Bond shot a quick glance towards the bank of cameramen. Yes, the M.I.5 photographer was on his toes. He had also seen the movement. He lifted his camera deliberately and there was the quick glare of a flash. Bond got back to his seat and whispered to Snowman, ‘Got him. Be in touch with you tomorrow. Thanks a lot.’ Mr Snowman only nodded. His eyes remained glued on the auctioneer.
Bond slipped out of his place and walked swiftly down the aisle as the auctioneer said for the third time, ‘One hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds I am bid,’ and then softly brought down his hammer. ‘Yours, sir.’
Bond got to the back of the room before the audience had risen, applauding, to its feet. His quarry was hemmed in amongst the gilt chairs. He had now put on his dark glasses again and Bond put on a pair of his own. He contrived to slip into the crowd and get behind the man as the chattering crowd streamed down the stairs. The hair grew low down on the back of the man’s rather squat neck and the lobes of his ears were pinched in close to his head. He had a slight hump, perhaps only a bone deformation, high up on his back. Bond suddenly remembered. This was Piotr Malinowski, with the official title on the Embassy staff of ‘Agricultural Attaché’. So!
Outside, the man began walking swiftly towards Conduit Street. James Bond got unhurriedly into a taxi with its engine running and its flag down. He said to the driver, ‘That’s him. Take it easy.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the M.I.5 driver, pulling away from the kerb.
The man picked up a taxi in Bond Street. The tail in the mixed evening traffic was easy. Bond’s satisfaction mounted as the Russian’s taxi turned up north of the Park and along Bayswater. It was just a question whether he would turn down the private entrance into Kensington Palace Gardens, where the first mansion on the left is the massive building of the Soviet Embassy. If he did, that would clinch matters. The two patrolling policemen, the usual Embassy guards, had been specially picked that night. It was their job just to confirm that the occupant of the leading taxi actually entered the Soviet Embassy.
Then, with the Secret Service evidence and the evidence of Bond and of the M.I.5 cameraman, there would be enough for the Foreign Office to declare Comrade Piotr Malinowski persona non grata on the grounds of espionage activity and send him packing. In the grim chess game that is Secret Service work, the Russians would have lost a queen. It would have been a very satisfactory visit to the auction rooms.
The leading taxi did turn in through the big iron gates.
Bond smiled with grim satisfaction. He leant forward.
‘Thanks, driver. Headquarters please.’
3 | THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
James Bond lay at 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-foot-square target that, to the human eye and in the late summer dusk, looked no larger than a postage stamp. But Bond’s lens, an infra-red Sniperscope fixed above his rifle, covered the whole canvas. He could even clearly distinguish the pale-blue and beige colours into which the target was divided, and the six-inch semi-circular bull 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 on to 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.
‘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 Armourer 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 calibre International Experimental Target rifle built by Winchester to help American marksmen at World Championships, and it had the usual gadgets of super-accurate target weapons – a curled aluminium ‘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 centre of gravity to allow the stock to be ‘nailed’ into its grooved wooden rest. The Armourer had had the usual single-shot bolt action replaced by a five-shot magazine, and he had assured Bond that if he would allow only 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 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?’