AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The train pulled into a station that was simply a pair of outdoor platforms, one on either side of the tracks, and a plain-looking brick building. He had no idea what the sign said. The train stopped, the doors opened, and people struggled with heavy luggage and children and their own stiff-leggedness from sitting eight hours. They got out the open door and started to walk.
Sam had instinctively tried to stick with crowds, but this wasn’t a crowd. A trickle of people who didn’t look much like him crossed a platform to a rural road that looked empty. He thought, It’s time. It has to be now. He got up and stepped out the door with his schoolboy bag and his cap and began to walk. He heard the doors close behind him, then a muffled Russian announcement from inside the train, and the big diesel engine began to pull it away. He kept going. He looked at his watch. It was 5:08. If the train was on time, it was thirty-seven minutes from Nizhny Novgorod.
He knew he must be subjecting himself to a very long walk, but he also knew that he had probably just saved his own life. He thought about his route. The train had gone pretty much due east for hours, and there was no reason to imagine it wasn’t designed to go due east the rest of the way. He could see the sun rising at the eastern end of the road, so he headed toward it. He pushed his hat’s brim down to protect his eyes and stared ten feet ahead at the ground alongside the road. He was going to get to Remi.
He knew he wasn’t getting there quickly, but he decided it had to be that way. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, to be the one who was different. When he got there, he wanted to be like a drop of water in a rainstorm. He was just another Russian worker making his way.
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA
IT WAS LATE THE FOLLOWING NIGHT WHEN SAM SAW THE big farm that a woman on the road had pointed out. There were large fields surrounded by fences, but there didn’t seem to be anything growing except grass. He could see the big old manor house about half a mile back from the road and a number of white buildings beyond that he supposed must be barns and stables. There were no lights on that he could see. He could tell there was a stream that ran from somewhere in the back part of the farm down under the road and off in the direction of the Volga River. Most of the field was just short grassy vegetation that he couldn’t identify in the night, but along the stream were tall reeds, and its course was marked by a long line of bushes and trees that grew there because of the abundant water.
He went down to the streambed and stepped along it toward the big mansion. He knew the vegetation would make his silhouette difficult to pick out, and the lower elevation of the stream would hide about half his body from the house. He also guessed that any guards stationed there would expect trouble to come from the road, not the little stream.
Sam walked patiently, listening and watching for trouble. Once, he froze, and felt his heart pounding, because he
’d heard a noise up ahead, but then he realized it was just the sound of a bullfrog jumping off a rock into the water somewhere upstream. He listened to the night birds calling, trying to detect any note of alarm that men were approaching.
And then he reached a low arched wooden bridge that led from the fenced field to the lawn of the mansion. He climbed up the bank and sat beside the bridge to hide himself as he studied the building. There were four stories and a French mansard roof, but he still saw no sign of lights in the front. He searched for sentries. As he did, a pair of men appeared far to his right, walking toward the house from an area that looked to him like a formal flower garden. They passed the house, and he could see that both carried machine pistols on slings. They also carried small, powerful LED flashlights, and one of them took his out and ran its bright beam along the shrubs in front of the house as they walked. He shone the light up the side of the house to the second floor, and Sam noticed that there was a window open there at what must be the end of a corridor.
The two men turned the corner and walked on. Sam waited only a couple of seconds to be sure they were gone and then trotted up the lawn to the end of the mansion they had just passed. He tested the drainpipe running downward near the open window to see if its supports would hold a man’s weight. Then he began to climb. He reached the second floor, put his hand on the window frame, and pulled himself in over the sill. He crouched near the window and listened. He didn’t hear the sound of footsteps.
He thought he heard something else in the total silence, a faint tapping of metal on metal. Beside him was an open door. He moved toward it and saw it was a bedroom. He moved in farther to the next door, which was a bathroom. He could hear the tapping clearly now, and, after a moment, he knew exactly what it was.
Remi 4th floor.
.-. . --.. ....--.... ..-. .-.. --- --- .-.
Remi 4th floor.
.-. . --.. ....--.... ..-. .-.. --- --- .-.
She used the metal strut she had taken from the cabinet to rap on the pipe for what she imagined must be the thousandth time. Each night, when the house was silent and she was sure the others were asleep, she would begin signaling again. First, she would pick the lock on the bedroom door, leaving the separated fork tine in it so she could lock it by raking the pins aside on the tumbler and hiding the tine. She would open the door, listen carefully, and then make her way along the corridor to a window so she knew for sure it was night and all were asleep. Then she would go back and signal.
She always left the door closed but unlocked so she would be ready for Sam. It would be very difficult for him to find her, but she knew he would. He was a brilliant man, and he loved her as much as he loved breathing. He had once promised her that if they were ever separated this way, he would simply keep coming for her until he had her. Nothing would stop him while he was alive. She had no idea when he would arrive at this remote Russian manor house, but she knew he was on his way.
Most nights, she kept up the signaling on the pipes until she judged it must be around five a.m. and nearly light outside. Then she would look down the hall to confirm it was predawn, close and lock her door, and sleep. She had become nocturnal in the past week, sleeping during the long periods between meals except while she was exercising, bathing, or interrogating Sasha about the world outside.
And then he came. Remi was tapping on the pipe as usual when she became aware that something had changed. She had been in this small space so long that adding another human being changed everything—air, sounds, a new vibration on the floor as he walked in the door.
Remi sprang up instantly, hurried to Sam and threw her arms around him. She held him as tightly as she could for a full ten seconds, tears welling in her eyes. She recognized the familiar contour of his shoulders under the bulky jacket. Then she looked up at him and whispered, “What took you so long—enjoying being single?”
“No. You just forgot to tell me you were leaving.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Ready to get out of here?”
“Almost,” she whispered. She sat on the bed and put on her shoes. “We’ve got to go that way and down the back stairs to the second floor, which will get us past the family’s floor and the bodyguards. Then we use the main staircase to reach the first floor, so we miss the kitchen, where the night guards go for their breaks.”
“You know that?”
“I made a friend—a girl who works in the kitchen. How did you get into the house?”
“I saw a second-floor window that had been left opened. It turned out to be a hallway. I heard your signal, and from there I went up the back stairs.”
“Dumb luck. That was about the only way that was clear.” She stood. “I’m ready.” She opened the door and walked out, waited for Sam, and locked it behind them.
She led him down the spiraling stairs for two stories, then silently and carefully moved up the hallway to the broad main staircase. She stopped for a moment to listen for the two guards in their room snoring, then moved onto the stairs. The steps were carpeted, so their footsteps were muffled. They descended to the ground floor, where there was a large foyer with a marble floor with a round escutcheon mosaic at the center. As they stepped onto its surface, three men seemed to materialize from a shadowy doorway somewhere beside the stairs.
