would British Naval Intelligence have any interest in a murder case involving civilians? Even rich ones?”
Fleming stamped out his cigarette in a glass ashtray and immediately withdrew another from his gold case and lighted up. “Well, one of the people involved on the periphery is not, after all, strictly speaking, a civilian. He’s what you call a VIP-and he’s in a…delicate position. A vulnerable position.”
Now I was getting it.
‘The Duke of Windsor, you mean. The ex-King with the Nazi sympathies. He’s a living, breathing embarrassment to your country, isn’t he?”
Fleming’s smile was almost a sneer. “On the contrary-the Duke is beloved, worldwide. My government’s concern is that he not be…misused. That he, himself, not be embarrassed.”
“Yeah, right.”
The waitress brought our drinks; she and Fleming exchanged smiles, hers generous, his miserly.
“I’m afraid the Duke is rather easy prey for financial operators. He’s known to…resent the limitations of his annual allowance, particularly in wartime.”
“I may bust out crying.”
“The Duke also resents the limitations imposed on exchange control-limitations designed to keep British money available to the British war effort.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow any of this, let alone see how it relates to the Oakes murder.”
“Oh but it does.” Fleming sipped his drink; smoke curled from the cigarette between the fingers of his other hand. “You see, several years ago, the Duke entered into a partnership with Sir Harry Oakes.”
“So?”
“The other partners included Harold Christie, as you might well imagine, and a certain Axel Wenner-Gren.” Fleming raised an eyebrow. “Now, the Duke’s friendship with Wenner-Gren has, I will admit, been a source of embarrassment for the Crown.”
I shrugged. “There are those in Nassau who say Wenner-Gren got a bum rap when he was blacklisted.”
He laughed silently. Then he said, “Allow me to tell you a little story about the wealthy Wenner-Gren. In September of ‘39, Wenner-Gren was sailing the Southern Cross from Gothenburg to the Bahamas. Off the northern coast of Scotland, he quite coincidentally happened to see the British liner Athenia as it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. He picked up several hundred survivors on his yacht, great humanitarian that he is, and wired President Roosevelt, encouraging him to utilize the ‘horror of this disaster’ as a basis for peace efforts with Germany. Now, we in Naval Intelligence were just wondering why the Southern Cross, with its many radio aerials, and unusually powerful transmitters and receivers, just happened to be in that particular spot in that ocean at that particular moment.”
“That is an interesting coincidence.”
“Other fantastic coincidences were to follow-the Southern Cross was also conveniently on hand when Allied pilots, training in the Bahamas, crashed into the sea. He rescued these pilots-but had he been watching them train? Before he was banished from these waters, Wenner-Gren liked to keep aboard his ship samples-in depth-of the various armaments manufactured by his company, the Bofors Munition Works. He also kept unusually large fuel tanks aboard the Southern Cross, which led to the nasty rumor that he’d been refueling U-boats.”
I sat forward in the booth. “And this is the same ship that the Duke and Duchess would take little outings to America on?”
“Oh yes. Wenner-Gren would ferry the Duchess to Miami so she could see her dentist. The Windsors’ favorite dessert? An immense sherbet replica of the Southern Cross.”
“Charming.”
“Isn’t it? Still, there are those of us in Naval Intelligence who are just cynical enough to consider Axel a…bad influence on our boy.”
The native band was still clanging away at their steel drums, but I barely heard them.
“Well, Wenner-Gren’s in Cuernavaca or someplace, isn’t he? What harm can he do now, where your Duke is concerned?”
“The harm, Mr. Heller, if indeed there is any, has to do with that business relationship I mentioned-the one the Duke shares with Christie and Wenner-Gren, and the late Sir Harry Oakes. That mutual business venture, you see, is a bank. Specifically, Banco Continental in Mexico City.”
I shrugged and sat back. “So what? International finances are what you’d expect of people on that level.”
Fleming drew on his cigarette. Blew out smoke, smiled mysteriously. “Mr. Heller, I am being frank with you, but there are limits on just how much I can explain. Let me see if I can put this succinctly for you. During war time, certain practices are…discouraged. Such as sending money illegally from a struggling Empire to invest alongside blacklisted neutrals in a country ripe for sabotage.”
“Oh.”
“The Duke’s involvement with Banco Continental is unfortunate-it’s a rather well-kept secret, however, and I doubt the Duke even knows that Naval Intelligence is aware of it. But we are. And now, so are you.”
“Why me, for God’s sake?”
The waitress was back, bringing another round, exchanging smiles with Fleming.
“You mind if I duck your question? Just for a moment?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He sipped his second bourbon and branch water. “When I was nine, vacationing with my family at St. Ives, Cornwall, I was searching the caves off the beach for amethyst quartz when I stumbled onto a lump of ambergris as big as a child’s football.”
I wasn’t sure what ambergris was, but I knew it was valuable. I should have been irritated, but this aloof son of a bitch was a good storyteller.
“Now, I knew at once I would be rich-I would live on milk chocolate, and I wouldn’t have to go back to my private school, or indeed do any work at all-I’d found the short cut to success and happiness. But on my way home it began to melt, and soon I was a bit of a mess. My mother asked me what I was carrying, and I told her, It’s ambergris! It’s worth a thousand pounds an ounce, and I’m never going back to school!’”
He paused to sip his drink again. Then resumed.
“But my ambergris, as it turned out, was actually a lump of very rancid butter, which a supply ship had dumped off the coast. My mother was not amused.”
“Neither am I. What’s the point?”
“The point, Mr. Heller, is merely that sometimes ambergris turns out to be rancid butter.” He smiled again, mostly to himself; blew smoke through his nose. “Wenner-Gren is your host right now, so to speak.”
“I’ve never even met the man. Never seen him, outside of an oil painting.”
“But you’re spending time with the charming Lady Medcalf, are you not?”
“Yeah. She’s been helpful, too.”
“Has she? I wonder. What do you know about her?”
His perpetual mild amusement was starting to irritate me. I said, “She’s the widow of some pal of the Duke’s; she’s very high up in royal society or whatever the hell you call it.”
He smiled and showed his teeth now; it turned his handsome face horsey. “Diane Medcalf is the former June Diane Sims of the Blackfriars settlement in the East End of London. Strictly lowerclass.”
I blinked; swallowed thickly. “How is it possible she could wind up married to a lord?”
He shrugged one shoulder, gestured mildly with his cigarette-in-hand. “David Windsor gave up the throne for a twice-divorced American said to have done a stint in a Hong Kong brothel.” He put out the cigarette and flipped open his gold case to get another. “Hell, man-you’ve seen ‘Lady Diane’…a damn sight closer up than I have. She’s a smart woman and a beautiful one.”