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'What are your ideas? Would you and your wife like to take another way home?'

'I'd rather you decided, sir My wife's all right The saood condition I don't see why it should deteriorate I'in territory We shan't knohat the possibilities are'

'Would you like one of our other salesive you a hand?' 'It shouldn't be necessary, sir Just as you feel'

Til think about it So you really want to see this sales ca with the sae to know, as he himself felt 'Yes, sir Now that I'm half way, it seeht then I'll think about giving you another salesman to lend a hand' There was a pause on the end of the line 'Nothing else on your mind?'

'No, sir'

'Goodbye, then'

'Goodbye, sir'

Bond put down the receiver He sat and looked at it He suddenly wished he had agreed with M's suggestion to give hiot up from the bed At least they would soon be out of these damn Balkans and down into Italy Then Switzerland, France–a friendly people, away froirl, what about her? Could he blame her for the death of Keriain by the , looking out, wondering, going back over everything, every expression and every gesture she had ht in the Kristal Palas No, he knew he couldn't put the blaent There wasn't a girl of her age in the world who could have played this role, if it was a role she was playing, without betraying herself And he liked her And he had faith in his instincts Besides, with the death of Kerim, had not the plot, whatever it was, played itself out? One day he would find out what the plot had been For the moment he was certain Tatiana was not a conscious part of it

His mind made up, Bond walked over to the bathroom door and knocked She came out and he took her in his ar to him They stood and felt the ani it push back the cold memory of Kerim's death

Tatiana broke away She looked up at Bond's face She reached up and brushed the black comma of hair away frolad you have come back, James,' she said And then, matter-of-factly, 'And noe ain'

Later, after Slivovic and smoked ham and peaches, Te express under the hard lights of the arcs He said goodbye, quickly and coldly, and vanished down the platform and back into his dark existence

Punctually at nine the new engine gave its new kind of noise and took the long train out on its all-night run down the valley of the Sava Bond went along to the conductor's cabin to give hiers

Bond knew ed passports, the blurred writing, the too exact iuht transparencies on the pages where the fibres of the paper had been tampered with to alter a letter or a number, but the five new passports–three American and tiss–seemed innocent The Swiss papers, favourites with the Russian forgers, belonged to a husband and wife, both over seventy, and Bond finally passed them and went back to the coht with Tatiana's head on his lap

Vincovci careb The train ca loco forlornly as Bond read the plate on one of them–BERLINER MASCHINENBAU GMBH–as they slid out through the iron ceun bullets Bond heard the screa arically and unreasonably of the exciteround skirs since the war had turned cold

They hammered into the mountains of Slovenia where the apple trees and the chalets were alh Ljubliana The girl awoke They had breakfast of fried eggs and hard brown bread and coffee that was lish and Aht with a lift of the heart that by the afternoon they would be over the frontier into western Europe and that a third dangerous night was gone

He slept until Sezana The hard-faced Yugoslav plain-clothes ioreale came and the first s of Italian officials and the carefree upturned faces of the station crowd The new diesel-electric engine gave a slap-happy whistle, theeasily down into Venezia, towards the distant sparkle of Trieste and the gay blue of the Adriatic

We've ht Bond I really think we've made it He thrust the memory of the last three days away from him Tatiana saw the tense lines in his face relax She reached over and took his hand He ay villas on the Corniche and at the sailing-boats and the people water-skiing

The train clanged across so station of Trieste Bond got up and pulled down theand they stood side by side, looking out Suddenly Bond felt happy He put an arainst hiazed down at the holiday crowd The sun shone through the tall clean s of the station in golden shafts The sparkling scene emphasized the dark and dirt of the countries the train had come froaily dressed people pass through the patches of sunshine towards the entrance, and the sunburned people, the ones who had had their holidays, hasten up the platforet their seats on the train