Sasha pulled his head back and touched the ends of his bushy mustache. “The famous one?”
“Not famous enough for you to remember his name, but yes. And he is aboard this train with a group of Serbian mercenaries who are holding him hostage.”
Sasha stared at her for a second, and Alex could see many emotions flitting across his face, finishing up with self-preservation.
“Nonsense, my girl!” he chuckled dismissively, then took a long, covering sip of black tea before finally putting the cup down, having decided on a weak follow-up. “You have been reading too much American fiction. Try some Chekhov.”
Alex wasn’t sure why the gent was suggesting she search out the books of Star Trek’s helmsman, but she didn’t have time to find out he was referring to a great Russian writer. Instead, she reached across the small space, and gripped his knee with conviction and urgency.
“It’s true, Sasha. I have had it confirmed. Believe me, I wouldn’t make this up for any reason.”
He looked down at her hand, then back up to her face. “Then perhaps we should consult with Boris,” he said cautiously, referring to the onboard policeman.
“I considered that, but any intervention could place Kozlov in further danger. And there are seven of them and only one Boris. I also believe these people had something to do with the death of that passenger, Yankovski.”
Sasha leaned back, his expression conflicted, and, finally, overwhelmed. “This will all be something for the proper authorities, Miss Alex. I shall personally summon them when we arrive at Irkutsk.”
“We may not arrive at Irkutsk, Sasha.”
Now the old Stalinite looked alarmed. “What do you mean?”
“Sasha, these men are plotting something that will happen aboard this train. They have some equipment hidden somewhere. Could there be such a secret compartment in one of the cars?”
“Well …” Sasha hesitated. He wanted no part of this intrigue, and his only desire was to get rid of this girl and go to sleep. “There are some cargo compartments aboard that can be rented. They are locked and can only be entered by the customers.”
“Only by the customers, Sasha?”
“Well, and by me, of course.”
“Show me, please.”
Once more Alex witnessed the argument going on behind the conductor’s eyes. But, finally, she saw that he recognized the possible danger etched into the faces of those Serbians.
“Blyat,” Sasha muttered in Russian, pressed his hands to his knees, and got up. He pulled a small scrolled poster from a cardboard tube tucked next to his bed, and unfurled it. It was a schematic diagram of the Trans-Siberian, detailing all the cars’ layouts from a birds-eye view. He stretched the scroll out on his bed coverlet as Alex got up and looked down at it.
“You see?” he said. “Here, up front near the locomotive, there is a cargo compartment with four large lockers. They were berths before being converted, but I assure you that nothing of danger is in there.”
“How do you know, Sasha?”
The conductor puffed out his chest. “Alex, I am much like the captain of a ship …”
“Once you rent someone a locker, do you see everything that goes in there?”
“Well, not always. But passengers are most often shipping their personal effects. Sometimes they are moving, with clothing and suitcases and dishware.”
With that, Alex knelt on both knees and laced her fingers together on the edge of Sasha’s bed. She looked up at him with such sincerity that he was taken aback.
“Sasha,” she said. “Are you a patriot?”
“Of course. I am a devoted child of Mother Russia!”
“Well, your mother is in grave danger, Sasha. Perhaps mortal danger. If you don’t believe me, go have a look at Yankovski’s cold corpse.”
Sasha said nothing, but his expression turned very grave, and his sharp old eyes began to melt in surrender.
“Take me to these compartments, Sasha,” Alex said. “If I am wrong, you can laugh at me afterwards.” She looked over at his ancient radio. “And I’ll buy you a brand new stereo, battery powered, and a whole set of all the classics, loaded on an iPod that plugs right in. I’ll even look up the works of ensign Chekov.”
“Anton Chekov,” Sasha said. But then he got up, shrugged off his robe, pulled his uniform pants from a hook and started dressing.
“I knew you were going to be trouble the first time I saw you,” he said.
Alex grinned. “That’s what my father always says.”
* * * *
It was well past midnight, and except for the rolling pitch of its cars and the constant clacks of its old iron wheels, the train was quiet. Only a few passengers moved through the corridors, most of whom trudged to the toilets in slippers. The dining cars were empty.
Alex followed Sasha as he made his way forward, noting his bow-legged, but steady, gait, and she felt an affinity for the kind old Russian. She had never known her grandfathers, and decided that such nurturing souls reached across nationalities, borders and politics.
Her stomach only tensed as they passed through the car where Kreesat and his crew occupied their two suites, but he’d posted no guard and the doors were closed. A few minutes later they had negotiated all of the passenger cars, arrived at a coupling, and faced a locked iron door with no window. Sasha produced a collection of skeleton keys on a large brass ring.
“It is foolishness,” he muttered as the wind stream coursed through the coupling’s cracked flex shields.
“I don’t mind being proved a fool,” Alex said.
“It is because you are young,” Sasha said as he cranked the key. “The taste grows bitter as one gets older.” He pulled the heavy door open and disappeared into utter blackness.
Alex followed, squinting hard but seeing absolutely nothing, until Sasha flicked on the battery-powered hurricane lantern he’d brought along. The weak bulb flickered, throwing pale yellow shadows along a car corridor stripped of any comforts—no carpeting or drapes on the windows. The berths on the right hadn’t been painted for years, and the rusty doors all had heavy padlocks hanging from hasps. She pulled the car’s entrance door closed behind her.
“We do not care very much for this space,” Sasha said with a hint of embarrassment.
“I can see that,” Alex said, though she wasn’t sure if Sasha meant that the train crew didn’t like the cargo car, or that they didn’t bother to dust.
Sasha waved at the cargo berths. “Where do you wish to begin, Miss Alex?”
“At the beginning, please.”
He flipped through his massive key ring, until he found an additional set of padlock keys with numbers that matched their locks. He worked the first berth’s lock open, hung the heavy padlock from his leather belt, slid the door aside, and raised his lantern. Alex, considerably taller than Sasha, stuck her face over his shoulder and peered inside. She saw nothing more than a pile of suitcases and steamer trunks.
“May I open one of those, Sasha?” she asked.
“No, but I may if you wish.”
“Please.”
Sasha walked into the berth, flipped the hasp of one thick wooden trunk and opened the lid. It was packed with books, and he looked up at Alex and snorted, “Unless your criminals are violent librarians, I think we are done with this one.”
Alex agreed and they locked up and moved to the next berth. She had hope as the light from the hurricane lantern gleamed off of large metal boxes, but they turned out to be filing cabinets filled with legal briefs.
“There is an attorney on board with his family,” Sasha said. “It appears he has had his fill of Siberian courts and is moving to Moscow. Would you like to read his files, Miss Alex?”
“I don’t read Russian.”
“Well, I could leave you here anyway. Maybe you’d learn.”
Alex put her fists to her hips and dipped her forehead. “Very funny, Sasha. Can we move on?”
“As you wish.”
As they opened the third cargo berth, both of them gasped and jumped back. In the middle of the berth between a neat pile of suitcases and household goods packed in cardboard boxes, was a standing birdcage with a huge white cockatoo inside that started flapping and screaming.
“Jesus!” Alex touched her thumping heart, while Sasha recovered the huge key ring he’d dropped on the floor.
“Some people have pets,” he said. “They cannot be with them in the cars.”
“At least it wasn’t a lion.”
Sasha locked the berth, looked at his pocket watch and then up at Alex from under his wild eyebrows. “I think we have seen enough. Nothing is here, Miss Alex.”
“But there’s only one more, Sasha.”
“Oh, all right,” he huffed as he walked to the last one. “But you are far too inquisitive. Or how do they say it in English?” He touched his bulbous veiny nose.
“Nosy.”
“Yes! If you were my granddaughter …”
“I’d be a very fortunate girl.”
“You do not need to flatter me, Alex,” he admonished as he opened the last lock.
“I meant it.”
Sasha slid the door open, raised his lantern, and froze.
“Oh my God,” Alex blurted in a hoarse whisper.
Both of them stood in the doorway, mouths agape. This cargo compartment was devoid of any household or business goods. To the left against the forward wall of the train car was a slim metal table with a tucked-under chair, and on top of the table sat a sophisticated single sideband radio set, its power cord plugged into a black extension cord that snaked off somewhere.
Across from that, against the right-hand bulkhead, was a black tower of much more complex communications equipment, topped by a wire-array antenna that looked somewhat like a large, black praying mantis. This multi-comm module was not plugged into the train’s juice either, but instead attached to some sort of gasoline generator sitting on the floor, which in turn was encased in a soundproof “blimp” and was chugging out electricity almost silently. The power lights on the comm tower flickered and blinked in a steady rhythm.
And sitting in the middle of the berth between these two sections of digital wares, on a hard-backed steel chair, was a young blond woman about thirty years old. She was wearing a stained green blouse and a business-like gray skirt, no shoes. Her trunk was tied to the chair back with coils of rough hemp, her arms cranked behind her, and her ankles were trussed to the chair legs. A long filthy silk scarf was tied horizontally around her head, its soggy twists parting her pale lips like a horse bit. Her green eyes were gleaming and wild and her chest heaved.
“What is this?!” Sasha exclaimed in rage and made to jump to the woman’s rescue, but Alex gripped his arm and yanked him back.
“Wait, Sasha,” she ordered, and she took the lantern from his clenched fist and lowered the light, examining the space for some kind of trip wire. Seeing nothing, she released him and he sprang forward. He quickly untied the woman’s gag and threw it away as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped her drooling mouth and saliva-soaked chin.
“My poor dear,” he said in Russian. “What in heaven’s name happened to you?”
But the woman couldn’t speak. Alex looked around and spotted a water bottle on the floor near the right-hand wall, next to a bowl of some sort of gruel and a pail for human waste. Yet none of those items could be of use to a bound hostage, unless she were regularly visited by her captors. She picked up the water bottle and gently sluiced some into the woman’s lips. Then she finger brushed her wild blond hair back from her face and bent to talk to her, but Sasha was very agitated and broke in first.
“Who are you?” he asked in Russian.
“You are Svetlana Kozlov, aren’t you?” Alex said to her in English.
“Da,” the woman whispered, and then added in English, “I am Svetlana.”
“She is Svetlana Kozlov!” Sasha said to Alex.
“I know, Sasha,” Alex said. “She just said it in English.”
“You are the daughter of the famous physicist!” Sasha said to Svetlana in Russian. “I read the story, but the newspapers all said you died.”
“She’s the daughter of Dmitry Kozlov,” Alex said to Sasha in English.
“I know that!” he repeated. “I read and speak Russian well!” Then Sasha jumped to the back of Svetlana’s chair and made to untie her wrists, but Alex reached out, squeezed his shoulder, and looked in his furious eyes.
“No, Sasha. Not yet.” She knelt and placed her hands on Svetlana’s trembling thighs and looked at her tortured pale face. “Svetlana, my name is Alex. I am here to help you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Svetlana said.
“We are here to help you,” Sasha corrected.
“Yes, we.” Alex looked up at him over Svetlana’s shoulder. “Do you believe me now, Sasha?”
“Yes, yes!”
Alex turned her attention back to the woman. “How did you get here?”
“Serbians,” Svetlana whispered in a croak. “Six terrible men and one young female.”
Sasha, unable as yet to free the woman, took to gently petting her hair. “But how did they bring you in here, my poor dear?”
“On board as a regular passenger with a ticket,” Alex guessed. “And then in here, probably at gunpoint. Is that right?”
Svetlana shuddered with a sob. “Please let me go,” she begged.
“We will,” Alex said. “But we can’t just yet.”
“Why?” Tears welled in Svetlana’s eyes and rolled down her quivering cheeks.
“Why not?” Sasha demanded.
Alex ignored him. “Listen to me, Svetlana. Your father is also on this train, and he is in grave danger, just like you.”
“Nyet. Oh no …”
“Yes.” Alex held the woman’s shocked gaze. “And you can imagine what these people want from him, can’t you?”
“He is an important scientist.” Svetlana glanced around at the communications gear. “A brilliant man.”
“Yes.” Alex touched her chin to bring her focus back. “And when he thought you were dead, he was broken. But now he knows you are alive somewhere, though he does not know you are on this train. Only Sasha and I know that, and these Serbs have no idea that we know. They are planning to force your father to do something terrible. We cannot give them any warning. Do you understand?”
Then the woman began to comprehend, as did Sasha, though he was shaking his old head behind Svetlana and murmuring keening sounds. Svetlana slumped as she stared at Alex.
“I must stay here, like this, for now.”
“Yes,” Alex said. “Just for now.”
Alex turned to search for the sodden gag where Sasha had thrown it to the floor. The last thing she wanted to do was to leave this woman alone in her terror, but if she freed her now and the Serbians discovered her gone, they might act out in ways that could be murderous to everyone on board the train.
She stopped searching for the rag as her eyes fixed on something attached to one leg of the metal table on the left. It was a small disk, the shape and thickness of a bottle cap, with a gleaming glass orb in the center. Her heart started hammering as she turned her head to the comm tower over on the right, where she spotted a similar module affixed to one upright stanchion of the power rack. The two “bottle caps” were directly in line with each other, positioned about six inches in front of Svetlana’s ankles. Alex was kneeling right there, between them.
It was an electric eye—a digital tripwire. At that very moment, a receiver alarm was probably beeping in Maxim Kreesat’s cell phone. She reached out, snatched up Svetlana’s gag and got up.
“Sasha,
where is Boris?” she asked him.
“The policeman? He is probably asleep, and drunk.”
“Go get him.”
“But why?”
“Now Sasha! I will stay here with Svetlana. Go!”
He cursed in a string of Russian mumbles and made for the door. Then he turned back and offered Alex the lantern.
“No, take it with you. And padlock the door again after you leave.”
He complied, and the door slid home and the cargo berth was plunged into blackness.
Alex worked her way behind Svetlana’s chair in the dark, and gently retied the gag in her mouth. Then she leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Just sit very still and act exactly like you have before, okay?”
Svetlana nodded, although Alex could smell the rank sweat and adrenaline fear rising from the poor woman’s skin. She worked her way in the dark to the near right corner of the berth, in front of the comm tower rack and just behind the door. Then she whispered once more in the dark.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, for both their benefits. “I am a very capable girl.”
CHAPTER SIX
The doorway to Maxim Kreesat’s suite was filled with the enormous frame of Vlado Hislak, formerly the sergeant major of the Shadows—and a very capable man. Hislak gripped the door frame with his ham hock hands, and thrust his grizzly-sized head and wild beard inside, as if he were a jump master checking the drop zone from the door of a paratroop transport.
“Yes, Major?” He looked down at Kreesat, who was large himself, but few men were as massive as Hislak.
The Ghost showed Hislak his smart phone and the small orange icon blinking in the upper right corner of the screen. “Something has set off the digital tripwire, Vlado,” Kreesat said. “Go check on it.”
“Yes, sir,” Hislak said with a voice that sounded like a dump truck engine. He glanced toward the sleeping compartment, and tipped his red beard up at Amina. She stood there, arms folded, keeping watch over the reclining form of Dmitry Kozlov, who lay under a thin blanket—a cold wash cloth soothing his eyes. Amina tipped her cleft chin back up at Hislak, then unsnapped a large key ring from her belt and flung it across the space. Hislak caught it like a Frisbee.
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