You Only Live Twice (James Bond, #12)

by Ian Fleming

M. looked him coldly in the eye. ‘It’s 007. I’m getting more and more worried about him.’ ‘You’ve read my two reports on his condition. Anything new?’ ‘No. Just the same. He’s going slowly to pieces. Late at the office. Skimps his work. Makes mistakes. He’s drinking too much and losing a lot of money at one of these new gambling clubs. It all adds up to the fact that one of my best men is on the edge of becoming a security risk. Absolutely incredible considering his record.’ Sir James Molony shook his head with conviction. ‘It’s not in the least incredible. You either don’t read my reports or you don’t pay enough attention to them. I have said all along that the man is suffering from shock.’

The state of your health, the state of the weather, the wonders of nature – these are things that rarely occupy the average man’s mind until he reaches the middle thirties. It is only on the threshold of middle-age that you don’t take them all for granted, just part of an unremarkable background to more urgent, more interesting things.

God, it was hot. He wiped a hand across his forehead and then down the side of his trousers. He used not to sweat like this. The weather must be changing. Atomic bomb, whatever the scientists might say to the contrary.

Then, with a jumble of his health, the heat, and the corpses of bees revolving lazily round his mind, James Bond strolled off in the direction of the tall grey building whose upper storeys showed themselves above the trees. It was three thirty. Only two more hours to go before his next drink!

Bond took his usual place across the desk from M.’s tall-armed chair. He noticed that there was no file on the expanse of red leather in front of the chair. And the In and Out baskets were both empty. Suddenly he felt really bad about everything – about letting M. down, letting the Service down, letting himself down. This empty desk, the empty chair, were the final accusation. We have nothing for you, they seemed to say. You’re no use to us any more. Sorry. It’s been nice knowing you, but there it is.

‘Nonsense. There’s nothing the matter with you. You’ve been through a bad time. You’ve had good reason to be a bit under the weather. As for the last two assignments, anyone can make mistakes. But I can’t have idle hands around the place, so I’m taking you out of the Double-O Section.’

Well now, the Japanese are past masters at it. They’ve got the right mentality for finicky problems in letters and numbers. Since the war, under C.I.A. guidance, they’ve built incredible cracking machines – far ahead of I.B.M. and so forth. And for the last year they’ve been reading the cream of the Soviet traffic from Vladivostok and Oriental Russia – diplomatic, naval, air-force, the lot.’ ‘That’s terrific, sir.’ ‘Terrific for the C.I.A.’ ‘Aren’t they passing it on to us, sir? I thought we were hand in glove with C.I.A. all along the line.’ ‘Not in the Pacific. They regard that as their private preserve.

He’s in fief’–Bond was amused by the old Scottish expression–‘to the C.I.A. He probably doesn’t think much of us.’ M.’s mouth bent down at the corners. ‘People don’t these days. They may be right or wrong. I’m not a politician.

We haven’t had a Station in Japan since 1950. No traffic. It all went to the Americans. You’ll be working under the Australians.

And, anyway, the C.I.A.’s hands aren’t as clean as all that. We’ve got a whole file of cases where they’ve crossed wires with us round the world. Often dangerously.

‘For God’s sake, Dikko! How in hell did we get on to politics? Let’s go and get some food. I’ll agree there’s a certain aboriginal common sense in what you say ...’ ‘Don’t talk to me about the aborigines! What in hell do you think you know about the aborigines? Do you know that in my country there’s a move afoot, not afoot, at full gallop, to give the aborigines the vote? You pommy poofter. You give me any more of that liberal crap and I’ll have your balls for a bow-tie.’ Bond said mildly, ‘What’s a poofter?’

Bond assumed that this man would know the published facts of the Secret Service Vote. He said, ‘Under ten million pounds a year doesn’t go far when there is the whole world to cover.’ The teeth glistened under the neon strip lighting. ‘At least for the last ten years you have saved money by closing down your activities in this part of the world.’ ‘Yes. We rely on the C.I.A. to do our work here for us. They are most efficient and helpful.’ ‘As much so under McCone as under Dulles?’ The old fox! ‘Nearly so. Nowadays they are even more inclined to regard the Pacific as their own back garden.’

When Bond laughed, Tiger also laughed, but carefully. Bond said, ‘We had a man called Captain Cook and various others who discovered much of this garden. Australia and New Zealand are two very great countries. You must admit that our interest in this half of the world is perfectly legitimate.’ ‘My dear Commander. You were lucky that we struck at Pearl Harbour rather than at Australia. Can you doubt that we would have occupied that country and New Zealand if we had done otherwise? These are big and important land spaces, insufficiently developed. You could not have defended them. The Americans would not have. If our policy had been different, we would now own half the British Commonwealth.

The Oriental way of life is particularly attractive to the American who wishes to escape from a culture which, I am sure you will agree, has become, to say the least of it, more and more unattractive except to the lower grades of the human species to whom bad but plentiful food, shiny toys such as the automobile and the television, and the “quick buck”, often dishonestly earned, or earned in exchange for minimal labour or skills, are the summum bonum, if you will allow the sentimental echo from my Oxford education.’

For, in their impermanent world, they recognize these as permanent things just as, in their ignorant and childish way, they admire the fictions of the Wild West and other American myths that have become known to them, not through their education, of which they have none, but through television.’

Presumably you’re talking of the lower level G.I.s – second-generation Americans who are basically Irish or Germans or Czechs or Poles who probably ought to be working in the fields or coalmines of their countries of origin instead of swaggering around a conquered country under the blessed coverlet of the Stars and Stripes with too much money to spend.

‘You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face.’

If his wife is with him, you will throttle her too. She is certainly involved in all this business, and anyway she is too ugly to live.

And, compared with the blazing significance to him of that single Russian word on the scrap of paper, his life on Kuro, his love for Kissy Suzuki, were, in Tiger’s phrase, of as little account as sparrows’ tears.