CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Farmhouse (Part 2)
The jeep turned down a wide fire lane, and the BMW turned off the road after it. The rough ground hammered the suspension. Above them, the tips of firs almost closed out the budding stars.
They sped along the claustrophobic track like lice in a hair-brush, and through the fire gaps Bond caught glimpses of rolling countryside in the growing final embers of the sun.
Devereaux was silent, or at least, Bond couldn't hear his muttered prayer.
"Stasi," he told Bond at one point.
Bond only nodded. The rutted road beat hell out of the rental car.
The jeep slowed as it reached a clearing where a soldier in a brown anorak was waving a torch. It was large and a small farm fitted snugly into a corner of it. Inside the hollow feudal plan of the farmhouse, Bond spied a cobbled courtyard which held a half-dozen more soldiers, some motorcycles, and a group of baying Alsatians.
The jeep slowed to a stop and Bond parked behind it.
As he climbed out of the car, a soldier from the back seat of the jeep trained a Type 58 assault rifle at him, the curved magazine cradled in his arm.
As Devereaux got out, Bond said, "Play is cool, will you?"
"You bet I will." He raised his hands.
"Put those down."
He did.
The soldier signaled with the muzzle of the rifle that they were to make their way to the farmhouse. Bond and Devereaux obeyed. They stepped through the small door.
The building into which they were ushered had one simple wooden table and four rickety chairs rising up from a floor of strewn straw. A single door in the back was suggested another room, but it remained closed. Three hens moved sleepily around the legs of the table, unconcerned about the men in the house. An officer in the uniform of the Feldjäger stood next to the table, pretending to read a sheet of paper. Bond noted that he was not in a routine patrol uniform, but rather the Weißzeug pattern of uniform ⸺ for parades and ceremonies, the 'white gear.'
As they entered, he said, "Good evening," in English and gestured to two weather-beaten chairs.
Devereaux and Bond sat without speaking.
The Feldjäger's skin and eyes were grey. His forehead was tall and his ears, nose and chin a little too long, like a wax doll that has been left out in the sun.
Behind them, the door banged open and Bond, turning, saw the Russian corporal enter, intent on opening a bottle.
The corporal smiled widely at him. "English!" he said. "What a wonderful surprise!"
"Aristarkhov," Bond said.
It was Major Leonid Pushkin.
"You're outside of your district, are you not?" he continued, politely.
Pushkin pulled down the front of his brown soldiers' summer-issue blouse, with its corporal's insignia. "It was the only uniform I could find that fit me," he said in English.
The officer in the English country squire outfit followed Pushkin through the door. He held a tray with four thimble-size glasses and a plain tin the size of a floor polish can on it.
"Only the best for you, English," said Pushkin.
The Feldjäger smiled a tight smile, like his skin were too tight and pulled into a weird shape, and the slightest relaxation might tear off his ears. He seemed to study the English Squire as he laid the tray on the rough table.
Pushkin prised off the can's lid. "Beluga," he said, holding it out to Bond. "They sent me Ocietrova at first but I said, 'This is for a special guest. We must have Beluga.'"
Inside the can were light-grey veiny spheres of caviar, like tiny peas gone bad.
Pushkin produced what looked like a packet of cigarettes, but which proved to be small wafers. He spooned a portion onto each wafer with a plastic spoon, then poured vodka until the tiny glasses brimmed.
Devereaux leaned over to ask Bond a question, but thought better of it.
Pushkin held up a glass. "To travellers!"
"To motorists!" Bond retorted.
The Feldjäger let his smile fall off but he took a thimble of vodka.
"To motorists," said Pushkin, "all over the world."
The four drank. and as Pushkin refilled the glasses he said, "They say that all the traffic police are communists and all the drivers are fascists, which would be all right if it were not that all of the pedestrians are anarchists." He roared at his joke.
Bond prodded Devereaux with an elbow to cue him that he was to laugh, which Devereaux managed hollowly.
Bond said, "Here's one I heard The factory workers say that it's impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early, you are a saboteur. If you are five minutes late, you are betraying socialism. If you arrive on time, they ask, 'Where did you get that watch, comrade?'"
Pushkin laughed and spilled his drink. The Feldjäger officer looked at him in disbelief.
The Country Squire offered around a packet of Memfis cigarettes.
Pushkin said, "Capitalism is but the exploitation of man by man."
"And Socialism is exactly the reverse," finished Bond.
Everyone laughed and down another round of vodka, although Devereaux laughed with a hunted-rabbit's expression in his eyes.
The Feldjäger fished out his pair of soft leather gloves, which he dragged on and smoothed the creases around the fingers and flapped the cuffs backwards and forwards. In German, he said, "If you will excuse me."
"Go, go," urged Pushkin, then to the others he said, "Eat! Drink!"
The Country Squire shoveled another wafer laden with caviar into his mouth.
"To Henry Ford," he said. He had a surprisingly adenoidal voice.
Pushkin was doubtful. "If Henry Ford were born in the Soviet Union, he would be a man I could drink to."
"If Henry Ford had been born in the Soviet Union," said Bond, "he would still be making bicycles."
Devereaux lifted his glass again. "Henry Ford, philanthropist."
The Country Squire asked in German what the word meant, and Pushkin translated it.
There were toasts to Sputnik, to the inventor of vodka, to detour signs, to Shakespeare and to that 'famous English cathedral, St Pancras.''
Then Pushkin held his glass up and proposed "To SPECTRE."
Bond froze. "Why?"
"Without Mr. Lemon, I will not be getting rich!" Puskin roared again and drank. Bond joined him in the vodka, but not the laughter. "I never know when you joke," he said.
"Me neither," said Pushkin.
Pushkin refilled the glasses, and Bond said, "Death to the fascists."
Devereaux said, "Fascists," and looked around.
Pushkin said, "Yes! Death to fascists, that I will drink to!" And he did so, with vigor.
''Yes," said the Country Squire dully.
There were more toasts after that, but the party had begun to lose its bounce.
When the bottle was empty, Pushkin bid them a safe journey and, with great ceremony, presented their passports.
As they stepped out, full dark had covered the farmhouse and the clearing. The soldiers remained, but no rifles were pointed at them. Bond had drunk more than he should, but Devereaux was drunk all over again.
"Hey," he said.
"Shut up," Bond urged him. "Not until we're in the car."
They didn't speak again until they were off the rough stretch of road and headed back to East Berlin.
"The hell was that about?" Devereaux demanded.
"Power," said Bond. "He was showing us who is the boss. Doesn't want us getting to big or getting ideas above our station."
"'Above our station?' What does that mean?"
"Means we work for him. Look." Bond made a gesture behind him. "That traffic motorcycle, the show of force, that farmhouse, even the man in the English tweed."
"Who was he?"
"I hazard a guess," said Bond, "probably KGB from Moscow. Probably brought in for the occasion of studying us up close."
Devereaux exhaled drunkenly. "I wish I knew what Pushkin was thinking."
"Show of force. That all was a show of force. Even that toast to SPECTRE and knowing that we call Kronsteen 'lemon.'"
"What does that mean?"
"Someone's talking to Pushkin about us."
"I need you to pull over," said Devereaux suddenly.
"Why?"
"I'm going to throw up."