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PART ONE: HAPPENSTANCE

CHAPTER ONE

REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON

JAMES BOND, with two double bourbons inside hie of Miaht about life and death

It was part of his profession to kill people He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he kne and forgot about it As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix - the licence to kill in the Secret Service - it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon If it happened, it happened Regret was unprofessional - worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul

And yet there had been so curiously impressive about the death of the Mexican It wasn't that he hadn't deserved to die He was an evil o is a bandit ill kill for as little as forty pesos, which is about twenty-five shillings -though probably he had been paidof Bond - and, from the look of him, he had been an instrument of pain and misery all his life Yes, it had certainly been time for him to die; but when Bond had killed hione out of the body so quickly, so utterly, that Bond had almost seen it come out of his mouth as it does, in the shape of a bird, in Haitian primitives

What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one This had been a Mexican with a na licence Then soone out of him, out of the envelope of flesh and cheap clothes, and had left hi for the dustcart And the difference, the thing that had gone out of the stinking Mexican bandit, was greater than all Mexico

Bond looked down at the weapon that had done it The cutting edge of his right hand was red and swollen It would soon show a bruise Bond flexed the hand, kneading it with his left He had been doing the saot him away It was a painful process, but if he kept the circulationthe hand would heal more quickly One couldn't tell how soon the weapon would be needed again Cynicisathered at the corners of Bond's mouth

'National Airlines, “Airline of the Stars”, announces the departure of their flight NA 106 to La Guardia Field, New York Will all passengers please proceed to gate number seven All aboard, please'

The Tannoy switched off with an echoing click Bond glanced at his watch At least another ten nalled to a waitress and ordered another double bourbon on the rocks When the wide, chunky glass came, he swirled the liquor round for the ice to blunt it down and sed half of it He stubbed out the butt of his cigarette and sat, his chin resting on his left hand, and gazedtarloriously into the Gulf

The death of the Mexican had been the finishing touch to a bad assignerous and without any redeeot him away from headquarters

A big man in Mexico had some poppy fields The floere not for decoration They were broken down for opium which was sold quickly and comparatively cheaply by the waiters at a small cafe in Mexico City called the 'Madre de Cacao' The Madre de Cacao had plenty of protection If you needed opium you walked in and ordered what you wanted with your drink You paid for your drink at the caisse and the hts to add to your bill It was an orderly commerce of no concern to anyone outside Mexico Then, far away in England, the Governling, announced that hern would be banned in Britain There was alar respectable doctors anted to save their patients agony Prohibition is the trigger of cri channels from China, Turkey and Italy were ran alland In Mexico City, a pleasant-spoken Import and Export land as a hern addict He loved her and was sorry for her and, when she wrote that she would die if someone didn't help, he believed that she wrote the truth and set about investigating the illicit dope traffic in Mexico In due course, through friends and friends of friends, he got to the Madre de Cacao and on frorower In the process, he came to know about the economics of the trade, and he decided that if he couldhumanity he had found the Secret of Life Blackwell's business was in fertilizers He had a warehouse and a s and plant research It was easy to persuade the big Mexican that, behind this respectable front, Blackwell's teae to England iftly arranged by the Mexican For the equivalent of a thousand pounds a trip, every n Affairs carried an extra suitcase to London The price was reasonable The contents of the suitcase, after the Mexican had deposited it at the Victoria Station left-luggage office and had mailed the ticket to a man called Schwab, c/o Boox-an-Pix, Ltd, WC1, orth twenty thousand pounds

Unfortunately Schas a badhumanity He had the idea that if American juvenile delinquents could consume millions of dollars' worth of hern every year, so could their Teddy boy and girl cousins In two rooms in Pimlico, his staff watered the hern with stomach powder and sent it on its way to the dance halls and amusement arcades

Schwab had already ot on to him Scotland Yard decided to let hiated the source of his supply They put a close tail on Schwab and in due course were led to Victoria Station and thence to the Mexican courier At that stage, since a foreign country was concerned, the Secret Service had had to be called in and Bond was ordered to find out where the courier got his supplies and to destroy the channel at source

Bond did as he was told He flew to Mexico City and quickly got to the Madre de Cacao Thence, posing as a buyer for the London traffic, he got back to the big Mexican The Mexican received him amiably and referred him to Blackwell Bond had rather taken to Blackwell, He knew nothing about Blackwell's sister, but the man was obviously an a true Bond broke into his warehouse one night and left a thermite bomb He then went and sat in a cafe a mile away and watched the flames leap above the horizon of rooftops and listened to the silver cascade of the fire-brigade bells The nexthe telephoned Blackwell He stretched a handkerchief across the h it

'Sorry you lost your business last night I'm afraid your insurance won't cover those stocks of soil you were researching'

'Who's that? Who's speaking?'

'I'land That stuff of yours has killed quite a lot of young people over there Daland any ht That fellow Bond you've been seeing, he won't get out of the net either The police are after him now'