brought a stray gust of air that suddenly struck chill. The moment passed. He had no trouble making himself relax again. He considered dispassionately the undeniable fact that the time schedule he was working to was even tighter than the date schedule, and was showing signs of coming apart. Events were running half an hour late. The man Bond and his companion had lingered hoggishly over their lunch in the rich aristocrats' restaurant. It would be very awkward if they lingered over the drinks these people felt bound to consume around this hour.
A casual glance showed that the two Englishmen had finished their round of infantile play and were approaching the club house. The man in sunglasses, his eyes invisible behind the dark lenses, watched sidelong until, laughing inanely together, they had passed out of sight. No further delay had occurred. Although he had not looked at his watch for half an hour, and did not do so now, he knew the correct time to within a minute.
A pause. Silence but for a few distant voices, an engine being started in the car park, a jet aircraft in a distant corner of the sky. Somewhere a clock struck. The man went through a tiny underplayed pantomime of somebody deciding regretfully that he really cannot be kept waiting any longer. Then he walked off at an easy pace towards the entrance. As he neared the road he took off his sunglasses and slipped them carefully into the top jacket pocket of his anonymous light-grey suit. His eyes, of a washed-out blue that went oddly with his dead black hair, had the controlled interestedness of a sniper's as he reaches for his rifle.
* * *
'Do you think I'm going soft, Bill?' asked Bond twenty minutes later as they stood at the bar.
Bill Tanner grinned. 'Still sore about ending up two down?' (Bond had missed a four-foot putt on the last green.)
'It isn't that, it's... Look, to start with I'm under-employed. What have I done this year? One trip to the States, on what turns out to be a sort of discourtesy visit, and then that miserable flop out East back in June.'
Bond had been sent to Hong Kong to supervise the conveying to the Red mainland of a certain Chinese and a number of unusual stores. The man had gone missing about the time of Bond's arrival and had been found two days later in an alley off the waterfront with his head almost severed from his body. After another three days, memorable chiefly for a violent and prolonged typhoon, the plan had been cancelled and Bond recalled.
'It wasn't your fault that our rep. went sick before you turned up,' said Tanner, falling automatically into the standard Service jargon for use in public.
'No.' Bond stared into his gin and tonic. 'But what worries me is that I didn't seem to mind much. In fact I was quite relieved at being spared the exertion. There's something wrong somewhere.'
'Not physically, anyway. You're in better shape than I've seen you for years.'
Bond looked round the unpretentious room with its comfortable benches in dark-blue leather, its decorous little groups of business and professional men - quiet men, decent men, men who had never behaved violently or treacherously in their lives. Admirable men: but the thought of becoming indistinguishable from them was suddenly repugnant.
'It's ceasing to be an individual that's deadly,' said Bond thoughtfully. 'Becoming a creature of habit. Since I got back I've been coming down here about three Tuesdays out of four, arriving at the same sort of time, going round with one or other of the same three friends, leaving at six thirty or so, driving home each time for the same sort of evening. And seeing nothing wrong with it. A man in my line of business shouldn't work to a time-table. You understand that.'
It is true that a secret agent on an assignment must never fall into any kind of routine that will enable the opposition to predict his movements, but it was not until later that Bill Tanner was to appreciate the curious unintentional significance of what Bond was saying.
'I don't quite follow, James. It doesn't apply to your life in England, surely,' said Tanner, speaking with equally unintentional irony.
'I was thinking of the picture as a whole. My existence is falling into a pattern. I must find some way of breaking out of it.'
'In my experience that sort of shake-up comes along of its own accord when the time is ripe. No need to do anything about it yourself.'
'Fate or something?'
Tanner shrugged. 'Call it what you like.'
For a moment there was an odd silence between the two men. Then Tanner glanced at the clock, drained his glass and said briskly, 'Well, I suppose you'll want to be getting along.'
On the point of agreeing, Bond checked himself. 'To hell with it,' he said. 'If I'm going to get myself disorganized I might as well start now.' He turned to the barmaid. 'Let's have those again, Dot.'
'Won't you be late for M?' asked Tanner.
'He'll just have to possess his soul in patience. He doesn't dine till eight fifteen, and half an hour or so of his company is quite enough these days.'
'Don't I know it,' said Tanner feelingly. 'I still can't get near him at the office. We've taken to doing most of our confabulating over the intercom and that suits me fine. I've only to say it looks like rain for him to shout at me to stop fussing round him like a confounded old woman.'
It was a life-like imitation and Bond laughed, but he was serious enough when he said, 'It's only natural. Sailors hate being ill.'
The previous winter M had developed a distressing cough which he had testily refused to do anything about, saying that the damn thing would clear up when the warmer weather came. But the spring and early summer had brought rain and humidity as well as warmth, and the cough had not cleared up. One morning in July Miss Moneypenny had taken in a sheaf of signals to find M sprawled semiconscious over his desk, grey in the face and fighting for breath. She had summoned Bond from his fifth-floor office and, at the angry insistence of the headquarters MO, M had been bundled half by force into his old Silver Wraith Rolls and escorted home. After three weeks in bed under the devoted care of ex-Chief Petty Officer Hammond and his wife, M had largely recovered from his bronchial congestion, though his temper - as Bond had amply discovered on his periodic visits - looked like taking longer to heal.... Since then, Bond had taken to breaking his weekly return journey from Sunningdale by looking in at Quarterdeck, the beautiful little Regency manor-house on the edge of Windsor Park, ostensibly for an informal chat about the affairs of the Service but really to keep an eye on M's health, to have a sly word with the Hammonds and find out whether the old man was following the MO's orders, getting plenty of rest and, in particular, laying off his
