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'He said he's selling Televeesion sets on commission in his spare time And are we sure we don't want one He says we're one of the only folk in the square that haven't got one Sees there isn't one of those aerial things on the house, I dare say He's always asking if you're at home so that he can have a ith you about it Fancy his cheek! I' out He's always asking if I' about your movements Respectable, quiet-spoken body, if he wasn't so persistent'

Could be, thought Bond There areup whether the owner's at holance through the open door 'Well, you're wasting your time because he's away,' would be the obvious reception if the flat was eed his shoulders irritably What the hell There was probably nothing in it Why should They be interested in hi in it, Security was quite capable of htened him away this time' Bond smiled up at May 'I should think you've heard the last of him'

'Yes-s,' said May doubtfully At any rate she had carried out her orders to tell hi about the place' She bustled off with a whisper of the old-fashioned black uniforust

Bond went back to his breakfast Normally it was little straws in the wind like this that would start a persistent intuitive ticking in his mind, and, on other days, he would not have been happy until he had solved the proble to the house Now, from months of idleness and disuse, the sas rusty in the scabbard and Bond's uard was down

Breakfast was Bond's favourite meal of the day When he was stationed in London it was always the sa coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an Ae cups, black and without sugar The single egg, in the dark blue egg cup with a gold ring round the top, was boiled for three and a thirdfrom French Marans hens owned by sos and, faddish as he was in s, it a as the perfect boiled egg) Then there were two thick slices of heat toast, a large pat of deep yellow Jersey butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jaian Heather Honey from Fortnum's The coffee pot and the silver on the tray were Queen Anne, and the china was Minton, of the sa-cup

That , while Bond finished his breakfast with honey, he pinpointed the iin with, Tiffany Case, his love for so many happywhich she had withdrawn to an hotel, had sailed for America at the end of July He missed her badly and his ht of her And it was August, and London was hot and stale He was due for leave, but he had not the energy or the desire to go off alone, or to try and find soo with him So he had stayed on in the half-e away at the old routines, snapping at his secretary and rasping his colleagues

Even M had finally got ier on the floor below, and, on Monday of this particular week, he had sent Bond a sharp note appointing him to a Committee of Inquiry under Paymaster Captain Troop The note said that it was time Bond, as a senior officer in the Service, took a hand in major administrative problems Anyway, there was no one else available Headquarters were short-handed and the 00 Section was quiescent Bond would pray report that afternoon, at 230, to Room 412

It was Troop, reflected Bond, as he lit his first cigarette of the day, as theand ie business, there is one bear and who is cordially disliked by all the staff This individual perforhtning conductor for the usual office hates and fears In fact, he reduces their disruptive influence by providing theer, or the Head of Ad over the sht, towels and soap in the lavatories, stationery supplies, the canteen, the holiday rota, the punctuality of the staff He is the one man who has real impact on the office comforts and amenities and whose authority extends into the privacy and personal habits of the anization To want such a job, and to have the necessary qualifications for it, the man must have exactly those qualities which irritate and abrade Hedisciplinarian and indifferent to opinion He must be a little dictator In all well-run businesses there is such a man In the Secret Service, it is Paymaster Captain Troop, RN Retired, Head of Admin, whose job it is, in his oords, 'to keep the place shipshape and Bristol fashion'

It was inevitable that Captain Troop's duties would bring hianization, but it was particularly unfortunate that M could think of no one but Troop to spare as Chairman for this particular Committee

For this was yet onewith the delicate intricacies of the Burgess and Maclean case, and with the lessons that could be learned from it M had dreamed it up, five years after he had closed his own particular file on that case, purely as a sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the Prime Minister had ordered in 1955

At once Bond had got into a hopeless wrangle with Troop over the employment of 'intellectuals' in the Secret Service

Perversely, and knowing it would annoy, Bond had put forward the proposition that, if MI5 and the Secret Service were to concern thee 'intellectual spy', they must employ a certain number of intellectuals to counter them 'Retired officers of the Indian Arht processes of a Burgess or a Maclean They won't even know such people exist–let alone be in a position to frequent their cliques and get to know their friends and their secrets Once Burgess and Maclean went to Russia, the only way to ot tired of Russia, turn theainst the Russians, would have been to send their closest friends to Moscow and Prague and Budapest with orders to wait until one of these chaps crept out of the ess, would have been driven to make contact by his loneliness and by his ache to tell his story to someone [Note: Written in March 1956 I F] But they certainly wouldn't take the risk of revealing themselves to someone with a trench-coat and a cavalry moustache and a beta minus mind'

'Oh really,' Troop had said with icy cal-haired perverts That's quite an original notion I thought ere all agreed that homosexuals were about the worst security risk there is I can't see the A over many atom secrets to a lot of pansies soaked in scent'

'All intellectuals aren't ho that ,' and so the argus of the past three days, and the other coed themselves more or less with Troop Now, today, they had to draw up their reco whether to take the unpopular step of entering a minority report

How seriously did he feel about the whole question, Bond wondered as, at nine o'clock, he walked out of his flat and down the steps to his car? Was he just being petty and obstinate? Had he constituted hiive his teeth so to bite into? Was he so bored that he could find nothing better to do than anization? Bond couldn't make up his mind He felt restless and indecisive, and, behind it all, there was a nagging disquiet he couldn't put his finger on

As he pressed the self-starter and the twin exhausts of the Bentley woke to their fluttering growl, a curious bastard quotation slipped from nowhere into Bond's mind

'Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored'

Chapter Twelve