"Well, Ah'll be damned," Bond stammered. "He looks just lahk me, 'cept after a shave!" Bond gently rubbed his phony beard.

"You know that man?"

"No. Could be mah twin brothah, 'cept Ah doan have no twin brothah."

"He's British Secret Service, we think. You now see why I'm determined to have help from you, Tipton. I want you to impersonate this man. You already look a lot like him. We give you a shave, maybe arrange your hair a little differently, you ought to be able to pass."

I wonder who told Stamp that I'm with the British Secret Service, Bond thought. The Secret Service hardly ever makes its way to Minnesota.

"He's a Limey, huh?" Bond decided to try to impersonate a Georgia man doing a bad Cockney accent: "Pardon me, Govnah! 'Ave you got a foyvah?" Bond smiled at how comical he sounded.

Stamp was unamused. "We've got someone who can help you with your accent. Hopefully you won't have to say too much. Maybe you can plead laryngitis."

Bond turned serious. "What'd this fellah do to ya?"

"Nothing. He's not the problem." Stamp fished another photograph from the envelope and slid it over to Bond. "This dude is the problem."

Bond looked at the photograph. It was Double-Oh-Four, one of the newer Double-Oh men.

Someone's been giving Stamp information about my organization.

Bond pretended to be nonplussed. "And who's he?"

"British Secret Service, serves with the man you'll be impersonating. All you have to do, Tipton, is make contact with this man, who will recognize you as a colleague of his. You will then send this man to a place where I tell you to send him, and someone else will do the rest."

So, Stamp's "problem" was Double-Oh-Four. And he wanted Tipton to impersonate Double-Oh-Seven, to lure Double-Oh-Four into a fatal trap.

Stamp would pay $750,000 for that? There didn't seem to be much risk. Even if Double-O-Four were to catch on that the man he met was an imposter, there was little chance the imposter would be hurt or killed. The imposter might be led on, or tricked, or fed false intelligence, or maybe captured and interrogated. But the risk wasn't much beyond that.

It didn't add up.

But maybe Stamp doesn't know how things work in the intelligence community?

Bond pointed to Double-Oh-Four's picture. "What'd he do to ya?"

"Never mind about that. All you have to do is get this guy to trust you, and get him into a vulnerable position; we fix him right up, and you get seven hundred and fifty thousand bucks. Easy money."

"Lahk hell, easy," Bond said, caustically. "Trickin' local cops is one thing, in mah experience. Trickin' the Feds is a little toughah. But trickin' intelligence people? That's anothah ball game altogethah. Ah've run inta a couple o' them, and they're a suspicious group. Hard ta fool 'em; they're always on the lookout for trickereh."

Stamp was unshaken. "A man of your reputation, you ought to be able to pull this off. Besides, we think these men know each other, but they don't know each other all that well."

True enough, Bond thought. I wonder how Stamp learned that?

"He ought to know you on sight," Stamp continued. "He'll probably know that your name is Bond. You ought to be able to get his trust fairly easily."

"Bond, ya say?"

"Bond is the name of the man you'll be doubling."

Bond nodded, and rubbed the back of his head as he pretended to think about Stamp's proposal. What Bond was really thinking, though, was that M should have told him about Stamp, especially since one of the Double-Ohs was involved with Stamp. The FBI certainly would have told M the identity of the target of their operation, wouldn't they? Why did M withhold this from me? The answer seemed inescapable. The FBI didn't tell M the whole story.

Bond tried to put those questions aside. For the time being, his course of action was clear.

"That kinda moneh is just too hard to pass up," Bond grinned. "And Ah can tell you're not a man who takes 'No' for an anssah, so yeah, Ah'll impersonate this Limey. Just show me the cash and we got a deal."

Stamp seemed pleased. "I'll have the cash brought in."

Bond looked at his own photo, then showed it to Stamp. "Am Ah right to assume that you will take the real fellah out of the pitchah?"

"Don't worry about that. We know where the real guy is, and he's not going to give us any trouble."