Diamonds Are Forever (james Bond, #4)

The fourth novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, Diamonds Are Forever follows the British secret agent as he infiltrates a diamond smuggling pipeline stretching from the mines of Sierra Leone to the criminal underworld of the United States.

The story opens in the African bush near the borders of French Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where a smuggler posing as a dentist at nearby diamond mines waits for a helicopter rendezvous. He extracts uncut diamonds from miners' mouths during sham dental appointments, paying them in paper currency that evades X-ray detection. A German pilot collects the stones and flies them onward through the first link of a sprawling pipeline.

In London, Bond's superior, M, head of the British Secret Service, briefs him on the operation. Two million pounds' worth of diamonds are smuggled out of Africa each year, believed to be flowing into the American market. Scotland Yard's Special Branch has identified the current courier, a burglar named Peter Franks, and M's plan is to arrest Franks and insert Bond in his place. Bond will carry the diamonds to America and trace the operation to its source. M also flags the House of Diamonds, a prominent American jewellery firm with a suspicious London office run by a man called Rufus B. Saye.

At Scotland Yard, Assistant Commissioner Vallance explains that Franks is to meet a woman named Case at the Trafalgar Palace hotel, where she will accompany him on the smuggling run. Bond also visits the House of Diamonds in disguise with a sergeant from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), who mentions fictitious diamond types that Saye fails to catch, confirming he is no genuine merchant.

Posing as Franks, Bond meets Tiffany Case at the Trafalgar Palace: an attractive, guarded American blonde with an ironical manner. She instructs Bond to fly to New York under his real name with golf clubs and await a set of Dunlop 65 golf balls in which the diamonds will be concealed. Bond persuades her to agree to dinner at the "21" Club in New York. After he leaves, Tiffany phones a London number and reports to a wire-recorder operated by an unknown controller she knows only as ABC.

Before departing, Bond receives a memorandum from M revealing that Saye is actually Jack Spang, twin brother of Seraffimo Spang. Together they control the Spangled Mob, one of America's most powerful criminal organizations. The Spangs own the House of Diamonds, an illegal wire service called Sure Fire, and the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, Seraffimo's headquarters. M orders Bond to withdraw if he encounters dangerous contact, but Bond resolves to interpret this instruction loosely.

In New York, Bond delivers the diamonds to Shady Tree, a red-haired man with a barrel chest and sharp voice who serves as the Mob's intermediary. Tree's driver cuts open the golf balls and extracts eighteen uncut diamonds. Rather than paying Bond directly, Tree gives him $1,000 as a supposed gambling debt and sends him to Saratoga to bet on a fixed horse race: Shy Smile in the Perpetuities Stakes, at odds of at least five to one.

On the street afterward, Bond is surprised by his old friend Felix Leiter, a former CIA agent now working for the Pinkerton detective agency. Leiter has been investigating Shy Smile independently and reveals that the real horse was shot months ago and replaced by a fast ringer called Pickapepper, surgically altered to match. Over lunch, Leiter shares Tiffany's backstory: Her mother ran a brothel in San Francisco, and after refusing to pay protection money, the local mob retaliated by assaulting sixteen-year-old Tiffany, an attack that left her permanently distrustful of men.

At dinner at the "21" Club, Tiffany reveals that two brothers named Spang run the operation, that ABC issues her orders via wire-recorder, and that Seraffimo handles gambling and horses from Las Vegas. The evening ends with Tiffany kissing Bond fiercely at her hotel door and warning him to look after himself before slamming the door.

Bond and Leiter drive to Saratoga, where Leiter has blackmailed jockey Tingaling Bell into sabotaging the race: Bell must ride to win but deliberately foul another horse, ensuring disqualification. On race day, the plan works, and Shy Smile is disqualified after crossing the finish line first. That evening, Bond visits the Acme Mud and Sulphur Baths to pay Bell, but two hooded gunmen burst in. The larger one, distinguishable by a red wart on his thumb, pours scalding mud over the jockey's face. Leiter identifies the attackers as Wint and Kidd, the Spangled Mob's top enforcers.

Tree directs Bond to Las Vegas for a new pay-off at the Tiara Hotel. Tiffany deals Bond $5,000 in blackjack winnings from a fixed deck. Defying orders to stop gambling, Bond walks to the roulette table and wins three successive bets, pocketing $20,000 total. Seraffimo Spang appears in the casino and watches with cold hostility.

The next evening, Bond and Ernie Cureo, a Pinkerton undercover agent posing as a cab driver, are pursued by gunmen. Cureo is shot in the arm, and despite Bond returning fire, the Mob's associates capture Bond and drive him across the desert to Spectreville, Seraffimo Spang's restored ghost town.

In the stateroom of the Pullman coach The Sierra Belle, coupled to Spang's prized locomotive the Cannonball, Seraffimo reveals that a coded signal from London has exposed Bond: Peter Franks is in police custody, and Bond is an impostor. Spang orders Wint and Kidd to beat Bond savagely.

Tiffany rescues Bond after the beating, having prepared a railroad handcar for escape. Bond sets fire to Spectreville's buildings, and they flee down the track. When the Cannonball bears down on them, Bond heaves a rusty switch to divert the main line onto a disused branch. The locomotive thunders onto the branch, crashes into the mountains, and explodes, killing Seraffimo Spang. Leiter finds the pair beside the highway and drives them to safety.

Leiter's contacts arrange passage on the Queen Elizabeth to England, but Wint and Kidd slip aboard under aliases. During the voyage, Bond and Tiffany grow close. She opens up about her past, describing how she drifted through menial jobs and alcohol addiction before learning to deal cards in Reno and joining Spang's operation. They fall in love.

A cable from London wakes Bond at three in the morning: A search of Saye's London office has uncovered messages revealing that ABC ordered Tiffany's murder for $20,000, with Wint and Kidd aboard to carry it out. The cable identifies Saye as ABC, the codename derived from the French pronunciation of A-B-C ("Ah-Bay-Say"), which approximates "Saye." Bond finds Tiffany's cabin empty and realizes the aliases Winter and Kitteridge belong to Wint and Kidd. He tears his bedsheets into a rope, climbs out his porthole, and lowers himself to their cabin. Crashing through the porthole, he finds Tiffany held captive. Bond kills both men and stages the scene to resemble a quarrel between the two.

In the final chapter, M dispatches Bond to Africa to close the case. Jack Spang, having fled London, arrives by helicopter at the thorn bush to shut down the pipeline, shooting the smuggler dead. Bond, positioned nearby with a British army unit and a Bofors anti-aircraft gun, fires on the helicopter as it lifts off. The rounds destroy the tail rotor, and the helicopter spirals into the thorn bush and explodes, killing Jack Spang, the last member of the Spangled Mob. Sitting beside the wreckage, Bond reflects that the pipeline is destroyed, but the diamonds, indestructible and permanent, will outlast all the violence done in their name.