From Russia, With Love/Casino Royale/Live and Let Die/Diamonds are Forever/Dr No/Goldfinger [antikvár]

Part One THE PLAN Chapter One Roseland The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead. He might have been drowned and fished out of the pool and laid out on the grass to dry while the police or the next-of-kin were summoned. Even ihc little pile of objects in the grass beside his head might have been his personal effects, meticulously assembled in full view so that no one should think that something had been stolen by his rescuers. To judge by the glittering pile, this had been, or was, a rich man. It contained the typical membership badges of the rich man's club - a money clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a well-used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval gold cigarette case with ihc wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means Faberge, and the .sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to take into the garden -The LilLle Nugget - an old P. G. Wodehouse. There was also a bulky gold wrislwatch on a well-used brown crocodile strap. It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets, and it had a sweep second-hand and two little windows in the face to tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon. The story it now told was 2.30 on June lOth with the moon three-quarters full. A blue and green dragon-fly flashed out from among the rose bushes at the end of the garden and hovered in mid-air a few inches above the base of the man's spine. It had been attracted by the golden shimmer of the June sunshine on the ridge of fine blond hairs above the coccyx. A puff of breeze came olf the sea. The tiny field of hairs bent gently. The dragon-fiy darted nervously sideways and hung above the man's left shoulder, looking down. The young grass below the man's open mouth stirred. A large drop of sweat rolled down the side of the Meshy nose and dropped glittering into the grass. "l"ha( was enough. The dragon-fly flashed away through the roses and over the jagged glass on to|) of the high garden wall. It might be good food, but it moved. 'I'he garden in which the man lay was about an acre of well-kept lawn surrounded on three sides by thickly banked rose bushes from which came the steady murmur of bees. Behind the drowsy noise of the bees the sea boomed softly at the bottom of the di(f at the end of the garden. There was no view of the sea from the garden - no view of anything except of ihe sky and the clouds above the twelve-foot wall. In fact you could I