Solo

redundant click of the trigger. The gun had jammed. Jamming – the curse of the Sten gun. Carbon build-up in the breech, or a feed malfunction in the magazine. The operating instructions when this occurred were to remove the magazine, tap against knee and reinsert. Bond didn’t think he was going to do this.
    The boy in the braces looked at Bond and seemed to smile. With deliberate care he took out another match and struck it. It caught and flared.
    ‘Now you are fool,’ the boy said, in English. He dropped the match on the bonfire and small flames flickered.
    Bond slapped the Sten’s magazine and worked the cocking bolt.
    Bond pulled the trigger again and again. Nothing. Click-click-click. The boy stooped and picked up the long-handled fork. It had three tines, Bond saw, curved, ten inches long.
    Bond worked the bolt again. He aimed the Sten at the boy.
    ‘
Forke weg
,’ Bond said. ‘
Sonst bring ich dich um
.’
    The boy quickly stepped towards him and thrust the fork upward. The sharp, curved gleaming tines were suddenly two inches from Bond’s chest and throat. Bond imagined them entering his body, effortlessly, puncturing the material of his uniform and then his skin, plunging deep inside him. He couldn’t turn and run – he’d be speared in the back. He still had the useless Sten in his hands; he thought in the mad scrambling seconds left to him he could fling himself sideways and smash the gun against the boy’s head. Somewhere in the back of his mind rose up the absolute determination that he was not going to die here, in this Normandy orchard.
    The boy smiled thinly and pressed the tines of the fork closer, so that they actually touched the serge of Bond’s jacket, ready for the fatal thrust.
    ‘
Dummkopf Englander
,’ he said.
    Tozer’s first shot hit the boy full in the throat, the second in the chest and flung him backwards.
    Bond glanced round. Tozer was leaning against an apple tree. He lowered Bond’s Webley, smoke drifting from its barrel.
    ‘Sorry about that, Mr Bond,’ he said. ‘Bloody useless Sten, always has been.’ He limped forward, raising the revolver to cover the German lying on the ground. ‘I think I got him fair and square,’ Tozer said, with a satisfied smile.
    Bond realised he was shuddering, as if suddenly very cold. He took a few steps towards the boy and looked down at him. His woollen vest was drenched in his blood. The round that had caught him in the throat had torn it wide open. Big thick pink bubbles formed and burst, popping quietly as his lungs emptied.
    Bond sank to his knees. He laid the Sten carefully on the ground and vomited.
     
    The traffic light changed to green. Bond put the Jensen in gear and accelerated cleanly away. Now he knew why the dream had so haunted him, summoned up from his unconscious mind like a minatory symbol. Why had he remembered it? What had provoked this recollection in every detail and texture? His birthday? The fact that he was aware he was growing older? Whatever it was, the memorable part of that particular day, he realised, 7 June 1944, was that he had been confronted with the possibility that his life was about to end, there and then – it marked the first time he had stared death full in the face. He could have had no idea that this was to be the pattern of the life ahead of him.

PART TWO
     

HOW TO STOP A WAR
     

·1·
     

ELEMENTS OF RISK
     
    ‘Happy birthday, James,’ Miss Moneypenny said, as Bond stepped into her office. ‘Rather, happy birthday in arrears. Did you have an enjoyable day off, last week?’
    ‘I’d rather hoped you’d forgotten it was my birthday,’ Bond said, his voice thick and raspy. He could hardly swallow.
    ‘No, no. It’s my business to know these things,’ she said, standing and going to a filing cabinet. ‘All the mundane little facts of your life.’
    Sometimes, Bond thought, Moneypenny’s banter could verge on the annoyingly self-satisfied. He was vaguely irritated that she must know how old he was.
    ‘You don’t happen to have a couple of aspirin, do you?’ he asked.
    ‘You’ve obviously been celebrating far too enthusiastically,’ she said, returning to her desk and handing him a file. Bond took it, unreflectingly.
    ‘I’ve got a sore throat,’ he said. ‘Touch of flu, I think. I’ve been in bed by eight the last two nights.’
    ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ she said in the same dry tone, somehow producing a glass of water and then two aspirins from a