On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Part I It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end. The five-mile promenade of Royale les Eaux, backed by trim lawns emblazoned at intervals with tricolor beds of salvia, alyssum and lobelia, was bright with flags and, on the longest beach in the north of France, the gay bathing tents still marched prettily down to the tideline in big, moneymaking battalions. Music, one of those lilting accordion waltzes, blared from the loudspeakers around the Olympic-size piscine and, from time to time, echoing above the music, a man's voice announced over the public address system that Philippe Bertrand, aged seven, was looking for his mother, that Yolande Lefèvre was waiting for her friends below the clock at the entrance, or that a Madame Dufours was demanded on the telephone. From the beach, particularly from the neighborhood of the three playground enclosures -- "Joie de Vivre," "Hélio" and "Azur" -- came a twitter of children's cries that waxed and waned with the thrill of their games and, farther out, on the firm sand left by the now distant sea, the shrill whistle of the physical-fitness instructor marshaled his teenagers through the last course of the day.

It was one of those beautiful, naive seaside panoramas for which the Brittany and Picardy beaches have provided the setting -- and inspired their recorders, Boudin, Tissot, Monet -- ever since the birth of plages and bains de mer more than a hundred years ago.

To James Bond, sitting in one of the concrete shelters with his face to the setting sun, there was something poignant, ephemeral about it all. It reminded him almost too vividly of childhood -- of the velvet feel of the hot powder sand, and the painful grit of wet sand between young toes when the time came for him to put his shoes and socks on, of the precious little pile of sea shells and interesting wrack on the sill of his bedroom window ("No, we'll have to leave that behind, darling. It'll dirty up your trunk!"), of the small crabs scuttling away from the nervous fingers groping beneath the seaweed in the rock pools, of the swimming and swimming and swimming through the dancing waves -- always in those days, it seemed, lit with sunshine -- and then the infuriating, inevitable "time to come out." It was all there, his own childhood, spread out before him to have another look at. What a long time ago they were, those spade-and-bucket days! How far he had come since the freckles and the Cadbury milk-chocolate Flakes and the fizzy lemonade! Impatiently Bond lit a cigarette, pulled his shoulders out of their slouch and slammed the mawkish memories back into their long-closed file. Today he was a grownup, a man with years of dirty, dangerous memories -- a spy. He was not sitting in this concrete hide-out to sentimentalize about a pack of scrubby, smelly children on a beach scattered with bottle tops and lolly sticks and fringed by a sea thick with sun oil and putrid with the main drains of Royale. He was here, he had chosen to be here, to spy. To spy on a woman.

The sun was getting lower. Already one could smell the September chill that all day had lain hidden beneath the heat. The cohorts of bathers were in quick retreat, striking their little camps and filtering up the steps and across the promenade into the shelter of the town where the lights were going up in the cafés. The announcer at the swimming pool harried his customers: "Allo! Allo! Fermeture dans dix minutes! A dix-huit heures, fermeture de la piscine!" Silhouetted in the path of the setting sun, the two Bombard rescue boats with flags bearing a blue cross on a yellow background were speeding northward for their distant shelter upriver in the Vieux Port. The last of the gay, giraffelike sand yachts fled down the distant waterline toward its corral among the sand dunes, and the three agents cyclistes in charge of the car parks pedaled away through the melting ranks of cars toward the police station in the center of the town. In a matter of minutes the vast expanse of sand -- the tide, still receding, was already a mile out -- would be left to the seagulls that would soon be flocking in their hordes to forage for the scraps of food left by the picnickers. Then the orange ball of the sun would hiss down into the sea and the beach would, for a while, be entirely deserted, until, under cover of darkness, the prowling lovers would come to writhe briefly, grittily in the dark corners between the bathing huts and the sea wall.

On the beaten stretch of sand below where James Bond was sitting, two golden girls in exciting bikinis packed up the game of Jokari which they had been so provocatively playing, and raced each other up the steps toward Bond's shelter. They flaunted their bodies at him, paused and chattered to see if he would respond, and, when he didn't, linked arms and sauntered on toward the town, leaving Bond wondering why it was that French girls had more prominent navels than any others. Was it that French surgeons sought to add, even in this minute respect, to the future sex appeal of girl babies?

And now, up and down the beach, the lifeguards gave a final blast on their horns to announce that they were going off duty, the music from the piscine stopped in mid-tune and the great expanse of sand was suddenly deserted.

But not quite! A hundred yards out, lying face downwards on a black-and-white striped bathing wrap, on the private patch of firm sand where she had installed herself an hour before, the girl was still there, motionless, spread-eagled in direct line between James Bond and the setting sun that was now turning the left-behind pools and shallow rivulets into blood-red, meandering scrawls across the middle distance. Bond went on watching her -- now, in the silence and emptiness, with an ounce more tension. He was waiting for her to do something -- for something, he didn't know what, to happen. It would be more true to say that he was watching over her. He had an instinct that she was in some sort of danger. Or was it just that there was the smell of danger in the air? He didn't know. He only knew that he mustn't leave her alone, particularly now that everyone else had gone.

James Bond was mistaken. Not everyone else had gone. Behind him, at the Café de la Plage on the other side of the promenade, two men in raincoats and dark caps sat at a secluded table bordering the sidewalk. They had half-empty cups of coffee in front of them and they didn't talk. They sat and watched the blur on the frosted-glass partition of the shelter that was James Bond's head and shoulders. They also watched, but less intently, the distant white blur on the sand that was the girl. Their stillness, and their unseasonable clothes, would have made a disquieting impression on anyone who, in his turn, might have been watching them. But there was no such person, except their waiter who had simply put them in the category of "bad news" and hoped they would soon be on their way.

When the lower rim of the orange sun touched the sea, it was almost as if a signal had sounded for the girl. She slowly got to her feet, ran both hands backward through her hair and began to walk evenly, purposefully toward the sun and the faraway froth of the waterline over a mile away. It would be violet dusk by the time she reached the sea and one might have guessed that this was probably the last day of her holiday, her last bathe.

James Bond thought otherwise. He left his shelter, ran down the steps to the sand and began walking out after her at a fast pace. Behind him, across the promenade, the two men in raincoats also seemed to think otherwise. One of them briskly threw down some coins and they both got up and, walking strictly in step, crossed the promenade to the sand and, with a kind of urgent military precision, marched rapidly side by side in Bond's tracks.

Now the strange pattern of figures on the vast expanse of empty, blood-streaked sand was eerily conspicuous. Yet it was surely not one to be interfered with! The pattern had a nasty, a secret smell. The white girl, the bareheaded young man, the two squat, marching pursuers -- it had something of a kind of deadly Grandmothers' Steps about it. In the café, the waiter collected the coins and looked after the distant figures, still out lined by the last quarter of the orange sun. It smelled like police business -- or the other thing. He would keep it to himself but remember it. He might get his name in the papers.

James Bond was rapidly catching up with the girl. Now he knew that he would get to her just as she reached the waterline: He began to wonder what he would say to her, how he would put it. He couldn't say, "I had a hunch you were going to commit suicide so I came after you to stop you." "I was going for a walk on the beach and I thought I recognized you. Will you have a drink after your swim?" would be childish. He finally decided to say, "Oh, Tracy!" and then, when she turned round, "I was worried about you." Which would at least be inoffensive and, for the matter of that, true.

The sea was now gunmetal below a primrose horizon. A small, westerly offshore breeze, drawing the hot land air out to sea, had risen and was piling up wavelets that scrolled in whitely as far as the eye could see. Flocks of herring gulls lazily rose and settled again at the girl's approach, and the air was full of their mewing and of the endless lap-lap of the small waves. The soft indigo dusk added a touch of melancholy to the empty solitude of sand and sea, now so far away from the comforting bright lights and holiday bustle of "La Reine de la Côte Opale," as Royale les Eaux had splendidly christened herself. Bond looked forward to getting the girl back to those bright lights. He watched the lithe golden figure in the white one-piece bathing suit and wondered how soon she would be able to hear his voice above the noise of the gulls and the sea. Her pace had slowed a fraction as she approached the waterline and her head, with its bell of heavy fair hair to the shoulders, was slightly bowed, in thought perhaps, or tiredness.

Bond quickened his step until he was only 10 paces behind her. "Hey! Tracy!"

The girl didn't start or turn quickly round. Her steps faltered and stopped, and then, as a small wave creamed in and died at her feet, she turned slowly and stood squarely facing him. Her eyes, puffed and wet with tears, looked past him. Then they met his. She said dully, "What is it? What What do you want?"

"I was worried about you. What are you doing out here? What's the matter?"

The girl looked past him again. Her clenched right hand went up to her mouth. She said something, something Bond couldn't understand, from behind it. Then a voice, from very close behind Bond, said softly, silkily, "Don't move or you get it back of the knee."

Bond swirled round into a crouch, his gun hand inside his coat. The steady silver eyes of the two automatics sneered at him.

Bond slowly straightened himself. He dropped his hand to his side and the held breath came out between his teeth in a quiet hiss. The two deadpan, professional faces told him even more than the two silver eyes of the guns. They held no tension, no excitement. The thin half-smiles were relaxed, contented. The eyes were not even wary. They were almost bored. Bond had looked into such faces many times before. This was routine. These men were killers -- pro killers.

Bond had no idea who these men were, who they worked for, what this was all about. On the theory that worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due, he consciously relaxed his muscles and emptied his mind of questions. He stood and waited.

"Position your hands behind your neck." The silky, patient voice was from the south, from the Mediterranean. It fitted with the men's faces -- though-skinned, widely pored, yellow-brown. Marseillais perhaps, or Italian. The Mafia? The faces belonged to good secret police or tough crooks. Bond's mind ticked and whirred, selecting cards like an IBM machine. What enemies had he got in those areas? Might it be Blofeld? Had the hare turned upon the hound?

When the odds are hopeless, when all seems to be lost, then is the time to be calm, to make a show of authority -- at least of indifference. Bond smiled into the eyes of the man who had spoken. "I don't think your mother would like to know what you are doing this evening. You are a Catholic? So I will do as you ask." The man's eyes glittered. Touché! Bond clasped his hands behind his head.

The man stood aside so as to have a clear field of fire while his number two removed Bond's Walther PPK from the soft leather holster inside his trouser belt and ran expert hands down his sides, (continued on page 162) Her Majesty's Secret Service (continued from page 74) down his arms to the wrists and down the inside of his thighs. Then number two stood back, pocketed the Walther and again took out his own gun.

Bond glanced over his shoulder. The girl had said nothing, expressed neither surprise nor alarm. Now she was standing with her back to the group, looking out to sea, apparently relaxed, unconcerned. What in God's name was it all about? Had she been used as a bait? But for whom? And now what? Was he to be executed, his body left lying to be rolled back inshore by the tide? It seemed the only solution. If it was a question of some kind of a deal, the four of them could not just walk back across the mile of sand to the town and say polite goodbyes on the promenade steps. No. This was the terminal point. Or was it? From the north, through the deep indigo dusk, came the fast, rattling hum of an outboard and, as Bond watched, the cream of a thick bow wave showed and then the blunt outline of one of the Bombard rescue craft, the flat-bottomed inflatable rubber boats with a single Thompson engine in the flattened stern. So they had been spotted! By the coastguards perhaps? And here was rescue! By God, he'd roast these two thugs when they got to the harbor police at the Vieux Port! But what story would he tell about the girl?

Bond turned back to face the men. At once he knew the worst. They had rolled their trousers up to the knees and were waiting, composedly, their shoes in one hand and their guns in the other. This was no rescue. It was just part of the ride. Oh well! Paying no attention to the men, Bond bent down, rolled up his trousers as they had done and, in the process of fumbling with his socks and shoes, palmed one of his heel knives and, half turning toward the boat that had now grounded in the shallows, transferred it to his right-hand trouser pocket.

No words were exchanged. The girl climbed aboard first, then Bond, and lastly the two men who helped the reversing engine with a final shove on the stern. The boatman, who looked like any other French deep-sea fisherman, whirled the blunt nose of the Bombard round, changed gears to forward, and they were off northward through the buffeting waves while the golden hair of the girl streamed back and softly whipped James Bond's cheek.

"Tracy. You're going to catch cold. Here. Take my coat." Bond slipped his coat off. She held out a hand to help him put it on her. In the process her hand found his and pressed it. Now what the hell? Bond edged closer to her. He felt her body respond. Bond glanced at the two men. They sat hunched against the wind, their hands in their pockets, watchful, but somehow uninterested. Behind them the necklace of lights that was Royale receded swiftly until it was only a golden glow on the horizon. James Bond's right hand felt for the comforting knife in his pocket and ran his thumb across the razor-sharp blade.

While he wondered how and when he might have a chance to use it, the rest of his mind ran back over the previous 24 hours and panned them for the golddust of truth.

• • •

Almost exactly 24 hours before, James Bond had been nursing his car, the old Continental Bentley -- the "R" type chassis with the big 6 engine and a 13:40 back-axle ratio -- that he had now been driving for three years, along that fast but dull stretch of N.1 between Abbeville and Montreuil that takes the English tourist back to his country via Silver City Airways from Le Touquet or by ferry from Boulogne or Calais. He was hurrying safely, at between 80 and 90, driving by the automatic pilot that is built into all rally-class drivers, and his mind was totally occupied with drafting his letter of resignation from the Secret Service.

The letter, addressed "Personal for M," had got to the following stage:

Sir,

I have the honor to request that you will accept my resignation from the Service, effective forthwith.

My reasons for this submission, which I put forward with much regret, are the following:

(1) My duties in the Service, until some 12 months ago, have been connected with the Double-O Section and you, Sir, have been kind enough, from time to time, to express your satisfaction with my performance of those duties, which I, for my part, have enjoyed. To my chagrin [Bond had been pleased with this fine word], however, on the successful completion of Operation "Thunderball," I received personal instructions from you to concentrate all my efforts, without a terminal date [another felicitous phrase!], on the pursuit of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and on his apprehension, together with any members of spectre -- otherwise "The Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Revenge and Extortion" -- if that organization had been recreated since its destruction at the climax of Operation "Thunderball."

(2) I accepted the assignment with, if you will recall, reluctance. It seemed to me, and I so expressed myself at the time, that this was purely an investigatory matter which could well have been handled, using straightforward police methods, by other sections of the Service -- local Stations, allied foreign secret services and Interpol. My objections were overruled, and for close on 12 months I have been engaged all over the world in routine detective work which, in the case of every scrap of rumor, every lead, has proved abortive. I have found no trace of this man nor of a revived spectre, if such exists.

(3) My many appeals to be relieved of this wearisome and fruitless assignment, even when addressed to you personally, Sir, have been ignored or, on occasion, curtly dismissed, and my frequent animadversions [another good one!] to the effect that Blofeld is dead have been treated with a courtesy that I can only describe as scant. [Neat, that! Perhaps a bit too neat!]

(4) The above unhappy circumstances have recently achieved their climax in my undercover mission (Ref. Station R'S PX 437/007) to Palermo, in pursuit of a hare of quite outrageous falsity. This animal took the shape of one "Blauenfelder," a perfectly respectable German citizen engaged in viniculture -- specifically the grafting of Moselle grapes onto the Sicilian strains to enhance the sugar content of the latter which, for your passing information [Steady on, old chap! Better redraft all this!], are inclined to sourness. My investigations into this individual brought me to the attention of the Mafia and my departure from Sicily was, to say the least, ignominious.

(5) Having regard, Sir, to the above and, specifically, to the continued misuse of the qualities, modest though they may be, that have previously fitted me for the more arduous, and, to me, more rewarding, duties associated with the work of the Double-O Section, I beg leave to submit my resignation from the Service.

I am, Sir,Your Obedient Servant, 007

Of course, reflected Bond, as he nursed the long bonnet of his car through a built-up S-bend, he would have to rewrite a lot of it. Some of it was a bit pompous and there were one or two cracks that would have to be ironed out or toned down. But that was the gist of what he would dictate to his secretary when he got back to the office the day after tomorrow. And if she burst into tears, to hell with her!

He meant it. By God he did. He was fed to the teeth with chasing the ghost of Blofeld. And the same went for Spectre. The thing had been smashed. Even a man of Blofeld's genius, in the impossible event that he still existed, could never get a machine of that caliber running again.

It was then, on a 10-mile straight cut through a forest, that it happened. Triple wind horns screamed their banshee discord in his ear, and a low, white two-seater, a Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spyder with its hood down, tore past him, cut in cheekily across his bonnet and pulled away, the sexy boom of its twin exhausts echoing back from the border of trees. And it was a girl driving, a girl with a shocking-pink scarf tied around her hair, leaving a brief pink tail that the wind blew horizontally behind her.

If there was one thing that set James Bond really moving in life, with the exception of gunplay, it was being passed at high speed by a pretty girl; and it was his experience that girls who drove competitively like that were always pretty -- and exciting. The shock of the wind horn's scream had automatically cut out "George," emptied Bond's head of all other thought, and brought his car back under manual control. Now, with a tight-lipped smile, he stamped his foot to the floorboard, held the wheel firmly at a quarter to three, and went after her.

One-hundred, 110, 115, and he still wasn't gaining. Bond reached forward to the dashboard and flicked up a red switch. The thin high whine of machinery on the brink of torment tore at his eardrums and the Bentley gave an almost perceptible kick forward: 120, 125. He was definitely gaining: 50 yards, 40, 30! Now he could just see her eyes in her rearview mirror. But the good road was running out. One of those exclamation marks that the French use to denote danger flashed by on his right. And now, over a rise, there was a church spire, the clustered houses of a small village at the bottom of a steepish hill, the snake sign of another S-bend. Both cars slowed down -- 90, 80, 70. Bond watched her taillights briefly blaze, saw her right hand reach down to the floor stick, almost simultaneously with his own, and change down. Then they were in the S-bend, on pavé, and he had to brake as he enviously watched the way her de Dion axle married her rear wheels to the rough going, while his own live axle wrenched at his arms. And then it was the end of the village, and, with a brief wag of her tail as she came out of the S, she was off like a bat out of hell up the long straight rise and he had lost 50 yards.

And so the race went on, Bond gaining a little on the straights but losing it all to the famous Lancia roadholding through the villages -- and, he had to admit, to her wonderful, nerveless driving. And now a big Michelin sign said Montreuil 5, Royale Les Eaux 10, Le Touquet Paris Plage 15, and he wondered about her destination and debated with himself whether he shouldn't forget about Royale and the night he had promised himself at its famous casino and just follow where she went, wherever it was, and find out who this devil of a girl was.

The decision was taken out of his hands. Montreuil is a dangerous town with cobbled, twisting streets and much farm traffic. Bond was 50 yards behind her at the outskirts, but, with his big car, he couldn't follow her fast slalom through the hazards and, by the time he was out of the town and over the étaples-Paris level crossing, she had vanished. The left-hand turn for Royale came up. Was there a little dust hanging in the bend? Bond took the turn, somehow knowing that he was going to see her again.

He leaned forward and flicked down the red switch. The moan of the blower died away and there was silence in the car as he motored along, easing his tense muscles. He wondered if the supercharger had damaged the engine. Against the solemn warnings of Rolls-Royce, he had had fitted, by his pet expert at the Headquarters' motor pool, an Arnott supercharger controlled by a magnetic clutch. Rolls-Royce had said the crankshaft bearings wouldn't take the extra load and, when he confessed to them what he had done, they regretfully but firmly withdrew their guarantees and washed their hands of their bastardized child. This was the first time he had notched 125 and the rev. counter had hovered dangerously over the red line at 4500. But the temperature and oil were OK and there were no expensive noises. And, by God, it had been fun!

James Bond idled through the pretty approaches to Royale, through the young beeches and the heavy-scented pines, looking forward to the evening and remembering his other annual pilgrimages to this place and, particularly, the great battle across the baize he had had with Le Chiffre so many years ago. He had come a long way since then, dodged many bullets and much death and loved many girls, but there had been a drama and a poignancy about that particular adventure that every year drew him back to Royale and its casino and to the small granite cross in the little churchyard that simply said "Vesper Lynd. R.I.P."

And now what was the place holding for him on this beautiful September evening? A big win? A painful loss? A beautiful girl -- that beautiful girl?

To think first of the game. This was the weekend of the "clôture annuelle." Tonight, this very Saturday night, the Casino Royale was holding its last night of the season. It was always a big event and there would be pilgrims even from Belgium and Holland, as well as the rich regulars from Paris and Lille. In addition, the "Syndicat d'Initiative et des Bains de Mer de Royale" traditionally threw open its doors to all its local contractors and suppliers, and there was free champagne and a great groaning buffet to reward the town people for their work during the season. It was a tremendous carouse that rarely finished before breakfast time. The tables would be packed and there would be a very high game indeed.

Bond had one million francs of private capital -- Old Francs, of course -- about 800 pounds' worth. He always reckoned his private funds in Old Francs. It made him feel so rich. On the other hand, he made out his official expenses in New Francs because that made them look smaller -- but probably not to the Chief Accountant at Headquarters! One million francs! For that evening he was a millionaire! Might he so remain by tomorrow morning!

And now he was coming into the Promenade des Anglais and there was the bastard Empire frontage of the Hotel Splendide. And there, by God, on the gravel sweep alongside its steps, stood the little white Lancia and, at this moment, a bagagiste, in a striped waistcoat and green apron, was carrying two Vuitton suitcases up the steps to the entrance!

So!

James Bond slid his car into the million-pound line of cars in the car park, told the same bagagiste, who was now taking rich, small stuff out of the Lancia, to bring up his bags, and went in to the reception desk. The manager impressively took over from the clerk and greeted Bond with golden-toothed effusion, while making a mental note to earn a good mark with the Chef de Police by reporting Bond's arrival, so that the Chef could, in his turn, make a good mark with the Deuxième and the SDT by putting the news on the teleprinter to Paris.

Bond said, "By the way, Monsieur Maurice. Who is the lady who has just driven up in the white Lancia? She is staying here?"

"Yes, indeed, Mon Commandant." Bond received an extra two teeth in the enthusiastic smile. "The lady is a good friend of the house. The father is a very big industrial tycoon from the south. She is La Comtesse Teresa di Vicenzo. Monsieur must surely have read of her in the papers. Madame la Comtesse is a lady -- how shall I put it?" -- the smile became secret, between men -- "a lady, shall we say, who lives life to the full."

"Ah, yes. Thank you. And how has the season been?"

The small talk continued as the manager personally took Bond up in the lift and showed him into one of the handsome gray and white Directoire rooms with the deep rose coverlet on the bed that Bond remembered so well. Then, with a final exchange of courtesies, James Bond was alone.

Bond was faintly disappointed. She sounded a bit grand for him, and he didn't happen to like girls, film stars for instance, who were in any way public property. He liked private girls, girls he could discover himself and make his own. Perhaps, he admitted, there was inverted snobbery in this. Perhaps, even less worthily, it was that the famous ones were less easy to get.

His two battered suitcases came and he unpacked leisurely and then ordered from Room Service a bottle of the Taittinger Blanc de Blanc that he had made his traditional drink at Royale. When the bottle, in its frosted silver bucket, came, he drank a quarter of it rather fast and then went into the bathroom and had an ice-cold shower and washed his hair with Pinaud Elixir, that prince among shampoos, to get the dust of the roads out of it. Then he slipped on his dark-blue tropical worsted trousers, white sea-island cotton shirt, socks and black casual shoes (he abhorred shoelaces), and went and sat by the window and looked out across the promenade to the sea and wondered where he would have dinner and what he would choose to eat.

James Bond was not a gourmet. In England he lived on grilled soles, ceufs cacotte and cold roast beef with potato salad. But when traveling abroad, generally by himself, meals were a welcome break in the day, something to look forward to, something to break the tension of fast driving, with its risks taken or avoided, the narrow squeaks, the permanent background of concern for the fitness of his machine. In fact, at this moment, after covering the long stretch from the Italian frontier at Ventimiglia in a comfortable three days (God knew there was no reason to hurry back to Headquarters!), he was fed to the teeth with the sucker traps for gourmandising tourists. The "Hostelleries," the "Vieilles Auberges," the "Relais Fleuris" -- he had had the lot. He had had their "Bonnes Tables" and their "Fines Bouteilles." He had had their "Spécialités du Chef" -- generally a rich sauce of cream and wine and a few button mushrooms concealing poor quality meat or fish. He had had the whole lip-smacking ritual of winemanship and foodmanship and, incidentally, he had had quite enough of the Bisodol that went with it!

It was to efface all these dyspeptic memories that Bond now sat at his window, sipped his Taittinger and weighed up the pros and cons of the local eating places and wondered what dishes it would be best to gamble on. He finally chose one of his favorite restaurants in France, a modest establishment, unpromisingly placed exactly opposite the railway station of étaples, rang up his old friend Monsieur Bécaud for a table and, two hours later, was motoring back to the Casino with Turbot poché, sauce mousseline, and the best half roast partridge he had eaten in his life, under his belt.

Greatly encouraged, and further stimulated by half a bottle of Mouton Rothschild '53 and a glass of 10-year-old calvados with his three cups of coffee, he went cheerfully up the thronged steps of the Casino with the absolute certitude that this was going to be a night to remember.

(The Bombard had now beaten round the dolefully clanging bell buoy and was hammering slowly up the River Royale against the current. The gay lights of the little marina, haven of cross-channel yachtsmen, showed way up on the right bank, and it crossed Bond's mind to wait until they were slightly above it and then plunge his knife into the side and bottom of the rubber Bombard and swim for it. But he already heard in his mind the boom of the guns and heard the zwip and splash of the bullets round his head until, probably, there came the bright burst of light and the final flash of knowledge that he had at last had it. And anyway, how well could the girl swim, and in this current? Bond was now very cold. He leaned closer against her and went back to remembering the night before and combing his memories for clues.)

He paused for a moment by the caisse, his nostrils flaring at the smell of the crowded, electric, elegant scene, then he walked slowly across to the top chemin de fer table beside the entrance to the luxuriously appointed bar, and caught the eye of Monsieur Pol, the Chef de Jeu of the high game. Monsieur Pol spoke to a huissier and Bond was shown to number seven, reserved by a counter from the huissier's pocket. The huissier gave a quick brush to the baize inside the line -- that famous line that had been the bone of contention in the Tranby Croft case involving King Edward VII -- polished an ashtray and pulled out the chair for Bond. Bond sat down. The shoe was at the other end of the table, at number three. Cheerful and relaxed, Bond examined the faces of the other players while the Changeur changed his notes for a hundred thousand into 10 bloodred counters of ten thousand each. Bond stacked them in a neat pile in front of him and watched the play which, he saw from the notice hanging between the green-shaded lights over the table, was for a minimum of one hundred New Francs, or ten thousand of the old. But he noted that the game was being opened by each banker for up to five hundred New Francs -- serious money -- say forty pounds as a starter.

The players were the usual international mixture -- three Lille textile tycoons in overpadded dinner jackets, a couple of heavy women in diamonds who might be Belgian, a rather Agatha Christie-style little Englishwoman who played quietly and successfully and might be a villa owner, two middle-aged Americans in dark suits who appeared cheerful and slightly drunk, probably down from Paris, and Bond. Watchers and casual punters were two deep round the table. No girl!

The game was cold. The shoe went slowly round the table, each banker in turn going down on that dread third coup which, for some reason, is the sound barrier at chemin de fer which must be broken if you are to have a run. Each time, when it came to Bond's turn, he debated whether to bow to the pattern and pass his bank after the second coup. Each time, for nearly an hour of play, he obstinately told himself that the pattern would break, and why not with him? That the cards have no memory and that it was time for them to run. And each time, as did the other players, he went down on the third coup. The shoe came to an end. Bond left his money on the table and wandered off among the other tables, visiting the roulette, the trente et quarante and the baccarat table, to see if he could find the girl. When she had passed him that evening in the Lancia, he had only caught a glimpse of fair hair and of a pure, rather authoritative profile. But he knew that he would recognize her at once, if only by the cord of animal magnetism that had bound them together during the race. But there was no sign of her.

Bond went back to the table. The croupier was marshaling the eight packs into the oblong block that would soon be slipped into the waiting shoe. Since Bond was beside him, the croupier offered him the neutral, plain red card to cut the pack with. Bond rubbed the card between his fingers and, with amused deliberation, slipped it as nearly halfway down the block of cards as he could estimate. The croupier smiled at him and at his deliberation, went through the legerdemain that would in due course bring the red stop card into the tongue of the shoe and stop the game just six cards before the end of the shoe, packed the long block of cards into the shoe, slid in the metal tongue that held them prisoner and announced, loud and clear: "Messieurs [the "mesdames" are traditionally not mentioned; since Victorian days it has been assumed that ladies do not gamble], les jeux sont faits. Numéro six à la main." The Chef de Jeu, on his throne behind the croupier, took up the cry, the huissiers shepherded distant stragglers back to their places, and the game began again.

James Bond confidently bancoed the Lille tycoon on his left, won, made up the cagnotte with a few small counters, and doubled the stake to two thousand New Francs -- two hundred thousand of the old.

He won that, and the next. Now for the hurdle of the third coup and he was off to the races! He won it with a natural nine! Eight hundred thousand in the bank (as Bond reckoned it)! Again he won, with difficulty this time -- his six against a five. Then he decided to play it safe and pile up some capital. Of the one million, six, he asked for the six hundred to be put "en garage," removed from the stake, leaving a bank of one million. Again he won. Now he put a million "en garage." Once more a bank of a million, and now he would have a fat cushion of one million, six coming to him anyway! But it was getting difficult to make up his stake. The table was becoming wary of this dark Englishman who played so quietly, wary of the half-smile of certitude on his rather cruel mouth. Who was he? Where did he come from? What did he do? There was a murmur of excited speculation round the table. So far a run of six. Would the Englishman pocket his small fortune and pass the bank? Or would he continue to run it? Surely the cards must change! But James Bond's mind was made up. The cards have no memory in defeat. They also have no memory in victory. He ran the bank three more times, adding each time a million to his "garage," and then the little old English lady, who had so far left the running to the others, stepped in and bancoed him at the tenth turn, and Bond smiled across at her, knowing that she was going to win. And she did, ignominiously, with a one against Bond's "bûche" -- two kings, making zero.

There was a sigh of relief round the table. The spell had been broken! And a whisper of envy as the heavy, mother-of-pearl plaques piled nearly a foot high, four million, six hundred thousand francs' worth, well over three thousand pounds, were shunted across to Bond with the flat of the croupier's spatula. Bond tossed a plaque for a thousand New Francs to the croupier, received the traditional "Merci, monsieur! Pour le personnel!" and the game went on.

James Bond lit a cigarette and paid little attention as the shoe went shunting round the table away from him. He had made a packet, damnit! A bloody packet! Now he must be careful. Sit on it. But not too careful, not sit on all of it! This was a glorious evening. It was barely past midnight. He didn't want to go home yet. So be it! He would run his bank when it came to him, but do no bancoing of the others -- absolutely none. The cards had got hot. His run had shown that. There would be other runs now, and he could easily burn his fingers chasing them.

Bond was right. When the shoe got to number five, to one of the Lille tycoons two places to the left of Bond, an illmannered, loud-mouthed player who smoked a cigar out of an amber-and-gold holder and who tore at the cards with heavily manicured, spatulate fingers and slapped them down like a German tarot player, he quickly got through the third coup and was off. Bond, in accordance with his plan, left him severely alone and now, at the sixth coup, the bank stood at twenty thousand New Francs -- two million of the old, and the table had got wary again. Everyone was sitting on his money.

The croupier and the Chef de Jeu made their loud calls, "Un banco de deux cent mille! Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Il reste à compléter! Un banco de deux cent mille!"

And then there she was! She had come from nowhere and was standing beside the croupier, and Bond had no time to take in more than golden arms, a beautiful golden face with brilliant blue eyes and shocking-pink lips, some kind of a plain white dress, a bell of golden hair down to her shoulders, and then it came.

"Banco!"

Everyone looked at her and there was a moment's silence. And then "Le banco est fait" from the croupier, and the monster from Lille (as Bond now saw him) was tearing the cards out of the shoe, and hers were on their way over to her on the croupier's spatula.

She bent down and there was a moment of discreet cleavage in the white V of her neckline.

"Une carte."

Bond's heart sank. She certainly hadn't anything better than a five. The monster turned his up. Seven. And now he scrabbled out a card for her and flicked it contemptuously across. A simpering queen!

The croupier delicately faced her other two cards with the tip of his spatula. A four! She had lost!

Bond groaned inwardly and looked across to see how she had taken it.

What he saw was not reassuring. The girl was whispering urgently to the Chef de Jeu. He was shaking his head, sweat was beading on his cheeks. In the silence that had fallen round the table, the silence that licks its lips at the strong smell of scandal now electric in the air, Bond heard the Chef de Jeu say firmly, "Mais c'est impossible. Je regrette, madame. Il faut vous arranger à la caisse."

And now that most awful of all whispers in a casino was running among the watchers and the players like a slithering reptile: "Le coup du déshonneur! C'est le coup du déshonneur! Quelle honte! Quelle honte!"

Oh, my God! thought Bond. She's done it! She hasn't got the money! And for some reason she can't get any credit at the caisse!

The monster from Lille was making the most of the situation. He knew that the casino would pay in the case of a default. He sat back with lowered eyes, puffing at his cigar, the injured party.

But Bond knew of the stigma the girl would carry for the rest of her life. The casinos of France are a strong trade union. They have to be. Tomorrow the telegrams would go out: "Madame la Comtesse Teresa di Vicenzo, passport number X, is to be put on the black list." That would be the end of her casino life in France, in Italy, probably also in Germany, Egypt and, today, England. It was like being declared a bad risk at Lloyds' or with the City security firm of Dun and Bradstreet. In American gambling circles, she might even have been liquidated. In Europe, for her, the fate would be almost as severe. In the circles in which, presumably, she moved, she would be bad news, unclean. The "coup du déshonneur" simply wasn't done. It was social ostracism.

Not caring about the social ostracism, thinking only about the wonderful girl who had outdriven him, shown him her tail, between Abbeville and Montreuil, James Bond leaned slightly forward. He tossed two of the precious pearly plaques into the center of the table. He said, with a slightly bored, slightly puzzled intonation, "Forgive me. Madame has forgotten that we agreed to play in partnership this evening." And, not looking at the girl, but speaking with authority to the Chef de Jeu, "I beg your pardon. My mind was elsewhere. Let the game continue."

The tension round the table relaxed. Or rather it changed to another target, away from the girl. Was it true what this Englishman had said? But it must be! One does not play two million francs for a girl. But previously there had been no relationship between them -- so far as one could see. They had been at opposite sides of the table. No signs of complicity had been exchanged. And the girl? She had shown no emotion. She had looked at the man, once, with directness. Then she had quietly moved away from the table, toward the bar. There was certainly something odd here -- something one did not understand. But the game was proceeding. The Chef de Jeu had surreptitiously wiped a handkerchief across his face. The croupier had raised his head, which, previously, had seemed to be bowed under some kind of emotional guillotine. And now the old pattern had re-established itself. "La partie continue. Un banco de quatre cent mille!"

James Bond glanced down at the still formidable pile of counters between his curved, relaxed arms. It would be nice to get that two million francs back. It might be hours before a banco of equal size offered the chance. After all, he was playing with the casino's money! His profits represented "found" money and, if he lost, he could still go away with a small profit -- enough and to spare to pay for his night at Royale. And he had taken a dislike to the monster from Lille. It would be amusing to reverse the old fable -- first to rescue the girl, then to slay the monster. And it was time for the man's run of luck to end. After all, the cards have no memory!

James Bond had not enough funds to take the whole banco, only half of it, what is known as "avec la table," meaning that the other players could make up the remaining half if they wanted to. Bond, forgetting the conservation strategy he had sworn himself to only half an hour before, leaned slightly forward and said, "Avec la table," and pushed twenty thousand New Francs over the line.

Money followed his onto the table. Was this not the Englishman with the green fingers? And Bond was pleased to note that the little old Agatha Christie Englishwoman supported him with ten thousand. That was a good omen! He looked at the banker, the man from Lille. His cigar had gone out in its holder and his lips, where they gripped the holder, were white. He was sweating profusely. He was debating whether to pass the hand and take his fat profits or have one more go. The sharp, piglike eyes darted round the table, estimating if his four million was covered.

The croupier wanted to hurry the play. He said firmly, "C'est plus que fait, monsieur."

The man from Lille made up his mind. He gave the shoe a fat slap, wiped his hand on the baize and forced out a card. Then one for himself, another for Bond, the fourth for him. Bond did not reach across number six for the cards. He waited for them to be nudged toward him by the croupier. He raised them just off the table, slid them far enough apart between his hands to see the count, edged them together again and laid them softly face down again on the table. He had a five! That dubious jade on which one can either draw or not! The chances of improving your hand toward or away from a nine are equal. He said "Non," quietly, and looked across at the two anonymous pink backs of the cards in front of the banker. The man tore them up, disgustedly tossed them out onto the table. Two knaves. A "bûche"! Zero!

Now there were only four cards that could beat Bond and only one, the five, that could equal him. Bond's heart thumped. The man scrabbled at the shoe, snatched out the card, faced it. A nine, the nine of diamonds! The curse of Scotland! The best!

It was a mere formality to turn over and reveal Bond's miserable five. But there was a groan round the table. "Il fallait tirer," said someone. But if he had, Bond would have drawn the nine and disimproved down to a four. It all depended on what the next card, its pink tongue now hiding its secret in the mouth of the shoe, might have been. Bond didn't wait to see. He smiled a thin, rueful smile round the table to apologize to his fellow losers, shoveled the rest of his chips into his coat pocket, tipped the huissier who had been so busy emptying his ashtray over the hours of play, and slipped away from the table toward the bar, while the croupier triumphantly announced, "Un banco de huit cent mille francs! Faites vos jeux, messieurs! Un banco de huit cent mille Nouveaux Francs." To hell with it! thought Bond. Half an hour before he had had a small fortune in his pocket. Now, through a mixture of romantic quixotry and sheer folly he had lost it all. Well, he shrugged, he had asked for a night to remember. That was the first half of it. What would be the second?

The girl was sitting by herself, with half a bottle of Pol Roger in front of her, staring moodily at nothing. She barely looked up when Bond slipped into the chair next to hers and said, "Well, I'm afraid our syndicate lost again. I tried to get it back. I went 'avec'. I should have left that brute alone. I stood on a five and he had a 'bûche' and then drew a nine."

She said dully, "You should have drawn on the five. I always do." She reflected. "But then you would have had a four. What was the next card?"

"I didn't wait to see. I came to look for you."

She gave him a sideways, appraising glance. "Why did you rescue me when I made the 'coup du déshonneur'?"

Bond shrugged. "Beautiful girl in distress. Besides, we made friends between Abbeville and Montreuil this evening. You drive like an angel." He smiled. "But I don't think you'd have passed me if I'd been paying attention. I was doing about 90 and not bothering to keep an eye on the mirror. And I was thinking of other things."

The gambit succeeded. Vivacity came into her face and voice. "Oh, yes. I'd have beaten you anyway. I'd have passed you in the villages. Besides" -- there was an edge of bitterness in her voice -- "I would always be able to beat you. You want to stay alive."

Oh, Lord! thought Bond. One of those! A girl with a wing, perhaps two wings, down. He chose to let the remark lie. The half-bottle of Krug he had ordered came. After the huissier had half filled the glass, Bond topped it to the brim. He held it toward her without exaggeration. "My name is Bond, James Bond. Please stay alive, at any rate for tonight." He drank the glass down at one long gulp and filled it again.

She looked at him gravely, considering him. Then she also drank. She said, "My name is Tracy. That is short for all the names you were told at the reception in the hotel. Teresa was a saint. I am not a saint. The manager is perhaps a romantic. He told me of your inquiries. So shall we go now? I am not interested in conversation. And you have earned your reward."

She rose abruptly. So did Bond, confused. "No. I will go alone. You can come later. The number is 45. There, if you wish, you can make the most expensive piece of love of your life. It will have cost you four million francs. I hope it will be worth it."

She was waiting in the big double bed, a single sheet pulled up to her chin. The fair hair was spread out like golden wings under the single reading light that was the only light in the room, and the blue eyes blazed with a fervor that, in other girls, in other beds, James Bond would have interpreted. But this one was in the grip of stresses he could not even guess at. He locked the door behind him and came over and sat on the edge of her bed and put one hand firmly on the little hill that was her left breast. "Now listen, Tracy," he began, meaning to ask at least one or two questions, find out something about this wonderful girl who did hysterical things like gambling without the money to meet her debts, driving like a potential suicide, hinting that she had had enough of life.

But the girl reached up a swift hand that smelled of Guerlain's "Ode" and put it across his lips. "I said 'no conversation.' Take off those clothes. Make love to me. You are handsome and strong. I want to remember what it can be like. Do anything you like. And tell me what you like and what you would like from me. Be rough with me. Treat me like the lowest whore in creation. Forget everything else. No questions. Take me."

An hour later, James Bond slipped out of bed without waking her, dressed by the light of the promenade lights filtering between the curtains, and went back to his room.

He showered and got in between the cool, rough French sheets of his own bed and switched off his thinking about her. All he remembered, before sleep took him, was that she had said when it was all over, "That was heaven, James. Will you please come back when you wake up? I must have it once more." Then she had turned over on her side away from him and, without answering his last endearments, had gone to sleep -- but not before he had heard that she was crying.

At eight o'clock he woke her and it was the same glorious thing again. But this time he thought that she held him to her more tenderly, kissed him not only with passion but with affection. But, after, when they should have been making plans about the day, about where to have lunch, when to bathe, she was at first evasive and then, when he pressed her, childishly abusive.

"Get to hell away from me! Do you hear? You've had what you wanted. Now get out!"

"Wasn't it what you wanted too?"

"No. You're a lousy goddamn lover. Get out!"

Bond recognized the edge of hysteria, at least of desperation. He dressed slowly, waiting for the tears to come, for the sheet that now covered her totally to shake with sobs. But the tears didn't come. That was bad! In some way this girl had come to the end of her tether, of too many tethers. Bond felt a wave of affection for her, a sweeping urge to protect her, to solve her problems, make her happy. With his hand on the doorknob he said softly, "Tracy. Let me help you. You've got some troubles. That's not the end of the world. So have I. So has everyone else."

The dull clichés fell into the silent, sun-barred room, like clinkers in a grate.

"Go to hell!"

In the instant of opening and closing the door, Bond debated whether to bang it shut, to shake her out of her mood, or to close it softly. He closed it softly. Harshness would do no good with this girl. She had had it, somehow, somewhere -- too much of it. He went off down the corridor, feeling, for the first time in his life, totally inadequate.

• • •

(The Bombard thrashed on upriver. It had passed the marina and, with the narrowing banks, the current was stronger. The two thugs in the stern still kept their quiet eyes on Bond. In the bow, the girl still held her proud profile into the wind like the figurehead on a sailing ship. In Bond, the only warmth was in his contact with her back and his hand on the haft of his knife. Yet, in a curious way, he felt closer to her, far closer, than in the transports of the night before. Somehow he felt that she was as much a prisoner as he was. How? Why? Way ahead the lights of the Vieux Port, once close to the sea, but now left behind by some quirk of the Channel currents that had built up the approaches to the river, shone sparsely. Before many years they would go out and a new harbor, nearer the mouth of the river, would be built for the deep-sea trawlers that served Royale with their soles and lobsters and crabs and prawns. On this side of the lights were occasional gaunt jetties built out into the river by private yacht owners. Behind them were villas that would have names like "Rosalie," "Toil et Moi," "Nid Azur" and "Nouvelle Vague." James Bond nursed the knife and smelled the "Ode" that came to him above the stink of mud and seaweed from the river banks. His teeth had never chattered before. Now they Chattered. He stopped them and went back to his memories.)

Normally, breakfast was an important part of Bond's day, but today he had barely noticed what he was eating, hurried through the meal and sat gazing out of his window and across the promenade, chain-smoking and wondering about the girl. He knew nothing positive about her, not even her nationality. The Mediterranean was in her name, yet she was surely neither Italian nor Spanish. Her English was faultless and her clothes and the way she wore them were the products of expensive surroundings -- perhaps a Swiss finishing school. She didn't smoke, seemed to drink only sparingly, and there was no sign of drug taking. There had not even been sleeping pills beside the bed or in her bathroom. She could only be about 25, yet she made love with the fervor and expertness of a girl who, in the American phrase, had "gone the route." She hadn't laughed once, had hardly smiled. She seemed in the grip of some deep melancholy, some form of spiritual accidie that made life, on her own admission, no longer worth living. And yet there were none of those signs that one associates with the hysteria of female neurotics -- the unkempt hair and sloppy make-up, the atmosphere of disarray and chaos they create around them. On the contrary, she seemed to possess an ice-cold will, authority over herself and an exact idea of what she wanted and where she was going. And where was that? In Bond's book she had desperate intentions, most likely suicide, and last night had been the last fling.

He looked down at the little white car that was now not far from his in the parking lot. Somehow he must stick close to her, watch over her, at least until he was satisfied that his deadly conclusions were wrong. As a first step, he rang down to the concierge and ordered a drive-yourself Simca Aronde. Yes, it should be delivered at once and left in the parking lot. He would bring his international driving license and green insurance card down to the concierge who would kindly complete the formalities.

Bond shaved and dressed and took the papers down and returned to his room. He stayed there, watching the entrance and the little white car until 4:30 in the afternoon. Then, at last, she appeared, in the black-and-white striped bathing wrap, and Bond ran down the corridor to the lift. It was not difficult to follow her as she drove along the promenade and left her car in one of the parking lots, and it was also no problem for the little anonymous 2CV Citroën that followed Bond.

• • •

And then had been set up the train of the watchers and the watched which was now drawing to its mysterious climax as the little Bombard thrashed its way up the River Royale under the stars.

What to make of it all? Had she been a witting or unwitting bait? Was this a kidnaping? If so, of one or of both? Was it blackmail? The revenge of a husband or another lover? Or was it to be murder?

Bond was still raking his mind for clues when the helmsman turned the Bombard in a wide curve across the current toward a battered, skeletal jetty that projected from the muddy bank into the stream. He pulled up under its lee, a powerful flashlight shone down on them out of the darkness, a rope clattered down and the boat was hauled to the foot of muddy wooden steps. One of the thugs climbed out first, followed by the girl, the white bottom of her bathing dress lascivious below Bond's coat, then Bond, then the second thug. Then the Bombard backed quickly away and continued upriver, presumably, thought Bond, to its legitimate mooring in the Vieux Port.

There were two more men, of much the same build as the others, on the jetty. No words were spoken as, surrounded, the girl and Bond were escorted up the small dust road that led away from the jetty through the sand dunes. A hundred yards from the river, tucked away in a gully between tall dunes, there was a glimmer of light. When Bond got nearer he saw that it came from one of those giant corrugated aluminum transport trucks that, behind an articulated driver's cabin, roar down the arterial routes of France belching diesel smoke and hissing angrily with their hydraulic brakes as they snake through the towns and villages. This one was a glinting, polished affair. It looked new, but might be just well cared for. As they approached, the man with the flashlight gave some signal, and an oblong of yellow light promptly blazed as the caravanlike door in the rear was thrown open. Bond fingered his knife. Were the odds in any way within reason? They were not. Before he climbed up the steps into the interior, he glanced down at the number plate. The commercial license said, "Marseille-Rhône. M. Draco. Appareils électriques. 397694." So! One more riddle!

Inside it was, thank God, warm. A passageway led between stacked rows of cartons marked with the famous names of television manufacturers. Dummies? There were also folded chairs and the signs of a disturbed game of cards. This was presumably used as the guard room. Then, on both sides, the doors of cabins. Tracy was waiting at one of the doors. She held out his coat to him, said an expressionless "Thank you" and closed the door after Bond had caught a brief glimpse of a luxurious interior. Bond took his time putting on his coat. The single man with the gun who was following him said impatiently, "Allez!" Bond wondered whether to jump him. But, behind, the other three men stood watching. Bond contented himself with a mild "Merde à vous!" and went ahead to the aluminum door that presumably sealed off the third and forward compartment in this strange vehicle. Behind this door lay the answer. It was probably one man -- the leader. This might be the only chance. Bond's right hand was already grasping the hilt of his knife in his trouser pocket. Now he put out his left hand and, in one swirl of motion, leaped through, kicked the door shut behind him and crouched, the knife held for throwing.

Behind him he felt the guard throw himself at the door, but Bond had his back to it and it held. The man, 10 feet away behind the desk, within easy range for the knife, called out something, an order, a cheerful, gay order in some language Bond had never heard. The pressure on the door ceased. The man smiled a wide, a charming smile that cracked his creased walnut of a face in two. He got to his feet and slowly raised his hands. "I surrender. And I am now a much bigger target. But do not kill me, I beg of you. At least not until we have had a stiff whiskey and soda and a talk. Then I will give you the choice again. OK?"

Bond rose to his full height. He smiled back. He couldn't help it. The man had such a delightful face, so lit with humor and mischief and magnetism that, at least in the man's present role, Bond could no more have killed him than he could have killed, well, Tracy.

There was a calendar hanging on the wall beside the man. Bond wanted to let off steam against something, anything. He said, "September the 16th," and jerked his right hand forward in the underhand throw. The knife flashed across the room, missed the man by about a yard, and stuck, quivering, halfway down the page of the calendar.

The man turned and looked inquisitively at the calendar. He laughed out loud. "Actually the 15th. But quite respectable. I must set you against my men one of these days. And I might even bet on you. It would teach them a lesson."

He came out from behind his desk, a smallish, middle-aged man with a brown, crinkled face. He was dressed in the sort of comfortable dark-blue suit Bond himself wore. The chest and arms bulged with muscle. Bond noticed the fullness of the cut of the coat under the armpits. Built for guns? The man held out a hand. It was warm and firm and dry. "Marc-Ange Draco is my name. You have heard of it?"

"No."

"Aha! But I have heard of yours. It is Commander James Bond. You have a decoration called the C.M.G. You are a member, an important member, of Her Majesty's Secret Service. You have been taken off your usual duties and you are on temporary assignment abroad." The impish face creased with delight. "Yes?"

James Bond, to cover his confusion, walked across to the calendar, verified that he had in fact pierced the 15th, pulled out the knife and slipped it back in his trouser pocket. He turned and said, "What makes you think so?"

The man didn't answer. He said, "Come. Come and sit down. I have much to talk to you about. But first the whiskey and soda. Yes?" He indicated a comfortable armchair across the desk from his own, put in front of it a large silver box containing various kinds of cigarettes, and went to a metal filing cabinet against the wall and opened it. It contained no files. It was a complete and compact bar. With efficient, housekeeperly movements he took out a bottle of Pinchbottle Haig, another of I. W. Harper's bourbon, two pint glasses that looked like Waterford, a bucket of ice cubes, a siphon of soda and a flagon of iced water. One by one he placed these on the desk between his chair and Bond's. Then, while Bond poured himself a stiff bourbon and water with plenty of ice, he went and sat down across the desk from Bond, reached for the Haig and said, looking Bond very directly in the eye, "I learned who you are from a good friend in the Deuxième in Paris. He is paid to give me such information when I want it. I learned it very early this morning. I am in the opposite camp to yourself -- not directly opposite. Let us say at a tangent on the field." He paused. He lifted his glass. He said with much seriousness, "I am now going to establish confidence with you. By the only means. I am going once again to place my life in your hands."

He drank. So did Bond. In the filing cabinet, in its icebox, the hum of the generator broke in on what Bond suddenly knew was going to be an important moment of truth. He didn't know what the truth was going to be. He didn't think it was going to be bad. But he had an instinct that, somehow, perhaps because he had conceived respect and affection for this man, it was going to mean deep involvement for himself.

The generator stopped.

The eyes in the walnut face held his.

"I am the head of the Union Corse."

The Union Corse! Now at least some of the mystery was explained. Bond looked across the desk into the brown eyes that were now shrewdly watching his reactions while his mind flicked through the file that bore the innocent title, "The Union Corse," more deadly and perhaps even older than the Unione Siciliano, the Mafia. He knew that it controlled most organized crime throughout metropolitan France and her colonies -- protection rackets, smuggling, prostitution and the suppression of rival gangs. Only a few months ago a certain Rossi had been shot dead in a bar in Nice. A year before that, a Jean Giudicelli had been liquidated after several previous attempts had failed. Both these men had been known pretenders to the throne of Capu -- the ebullient, cheerful man who now sat so peacefully across the table from Bond. Then there was this mysterious business of Rommel's treasure, supposed to be hidden beneath the sea somewhere off Bastia. In 1948 a Czech diver called Fleigh, who had been in the Abwehr, and had got on the track of it, was warned off by the Union and then vanished off the face of the earth. Quite recently the body of a young French diver, André Mattei, was found riddled with bullets by the roadside near Bastia. He had foolishly boasted in the local bars that he knew the whereabouts of the treasure and had come to dive for it. Did Marc-Ange know the secret of this treasure? Had he been responsible for the killing of these two divers? The little village of Calenzana in the Balagne boasted of having produced more gangsters than any other village in Corsica and of being in consequence one of the most prosperous. The local mayor had held office for 56 years -- the longest reigning mayor in France. Marc-Ange would surely be a son of that little community, know the secrets of that famous mayor, know, for instance, of that big American gangster who had just returned to discreet retirement in the village after a highly profitable career in the States.

It would be fun to drop some of these names casually in this quiet little room -- fun to tell Marc-Ange that Bond knew of the old abandoned jetty called the Port of Crovani near the village of Galeria, and of the ancient silver mine called Argentella in the hills behind, whose maze of underground tunnels accommodates one of the great world junctions in the heroin traffic. Yes, it would be fun to frighten his captor in exchange for the fright he had given Bond. But better keep this ammunition in reserve until more had been revealed. For the time being it was interesting to note that this was Marc-Ange Draco's traveling headquarters. His contact in the Deuxième Bureau would be an essential tip-off man. Bond and the girl had been "sent for" for some purpose that was still to be announced. The "borrowing" of the Bombard rescue boat would have been a simple matter of finance in the right quarter, perhaps accompanied by a "pot de vin" for the coastguards to look the other way. The guards were Corsicans. On reflection, that was anyway what they looked like. The whole operation was simple for an organization as powerful as the Union -- as simple in France as it would have been for the Mafia in most of Italy. And now for more veils to be lifted! James Bond sipped his drink and watched the other man's face with respect. This was one of the great professionals of the world!

(How typical of Corsica, Bond thought, that their top bandit should bear the name of an angel! He remembered that two other famous Corsican gangsters had been called "Gracieux" and "Toussaint" -- "All-Saints.") Marc-Ange spoke. He spoke excellent but occasionally rather clumsy English, as if he had been well taught but had little occasion to use the language. He said, "My dear Commander, everything I am going to discuss with you will please remain behind your Herkos Odonton. You know the expression? No?" The wide smile lit up his face. "Then, if I may say so, your education was incomplete. It is from the classical Greek. It means literally 'the hedge of the teeth.' It was the Greek equivalent of your 'top secret.' Is that agreed?"

Bond shrugged. "If you tell me secrets that affect my profession, I'm afraid I shall have to pass them on."

"That I fully comprehend. What I wish to discuss is a personal matter. It concerns my daughter, Teresa."

Good God! The plot was indeed thickening! Bond concealed his surprise. He said, "Then I agree." He smiled. "'Herkos Odonton' it is."

"Thank you. You are a man to trust. You would have to be, in your profession, but I see it also in your face. Now then." He lit a Caporal and sat back in his chair. He gazed at a point on the aluminum wall above Bond's head, only occasionally looking into Bond's eyes when he wished to emphasize a point. "I was married once only, to an English girl, an English governess. She was a romantic. She had come to Corsica to look for bandits --" he smiled -- "rather like some English women adventure into the desert to look for sheiks. She explained to me later that she must have been possessed by a subconscious desire to be raped. Well --" this time he didn't smile -- "she found me in the mountains and she was raped -- by me. The police were after me at the time, they have been for most of my life, and the girl was a grave encumbrance. But for some reason she refused to leave me. There was a wildness in her, a love of the unconventional, and, for God knows what reason, she liked the months of being chased from cave to cave, of getting food by robbery at night. She even learned to skin and cook a mouflon, those are our mountain sheep, and even eat the animal, which is tough as shoe leather and about as palatable. And in those crazy months, I came to love this girl and I smuggled her away from the island to Marseilles and married her." He paused and looked at Bond. "The result, my dear Commander, was Teresa, my only child."

So, thought Bond. That explained the curious mixture the girl was -- the kind of wild "lady" that was so puzzling in her. What a complex of bloods and temperaments! Corsican English. No wonder he hadn't been able to define her nationality.

"My wife died 10 years ago --" Marc-Ange held up his hand, not wanting sympathy -- "and I had the girl's education finished in Switzerland. I was already rich and at that time I was elected Capu, that is chief, of the Union, and became infinitely richer -- by means, my dear Commander, which you can guess but need not inquire into. The girl was -- how do you say? -- that charming expression, 'the apple of my eye,' and I gave her all she wanted. But she was a wild one, a wild bird, without a proper home, or, since I was always on the move, without proper supervision. Through her school in Switzerland, she entered the fast international set that one reads of in the newspapers -- the South American millionaires, the Indian princelings, the Paris English and Americans, the playboys of Cannes and Gstaad. She was always getting in and out of scrapes and scandals, and when I remonstrated with her, cut off her allowance, she would commit some even grosser folly -- to spite me, I suppose." He paused and looked at Bond and now there was a terrible misery in the happy face. "And yet all the while, behind her bravado, the mother's side of her blood was making her hate herself, despise herself more and more, and as I now see it, the worm of self-destruction had somehow got a hold inside her and, behind the wild, playgirl facade, was eating away what I can only describe as her soul." He looked at Bond. "You know that this can happen, my friend -- to men and to women. They burn the heart out of themselves by living too greedily, and suddenly they examine their lives and see that they are worthless. They have had everything, eaten all the sweets of life at one great banquet, and there is nothing left. She made what I now see was a desperate attempt to get back on the rails, so to speak. She went off, without telling me, and married, perhaps with the idea of settling down. But the man, a worthless Italian called Vicenzo, Count Julio Vicenzo, took as much of her money as he could lay his hands on and deserted her, leaving her with a girl child. I purchased a divorce and bought a small château for my daughter in the Dordogne and installed her there, and for once, with the baby and a pretty garden to look after, she seemed almost at peace. And then, my friend, six months ago, the baby died -- died of that most terrible of all children's ailments, spinal meningitis."

There was silence in the little metal room. Bond thought of the girl a few yards away down the corridor. Yes. He had been near the truth. He had seen some of this tragic story in the calm desperation of the girl. She had indeed come to the end of the road.

Marc-Ange got slowly up from his chair and came round and poured out more whiskey for himself and for Bond. He said, "Forgive me. I am a poor host. But the telling of this story, which I have always kept locked up inside me, to another man, has been a great relief." He put a hand on Bond's shoulder. "You understand that?"

"Yes. I understand that. But she is a fine girl. She still has nearly all her life to live. Have you thought of psychoanalysis? Of her church? Is she a Catholic?"

"No. Her mother would not have it. She is Presbyterian. But wait while I finish the story." He went back to his chair and sat down heavily. "After the tragedy, she disappeared. She took her jewels and went off in that little car of hers, and I heard occasional news of her, selling the jewels and living furiously all over Europe, with her old set. Naturally I followed her, had her watched when I could, but she avoided all my attempts to meet her and talk to her. Then I heard from one of my agents that she had reserved a room here, at the Splendide, for last night, and I hurried down from Paris --" he waved a hand -- "in this, because I had a presentiment of tragedy. You see, this was where we had spent the summers in her childhood and she had always loved it. She is a wonderful swimmer and she was almost literally in love with the sea. And, when I got the news, I suddenly had a dreadful memory, the memory of a day when she had been naughty and had been locked in her room all afternoon instead of going bathing. That night she had said to her mother, quite calmly, 'You made me very unhappy keeping me away from the sea. One day, if I get really unhappy, I shall swim out into the sea, down the path of the moon or the sun, and go on swimming until I sink. So there!' Her mother told me the story and we laughed over it together, at the childish tantrum. But now I suddenly remembered again the occasion and it seemed to me that the childish fantasy might well have stayed with her, locked away deep down, and that now, wanting to put an end to herself, she had resurrected it and was going to act on it. And so, my dear friend, I had her closely watched from the moment she arrived. Your gentlemanly conduct in the casino, for which --" he looked across at Bond -- "I now deeply thank you, was reported to me, as of course were your later movements together." He held up his hand as Bond shifted with embarrassment. "There is nothing to be ashamed of, to apologize for, in what you did last night. A man is a man and, who knows -- but I shall come to that later. What you did, the way you behaved in general, may have been the beginning of some kind of therapy."

Bond remembered how, in the Bombard, she had yielded when he leaned against her. It had been a tiny reaction, but it had held more affection, more warmth, than all the physical ecstasies of the night. Now, suddenly he had an inkling of why he might be here, where the root of the mystery lay, and he gave an involuntary shudder, as if someone had walked over his grave.

Marc-Ange continued, "So I put in my inquiry to my friend from the Deuxième, at six o'clock this morning. At eight o'clock he went to his office and to the central files and by nine o'clock he had reported to me fully about you -- by radio. I have a high-powered station in this vehicle." He smiled. "And that is another of my secrets that I deliver into your hands. The report, if I may say so, was entirely to your credit, both as an officer in your Service, and, more important, as a man -- a man, that is, in the terms that I understand the word. So I reflected. I reflected all through this morning. And, in the end, I gave orders that you were both to be brought to me here." He made a throwaway gesture with his right hand. "I need not tell you the details of my instructions. You yourself saw them in operation. You have been inconvenienced. I apologize. You have perhaps thought yourself in danger. Forgive me. I only trust that my men behaved with correctness, with finesse."

Bond smiled. "I am very glad to have met you. If the introduction had to be effected at the point of two automatics, that will only make it all the more memorable. The whole affair was certainly executed with neatness and expedition."

Marc-Ange's expression was rueful "Now you are being sarcastic. But believe me, my friend, drastic measures were necessary. I knew they were." He reached to the top drawer of his desk, took out a sheet of writing paper and passed it over to Bond. "And now, if you read that, you will agree with me. That letter was handed in to the concierge of the Splendide at 4.30 this afternoon for posting to me in Marseilles, when Teresa went out and you followed her. You suspected something? You also feared for her? Read it, please."

Bond took the letter. He said, "Yes. I was worried about her. She is a girl worth worrying about." He held up the letter. It contained only a few words, written clearly, with decision.

Dear Papa,I am sorry, but I have had enough. It is only sad because tonight I met a man who might have changed my mind. He is an Englishman called James Bond. Please find him and pay him 20,000 New Francs which I owe him. And thank him from me.

This is nobody's fault but my own.

Goodbye and forgive me.

Tracy

Bond didn't look at the man who had received this letter. He slid it back to him across the desk. He took a deep drink of the whiskey and reached for the bottle. He said, "Yes, I see."

"She likes to call herself Tracy. She thinks Teresa sounds too grand."

"Yes."

"Commander Bond." There was now a terrible urgency in the man's voice -- urgency, authority and appeal. "My friend, you have heard the whole story and now you have seen the evidence. Will you help me? Will you help me save this girl? It is my only chance, that you will give her hope. That you will give her a reason to live. Will you?"

Bond kept his eyes on the desk in front of him. He dared not look up and see the expression on this man's face. So he had been right, right to fear that he was going to become involved in all this private trouble! He cursed under his breath. The idea appalled him. He was no Good Samaritan. He was no doctor for wounded birds. What she needed, he said fiercely to himself, was the psychiatrist's couch. All right, so she had taken a passing fancy to him and he to her. Now he was going to be asked, he knew it, to pick her up and carry her perhaps for the rest of his life, haunted by the knowledge, the unspoken blackmail, that, if he dropped her, it would almost certainly be to kill her. He said glumly, "I do not see that I can help. What is it you have in mind?" He picked up his glass and looked into it. He drank, to give him courage to look across the desk into Marc-Ange's face.

The man's soft brown eyes glittered with tension. The creased dark skin round the mouth had sunk into deeper folds. He said, holding Bond's eyes, "I wish you to pay court to my daughter and marry her. On the day of the marriage, I will give you a personal dowry of one million pounds in gold."

James Bond exploded angrily. "What you ask is utterly impossible. The girl is sick. What she needs is a psychiatrist. Not me. And I do not want to marry, not anyone. Nor do I want a million pounds. I have enough money for my needs. I have my profession." (Is that true? What about that letter of resignation? Bond voice.)

"You must understand all this." Suddenly he could not bear the hurt in the man's face. He said, softly, "She is a wonderful girl. I will do all I can for her. But only when she is well again. Then I would certainly like to see her again -- very much. But, if she thinks so well of me, if you do, then she must first get well of her own accord. That is the only way. Any doctor would tell you so. She must go to some clinic, the best there is, in Switzerland probably, and come to terms with her past. She must want to live again. Then, only then, would there be any point in our meeting again." He pleaded with Marc-Ange. "You do understand, don't you, Marc-Ange? I am a ruthless man. I admit it. And I have not got the patience to act as anyone's nurse, man or woman. Your idea of a cure might only drive her into deeper despair. You must see that I cannot take the responsibility, however much I am attracted by your daughter." Bond ended lamely, "Which I am."

The man said resignedly, "I understand you, my friend. And I will not importune you with further arguments. I will try and act in the way you suggest. But will you please do one further favor for me? It is now nine o'clock. Will you please take her out to dinner tonight? Talk to her as you please, but show her that she is wanted, that you have affection for her. Her car is here and her clothes. I have had them brought. If only you can persuade her that you would like to see her again, I think I may be able to do the rest. Will you do this for me?"

Bond thought, God, what an evening! But he smiled with all the warmth he could summon. "But of course. I would love to do that. But I am booked on the first morning flight from Le Touquet tomorrow morning. Will you be responsible for her from then?"

"Certainly, my friend. Of course I will do that." Marc-Ange brusquely wiped a hand across his eyes. "Forgive me. But you have given me hope at the end of a long night." He straightened his shoulders and suddenly leaned across the desk and put his hands decisively down. "I will not thank you. I cannot, but tell me, my dear friend, is there anything in this world that I can do for you, now at this moment? I have great resources, great knowledge, great power. They are all yours. Is there nothing I can do for you?"

Bond had a flash of inspiration. He smiled broadly. "There is a piece of information I want. There is a man called Blofeld, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. You will have heard of him. I wish to know if he is alive and where he is to be found."

Marc-Ange's face underwent a remarkable change. Now the bandit, cold, cruel, avenging, looked out through the eyes that had suddenly gone as hard as brown opals. "Aha!" he said thoughtfully. "The Blofeld. Yes, he is certainly alive. Only recently he suborned three of my men, bribed them away from the Union. He has done this to me before. Three of the members of the old Spectre were taken from the Union. Come, let us find out what we can."

There was a single black telephone on the desk. He picked up the receiver and at once Bond heard the soft crackle of the operator responding. "Dammi u commandu." Marc-Ange put the receiver back. "I have asked for my local headquarters in Ajaccio. We will have them in five minutes. But I must speak fast. The police may know my frequency, though I change it every week. But the Corsican dialect helps." The telephone burred. When Marc-Ange picked up the receiver, Bond could hear the zing and crackle he knew so well. Marc-Ange spoke, in a voice of rasping authority. "Ecco u Capu. Avette nuttizie di Blofeld, Ernst Stavro? Duve sta?" A voice crackled thinly. "Site sigura? Ma no ezzatu indirizzu?" More crackle. "Buon. Sara tutto."

Marc-Ange put back the receiver. He spread his hands apologetically. "All we know is that he is in Switzerland. We have no exact address for him. Will that help? Surely your men there can find him -- if the Swiss Sécurité will help. But they are difficult brutes when it comes to the privacy of a resident, particularly if he is rich."

Bond's pulse had quickened with triumph. Got you, you bastard! He said enthusiastically, "That's wonderful, Marc-Ange. The rest shouldn't be difficult. We have good friends in Switzerland."

Marc-Ange smiled happily at Bond's reaction. He said seriously, "But if things go wrong for you. on this case or in any other way, you will come at once to me. Yes?" He pulled open a drawer and handed a sheet of notepaper over to Bond. "This is my open address. Telephone or cable to me, but put your request or your news in terms that would be used in connection with electrical appliances. A consignment of radios is faulty. You will meet my representative at such and such a place, on such and such a date. Yes? You understand these tricks, and anyway --" he smiled slyly -- "I believe you are connected with an international export firm. 'Universal Export,' isn't it?"

Bond smiled. How did the old devil know these things? Should he warn Security? No. This man had become a friend. And anyway, all this was Herkos Odonton!

Marc-Ange said diffidently, "And now may I bring in Teresa? She does not know what we have been discussing. Let us say it is about one of the South of France jewel robberies. You represent the insurance company. I have been making a private deal with you. You can manage that? Good." He got up and came over to Bond and put his hand on Bond's shoulder. "And thank you. Thank you for everything." Then he went out of the door.

Oh my God! thought Bond. Now for my side of the bargain.

• • •

It was two months later, in London, and James Bond was driving lazily up from his Chelsea flat to his headquarters.

It was 9:30 in the morning of yet another beautiful day of this beautiful year, but, in Hyde Park, the fragrance of burning leaves meant that winter was only just round the corner. Bond had nothing on his mind except the frustration of waiting for Station Z somehow to penetrate the reserves of the Swiss Sécurité and come up with the exact address of Blofeld. But their "friends" in Zürich were continuing to prove obtuse, or, more probably, obstinate. There was no trace of any man, either tourist or resident, called Blofeld in the whole of Switzerland. Nor was there any evidence of the existence of a reborn Spectre on Swiss soil. Yes, they fully realized that Blofeld was still urgently "wanted" by the governments of the Nato alliance.

They had carefully filed all the circulars devoted to the apprehension of this man, and for the past year he had been constantly reconfirmed on their "watch" lists at all frontier posts. They were very sorry, but unless the SIS could come up with further information or evidence about this man, they must assume that the SIS was acting on mistaken evidence. Station Z had asked for an examination of the secret lists at the banks, a search through those anonymous "numbered" accounts which conceal the owners of most of the fugitive money in the world. This request had been peremptorily refused. Blofeld was certainly a very great criminal, but the Sécurité must point out that such information could only be legally obtained if the criminal in question was guilty of some crime committed on Federal soil and indictable under the Federal Code. It was true that this Blofeld had held up Britain and America to ransom by his illegal possession of atomic weapons. But this could not be considered a crime under the laws of Switzerland, and particularly not having regard to Article 47B of the banking laws. So that was that! The Holy Franc, and the funds which backed it, whereever they came from, must remain untouchable. Wir bitten höflichst um Entschuldigung!

Bond wondered if he should get in touch with Marc-Ange. So far, in his report, he had revealed only a lead into the Union Corse, which he gave, corporately, as the source of his information. But he shied away from this course of action, which would surely have, as one consequence, the reopening with Marc-Ange of the case of Tracy. And that corner of his life, of his heart, he wanted to leave undisturbed for the time being. Their last evening together had passed quietly, almost as if they had been old friends, old lovers. Bond had said that Universal Export was sending him abroad for some time, They would certainly meet when he returned to Europe. The girl had accepted this arrangement. She herself had decided to go away for a rest. She had been doing too much. She had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She would wait for him. Perhaps they could go skiing together around Christmastime? Bond had been enthusiastic. That night, after a wonderful dinner at Bond's little restaurant, they had made love, happily, and this time without desperation, without tears. Bond was satisfied that the cure had really begun. He felt deeply protective toward her. But he knew that their relationship, and her equanimity, rested on a knife-edge which must not be disturbed.

It was at this moment in his reflections that the Syncraphone in his trouser pocket began to bleep. Bond accelerated out of the park and drew up beside the public telephone booth at Marble Arch. The Syncraphone had recently been introduced and was carried by all officers attached to Headquarters. It was a light plastic radio receiver about the size of a pocket watch. When an officer was somewhere in London, within a range of 10 miles of Headquarters, he could be bleeped on the receiver. When this happened, it was his duty to go at once to the nearest telephone and contact his office. He was urgently needed.

Bond rang his exchange on the only outside number he was allowed to use, said "007 reporting," and was at once put through to his secretary. She was a new one. Loelia Ponsonby had at last left to marry a dull, but worthy and rich member of the Baltic Exchange, and confined her contacts with her old job to rather yearning Christmas and birthday cards to the members of the Double-O Section. But the new one, Mary Goodnight, an ex-Wren with blue-black hair, blue eyes and 37-22-35, was a honey and there was a private five-pound sweep in the Section as to who would get her first. Bond had been lying equal favorite with the ex-Royal Marine Commando who was 006 but, since Tracy, had dropped out of the field and now regarded himself as a rank outsider, though he still flirted with her. Now he said to her, "Good morning, Goodnight. What can I do for you? Is it war or peace?"

She giggled unprofessionally. "It sounds fairly peaceful, as peaceful as a hurry message from upstairs can be. You're to go at once to the College of Arms and ask for Sable Basilisk. He's one of the Heralds. Apparently they've got some kind of a line on 'Bedlam.'"

"Bedlam" was the code name for the pursuit of Blofeld. Bond said respectfully, "Have they indeed? Then I'd better get cracking. Goodbye, Goodnight." He heard her giggle before he put the receiver down.

Now what the hell? Bond got back into his car, that had mercifully not yet attracted the police or the traffic wardens, and motored fast across London. This was a queer one. How the hell did the College of Arms, of which he knew very little except that they hunted up people's family trees, allotted coats of arms, and organized various royal ceremonies, get into the act?

The College of Arms is in Queen Victoria Street on the fringe of the City. It is a pleasant little Queen Anne backwater in ancient red brick with white sashed windows and a convenient cobbled courtyard, where Bond parked his car. There are horseshoe-shaped stone stairs leading up to an impressive entrance. He went through the door into a large gloomy hall whose dark paneling was lined with the musty portraits of proud-looking gentleman in ruffs and lace, and from whose cornice hung the banners of the Commonwealth. The porter, a kindly, soft-spoken man in a cherry-colored uniform with brass buttons, asked Bond what he could do for him. Bond asked for Sable Basilisk and confirmed that he had an appointment.

Bond followed the porter along a passage hung with gleaming coats of arms in carved wood, up a dank, cobwebby staircase and round a corner to a heavy door with a nightmare black monster, with a vicious beak, above it. He was shown into a light, clean, pleasantly furnished room with attractive prints on the walls and meticulous order among its books. There was a faint smell of Turkish tobacco. A young man, a few years younger than Bond, got up and came across the room to meet him. He was rapier slim, with a fine, thin, studious face that was saved from seriousness by wry lines at the edges of the mouth and an ironical glint in the level eyes.

"Commander Bond?" The handshake was brief and firm. "I'd been expecting you."

He sat down behind his desk, pulled a file toward him, and gestured Bond to a chair beside him. "Well, then. Let's get down to business. First of all -- " he looked Bond very straight in the eye -- "I gather, I guess that is, that this is an Intelligence matter of some kind. I did my national service with Intelligence in the Army of the Rhine, so please don't worry about security. Secondly, we have in this building probably as many secrets as a government department -- and nastier ones at that. One of our jobs is to suggest titles to people who've been ennobled in the Honors Lists. Sometimes we're asked to establish ownership to a title that has become lost or defunct. Snobbery and vanity positively sprawl through our files. Before my time, a certain gentleman who had come up from nowhere, made millions in some light industry or another, and had been given a peerage 'for political and public services' -- i.e., charities and the party funds -- suggested that he should take the title of Lord Bentley Royal, after the village in Essex. We explained that the word Royal could not be used except by the reigning family, but, rather naughtily I fear, we said that 'Lord Bentley Common' was vacant." He smiled. "See what I mean? If that got about, this man would become the laughingstock of the country. Then sometimes we have to chase up lost fortunes. So-and-so thinks he's the rightful Duke of Blank and ought to have his money. His name happens to be Blank and his ancestors migrated to America or Australia or somewhere. So avarice and greed come to join snobbery and vanity in these rooms. Of course," he added, putting the record straight, "that's only the submerged tenth of our job. The rest is mostly official stuff for governments and embassies -- problems of precedence and protocol, the Garter ceremonies and others. We've been doing it for around 500 years so I suppose it's got its place in the scheme of things."

"Of course it has," said Bond staunchly. "And certainly, so far as security is concerned, I'm sure we can be open with each other. Now this man Blofeld. Truth of the matter is he's probably the biggest crook in the world. Remember that Thunderball affair about a year ago? Only some of it leaked into the papers, but I can tell you that this Blofeld was at the bottom of it all. Now, how did you come to hear of him? Every detail, please. Everything about him is important."

Sable Basilisk turned back to the first letter on the file. "Yes," he said thoughtfully, "I thought this might be the same chap when I got a lot of urgent calls from the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense yesterday. Hadn't occurred to me before, I'm afraid, that this is a case where our secrets have to come second or I'd have done something about it earlier. Now then, in June last, the 10th, we got this confidential letter from a firm of respectable Zurich solicitors, dated the day before. I'll read it out:

"Honored Sirs,

"We have a valued client by the name of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. This gentleman styles himself Monsieur le Comte Balthazar de Bleuville in the belief that he is the rightful heir to this title which we understand to be extinct. His belief is based on stories he heard from his parents in childhood to the effect that his family fled France at the time of the Revolution, settled in Germany under the adopted name of Blofeld, assumed in order to evade the Revolutionary authorities and safeguard their fortune which they had sequestered in Augsburg, and subsequently, in the 1850s, migrated to Poland.

"Our client is now anxious to have these facts established in order legally to obtain right to the de Bleuville title supported by an Acte de Notoriètè which would in due course receive the stamp of approval of the Ministère de la Justice in Paris.

"In the meantime, our client proposes to continue to adopt, albeit provisionally, the title of Comte de Bleuville together with the family arms which he informs us are 'Argent four fusils in fesse gules' and the de Bleuville motto which, in English, is 'For Hearth and Home.'"

"That's a good one!" interjected Bond. Sable Basilisk smiled and continued:

"We understand that you, honored Sirs, are the only body in the world capable of undertaking this research work and we have been instructed to get in touch with you under the strictest conditions of confidence, which, in view of the social aspects involved, we think we have the right to request.

"The financial standing of our client is impeccable and expense is no object in this matter. As a preliminary honorarium and upon acceptance of this commission, we propose a payment of one thousand pounds sterling to your account in such bank as you may designate.

"Awaiting the favor of an early reply, we remain, honored Sirs, etc., etc.,

Gebrüder Gumpold-Moosbrugger, Advokaten,16 bis, Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich."

Sable Basilisk looked up. James Bond's eyes were glittering with excitement. Sable Basilisk smiled. "We were even more interested than you seem to be. You see, to let you in on a secret, our salaries are extremely modest. So we all have private means which we supplement from fees received for special work like this. These fees rarely go above 50 guineas for a piece of pretty tough research and all the legwork at Somerset House and in parish records and graveyards that is usually involved in tracking a man's ancestry. So this looked like a real challenge for the College, and as I was 'in waiting' the day the letter came in, sort of 'officer of the watch,' the job fell into my lap."

Bond said urgently, "So what happened? Have you kept the contact?"

"Oh yes, but rather tenuously, I'm afraid. Of course I wrote at once accepting the commission and agreeing to the vow of secrecy which --" he smiled -- "you now force me to break presumably by invoking the Official Secrets Act. That is so, isn't it? I am acting under force majeure?"

"You are indeed," said Bond emphatically.

Sable Basilisk made a careful note on the top paper in the file and continued. "Of course the first thing I had to ask for was the man's birth certificate and, after a delay, I was told that it had been lost and that I was on no account to worry about it. The Count had in fact been born in Gdynia of a Polish father and a Greek mother -- I have the names here -- on May 28th, 1908. Could I not pursue my researches backward from the de Bleuvilles end? I replied temporizing, but by this time I had indeed established from our library that there had been a family of de Bleuvilles, at least as lately as the 17th Century, at a place called Blonville-sur-Mer, Calvados, and that their arms and motto were as claimed by Blofeld." Sable Basilisk paused. "This of course he must have known for himself. There would have been no purpose in inventing a family of de Bleuvilles and trying to stuff them down our throats. I told the lawyers of my discovery and, in my summer holidays -- the North of France is more or less my private heraldic beat, so to speak, and very rich it is too in connections with England -- I motored down there and sniffed around. But meanwhile I had, as a matter of routine, written to our Ambassador in Warsaw and asked him to contact our Consul in Gdynia and request him to employ a lawyer to make the simple researches with the Registrar and the various churches where Blofeld might have been baptized. The reply, early in September, was, but is no longer, surprising. The pages containing the record of Blofeld's birth had been neatly cut out. I kept this information to myself, that is to say I did not pass it on to the Swiss lawyers because I had been expressly instructed to make no inquiries in Poland. Meanwhile I had carried out similar inquiries through a lawyer in Augsburg. There, there was indeed a record of Blofelds, but of a profusion of them, for it is a fairly common German name, and in any case nothing to link any of them with the de Bleuvilles from Calvados. So I was stumped, but no more than I have been before, and I wrote a neutral report to the Swiss lawyers and said that I was continuing my researches. And there --" Sable Basilisk slapped the file shut --" until my telephone began ringing yesterday, presumably because someone in the Northern Department of the Foreign Office was checking the file copies from Warsaw and the name Blofeld rang a bell, the case rests."

Bond scratched his head thoughtfully. "But the ball's still in play?"

"Oh yes, definitely."

"Can you keep it in play? I take it you haven't got Blofeld's present address?" Sable Basilisk shook his head. "Then would there be any conceivable excuse for an envoy from you?" Bond smiled. "Me, for example, to be sent out from the College to have an interview with Blofeld -- some tricky point that cannot be cleared up by correspondence, something that needs a personal inquiry from Blofeld?"

"Well, yes, there is in a way." Sable Basilisk looked rather dubious. "You see, in some families there is a strong physical characteristic that goes on inevitably from generation to generation. The Hapsburg lip is a case in point. So is the tendency to hemophilia amongst descendents of the Bourbons. The hawk nose of the Medici is another. A certain royal family have minute, vestigial tails. The original maharajahs of My sore were born with six fingers on each hand. I could go on indefinitely, but those are the most famous cases. Now, when I was scratching around in the crypt of the chapel at Blonville, having a look at the old Bleuville tombs, my flashlight, moving over the stone faces, picked out a curious fact that I tucked away in my mind but that your question has brought to the surface. None of the de Bleuvilles, as far as I could tell, and certainly not through 150 years, had lobes to their ears."

"Ah," said Bond, running over in his mind the Identicast picture of Blofeld and the complete, printed physiognomy of the man in Records. "So he shouldn't by rights have lobes to his ears. Or at any rate it would be a strong piece of evidence for his case if he hadn't?"

"That's right."

"Well, he has got lobes," said Bond, annoyed. "Rather pronounced lobes as a matter of fact. Where does that get us?"

"To begin with, added to what I know anyway, that makes him probably not a de Bleuville. But after all --" Sable Basilisk looked sly -- "there's no reason why he should know what physical characteristic we're looking for in this interview."

"You think we could set one up?"

"Don't see why not. But --" Sable Basilisk was apologetic -- "would you mind if I got clearance from Garter King of Arms? He's my boss, so to speak, under the Duke of Norfolk that is, the Earl Marshal, and I can't remember that we've ever been mixed up in this sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff before. Actually --" Sable Basilisk waved a deprecating hand -- "we are, we have to be, damned meticulous. You do see that, don't you?"

"Naturally. And I'm sure there'd be no objection. But, even if Blofeld agreed to see me, how in hell could I play the part? This stuff is all double Dutch to me." He smiled. "I don't know the difference between a gule and a bezant and I've never been able to make out what a baronet is. What's my story to Blofeld? Who am I exactly?"

Sable Basilisk was getting enthusiastic. He said cheerfully, "Oh that'll be all right. I'll coach you in all the dope about the de Bleuvilles. You can easily mug up a few popular books on heraldry. It's not difficult to be impressive on the subject. Very few people know anything about it."

"Maybe. But this Blofeld is a pretty smart animal. He'll want the hell of a lot of credentials before he sees anyone but his lawyer and his banker. Who exactly am I?"

"You think Blofeld's smart because you've seen the smart side of him," said Sable Basilisk sapiently. "I've seen hundreds of smart people from the City, industry, politics -- famous people I've been quite frightened to meet when they walked into this room. But when it comes to snobbery, to buying respectability so to speak, whether it's the title they're going to choose or just a coat of arms to hang over their fireplaces in Surbiton, they dwindle and dwindle in front of you --" he made a downward motion over his desk with his hand -- "until they're no bigger than homunculi. And the women are even worse. The idea of suddenly becoming a 'lady' in their small community is so intoxicating that the way they bare their souls is positively obscene. It's as if --" Sable Basilisk furrowed his high, pale brow, seeking for a simile -- "these fundamentally good citizens, these Smiths and Browns and Joneses and --" he smiled across the desk -- "Bonds, regarded the process of ennoblement as a sort of laying on of hands, a way of ridding themselves of all the drabness of their lives, of all their, so to speak, essential meagermess, their basic inferiority. Don't worry about Blofeld. He has already swallowed the bait. He may be a tremendous gangster, and he must be from what I remember of the case. He may be tough and ruthless in his corner of human behavior. But if he is trying to prove that he is the Comfe de Bleuville, you can be sure of various things. He wants to change his name. That is obvious. He wants to become a new, a respectable personality. That is obvious too. But above all he wants to become a Count." Sable Basilisk brought his hand flat down on his desk for emphasis. "That, Mr. Bond, is tremendously significant. He is a rich and successful man in his line of business -- no matter what it is. He no longer admires the material things, riches and power. He is now 54, as I reckon it. He wants a new skin. I can assure you, Mr. Bond, that he will receive you, if we play our cards right that is, as if he were consulting his doctor about --" Sable Basilisk's aristocratic face took on an expression of distaste -- "as if he were consulting his doctor after contracting V.D." Sable Basilisk's eyes were now compelling. He sat back in his chair and lit his first cigarette. The smell of Turkish tobacco drifted across to Bond. "That's it," he said with certitude. "This man knows he is unclean, a social pariah. Which of course he is. Now he has thought up this way of buying himself a new identity. If you ask me, we must help the hair to grow and flourish on his heel of Achilles until it is so luxuriant that he trips on it."

• • •

"And who the hell are you supposed to be?"

M more or less repeated Bond's question when, that evening, he looked up from the last page of the report that Bond had spent the afternoon dictating to Mary Goodnight. M's face was just outside the pool of yellow light cast by the green-shaded reading lamp on his desk, but Bond knew that the lined, sailor's face was reflecting, in varying degrees, skepticism, irritation and impatience. The "hell" told him so. M rarely swore and when he did it was nearly always at stupidity. M obviously regarded Bond's plan as stupid, and now, away from the dedicated, minutely focused world of the Heralds, Bond wasn't sure that M wasn't right.

"I'm to be an emissary from the College of Arms, sir. This Basilisk chap recommended that I should have some kind of a title, the sort of rather high-falutin' one that would impress a man with this kind of bee in his bonnet. And Blofeld's obviously got this bee or he wouldn't have revealed his existence, even to such a presumably secure and -- er -- sort of remote corner of the world as the College of Arms. I've put down there the arguments of this chap and they make a lot of sense to me. Snobbery's a real Achilles heel with people. Blofeld's obviously got the bug badly. I think we can get to him through it."

"Well, I think it's all a pack of nonsense," said M testily. (Not many years before, M had been awarded the K.C.M.G. for his services, and Miss Moneypenny, his desirable secretary, had revealed in a moment of candor to Bond that M had not replied to a single one of the notes and letters of congratulation. After a while he had refused even to read them and had told Miss Moneypenny not to show him any more but to throw them in the wastepaper basket.) "All right then, what's this ridiculous title to be? And what happens next?"

If Bond had been able to blush, he would have blushed. He said, "Er -- well, sir, it seems there's a chap called Sir Hilary Bray. Friend of Sable Basilisk's. About my age and not unlike me to look at. His family came from some place in Normandy. Family tree as long as your arm. William the Conqueror and all that. And a coat of arms that looks like a mixture between a jigsaw puzzle and Piccadilly Circus at night. Well, Sable Basilisk says he can fix it with him. This man's got a good war record and sounds a reliable sort of chap. He lives in some remote glen in the Highlands, watching birds and climbing the hills with bare feet. Never sees a soul. No reason why anyone in Switzerland should have heard of him." Bond's voice became defensive, stubborn. "Well, sir, the idea is that I should be him. Rather fancy cover, but I think it makes sense."

"Sir Hilary Bray, eh?" M tried to conceal his scorn. "And then what do you do? Run around the Alps waving this famous banner of his?"

Bond said patiently, obstinately, refusing to be browbeaten, "First I'll get Passport Control to fix up a good passport. Then I mug up Bray's family tree until I'm word perfect on the thing. Then I swot away at the rudiments of this heraldry business. Then, if Blofeld takes the bait, I go out to Switzerland with all the right books and suggest that I work out his de Bleuville pedigree with him."

"Then what?"

"Then I try and winkle him out of Switzerland, get him over the frontier to somewhere where we can do a kidnap job on him, rather like the Israelis did with Eichmann. But I haven't worked out all the details yet, sir. Had to get your approval and then Sable Basilisk has got to make up a damned attractive fly and throw it over these Zürich solicitors."

"Why not try putting pressure on the Zürich solicitors and winkle Blofeld's address out of them? Then we might think of doing some kind of a commando job."

"You know the Swiss, sir. God knows what kind of a retainer these lawyers have from Blofeld. But it's bound to be millionaire size. We might eventually get the address, but they'd be bound to tip off Blofeld if only to lay their hands on their fees before he vamoosed. Money's the religion of Switzerland."

"I don't need a lecture on the qualities of the Swiss, thank you, 007. At least they keep their trains clean and cope with the beatnik problem [two very rampant bees in M's bonnet!], but I dare say there's some truth in what you say. Oh, well." M wearily pushed the file over to Bond. "Take it away. It's a messy-looking bird's-nest of a plan. But I suppose it had better go ahead." M shook his head skeptically. "Sir Hilary Bray! Oh, well, tell the Chief of Staff I approve. But reluctantly. Tell him you can have the facilities. Keep me informed." M reached for the Cabinet telephone. His voice was deeply disgruntled. "Suppose I'll have to tell the P.M. we've got a line on the chap. The kind of tangle it is, I'll keep to myself. That's all, 007."

"Thank you, sir. Goodnight." As Bond went across to the door he heard M say into the green receiver, "M speaking. I want the Prime Minister personally, please." He might have been asking for the mortuary. Bond went out and softly closed the door behind him.

• • •

So, as November blustered its way into December, James Bond went unwillingly back to school, swotting up heraldry at his desk instead of top-secret reports, picking up scraps of medieval French and English, steeping himself in fusty lore and myth, picking the brains of Sable Basilisk and occasionally learning interesting facts, such as that the founders of Gamages came from the de Gamaches in Normandy and that Walt Disney was remotely descended from the D'Isignys of the same part of France. But these were nuggets in a wasteland of archaisms, and when, one day, Mary Goodnight, in reply to some sally of his, addressed him as "Sir Hilary" he nearly bit her head off.

Meanwhile the highly delicate correspondence between Sable Basilisk and the Gebrüder Moosbrugger proceeded haltingly and at a snail's pace. They, or rather Blofeld behind them, asked countless irritating but, Sable Basilisk admitted, erudite queries, each one of which had to be countered with this or that degree of heraldic obfuscation. Then there were minute questions about this emissary, Sir Hilary Bray. Photographs were asked for, and, suitably doctored, were provided. His whole career since his school days had to be detailed and was sent down from Scotland with a highly amused covering note from the real man. To test the market, more funds were asked for by Sable Basilisk and, with encouraging promptitude, were forthcoming in the shape of a further thousand pounds. When the check arrived on December 15th Sable Basilisk telephoned Bond delightedly. "We've got him," he said. "He's hooked!" And, sure enough, the next day came a letter from Zürich to say that their client agreed to a meeting with Sir Hilary. Would Sir Hilary please arrive at Zürich Central Airport by Swiss-air flight Number 105, due at Zürich at 1300 hours on December 21st? On Bond's prompting, Sable Basilisk wrote back that the date was not convenient to Sir Hilary owing to a prior engagement with the Canadian High Commissioner regarding a detail in the Arms of the Hudson's Bay Company. Sir Hilary could, however, manage the 22nd. By return came a cable agreeing and, to Bond, confirming that the fish had not only swallowed the hook but the line and sinker as well.

The last few days were spent in a flurry of meetings, with the Chief of Staff presiding, at Headquarters. The main decisions were that Bond should go to the meeting with Blofeld absolutely "clean." He would carry no weapons, no secret gear of any kind, and he would not be watched or followed by the Service in any way. He would communicate only with Sable Basilisk, getting across such information as he could by using heraldic double talk (Sable Basilisk had been cleared by M.I.5 immediately after Bond's first meeting with him), and Sable Basilisk, who vaguely thought that Bond was employed by the Ministry of Defense, would be given a cut-out at the Ministry who would be his go-between with the Service. This was all assuming that Bond managed to stay close to Blofeld for at least a matter of days. And that was to be his basic stratagem. It was essential to find out as much as possible about Blofeld, his activities and his associates, in order to proceed with planning the next step, his abduction from Switzerland. Physical action might not be necessary. Bond might be able to trick the man into a visit to Germany, as a result of a report which Sable Basilisk had prepared of certain Blofeld family documents at the Augsburg Zentral Archiv, which would need Blofeld's personal identification. Security precautions would include keeping Station Z completely in the dark about Bond's mission to Switzerland and a closure of the "Bedlam" file at Headquarters which would be announced in the routine "Orders of the Day." Instead, a new code word for the operation, known only to an essential handful of senior officers, would be issued. It would be "CORONA."

Finally, the personal dangers to Bond himself were discussed. There was total respect for Blofeld at Headquarters. Nobody questioned his abilities or his ruthlessness. If Bond's true identity somehow became known to Blofeld, Bond would of course instantly be liquidated. A more dangerous and likely event would be that, once Blofeld had probed Bond's heraldic gen to its rather shallow bottom and it had been proved that he was or was not the Comte de Bleuville, Sir Hilary Bray, his usefulness expended, might "meet with an accident." Bond would just have to face up to these hazards and watch out particularly for the latter. He, and Sable Basilisk behind him, would have to keep some tricks up their sleeves, tricks that would somehow make Sir Hilary Bray's continued existence important to Blofeld. In conclusion, the Chief of Staff said he considered the whole operation "a lot of bezants" and that "Bezants" would have been a better code word than "Corona." However, he wished Bond the best of luck and said, coldheartedly, that he would instruct the Technical Section to proceed forthwith with the devising of a consignment of explosive snowballs for Bond's protection.

It was on this cheery note that Bond, on the evening of December 21st, returned to his office for a last run-through of his documentation with Mary Goodnight.

He sat sideways to his desk, looking out over the triste winter twilight of Regent's Park under snow, while she sat opposite him and ran through the items: "Burke's Extinct Baronetage, property of the College of Heralds. Stamped 'Not to be removed from the Library.' The printed Visitations in the College of Arms, stamped ditto. Genealogist's Guide, by G. W. Marshall, with Hatchard's receipted bill to Sable Basilisk inserted. Burke's General Armory, stamped 'Property of the London Library,' wrapped and franked December 10th. Passport in the name of Sir Hilary Bray, containing various recently dated frontier stamps in and out of France, Germany and the Low Countries, fairly well used and dogeared. One large file of correspondence with Augsburg and Zürich on College of Arms writing paper and the writing paper of the addressees. And that's the lot. You've fixed your laundry tags and so on?"

"Yes," said Bond dully. "I've fixed all that. And I've got two new suits with cuffs and double vents at the back and four buttons down the front. Also a gold watch and chain with the Bray seal. Quite the little baronet." Bond turned and looked across the desk at Mary Goodnight. "What do you think of this caper, Mary? Think it'll come off?"

"Well, it should do," she said staunchly. "With all the trouble that's been taken. But --" she hesitated -- "I don't like you taking this man on without a gun." She waved a hand at the pile on the floor. "And all these stupid books about heraldry! It's just not you. You will take care, won't you?"

"Oh, I'll do that all right," said Bond reassuringly. "Now, be a good girl and get a radio taxi to the Universal Export entrance. And put all that junk inside it, would you? I'll be down in a minute. I'll be at the flat all this evening --" he smiled sourly -- "packing my silk shirts with the crests on them." He got up. "So long, Mary. Or rather goodnight, Goodnight. And keep out of trouble till I get back."

She said, "You do that yourself." She bent and picked up the books and papers from the floor and, keeping her face hidden from Bond, went to the door and kicked it shut behind her with her heel. A moment or two later she opened the door again. Her eyes were bright. "I'm sorry, James. Good luck! And Happy Christmas!" She closed the door softly behind her.

Bond looked at the blank face of the Office of Works cream door. What a dear girl Mary was! But now there was Tracy. He would be near her in Switzerland. It was time to make contact again. He had been missing her, wondering about her. There had been three noncommittal but cheerful postcards from the Clinique de l'Aube at Davos. Bond had made inquiries and had ascertained that this was run by a Professor Auguste Kommer, President of the Société Psychiatrique et Psychologique Suisse. Over the telephone, Sir James Molony, the nerve specialist by appointment to the Service, had told Bond that Kommer was one of the top men in the world at his job. Bond had written affectionately and encouragingly to Tracy and had had the letters posted from America. He had said he would be home soon and would be in touch with her. Would he? And what would he do then? Bond had a luxurious moment feeling sorry for himself, for the miscellaneous burdens he was carrying alone. He then crushed out his cigarette and, banging doors behind him, got the hell out of his office and down in the lift to the discreet side entrance that said "Universal Export."

The taxi was waiting. It was seven o'clock. As the taxi got under way, Bond made his plan for the evening. He would first do an extremely careful packing job of his single suitcase, the one that had no tricks to it, have two double vodkas and tonics with a dash of Angostura, eat a large dish of May's speciality -- scrambled eggs fines herbes -- have two more vodkas and tonics, and then, slightly drunk, go to bed with half a grain of seconal.

Encouraged by the prospect of this cozy self-anesthesia, Bond brusquely kicked his problems under the carpet of his consciousness.

• • •

The next day, at London Airport, James Bond, bowler hat, rolled umbrella, neatly folded Times and all, felt faintly ridiculous. He felt totally so when he was treated with the deference due to his title and shown into the V.I.P. lounge before take-off. At the ticket desk, when he had been addressed as Sir Hilary, he had looked behind him to see who the girl was talking to. He really must pull himself together and damn well be Sir Hilary Bray!

Bond had a double brandy and ginger ale and stood aloof from the handful of other privileged passengers in the gracious lounge, trying to feel like a baronet. Then he remembered the real Sir Hilary Bray, perhaps now gralloching a stag with his bare hands somewhere up in the Glens. There was nothing of the baronet about him! He really must get rid of the inverted snobbery that, with its opposite, is ingrained in so many of the English! He must stop acting a part, being a stage nobleman! He would just be himself and, if he gave the appearance of being rather a rough-hewn baronet, the easy-going kind, well, that at least was like the real one up in Scotland. Bond threw down the Times that he had been carrying as an extra badge of Top Peopleship, picked up the Daily Express, and asked for another brandy and ginger ale.

Then, with its twin jets whispering far back of the first-class cabin, the Swissair Caravelle was airborne and Bond's mind was reaching forward to the rendezvous that had been so briefly detailed by the Zürich solicitors. Sir Hilary would be met at the airport by one of the Comte de Bleuville's secretaries. He would be seeing the Count that day or the next. Bond had a moment of panic. How should he address the man when he met him? Count? Monsieur le Comte? No, he would call him nothing -- perhaps an occasional patronizing "my dear sir" in context. What would Blofeld look like? Would he have changed his appearance much? Probably, or the fox wouldn't have kept ahead of the hounds so efficiently. Bond's excitement mounted as he consumed a delicious lunch served by a delicious stewardess, and the winter-brown checkerboard of France fled backward distantly below.

This is the first of three installments of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," a new novel by Ian Fleming. Part II will appear next month.