James Bond Anthology (358 page)

‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll give you a count-down from five. Now! Five, four, three, two, one. Fire!’

The ground shuddered slightly and the air sang as the five whirling scraps of cupro-nickel spat off into the dusk. The target went down and quickly rose again decorated with four small white discs closely grouped on the bull. There was no fifth disc – not even a black one to show an inner or an outer.

‘The last round was low,’ said the Range Officer lowering his night-glasses. ‘Thanks for the contribution. We sift the sand on those butts at the end of every year. Never get less than fifteen tons of good lead and copper scrap out of them. Good money.’

Bond had got to his feet. Corporal Menzies from the Armourers’ section appeared from the pavilion of the Gun Club and knelt down to dismantle the Winchester and its rest. He looked up at Bond. He said with a hint of criticism, ‘You were taking it a bit fast, sir. Last round was bound to jump wide.’

‘I know, Corporal. I wanted to see how fast I
could
take it. I’m not blaming the weapon. It’s the hell of a fine job. Please tell the Armourer so from me. Now I’d better get moving. You’re finding your own way back to London, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Good night, sir.’

The Chief Range Officer handed Bond a record of his shoot – two sighting shots and then ten rounds at each hundred yards up to five hundred. ‘Damned good firing with this visibility. You ought to come back next year and have a bash at the Queen’s Prize. It’s open to all comers nowadays – British Commonwealth, that is.’

‘Thanks. Trouble is, I’m not all that much in England. And thanks for spotting for me.’ Bond glanced at the distant Clock Tower. On either side, the red danger flag and the red signal drum were coming down to show that firing had ceased. The hands stood at nine fifteen. ‘I’d like to have bought you a drink, but I’ve got an appointment in London. Can we hold it over until that Queen’s Prize you were talking about?’

The Range Officer nodded non-committally. He had been looking forward to finding out more about this man who had appeared out of the blue after a flurry of signals from the Ministry of Defence and had then proceeded to score well over ninety per cent at all distances, and that after the range was closed for the night and visibility was poor to bad. And why had he, who only officiated at the annual July meeting, been ordered to be present? And why had he been told to see that Bond had a six-inch bull at 500 instead of the regulation fifteen-inch? And why this flummery with the danger flag and signal drum that were only used on ceremonial occasions? To put pressure on the man? To give an edge of urgency to the shoot? Bond. Commander James Bond. The N.R.A. would surely have a record of anyone who could shoot like that. He’d remember to give them a call. Funny time to have an appointment in London. Probably a girl. The Range Officer’s undistinguished face assumed a disgruntled expression. Sort of fellow who got all the girls he wanted.

The two men walked through the handsome façade of Club Row behind the range to Bond’s car that stood opposite the bullet-pitted iron reproduction of Landseer’s famous ‘Running Deer’. ‘Nice-looking job,’ commented the Range Officer. ‘Never seen a body like that on a Continental. Have it made specially?’

‘Yes. The Sports Saloons are really only two-seaters. And damned little luggage space. So I got Mulliner’s to make it into a real two-seater with plenty of boot. Selfish car, I’m afraid. Well, good night. And thanks again.’ The exhaust boomed healthily and the back wheels briefly spat gravel.

The Chief Range Officer watched the ruby lights vanish up King’s Avenue towards the London road. He turned on his heel and went to find Corporal Menzies on a search for information that was to prove fruitless. The corporal remained as wooden as the big mahogany box he was in the process of loading into a khaki Land Rover without military symbols. The Range Officer was a major. He tried pulling his rank without success. The Land Rover hammered away in Bond’s wake. The major walked moodily off to the offices of the National Rifle Association to try and find out what he wanted in the library under ‘Bond, J.’

James Bond’s appointment was not with a girl. It was with a B.E.A. flight to Hanover and Berlin. As he bit off the miles to London Airport, pushing the big car hard so as to have plenty of time for a drink, three drinks, before the take-off, only part of his mind was on the road. The rest was re-examining, for the umpteenth time, the sequence that was now leading him to an appointment with an aeroplane. But only an interim appointment. His final rendezvous on one of the next three nights in Berlin was with a man. He had to see this man and infallibly shoot him dead.

When, at around two thirty that afternoon, James Bond had gone in through the double-padded doors and had sat down opposite the turned-away profile on the other side of the big desk, he had sensed trouble. There was no greeting. M.’s head was sunk into his stiff turned-down collar in a Churchillian pose of gloomy reflection, and there was a droop of bitterness at the corners of his lips. He swivelled his chair round to face Bond, gave him an appraising glance as if, Bond thought, to see that his tie was straight and his hair properly brushed, and then began speaking, fast, clipping off his sentences as if he wanted to be rid of what he was saying, and of Bond, as quickly as possible.

‘Number 272. He’s a good man. You won’t have come across him. Simple reason that he’s been holed up in Novaya Zemlya since the war. Now he’s trying to get out – loaded with stuff. Atomic and rockets. And their plan for a whole new series of tests. For 1961. To put the heat on the West. Something to do with Berlin. Don’t quite get the picture but the F.O. say if it’s true it’s terrific. Makes nonsense of the Geneva Conference and all this blether about nuclear disarmament the Communist bloc are putting out. He’s got as far as East Berlin. But he’s got practically the whole of the K.G.B. on his tail – and the East German security forces of course. He’s holed up somewhere in the city and he got one message over to us – that he’d be coming across between six and seven p.m. on one of the next three nights – tomorrow, next day, or the day after. He gave the crossing point. Trouble is,’ the downward curve of M.’s lips became even more bitter, ‘the courier he used was a double. Station W.B. bowled him out yesterday. Quite by chance. Had a lucky break with one of the K.G.B. codes. The courier’ll be flown out for trial, of course. But that won’t help. The K.G.B. know that 272 will be making a run for it. They know when. They know where. They know just as much as we do and no more. Now, the code we cracked was a one-day-only setting on their machines. But we got the whole of that day’s traffic and that was good enough. They plan to shoot him on the run. At this street crossing between East and West Berlin he gave us in his message. They’re mounting quite an operation – operation “Extase” they call it. Put their best sniper on the job. All we know about him is that his code name is the Russian for “Trigger”. Station W.B. guess he’s the same man they’ve used before for sniper work. Long-range stuff across the frontier. He’s going to be guarding this crossing every night and his job is to get 272. Of course they’d obviously prefer to do a smoother job with machine-guns and what have you. But it’s quiet in Berlin at the moment and apparently the word is it’s got to stay so. Anyway,’ M. shrugged, ‘they’ve got confidence in this “Trigger” operator and that’s the way it’s going to be!’

‘Where do I come in, sir?’ James Bond had guessed the answer, guessed why M. was showing his dislike of the whole business. This was going to be dirty work and Bond, because he belonged to the Double-O Section, had been chosen for it. Perversely, Bond wanted to force M. to put it in black and white. This was going to be bad news, dirty news, and he didn’t want to hear it from one of the Section officers, or even from the Chief of Staff. This was to be murder. All right. Let M. bloody well say so.

‘Where do you come in, 007?’ M. looked coldly across the desk. ‘You know where you come in. You’ve got to kill this sniper. And you’ve got to kill him before he gets 272. That’s all. Is that understood?’ The clear blue eyes remained cold as ice. But Bond knew that they remained so only with an effort of will. M. didn’t like sending any man to a killing. But, when it had to be done, he always put on this fierce, cold act of command. Bond knew why. It was to take some of the pressure, some of the guilt, off the killer’s shoulders.

So now Bond, who knew these things, decided to make it easy and quick for M. He got to his feet. ‘That’s all right, sir. I suppose the Chief of Staff has got all the gen. I’d better go and put in some practice. It wouldn’t do to miss.’ He walked to the door.

M. said quietly, ‘Sorry to have to hand this to you. Nasty job. But it’s got to be done well.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir.’ James Bond walked out and closed the door behind him. He didn’t like the job, but on the whole he’d rather have it himself than have the responsibility of ordering someone else to go and do it.

The Chief of Staff had been only a shade more sympathetic. ‘Sorry you’ve bought this one, James,’ he had said. ‘But Tanqueray was definite that he hadn’t got anyone good enough on his Station, and this isn’t the sort of job you can ask a regular soldier to do. Plenty of top marksmen in the B.A.O.R., but a live target needs another kind of nerve. Anyway, I’ve been on to Bisley and fixed a shoot for you tonight at eight fifteen when the ranges will be closed. Visibility should be about the same as you’ll be getting in Berlin around an hour earlier. The Armourer’s got the gun – a real target job, and he’s sending it down with one of his men. You’ll find your own way. Then you’re booked on a midnight B.E.A. charter flight to Berlin. Take a taxi to this address.’ He handed Bond a piece of paper. ‘Go up to the fourth floor and you’ll find Tanqueray’s Number 2 waiting for you. Then I’m afraid you’ll just have to sit it out for the next three days.’

‘How about the gun? Am I supposed to take it through the German customs in a golf bag or something?’

The Chief of Staff hadn’t been amused. ‘It’ll go over in the F.O. bag. You’ll have it by tomorrow midday.’ He had reached for a signal pad. ‘Well, you’d better get cracking. I’ll just let Tanqueray know everything’s fixed.’

James Bond glanced down at the dim blue face of the dashboard clock. Ten fifteen. With any luck by this time tomorrow it would all be finished. After all, it was the life of this man ‘Trigger’ against the life of 272. It wasn’t
exactly
murder. Pretty near it, though. He gave a vicious blast on his triple windhorns at an inoffensive family saloon, took the roundabout in a quite unnecessary dry skid, wrenched the wheel harshly to correct it and pointed the nose of the Bentley towards the distant glow that was London Airport.

The ugly six-storey building at the corner of Kochstrasse and the Wilhelmstrasse was the only one standing in a waste of empty bombed space. Bond paid off his taxi and got a brief impression of waist-high weeds and half-tidied rubble walls stretching away to a big deserted crossroads lit by a central cluster of yellowish arc lamps, before he pushed the bell for the fourth floor and at once heard the click of the door-opener. The door closed itself behind him and he walked over the uncarpeted cement floor to the old-fashioned lift. The smell of cabbage, cheap cigar smoke and stale sweat reminded him of other apartment houses in Germany and Central Europe. Even the sigh and faint squeal of the slow lift were part of a hundred assignments when he had been fired off by M., like a projectile, at some distant target where a problem waited for his coming, waited to be solved by him. At least this time the reception committee was on his side. This time there was nothing to fear at the top of the stairs.

Number 2 of Secret Service Station W.B. was a lean, tense man in his early forties. He wore the uniform of his profession – well-cut, well-used, lightweight tweeds in a dark-green herringbone, a soft white silk shirt and an old school tie – in his case Wykehamist. At the sight of the tie, and while they exchanged conventional greetings in the small musty lobby of the apartment, Bond’s spirits, already low, sank another degree. He knew the type: backbone of the Civil Service; over-crammed and under-loved at Winchester; a good second in P.P.E. at Oxford; the war, staff jobs he would have done meticulously; perhaps an Q.B.E.; Allied Control Commission in Germany where he had been recruited into the I Branch and thence – because he was the ideal staff man and A.1 with Security and because he thought he would find life, drama, romance, the things he had never had – into the Secret Service. A sober, careful man had been needed to chaperon Bond on this ugly business. Captain Paul Sender, late of the Welsh Guards, had been the obvious choice. He had bought it. Now, like a good Wykehamist, he concealed his distaste for the job beneath careful, trite conversation as he showed Bond the layout of the apartment and the arrangements that had been made for the executioner’s preparedness and, to a modest extent, his comfort.

The flat consisted of a large double bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen containing tinned food, milk, butter, eggs, tea, bacon, bread and one bottle of Dimple Haig. The only odd feature in the bedroom was that one of the double beds was angled up against the curtains covering the single broad window and was piled high with three mattresses below the bedclothes.

Captain Sender said, ‘Care to have a look at the field of fire? Then I can explain what the other side have in mind.’

Bond was tired. He didn’t particularly want to go to sleep with the picture of the battlefield on his mind. He said, ‘That’d be fine.’

Captain Sender switched off the lights. Chinks from the street light at the intersection showed round the curtains. ‘Don’t want to draw the curtains,’ said Captain Sender. ‘Unlikely, but they may be on the look-out for a covering party for 272. If you’d just lie on the bed and get your head under the curtains, I’ll brief you about what you’ll be looking at. Look to the left.’