Devil May Care

back on to the seat.
    Scarlett put her face into her hands and wept.
    Bond awoke in daylight, with Scarlett’s arms round him, lying on the bottom bunk. She had covered them both with a grey blanket and the garage woman’s cardigan.
    Scarlett’s hair lay over his face like a dark shawl as she stroked his aching back and whispered in his ear, ‘We’re nearly there, we’re nearly there, my darling. Breakfast in Leningrad at the Literaturnaya Café on the Nevsky Prospekt. My father used to tell me about it. We’ll have eggs with smoked salmon and coffee. Then a boat. Helsinki. And then Paris.’
    Bond smiled, rolled on to his back and kissed her on the lips. The sleep had partly restored him.
    ‘Why is it that every time I’m about to make love to you,’ he said, ‘we get interrupted? Is it still “destiny”?’
    ‘No,’ said Scarlett, ‘it’s so that when it finally happens it will be more wonderful.’
    Scarlett disappeared down the corridor with the Volga driver’s spongebag and Bond prepared himself for one more day. When they reached Helsinki, he would telephone M and find out what had happened to the Caspian Sea Monster. He smiled to himself at the prospect. The old man could never quite disguise the pleasure he had in hearing Bond’s voice after a long radio silence.
    When each had done what they could with Soviet toothpaste and brackish water, they settled back to watch the approach of Leningrad.
    ‘As soon as we get to the docks,’ said Bond, ‘you’ll have to find an adventurous boat owner, Scarlett. Somewhere out in the Gulf of Finland there’s a watery border between the Communists and the free world. I think we can be reasonably certain that it will be patrolled by armed frontier guards.’
    ‘You want me to find a pirate,’ said Scarlett.
    ‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘With a very fast boat.’
    ‘I shall need money.’
    ‘You’re turning me into a cheap thief.’
    ‘You have such a flair for it, my love.’
    Bond sighed and checked the magazine of the Luger.
    It was only a short walk from the Moscow station to the Nevsky Prospekt, and when they had breakfasted, Bond set about raising more money while Scarlett went to the docks. They had a rendezvous behind the Pushkin Theatre at one o’clock. Bond, rather to his shame, slipped a knitted balaclava from a market stall into his pocket and wore it while he removed a quantity of money at gunpoint from a van delivering cash before opening time to a bank on a quiet street off Moskovsky Prospekt. At least the security guard had been stupefied enough by the sight of the Luger to offer no struggle, and Bond had been able to put a good distance between himself and the scene before he heard a police siren. He threw the balaclava into a bin, put on the ‘maths teacher’ straw hat from GUM and made himself as inconspicuous as he could in a municipal park near the Neva river.
    When he was reunited with Scarlett, her news was mixed. She looked anxious. ‘I found a man,’ she said. ‘He’s Finnish, in fact, and he speaks English, though not very well. He’s prepared to do it, but he can’t get us to Helsinki. It’s too far. If he takes a lot of extra fuel, he can get us over the border. Then we transfer to a boat belonging to his brother. They do the run quite regularly, he says. This second boat will take us to a large port called Hamina, which is about a hundred and fifty miles from here. It’s the best he can do. We can get a train from there, or there’s a good road.’
    ‘All right,’ said Bond. ‘At least it’s in Finland. A neutral country.’
    ‘There are Russian navy boats on patrol and part of the sea is mined, but he knows the way through. We do it atnight. We leave at eleven. It’ll take eight hours altogether. But he wants a hell of a lot of money.’
    ‘That’s just what I have,’ said Bond.
    ‘How did you –’
    ‘You said you wouldn’t ask.’
    At ten forty-five, Bond and Scarlett arrived at the appointed place. The docks were heavily guarded by Customs and police requiring paperwork and passports, so Scarlett had been directed to one of the small islands on the west of the city. At the end of a narrow street, there was a flight of old lightermen’s brick steps going down into the sea.
    At their foot, as he had promised, was Jaska, the man with whom Scarlett had made the deal. The boat was a converted fishing vessel with a sluggish inboard motor that was already turning over with a throaty, catarrhal