Bond followed Colonel Smithers to the lift. While they waited for it, Bond glanced out of the tall window at the end of the passage. He was looking down into the deep well of the back courtyard of the Bank. A trim chocolate-brown lorry with no owner’s name had come into the courtyard through the triple steel gates. Square cardboard boxes were being unloaded from it and put on to a short conveyor belt that disappeared into the bowels of the Bank.
Colonel Smithers came over. ‘Fivers,’ he commented. ‘Just come up from our printing works at Loughton.’
The lift came and they got in. Bond said, ‘I’m not very impressed by the new ones. They look like any other country’s money. The old ones were the most beautiful money in the world.’
They walked across the entrance hall, now dimly lit and dese
