Authors: Douglas Corleone
But I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight. My adrenaline was pumping, my blood running too hot. I felt as though Odessa had been a big waste of precious time—Lindsay’s precious time.
The kidnappers consistently remained one step ahead of me, and I knew that if this game of cat and mouse continued this way, I’d leave an ugly number of bodies in my wake without ever locating Lindsay Sorkin. As things stood, it would be a hell of a risk to return to Germany. And surely I was now wanted in Poland for questioning. If charges were ultimately brought against me in either country, I’d be red-flagged by Interpol and confined to a nation averse to extradition treaties. Even then I wouldn’t be entirely safe. I’d forever be looking over my shoulder.
But this wasn’t about me, I had to remind myself; it was about Vince and Lori Sorkin and reuniting them with their daughter.
In my years as a U.S. Marshal, then (for lack of a better term) as a private investigator, I’d always known that anticipating my target’s next move was key. Usually you found your subjects because of the research you did before the chase. You learned where your targets had family and friends, what type of jobs they were qualified for, the kind of climate they preferred or at least could endure. But in this case, that essential preparation was impossible.
Again I stared out the window into the night and tried to picture the person or persons capable of pulling off this elaborate kidnapping of Lindsay Sorkin. For a moment, I locked on a reflection coming from the window into our compartment. That face again. I swung my head around but the visage was gone.
Must have been the
provodnik.
Each carriage had one: an attendant who collected tickets, distributed sheets and pillows, made morning wake-up calls, served cups of tea. Or maybe it was someone in a second-or third-class sleeper, or even a fourth-class traveler with nothing but a hard bench seat, looking for an empty compartment with a bed so that he could stretch out and catch some z’s before arriving in Kiev.
I thought of lowering the curtain, but I wanted to be able to see out. I hadn’t been having the safest week of my life, after all.
The motion of the train threatened to lull me to sleep, but I knew it wouldn’t keep, that I’d just wake up feeling miserable after eight or ten minutes, so I kept myself awake with a Ukrainian travel guide some previous passenger had left behind.
I opened to the section on Kiev, the birthplace of Eastern Slavic civilization. Somehow, the city had persevered despite having been conquered by the Vikings, captured by the Nazis, and controlled by the Soviet Union. While under the control of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had suffered the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.
After a few minutes, my sore eyes wandered above the guidebook and there in the window I saw that face again. Staring directly into our compartment.
He’s checking to see if I’ve fallen asleep.
I gently moved Ana’s head off my shoulder and she stirred. I propped her up in the corner and covered her with my suit jacket. Then I made for the door, unlocked it, and slid it open.
I stepped out of the compartment, spun my head around, and scanned the aisle in either direction. To my right, in the distance, I saw the back of a man in a denim jacket walking swiftly toward the front of the train.
I followed.
As I got nearer I noticed he had a small pack swung over his right shoulder. I picked up my pace in order to catch up to him.
I’m being paranoid. I’ve had too little sleep. He’s just a kid backpacking through eastern Europe. Probably heading to a hostel in Kiev for six bucks a night. All he can afford. That’s why he was peeking into our compartment. He’s staying in fourth class. He was simply looking for a place to crash.
I wasn’t convinced. My feet were carrying me almost in a jog, my pulse racing. I saw my arm reaching out to grab the kid. As I put my hand on his shoulder he spun around. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.
“What do you want?” he shouted in awful English.
His lips were trembling, his eyes darting back and forth. He was terrified of me.
Or at least of someone.
Or
something.
“Why were you looking into my sleeping compartment?” I said.
“Why do you accuse me of this, you stupid American?” he roared, earning dirty looks from the other passengers.
It was
what
he said, not how he said it, that bothered me. How did he know I was American? Everyone who met me assumed I was British. I looked British. I sounded British. Hell, I
was
British, truth be told.
“What’s in your pack?” I said.
He turned his head and glanced at the carriage door. The train was rounding a bend, so we weren’t moving all that fast. The bastard was thinking of making a run for it.
“You want it?” he shouted at me as he removed the pack from his shoulder. “Here, you take it!”
He shoved the pack into my chest, turned, and went straight for the door. As he did, I noticed him reach into his denim jacket and pull out a mobile phone.
I tried to piece it all together. Here was a kid who’d been peeking into our compartment, who’d thrown a fit when I asked him a simple question, who’d somehow known where I was from. I looked down at the bag he’d pushed on me, then glanced at his right hand as his thumb worked the button on the old mobile phone.
Christ. The phone’s a detonator. The kid just handed me a goddamn bomb.
I immediately darted after him through the aisle, the contents of my stomach rising in my throat. I finally caught up with him just as he jumped the four short steps to the door. He pushed the door open and I watched tall brown grass and rail blowing by us. He hesitated for just a second, but a second was all I needed. I tossed the strap of the pack over his head and around his neck.
The kid spun around, trying to remove the pack to toss it back to me.
Meanwhile, I saw green digital numbers decreasing on the phone he now held in his left hand.
Six.
I used the banister as leverage and raised my left leg, throwing a back kick straight into his chest. The kid flew out the door, his back striking the ground with great force.
Five.
Gripping the banister, I jumped down the stairs and watched him tumble away from the train as I counted down in my head.
Four.
I closed the door, bounded back up the four steps, and saw every passenger in the car staring at me.
Three.
I started up the aisle, staring out the side window, looking for the kid.
Two.
At the very last second I spotted him.
One.
The explosion was so powerful that it blew the kid to bits, and very nearly knocked our night train off the bloody rails.
Chapter 42
We arrived at Kiev’s Central Station two hours later than scheduled. Police had come to investigate the scene of the explosion, and explained that no one would be permitted off the train in Kiev until everyone had been questioned.
“That means we will be trapped aboard this train for another three or fours hours,” Ana said in exasperation once we pulled into the station.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I suspect we’ll be among the first to be questioned. Once they have their information, they will either arrest me or let us both go.”
“Arrest you? Why would they possibly arrest you?”
“Because most of the passengers who witnessed the incident were half asleep, and chances are, most of them don’t speak English. So they’re going to explain to the police not what occurred but how they perceived it. Some of them probably just caught the tail end. Which means the police will have accounts of a larger man wrapping a pack around a skinny kid’s neck before physically kicking him off the train. Followed, of course, by an explosion that rocked the train and blew the kid to kingdom come.”
“And you are certain we were the intended target?” she said.
I nodded without looking at her. “No doubt about it.”
There was a quick rap on our compartment door, then it slid open, revealing a short, completely bald Ukrainian man and a pale, gangly woman.
The man said, “Simon Fisk? Anastazja Staszak?”
We both nodded.
“My name is Martyn Rudnyk,” he said. “I am the deputy head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of the Interior here in Ukraine. This is Agent Jess Kidman of Interpol. She is from South Africa, currently based in Harare, Zimbabwe.” He looked from me to Ana. “I spoke to your brother, Marek. After putting up a fight and learning of the bomb on the train, he explained the situation and the reason the two of you are presently in Ukraine.”
“Word travels fast,” I said.
Rudnyk ignored me. “It is important that the four of us speak privately. If you wouldn’t mind coming with us, the ministry’s headquarters are here in Kiev.”
“Do we have a choice?” Ana said.
Kidman stepped forward. Her suit was too large for her frame. She’d purchased it off the rack and was either too tall or had recently lost a lot of weight. “We are not the enemy, Ms. Staszak.”
After what we had learned about Chief Inspector Aleksander Gasowski back in Warsaw, it was difficult to trust anyone in authority, especially here in eastern Europe. Just the night before, we’d witnessed firsthand a perfectly fine example of the corruption within Ukraine’s police force down at the pier in Odessa. We had no reason whatsoever to trust these two.
“Given a choice,” I said, “we’d both prefer to provide a statement, then be left alone.”
Kidman appeared unperturbed. “As I am sure you are aware by now, Mr. Fisk, both of your lives are in grave danger. And you cannot possibly complete your objective of finding the American child if both of you are dead.”
*
“One way or the other,” Kidman said in a cramped room at ministry headquarters, “the attempted bombing on the overnight train from Odessa suggests that you have run afoul of Ukrainian organized crime. In such cases, we have no choice but to extract you from the situation.”
“With all due respect, Agent Kidman,” I said, “we don’t require extraction. As you can see, we can take care of ourselves.”
“Perhaps,” Rudnyk piped in. “But our first concern must be for the public at large, and if that bomb had exploded on the train, it would have killed dozens of innocent people. Such risks—such
close calls
—you must understand, are unacceptable.”
Ana’s face glowed red. “In case you have not noticed, Simon and I did not attempt to bomb anyone. We are victims. Maybe if your police force spent more time investigating and attempting to prevent such crimes—as opposed to, say, taking bribes—this incident would not have occurred.”
Rudnyk nodded affably. Behind the veneer of an agreeable cop, however, I detected a man burning with rage. The lines on his forehead and the hooded eyes reminded me of idealistic cops who’d been bludgeoned by the job. Cops sickened by what they’d seen and heard over too many years on the force, too many rounds of the same fight. Cops who’d taken on too much friendly fire, who’d been blocked by bureaucrats and colleagues who played on both sides of the line. Bitter cops who nevertheless continued to slip into their wrinkled suits each day, cops who’d never bend or break, never surrender their convictions, right up to the moment they slept their last sleep.
“Your point is well taken,” Rudnyk said. “I, of all people, am not blind to the corruption that plagues my country. It is not my intention to make excuses for it. However, it is a plague that presently afflicts all post-Soviet states. I could sit here and list the various academic causes for the corruption, but that will not aid you in finding the young girl you seek. So for now, let us just say that my nation is experiencing, for want of a better term, ‘growing pains.’”
Kidman nodded. She seemed more of a pragmatist. It was a consequence of worldliness, of experiencing enough of humanity to know that change came, if it came at all, in barely perceptible increments, and of accepting the fact that it wouldn’t be you but maybe your great-grandchildren who would reap the benefits of the good you did today.
They made a good match, Kidman and Rudnyk. The world needed both types of cops.
“Back to the matter at hand,” Kidman said. “As I said back on the train, we are not the enemy. We are certainly not here to thwart your attempt at locating the missing American girl. We wish to provide assistance. But there are conditions.”
“Conditions?” Ana said.
“Consideration must be given with respect to our ongoing investigations. Our work over the past several years cannot be jeopardized.”
I said, “We’ve no interest in interfering with your investigations. We just want to find Lindsay Sorkin.”
“Very well,” Kidman said. “Then we understand each other. And our objectives do not conflict.” She turned to Rudnyk. “Let’s proceed.”
We waited as Rudnyk left the room to retrieve a file. I was surprised by all the formality, the mechanical way in which our presence was being received. It was unlike any law enforcement collaboration I had ever seen. There was no yelling, no threats or ultimatums. Just cool heads and an almost frightening air of patience.
When Rudnyk returned with the file, he sat across from us and said, “Last night, shortly before the incident on the train, we intercepted a communication that we believe was commenced by Yuri Bobrovnyk in Odessa.”
“You
believe
it was him?” I said.
“Yes, it was not his line that was being tapped.”
“Whose was it?”
“We will get to that. In any event, you, Simon Fisk, were mentioned by name. A description that fits yours was given, along with a summary of events that apparently transpired on a boat docked in the Black Sea.”
I didn’t say anything.
“The conversation between Yuri Bobrovnyk and one of our suspects was heated. From everything we know about them, these men do not get along, but they have formed some unholy alliance to further their own respective interests.”