The James Bond Anthology

He strained his eyes, taking in the squat flash eliminator at the muzzle, the telescopic sight and thick downward chunk of magazine. Yes, that would be it! Absolutely for sure – and the best they had!

‘Kalashnikov,’ he said curtly. ‘Sub-machine-gun. Gas-operated. Thirty rounds in 7.62 millimetre. Favourite with the K.G.B. They’re going to do a saturation job after all. Perfect for range. We’ll have to get him pretty quick or 272’ll end up not just dead but strawberry jam. You keep an eye out for any movement over there in the rubble. I’ll have to stay married to that window and the gun. He’ll have to show himself to fire. Other chaps are probably spotting behind him – perhaps from all four windows. Much the sort of set-up we expected, but I didn’t think they’d use a weapon that’s going to make all the racket this one will. Should have known they would. A running man would be hard to get in this light with a single-shot job.’

Bond fiddled minutely with the traversing and elevating screws at his fingertips and got the fine lines of the ’scope exactly intersected, just behind where the butt of the enemy gun merged into the blackness behind. Get the chest – don’t bother about the head!

Inside the hood, Bond’s face began to sweat and his eye socket was slippery against the rubber of the eyepiece. That didn’t matter. It was only his hands, his trigger-finger, that must stay bone dry. As the minutes ticked by, he frequently blinked his eyes to rest them, shifted his limbs to keep them supple, listened to the music to relax his mind.

The minutes slouched on leaden feet. How old would she be? Early twenties – say, twenty-three. With that poise and insouciance, the hint of authority in her long easy stride, she would come of good racy stock – one of the old Prussian families probably, or from similar remnants in Poland or even Russia. Why in hell did she have to choose the ’cello? There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle.

At his side Captain Sender said, ‘Seven o’clock. Nothing’s stirred on the other side. Bit of movement on our side, near a cellar close to the frontier; that’ll be our reception committee – two good men from the Station. Better stay with it until they close down. Let me know when they take that gun in.’

‘All right.’

It was seven thirty when the K.G.B. sub-machine-gun was gently drawn back into the black interior. One by one the bottom sashes of the four windows were closed. The cold-hearted game was over for the night. 272 was still holed up. Two more nights to go!

Bond softly drew the curtain over his shoulders and across the muzzle of the Winchester. He got up, pulled off his cowl and went into the bathroom and stripped and had a shower. Then he had two large whiskies on the rocks in quick succession, while he waited, his ears pricked, for the now muffled sound of the orchestra to stop. When at eight o’clock it did (with the expert comment from Sender, ‘Borodin’s Prince Igor, Choral Dance Number 17, I think,’) he said to Sender, who had been getting off his report in garbled language to the Head of Station, ‘Just going to have another look. I’ve rather taken to that tall blonde with the ’cello.’

‘Didn’t notice her,’ said Sender, uninterested. He went into the kitchen. Tea, guessed Bond. Or perhaps Horlick’s. Bond donned his cowl, went back to his firing position and depressed the Sniperscope to the doorway of the Ministry. Yes, there they went, not so gay and laughing now. Tired, perhaps. And now here she came, less lively but still with that beautiful careless stride. Bond watched the blown, golden hair and the fawn raincoat until it had vanished into the indigo dusk up the Wilhelmstrasse. Where did she live? In some miserable, flaked room in the suburbs? Or in one of the privileged apartments in the hideous, lavatory-tiled Stalinallee?

Bond drew himself back. Somewhere, within easy reach, that girl lived. Was she married? Did she have a lover? Anyway to hell with it! She was not for him.

The next day, and the next night-watch, were duplicates, with small variations, of the first. James Bond had two more brief rendezvous, by Sniperscope, with the girl, and the rest was a killing of time and a tightening of the tension that, by the time the third and final day came, was like a fog in the small room.

James Bond crammed the third day with an almost lunatic programme of museums, art galleries, the zoo and a film, hardly perceiving anything he looked at, his mind’s eye divided between the girl and those four black squares and the black tube and the unknown man behind it – the man he was now certainly going to kill tonight.