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7ca05ad
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However that may be, it is clear that he could have found many investments more savoury than prostitution, if he had not been tempted by the by-product of unlimited women for his personal use. Fate rebuked him with terrifying swiftness.
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Ian Fleming |
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4f2f30c
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Madame Versoix had been interrupted in the middle of preparing dinner. She wore an apron and held a wooden spoon in one hand. She was younger than her husband, chubby and handsome and warm-eyed. Instinctively Bond guessed that they had no children and that they gave their thwarted affection to their friends and some regular customers, and probably to some pets.
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Ian Fleming |
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9a145a2
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He awoke in the evening completely refreshed. After a cold shower, Bond walked over to the Casino. Since the night before he had lost the mood of the tables. He needed to re-establish that focus which is half mathematical and half intuitive and which, with a slow pulse and a sanguine temperament, Bond knew to be the essential equipment of any gambler who was set on winning.
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Ian Fleming |
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50f2e2d
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It's wonderful,' said Bond, deciding to relieve her mind, though irritated with her obvious guilt over this childish mystery. 'You must go in and we'll have breakfast on the terrace. I'm ravenous. I'm sorry I made you jump. I was just startled to see anyone about at this hour of the morning.
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Ian Fleming |
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31ed714
|
Be that as it may, it is here that Le Chiffre will, we are confident, endeavour on or after 15 June to make a profit at baccarat of fifty million francs on a working capital of twenty-five million. (And, incidentally, save his life.)
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Ian Fleming |
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6089cfa
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If the decision is unfavourable, the only alternative would be to place our information and our recommendations in the hands of the Deuxieme Bureau or of our American colleagues of the Combined Intelligence Agency in Washington. Both of these organizations would doubtless be delighted to take over the scheme.
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Ian Fleming |
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234fda5
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It reads better than it lives.
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Ian Fleming |
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9855874
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She kept on patching up the edifice of her deceit until Bond wanted to spank her and tell her to relax and tell the truth. Instead he just gave her a reassuring pat on the back outside her room and told her to hurry up and have her bathe. Then he went on to his room.
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Ian Fleming |
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4c1d4df
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During interrogation he committed suicide by swallowing a coat-button of compressed potassium cyanide.
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Ian Fleming |
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2853de4
|
Stay there,' said Mathis. He kicked back his chair and hurtled through the empty window-frame on to the pavement. 6 ....... TWO MEN IN STRAW HATS WHEN BOND left the bar he walked purposefully along the pavement flanking the tree-lined boulevard towards his hotel a few hundred yards away. He was hungry. The day was still beautiful, but by now the sun was very hot and the plane-trees, spaced about twenty feet apart on the grass verge between ..
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Ian Fleming |
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955aee5
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LE CHIFFRE looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze. He slowly removed one thick hand from the table and slipped it into the pocket of his dinner-jacket. The hand came out holding a small metal cylinder with a cap which Le Chiffre unscrewed. He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in ..
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Ian Fleming |
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c4502b8
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The one more or less behind Le Chiffre's right arm was tall and funereal in his dinner-jacket. His face was wooden and grey, but his eyes flickered and gleamed like a conjurer's. His whole long body was restless and his hands shifted often on the brass rail. Bond guessed that he would kill without interest or concern for what he killed and that he would prefer strangling. He had something of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, but his inhumanity wou..
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Ian Fleming |
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1207cdc
|
He wore a heavy black moustache and the backs of his hands on the rail were matted with black hair. Bond guessed that hair covered most of his squat body. Naked, Bond supposed, he would be an obscene object.
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Ian Fleming |
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48a2c94
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Bond's mind was clear again. By a miracle he had survived a devastating wound. He could feel his armpits still wet with the fear of it. But the success of his gambit with the chair had wiped out all memories of the dreadful valley of defeat through which he had just passed.
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Ian Fleming |
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44cecee
|
The two cards slithered towards him across the green sea. Like an octopus under a rock, Le Chiffre watched him from the other side of the table. Bond reached out a steady right hand and drew the cards towards him. Would it be the lift of the heart which a nine brings, or an eight brings? He fanned the two cards under the curtain of his hand. The muscles of his jaw rippled as he clenched his teeth. His whole body stiffened in a reflex of sel..
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Ian Fleming |
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462a803
|
Bravo,' said Mathis. 'I'm proud of you. You ought to be tortured every day. I really must remember to do something evil this evening. I must start at once. I have a few marks in my favour - only small ones, alas,' he added ruefully - 'but I shall work fast now that I have seen the light. What a splendid time I'm going to have. Now, let's see, where shall I start, murder, arson, rape? But no, these are peccadilloes. I must really consult the..
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Ian Fleming |
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5f4aca0
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There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parable..
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Ian Fleming |
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9889d67
|
Bond found this irksome. He disliked being cosseted. It gave him claustrophobia.
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Ian Fleming |
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9483de9
|
Bond grunted. 'God knows when I'll be able to bathe,' he said. 'The doctor's talking through his hat. And when I can bathe it would probably be better for me to bathe alone for a bit. I don't want to frighten anybody. Apart from anything else,' he glanced pointedly down the bed, 'my body's a mass of scars and bruises. But you enjoy yourself. There's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy yourself.' Vesper was stung by the bitterness and injustic..
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Ian Fleming |
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8f8e4ce
|
We have been feeling for some time that Le Chiffre is getting into deep water. In nearly all respects he is an admirable agent of the U.S.S.R., but his gross physical habits and predilections are an Achilles heel of which we have been able to take advantage from time to time and one of his mistresses is a Eurasian (No. 1860) controlled by Station F., who has recently been able to obtain insight into his private affairs.
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Ian Fleming |
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51a565c
|
Breakfast was Bond's favourite meal of the day. When he was stationed in London it was always the same. It consisted of very strong coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, of which he drank two large 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 third minutes. It was a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens ow..
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Ian Fleming |
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33f647a
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Each day the atmosphere became more hateful. It seemed fantastic to Bond that human relationships could collapse into dust overnight and he searched his mind again and again for a reason.
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Ian Fleming |
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05653da
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The man seemed to realize that he was being watched. He looked up and gazed incuriously at them for a moment. Then he reached for a brief-case on the chair beside him, extracted a newspaper and started to read it, his elbows propped up on the table.
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Ian Fleming |
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ba6c49b
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He's not a bad guy really, except he's so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards.
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Ian Fleming |
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9f2aded
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Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses,
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Ian Fleming |
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8afcfda
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And of course, Japan, with the highest suicide statistics in the world, a country with an unquenchable thirst for the bizarre, the cruel and the terrible, would provide the perfect last refuge for him.
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Ian Fleming |
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1f6e8e6
|
IT WAS twelve o'clock when Bond left the Splendide and the clock on the 'mairie' was stumbling through its midday carillon.
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Ian Fleming |
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5aaa514
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He pulled out a chair and while they sat down he beckoned to a waiter and despite Mathis's expostulations insisted on ordering the drinks - a 'fine a l'eau' for Mathis and a 'bacardi' for the girl.
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Ian Fleming |
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4ae8c19
|
A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' 'Oui, monsieur.' 'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?
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Ian Fleming |
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1401da2
|
AS, TWO weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Hotel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind.
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Ian Fleming |
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2c50292
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She has black hair, blue eyes, and splendid ... er ... protuberances. Back and front,' he added.
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Ian Fleming |
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f22542f
|
when the stresses are too great for the tired metal, when the ground mechanic who checks the de-icing equipment is crossed in love and skimps his job, way back in London, Idlewild, Gander, Montreal; when those or many things happen, then the little warm room with propellers in front falls straight down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain. And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible with..
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Ian Fleming |
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9f881a0
|
Put your guns away and get him out,' he ordered brusquely. 'I'll keep you covered. Be careful of him. I don't want a corpse. And hurry up, it's getting light.
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Ian Fleming |
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4830ef8
|
A few hundred yards ahead a Michelin post showed where a small parochial road crossed with the highway.
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Ian Fleming |
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20a59ff
|
He saw her now only as a spy. Their love and his grief were relegated to the boxroom of his mind. Later, perhaps they would be dragged out, dispassionately examined, and then bitterly thrust back with other sentimental baggage he would rather forget.
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Ian Fleming |
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2b31589
|
How soon Mathis had been proved right and how soon his own little sophistries had been exploded in his face!
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Ian Fleming |
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b9c5d26
|
Mathis had been unable to enlighten him. 'Unless you have bought him yourself,' he had said, 'you must assume that he has been bought by the other side. All concierges are venal. It is not their fault. They are trained to regard all hotel guests except maharajahs as potential cheats and thieves. They have as much concern for your comfort or well-being as crocodiles.
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Ian Fleming |
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1daae39
|
heroin pipeline whose outlet is Beirut. These eighteen men, all experts in conspiracy, in the highest ranges of secret communication and action and, above all, of silence, also shared one supreme virtue - every man had a solid cover. Every man possessed a valid passport with up-to-date visas for the principal countries in the world, and an entirely clean sheet with Interpol and with their respective national police forces. That factor alone..
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Ian Fleming |
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ea7454c
|
He was used to oblique control and rather liked it. He felt it feather-bedded him a little, allowed him to give or take an hour or two in his communications with M.
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Ian Fleming |
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3fc1831
|
The safe, empty room sneered at him.
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Ian Fleming |
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914d6c8
|
Vesper smiled at him. 'I like it,' she said. 'I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that's the way to live. But it sounds rather schoolgirlish when one says it,' she added apologetically.
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Ian Fleming |
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e05fda0
|
He suddenly dropped his bantering tone and looked at Bond sharply and venomously.
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Ian Fleming |
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6c7d3a0
|
She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him. 'I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It's about the bomb. It's a fantastic story.
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Ian Fleming |
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fb5944e
|
THERE ARE moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death; and times when, as was now the case, he is a guest in the territory of an allied Secret Service.
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Ian Fleming |