Bond took another shower and dressed in shirt, slacks and sandals and wandered over to the little bar on the waterfront and ordered a double Walker’s de Luxe Bourbon on the rocks and watched the pelicans diving for their dinner. Then he had another drink with a water chaser to break it down and wondered about 3½ Love Lane and what the ‘samples’ would consist of and how he would take Scaramanga. This had been worrying him since he had been given his orders. It was all very fine to be told to ‘eliminate’ the man, but James Bond had never liked killing in cold blood and to provoke a draw against a man who was possibly the fastest gun in the world was suicide. Well, he would just have to see which way the cards fell. The first thing to do was to clean up his cover. The diplomatic passport he would leave with Goodnight. He would now be ‘Mark Hazard’ of the ‘Transworld Consortium’, the splendidly vague title which could cover almost any kind of human activity. His business would have to be with the West Indies Sugar Company because that was the only business, apart from Kaiser Bauxite, that existed in the comparatively deserted western districts of Jamaica. There was also the Negril project for developing one of the most spectacular beaches in the world, beginning with the building of the Thunderbird Hotel. He could be a rich man looking around for a building site. If his hunch was right, and the childish predictions of his horoscope, and if he came up with Scaramanga at the romantic Love Lane address, it would be a question of playing it by ear.

The prairie fire of the sunset raged briefly in the west and the molten sea cooled off into moonlit gunmetal.

A naked arm smelling of Chanel No. 5 snaked round his neck and warm lips kissed the corner of his mouth. As he reached up to hold the arm where it was, a breathless voice said, ‘Oh, James! I’m sorry. I just had to! It’s so wonderful to have you back.’

Bond put his hand under the soft chin and lifted up her mouth and kissed her full on the half-open lips. He said, ‘Why didn’t we ever think of doing that before, Goodnight? Three years with only that door between us! What must we have been thinking of?’

She stood away from him. The golden bell of hair fell back to embrace her neck. She hadn’t changed. Still only the faintest trace of make-up, but now the face was golden with sunburn from which the wide-apart blue eyes, now ablaze with the moon, shone out with that challenging directness that had disconcerted him when they had argued over some office problem. Still the same glint of health over the good bones and the broad uninhibited smile from the full lips that, in repose, were so exciting. But now the clothes were different. Instead of the severe shirt and skirt of the days at Headquarters, she was wearing a single string of pearls and a one-piece short-skirted frock in the colour of a pink gin with a lot of bitters in it – the orangey-pink of the inside of a conch shell. It was all tight against the bosom and the hips. She smiled at his scrutiny. ‘The buttons are down the back. This is standard uniform for a tropical Station.’

‘I can just see Q Branch dreaming it up. I suppose one of the pearls has a death pill in it.’

‘Of course. But I can’t remember which. I’ll just have to swallow the whole string. Can I have a daiquiri, please, instead?’

Bond gave the order. ‘Sorry, Goodnight. My manners are slipping. I was dazzled. It’s so tremendous finding you here. And I’ve never seen you in your working clothes before. Now then, tell me the news. Where’s Ross? How long have you been here? Have you managed to cope with all that junk I gave you?’

Her drink came. She sipped it carefully. Bond remembered that she rarely drank and didn’t smoke. He ordered another for himself and felt vaguely guilty that this was his third double and that she wouldn’t know it and when it came wouldn’t recognize it as a double. He lit a cigarette. Nowadays he was trying to keep to twenty and failing by about five. He stabbed the cigarette out. He was getting near to his target and the rigid training rules that had been drilled into him at The Park must from now on be observed meticulously. The champagne wouldn’t count. He was amused by the conscience this girl had awakened in him. He was also surprised and impressed.

Mary Goodnight knew that the last question was the one he would want answered first. She reached into a plain straw handbag on a gold metal chain and handed him a thick envelope. She said, ‘Mostly in used singles. A few fivers. Shall I debit you direct or put it in as expenses?’

‘Direct, please.’

‘The car’s outside. You remember Strangways? Well it’s his old Sunbeam Alpine. The Station bought it and now I use it. The tank’s full and it goes like a bird. The top man at Frome is a man called Tony Hugill. Ex-navy. Nice man. Nice wife. Nice children. Does a good job. Has a lot of trouble with cane burning and other small sabotage – mostly with thermite bombs brought in from Cuba. Cuba’s sugar crop is Jamaica’s chief rival and with Hurricane Flora and all the rains they’ve been having over there, the Cuban crop is going to be only about three million tons this year, compared with a Batista level of about seven, and very late, because the rains have played havoc with the sucrose content.’ She smiled her wide smile. ‘No secrets. Just reading the Gleaner. So it’s worth Castro’s trouble to try and keep the world price up by doing as much damage as he can to rival crops so that he’s in a better position to bargain with Russia. He’s only got his sugar to sell and he wants food badly. This wheat the Americans are selling to Russia. A lot of that will find its way back to Cuba, in exchange for sugar, to feed the Cuban sugar croppers.’ She smiled again. ‘Pretty daft business, isn’t it? I don’t think Castro can hold out much longer. The missile business in Cuba must have cost Russia about a billion pounds. And now they’re having to pour money into Cuba, money and goods, to keep the place on its feet. I can’t help thinking they’ll pull out soon and leave Castro to go the way Batista went. It’s a fiercely Catholic country and Hurricane Flora was considered as the final judgment from heaven. It sat over the island and simply whipped it, day after day, for five days. No hurricane in history has ever behaved like that. The churchgoers don’t miss an omen like that. It was a straight indictment of the regime.’

Bond said with admiration, ‘Goodnight, you’re a treasure. You’ve certainly been doing your homework.’

The direct blue eyes looked straight into his, dodging the compliment. ‘This is the stuff I live with here. It’s built into the Station. But I thought you might like some background to Frome and what I’ve said explains why WISCO are getting these cane fires. At least we think it is. Apparently there’s a tremendous chess game going on all over the world in sugar – in what they call sugar futures, that’s sort of buying the stuff forward for delivery dates later in the year. Washington’s trying to keep the price down, to upset Cuba’s economy, but there’s increased world consumption and a shortage largely due to Flora and the tremendous rains we’ve been having here after Flora which have delayed the Jamaican crop. I don’t understand it all, but it’s in Cuba’s interest to do as much damage as possible to the Jamaican crop and this place Frome you’re interested in produces about a quarter of Jamaica’s total output.’ She took a sip at her drink. ‘Well, that’s all about sugar. The top man there is this man Hugill. We’ve had a lot to do with him, so he’ll be friendly. He was in Naval Intelligence during the war, sort of commando job, so he knows the score. The car’s a bit aged but it’s still pretty fast and it won’t let you down. It’s rather bashed about so it won’t be conspicuous. I’ve put the survey map in the glove compartment.’

‘That’s fine. Now, last question and then we’ll go and have dinner and tell each other our life stories. But, by the way, what’s happened to your chief, Ross?’