Authors: Rob Sinclair
My head came out of the darkness when I heard the voice. It was like a mist clearing in front of me. I was being spoken to. I thought I recognised the voice. But I wasn’t sure why she was asking me my name. How did she not remember me?
‘What is your name?’ she said again.
Her voice was warm, comforting. Welcome. It had been months since I’d heard her speak but it was distinctive and clear to me, as though I still talked to her, heard her voice, every day. I still thought about her all the time after all.
‘Why are you asking me that?’ I said.
My head was foggy. My sight blurred. I could feel odd sensations in my body. I knew it was there, but it felt so detached. I wanted to stand up but it was like I didn’t know how. I looked around. I couldn’t make out the room because of the bright light dazzling my eyes. I wasn’t sure why we were in this place. From what I could make out it was dark, dingy. We were the only people here. Such a strange place to come to.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she said.
‘I’m starving.’
‘Well, just a few more questions, then you can eat. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘What is your name?’
‘It’s Carl,’ I said.
Wasn’t it obvious? Was this some sort of test? Should I have given one of my covers?
‘Carl what?’
Did she really not know?
‘Carl Logan,’ I said.
Past the glare of the bright lights I caught a glimpse of her face. She was leaning forward toward me. Smiling. Such a beautiful face. Just seeing her made me feel more at ease.
And yet it was a face that was unfamiliar to me. Not the face that belonged to the voice. It wasn’t Angela’s.
Nonetheless the woman seemed pleased by my response to the question. Or maybe just pleased that I had responded.
Perhaps this was a test. Yes, it must be. It all seemed so surreal, though. Not like any test I had done before.
‘That’s great, Carl. You’re doing great. Now just a few more questions, then we can get you that food.’
Well, that sounded good to me. I really was starving.
We’d been sitting for about twenty minutes in silence. It’d given me enough time to figure out how to get away from Chris and Mary. But I still had plenty of time to kill before I needed to move.
‘You got anything to eat?’ I said.
‘Nope,’ Chris said.
‘Drink?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t plan that too well then, did you?’
‘Well, we weren’t planning on getting off the train so quickly.’
‘You didn’t have to,’ I said.
‘Yes, we did,’ Chris said, scowling. ‘We’re following orders. You might think this is funny, but it isn’t a game for us.’
‘You think it’s a game for me? Just remember, I’m the one who’s been locked up in a cell for months.’
Neither of them responded to that. We sat in silence again; Chris looking like a sullen child, Mary beginning to look tired and disinterested.
Glancing over at the departures board, I noticed my train was the second on the list. First was an eastbound train, due
just fifteen minutes before the next westbound. The westbound was the train I was going to be on. Chris and Mary wouldn’t be.
I waited in the warmth of the station lounge until five minutes before the eastbound was due, not wanting to go out in the cold too early. By that point, none of us had spoken a word for what must have been an hour.
‘I’m going outside,’ I said. ‘I fancy getting some fresh air while we wait for the train. Not long before it’s due now.’
As I got up I noticed the distrusting look on both Chris’s and Mary’s faces. But they didn’t protest, just shrugged at each other and then got up to follow me. I walked over to the doors and out onto the icy platform, turning left to head towards the far western end.
It was still dark out but daylight would be arriving within an hour or two. The temperature seemed to have dropped at least another couple of degrees in the time that we’d sat in the terminal building. Not surprisingly, no other people were yet waiting on the westbound platform. And only three people stood on the eastbound, eagerly awaiting the imminent arrival.
I hunkered my head down into the collar of my coat, trying to protect it from the cold as best as I could. I pushed my hands hard into my pockets. But I still had no hat, scarf or gloves and there was nothing I could do to stop the chilling air getting to my extremities. I tried my best to ignore the cold and the shivers that were running through me and carried on walking towards the far end of the long platform.
‘Logan, what the hell are you up to?’ Mary said, keeping pace two or three yards behind me. ‘It’s freezing out here.’
I ignored her and carried on walking. When I reached the end of the platform, I stopped, turning to face the lines.
‘You’re up to something,’ Mary said, catching up with
me. ‘I can tell. Just don’t do anything stupid. We’ve been told to use force if necessary. Lethal force. You know what I mean, right?’
I did. It would have been naive to think they weren’t armed, whoever they were working for. But Mary’s words still shook me. They weren’t meant as friendly advice but as a clear threat. If I did anything stupid, anything to compromise their position, they had been ordered to take me down.
And if they really were from the JIA, that was a patent sign that I wasn’t trusted. I was no longer seen as one of them. I was a hostile. My mind had been toying with the idea for some time. But her words had made it seem all the more real.
So much for wanting to bring me in to make sure I was all right. To them, this was just damage limitation.
Probably the only reason they were trying to bring me in quietly rather than just getting rid of me out in the middle of Siberia was because they didn’t want to create an unnecessary scene. Plus they didn’t want to finish me off before first finding out whether I was now an asset for another agency.
I turned my head and looked at Mary. She had her hat and scarf back on now. Her hands, like mine, were pushed into the pockets of her coat. Chris, who had caught up and was standing next to her, took the same stance. I wondered whether they already had their guns in hand, inside their pockets, in anticipation of what I might do.
‘Don’t do anything you might regret, Carl,’ Mary said.
But I didn’t say another word to either of them. I turned my head away and looked up the track. And waited.
After a couple of minutes, the eastbound train came into view in the distance, its bright twin headlights piercing the hazy darkness. Next came the rumbling sound from the guzzling diesel engine and the whine from the friction of the wheels rubbing on the iced-up tracks.
I focused on the lights and the noise, both getting more intense as the slowing train came closer. The brakes were pushed down harder and a screeching sound filled the air. The vibrations resonated in the pit of my stomach as the train slowed for its final approach. It was just a couple of hundred yards away.
I took a step closer to the platform edge, the tips of my boots hanging over.
‘Logan,’ Chris said, ‘whatever you’re about to do, don’t. Just come back to Omsk with us. That’s all we want. Don’t make us do something that we’ll all regret.’
I ignored him. I got no comfort from his words. Their position had been made clear. I took one more look at the approaching train, just a little over fifty yards away.
And then I jumped down onto the track.
‘Shit!’ Chris shouted, the only thing I heard from either of them above the roar of the oncoming train filling my ears.
I jumped the set of westbound tracks, then into the middle of the eastbound, feeling the rush of chilled air as the train ploughed its way towards me. I thrust my hands out to the platform edge, grasped the icy surface, tried to pull myself over.
But my plan hadn’t taken account of the difficulty of cold, bare hands clinging on to slippery, frozen concrete.
My grip gave way and I fell back down, the base of my back smacking off one of the raised tracks.
I thought I heard gasps and shouts from the small cluster of bystanders but I couldn’t be sure above the din of the train. Its bulk filled my entire peripheral vision. I didn’t dare look just how close it was. I knew I must only be seconds away from being crushed to death under its massive weight.
In one last desperate attempt, I jumped up. I put both my forearms over the platform edge, placing my weight right across them from my wrists to my elbows. It gave me more grip than my numb fingers had been able to muster.
And it worked.
I hauled my body up and over the edge. Almost simultaneously,
the train swept past as I lay on the ground, panting heavy breaths. More from relief than anything else.
I didn’t wait for long, though. I quickly got to my feet. The three passengers on the platform stared at me, aghast. I gave a meek smile and turned my attention to the other side of the station. Looking through the windows of the train as it made its way through, I could see the blinking outline of Chris and Mary, still standing on the westbound platform, confusion fixed on their faces.
They had a simple choice now. To get to this side, they could either take the overhead bridge, which was towards the middle of the platform, or wait for the train to fully move into the station before crossing behind it and over the tracks the same as I had. Whichever route they chose, I probably had at least a minute on them.
I didn’t waste any more time: I turned on my heels and ran.
The eastbound side had no station building. Just the overhead walkway for passengers to get onto and off the platform. At the back of the platform was a wire fence, closing the station off from the unknown darkness beyond it. That was where I headed.
The fence was somewhere between seven and eight feet high. I cleared it without too much effort, then trudged across the hard ground that lay beyond on which lay a covering of soft, fresh snow, maybe an inch or two thick. Within a few yards I was into a clump of trees.
The memories of being out in the desolate forest came rushing back to me. I shook my head to clear the depressing thoughts from my mind. Thankfully this wasn’t a seemingly never-ending expanse like before. I knew the station was just behind. And as I moved forward, the trees soon opened out again into a dark clearing.
In the dim moonlight, it looked to be a small industrial plant of some sort with numerous low-rise buildings of various shapes and sizes. I headed towards the second nearest, which looked like an outbuilding, maybe holding a generator or something similar. I stopped alongside it.
Only then did I turn to look behind me for the first time. I had no doubt that Chris and Mary would follow me here. The only question was how they would approach. I had to assume they would draw their weapons and I was now a shooting target. I could do nothing about that. But would they stick together or move apart? Would one or more of them use a torch to try to find me? Would they approach slowly with stealth or opt for speed and surprise?
I couldn’t yet see or hear anything of them, which suggested some of those possibilities more than others.
But Mary’s voice soon broke the silence. Her pitch was raised. She was shouting, but her voice was still distant.
‘Please, Logan. Don’t do this. You’re only making this harder for yourself. Someone could end up getting hurt.’
Her voice was coming from the direction that I had come from. But I couldn’t see any sign of her at all. No torch beam. No moving outline.
‘That was some crazy shit you pulled back there,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. You only had a second to spare, you know.’
I gazed into the darkness, my eyes squinting as though that would make my night-time vision better. But other than her voice, I had nothing to pinpoint her position.
‘I was relieved that you did make it,’ she continued. ‘But the longer this goes on, you dodging us and running like this, the greater the chance that one of us is going to end up getting hurt.’
Her choice of words was interesting –
us
, rather than
them and me. Trying to make me feel like we were still part of the same team. Like I was just having a momentary lapse that would soon pass. But I wouldn’t trust that. She’d already made it quite clear that they had orders to take me down if necessary. I wasn’t going to give them that chance.
The other, more interesting, thing, though, was that she had spoken at all. Making it obvious where she was positioned, even though I couldn’t see her yet. And Chris had been silent. Which I knew could only mean one thing: they had split up.
Chris would be moving around, trying to outflank me. Even if they didn’t know exactly where I was, it would still have been a good a tactic, considering their options. They probably assumed I would stop and wait behind one of the buildings. And they were right. I wasn’t about to go on the run in a cut-off town in the middle of Siberia, in freezing temperatures, when the station was where I wanted to be.
That was why I saw no point in staying where I was. Because they would corner me eventually. I moved away from the building, walking quickly off at a right angle to where I had approached from.
Depending on which way Chris had gone, I could be heading directly towards him. That didn’t matter. In fact, that was the plan. They thought they had the upper hand. I would take it from them. I would pursue
them
.
If I didn’t find Chris as I headed in this direction, well, at least it would give away where he actually was. If that was the case, I would turn around and charge straight for Mary, going back to take him out after.
Either way, I planned to get to them before they got to me.
I had been moving for about a minute when, as if from nowhere, the figure of Chris came into view from around the trunk of a tree, illuminated by the dim moonlight. He
was holding his gun outstretched in both hands, pointing off to my right. He was almost within touching distance of me and yet I’d seen nor heard nothing of him until that point. He turned his head towards me, his eyes glinting in the moonlight.
The sudden appearance of him to me and vice versa caught us both by surprise. But I’d had a second longer to process it. And I wasn’t going to give him the chance to dwell.
I lunged forward, tackling him just above the waist, hearing the burst of air from his lungs as I knocked the wind out of him. We fell back in a tangle and I heard a loud cracking sound as his head bounced off the tree trunk behind him. We were both on the ground, me straddling him. I was alert and ready for action, fists clenched.
But there was no need.
I soon realised Chris was already out cold. The blow to the head had been enough to subdue him. Nothing more than an accident. Unlucky on his part, lucky on mine.
I felt around the back of his head with my left hand. His hair was wet and sticky. Even in the dark I could see what it was. Blood. But he was still breathing. He probably wouldn’t have anything more severe than a cut and a concussion. A relief. I certainly hadn’t intended to kill him.
I rummaged in his pockets, looking for a wallet or some loose cash, and found both. I didn’t feel good about robbing him, but how else was I going to survive?
I didn’t sit in contemplation any longer. I got off Chris and searched the ground around him for his gun. I quickly found it, a pristine-looking Glock, and was back on my feet again, heading in the direction where Mary should be. That was presuming that she hadn’t changed course or doubled back.
She hadn’t. And it didn’t take me long to find her.
She was moving, just as I hoped. I approached her from
behind. Creeping as quietly as I could, I got to within a yard of her, then I pulled the Glock up, aiming it at the back of her head.
I was about to announce my presence when, without warning, she whipped around.
Her pose mimicked mine with her gun held out in her right hand, the barrel just inches from my face. Professional moves, for sure. Surprisingly so, in fact. Even though she and Chris claimed to be from the JIA I’d noticed a softness about Mary that had made me assume she might not be up to the challenge. But her actions were certainly slick.
Her face, though, told a different story. She looked scared.
‘Stalemate,’ I said.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said.
She was shivering violently. Probably a combination of the cold and fear.
‘I’m leaving,’ I said.
‘Not without me, you’re not,’ she said, her voice still strong and assured in contrast to the evident unease in her face and body.
‘I’m going alone. Like you said, the longer this goes on, the more chance there is that one of us gets hurt. I don’t want to hurt you, Mary. Not unless I have to.’
‘That’s why you were sneaking up on me, pointing a gun at my head?’
‘If I’d wanted to shoot, do you not think I would have done?’
She didn’t answer that. But I could tell from the look of panic on her face that it had finally dawned on her that I was holding her partner’s gun.
‘Where’s Chris?’ she said.
‘Back there,’ I said, indicating over my shoulder ‘You should go check on him. He won’t last long out here.’
‘Jesus, Logan! What have you done to him?’
She was angry. But also quite clearly scared of where this was going.
‘Don’t forget, you two are the ones who came out here hunting. I’m just protecting myself.’
She shook her head, as though I’d missed the point.
‘So are we, Logan. These guns are to protect us from you! And don’t you think if we wanted to kill you, we’d have done so by now?’
‘No. I don’t. I don’t know what’s going on. But I know that you’re not here for my benefit. Just toss your gun, then we’ll both step away.’
‘Why don’t you toss yours?’
‘Because you’re the one who’s got orders to kill. I’m only holding this gun in your face because you won’t let me leave. You toss your gun and I’ll be gone.’
‘They’re not orders to kill,’ she said. ‘Our orders are to bring you in, whatever it takes.’
‘Exactly. Bring me in. Even if it’s in a body bag, right?’
‘Why don’t we both toss the guns?’
‘You don’t trust me?’ I said.
‘How could I? Look at what you’re doing.’
‘You really should go check on Chris. The stakes are simple. You toss your gun, probably all three of us live. You don’t…well, all three of us might end up dead right here.’
The twitch in her face told me that this registered with her. Orders were orders, but she knew that I could pull the trigger just as quickly as she could. We would both be down and out for good. Chris would probably die of exposure if he didn’t come round soon. The collateral damage of the lives of both her and Chris were not worth it. Better to regroup and come back after me later.
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Go on then. Toss it. Off to the left.’
She did so, hurling the weapon. I heard it smack into the
ground well away from where we were standing. That was good enough for me. Even if she wanted to go and find it and fire after me, it gave me plenty of breathing space.
I lowered my weapon, but still kept myself ready for a wave of attack. I slowly began to step away, one small step at a time. She did the same, neither of us breaking eye contact until we both faded away into the darkness.
We were probably still only twenty yards away from each other but I fancied my chances from there. As soon as I could no longer make out her shape, I turned around and ran, heading back to the station platform.
By my reckoning, I only had two minutes until my train arrived.