To my gentle Reader William Plomer PART ONE: HAPPENSTANCE CHAPTER ONE REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON JAMES BOND, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death. It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix - the licence to kill in the Secret Service - it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional - worse, it was death-watch
