The Sharp End Read online

  “You know better than that,” Jim said.

  “Quite right—what was I thinking?”

  “Raiding Forces took almost fifty percent casualties in CRUSADER,” Jim said. “The colonel is more than a little disenchanted with the British High Command at the moment. He was ordered to deploy his gun jeep patrols against Rommel’s main supply line once reinforcements started pouring down the Via Balbia.

  “The results were exactly what Randal predicted—disastrous.”

  “As incredible as this sounds, the U.S. does not have a national intelligence service,” Brig. Menzies said. “The Yanks intend to create one.

  “Colonel ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who is currently heading up the Office of Coordinator of Information, wants the director’s job, and we want him to have it—despite the fact that he is a complete intelligence novice.

  “Fleming was recently in New York working with our man ‘Intrepid,’ Bill Stephenson, to lobby President Roosevelt to secure the Donovan appointment.”

  Cmdr. Fleming said, “Wild Bill and I have conducted extensive discussions on how the U.S. intelligence agency should be structured. As per the brigadier’s instructions, I recommended he keep Secret Intelligence and Special Operations under one roof—not allow them to be split up like what happened to us when Special Operations Executive was spun off from MI-6.”

  Brig. Menzies said, “My intent is for the Americans to participate in Special Operations to their hearts’ content, but they are not to be permitted to have any direct involvement with Secret Intelligence. That is to remain a British monopoly—doubly so in Europe.

  “To that end,” Brig. Menzies said, “I shall propose to Donovan he designate Randal as his SO officer in Middle East Command. The idea being for him to remain in command of Raiding Forces as a joint U.S./U.K. formation if or when he transfers to the U.S. Army. However, we have to keep Randal in British uniform long enough for me to float the idea of Raiding Forces becoming a joint Allied special operation as a bargaining chip with the Yanks.”

  “Why?” Jim asked.

  “Kill two birds with one stone that way—Fleming gets his RED INDIAN Raiders,” Brig. Menzies said, “and I keep Donovan out of Secret Intelligence by trading him a Special Operations unit which we will continue to control through back channels—meaning you, Baldie—business as usual.”

  “Understood, sir,” Jim said. “In effect, you are trading Donovan nothing for something.”

  “Very intuitive, James,” Brig. Menzies said. “Your assignment is to prevent Randal from rejoining the U.S. Army until such time as we have concluded our negotiations.”

  “Need to handle Colonel Randal with silk gloves, sir,” Jim said. “Should he ever suspect we are playing him, Randal will be back at Ft. Benning commanding a battalion of paratroopers before we know what hit us.”

  “I have a proposal, gentlemen,” Cmdr. Fleming said, tapping a cigarette on his elegant monogrammed sterling silver case. “Why not arrange to promote Randal to full colonel? The U.S. Army will never take him at the grade of brigadier—make him the youngest general officer since their Civil War.

  “We checkmate Randal’s transfer temporarily while the Americans try to figure out what to tender as an incentive. Which gives you, brigadier, time to cut your deal with Donovan.

  “Eventually, in order to induce Randal to transfer, the U.S. Army will have to propose something other than a promotion. We make sure that offer is to remain in command of Raiding Forces—with an invisible chain-of-command that runs through MI-6/NID.”

  “Should work,” Jim said, thinking to himself, you are not as smart as you think you are, Ian Fleming. Randal will receive a promotion no matter how it turns out—unless that was the commander’s plan in the first place.

  Hmmm, possibly there could be more to the sailor than he had given him credit for in the past.

  Jim had always judged Fleming to be a man of action who always managed to stay out of it—an appraisal that may have been harsh.

  Brig. Menzies said, “I shall ask the Prime Minister to immediately cable Field Marshal Auchinleck to confirm Randal’s promotion. At the appropriate time, James, we shall arrange to have you appointed as Donovan’s liaison to MI-6, SOE and Raiding Forces.

  “Perhaps you can prevail on Lady Jane to consent to serve as Wild Bill’s social adviser.”

  “You can count on Lady Seaborn for that service, sir,” Jim said. “Any enterprise that champions Randal’s cause—consider it done.”

  “Nicely played, Fleming,” Brig. Menzies said. “Splendid.”

  • • •

  JAMES “BALDIE” TAYLOR DEPARTED WHITE’S IN THE CLUB’S LIMOUSINE. HE BOARDED A Lancaster bomber en route to Cairo. After a long, miserable flight in an unpressurized cabin, wrapped in more cold-weather gear than an Eskimo, he was met at the RAF airfield by one of his operatives and driven straight to Raiding Forces Headquarters (RFHQ).

  Immediately upon arrival, Jim met privately with Lieutenant Colonel John Randal and briefed him on everything that had transpired during the meeting at White’s, leaving out only such details as did not pertain to him directly or which he had no need to know.

  Lt. Col. Randal said, “I like that plan.”

  3

  AUTO GYRO

  Lieutenant Colonel John Randal was in the third-floor suite at RFHQ that he shared with Captain the Lady Jane Seaborn. The morning had been spent with Lady Jane visiting the Raiding Forces personnel in the hospital. He was not feeling very chipper.

  Keeping calm and carrying on in a ward full of his wounded troops was a lot easier said than done—Lady Jane had been magnificent, though she cried in the car on the way home.

  Most of the Raiders would make a full recovery, but not all of them, and others would not be coming back to the unit. Operating behind enemy lines for extended periods of time has a way of grinding men down. Nerves go. And it was not always the ones he would have expected.

  At best, Desert Patrol was going to be at less than half strength when everyone who was planning to return reported back for duty.

  Major Sir Terry “Zorro” Stone had been critically wounded by a burst of MG fire at the very end of an ambush on one of the secondary roads running parallel to the Via Balbia. It was a miracle he was alive. True to form, Sir Terry vowed to be back as the commander of the Lancelot Lancers Yeomanry—his family regiment.

  The surgeon, Dr. Stephen Milam, had agreed to increase Maj. Stone’s daily quota of female visitors from ten to an even dozen. Which was a good sign that the Errol Flynn look-alike Life Guards officer was on the way to recovery.

  Lieutenant Mandy Paige came into the suite, wearing cutoff blue jean shorts and peewee cowgirl boots. She said, “John, I need your help.”

  “For what?” It paid to take care before agreeing to do something with Lt. Mandy.

  “R. J. assigned me an intelligence mission.”

  Brigadier Raymond J. Maunsell, who liked to be called R. J., was the chief of Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME). However, the lines of his responsibilities were blurry. He also had a role in Colonel Dudley Clarke’s A-Force, an involvement with a number of shadowy projects with bad people, and most likely a relationship with MI-6—the British SIS.

  “What kind of mission?”

  “To run a pseudo agent—a radio game,” Lt. Mandy said. “I need you to help me figure out how to go about it.”

  “The Brigadier tapped you to carry out a classified intelligence operation with no previous experience or instructions?” Lt. Col. Randal asked. “How’s that supposed to work?”

  “On-the-job training,” Lt. Mandy said. “There’s not any actual agent—that part’s a ruse. My assignment is to create a notional spy residing in Cairo with contacts in Special Forces—that’s you, John—and to sell information to the Germans about how Desert Patrol operates so successfully.”

  “You want me to help you sell information to the Nazis about Desert Patrol?” Lt. Col. Randal asked. “What kind of money are we tal
king?”

  “No, John,” Mandy said, “we make up what we tell the Germans . . . it’s not going to be true.”

  “How do you initiate contact?”

  “R. J. has a channel to the other side. My job is to create the actor and develop the story line. That’s why I need your help.”

  “Why don’t we bring in a real pro?” Lt. Col. Randal said. “No reason to reinvent the wheel.”

  “Perfect—where do we find one?”

  Lt. Mandy had a way of improving his spirits—she always did.

  “King,” Lt. Col. Randal said, “would you ask Miss Runborg if she would join us.”

  “On the way, Chief.”

  “OK,” Lt. Col. Randal said. “Help me understand, Mandy. R. J. has a means to contact the other side. You’re going to create a profile of a fictitious spy operating out of Cairo with the idea to sell information about Raiding Forces to the Nazis—specifically, Desert Patrol. Have I got that right?”

  “Exactly,” Lt. Mandy said. “Apparently Rommel is really unhappy about all the carnage inflicted by our gun jeep patrols. R. J. says the timing is right to mystify and mislead him about how we go about it.”

  “I’m all for that,” Lt. Col. Randal said. “What do we have to do?”

  “There’s two types of intelligence, John,” Lt. Mandy said. “Human intelligence and signals intelligence.

  “The first is human intelligence—meaning secret agents, spies, cloak and dagger operatives, etc. The second is signals intelligence—tap a phone line, break an enemy code—read their mail.”

  “I see,” Lt. Col. Randal said. Meaning he did not.

  “My task is to develop the story line of a human intelligence source,” Mandy said. “You have to tell me what to say to the Germans.”

  Rikke Runborg, whose friends called her Rocky, arrived in ballet workout togs and leg warmers. The ice-blond former dancer in the Russian ballet was wearing her trademark ten gold bangles on her left wrist. Rocky had a way of sucking the oxygen out of a room.

  “Tell Rocky your story,” Lt. Col. Randal said, lighting a cigarette with his old battered U.S. 26th Cavalry Regiment Zippo.

  Lady Jane came in from the suite’s private pool where she had been sunning in her black, French-cut swimsuit. Lt. Col. Randal noticed his morale had almost returned to normal.

  Lady Jane paused to listen to Lt. Mandy.

  When she finished explaining, Rocky unleashed a sparkling smile. “Never trust a spy.

  “They are deceitful people. Most, the mercenaries who are simply in it for the money—not patriotism or ideology—invent the intelligence they sell their masters.”

  Lt. Col. Randal had no idea what to make of her answer.

  Rocky was a spy—an admitted German agent currently working for Great Britain. Unless she was the Russian master spy Marina Lee, who had been sent to infiltrate the German intelligence apparatus and was then, in turn, ordered by the Abwehr to penetrate the British SIS. Rocky denied being Marina Lee.

  MI-5 (Counterintelligence) suspected she could be a triple agent. However, Rocky had sent a message to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel with a false start date for OPERATION CRUSADER. Based on her report, the Desert Fox had flown out of the country to celebrate his birthday and was away from his command post when the British attack kicked off, taking Afrika Korps by surprise.

  Rommel’s absence at the crucial moment when CRUSADER went in should have exonerated Rocky. However, the Afrika Korps commander had flown back to Libya and counterattacked so quickly with such powerful effect that there was lingering suspicion in some quarters.

  Could the Desert Fox’s departure from the country be a German ploy designed to cement British intelligence’s belief that Rocky had flipped to their side when, in fact, she was still working for the Nazis, all the while reporting—somehow—to the Russians who were her true masters?

  The spy versus spy game could be byzantine. And it could also stretch the imagination.

  Lt. Col. Randal was having a hard time believing anyone could invent a story convincing enough to fool a national level intelligence agency for any length of time. He had faith in British Intelligence (MI-6) and the Abwehr—it being a bad idea to hold your enemy in contempt.

  As if reading his mind, Rocky said, “Most spies operating in a foreign country go straight to the nearest public library. They mine the latest newspapers and scientific magazines for stories—it’s called ‘open source intelligence.’ When the spy finds a suitable article with military implications, they edit it, manufacture a credible story, and then send it to their customers.”

  “Do the spy’s handlers realize that?”

  “Of course not, John,” Rocky said. “Case officers imagine their secret agents spend their time performing fantastic feats of clandestine skullduggery like in the movies—honey traps, sleeping with informants, black bag entries, steaming open envelopes, bribing or blackmailing people into revealing classified information.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Lt. Col. Randal said.

  “The irony,” Rocky said, “is that information obtained from open source stories available to the public at the local library often results in high-grade intelligence. More reliable than human intelligence, even from the trustworthy agents who are not fabricating their reports from whole cloth.”

  Lt. Col. Randal said, “Really?”

  Lady Jane, who had been in MI-6 at the start of the war, having been sent to every school the SIS had in order to keep her occupied—there being no chance she would ever be used as an undercover operative due to being so well known—then transferred to SOE with Section D, where the exact same thing happened, was following every word of Rocky’s explanation.

  Lt. Mandy was too.

  King said, “Rocky’s right, Chief—that’s the way it works. Not unheard of for a foreign intelligence agent to create an entire fictional network of imaginary sub-agents under his notional control to impress his customer and convince them to buy more information. No way for the employing intelligence service to verify the network—the spy’s all alone operating in an enemy country.”

  “Since I’m not about to tell Desert Patrol’s tactics or practices to the other side,” Lt. Col. Randal said, “what we need to come up with for Mandy is a true story we can use as a basis to work from—make up the rest?”

  “Precisely,” Lady Jane said. “Send the Nazis on a fool’s errand. I want to play—fun.”

  “Come on, King,” Mandy said. “There are stacks of magazines downstairs for the troops to read. Let’s bring some up here . . . look through them for the right article.”

  “If I’m understanding this right,” Lt. Col. Randal said, “the British Secret Service would be better off hiring librarians than recruiting secret agents to penetrate the Third Reich?”

  “Exactly,” Lady Jane said. “At least that way MI-6 would know the true source of the intelligence—print media written by an accredited reporter. Not the product of some imposter’s imagination.”

  “Most human intelligence is worthless,” Rocky said. “Spies are scum.”

  “That’s too bad,” Lt. Col. Randal said. “I always liked spy stories.”

  Thirty minutes later, feeling fairly stupid, Lt. Col. Randal was flipping the pages of a year-old copy of Popular Science, looking for who knows what, when he froze. There it was—complete with a photograph: AUTO GYRO—THE THEORY AND HISTORY.

  “Here you go, Mandy,” Lt. Col. Randal said, handing her the magazine. “Tell the bad guys Desert Patrol is buzzing around the Great Sand Sea in a fleet of Auto Gyros under cover of darkness like a swarm of killer bumble bees.

  “That should give ’em something to think about.”

  “Great story, John!” Lt. Mandy said.

  “Agreed,” Lady Jane said, looking over her shoulder at the article. “Excellent.”

  “The Germans will believe you, Mandy,” Rocky said. “Nazis are obsessed with technology and ‘wonder weapons.’”

  “Maybe we should look
into testing one of these Auto Gyros,” King said, “You might be on to something, Chief—could work.”

  “I can’t believe,” Lt. Col. Randal said, “that spies do their best work at the public library.”

  • • •

  CAPTAIN THE LADY JANE SEABORN STEPPED OUT OF THE SHOWER AT HER POSH MENA

  House suite, six hundred yards from the Great Pyramid. Lieutenant Colonel John Randal could not help but notice how the white fluffy towel wrapped around her contrasted sharply with her golden tan. Lady Jane sat down in front of a massive, clam-shaped art deco mirror and began putting on her eyeliner.

  “Your mission,” she said, “is to have Brandy arrive at the Field Marshal’s residence at twenty-hundred hours sharp.”

  “I can do that,” Lt. Col. Randal said. He was polishing his Blood’s uniform dress boots. There was a two-year waiting period for a pair—provided you were on the client list. He had received his boots a few weeks after Lady Jane had ordered them. According to Major Sir Terry “Zorro” Stone, your father had to put you on the Blood’s list the day you were born—provided of course, he was on it.

  Maj. Stone claimed that Lt. Col. Randal must have replaced Lady Jane’s dead husband on the Blood’s list in order to get a pair of boots. Only her husband had turned out not to be dead. Now, he was marooned on a semi-arctic island commanding a Royal Navy support depot—under a cloud of suspicion for being the only survivor when the destroyer he commanded had been sunk off Norway.

  Lt. Col. Randal wondered what would happen if Commander Mallory Seaborn, RN, decided to order a new pair of boots someday.

  “I shall meet you there,” Lady Jane said, making eye contact with him in the mirror. “Do not forget that her award is to be a secret.”

  Brandy Seaborn was finally going to be decorated for captaining the family houseboat to Dunkirk during OPERATION DYNAMO—making five trips to rescue troops. She and Captain Penelope “Legs” Honeycutt-Parker, OBE, RM, were the only all-female crew in the flotilla of private watercraft. Capt. Honeycutt-Parker was to receive a medal too.

  Lieutenant Pamala Plum-Martin, Lieutenant Mandy Paige, her mother, Veronica, and Red, the Flying Clipper Girl, were all to be decorated for their actions during the siege of RAF Habbaniya. That was a secret too. The night was going to be full of surprises.