by Thomas Perry
With every visit, Remi kept trying to solidify the friendship and learn whatever she could about the house, the grounds, and its occupants. Sasha didn’t volunteer much information. Instead she listened to Remi, took a minute or two to ask herself whether the information could be dangerous, and then invariably devised some way to answer without saying anything that might get her in trouble.
Four days—twelve meals—passed this way. In the end, Remi knew—partly from observation the morning she’d arrived and partly from Sasha—the approximate layout of the house and grounds. She knew that there were twenty men on the estate who were not usually there and that they made Sasha’s work much harder since they required much more cooking, cleaning, laundry, and dishwashing. And they were the sort of men who gave Sasha the creeps.
What Sasha didn’t know was that Remi had slipped a fork up her sleeve the second day. Sasha would never have suspected that Remi had used a hole drilled in the steel bed frame to bend all the tines on the fork but one, that she had a husband who had taught her to pick a lock, and that she had broken one tine all the way off to use as a tension wrench.
During her sixth day of captivity, Remi unscrewed a small metal strut that strengthened the corner of the bathroom cabinet and tested its utility tapping on the pipes to make noise. That way, after using it, she could leave it where it belonged and never have it found if the room was searched.
She further endeared herself to Sasha by dividing her first dessert evenly and sharing it, all the while talking about what city they were near and which direction was Moscow in. When she was sure the house had gotten quiet for the night, she used her tine pick and tension wrench to line up the pins on the door lock’s tumbler and open it. She practiced again and again until she could do it easily and quickly. It occurred to her while she did that Sam would be amazed at how good she was at picking locks now that it mattered.
She slipped out and spent about five minutes exploring the quiet, dark hallway to find the back stairwell she had climbed to get here, looked out two different windows at the large estate and the big black river beyond, and found the room at the top of the stairway where she could hear two guards snoring. Then she had the feeling that she had ventured as much as she dared and went back to her room, relocked the door by poking the pins out of line, and slept.
On the seventh day she practiced the Morse code that Sam had insisted she learn for this kind of occasion despite her protests that no military organizations still taught it. She abbreviated her message to “Remi 4th floor” and began to tap it on the pipe that fed her sink. The taps had to be soft and at a low volume and continued for long periods so the regular occupants of the house got used to them and didn’t notice anymore. She and Sasha had a conversation in English about the mild, clear weather outside and the pretty view of the Volga from Sasha’s room. When the house was dark again, Remi picked the lock of her room and went out again into the dark hallway.
Remi had a light and agile fencer’s body, and her husband had taught her a few tricks about walking in a dark building. One was that boards tended to creak more near the center of a hall and that the way to walk silently was to move ahead a bit and then stop at the first creak and wait so that any listener would not associate it with the next creak that came, classifying the two as unrelated. Most noises made in this way would be thought of as having no human cause—just an old house standing up to a sudden wind or maybe a branch moving against the outer wall of the house.
Each day while Remi did her exercises to stay strong and limber, she reviewed all the tasks she had performed. She made certain that she had not neglected any of the preparations that Sam had made her practice in advance. During the long, happy times at the house on the Pacific at La Jolla, it had been hard to take all of the pieces of this drill seriously. Sam had kidded and cajoled her into learning the dull parts, but as she thought about them now, ticking them off in her mind, she realized that they had been helping her to stave off the terror that had been waiting to paralyze her. The drill had given her purpose and kept her occupied constructively from the very beginning of her captivity. Everything she did reminded her that she must not give up hope, but it also reminded her of Sam and made the tears threaten to come if she allowed them. Sam is coming, getting closer. I’ve got to be ready.
MOSCOW
MOVING THROUGH MOSCOW ALONE ON FOOT AT EIGHT in the evening, Sam was unidentifiable, a shadow, indistinguishable from the hundreds of thousands of Russians ending their workday and going home. Some were happy to go, and spoke to one another and laughed boisterously. Maybe a few had spent some time having a drink together. Others were just like Sam—tired, solitary men, getting onto buses that headed out into the distant suburbs where ordinary people lived. Sam waited until a line of them had boarded the bus and he’d seen how much they paid, and paid the same.
He had left the two cell phones in his hotel for the CIA, so he hoped the kidnappers were following the progress of their cell into and around Europe. Sam went east for as far as the bus went and then followed a few of the passengers at a distance. They entered high-rise apartment buildings collected together like the projects in big American cities.
The summer night was warm, so Sam managed to find a place to sleep outdoors at a construction site. A foundation had been dug, and there was a high pile of dirt with a tarp tied over it with several lines attached to grommets. Sam assumed that was to keep down the dust or prevent rain from turning the topsoil into a pyramid of mud. He climbed halfway up on the tarp so he wouldn’t be seen from the street and lay down. He hadn’t slept in two days and fell asleep immediately and woke only when the sun was high enough to shine on his face.
He got up and dusted himself off. As he was looking down at his clothes to be sure he had gotten them clean, he realized they were all wrong. He had bought them in Germany and Hungary and they didn’t quite look like the ones the men had been wearing on the bus the night before.
Sam climbed down and walked east, staying with streets that looked as though they might be commercial zones. As he walked, the army of ordinary people heading to work appeared and he tried to stay among them. Late in the morning he found a block-long street market. There were numerous small shops with tables in front of them, extending out across the sidewalk. He bought a flat tweed cap with a short brim like the ones American workers wore during the Depression. He had seen just a few of these on the streets of Moscow, mainly on old men, but he needed a hat to make it harder for the people who were watching for him to see his face. He bought a wool-and-polyester sport jacket in a faux herringbone tweed, because he had seen many of these. The cut was too short and too wide for him, so it made him look broader in the shoulders and a bit more muscular. He bought a pair of pants to go with the coat that had a loose cut too. The pale blue shirt he bought was an exact match with some he’d seen on the bus. His last purchases were a pair of shoes with a wide box toe that were comfortable for walking and a bag with a shoulder strap like the ones European students use to carry books. He changed into his new clothes in a curtained dressing stall. And then, as he was walking past another shop, he saw a display of used books in a bin.
Sam leafed through the piles of books, pretending to be casually browsing but actually searching desperately for something in a language other than Russian. He picked up and even pretended to leaf through many that were set in Cyrillic before he finally saw something different, a tourist’s guidebook in French. He immediately clutched it to his side and went to find the cashier.
After a few minutes of leafing through his French book, he found a map that seemed to show the area he was in. He walked away from the market, and kept walking, until he found a small urban park where he could sit on a bench and look at the maps of the Moscow area. After some study, he found that the various stations in the city had trains that went only to specific destinations. The one for Nizhny Novgorod was out of the Kursky Station, which was on the east side.
He folded down the corner of the page o
f his guidebook so he could easily find the map again, put the book in his shoulder bag with his extra clothes, and began to walk in the direction of the station. He walked steadily, stopping for food and drink at the sort of establishment where he could point at what he wanted and then hand someone a bill with a reasonable expectation of getting the right change.
It took him a whole day of walking to reach the right neighborhood and then he had to approach a family on the street, show them his French map, and say, “Ou est la gare Kursky?” He chose a family because it seemed safer for him than approaching either a woman, who might be afraid, or a man, who might be a cop. They pointed him in the right direction, with many friendly Russian words he couldn’t understand.
Sam made it to the Kursky Station in the evening, but it was still quite full and busy. Trains were leaving regularly for distant cities. He found a schedule board and looked up at it for a long time. To his great relief, he saw that the words were written in the Latin alphabet as well as Cyrillic. He recognized most of the names—St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vladivostok—but he couldn’t see anything that said Nizhny Novgorod. At first, he assumed that his exhaustion and his eagerness had combined to make him skip right over the name. He looked over and over, but still didn’t see it. He walked along the line of counters and cages where station employees helped customers, studying their faces. Should he try one of the women because women are naturally softhearted or would they be ready to feel irritated by his approach? The pretty ones must get asked for dates and flirted with all the time, and who knows what the others would feel?
Then he heard words in English. There was a man behind a counter who wore a uniform reminiscent of a train conductor’s. He was telling a couple who looked American that their fare was nine hundred rubles. Sam turned his head to be sure he wasn’t cutting in line in front of someone and then stood in front of the man.
The man looked at him, expecting him to speak.
Sam said, “Sir, I can’t seem to find Nizhny Novgorod on the schedule.”
“Gorky,” the man said. “The city used to be called Gorky and the railway never changed it. All Russians know that, so we don’t have any trouble. Just people from other countries.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” said Sam. He was genuinely relieved. He had imagined another day walking to some other distant station.
“I’ll help you. When would you like to go?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Very good. There is a train at 2204. Would you like a ticket?”
“Yes, please.”
“It will be nine hundred rubles. One hundred eleven U.S. dollars and fifty cents for a one-way second-class ticket or fifty-five dollars for a third-class ticket.”
“And first-class?”
“I’m sorry, but those seats are all reserved already. It’s four hundred sixty-seven miles and takes eight hours and ten minutes, so people reserve the best seats ahead of time.”
“Second-class, then.” He added, “Two tickets.” Never miss a chance to mislead, he thought. Couples are less suspicious than lone men.
“Very good, sir.”
Sam counted out two hundred forty dollars. “Thank you so much.”
The man handed him his change in rubles. “And can I see your passports?”
Sam had his passport in his coat, but it occurred to him that he didn’t want his name on the record, either for the Russian police, who would come and get him, or Poliakoff’s men, who would kill him. He patted his pockets, a look of horror on his face. “Oh, no. My wife has our passports.” He turned and craned his neck, searching for the imaginary woman. He also ascertained that the line behind him had grown to about fifteen people, many of whom were looking anxious.
“Never mind,” the man said. “Here.” He handed him two tickets. “If anyone asks on the train, just show him your passports then.”
“Thank you again.” Sam rushed off.
Sam had only twenty minutes to wait and so he went to the platforms and spotted a sign in Latin letters that spelled Gorky. He stood eagerly waiting for the chance to get on the train. He saw pairs of policemen walking up and down the platforms, occasionally stopping people to talk, sometimes even asking to see a ticket. Sam reminded himself that this was perfectly normal behavior. When he had ridden the subway in Los Angeles, there would often be pairs of sheriff’s deputies, in their khaki pants and shirts, stopping people with the same half-friendly authority: “Didn’t forget to get your ticket, did you?” The main thing was not to look furtive or frightened.
When the doors to the train opened, he held his ticket in his hand and stepped in. He walked from car to car until he found one that said “2me” which he hoped meant second class. He found a seat beside a window toward the back of the car. Almost immediately a man about his age sat next to him. There was alcohol on the man’s breath, and he was broad and took up a bit more than his seat. Sam contemplated moving but was reluctant to draw attention to himself, and one by one the seats all filled up. Sam waited for a few minutes until the train doors closed and the people around him began to get settled. He leaned his head against the window for a time, looking out as the train moved slowly through the station, past the platforms, and then the open train yard, with its dozens of parallel tracks, under the evening sky. There was a disorienting feeling as a train clattered into the station on the track just to his left, giving him the unsettling impression that his train was suddenly traveling at high speed.
His train did gain speed from then on, heading out toward the farthest eastern reaches of the city. He hoped the man beside him was not going to try to chat the time away. If he did, Sam planned to smile stupidly, produce his American passport, and say he just spoke English. But there was no talk. The man folded his arms, leaned back in his seat, and fell asleep. After a few minutes, his deep breathing became a snore when he inhaled and a hiss when he exhaled. Sam stared out the window for an hour until the gray buildings floating by turned darker and were farther apart and then disappeared into the night.
Sam had walked most of the day, had many tense moments that he’d had to get through, and had finally gotten into a secure, comfortable place, a train that was taking him toward Remi. The repetitive sound of the wheels on the tracks, the gentle rocking of the car, even the soft sound of two women talking quietly, were reassuring. After a time, he succumbed to sleep.
He slept for seven hours and woke to a still-dark car full of sleeping people. He remembered seeing on the schedule that the train would arrive in Gorky at five forty-five. He checked his watch and saw that it was five. Somewhere far ahead of the train, the sky had become darker than night in preparation for the first light of dawn. He couldn’t see the sun yet, just sense its energy. He had time to think about his next move. He realized he had been desperate and foolish to climb aboard a train that would take him unerringly to the train station in his enemy’s hometown. How could Poliakoff not have photographs of Sam to hand out to whatever shadowy figures he could hire to watch for Sam and warn Poliakoff when Sam got off the train?
Sam was sitting passively, letting the train carry him straight into a place where his enemies were watching and waiting for him. From the moment he bought his ticket, he had been like a steer walking down one chute to the next on his way into the slaughterhouse. Each turn he made closed off another alternate route and brought him closer to the end. He could see the open fields beside the train now and the telephone poles slipping past. The fields of alfalfa looked inviting, but he could tell the train was going too fast to permit him to jump. Maybe if there were a turn, or a hill, the train would slow down, but this area was as flat as the American Plains. There was no reason for a train to do anything but barrel into the bright morning. And then he felt the train slowing down.
He held his hand over his ticket inside his pocket and sat on the edge of his seat, looking out to see what was happening. People around him seemed to be waking up, poking or shaking one another, whispering. Then there was a definite slowi
ng, and a recorded voice announcing a destination. People took that as a signal to stand and get their belongings off overhead racks or put on their jackets against the morning chill.
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.