Moonraker (James Bond, #3)

by Ian Fleming

And suddenly Bond didn’t care about the high stakes. Suddenly all he wanted to do was to give this hairy ape the lesson of his life, give him a shock which would make him remember this evening for ever, remember Bond, remember M, remember the last time he would cheat at Blades, remember the time of day, the weather outside, what he had had for dinner.

Before he slept he reflected, as he had often reflected in other moments of triumph at the card table, that the gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.

Bond had left Scotland Yard with the feeling that he had achieved Clausewitz’s first principle. He had made his base secure.