Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [96]
‘How did you manage to get us in here?’ he said, looking at the wooden bunks of the private sleeping compartment, normally reserved for senior Party members.
‘I gave the guard about three months’ wages,’ said Scarlett, ‘out of the money you took from the garage. You saw his face, didn’t you?’
‘I did,’ said Bond. ‘It was unforgettable.’
‘He says if any Party bigwigs get on board, he’ll have to move us – but I don’t think that’s likely to happen now. If they were going to get on, it would be in Moscow, not Klin or Bologoye. When we’ve been going for a bit, he’ll bring vodka. Stolichnaya. And I asked for food. He said he’d see what he could find. Otherwise, there’s just the remains of the cheese.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Bond. He felt a great weariness come over him as the Red Arrow pulled out of the station. Scarlett leaned her head against his shoulder as they watched the grey suburbs of northern Moscow eventually give way to the open fields. Surely nothing could go wrong now, Bond thought, as they hurtled through the summer darkness towards the old capital, home of the Romanovs and their great palaces.
An hour later, the guard knocked at the door and they sat up guiltily, as though they had been doing something wrong. With no expression of pleasure or concern, the man opened a copy of Pravda and spread it on the lower bunk next to them. Then, from inside a brown-paper parcel, he took half a loaf of black bread, a bottle of Stolichnaya, a bag of plums and two fillets of smoked fish.
Bond watched Scarlett as she smiled and proffered more money. She was an extraordinary woman, he thought, chatting away with this man who – clearly charmed by her – declined the extra cash.
When he had gone, Scarlett said, ‘I told him you were from the Ukraine, darling.’ Her eyes were alight with innocent mischief. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
Bond smiled as he drank deeply from the Stolichnaya bottle and offered it to Scarlett, who shook her head. The meal was quickly done, and they each lit one of the cheap Russian cigarettes she had bought at the station. They were now sitting opposite one another, so Bond could watch her as she stared through the window.
He remembered returning to his hotel room in Paris to see her there, sitting in the gilded armchair beneath the looking-glass, her long legs demurely crossed and her empty hands folded in front of her
breasts . . . ‘I’m so sorry to startle you, Mr Bond . . . I didn’t want to give you the chance of turning me down again.’
Now, against the flashing Russian landscape, she looked tired, but no less beautiful. Her large brown eyes flickered and refocused as the fields went by. Her mouth was slightly parted, and he remembered that stiffening of the upper lip when she was aroused. She pushed a strand of black hair behind her ear. Did she know that he was watching? Why else reveal the perfect pink shape of her ear, so delicate and exactly formed that it was all he could do not to lean across and kiss it?
The rattle of the wheels on the tracks as the engine picked up speed, the gentle swaying of the carriage and the creak of the woodwork in the warm compartment all seemed to form an irresistible lullaby. Bond had not drunk alcohol for days, and the vodka had gone to his head. He remembered other journeys –
the Orient Express with Tanya . . . Soon, he thought, he should prepare himself for sleep and climb on to the bunk, but for the moment . . .
Drowsily, he remembered the room at Jamal’s Five Star and the abandon with which Scarlett had kissed him, the light movement with which she’d stepped out of her skirt and sat on the end of his bed . . .
They were deep, deep in the darkness of the Soviet night, and the images became disjointed in his mind as the rattle of the wheels on the iron track brought back memories of childhood, a train in the Highlands, his mother’s voice – then the glass walkway at Gorner’s factory, the huge steel vats of somniferous poppy juice, drugging, drowsing . . . Someone he loved calling his