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There was a pause as the chief pilot gunned up the four turbo-jets into a banshee scream and then, with a jerk of released brakes, the 1030 BEA

Flight 130 to Roathered speed and hurtled down the runway and up into a quick, easy climb

In tensouth along the wide air-channel that takes the Mediterranean traffic froland The scream of the jets died to a low, drohistle Bond unfastened his seat-belt and lit a cigarette He reached for the sli attaché case on the floor beside him and took out The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler and put the case, which was very heavy in spite of its size, on the seat beside hiht how surprised the ticket clerk at London Airport would have been if she had weighed the case instead of letting it go unchecked as an 'overnight bag' And if, in their turn, Custoht, how interested they would have been when it was slipped under the Inspectoscope

Q Branch had put together this s out the careful handiwork of Swaine and Adeney to pack fifty rounds of 25 am of the spine In each of the innocent sides there was a flat throwing knife, built by Wilkinsons, the sword makers, and the tops of their handles were concealed cleverly by the stitching at the corners Despite Bond's efforts to laugh the a hidden compartment into the handle of the case, which, by pressure at a certain point, would deliver a cyanide death-pill into the palm of his hand (Directly he had taken delivery of the case, Bond had washed this pill down the lavatory) More i crea The whole top of this unscrewed to reveal the silencer for the Beretta, packed in cotton wool In case hard cash was needed, the lid of the attaché case contained fifty golden sovereigns These could be poured out by slipping sideways one ridge of welting

The co of tricks aht-pound weight, the bag was a convenient way of carrying the tools of his trade, which otherould have to be concealed about his body

Only a dozen ers were on the plane Bond sht of Leolia Ponsonby's horror if she knew that that made the load thirteen The day before, when he had left M and had gone back to his office to arrange the details of his flight, his secretary had protested violently at the idea of his travelling on Friday the thirteenth

'But it's always best to travel on the thirteenth,' Bond had explained patiently 'There are practically no passengers and it's et better service I always choose the thirteenth when I can'

'Well,' she had said resignedly, 'it's your funeral But I shall spend the day worrying about you And for heaven's sake don't go walking under ladders or anything silly this afternoon You oughtn't to overplay your luck like this I don't knohat you're going to Turkey for, and I don't want to know But I have a feeling in my bones'

'Ah, those beautiful bones!' Bond had teased her 'I'll take theet back'

'You'll do nothing of the sort,' she had said coldly Later she had kissed hioodbye with a sudden warmth, and for the hundredth time Bond had wondered why he bothered with other wo of the steadily on above the endless sea of whipped-creaines failed The clouds broke up and a distant blue haze, far away to their left, was Paris For an hour they flew high over the burned-up fields of France until, after Dijon, the land turned froreen as it sloped up into the Juras

Lunch ca between hiazed down at the cool an to climb towards the snow patches between the beautifully scoured teeth of the Alps, he rereat eye-tooth of Mont Blanc, a few hundred yards to port, and Bond looked down at the dirty grey elephant's skin of the glaciers and saw hi end of the rope round his waist, bracing hies as his two companions from the University of Geneva inched up the smooth rock towards him

And now? Bond smiled wryly at his reflection in the Perspex as the plane swung out of the rained terazza of Lo James Bond canize the clean, eager youth that had been him at seventeen? And ould that youth think of hinize himself beneath the surface of this man as tarnished with years of treachery and ruthlessness and fear–this ant eyes and the scar down his cheek and the flat bulge beneath his left arenent as off across the world in a new and land?