Bond was getting into his car. He had slammed the door. Sub-operator G watched the blue smoke curl from the twin exhausts. He got moving.

On the other side of the road, and a hundred yards behind the Volkswagen, SPECTRE No. 6 slipped his goggles down over his eyes, stamped the 500-c.c. Triumph into gear and accelerated down the road. He swerved neatly through the traffic – he had been a test rider for D.K.W. at one time in his post-war career – and stationed himself ten yards behind the off rear wheel of the Volkswagen and just out of the driver’s line of vision in the windscreen mirror. He had no idea why Sub-operator G was following the Bentley, nor who the Bentley belonged to. His job was to kill the driver of the Volkswagen. He put his hand into the leather satchel he carried slung over his shoulder, took out the heavy grenade – it was twice the normal military size – and watched the traffic ahead for the right pattern to allow his getaway.

Sub-operator G was watching for a similar pattern. He also noted the spacing on the lamp-posts on the pavement in case he might be blocked and have to run off the road. Now the cars ahead were sparse. He stamped his foot into the floor and, driving with his left hand, drew out the Colt with his right. Now he was up with the Bentley’s rear bumper. Now he was alongside. The dark profile was a sitting target. With a last quick glance ahead, he raised the gun.

It was the cheeky iron rattle of the Volkswagen’s air-cooled engine that made Bond turn his head, and it was this minute reduction of the target area that saved his jaw. If he had then accelerated, the second bullet would have got him, but some blessed instinct made his foot stamp the brake at the same time as his head ducked so swiftly that his chin hit the horn button, nearly knocking him out. Almost simultaneously, instead of a third shot, there came the roar of an explosion and the remains of his windscreen, already shattered, cascaded around him. The Bentley had stopped, the engine stalled. Brakes screamed. There were shouts and the panicky screams of horns. Bond shook his head and cautiously raised it. The Volkswagen, one wheel still spinning, lay on its side in front of and broadside to the Bentley. Most of the roof had been blown off. Inside, and half sprawling into the road, was a horrible, glinting mess. Flames were licking at the blistered paintwork. People were gathering. Bond pulled himself together and got quickly out of his car. He shouted, ‘Stand back. The petrol tank’ll go.’ Almost as he said the words there came a dull boom and a cloud of black smoke. The flames spurted. In the distance, sirens sounded. Bond edged through the people and strode quickly back towards his headquarters, his thoughts racing.

The inquiry made Bond lose two planes to New York. By the time the police had put out the fire and had transported the bits of man and the bits of machinery and bomb casing to the morgue it was quite clear that they would have nothing to go on but the shoes, the number on the gun, some fibres and shreds of clothing, and the car. The car-hire people remembered nothing but a man with dark glasses, a driver’s licence in the name of Johnston, and a handful of fivers. The car had been hired three days before for one week. Plenty of people remembered the motor cyclist, but it seemed that he had no rear number plate. He had gone like a bat out of hell towards Baker Street. He wore goggles. Medium build. Nothing else.

Bond had not been able to help. He had seen nothing of the Volkswagen driver. The roof of the Volkswagen had been too low. There had only been a hand and the glitter of a gun.

The Secret Service asked for a copy of the police report and M. instructed that this should be sent to the Thunderball war-room. He saw Bond briefly again, rather impatiently, as if it had all been Bond’s fault. Then he told Bond to forget about it – it was probably something to do with one of his past cases. A hangover of some kind. The police would get to the bottom of it in time. The main thing was Operation Thunderball. Bond had better get a move on.

By the time Bond left the building for the second time, it had begun to rain. One of the mechanics from the car pool at the back of the building had done what he could, knocking out the remains of the Bentley’s windscreen and cleaning the bits out of the car, but when he got home at lunch time Bond was soaked to the skin. He left the car in a near-by garage, telephoned Rolls and his insurance company (he had got too close to a lorry carrying steel lengths, for reinforced concrete presumably. No, he had not got the lorry’s number. Sorry, but you know how it is when these things happen all of a sudden), and then went home and had a bath and changed into his dark blue tropical worsted. He packed carefully – one large suitcase and a holdall for his underwater swimming gear – and went through to the kitchen.

May was looking rather contrite. It seemed as if she might make another speech. Bond held up his hand. ‘Don’t tell me, May. You were right. I can’t do my work on carrot juice. I’ve got to be off in an hour and I need some proper food. Be an angel and make me your kind of scrambled eggs – four eggs. Four rashers of that American hickory-smoked bacon if we’ve got any left, hot buttered toast – your kind, not wholemeal – and a big pot of coffee, double strength. And bring in the drink tray.’

May looked at him, relieved but aghast. ‘Whatever happened, Mister James?’

Bond laughed at the expression on her face. ‘Nothing, May. It just occurred to me that life’s too short. Plenty of time to watch the calories when one goes to heaven.’

Bond left May tut-tutting at this profanity, and went off to look to his armament.

9 | MULTIPLE REQUIEM

So far as SPECTRE was concerned, Plan Omega had gone exactly as Blofeld had known it would and Phases I to III in their entirety had been completed on schedule and without a hitch.

Giuseppe Petacchi, the late Giuseppe Petacchi, had been well chosen. At the age of eighteen he had been co-pilot of a Focke-Wulf 200 from the Adriatic anti-submarine patrol, one of the few hand-picked Italian airmen who had been allowed to handle these German planes. The group was issued with the latest German pressure mines charged with the new Hexogen explosive just when the tide had turned in the Allied battle up the spine of Italy. Petacchi had known where his destiny lay and had gone into business for himself. On a routine patrol, he had shot the pilot and the navigator, very carefully, with one .38 bullet in the back of the head for each of them, and had brought the big plane skimming in, just above the waves to avoid the anti-aircraft fire, to the harbour of Bari. Then he had hung his shirt out of the cockpit as a token of surrender and had waited for the R.A.F. launch. He had been decorated by the English and the Americans for this exploit and had been awarded £10,000 from special funds for his presentation to the Allies of the pressure mine. He had told a highly coloured story to the Intelligence people of having been a one-man resistance ever since he had been old enough to join the Italian Air Force, and he emerged at the end of the war as one of Italy’s most gallant resistance heroes. From then on life had been easy – pilot and later captain in Alitalia when it got going again, and then back into the new Italian Air Force as colonel. His secondment to N.A.T.O. followed and then his appointment as one of the six Italians chosen for the Advance Striking Force. But he was now thirty-four, and it occurred to him that he had had just about enough of flying. He especially did not care for the idea of being part of the spearhead of N.A.T.O. defences. It was time for younger men to provide the heroics. And all his life he had had a passion for owning things – flashy, exciting, expensive things. He had most of what he desired – a couple of gold cigarette cases, a solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on a flexible gold bracelet, a white convertible Lancia Gran Turismo, plenty of sharp clothes, and all the girls he wanted (he had once been briefly married but it had not been a success). Now he desired, and what he desired he often got, a particular Ghia-bodied 3,500 G.T. Maserati he had seen at the Milan motor show. He also wanted Out – out of the pale green corridors of N.A.T.O., out of the air force and, therefore, off to new worlds with a new name. Rio de Janeiro sounded just right. But all this meant a new passport, plenty of money, and ‘organismo’ – the vital ‘organismo’.