Bond looked down at the weapon that had done it. And the difference, the thing that had gone out of the stinking Mexican bandit, was greater than all Mexico. Then something had gone out of him, out of the envelope of flesh and cheap clothes, and had left him an empty paper bag waiting for the dustcart. This had been a Mexican with a name and an address, an employment card and perhaps a driving licence. What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one. Yes, it had certainly been time for him to die but when Bond had killed him, less than twenty-four hours before, life had gone out of the body so quickly, so utterly, that Bond had almost seen it come out of his mouth as it does, in the shape of a bird, in Haitian primitives. A capungo is a bandit who will kill for as little as forty pesos, which is about twenty-five shillings-though probably he had been paid more to attempt the killing of Bond-and, from the look of him, he had been an instrument of pain and misery all his life. He was an evil man, a man they call in Mexico a capungo. It wasn't that he hadn't deserved to die. And yet there had been something curiously impressive about the death of the Mexican. Regret was unprofessional-worse, it was death watch beetle in the soul. As a secret agent who held the rare double-0 prefix-the licence to kill in the Secret Service - it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon.

He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it.

It was part of his profession to kill people. REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming