TANNER: Your hunch was right 007. Too bad the Evil Queen of Numbers didn’t let you play it.Bond enters headquarters where Moneypenny is in evening dress having been called in from a date. She escorts Bond to the Situation Room. Big screens of satellite pictures line the walls and computers fill the room. Bond greets co-worker Tanner who shows him images of what he believes is a missing Tiger helicopter.
Bond clears throat. Tanner turns to see M who has just entered the room from her office.
M: You were saying?
TANNER: No, no. I was just a ..., just a ...
M: Good, because if I want sarcasm I’ll talk to my children, thank you very much. Good evening, 007.
BOND: Good evening.
M:The Prime Minister is waiting for an update. Proceed with your briefing Tanner.
Tanner begins a briefing concerning what is suspected to be a secret Russian space based weapons program called Goldeneye.
M: Our statistical analysis saw they had neither the numbers or the finance to implement it.
BOND: Numbers were never my strong suit. Are these pictures live?
M: [Slightly nods] Unlike the American government we prefer not to get our bad news from CNN.
Cuts to an action scene in the frozen ice of the Russian landscape with fighter planes and woman inside a facility. Explosion occurs and appears on the Situation Room screen. The screen goes to static.
TANNER: What the bloody hell was that?
M and Bond look blank.Russia. Planes bombing, explosions, people trying to escape. A woman survives in a short skirt and cardigan.
Back to Situation Room where Tanner is on the phone.
TANNER: Thanks. [Hangs up] Our satellite is knocked out so are two of the American’s. We have another coming into range now.
Russian scene comes back onto the screen.
TANNER: Good God! Two of the MIGs are down.
M: It looks like a third went into the dish. [Looks at Bond] What do you think?
BOND: No lights. Not a single light on in a thirty-mile radius. EMP?
TANNER: Would account for the MIGs and satellites.
BOND: And the blackout.
TANNER: Electromagnetic Pulse. The first strike satellite weapon developed by the....
M: By the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War. I read the brief. Discovered after Hiroshima. Set off a nuclear device in the upper atmosphere. Creates a pulse, a radiation surge that destroys everything with an electronic circuit.
TANNER: The idea being to knock out the enemy’s communications before he, she, or they could retaliate.
M: So Goldeneye exists.
BOND:Yes.
M: Could this be an accident?
BOND: No, the helicopter, if you wanted to steal the Goldeneye, was the perfect get away vehicle. Setting off the blast was the ideal way to cover the crime.
M: Yanos Group?
BOND: They may have been involved with the helicopter. I know the Soviet fail-safe systems. You don’t just walk in and ask for keys to the bomb. You need access codes. [Bond looks closer at the satellite picture] It had to be an insider. At least one person probably knows who it is.
Cut to action where the woman has discovered dogs and a dog sled.Move to M’s Office. M is on the phone with her back to the camera.
M: Very well, sir. [Hangs up and turns to Bond] The Prime Minister’s talked to Moscow. Says it was an accident during a routine training exercise.
BOND: Governments change. The lies stay to the same.
M: What else do we know about the Yanos Syndicate?
BOND: Top flight arms dealers headquartered in St. Petersburg. First to restock the Iraqis during the Gulf War. Head man’s unreliably described. No photographs. A woman. Orimoff is her only confirmed contact.
M has been wandering around the office, listening. Now returns to her desk.
M: Would you like a drink?
BOND: Your predecessor kept some cognac in the top drawer of ….
M: I prefer bourbon. Ice?
BOND:Yes.
M pours and hands him a drink.
M: We’ve pulled the files on anyone who might have had access or authority at southern eye. Topping the list is a friend of yours.
M opens a screen in the wall and a male in uniform appears.
BOND: Orimoff. They’ve made him a general.
M: He sees himself as the next ironman of Russia which is why our political analysts threw him out. Doesn’t fit the profile of a traitor.
BOND: Are these the same analysts who said the Goldeneye couldn’t exist. Who said the helicopter posed no immediate threat and wasn’t worth following?
M: You don’t like me, Bond. You don’t like my methods. You think I’m an accountant. A bean counter. More interested in numbers than in your instincts.
BOND: The thought had occurred to me.
M: Good. Because I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the cold war whose boyish charms, wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you.
BOND: Point taken.
M: Not quite. If you think for one moment I don’t have the balls to send a man out to die, you’re instinct’s dead wrong. I have no compunction about sending you to your death. But I won’t do it on a whim. Even with your cavalier attitude towards life.
[Leaning toward him] I want you to find Goldeneye. Find who took it, what they plan to do with it, and stop it. And if you should come across Orimoff, guilty or not, I don’t want you running off on some kind of vendetta. Avenging Alec Trevallian will not bring him back.
BOND:You didn’t get him killed.
M: Neither did you. Don’t make it personal.
Bond makes an indecipherable noise, gets up and walks toward the door, then turns as M speaks to him.
M: Bond ... Come back alive.
Thanks to our transcriber, who wishes to remain anonymous