Goldfinger (James Bond, #7)

by Ian Fleming

‘Pardon me, but surely it’s Mr Bond ... Mr – er – James Bond?’

Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.

Colonel Smithers’s eyes took on their hard, foxy look. He said, ‘There’s a man who came over to England in 1937. He was a refugee from Riga. Name of Auric Goldfinger. He was only twenty when he arrived, but he must have been a bright lad because he smelled that the Russians would be swallowing his country pretty soon. He was a jeweller and goldsmith by trade, like his father and grandfather who had refined gold for Fabergé.

‘Now I’ll give you one piece of information the Bank didn’t give you. It just happens that I also know what Mr Goldfinger’s gold bars look like. As a matter of fact I was handling one today – scratched Z and all. It had come in with that haul we made last week when the Redland Resident Director’s office “caught fire” in Tangier. You’ll have seen the signals. Well, that’s the twentieth of these particular gold bars that have come our way since the war.’ Bond interrupted, ‘But that Tangier bar was out of the SMERSH safe.’ ‘Exactly. I’ve checked. All the other nineteen bars with the scratched Z have been taken from SMERSH operatives.’ M. paused. He said mildly, ‘D’you know, 007, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Goldfinger doesn’t turn out to be the foreign banker, the treasurer so to speak, of SMERSH.’

Bond had never cared for Orleans. It was a priest and myth ridden town without charm or gaiety. It was content to live off Joan of Arc and give the visitor a hard, holy glare while it took his money.

Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ‘sex equality’. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits – barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied.

SLOWLY THE red dawn broke over the endless plain of black grass that gradually turned to the famous Kentucky blue as the sun ironed out the shadows.

Identify the speaker. I repeat identify the speaker over.’ Bond said and smiled at the sensation his words would cause, ‘Speedbird to C for Charlie. This is British Secret Service agent Number 007, I repeat Number 007. Whitehall Radio will confirm.

He said softly, ‘Now.’ His mouth came ruthlessly down on hers.

Bond's cure for lesbianism.