Bond 04 - Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming Page A

admitting that if two of their number, himself and Tiffany Case, had their secrets, there was no reason why many of these dull people should not also be bound on strange missions.
    Bond felt that he was being watched, but it was only the blank gaze of two of the passengers he had put down as American businessmen. Their eyes shifted casually away, and one of them, a man with a young face but prematurely white hair, said something to the other and they both got up, picked up their Stetsons, which, although it was summer, were encased in waterproof covers, and walked over to the bar. Bond heard them order double brandies and water, and the second man, who was pale and fat, took a bottle of pills out of his pocket and swallowed one down with his brandy. Dramamine, guessed Bond. The man would be a bad traveller.
    The B.O.A.C. flight dispatcher was close to Bond. She picked up the telephone – to Flight Control, Bond supposed – and said ‘I have forty passengers in the Final Lounge’. She waited for the okay and then put the telephone back and picked up the microphone.
    ‘Final Lounge?’ Cheerful start to flying the Atlantic, reflected Bond, and then they were all walking across the tarmac and up into the big Boeing and, with a burst of oil and metanol smoke, the engines fired one by one. The chief steward announced over the loudspeaker that the next stop would be Shannon, where they would dine, and that the flying time would be one hour and fifty minutes, and the great double-decker Stratocruiser rolled slowly out to the East-West runway. The aircraft trembled against its brakes as the Captain revved the four engines, one at a time, up to take-off speed, and through his window Bond watched the wing flaps being tested. Then the great plane turned slowly towards the setting sun, there was a jerk as the brakes were released and the grass on either side of the runway flattened as, gathering speed, the Monarch hurtled down the two miles of stressed concrete and rose into the west, aiming ultimately for another little strip of concrete carpet on the other side of the world.
    Bond lit a cigarette and was settling himself with his book when the back of the reclining seat on the left of the pair in front of him was lowered sharply towards him. It was one of the two American businessmen, the fat one, lying slumped down with his safety belt still fastened round his stomach. His face was green and sweating. He held a brief-case clutched across his chest and Bond could read the name on the visiting card inserted in the leather label tag. It said ‘Mr W. Winter’ and below, in neat red ink capitals, was written ‘ MY BLOOD GROUP IS F’ .
    Poor brute, thought Bond. He’s terrified. He knows the plane is going to crash. He just hopes the men who pull him out of the wreckage will give him the right blood transfusion. To him this plane is nothing but a giant tube – full of anonymous deadweight, supported in the air by a handful of sparking plugs, and guided to its destination by a scrap of electricity. He has no faith in it, and no faith in safety statistics. He is suffering the same fears he had as a small child – the fear of noise and the fear of falling. He won’t even dare to go to the lavatory for fear he’ll put his foot through the floor of the plane when he stands up.
    A silhouette broke the rays of the evening sun that filled the cabin and Bond glanced away from the man. It was Tiffany Case. She walked past him to the stairs leading down to the cocktail lounge on the lower deck and disappeared. Bond would have liked to follow her. He shrugged his shoulders and waited for the steward to wheel round the tray of cocktails and the caviar and smoked salmon canapés. He turned again to his book and read a page without understanding a single word. He put the girl out of his mind and started the page again.
    Bond had read a quarter of the book when he felt his ears begin to block as the plane started its fifty-mile descent