“About three pounds and some silver.”
“Thank you, Sir.” The blue chalk made a scribble on the three bags, and the porter picked up the suitcase and clubs and loaded them on a trolley. “Follow the yellow light to Immigration, Sir,” he said and wheeled the trolley off towards the loading bay.
The driver gave Bond an ironical salute. The smudge of two eyes met his for a moment through the dark glass of the goggles and the lips narrowed in a thin smile. “Good night, Sir. Pleasant trip.”
“Thank you, my man,” said Bond cheerfully, and had the satisfaction of seeing the smile vanish as the driver turned and walked quickly away.
Bond picked up his attaché case, showed his passport to a pleasant, fresh-faced young man who ticked his name off the passenger list, and walked through into the Departure Lounge. Just behind him, he heard Tiffany Case’s low voice say “Thank you” to the fresh-faced young man, and a moment later she also came into the lounge and chose a seat between him and the door. Bond smiled to himself. It was where he would have chosen to sit if he had been tailing someone who might have second thoughts.
Bond picked up his Evening Standard and casually examined the other passengers over the top of it.
The plane would be nearly full (Bond had been too late to get a sleeping berth) and he was relieved to see that among the forty people in the lounge there was not a face he recognized. Some miscellaneous English, two of the usual nuns who, Bond reflected, seemed always to be flying the Atlantic in the summer-Lourdes, perhaps-some nondescript Americans, mostly of the businessman type, two babies in arms .to keep the passengers from sleeping, and a handful of indeterminate Europeans. A typical load, decided Bond, while admitting that if two of their number, himself and Tiffany Case, had their secrets, there was no reason why many of these dull people should not also be bound on strange missions.
Bond felt that he was being watched, but it was only the blank gaze of two of the passengers he had put down as American businessmen. Their eyes shifted casually away, and one of them, a man with a young face but prematurely white hair, said something to the other and they both got up, picked up their Stetsons, which, although it was summer, were encased in waterproof covers, and walked over to the bar. Bond heard them order double brandies and water, and the second man, who was pale and fat, took a bottle of pills out of his pocket and swallowed one down with his brandy. Dramamine, guessed Bond. The man would be a bad traveller.
The BOAC flight dispatcher was close to Bond. She picked up the telephone-to Flight Control, Bond supposed-and said
“I have forty passengers in the Final Lounge”. She waited for the okay and then put the telephone back and picked up the microphone.
“Final Lounge?” Cheerful start to flying the Atlantic, reflected Bond, and then they were all walking across the tarmac and up into the big Boeing and, with a burst of oil and metanol smoke, the engines fired one by one. The chief steward announced over the loudspeaker that the next stop would be Shannon, where they would dine, and that the flying time would be one hour and fifty minutes, and the great double-decker Stratocruiser rolled slowly out to the East-West runway. The aircraft trembled against its brakes as the Captain revved the four engines, one at a time, up to take-off speed, and through his window Bond watched the wing flaps being tested. Then the great plane turned slowly towards the setting sun, there was a jerk as the brakes were released and the grass on either side of the runway flattened as, gathering speed, the Monarch hurtled down the two miles of stressed concrete and rose into the west, aiming ultimately for another little strip of concrete carpet on the other side of the world.
Bond lit a cigarette and was settling himself with his book when the back of the reclining seat on the left of the pair in front of him was lowered sharply towards him. It was one of the two American business men, the fat one, lying slumped down with his safety belt still fastened round his stomach. His face was green and sweating. He held a brief case clutched across his chest and Bond could read the name on the visiting card inserted in the leather label tag. It said Mr W. Winter and below, in neat red ink capitals, was written MY BLOOD GROUP is F.