It had all depended on the man’s accuracy. Nash had said that Bond would get one bullet through the heart. Bond had taken the gamble that Nash’s aim was as good as he said it was. And it had been.
Bond lay like a dead man lies. Before the bullet, he had recalled the corpses he had seen—how their bodies had looked in death. Now he lay totally collapsed, like a broken doll, his arms and legs carefully outflung.
He explored his sensations. Where the bullet had crashed into the book, his ribs were on fire. The bullet must have gone through the cigarette case and then through the other half of the book. He could feel the hot lead over his heart. It felt as if it was burning inside his ribs. It was only a sharp pain in his head where it had hit the woodwork, and the violet sheen on the scuffed
