CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Farmhouse (Part 3)
Pushkin finished the caviar by running a stout finger through the interior of the can. The Feldjäger and the KGB officer ⸺ actually a junior clerk that Pushkin grabbed at the last minute, and him only because he fit the clothes that one of Pushkin's agents had confiscated from a Czech tourist the day before ⸺ watched his actions with neutral faces. Not even an eyebrow out of place.
With the can cleaned of caviar, Puskin snapped a finger at the junior clerk in the English Country clothes, then jerked a thumb at the door at the back of the room. As he sat, he kicked at one of the chickens, more for something to do. It clucked at him as it skipped out of range, then settled down to hunting for grubs amid the straw.
Pushkin eased off first one boot, then the other. He didn't seem to mind his sockinged feet on the straw.
The man who came through the door wore a simple black suit, as out of place in the farmhouse as the pseudo-KGB agent and the Feldjäger. "Well?" he said.
In Russian and again in German, Pushkin ordered the other two out of the farmhouse. When he and the man in the black suit were alone, he said, "I know the one as Jebediah Beauregarde Devereaux IV, of the ⸺"
"The Charleston River Devereauxs," finished the other man.
"Bah," exclaimed Pushkin, his demonstration of knowledge ruined. "It's not my job to think big thoughts. I am only a soldier. The KGB employs others to do that for me."
The man in the black suit helped himself to vodka in one of the thimble glasses. "And the other?"
"Neydermeier," said Pushkin, "which I'm certain is a false name."
"We know him as a British secret agent, MI-6, their double-oh division. Name of Bond. James Bond."
Pushkin watched his toes flex with great interest. "I'm not a fussy man," he said. "Something hot to eat, something to wash it down, a little vodka occasionally, and a bed under a roof. I have those, I am not complaining." He looked up and said. "What about you, Major Arnold? What do you need?"
Major Kerwin Arnold, when he spoke, used fluid and flawless Berlinisch German. "I think my aspirations are higher."
Puskin reached for his cigarettes. "You know, I prefer these," he said, showing the box of Makhoras. "I make it a point to smoke fancy cigarettes when I talk to Westerners, but this coarse ragweed Russian tobacco was what I prefer."
Major Arnold stared at him with a blank face.
"You should stay in Berlin," said Pushkin. "Big things are coming, very big things. You will be able to make yourself a fortune."
"I'll rotate home, if it's all the same to you."
"Damned comfortable, there. With your connection to American goods and my connection to the black market, we can really make a killing."
"All the same."
"They know how to look after themselves, Arnold. Sometimes I wonder how we beat them."
"Nazis?"
"The Germans. We haven't beaten the Nazis. They're an idea, and ideas don't die."
Major Arnold said, "Lenin's dream was of a marriage between the Russian and German proletariat."
"And as with any marriage, the illusion of happy domestication and tranquility is shattered by the hammer of reality. It's all well to extend a helping hand to the German proletariat, but then you find them in Wehrmacht uniforms burning down your village."
"I hate Germans," said Arnold in the same tone that he might comment on a radio play.
Pushkin raised his eyebrows. "We knew what to do with Germans," he said to Arnold. "The lucky ones took just whatever they could carry and crossed the border in cattle trucks. And they were glad to go. That's what to do with Germans."
"That's what you did wrong," Arnold said. "Lenin would never have agreed to the forced shift of factories and populations."
Pushkin looked at Arnold's pale eyes. "So the Amerikansky is a Stalinist."
"A realist," the major answered. "The Germans are the wild animals of Europe."
"All societies contain within themselves the germ of their own destruction," said Pushkin. He sighed and put his hands on the table, as if to push himself up. "In the end, we are all just policemen. We let the courts sort out who is wrong and who is right."
"Policemen shouldn't get mixed up with justice. Or the law."
"You're like so many of my own men, Major Arnold. Well provided with answers. Not obligated to think."
Blandly, Arnold said, "What was the purpose of this meeting tonight?"
"No purpose," said Pushkin without pause. "Just a matter of letting them know that we have our eyes on them"
"You never intended to arrest them?"
Pushkin attached a broad smile to his round face and beamed at Arnold. "This is all a matter of gentle probing. Like a brain operation. A hammer and chisel will get through the skull, but after that, you have to be delicate."
"I don't much care for the Englishman."
"Neydermeier?"
"Bond," Arnold corrected.
"I will always think of him as Neydermeier."
"He seemed unprofessional."
"Ah, you are not a spy, then, are you. In this business, that's the very height of professionalism. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if the Englishman came just to show us that they too are probing."
"You didn't order him to come?"
"Devereaux brought him along. Last minute." Pushkin made a noisy show of picking up one boot, about to slip it on. "Have a drink. You have all the warmth and charm of an unemployed mortician. And think about you and me and the black market. We can make a fortune."
As he brushed off his left foot, preparatory to slipping it into the boot, Pushkin said, "I always make my plans on the understanding that everyone is untrustworthy."
Arnold asked, "What about the Englishman agent?"
"He is especially untrustworthy. But he is also a professional, just like me."