the living daylights

james bond lay in the five-hundred-yard firing point of the famous century range at bisley. the white peg in the grass beside him said 44, and the same number was repeated high up on the distant butt above the single six-feet-square target that, to the human eye and in the late summer dusk, looked no larger than a postage stamp. but through bond's glass-an infrared sniperscope fixed above his rifle-the lens covered the whole canvas. he could even clearly distinguish the pale blue and beige colors in which the target was divided, and the six-inch semicircular bull's-eye looked as big as the half-moon that was already beginning to show low down in the darkening sky above the distant crest of chobham ridges.

james bond's last shot had been an inner left. not good enough. he took another glance at the yellow and blue wind flags. they were streaming across range from the east rather more stiffly than when he had begun his shoot half an hour before, and he set two clicks more to the right on the wind gauge and traversed the cross-wires on the sniperscope back to the point of aim. then he settled himself, put his trigger finger gently inside the guard and onto the curve of the trigger, shallowed his breathing, and very, very softly squeezed.

the vicious crack of the shot boomed across the empty range. the target disappeared below ground, and at once the dummy came up in its place. yes. the black panel was in the bottom right-hand corner this time, not in the bottom left. a bull's-eye.

"good," said the voice of the chief range officer from behind and above him. "stay with it."

the target was already up again, and bond put his cheek back to its warm patch on the chunky wooden stock and his eye to the rubber eyepiece of the scope. he wiped his gun hand down the side of his trousers and took the pistol grip that jutted sharply down below the trigger guard. he splayed his legs an inch more. now there were to be five rounds rapid. it would be interesting to see if that would produce "fade." he guessed not. this extraordinary weapon the armorer had somehow got his hands on gave one the feeling that a standing man at a mile would be easy meat. it was mostly a .308-caliber international experimental target rifle built by winchester to help american marksmen at world championships, and it had the usual gadgets of superaccurate target weapons-a curled aluminum hand at the back of the butt that extended under the armpit and held the stock firmly into the shoulder, and an adjustable pinion below the rifle's center of gravity to allow the stock to be nailed into its grooved wooden rest. the armorer had had the usual single-shot bolt action replaced by a five-shot magazine, and he had assured bond that if he allowed as little as two seconds between shots to steady the weapon there would be no fade even at five hundred yards. for the job that bond had to do, he guessed that two seconds might be a dangerous loss of time if he missed with his first shot. anyway, m. had said that the range would be not more than three hundred yards. bond would cut it down to one second-almost continuous fire.

"ready?"

"yes."

"i'll give you a countdown from five. now! five, four, three, two, one. fire!"

the ground shuddered slightly and the air sang as the five whirling scraps of cupronickel spat off into the dusk. the target went down and quickly rose again, decorated with four small white discs closely grouped on the bull's-eye. 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 nightglasses. "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 armorers' 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 a hell of a fine job. please tell the armorer 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 buy 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 noncommittally. 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 defense and had then proceeded to score well over ninety percent 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's-eye at five hundred 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 fa3ade of club row behind the range to bond's car, which 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 mark iv's are anyway 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 trunk space. selfish car i'm afraid. well, good night. and thanks again." the twin exhausts boomed healthily, and the back wheels briefly spat gravel.

the chief range officer watched the ruby lights vanish up king's avenue toward 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 takeoff, 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 airplane. 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 he had to be sure to 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 corner of his lips. he swiveled his chair around 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, biting 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 nineteen sixty-one. to put the heat on the west. something to do with berlin. don't quite get the picture, but the fo says if it's true it's terrific. makes nonsense of the geneva conference and all this blather about nuclear disarmament the communist bloc is putting out. he's got as far as east berlin. but he's got practically the whole of the kgb on his tail-and the east german security forces of course. he's holed up somewhere in east berlin, 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 next day. 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 wb bowled him out yesterday. quite by chance. had a lucky break with one of the kgb codes. the courier'll be flown out for trial, of course. but that won't help. the kgb knows 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 wb guesses 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?" but 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 armorer'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 two 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 golfbag or something?"

the chief of staff hadn't been amused. "it'll go over in the fo pouch. 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 wind horns 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 toward the distant glow that was london airport.