Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  Tomas flung himself after, but the door was already closing. His arm went through and stuck at the shoulder, wedged tight. On the other side he saw Richard draw back his fist and drive it into the electronic board. It hissed and sparked, and Tomas felt the two halves of the door closing on his bicep like metal jaws.

  He wrenched his arm once, twice, and the third time he pulled it free. But the door snapped shut with Tomas on the wrong side of it, and Richard long gone.

  Morgan knew there were men behind him as well as in front, the same black-clothed assassins he'd confronted in Budapest and only survived thanks to Tomas. It wasn't entirely clear whether he was fleeing or pursuing, but the adrenaline fuelling him didn't care.

  He wove from side to side as he ran, bouncing from one wooden wall to the other. But it slowed him down, and when he didn't hear gunfire after a few seconds he stopped doing it - only for the sharp streak of a throwing knife to graze his cheek as it passed. They did want to kill him, they just wanted to do it quietly.

  He could smell blood, an unpleasant counterpoint to his sour sweat. The wound in his side had opened again, oozing wetly. Occasionally people emerged from their cabins, sleepy-eyed in the dead of night. Morgan shouldered them aside, ignoring their grunts of protest.

  There were three black-clothed figures in front of him, so identical they could have been clones, but he still knew which of them had the book. It was the way his head bobbed as he ran, the rock of his stride heel to instep, as individual as a fingerprint. Morgan kept his eyes fixed on the thief and tried not to think about anything else.

  The assassins did their best to confuse him, swapping sides as they ran, slipping between each other with the grace of dancers. Find the queen, Morgan thought as his quarry swapped places again, remembering street hustlers near Brixton Market. The trick was to follow the cards and not their hands. It was almost like a game. That figure slipping left then dodging right was the thief, and again when he ran forward only to fall back.

  Another switch, one of them dropped back, and this time Morgan's reaching fingers grasped his black t-shirt. It was only the loosest hold but it was enough to make the man lose his rhythm and his footing. He stumbled forward, fell to his knees, half rolled - and then groaned and collapsed, limbs thumping down to the carpet.

  His own shuriken was embedded in his forehead, slicing clean between his eyes. There was no way the fall should have done that, and Morgan thought of Giles' words - you emit mortality - as he stooped to frisk the motionless body. Nothing, and then Morgan was up and running again, just two men ahead of him now.

  Then the rules changed. The thief veered to the left and Morgan kept going straight, sure he'd move to the right again, the card that had to be concealed. But while the other assassin ran on, through the antechamber between carriages, the thief didn't follow.

  For a baffled second Morgan thought he'd vanished - a real piece of magic mixed with the trickery. Then he saw a slither of movement outside the train, black against black, and he realised that the window was gaping wide open. The thief had climbed through it.

  Morgan knew it was too small a hole for him to fit through. He wrenched the whole door open instead, staggering back as the train swerved and nearly threw him into the night. Then he braced himself against the doorframe and leaned out as far as he dared. Metal rungs led from beside the door to the roof above, and he knew which way the thief must have gone.

  His heart lurched as he grasped the handholds. He knew he was going to have to let his feet swing free and pull himself up the first few rungs using his arms. He could do it, just like a bloody assault course. Only those had never been on a moving train and when he was already injured.

  No point worrying about it. Either he'd succeed or he'd fall.

  He released his hold on the doorframe and there was a second of wobbling uncertainly, then he was hanging limply from the first metal bar above. The pain in his side squeezed a groan out of him, but his arms weren't injured and he forced them to flex and pull. Another groan of mingled pain and effort, and he grabbed the rung above, then the next, the fire in his side burning hotter with each movement. One more and then - finally - his feet found purchase.

  He scrambled up the remaining rungs as fast as he could, and tried not to worry about how he was going to get back inside, or whether they were likely to pass under any low bridges before he did.

  The wind on top of the train was overwhelming. Morgan fell to his hands and knees, terrified it would sweep him off and onto the ground he could see rushing by below. They were in a city now, its houses dark as residents slept but a scattering of office blocks still lit up in geometric patterns that flickered their reflection on the train.

  It was in one of those brief squares of light that he saw the thief, sitting cross-legged on the roof only twenty feet ahead of him. He must have thought he'd be safe, intending to wait out the pursuit up here.

  Morgan slid to his stomach, suppressing a hiss of pain as his injured side met the cold metal of the train's roof. This was familiar territory, suddenly - stalking prey that didn't yet know you were there. Morgan's breathing was ragged and loud, but the wind snatched it and carried it away from the thief's ears.

  He crawled forward one foot, then another. Three feet, and there was still no sign he'd been spotted. His attention narrowed to nothing but the man ahead of him, sitting as still and calm as a statue of Buddha.

  Morgan was only five feet away when the statue finally moved, leaping to its feet and spinning with startling agility. Morgan stood too, much less gracefully. His knees tensed with fear as the rocking of the train threatened to overthrow him.

  The thief moved so fast, Morgan almost didn't see it. One second he was empty-handed, the next he had a shuriken in each fist. Morgan flung himself to the roof as the thief flung the stars. They passed harmlessly overhead, but by the time Morgan was on his feet again, the man had a thirty-foot lead on him. He leapt across the gap between carriages as if he barely noticed it was there.

  Morgan sprinted in pursuit, every step jarring his side until the blood flowed in a steady stream. Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, he told himself in time to the clattering of the train.

  He was so focused on his own progress he didn't immediately register that the figure in front of him had stopped moving. Its outline thickened and shrank against the spatter of stars behind. The thief was kneeling down. Surely not resting?

  The outline shrank still further, and Morgan saw that the thief was on his stomach, head hanging over the edge of the train. He must have been looking for something he didn't find, because a moment later he was on his feet and running again. But now Morgan was only ten feet behind.

  He was almost within reach when the thief dropped again. It caught Morgan by surprise and he overshot, skidding to a halt and almost overbalancing, arms flailing wildly as he tried to check his momentum.

  It was all the time the thief needed. Morgan didn't know what he'd been looking for but he must have found it, because this time he didn't stand back up. His hands gripped the edge of the train. Then, in a move of gymnastic virtuosity, he flipped himself into a backwards handstand, over and round and out of sight.

  Morgan dropped to his stomach where the thief had been, bending his neck to look down. There was nothing but an open window below, and how in god's name had the thief got through that? How the hell was Morgan going to get through that? But he didn't have a choice. By the time he found any other way into the train, the thief would be long gone.

  It was a desperate, inelegant scramble. He didn't attempt the thief's backflip, just hung down from fingers white with strain and swung his legs. They hit metal and then glass before finally moving through the void of the open window.

  His fingernails felt like they were breaking off, and the top of the glass pressed the inside of his calves. This couldn't work. If he let go now he wouldn't go through the window, he'd tumble backwards off the train, probably snapping both his legs in the process. And he was about t
o let go. He couldn't help himself. There was only a thin strip of metal to anchor him to the train's roof, and it was already slick with sweat.

  Not giving himself time to think about it, he swung his legs once, twice, fingers loosening their hold a little more each time - and on the third swing they finally let go. He felt himself falling, gravity wanting to pull him away from the train and down to his death. He fought it, pushed his body against the cold metal as he slid down, fingers finding what purchase they could. And somehow, incredibly, he was sliding through the window and down, scraping agonisingly at his wounded side as he went.

  He fell to his knees inside the carriage, gasping with mingled exertion and pain.

  It was bright, far brighter than he'd expected, and that probably saved his life. He saw the flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, rolled to the side without thinking, and the shuriken embedded itself in the wall where his head had been.

  He finished the tumble and let it propel him to his feet. He couldn't afford to look around, but he knew where he was - the dining car. The room's bright halogen lights had been switched on, reflecting starkly from the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and the regimented silver rows of cutlery.

  The thief stood immobile beside a table already set for breakfast. His hand was buried somewhere inside his black robes. Morgan braced himself, ready for another shuriken, but when the hand emerged it was empty. Morgan read something in the stiff lines of the thief's body that might have been consternation.

  His weapons must have fallen out in his escape from the roof. Morgan smiled. Unarmed, he had the advantage here - bigger and stronger than his opponent.

  "It's all right," a voice said behind him. "Throw it to me and get out."

  Morgan spun round, caught a brief glimpse of a tall, sandy-haired man, then realised that he was letting the book out of his sight. He spun back to see it already arcing over his head as the thief sprinted out of the door. Morgan let him go, an irrelevance now that he no longer had the book, and turned back to face the newcomer.

  The man's long, thin face darkened when he saw Morgan's. There was something in his expression that suggested recognition, though Morgan was certain they'd never met before. The man's left hand held the book. His right was empty. Improbably, he seemed to be unarmed.

  "Give it to me," Morgan said, "and we can both walk out of here."

  "Why do you want it?" His American accent was soft and confident, a man who didn't have to raise his voice to be heard.

  Morgan took a sidling step nearer. "Why do you want it?"

  "The people I'm working with," the man said. "think it's too dangerous to fall into enemy hands."

  "But it's all right for you to have it? I don't think so."

  "The Japanese aren't keen to use weapons of mass destruction. They're too familiar with the consequences."

  He was talking about the atomic bomb, Morgan realised. Tomas had said the Ragnarok artefacts were the bomb's mystical equivalent.

  "Last time I checked, we weren't at war with the Japanese." Morgan took another step nearer, and the man took one back in response, only to find himself pressed against the wall of the carriage.

  "This book's a threat to everyone in the world. I can't let you have it."

  "You're gonna have to," Morgan said - and even as he was speaking he pounced, gripping the man's wrist and squeezing the bones until he cried out in pain and the book dropped to the ground. Morgan kicked it behind him, backing up until he could safely stoop to pick it up.

  It was a welcome weight in his hand, the mottled leather of its cover a pleasing texture underneath his fingers. "Sorry," he said. "I need that."

  "Is that what they've told you, Morgan?"

  He startled at the use of his name.

  The man saw it and smiled, almost sadly. "I know who you are, probably better than you do. I know everything about you. Your birth, your family. You think you want this book? You don't. It holds nothing but death - and your ghosts are nearer than its pages."

  Morgan took an involuntary step back, and felt his gaze grabbed by a flicker of motion in front of him. It was a reflection in the glass wall of the dining car that was neither himself nor the other man. Morgan cursed, stepped aside and spun, triangulating - the threat from the first man to his left, and the threat he'd glimpsed in the mirror to the right.

  But there was nothing there, only another reflection in the glass. He moved just his eyes this time, searching for the source of that reflection. There was no one. There was nothing in the room but mirrors - and now every one of them was showing the same thing: the reflection of a person who wasn't there.

  She was such a little girl, she couldn't have been older than five, her face still soft and unformed, unshaped by the personality which lived inside it.

  Morgan tried hard not to recognise her. But although it had been a dozen years since he'd last seen her, hers was the one face he'd never forget.

  "Mary?" he said.

  Reflected in every mirror in the room, his long-dead sister's face looked back at him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The blade of the knife passed over Belle's head, slicing clean through Anya's blue night-shirt and some of the skin beneath. A dark stain spread on the satin and Anya let out a gasp of pain. Only the train's automatic doors saved them, shutting tight on the assassin's weapon as he darted forward for the killing strike.

  Belle knew that if she stayed with the German woman they'd both die. Belle's legs were too short. She just couldn't run that fast, and her arm felt like it was on the point of being dislocated, the shoulder wrenched out of its socket by Anya's desperate grasp. They couldn't carry on like this. If they separated, Anya at least would be able to get away while the assassin took care of Belle.

  If they separated, the assassin would almost certainly follow Anya, and Belle at least would be safe.

  The two thoughts merged in Belle's head into a chord whose separate notes were indistinguishable. One of them came from her, and one of them from him, but after all these years she could no longer tell which. It hardly mattered, anyway. They were both telling her to do the same thing.

  Her CIA handlers had given her martial arts training - some aikido, a little krav maga - just enough to survive until she could bring her real weapon to bear. She used the aikido, twisting her hand to drive the hardest part of her wrist against the point where Anya's fingertips met her thumb. The older woman tried to hold on, but Belle kept pulling and in a second she was free.

  She saw a quick flash of shocked betrayal on Anya's face, then she was through the door and she couldn't see the other woman any more.

  "What the hell did you do?" Morgan said, backing away. The movement should have been reflected all around them, but in the mirror the little girl just smiled and waved.

  "I opened the door," the other man said. "It's a talent I have, thanks to Nicholson."

  The girl in the mirror was saying something too. Her mouth moved soundlessly, her whole image wavering slightly like a mirage, or something seen under shallow water. Her dark skin looked washed-out and pale, and the tight ringlets of her hair drooped over her forehead and into her eyes.

  Morgan felt a hard, indigestible lump in his stomach. Guilt he'd never been able to swallow. "It wasn't my fault," he said. "I tried to save you."

  But he had never accepted the excuse, and Mary didn't seem to either. She frowned. It astonished him how well he had remembered that expression, through all the years since he'd last seen it. It was the way she'd looked when he stole her sweets, then told on her for hitting him. It was the baffled look of a four-year-old girl, who couldn't understand how the older brother she adored had betrayed her so badly.

  "Make her go away," he gasped. "Please."

  The other man was looking at the mirrors too. "It isn't so easy to banish the spirits that haunt us. Nicholson taught me how to call them up, but not how to send them back. Like all his lessons, it would have been better unlearnt."

  For just a second, the image in th
e mirror seemed to waver. Instead of Mary, Morgan saw a teenage boy, white, pimply and awkward in his own skin. His short hair was gelled into spikes, and his eyes blinked behind thick, wire-rimmed glasses.

  Morgan snatched a glance at the other man, to see that his eyes were misted with unshed tears.

  "I wanted to see him just one more time," he said thickly. "And now when I look in the mirror I never see anything else."

  Then the image was gone, and Morgan could only see Mary. Her mood had darkened still further. She looked angry - furious. It was an expression Morgan couldn't ever remember seeing when she was alive. It spoke of emotions no four-year-old girl should understand.

  "She wants the book," the other man said. "Give it to me and I can send her away."

  Morgan's hand clutched the thick leather, fingernails denting the spine. He wanted to give it to her. He wanted to do whatever it took to send Mary back to the locked cellar of his past.

  But the book was his past, too. It was the part of it that might make everything else make sense. If he gave it up, he'd never know who he was.

  "No," he said. Then, more firmly, "This isn't real. You can't scare me with illusions."

  The other man shook his head. "The past may be a shadow, but it's real enough to hurt us." He didn't take his eyes from the mirror as he spoke, and Morgan found his drawn back inexorably to the same place, like a scab he couldn't stop picking.

  Mary's face was so twisted with hate that he wouldn't have recognised her if he hadn't already known who she was. Her mouth was still moving but now Morgan didn't want to know what she was saying. He backed away, hands raised to ward her off, until he was pressed against the far wall of the carriage.

  Something brushed the small of his back where the material of his t-shirt had rucked up out of his trousers. He flinched instinctively at the cold clammy feel of it, but it was only when it touched him again that he turned to see what it was.

  She was in that mirror too. Her face looked quite mad. There was a froth of saliva at the corners of her mouth, open wide in a silent scream of rage.