Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  It was her hand which had touched him, reaching out through the glass. He stared at her small brown fingers in frozen incomprehension. They fumbled towards him, blind worms seeking the sun. Then she took a step forward.

  The tip of her nose broke through first. The mirror rippled around it like pond water. Her eyebrows were next, and when her eyes followed Morgan knew that she could see him. Her fingers clawed and struck out, leaving five thin trails of blood on his abdomen.

  Morgan snapped into movement, his fist lashing out to smash the mirror into shards. Mary let out a thin, horrible scream which ended in a sudden silence.

  She wasn't gone. He could see her already in the next mirror along. She was moving faster now, both arms already free of it. He smashed that too and ran to the next one before she could reach it. His knuckles were cut to ribbons but he didn't care. He was more terrified than he'd ever been looking down the business end of a gun.

  The floor was littered with shards of glass. He smashed another mirror, then another, and then he made the mistake of looking down at them. She was in every single shard. Her eyes blazed up at him, toxic with hatred.

  He stamped on the glittering fragments, trying to grind the glass into powder. Mary snarled and moved again - into the mirrors on the other side of the train. Morgan knew there was no way he could reach them in time to stop her. It was already too late. Her arms were in the carriage, groping towards him.

  It was too much. He didn't even think about it. A jerk of his elbow against glass, and this time he'd broken a window instead of a mirror.

  "Don't!" the other man shouted.

  It was only when he felt his shoulder catch and tear against a jagged fragment of glass that Morgan realised what he was intending to do. It didn't matter. He could sense his sister behind him, almost hear her soft tread across the narrow strip of carpet between them. He couldn't face her. He just couldn't.

  Morgan clutched his father's book to his chest and jumped.

  The assassin only hesitated for a moment before pivoting on his heel and flinging himself after Belle.

  There were a few people moving around the train now, passengers stumbling sleepy and bleary-eyed from their cabins. The first she ran past, an old man with grey hair sticking up at a strange angle, took one look at the knife-wielding maniac chasing after her and hurriedly ran back into his room. The next passenger, a kind-faced young woman, did exactly the same.

  Next time she saw someone, Belle tried screaming, but that just made them disappear faster. The part of her that wanted to believe better things about human nature hoped they'd gone to get their phones and call for help. She wasn't going to count on it, though.

  She wasn't going to get away. That left only one option.

  Five paces ahead of her there was another door, opening too slowly to let her through at a run. She kept moving forward anyway, running up the door and round in a backflip she'd learnt in junior high, more years ago than she could really remember.

  When she twisted back to face the assassin she was still in the air. His knife slashed but her hand moved quicker, grabbing the cloth across his eyes and pulling it free.

  His face was younger than she'd been imagining. Round and unlined and with the sort of innocence that often marked a total lack of conscience. There were no worry lines because nothing he could possibly do would worry him.

  And then Belle was falling through his eyes, diving into what lay inside.

  The most recent memories were always nearest the surface. She saw herself as he saw her, a blonde little girl in a red nightdress. Overlaid on the visual there was a layer of something dirtier. His thoughts. This little girl was a danger, a target. This little girl had to die. He'd never killed a child before. He looked forward to trying it.

  Somewhere that wasn't where her attention was, Belle felt herself dropping back to the floor. Her knees jarred but her eyes stayed fixed on his.

  And now she'd dived deeper, past that first layer to the things he wasn't thinking about right now. She saw the sushi he'd eaten last night. Felt the cold slide of it down his throat, and the shudder of disgust because these damn gaijin never knew how to make it fresh.

  She saw the face of the Westerner who'd led them, sneaked them onto the roof of the train as it left Budapest, to wait for the cover of deep night. She felt the hot wind as he pressed himself flat to the roof of the accelerating train, forty, fifty, seventy miles an hour, and the burn of exhilaration, because he didn't see why this was necessary, but it was fun.

  And with the part of her that wasn't buried inside him, Belle saw that his knife was moving again. He was beginning to recover from the shock of her attack. So she moved deeper still, grabbing the coattails of the thing that lived inside her as it hunted out the things it liked best - the twisted, base material that most people's minds hid at their core.

  He was shorter now, probably only a child. But he hated like an adult and he didn't have an adult's control over it. She looked out through his wide eyes at the body of his father. He hadn't realised that a body held that much blood. Ten pints. It doesn't sound so much until you see it spilled out on the floor.

  The gun felt like an intolerable weight in his hand. But it felt like something he might get used to, if he was given the chance.

  Belle felt the thing that lived inside her purring, like a cat in cream, luxuriating in these memories. Belle knew that she was speaking them aloud too, but she couldn't hear her own voice. The things she was finding inside this young man were so much more compelling. There he was now, dragging his father's body to the centre of the room, dousing it in gasoline. Just a little on himself too, because he was only twelve but he knew he had to make this look convincing.

  The assassin's knife dropped to the floor of the carriage with a soft thump. Belle's fingers remembered how it had fitted in his, but to her it just felt awkward, almost too heavy to wield. She had to swing her hips to get any kind of force behind the blow.

  The memories she was swimming in took a second to evaporate. She scrambled out of them, backwards into her own mind, dragging the beast with her, because she'd never found out what happened if she stayed with someone when they died.

  When her eyes were focused on the outside world again she saw the assassin at her feet, curled around the knife that hadn't quite hit his heart. He'd been right, she thought. There really was a lot of blood in one human body.

  She didn't stay to watch it pool. People were finally emerging from their cabins now the danger was past. She didn't think anyone would blame a little girl for killing the man who'd been chasing her, but she didn't want to have the conversation. Like Anya had said, they couldn't afford the delay. There was no way she could get the body out of the door on her own, and anyway they'd been seen. She settled for wiping the handle of the knife clean, then trotting off in the opposite direction before anyone associated her with the rapidly cooling corpse.

  Morgan hit something that wasn't hard enough to be the ground. He felt a moment of relief, and then he was sinking and he realised that falling into water wasn't necessarily going to save his life.

  He'd never liked swimming, not since Mary died. Now he was deep underwater and it should have been obvious which way was up. It was the way he'd just come - how could he forget that?

  But he had. He flailed desperately, bubbles of air he couldn't spare popping from his mouth. He thought if he watched them rise he'd know which direction he needed to swim, but he couldn't seem to concentrate. His mind was already greying towards black as the oxygen left it. Stay calm, he told himself. Calm, you useless fucker! What's the matter with you?

  On the edge of consciousness, he felt a brush of something against his leg. He looked down, through the murky, unclean water, the first hint of dawn shading it deep blue. Below him, a hand was clasped around his leg. He shut his eyes, because he didn't want to see any more.

  In his head he was seven years old. He'd dived after her, he honestly had, into that weed-choked lake he'd chased her into.
Only then she had grasped hold of his leg, and suddenly he felt as though he was drowning too. So instead of reaching down and pulling her to safety, he kicked out frantically. Kicked her away.

  He did it again now, but this time the grip on his leg didn't slacken. He felt her fingers clawing into his shin, the nails breaking the skin. She was doing exactly what he'd been afraid of all those years ago. She was pulling him under.

  There was a part of him that wanted to let her. It felt like justice, or at least retribution. But then he felt the hard outline of the book in his hand, and he remembered he had a reason to live.

  As he opened his eyes he realised the malicious spirit of his sister was doing him one favour. If she was pulling him down, then he finally knew which way was up. He bowed his legs in the beginning of breast stroke and tried to force himself away, against the press of the water and the pull of her fingers.

  His lungs were burning. They were running on empty and the urge to breathe in was almost irresistibly strong. Anything, even water, would feel better than that terrible hollow emptiness in his chest.

  He fought, against the urge and against the grip - hopelessly. He wasn't sinking any more but he wasn't rising either. And who knew how deep he'd gone, in that first violent plunge from the train?

  He opened his mouth to take a fatal gulp of water when he felt a sudden flaring pain in his shoulder to match the ache in his lungs. He fought it violently, but something was trying to surface through the confusion of his thoughts. This new grasp was drawing him in the opposite direction. It was pulling him up.

  With an effort of will, Morgan relaxed into it, letting his arms go limp as he kicked out with his legs. This time, they didn't flail uselessly. There was some traction there and the wonderful feeling of water moving past him.

  Another tug, another push, and the hand on his calf slipped down to his ankle. One more tug and it released him entirely. He suddenly felt as light as the air he so desperately needed. It was easy now. Another churn with his legs, the hand on his wrist still pulling him steadily upward, and then his head burst through the surface of the water.

  His legs trod water beneath him as he sucked air into starved lungs. He'd never realised it had a taste before, or how amazingly good that taste could be. When he opened his eyes all he could see for a moment was the gold of the rising sun refracted through the droplets of water on his eyelashes. He blinked them away and focused on his rescuer.

  "Anya," he said. His voice was halfway between a gasp and a croak. "What happened?"

  Her red hair looked much darker when it was wet, something like the colour of dried blood. "For some reason, you jumped out of the train. I jumped after you."

  She began swimming towards the shore. Now he had his breathing under control, Morgan took a second to look around before he followed her. As he'd suspected, they'd fallen into a river - a broad grey one that seemed to run through a city, to judge by the apartment buildings all around. To his left, the high span of the railway bridge cast its shadow on the water.

  The bank was flanked with concrete. Anya pulled herself out without difficulty, but it took Morgan's weakened arms two tries. As soon as he was clear of the water he rolled onto his back and just stared at the sky for a while. The sun wasn't high enough to be hot yet and the water had been cold. He was shivering, but he didn't care. He was alive.

  "Would you like to tell me why you jumped out of the train?" Anya asked when he had been quiet so long that the sun was finally beginning to warm him.

  He rolled onto his side to face her. "Not really." He reached into his waistband and pulled out his father's book. He should have been more surprised to see that it was bone dry. "I got it back."

  "Who said you were completely useless?" She smiled for the first time that Morgan could remember. It made her seem like a different person. A nicer one.

  "Thanks for saving my life," he said belatedly.

  She shrugged, and sat up. After a second, he did the same. "Where are we?" he asked.

  "Bratislava," she said. And at his blank expression, "The capital of Slovakia."

  "So, not Germany then."

  Anya laughed. "Not quite."

  "And I think it's fair to say we missed the train."

  Anya nodded. "No chance of re-boarding now. And even if we could, those people would still be there. It's safer to make our own way to Berlin. We'll have to catch up with the others there."

  If they survived the attack, Morgan thought. But he didn't say it. He was sure Anya was thinking it too.

  The train was crawling with people as Tomas walked wearily back towards his cabin, but none of them were the ones he was looking for. He felt a rising panic that he struggled to keep from his face. He was lucky, he supposed, that dead men didn't sweat. Guards were milling around, barking orders into walkie-talkies, and he was sure police would be getting on at the next stop. Someone would want to know what the hell had happened and where all those dead bodies had suddenly appeared from. Tomas had to make sure he looked as unsuspicious as possible.

  But he couldn't stop himself studying the faces of everyone he passed. Damn it! Nothing about this mission had gone right from the start. It felt like it was jinxed. In the back of his head he could hear Richard, telling him that he'd been misinformed - maybe about everything.

  He felt a surge of relief when he finally found Belle, waiting outside the door of his cabin. It took him a moment to realise that the dark stain on her red dress was blood. He didn't wait to find out if it was hers before he pulled her into the cabin and slammed the door behind them. Too incriminating either way.

  "Where's Anya?" he asked her.

  She looked down. In the dim light of the cabin her hair looked darker and the shadows under her eyes deeper. "I don't know. We got separated."

  Tomas swore. "And I don't suppose you've seen Morgan or the book?"

  She shook her head.

  He wondered how he could possibly report back to England now. Partner and target lost. They'd be sorry they ever dug him out of the ground. He was sorry, too - sorry for the young man who'd got dragged into all this against his will and now might very well have died for a cause he didn't believe in.

  "We should search the rest of the train," Belle said.

  Tomas hesitated. He wasn't sure they should be wandering around at the moment. Innocent people would be hiding in their cabins until the trouble was over. On the other hand, Morgan and Anya could be injured somewhere, needing their help.

  "You're right," he said eventually, and pulled the door open.

  Anya was standing just outside, hand raised ready to knock. She only looked surprised for a moment, then lowered her hand and said briskly, "Good. You both made it."

  "And Morgan?" Tomas asked.

  Anya shook her head. Tomas felt something clench inside him, until she quickly said, "Still alive, but not on the train."

  Belle perched on the end of the bed, her feet swinging above the floor. "What happened?"

  "He jumped. Or he was pushed - I don't know. I saw it from the window. But we were over the Danube at the time, he will have landed in the water."

  "Can he swim?" Belle asked.

  "If the fall didn't knock him unconscious," Tomas said grimly. "What's the next stop? We can get off there and go back for him."

  "Forget it," Anya said. "You won't get there in time to pull him out of the river. Either he made it or he didn't. If he did, the BND has agents in Slovakia we can send for him - he can rejoin us in Berlin. With the book taken, we have to concentrate on tracking down Raphael's contacts there, before we lose him as well."

  Tomas didn't like it, but he couldn't argue with the logic. After a moment he nodded. "OK then. I guess Morgan will just have to look after himself."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bratislava was like Budapest dialled down a notch. Anya told Morgan it was westernising fast, and he could see the signs of it in the smart restaurants and cheap bars, but it still felt like a place that had only recently remembered
how to have a good time. He shouldered his way through a crowd of young men with Bradford accents and ignored them when they swore at him.

  Anya followed behind, to a chorus of wolf whistles. Morgan could imagine her scowling. An increase in the noise from the lads suggested she might also have given them the finger.

  She'd told him she wanted to get straight out of the city, hire a car and head to Berlin overland. The train wasn't coming through for another few hours and anyway, it was compromised. But she reckoned the journey would be almost as quick by road, and Morgan wasn't going to argue with her. He just didn't want to go yet.

  Anya said something quietly behind him. When he turned he saw that she was talking into a mobile rather than to him. That, along with her credit card, had made it out of the river intact. Morgan pulled uncomfortably at the dry clothes she'd bought them both and wished she'd let him spend a bit more time shopping. The jeans were just about okay, but the baggy yellow t-shirt made him look like a middle-aged tourist. Her own shorts and muscle t-shirt ensemble was considerably more flattering. Morgan had to make an effort not to look at the way the material stretched over her breasts.

  She spoke a couple more times, too quiet for him to hear over the chatter of the morning crowd, then snapped the phone shut and handed it to him.

  Morgan raised an eyebrow.

  "I've spoken to my people," she said. "Now you need to call Tomas and let him know you're okay - and that you've got the book."

  Morgan nodded, entering the number he knew by heart, but she put her hand over his before he could dial. "Keep it short, and don't use any names. Someone could be listening."

  When Tomas answered, Morgan could hear the sound of the train in the background, clacking over the tracks. "Who is this?" he said.

  Morgan smiled, surprised at how glad he was to hear the other man had survived. "Its Mor -" He caught Anya's glare. "It's me. I'm fine. The... the thing's fine too."