Live and let die / Живи и дай умереть. Ян ФлемингЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Not for the first time, Bond felt his spine crawl at the cold, brilliant efficiency of the Soviet machine, and at the fear of death and torture which made it work and of which the supreme engine was SMERSH – SMERSH, the very whisper of death.

      Now, in his bedroom at the St. Regis, Bond shook away his thoughts and jumped impatiently out of bed. Well, there was one of them at hand, ready for the crushing. At Royale he had only caught a glimpse of his man. This time it would be face to face. Big Man? Then let it be a giant, a homeric slaying.

      Bond walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains. His room faced north, towards Harlem. Bond gazed for a moment towards the northern horizon, where another man would be in his bedroom asleep, or perhaps awake and thinking conceivably of him, Bond, whom he had seen with Dexter on the steps of the hotel. Bond looked at the beautiful day and smiled. And no man, not even Mr Big, would have liked the expression on his face.

      Bond shrugged his shoulders and walked quickly to the telephone.

      “St. Regis Hotel. Good morning,” said a voice.

      “Room Service, please,” said Bond. “Room Service? I’d like to order breakfast. Half a pint of orange juice, three eggs, lightly scrambled, with bacon, a double portion of cafe Espresso with cream. Toast. Marmalade. Got it?”

      The order was repeated back to him. Bond walked out into the lobby and picked up the five pounds’ weight of newspapers which had been placed quietly inside the door earlier in the morning. There was also a pile of parcels on the hall table which Bond disregarded.

      The afternoon before he had had to submit to a certain degree of Americanization at the hands of the FBI. A tailor had come and measured him for two single-breasted suits in dark blue light-weight worsted (Bond had firmly refused anything more dashing) and a haberdasher had brought chilly white nylon shirts with long points to the collars. He had had to accept half a dozen unusually patterned foulard ties, dark socks with fancy clocks, two or three “display kerchiefs” for his breast pocket, nylon vests and pants (called T-shirts and shorts), a comfortable light-weight camel-hair overcoat with over-buttressed shoulders, a plain grey snap-brim Fedora with a thin black ribbon and two pairs of handstitched and very comfortable black Moccasin “casuals”.

      He also acquired a “Swank” tie-clip in the shape of a whip, an alligator-skin billfold from Mark Cross, a plain Zippo lighter, a plastic “Travel-Pak” containing razor, hairbrush and toothbrush, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses, various other oddments and, finally, a light-weight Hartmann “Skymate” suitcase to contain all these things.

      He was allowed to retain his own Beretta 25 with the skeleton grip and the chamois leather shoulder-holster, but all his other possessions were to be collected at midday and forwarded down to Jamaica to await him.

      He was given a military haircut and was told that he was a New Englander from Boston and that he was on holiday from his job with the London office of the Guaranty Trust Company. He was reminded to ask for the “check” rather the “bill”, to say “cab” instead of “taxi” and (this from Leiter) to avoid words of more than two syllables. (“You can get through any American conversation,” advised Leiter, “with ‘Yeah’, ‘Nope’ and ‘Sure’.”) The English word to be avoided at all costs, added Leiter, was “Ectually”. Bond had said that this word was not part of his vocabulary.

      Bond looked grimly at the pile of parcels which contained his new identity, stripped off his pyjamas for the last time (“We mostly sleep in the raw in America, Mr Bond”) and gave himself a sizzling cold shower. As he shaved he examined his face in the glass. The thick comma of black hair above his right eyebrow had lost some of its tail and his hair was trimmed close across the temples. Nothing could be done about the thin vertical scar down his right cheek, although the FBI had experimented with “Cover-Mark”, or about the coldness and hint of anger in his grey-blue eyes, but there was the mixed blood of America in the black hair and high cheekbones and Bond thought he might get by – except, perhaps, with women.

      Naked, Bond walked out into the lobby and tore open some of the packages. Later, in white shirt and dark blue trousers, he went into the sitting-room, pulled a chair up to the writing-desk near the window and opened The Travellers Tree, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.