He cursed himself as he slid her arms through the cork jacket and tied the thongs securely. He could kill when it was an enemy and there was no other choice, but not a helpless woman who had shared her body with him, for whatever reason. If there was any chance at all, he meant her to have it. Jan lifted her from the bunk, then, grunting in the confined space, carried her up and placed her on the deckhouse floor. He went below again for the alcohol stove and the dead SD man’s machine pistol. He poured a panful of diesel oil on the limp sail, lit the stove with difficulty, and sat down beside the feverish girl to wait.
The reconnaissance plane made its first attack from dead astern at sea level. Machine-gun fire chewed across the deck, and the aircraft swept past so close that Memling saw the pilot staring down at him. The gun turret forward of the cockpit swivelled as the pilot sideslipped to give the gunner clearance, but the burst went wide. The plane banked sharply, fell off one wing, and swept down on them, again at sea level. Memling knelt behind the engine compartment and held his fire until the last possible moment; a split second before the twin machine-guns opened up, he fired a long burst that exhausted the Schmiesser magazine. The turret shattered and the aircraft swept past without response. One dead gunner, he hoped.
Memling rammed home the other magazine and watched the aircraft sweep away low, then climb swiftly. The pilot would not make that mistake again. Regretfully he dropped the machine pistol and picked Francine up, easing her over one shoulder. She muttered something through cracked lips, and he held her tightly for a moment, then bent, picked up the stove, and opened the valve until the flame roared.
Far above he could see the Nazi turning towards them. Sun glinted for a moment, highlighting the aircraft, and he could even see the racks of bombs slung under each wing. As the pilot began his run Memling walked to the after hatch where he had put a cloth-wrapped stick that he had soaked in oil. He lit the torch from the burning stove.
The seaplane droned nearer, and he saw the first bombs drop. The pilot had chosen his altitude well. The bombs would strike before the boat could answer the helm. They landed so close that when they exploded, the boat shuddered. The stove was knocked into the hold, and at the same moment Memling threw the torch against the sail. The canvas flared and he slipped over the side. Francine struggled a moment as the shock of the cold water bit through her delirium, then she was still.
The boat was pulling away rapidly, sail flaming brightly, providing an unmistakable target for the seaplane and perhaps a beacon for the Swedish coastal patrols. Two more bombs plummeted, and Memling held his breath, waiting for the concussions. When they came, it was as if a huge fist had clamped, then flung him away. The oil in the hold ignited, and the flame ran back to the fuel tank. The boat leapt clear of the water with the force of the explosion and fell back, a seething mass of flame. Still moving forward under her own momentum even though the sail had disappeared, she plunged beneath the waves.
The aircraft made a final low-level pass across the burning boat, then, as Memling had hoped, sought altitude and turned south towards Germany before Swedish pursuit planes could come to investigate.
Two hours later a Swedish coastal patrol launch found them. Memling was barely conscious, and although the girl must have died within minutes of entering the water, he was still clinging to her.
Sweden
September 1943
‘I say, are you Captain Jan Memling?’
Memling turned over on the bunk and regarded with suspicion the thin, pale young man in a well-tailored suit. He rubbed a hand over his face, grimaced at the three-day stubble, and nodded. ‘Yes.’
The man smiled with satisfaction and dropped down on the bunk opposite. ‘Had the devil of a time finding you. Must have been over this camp three times. None of these chaps want to help. Think ‘I’m a spy.’
‘Are you?’
‘Good heavens, no! ‘I’m the naval attaché at the Stockholm embassy. Name’s Ian Fleming.’ He handed Memling a leather case with his identification.
Memling decided that Fleming was who he claimed to be. A German impersonator would not have failed to mention his rank even though it was listed on the ID card as lieutenant commander, RN.
‘What can I do for you, Commander?’
‘I’d say it’s rather a matter of what I can do for you. But first, let’s establish your bona fides, shall we?’ He took a photograph from his case and held it beside Memling’s face. ‘Well, you look like Captain Jan Memling, late of the Number Two Commando. Perhaps you could tell me your mother’s maiden name?’ Memling grinned for the first time in three weeks. ‘Wells. Anything else?’
‘Oh, quite a bit.’ Fleming consulted a pocket notebook. ‘I believe your father was a Belgian gunsmith?’
‘My father was a British citizen, born in London,’ he corrected.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. My grandfather left Belgium in 1872.’
‘I see. Well then, in 1928 he made a certain type of gun for a rather famous personality. Perhaps you could describe it?’ Memling blinked. His father had made dozens of fine rifles and shotguns for his customers, many of them famous. He took a chance, knowing first-hand just how thorough MI6 could be.
‘He made a ten-bore double shotgun for Lord Esterbrook to use on his East African farm. Lord Esterbrook wanted a serviceable weapon with a steel skeleton stock. It had cast-steel barrels to make up the weight thus lost to reduce recoil.’
‘Very good.’
‘How did they find out about that gun? My father considered it an abomination and even refused to sign it. He made Lord Esterbrook promise never to reveal its maker.’
The naval officer only smiled at the question. ‘You know better than that.’ He slipped the notebook into his pocket, then took a small leather bag from the case and extracted an ink pad and a sheet of celluloid. He pressed Memling’s middle finger to the pad and then to the celluloid sheet and stepped to the window where he superimposed the celluloid over a transparent photocopy of Memling’s fingerprints and studied the results with a magnifying glass.
‘Well, that’s that. You do appear to be Captain Memling.’
‘So. Now what?’
Fleming packed up the kit. ‘Now we get out of here. I have a car outside.’
Memling shook his head. ‘Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’ve been interned for the duration.’
‘I did hear something to that effect.’ Fleming tossed him an envelope with the Royal Swedish cipher embossed discreetly in the upper left corner. ‘Royal pardon. Seems a mistake was made. You were thought to be an Allied combatant when your boat was sunk in Swedish territorial waters. The police should never have arrested a member of the embassy staff. Diplomatic immunity and all that. What’s the world coming to, I wonder? Ready?’
The day was exceptionally mild, and Fleming drove at breakneck speed through the rolling countryside. Somehow he had obtained an elderly Bentley that had obviously been restored in painstaking detail. With the top down it was difficult to talk, and Memling lay back against the leather seat and closed his eyes, revelling in the fresh air, warm sun, and semblance of freedom the car’s passage provided.
He could remember little of the first three days after the Swedish patrol boat fished him from the water, other than a successive flicker of static scenes; a jouncing ride in an ambulance, soft sounds and sterile walls, a woman in white uniform bending over him, and then nothing.
He awoke in the Allied detention camp at Korsnas, north of Vasteras, in central Sweden. A week later had come a hearing presided over by a civilian and attended by Swedish military officers and one representative each from the British embassy and the International Red Cross. The British diplomat impressed upon him the importance of keeping his mouth shut. At the end of the hearing, conducted entirely in Swedish, he was remanded to the detention camp for the duration of the war. Since then, all his attempts to contact the British embassy had been fruitless.