Bond 04 - Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming Read Free Book Online Page A

name is James Bond and will use that name on passport. Plays golf and will carry golf clubs. Suggest golf balls. Uses Dunlop 65’s. All other arrangements stand. Will call for confirmation at 1915 and 2015. That’s all.’
    She listened for a moment to the hiss of the recorder; then she put down the receiver and walked back to her hotel. She called Room Service for a large dry Martini and when it came she sat and smoked and played the gramophone and waited for 7.15.
    Then, or perhaps not until she called back again at 8.15, the neutral, muffled voice would come back at her over the telephone wire: ‘ A B C to Case. I repeat. A B C to Case ...’ And then would follow her instructions.
    And somewhere, in some rented room in London, the hiss of the recorder would stop as she put back the receiver. And then, perhaps, an unknown door would close and footsteps would softly sound on some stairs and out into an unknown street and away.

6 ....... IN TRANSIT
    I T WAS six o’clock on Thursday evening and Bond was packing his suitcase in his bedroom at the Ritz. It was a battered but once expensive pigskin Revelation and its contents were appropriate to his cover. Evening clothes; his lightweight black and white dog-tooth suit for the country and for golf; Saxone golf shoes; a companion to the dark blue, tropical worsted suit he was wearing, and some white silk and dark blue Sea Island cotton shirts with collars attached and short sleeves. Socks and ties, some nylon underclothes, and two pairs of the long silk pyjama coats he wore in place of two-piece pyjamas.
    None of these things bore, or had ever borne, any name-tags or initials.
    Bond completed his task and proceeded to fit his remaining possessions, his shaving and washing gear, Tommy Armour on How to Play your Best Golf all the Time , and his tickets and passport into a small attaché case, also of battered pig-skin. This had been prepared for him by Q Branch and there was a narrow compartment under the leather at the back which contained a silencer for his gun and thirty rounds of .25 ammunition.
    The telephone rang. He assumed it was the car, early at the rendezvous, but it was the hall-porter saying that there was a representative of ‘Universal Export’ with a letter to be delivered personally to Bond.
    ‘Send him up,’ said Bond, wondering.
    A few minutes later he opened the door to a man in plain-clothes whom he recognized as one of the messengers from the pool at Headquarters.
    ‘Good evening, Sir,’ said the man. He took a large plain envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to Bond. ‘I am to wait and take this back when you have read it, Sir.’
    Bond opened the white envelope and broke the seal of the blue envelope which it contained.
    There was a page of blue typewritten foolscap paper with no address and no signature. Bond recognized the extra-large type used in M.’s personal communications.
    Bond waved the messenger to a chair and sat down at the writing desk opposite the window.
    ‘Washington’, said the memorandum, ‘reports that “Rufus B. Saye” is an alias for Jack Spang, a suspected gangster who was mentioned in the Kefauver Report but who has no criminal record. He is, however, twin brother to Seraffimo Spang and joint controller of the “Spangled Mob” which operates widely in the United States. The brothers Spang bought control of the House of Diamonds five years ago “as an investment”, and nothing unfavourable is known about this business, which appears to be perfectly legitimate.
    ‘The brothers also own a “wire service” which serves off-the-course bookmakers in Nevada and California, and is, therefore, illegal. The name of this is the “Sure Fire Wire Service”. They also own the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, and this is the headquarters of Seraffimo Spang and also, to benefit from the Nevada tax laws, the company offices of the House of Diamonds.
    ‘Washington adds that the Spangled Mob is interested in other illegal