Kronsteen stopped talking. His gaze slowly came down from the ceiling. He rose thoughtfully to his feet. He looked across and into the watchful, intent eyes of the woman.
`I can think of nothing else at the moment, Comrade,’ he said. `Many details will come up and have to be settled from day to day. But I think the operation can safely begin.’
`I agree, Comrade. The matter can now go forward. I will issue the necessary directives.’ The harsh, authoritative voice unbent. `I am grateful for your co-operation.’
Kronsteen lowered his head one inch in acknowledgment. He turned and walked softly out of the room.
In the silence, the Telekrypton gave a warning ping and started up its mechanical chatter. Rosa Klebb stirred in her chair and reached for one of the telephones. She dialled a number.
`Operations Room,’ said a man’s voice.
Rosa Klebb’s pale eyes, gazing out across the room, lit on the pink shape on the wall-map that was England. Her wet lips parted.
`Colonel Klebb speaking. The konspiratsia against the English spy Bond. The operation will commence forthwith.’
Part Two
THE EXECUTION
Chapter Eleven
The Soft Life
The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline.
In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.
At 7.30 on the morning of Thursday, August 12th, Bond awoke in his comfortable flat in the plane-tree’d square off the King’s Road and was disgusted to find that he was thoroughly bored with the prospect of the day ahead. Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.
Bond reached out and gave two rings on the bell to show May, his treasured Scottish housekeeper, that he was ready for breakfast. Then he abruptly flung the single sheet off his naked body and swung his feet to the floor.
There was only one way to deal with boredom–kick oneself out of it. Bond went down on his hands and did twenty slow press-ups, lingering over each one so that his muscles had no rest. When his arms could stand the pain no longer, he rolled over on his back and, with his hands at his sides, did the straight leg-lift until his stomach muscles screamed. He got to his feet and, after touching his toes twenty times, went over to arm and chest exercises combined with deep breathing until he was dizzy. Panting with the exertion, he went into the big white-tiled bathroom and stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then cold hissing water for five minutes.
At last, after shaving and putting on a sleeveless dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt and navy blue tropical worsted trousers, he slipped his bare feet into black leather sandals and went through the bedroom into the long big-windowed sitting-room with the satisfaction of having sweated his boredom, at any rate for the time being, out of his body.
May, an elderly Scotswoman with iron grey hair and a handsome closed face, came in with the tray and put it on the table in the bay window together with The Times, the only paper Bond ever read.
Bond wished her good morning and sat down to breakfast.
`Good morning-s.’ (To Bond, one of May’s endearing qualities was that she would call no man `sir’ except–Bond had teased her about it years before–English kings and Winston Churchill. As a mark of exceptional regard, she accorded Bond an occasional hint of an `s’ at the end of a word.)
She stood by the table while Bond folded his paper to the centre news page.
`Yon man was here again last night about the Televeesion.’
`What man was that?’ Bond looked along the headlines.
`Yon man that’s always coming. Six times he’s been here pestering me since June. After what I said to him the first time about the sinful thing, you’d think he’d give up trying to sell us one. By hire purchase, too, if you please!’