GOLDFINGER – JAMES BOND 007 by Ian Fleming
GOLDFINGER – JAMES BOND 007 by Ian Fleming
CONTENTS
Goldfinger said, ‘Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.”‘
PART I • HAPPENSTANCE
REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON
LIVING IT UP
THE MAN WITH AGORAPHOBIA
OVER THE BARREL
NIGHT DUTY
TALK OF GOLD
THOUGHTS IN A D.B.III
PART 2 • COINCIDENCE
ALL TO PLAY FOR
THE CUP AND THE LIP
UP AT THE GRANGE
THE ODD-JOB MAN
LONG TAIL ON A GHOST
‘IF YOU TOUCH ME THERE…’
THINGS THAT GO THUMP IN THE NIGHT
PART 3 • ENEMY ACTION
THE PRESSURE ROOM
THE LAST AND THE BIGGEST
HOODS’ CONGRESS
CRIME DE LA CRIME
SECRET APPENDIX
JOURNEY INTO HOLOCAUST
THE RICHEST MAN IN HISTORY
THE LAST TRICK
T.L.C. TREATMENT
PART ONE: HAPPENSTANCE
CHAPTER ONE
REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON
JAMES BOND, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.
It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix – the licence to kill in the Secret Service – it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional – worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul.
And yet there had been something curiously impressive about the death of the Mexican. It wasn’t that he hadn’t deserved to die. He was an evil man, a man they call in Mexico a capungo. A capungo is a bandit who will kill for as little as forty pesos, which is about twenty-five shillings -though probably he had been paid more to attempt the killing of Bond – and, from the look of him, he had been an instrument of pain and misery all his life. Yes, it had certainly been time for him to die; but when Bond had killed him, less than twenty-four hours before, life had gone out of the body so quickly, so utterly, that Bond had almost seen it come out of his mouth as it does, in the shape of a bird, in Haitian primitives.
What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one. This had been a Mexican with a name and an address, an employment card and perhaps a driving licence. Then something had gone out of him, out of the envelope of flesh and cheap clothes, and had left him an empty paper bag waiting for the dustcart. And the difference, the thing that had gone out of the stinking Mexican bandit, was greater than all Mexico.
Bond looked down at the weapon that had done it. The cutting edge of his right hand was red and swollen. It would soon show a bruise. Bond flexed the hand, kneading it with his left. He had been doing the same thing at intervals through the quick plane trip that had got him away. It was a painful process, but if he kept the circulation moving the hand would heal more quickly. One couldn’t tell how soon the weapon would be needed again. Cynicism gathered at the corners of Bond’s mouth.
‘National Airlines, “Airline of the Stars”, announces the departure of their flight NA 106 to La Guardia Field, New York. Will all passengers please proceed to gate number seven. All aboard, please.’
The Tannoy switched off with an echoing click. Bond glanced at his watch. At least another ten minutes before Transamerica would be called. He signalled to a waitress and ordered another double bourbon on the rocks. When the wide, chunky glass came, he swirled the liquor round for the ice to blunt it down and swallowed half of it. He stubbed out the butt of his cigarette and sat, his chin resting on his left hand, and gazed moodily across the twinkling tarmac to where the last half of the sun was slipping gloriously into the Gulf.