Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [92]
‘Go home,’ said Bond.
‘How?’
‘I reckon we’re due east of Moscow. Probably seven or eight hundred miles. In view of what’s been going on, it’s too risky to take a train. They won’t expect survivors from the plane, but they’ll be jumpy. We’ll drive. You can navigate. I’m sure your Russian’s up to asking the way.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Scarlett, ‘though my accent may be a bit old-fashioned. Pre-revolutionary. I learned from White Russians.’
‘Well, even Communists respect a lady, don’t they? First we need clothes, money and a car. You may need to avert your eyes for the next few hours, Scarlett. Sometimes a secret agent has to do undignified things.’
‘ To tell the truth, James, I don’t mind what you do, so long as I can have something to eat soon. Anything else I see, I shall forget at once.’
‘First, you need shoes,’ he said, as he pulled Ken Mitchell’s wet loafers on to his own feet.
‘Yes. There were no shoes or stockings with the
uniform. The hostesses supply their own. Poppy told me. And – another thing – I have no underwear.’
‘I know,’ said Bond. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’
He held out his hand and pulled the weary girl to her feet.
They walked over the plain until they found a small road and, after half an hour of trudging, a village. At a farmhouse, Scarlett secured them water, bread and something half-way between curd and cheese. The puzzled peasant woman who fed them
couldn’t keep her eyes off Scarlett’s bare feet. She warned them they would need to walk for another half an hour before they came to a road of any size. She gave them more bread and two wrinkled apples from a store.
At the roadside, Scarlett waved down an agricultural lorry. By the time the driver realized there was a male hitch-hiker as well, it was too late and they were on their way west. He took them to a market town and pointed out where they could find a junction with a main east–west road to Kazan, the Tatar capital, then on to Gorky, the industrial city at the centre of the Volga-Vyatka region. From Gorky, he said, it was only five hours by road to Moscow. When the driver had dropped them off, Bond
helped Scarlett to tidy up as best she could. Their
clothes had dried, but the jacket of her BOACtunic was torn, and in any case looked suspicious with its braid and insignia, so they discarded it. Barefoot, in the navy skirt, which they pinned up with a hair grip to make it look short enough to catch the eye of passing drivers, and with her hair tied back as neatly as possible, Scarlett looked like a beautiful but dishevelled schoolmistress, Bond told her – just the sort of woman men would want to stop and help.
More than a dozen vehicles of varying kinds slowed and pulled over for her, but none met Bond’s requirements. From his concealed position behind a fir tree, he shook his head in answer to Scarlett’s interrogative glances.
Bond was beginning to wonder if there were any decent cars in this totalitarian country when at last he heard the sound of a 2.5-litre, 4-cylinder engine and saw a black Volga M21, the ‘Russian Mercedes’, approaching down the avenue of birches. It was the vehicle favoured by the KGB and thus the car most Russians least wanted to see outside their door at night. So much the better, thought Bond, for his purposes.
Scarlett stood in the road, and the car slowed down. A single man was at the wheel, and leaned across to open the door. He was in his fifties,
grey-haired, plump and wearing a suit without a tie. Not KGB, Bond thought, but probably an illegal dealer of some kind. Either that, or a favoured Party functionary.
As Scarlett got into the front, Bond climbed into the back. Scarlett explained to the disgruntled driver that he was her brother and that he was soft in the head, which was why he never spoke.
They drove west towards Kazan for an hour, and when they had reached a desolate stretch of road, far from any habitation, Bond pulled the Luger from his waistband and put it to the driver’s ear.
‘ Tell him to slow down and stop.’
All three climbed out of the car