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He drove to the airport and caught the silver, four-engined plane with a fewspace as in his report he had told the FBI he would He guessed that he need not have mentioned it to the FBI when he saw around the souvenir shop, buying nothing Raincoats seee of office of the FBI Bond was certain they wanted to see he caught the plane They would be glad to see the last of hione in America he had left dead bodies Before he boarded the plane he called the hospital in St Petersburg He wished he hadn't; Leiter was still unconscious and there was no news Yes, they would cable hi definite
It was five in the evening when they circled over Ta jet fro four trails of vapour that hung almost motionless in the still air Soon it would coo in to land, back to the Gulf Coast packed with oldsters in Trureen flanks of Jareat hard continent of Eldollarado
The plane swept on across the waist of Florida, across the acres of jungle and sithout sign of hureen and red in the gathering dark Soon they were over Miami and the monster chump-traps of the Eastern Seaboard, their arteries ablaze with Neon Away to port, State Highway No1 disappeared up the coast in a golden ribbon of h Palm Beach and Daytona to Jacksonville, three hundred ht of the breakfast he had had at Jacksonville not three days before and of all that had happened since Soon, after a short stop at Nassau, he would be flying over Cuba, perhaps over the hideout where Mr Big had put her away She would hear the noise of the plane and perhaps her instincts would make her look up towards the sky and feel that for a moment he was nearby
Bond wondered if they would ever un But that would have to come later, when his as over -- the prize at the end of the dangerous road that had started three weeks before in the fog of London
After a cocktail and an early dinner they came in to Nassau and spent half an hour on the richest island in the world, the sandy patch where a thousandlies buried beneath the Canasta tables and where bungalows surrounded by a thin scurf of screw-pine and casuarina change hands at fifty thousand pounds a piece
They left the platinu hts of Havana, so different in their pastel modesty froht
They were flying at fifteen thousand feet when, just after crossing Cuba, they ran into one of those violent tropical stor-rooered and plunged, its scre roaring in vacuu harshly into walls of solid air The thin tube shuddered and swung Crockery crashed in the pantry and huge rain haripped the arms of his chair so that his left hand hurt and cursed softly to hiazines and thought: they won't help much when the steel tires at fifteen thousand feet, nor will the eau-de-cologne in the washroom, nor the personalized meals, the free razor, the 'orchid for your lady' now tre in the ice-box Least of all the safety-belts and the life-jackets with the whistle that the steward demonstrates will really blow, nor the cute little rescue-lareat for the tiredequipment is crossed in love and skimps his job, way back in London, Idlewild, Gander, Montreal; when those or s happen, then the little warht down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible within the plane's fallibility, vain within its larger vanity, fall doith it and make little holes in the land or little splashes in the sea Which is anyway their destiny, so orry? You are linked to the ground ers in Nassau just as you are linked to the weak head of the little reen and meets you head-on, for the first and last ti quietly ho to do about it You start to die the h the pack with death So take it easy Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the ss Your stars have already let you co way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world Perhaps they'll even let you get to Jaht Can't you hear those cheerful voices in the control tower that have said quietly all day long, 'Come in BOAC Co you down too : 'Come in Transcarib Come in Transcarib'? Don't lose faith in your stars Remember that hot stitch of tiht You're still alive, aren't you? There, we're out of it already It was just to reun doesn't et it This happy landing at Palisadoes Airport comes to you by courtesy of your stars Better thank them
Bond unfastened his seat-belt and wiped the sweat off his face
To hell with it, he thought, as he stepped down out of the huge strong plane
Strangways, the chief Secret Service agent for the Caribbean, was at the airport to ration and Finance Control
It was nearly eleven and the night was quiet and hot There was the shrill sound of crickets from the dildo cactus on both sides of the airport road and Bond gratefully drank in the sounds and smells of the tropics as the ston and took the, moonlit foothills of the Blue Mountains
They talked in monosyllables until they were settled on the coways's neat white house on the Junction Road below Stony Hill
Strangways poured a strong whisky-and-soda for both of theave a concise account of the whole of the Jamaica end of the case