Benson The Hook and the Eye

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915797-60-5
Verlag: Ian Fleming Publications
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

FELIX LEITER - JAMES BOND'S TRUSTED FRIEND AND ALLY - TAKES CENTER STAGE IN A BRAND NEW ADVENTURE BY LEGENDARY BOND NOVELIST, RAYMOND BENSON. It is 1952. Felix has lost his job at the CIA and finds himself working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. What starts as a simple surveillance job turns into anything but when Felix stumbles upon a murder and a cabal of spies embedded in Manhattan. Hired to transport the impossibly beautiful and impossibly secretive Dora from New York to Texas, Felix is thrust into a non-stop adventure, where danger and deceit lie in wait around every bend in the road. The Hook and the Eye is a mystery, a romance, a spy story and a postcard to a lost Americana. It is also Raymond Benson at his very best.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Benson, Raymond

Leseproben

2

January 31–July 28, 1952

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

My thoughts go back a little over three months to the beginning of this strange adventure in my so-called illustrious career. A bit of reflection is warranted.

First, though, let me tell you about my fun-filled vacation in Florida!

I spent way too much time in a hospital in St. Petersburg, recuperating from The Mishap. That’s how I refer to it—The Mishap. Sounds like the title of one of those cheap Hollywood crime movies that feature cynical, hardboiled detectives, crooks, and seductive, but dangerous dames. I love those pictures. Anyway, The Mishap …

My job was supposed to be as an “observer” for the CIA on a case that involved a SMERSH operative based in Harlem. SMERSH is a Soviet outfit that runs counterintelligence agencies. One of the group’s tasks is to assassinate Russia’s enemies—spies, political figures, you name it. Sometimes they even kill off their own people if somebody screws up. Suffice it to say, they’re not very nice.

This Harlem gangster also had businesses in Florida and Jamaica. The British Secret Service was handling the bulk of the operation, and it turned out the agent they’d sent was a friend of mine. He was one of the best men on their team, a Double O, in fact. Those guys are the tops. I’d first met him in France while I was still working as part of the Joint Intelligence Staff of NATO in Paris. Several months after what I refer to as the Casino Job, I was transferred back to the States and put through the works in Washington in the fall of ’51. It all happened quickly before the New Year—the brass moved me to New York and I started working out of the tiny CIA branch there. A cozy one-bedroom garden-level apartment on Bank Street in Greenwich Village became my residence amongst the jazz clubs and all the up-and-coming Bohemian artists and weirdos—not that I minded that, I thought it was great. I settled in for an interesting stint in Manhattan. It beat D.C., that’s for sure.

The Harlem case was already on the CIA’s radar and by mid-January I was assigned to it. The FBI had jurisdiction; like I said, I was simply supposed to be an observer, but I never could sit on my hands. Once my limey pal got to New York, I made sure I shadowed him. We hit the bars and restaurants, drank as if the world would end tomorrow, and still managed to do the work. When my buddy, and a girl that was involved in the matter, arrived in St. Petersburg for the next phase of the mission, I met them there.

I admit I made a mistake. I went off alone during the night to sniff around the Harlem guy’s worm and bait warehouse in St. Pete. It was full of exotic sea creatures, some of them pretty dangerous. I should have waited for my British friend, but I didn’t. To make a long story short, the big man’s henchman caught me and fed me to a shark. The bastard fish took off my right arm and lower left leg. Moments of horror that lasted an eternity. The pain … well, yeah. I still have nightmares about it. I find Haig & Haig is good medicine for that, but it only goes so far.

I really don’t know why, but the man didn’t let the shark devour all of me. He got me out of the water—I don’t remember any of that part—and his buddies delivered my bloody body to my cabana at a Treasure Island beach resort with a note that read, . Ha ha. Very funny, fellas.

That was the end of the observing.

The Mishap occurred at the very end of January, so I spent the next few months in St. Pete “on leave.” First there was the hospital where doctors saved my life. My face got lacerated and other parts of my body were scarred up, too, so they had to do a lot of skin grafting. That was no fun at all. I do recall the moment when I learned that I no longer had an arm and foot. At first I was monumentally distressed, let me tell you. But then I thought about some of the crap I saw in the Pacific during the war. Hell, I was at the Battle of Iwo Jima in ’45. I saw men get blown to bits. Some of them lived to tell about it, and, believe me, you wouldn’t want to be in their shape and attempt to have a normal existence.

So, with all things relative, I guess I was lucky. I wasn’t completely eaten alive and the villains didn’t finish me off. I was allowed to continue my life and serve my country another day.

But I had a long, hard road ahead of me.

It took three months for my stumps to heal well enough to be fitted with prostheses. The Veterans Administration was in charge of that, and I have to say they took good care of me. My prosthetics doc, a guy named Karolewski, fixed me up with stuff from a company called Hanger. The “below knee leg,” or BK Leg, as I mentioned before, was made of wood and stretch leather. I had to don a thick wool sock over the stump, and I had to build up tolerance on the skin to be able to wear the thing and walk. I had to build up calluses. It was very uncomfortable in the beginning, but over time I got used to it.

On a day when I was in a good mood, I jokingly mentioned to Dr. Karolewski that I could use the BK Leg as a wooden club and beat a bad guy over the head with it. The doc looked at me and said with complete seriousness, “You actually could. Especially with the shoe on it.” By golly, he was right. I stored that information in the back of my mind, and then I thought of something else. “Can you fashion a little secret compartment where I can hide a knife?” I asked him. The man shrugged and nodded. So, ladies and gents, I do indeed carry a six-inch trench dagger that I’ve owned since I was a kid. My father had it during World War I and he gave it to me. It combines a simple knuckle-duster guard with a short, sharp blade. Very thin, lightweight, and potentially deadly. The compartment is on the lateral side of the leg so all I have to do is bend down, easily open it with my left hand, and pull the dagger out by a short string loop attached to the knuckle-duster hilt. I didn’t know if I’d ever have to use it, but it’s better to be safe than six feet under.

The Above Elbow Upper Extremity Prosthesis was more complicated and required a hell of a learning curve to operate. The figure eight harness took a while for me to master putting on by myself. That was a whole week of training. The VA arm is made of aluminum, stainless steel, leather, wood, and lamb’s wool for padding. It’s a dual control, cable-operated miracle of design that works with geometry and one’s own shoulder muscles. I had to intimately get to know the function of the two cables, the harness, the body control motions, and the sequence of operation like the back of my … well, you know.

The arm’s two-cable system works by shoulder flexion. Mind you, essential shoulder flexes have to be accomplished in concert to manipulate the cables and perform basic tasks. I can raise the forearm, but then I have to lock the elbow in position. Only then can I open and close the terminal device—that’s the hook, or pincer—again with a different shoulder flex. To lower the forearm, I first have to unlock the elbow. Then there’s the act of extending the full arm. All of these things take subtle contractions of both shoulder blades and flexing the shoulders.

The elbow can lock in eleven positions. I just have to remember the cycle—pull my shoulder and release it to lock the elbow, and then repeat the motions to unlock it. How high I lift my upper arm or my forearm is dependent on the amount of strength I use to flex. Normal tasks require only a pound or two of effort.

Man, it took some time getting used to. At first I had to take it one command at a time. It was a month of practice, therapy, and just plain to get to where I could use my prosthesis smoothly and do it without thinking. Now I can raise, lock, grasp, unlock, and lower in a second or two, as well as use the hook damn near like a hand. I found that one of the most difficult things was to tie a shoe! That required too much concentration. When I heard that many amputees would give up on that and wear loafers, I said, “Sign me up for a pair.”

Speaking of the terminal devices, there are a number of hooks I can use for different tasks. You just unscrew the one that’s currently on the forearm and replace it with another. For example, I’ve got the regular pincer-like hook. I also have one that’s just a ring and it can be used to pull and push the steering column shift on a car (learning to drive with a prosthesis was a different challenge). By the way, I a manual transmission over an automatic. I could make it easy on myself and simply drive an automatic, but my love of autos won’t let me. I’ve made it a point to master the column shift, goddamn it!

Then came the difficult exercises of learning to aim a pistol and shoot a target with my left hand. I’d lost my gun arm. Let me tell you, I was terrible at it. Still am. I started going to a range to practice every damn day as part of my physical therapy, and I never could hit the mark. I worked with a VA trainer, too, and the guy was very patient with me. I think I got more frustrated with my aim than with any other aspect of my rehabilitation.

Finally, it was time. The car I’d been driving in Florida before The Mishap was an old Cord that had been impounded by the...