Ian Fleming - YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (James Bond Classic)

Bond had turned. The huge man in the rumpled grey suit thrust out a hand as big as a small ham. ‘Glad to meet you. I’m Henderson. As you were the only pommy on the plane, I guess you’re Bond. Here. Give me that bag. Got a car outside and the sooner we get away from this blankety blank madhouse the better.’

Henderson looked like a middle-aged prize fighter who has retired and taken to the bottle. His thin suit bulged with muscle round the arms and shoulders and with fat round the waist. He had a craggy, sympathetic face, rather stony blue eyes, and a badly broken nose. He was sweating freely (Bond was to find that he was always sweating), and as he barged his way through the crowd, using Bond’s suitcase as a battering ram, he extracted a rumpled square of terry cloth from his trouser-pocket and wiped it round his neck and face. The crowd parted unresentfully to let the giant through, and Bond followed in his wake to a smart Toyopet saloon waiting in a no-parking area. The chauffeur got out and bowed. Henderson fired a torrent of instructions at him in fluent Japanese and followed Bond into the back seat, settling himself with a grunt. ‘Taking you to your hotel first – the Okura, latest of the Western ones. American tourist got murdered at the Royal Oriental the other day and we don’t want to lose you all that soon. Then we’ll do a bit of serious drinking. Had some dinner?’

‘About six of them, as far as I can remember. J.A.L. certainly takes good care of your stomach.’

‘Why did you choose the willow-pattern route? How was the old ruptured duck?’

‘They told me the bird was a crane. Very dainty. But efficient. Thought I might as well practise being inscrutable before plunging into all this.’ Bond waved at the cluttered shambles of the Tokyo suburbs through which they were tearing at what seemed to Bond a suicidal speed. ‘Doesn’t look the most attractive city in the world. And why are we driving on the left?’

‘God knows,’ said Henderson moodily. ‘The bloody Japs do everything the wrong way round. Read the old instruction books wrong, I daresay. Light switches go up instead of down. Taps turn to the left. Door handles likewise. Why, they even race their horses clockwise instead of anti-clockwise like civilized people. As for Tokyo, it’s bloody awful. It’s either too hot or too cold or pouring with rain. And there’s an earthquake about every day. But don’t worry about them. They just make you feel slightly drunk. The typhoons are worse. If one starts to blow, go into the stoutest bar you can see and get drunk. But the first ten years are the worst. It’s got its point when you know your way around. Bloody expensive if you live Western, but I stick to the back alleys and do all right. Really quite exhilarating. Got to know the lingo though, and when to bow and take off your shoes and so on. You’ll have to get the basic routines straight pretty quickly if you’re going to make any headway with the people you’ve come to see. Underneath the stiff collars and striped pants in the government departments, there’s still plenty of the old samurai tucked away. I laugh at them for it, and they laugh back because they’ve got to know my line of patter. But that doesn’t mean I don’t bow from the waist when I know it’s expected of me and when I want something. You’ll get the hang of it all right.’ Henderson fired some Japanese at the driver who had been glancing frequently in his driving mirror. The driver laughed and replied cheerfully. ‘Thought so,’ said Henderson. ‘We’ve got ourselves a tail. Typical of old Tiger. I told him you were staying at the Okura, but he wants to make sure for himself. Don’t worry. It’s just part of his crafty ways. If you find one of his men breathing down your neck in bed tonight, or a girl if you’re lucky, just talk to them politely and they’ll bow and hiss themselves out.’

But a solitary sleep had followed the serious drinking in the Bamboo Bar of the Okura, and the next day had been spent doing the sights and getting some cards printed that described Bond as Second Secretary in the Cultural Department of the Australian Embassy. ‘They know that’s our intelligence side,’ said Henderson, ‘and they know I’m the head of it and you’re my temporary assistant, so why not spell it out for them?’ And that evening they had gone for more serious drinking to Henderson’s favourite bar, Melody’s, off the Ginza, where everybody called Henderson ‘Dikko’ or ‘Dikko-san’, and where they were ushered respectfully to the quiet corner table that appeared to be his Stammtisch .

And now Henderson reached under the table and, with a powerful wrench, pulled out the wires and left them hanging. ‘I’ll give that black bastard Melody hell for this when I get around to it,’ he said belligerently. ‘And to think of all I’ve done for the dingo bastard! Used to be a favourite pub of the English Colony and the Press Club layabouts. Had a good restaurant attached to it. That’s gone now. The Eyteye cook trod on the cat and spilled the soup and he picked up the cat and threw it into the cooking stove. Of course that got around pretty quick, and all the animal-lovers and sanctimonious bastards got together and tried to have Melody’s licence taken away. I managed to put in squeeze in the right quarter and saved him, but everyone quit his restaurant and he had to close it. I’m the only regular who’s stuck to him. And now he goes and does this to me! Oh well, he’ll have had the squeeze put on hi m, I suppose. Anyway, that’s the end of the tape so far as T.T.’s concerned. I’ll give him hell too. He ought to have learned by now that me and my friends don’t want to assassinate the Emperor or blow up the Diet or something.’ Dikko glared around him as if he proposed to do both those things. ‘Now then, James, to business. I’ve fixed up for you to meet Tiger tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll pick you up and take you there. “The Bureau of All-Asian Folkways.” I won’t describe it to you. It’d spoil it. Now, I don’t really know what you’re here for. Spate of top secret cables from Melbourne. To be deciphered by yours truly in person. Thanks very much! And my Ambassador, Jim Saunderson, good bloke, says he doesn’t want to know anything about it. Thinks it’d be even better if he didn’t meet you at all. Okay with you? No offence, but he’s a wise guy and likes to keep his hands clean. And I don’t want to know anything about your job either. That way, you’re the only one who gets the powdered bamboo in his coffee. But I gather you want to get some high-powered gen out of Tiger without the C.I.A. knowing anything about it. Right? Well that’s going to be a dicey business. Tiger’s a career man with a career mind. Although, on the surface, he’s a hundred per cent demokorasu , he’s a deep one – very deep indeed. The American occupation and the American influence here look like a very solid basis for a total American-Japanese alliance. But once a Jap, always a Jap. It’s the same with all the other great nations – Chinese, Russian, German, English. It’s their bones that matter, not their lying faces. And all those races have got tremendous bones. Compared with the bones, the smiles or scowls don’t mean a thing. And time means nothing for them either. Ten years is the blink of a star for the big ones. Get me? So Tiger, and his superiors, who, I suppose, are the Diet and, in the end, the Emperor, will look at your proposition principally from two angles. Is it immediately desirable, today? Or is it a long-term investment? Something that may pay off for the country in ten, twenty years. And, if I were you, I’d stick to that spiel – the long-term talk. These people, people like Tiger, who’s an absolutely top man in Japan, don’t think in terms of days or months or years. They think in terms of centuries. Quite right, when you come to think of it.’