“The Living Daylights”

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“‘Look my friend,’ said Bond wearily, ‘I’ve got to commit a murder tonight. Not you. Me. So be a good chap and stuff it, would you?’”

Published:

• Originally appeared in February 1962 in the Sunday Times, under the title “Berlin Escape.”
• Later published as part of Octopussy and the Living Daylights, 1966.

Overview: In this short story, James Bond must take out a KGB sniper gunning for a British agent trying to smuggle Soviet atomic secrets into West Berlin. An overly officious Secret Service colleague threatens to report 007 for drinking on the job.

What does Bond drink?

• After testing the sniper rifle, Bond tells the range officer that he’d like to buy him a drink. As he drives to London Airport, 007 pushes his “big car hard so as to have plenty of time for a drink, three drinks, before the takeoff.”
• When Bond arrives at the flat in Berlin, he finds that Captain Sender has provided him with several food items and a bottle of Dimple Haig. The next morning, he prepares a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon over toast, accompanied by black coffee into which Bond has “poured a liberal tot of whiskey.”
• That afternoon, Bond enjoys a “high tea” of salted herring and two Molle mit Korn, a Berlin term for a double schnapps washed down with beer (in this case, draft Löwenbräu). Molle is a word for beer used by some Berliners.
• After the first night spent waiting behind the rifle, Bond has “two large whiskeys-on-the-rocks in quick succession.” Fleming says that on the second night, Bond largely duplicates everything he did the first night, which means he has an additional two whiskys on the rocks.
• As he gets ready to take up his rifle on the third night, 007 has a stiff drink of whisky, despite Sender’s vehement protests. Bond later feels the liquor “melt the coiled nerves in his stomach.”
• After he shoots (but doesn’t kill) Trigger, Bond drinks another whisky as he explains to Sender that the sniper was a woman.

Brand names: Dimple Haig scotch whisky and Löwenbräu beer.

Total: 14. Three undetermined drinks, a scotch whisky and coffee, two double korn schnapps, two draft Löwenbräu beers, and six large scotch whiskys.