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When the appropriate greetings and apologies for disturbed Christmases had been made, and they were in their chairs, M said, 'Mr Franklin, if you'll forgiveto see and hear in this room is subject to the Official Secrets Act You will no doubt be in possession of rateful if you would respect those of the Ministry of Defence May I ask you to discuss what you are about to hear only with your Minister personally?'

Mr Franklin made a little bow of acquiescence 'My Minister has already instructed ly My particular duties in the Ministry have accusto Top Secret matters You need have no reservations in what you tell me Now then' - the amused eyes rested on each of the other three in turn - 'perhaps you can tellexcept that a riculture and livestock Very decent of hi him as if he had stolen atomic secrets?'

'He did once, as a matter of fact,' said M drily 'I think the best course would be for you and Mr Leathers to read the report of my representative here It contains code numbers and other obscure references which need not concern you The story tells itself without them' M handed Bond's report to 501 'Most of this will be new to you also

Perhaps you would like to read a page at a ti silence fell in the rooernails and listened to the rain on thepanes and the soft noises of the fire M sat hunched up, apparently in a doze Bond lit a cigarette The rasp of his Ronson caused M's eyes to open lazily and then close again 501 passed across the last page and sat back Franklin finished his reading, shuffled the pages together, and stacked them neatly in front of him He looked at Bond and smiled' You're lucky to be here'

Bond s

M turned to 501 'Well?'

501 took off his thick spectacles and polished theet the object of the exercise, sir It seems perfectly above-board - praiseworthy, in fact, if we didn't knoe do know about Blofeld Technically, what he has done is this He has obtained ten, or rather eleven, counting the one that's left the place, suitable subjects for deep hypnosis These are all sinificant that the one called Ruby had failed her GCE twice They seem to suffer, and there's no reason to believe that they don't, froy We don't know the origins of their allergies and these are immaterial They are probably psychosomatic - the adverse reaction to birds is a very coht on by cattle The reactions to crops and plants are less coies by hypnosis, and not only cures, but a pronounced affinity with the cause of the allergy in place of the previous repulsion In the case of Ruby, for instance, she is told, in the words of the report, to “love” chickens, to wish to “improve their breed” and so forth The mechanical ht stage, on the edge of sleep - the sharp ringing of the bell would waken those ere already asleep - the use of thenoise, are both co, authoritative mure of what lectures these girls attended or what reading they did, but we can assume that these were merely additional means to influence the mind in the path desired by Blofeld Now, there is plenty of medical evidence for the efficacy of hypnosis There are well-authenticated cases of the successful treatment by these means of such stubborn disabilities as warts, certain types of asth, and hoh the British Medical Association frowns officially on the practitioners of hypnosis, you would be surprised, sir, to kno many doctors themselves, as a last resort, particularly in cases of alcoholism, have private treatment from qualified hypnotists But this is by the way All I can contribute to this discussion is that Blofeld's ideas are not new and that they can be completely efficacious'

M nodded 'Thank you, Mr Leathers Noould you like to be unscientific and hazard any wild guesses that would contribute in any way to what you have told us?' M smiled briefly 'You will not be quoted, I can assure you'

501 ran a worried hand through his hair 'Well, sir, it ht came to me as I read the report This is a very expensive set-up of Blofeld's Whether his intentions are benign or nant, and I nant, who is paying for all this? How did he fall upon this particular field of research and find the finance for it? Well, sir, this lars under the bed, so to speak, but the leaders in this field, ever since Pavlov and his salivating dogs, have been the Russians If you recall, sir, at the ti of the earth by the Russians, I put in a report on the physiology of the astronaut Yuri Gagarin I drew attention to the simple nature of this man, his equable temperament when faced with his hysterical welcome in London This equability never failed him and, if you will rehout his visit and on his subsequent tours abroad, at the request of the Ato face, sir, those wide-apart, innocent eyes, the extreical simplicity of the man, all added up, as I said in my report, to the perfect subject for hypnosis, and I hazarded the guess that, in the extremely coarin was operating throughout in a state of deep hypnosis All right, sir' - 501 esture of his hand -'arded as fanciful But, since you ask, I now repeat theestion that the Power behind Blofeld in all this may well be the Russians' He turned to Bond 'Was there any sign of Russian inspiration or guidance at this Gloria place? Any Russians anywhere in the offing?'

'Well, there was this man, Captain Boris I never saw hi I can think of except the three SPECTRE uess were ex-Smersh But they seemed definitely staff ed He said to M, 'Well, I'm afraid that's all I can contribute, sir But, if you come to the conclusion that this is dirty business, for my money, this Captain Boris was either the paymaster or supervisor of the scheme and Blofeld the independent operator It would fit in with the free-lance character of the old SPECTRE - an independent gang working for whoever illing to pay the there, Mr Leathers,' said M reflectively 'But what the devil's the object of the exercise?' He turned to Franklin 'Well now, Mr Franklin, what do you think of all this?'

The hly polished pipe He kept it between his teeth and reached down for his brief-case and took out so them he extracted a black and white outline map of Britain and Eire and smoothed it down across the desk The map was dotted with symbols, forests of the the total agricultural and livestock resources of Britain and Eire, leaving out grassland and tiht of the report, I admit

I was completely confused As Mr Leathers said, these experiments seem perfectly harmless - more than that, to use his word, praiseworthy But' - Franklin s for the dark side of the ly The result was that I am filled with a very deep and terrible suspicion Perhaps these black thoughts have entered my mind by a process of os at the world' - he looked deprecatingly at M - 'but I also have one piece of evidence which may be decisive Excusefroirls and their addresses Is that available?'

Bond took the photostat out of his inside pocket ' Sorry I didn't want to clutter up the report too much' He slipped it across the table to Franklin

Franklin ran his eyes down it Then he said, and there e in his voice, 'I've got it! I do believe I've got it!' He sat back heavily in his chair as if he couldn't believe what he had seen

The threehi for it

Franklin took a red pencil out of his breast pocket and leaned over thefrom time to tily unrelated points across Britain and Eke, but Bond noticed that they covered the areas where the forests of symbols were at their densest As he us, Devon - Red Poll, Lancashire - poultry, Kent - fruit, Shannon - potatoes,' until ten red circles stood out on the lia andcross He looked up, said 'Turkeys' and threw his pencil down

In the silence that followed, M said, rather testily, 'Well, Mr Franklin, what have you inpushed about by sorand and hush-hush, froain into his brief-case He came up with several papers He selected one, a newspaper cutting He said,' I don't expect you gentlericultural news in the paper, but this is froraph of early Decericultural correspondent, good man by the name of Thomas These are the headlines: “CONCERN OVER TURKEYS FLOCKS RAVAGED BY FOWL PEST” Then it goes on: “Supplies of turkeys to the Christmas market may be hit by recent fowl pest outbreaks which have resulted in large nuures available show that 218,000 birds have been slaughtered last year, total supplies for the Christmas market were estimated at between 3,700,000 and 4,000,000 birds, so much will depend now on the extent of further fowl pest outbreaks”'

Mr Franklin put the cutting down He said seriously, 'That neas only the tip of the iceberg We ed to keep later details out of the press But I can tell you this, gentlehtered threeof it Fowl pest is running wild in East Anglia and there are also signs of it in Haoes on What you ate at lunch today was aln bird We allowed the import of two million from America to cover this position up'

M said sourly, 'Well, so far as I'ain However, I see you've had quite a probleo from turkeys?'

Franklin was not amused He said, 'We have one clue All the birds that died first were exhibited at the National Poultry Show at Olympia early this month Olympia had been cleared and cleaned out for the next exhibition before we had reached that conclusion, and we could find no trace on the prehly infectious, with a mortality of one hundred per cent Now then' - he held up a stout white pania of the United States on it - 'how ical Warfare?'