[Anthology] Close to the Bones

by Martha Carr

  Across the bottom of the page it read, “1,000 Ruble Reward for Immediate Capture”.

  He turned to leave the train station, quickly making his way toward the stairs that led to the street above.

  “Hey! Stop!” A voice called from across the platform.

  Torvald’s heart stopped and his lungs froze mid-breath as he awaited the bullet that would certainly pierce his brain before the next heartbeat.

  Nothing happened.

  “Annaline! Wait! Annaline!”

  A young man sprinted past him, running toward what the youth probably was convinced would be his one and last chance at love. How romantic. Torvald checked to make sure he hadn’t lost his bowels, then sucked in a deep breath and kept moving away from the station.

  Once outside on the street he found a two-horse carriage and signaled to the driver assuming it was a taxi, “How far south-west can you go?”

  “How far would sir like,” the hirsute man behind the reins replied in Estonian.

  “Berlin,” Torvald said, not a trace of humor in his voice.

  “Uh,” the driver looked down at him, a calculating glaze in his eyes.

  “How close can you get me?”

  “Riga,” the driver said.

  “Latvia?” said Torvald.

  “Is there another Riga?”

  “That’s almost two hundred kilometers,” Torvald said.

  “You originally said Berlin, which five times farther,” said the driver.

  “I was honestly just thinking more like the next town with a good-sized fishing vessel.”

  “You can pay for Riga?”

  “Depends on how much.”

  The driver named a price.

  “Yes.”

  “Cash?” The driver asked.

  “Yes, or gold,” Torvald replied, instantly regretting that last. Then he noticed that while the driver was wearing a top hat, his hair jutted almost as wide as the brim. Past an impossibly thick black beard the man was darker skinned than anyone Torvald had seen before, like dark coffee with only a little cream. He also noticed the man was not wearing the uniform of Estonian taxi drivers, clean black trousers and a long black coat with tails. He was dressed in ill-fitting laborer’s clothes that looked like he’d stolen them.

  “Or gold, he says,” the driver muttered, then said to his passenger, “Am I going to have to run away with you or hide on a deserted island to keep myself alive after this?”

  “I hope not,” Torvald said.

  “Well mister…uh…” the driver held out, waiting for a name.

  “Torvald.”

  “Thank you, Torvald,” he said, “I don’t know about you but I have absolutely no desire to be arrested and/or find myself sitting in a jail cell in Mother Russia.”

  “Neither do I,” Torvald replied.

  “As long as we understand each other,” the driver said.

  “I am sure I understand your desire not to get caught doing whatever it is you are not doing with this carriage,” Torvald said. He stopped, suddenly realizing they had switched languages mid-conversation. “Wait…you…we’re speaking English.”

  “Fluently,” the driver replied in a crisp American accent.

  “This is getting weird,” Torvald said. “Are you one of the Czar’s men?”

  “I beg your pardon? No! Of course not,” the driver said. “And I’ll have you know that this is not a stolen carriage, either. Especially not a carriage stolen from a Russian diplomat who has been acting like a dunder-head lately.”

  “Who do you work for?” Torvald asked, eyes wide in exasperation.

  “The highest bidder,” said the driver then added, “that I like.” He studied Torvald for a moment then shoved a hand to the Swede, “Kharzai Ghiassi, mercenary. Persian by ancestry, Indianan by upbringing, American by God.”

  Torvald wasn’t sure what to make of this brash individual.

  “Were you sent by my government?”

  “Well,” said Kharzai, “now this is merely basing my response upon your well covered but still noticeable to the delicate ear Swedish accent as to who your government most likely is, probably not. Then again, I am pretty much unemployed right now so any governmental offers are welcome. Does your company/agency/ministry happen to have anything open?”

  Voices started to rise behind them. Both men looked up at the noise. They looked at each other, both noting a heightened sense of shared urgency on the other’s face.

  “Oh boy, Russians! I will pay you everything I have in my pockets,” said Torvald in a rush. He saw the shape of a gun appear among a group of men headed their way and added, “as well as what’s in my suitcase for you to get me as far west as possible as fast as possible.”

  “You had me hooked at oh boy, Russians,” Kharzai said. Apparently noticing the gun too, he shouted, “GET IN!”

  Torvald jumped into the carriage. Kharzai whipped the horses to a full gallop out onto the street, hooves pounding they vanished into a sea of identical black carriages as they wove through the crowded street headed toward the edge of the city. Kharzai took several turns that would lead anyone following them to believe they were headed to the docks, then at a point he was certain no one could watch he veered into side streets that took them instead to the southern edge of the city and from there out into the country. An hour of hard riding later they stopped in a heavily wooded copse and gave the horses a short break.

  “Riga is nearly a five-day ride in a carriage,” said Torvald, “I can’t ask you to stay with me that long.”

  “I really don’t have anything better to do,” replied Kharzai.

  “So, you actually did steal this carriage from a Russian diplomat?”

  “Yeah, well, yes,” Kharzai said. “I was actually hired to assassinate some buffoon who’d murdered one of your countrymen then taken a list of names that included the names of myself and at least a couple of my friends. But wouldn’t you know it, some moron got all jealous that Mitrofan the Murderer had his way with his favourite prostitute first that night and the lucky bastard kills the world-famous spy by bashing in his head with a trash receptacle in a drunken brawl.”

  Kharzai paused, head moving side to side in regret then continued, “I have done this cloak and dagger thing for over fifteen years, and I get one upped by a besotted lover. Crazy thing is the list that was supposed to be in his pocket for delivery to the consulate was gone. The lover took it!”

  Torvald stared at him for a moment. The moment extended into an uncomfortably long minute, then passed slightly longer than that. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a paper which he handed to Kharzai. The American looked at it, then to Torvald, then back to the paper.

  “You…are…the lucky bastard that killed Mitrofan,” Kharzai said in shock.

  “I wasn’t drunk,” Torvald said, “for that matter I was very sober. And I have never been with a prostitute of any kind, I’m married with kids at home. And that ‘trash receptacle’ as you describe it was a very heavy wrought iron thing that smashed Mitrofan’s face in. Nearly took my arm out of socket too.”

  Kharzai raised an eyebrow and said in Russian, “Why would you tell me all that, what if I am just a darker-than-average-skinned Russian agent who managed to catch you up in a word trap?”

  “Not possible,” Torvald replied in the same language, “not even the Czar’s pet baboon in his private Russian zoo would be simple enough to send a dark skinned Arab spy into Estonia, surrounded by thousands of miles of the palest skin on the planet. You stand out. A lot.”

  “Hey now! No need for insults here,” Kharzai gave an injured look. “I am Persian, not Arab!”

  “That may be your ancestry,” Torvald continued, “but only an American agency would even think to send you here on a secret mission. Definitely American.”

  “I could be a bad mercenary, the sellout kind,” Kharzai said in defense.

  “Nope, you don’t have the evil look,” Torvald said, switching back to English, “y
ou’re too much like a little kid wound up on chocolate.”

  “Whatever,” Kharzai said, “we’ll just agree to not stab each other in the back and let’s share this little escape adventure, eh?”

  “Sounds good,” Torvald gave a look over the rather large carriage. It looked very out of place so far from the city and travelling alone down a very rural road. “So, what are we going to do with this thing? I don’t see riding it across back country for two days without getting caught.”

  “My turn to say ‘nope’,” Kharzai smiled. “Go inside and lift up the seat cushions.”

  Torvald climbed into the carriage and tugged up one of the seats to discover a large storage compartment filled with a saddle, saddlebags of supplies, a short lever action carbine that looked like an American model, and a pistol he recognized immediately. He’d only seen it magazine articles, but there was no mistaking the Mauser C96 ‘Broomhandle’ design. Beside the pistol was a box with ten clips of twenty 7.63x25mm bullets ready to be fed into the fast reload magazine well. He hefted the pistol, Kharzai glanced inside and saw the weapon.

  “Ooh, nice,” the American said, “C96, I have one just like it.” He pulled one out from behind his back. “They shoot real good.”

  Torvald handed the items out to Kharzai, replaced the carriage seat and opened the other side to find the same items, except instead of a Mauser in this compartment they found a Belgian designed Browning .32 caliber automatic that he had only seen mentioned in “experimental design” articles in the same periodicals as the Mausers. Russia was apparently several steps ahead of the Belgians.

  As Torvald pulled out the assorted gear, Kharzai unhitched the horses from the wagon. They saddled the animals, placed the saddlebags across their flanks and holstered the carbines in hardened leather sheaths attached to the saddles. The other weapons and supplies were either stored on their persons or in the bags.

  They road west, toward the sea, making nearly double the pace without the carriage. By the time the sun went down the second day Kharzai declared they were half way to Riga. Twice during that time they’d had to evade Czarist men, escaping without detection. Crossing into Latvia they also had to circumvent border guards.

  By nightfall the third night they had reached Riga, the capital of Latvia. They traded the horses and a promise of cash to a fishing boat captain who agreed to drop the men off fifty kilometers from Copenhagen the next morning as long as they didn’t mention his cargo of black market Russian vodka and illegal ‘naked girlie’ photos imported all the way from exotic Siberia and Kazakhstan. They promised, and the Captain delivered.

  The following morning, the sun hanging just above the horizon, they landed on a shadow strewn rocky beach about fifty kilometers north of Copenhagen, just like he’d promised. Torvald politely declined a half price offer for some of the pictures. They ‘borrowed’ a farmer’s cart and horse to get them close enough to walk into the city. By just before five in the morning Torvald stood in front of his own house, Kharzai by his side.

  He put the key into the lock and opened the door. The house was silent, his wife and children still sleeping in the upper rooms. He quietly set his bags and rifle on the floor.

  “Such nice guns,” Kharzai said as he set his own load down and stretched his back, eliciting a pop from his spine. “Kind of too bad we didn’t get to use them.”

  Torvald gave him a look that showed he was relieved they’d not had to use them, “I am not out of the woods yet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I am taking my family to America today.”

  “Right now?”

  “The Russian Czar is one of the most powerful men in the world, there are no places in Europe to hide from him.”

  “Yeah, but,” Kharzai scratched at his beard, “America is an awful long ways away.”

  “They had my picture,” Torvald said. “If they know who I am, they can easily find my family. We are leaving.”

  Kharzai nodded, “What are you going to do in America?”

  “I have read about how the American government is giving land to people willing to settle in the faraway place known as North Dakota.”

  “Good plan, but, have you ever been a farmer? Homesteading is seriously hard work.”

  “I’d rather learn to do farming than learn how to take a bullet from one of Nicholas’ men.”

  “Another good point,” Kharzai said. “Well then, if you’re all set here, I will take my share of the booty and be on my way.”

  Torvald looked at the man whom he’d only met a few days earlier but had shared the bond of a near death experience.

  “Thank you Kharzai,” he said, then started suddenly, “Oh I haven’t paid you as I had promised!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kharzai waved him off. “I’ve been payed plenty well. There was more than saddles and stuff in those carriage seats.”

  The American mercenary patted a bulge in his jacket pocket. The unmistakable chink of gold coins sang out.

  “Seems like that Russian diplomat was making some cash on the side he didn’t want his own leaders to know about. I had snatched this right before I met you.”

  He lifted his spoils to his shoulder, turned and walked out the door, stopping just outside.

  “Hey Torvald,” Kharzai whispered back, “good luck. Maybe we’ll meet up in the good old U.S.A.”

  “I hope so,” he replied. Kharzai walked away. Torvald shut the door then rushed upstairs to wake his family.

  “Elisabet,” he hissed as he shook his wife awake. “Get up we must leave.”

  “Huh? Torvald?”

  “Yes darling, I just got back and we are in great danger. We have to leave Denmark right away.”

  She waved him off like a bad dream and curled back into her pillow. He flipped open the blind that kept the midnight sun out of the room.

  “This is not a dream Elisabet!”

  She sat groggily up in the bed, realizing her husband was truly home. She saw the filthy state he was in, and the butt of a pistol sticking out of his trousers, and shot to full alertness.

  “What are you talking about? Why do you have a gun?”

  “I will explain later,” he said as he grabbed her suitcase from beneath the bed.

  “No, you will explain now!” She took the posture she’d had during the argument just before he left for Estonia.

  “Look, I am sorry, but I’m a spy for Sweden and I made some very bad men very angry and have spent the past several days riding across Europe on a stolen horse with an American mad man to get back here alive so I can get you and the children out before those bad men come to punish me by killing you.”

  She stared at him, wide eyed, the information failing to make sense.

  “Who are these men? What did you do to make them angry?”

  “They are the officers of Czar Nicholas, and I killed his cousin, a Russian spy.”

  “You killed….” The word stuck at the end of her lips, disbelief filling her expression.

  “Yes, and they have my picture,” he said. “If we don’t leave we will all be dead the moment they find this house.”

  Three hours later, carrying one bag each, they boarded a ship that would take them from Copenhagen to Southampton in England, then on to New York in America, and from there as far west as they could get into the middle of nowhere.

  SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse

  Maiden Voyage to America

  June 13th, 1896

  Near Midnight

  Torvald Balch walked the deck of SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, flagship of the Imperial German Cruise Line, his face lit by the flare of a cigarette as he tried for force his heart to thump a little slower. His wife and sons were below decks in their second-class cabin. He could have afforded first, but didn’t want to stick out to anyone who was watching too closely. He also didn’t want to be in steerage, where any thug with a pointy object could make a few extra rubles.

  Footsteps clicked a couple dozen meters be
hind him, he wondered briefly if America had even heard of the new measurement system only recently adopted by nearly all of Europe. The sound of hard leather soles grew closer, pace increasing at the ever so gradual rate he’d grown to fear in his years of shadow life. He sucked in a deep breath of the harsh Danish cigarette, spun and blew a massive cloud of tobacco smoke into his assailant’s face, then he drove a fist into the man’s belly then grabbing him by the lapels. A knife clattered to the deck as Torvald slammed the man against the rails, jamming a hard knee to his groin, eliciting a hiss of pain, the man’s eyes bugged out as Torvald leaned his attacker over the ice cold North Atlantic, foamy breakers smashing threats of frigid death against the hull of the ship below.

  “Why can’t your people just let me go,” he grunted into the man’s face.

  “The Czar wants you dead,” the man replied with a thick Russian accent, “I can only follow orders.”

  “If I let you go,” Torvald said, “you can just tell them you threw us into the sea, no one will ever know.”

  “Too late,” the Russian said, an evil smile stretched across brown stained teeth, “my men are already meeting your wife and children below decks.”

  Torvald slammed the man’s groin again then shoved him all the way over the railing, screams muted by the roar of the ship against the waves. He sprinted to the nearest ladder-way and slid down the rails to second class. He hit the floor just as shadowy figures positioned themselves on either side of the door to the stateroom his wife and children were in. He charged, hand grasping the wooden grip of the pistol at his waist as he ran. One of the men reared back, raised a leg and smashed in the stateroom door. A boom echoed down the corridor as Torvald’s wife Elisabet fired the Browning he’d left with her into the space the Russian’s body occupied. The man collapsed to the deck. Torvald took out the other man a heartbeat later.

  “Are you okay?” Torvald shouted as he rushed up to the room. His wife stepped out, gun still aimed at the men on the floor. Doors slowly opened down the corridor and men stepped cautiously out, some armed. He called out in Swedish, “Help me get these Czarist shits into the sea.”