The James Bond Anthology

Major Smythe got briskly to his feet, went to the loaded sideboard and poured himself out another brandy and ginger ale, almost fifty-fifty. He might as well live it up while there was still time! The future wouldn’t hold many more of these for him. He went back to his chair and lit his twentieth cigarette of the day. He looked at his watch. It said eleven thirty. If he could be rid of the chap in an hour, he’d have plenty of time with his ‘people’. He sat and drank and marshalled his thoughts. He could make the story long or short, put in the weather and the way the flowers and pines had smelled on the mountain, or he could cut it short. He would cut it short.

Up in that big double bedroom in the Tiefenbrunner, with the wads of buff and grey paper spread out on the spare bed, he hadn’t been looking for anything special, just taking samples here and there and concentrating on the ones marked in red KOMMANDOSACHE, HOECHST VERTRAULICH. There weren’t many of these, and they were mostly confidential reports on German top brass, intercepts of broken Allied cyphers and the whereabouts of secret dumps. Since these were the main targets of ‘A’ Force, Major Smythe had scanned them with particular excitement – food, explosives, guns, espionage records, files of Gestapo personnel – a tremendous haul! And then, at the bottom of the packet, there had been the single envelope sealed with red wax and the notation ONLY TO BE OPENED IN FINAL EMERGENCY. The envelope contained one single sheet of paper. It was unsigned and the few words were written in red ink. The heading said VALUTA, and beneath was written WILDE KAISER. FRANZISKANER HALT. 100M. OESTLICH STEINHÜGEL. WAFFENKISTE. ZWEI BAR 24 KT and then a list of measurements in centimetres. Major Smythe held his hands apart as if telling a story about a fish he had caught. Each bar would be nearly as big as a couple of bricks. And one single English sovereign of only eighteen-carat was selling nowadays for two to three pounds! This was a bloody fortune! Forty, fifty thousand pounds’ worth! Maybe even a hundred! He had no idea, but, quite coolly and speedily, in case anyone should come in, he put a match to the paper and the envelope, ground the ashes to powder and swilled them down the lavatory. Then he took out his large-scale Austrian Ordnance map of the area and in a moment had his finger on the Franziskaner Halt. It was marked as an uninhabited mountaineers’ refuge on a saddle just below the highest of the easterly peaks of the Kaiser mountains, that awe-inspiring range of giant stone teeth that give Kitzbühel its threatening northern horizon. And the cairn of stones would be about there, his fingernail pointed, and the whole bloody lot was only ten miles and perhaps a five hours’ climb away!

The beginning had been as this fellow Bond had described. He had gone to Oberhauser’s chalet at four in the morning, had arrested him and had told his weeping, protesting family that he, Smythe, was taking him to an interrogation camp in Munich. If the guide’s record was clean, he would be back home within a week. If the family kicked up a fuss it would only make trouble for Oberhauser. Smythe had refused to give his name and had had the forethought to shroud the numbers on his jeep. In twenty-four hours, ‘A’ Force would be on its way and, by the time military government got to Kitzbühel, the incident would already be buried under the morass of the occupation tangle.

Oberhauser had been a nice enough chap once he had recovered from his fright, and when Smythe talked knowingly about skiing and climbing, both of which he had done before the war, the pair, as Smythe intended, became quite pally. Their route lay along the bottom of the Kaiser range to Kufstein, and Smythe drove slowly, making admiring comments on the peaks that were now flushed with the pink of dawn. Finally, below the Peak of Gold, as he called it to himself, he slowed to a halt and pulled off the road into a grassy glade. He turned in his seat and said candidly, ‘Oberhauser, you are a man after my own heart. We share many interests together and from your talk and from the man I think you to be, I am sure you did not co-operate with the Nazis. Now I will tell you what I will do. We will spend the day climbing on the Kaiser and I will then drive you back to Kitzbühel and report to my commanding officer that you have been cleared at Munich.’ He grinned cheerfully. ‘Now. How about that?’

The man had been near to tears of gratitude. But could he have some kind of paper to show that he was a good citizen? Certainly. Major Smythe’s signature would be quite enough. The pact was made, the jeep was driven up a track and well hidden from the road and they were off at a steady pace, climbing up through the pine-scented foot-hills.