FLEMING, IAN• 185Fleming’s move from the City to AdmiralJohn Godfrey’s staff as
personal assistant in theNaval Intelligence Division(NID) was
gradual at first, initially spending just three afternoons a week at the
Admiralty, which brought him into daily contact with SIS, where in
1941 he routinely metPhilip Johnsto exchange information. Ac-
cording to Merlin Mishall, an eccentric Naval Intelligence officer
who participated in theIron Gatessabotage fiasco in Romania and
later wroteGuilt Edged, Fleming played a part in that operation by
supervising the London end of the project that was to be such an
embarrassment toSection D. Later in the war Fleming accompanied
Admiral Godfrey to the United States, and for a time he was a fre-
quent visitor to the headquarters ofBritish Security Coordination
at Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue.
Fleming became one of the best-known journalists of his genera-
tion, mainly through his authorship of the Bond thrillers. After the
war, he was first foreign manager for theSunday Times, where he
was on the editorial board until 1959. For much of this period Flem-
ing was also working for SIS, as he himself acknowledged when, in
the summer of 1951, he finally gave up his commission in the Royal
Naval Reserve on the grounds that he was unable to spare the manda-
tory fortnight’s annual training. Fleming made an unsuccessful plea
for a special exemption from the irksome requirement, reminding
Vladimir Wolfson, the Russian-born NID officer who had been based
in Turkey during the war, that ‘‘as foreign manager of theSunday
Timesand Kemsley Newspapers, I am engaged throughout the year
in running a worldwide intelligence organization and there could be
no better training for the duties I would have to carry out for the DNI
[director of naval intelligence] in the event of war. I also carry out
a number of tasks on behalf of a department of the Foreign Office
and this department would, I believe, be happy to give details of these
activities to the DNI.’’
Certainly Fleming incorporated much of the wartime SIS into the
Bond series. InDr. Nohe referred to thepassport control officeras
the local SIS representative, a cover that had only recently been dis-
carded in favor of ‘‘visa officer,’’ and described the red light that
glowed outside the Chief’s office when he was not to be disturbed.
As for the name Bond, most likely it originated with the author of
the standard ornithological work on the birds of Jamaica. As an avid