Minsk Central was a huge station built in the Stalinist style that managed to remain grand and imposing despite the freezing downpour. Crossing the road, Victor could see a couple of armed police officers patrolling the square. Both looked alert. Not unusual. He showed nothing on his face, displayed nothing in his actions – just another anonymous businessman on his way home.
There was a tight feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he ignored it. He moved around a Belarusian family who seemed happy enough to wait in a position where they blocked the better part of the main entrance.
Air travel was the quickest way of creating distance, but also the most watched, the most regulated, the most restricting, and by far the best way of getting apprehended. A car offered the most freedom, but, whether he stole one and gambled with the watchfulness of the police, or hired one and added exposure to one of his aliases, was not without its negatives. A train, though not perfect, was usually the best option. He could pay cash without being noted, needed no identification, and
created no paper trail outside of a ticket that would be destroyed once its use was spent.
As a boy he’d loved trains, and had spent endless hours watching them from his dorm window that overlooked a station. Back then he’d longed to drive them. Instead he killed people, and now his fondness for trains extended only to their benefits in extraction.
Inside the station the concourse was noisy and crowded with commuters. Victor glided among them. His eyes, partially shielded behind a pair of non-prescription glasses, flicked back and forth between the faces of those standing along the walls or sitting down, where he would position himself if he were watching people enter. He was searching for recognition, some action or movement that would give away surveillance, but he saw no indication that he was being observed. He didn’t relax. Just because he saw no one watching him, it didn’t mean that no one was. If Petrenko’s network was large enough and they were smart enough, his description, maybe even a picture, could have been passed around. Train stations and airports could be watched.
He circled the concourse several times. He bought a cup of coffee, a newspaper, browsed books, acting casually, trying to cut down as many lines of sight as possible in the hope of drawing out watchers. Professional shadows could be working in multi-sex couples or disguised as station employees. He doubted Petrenko’s network would be that proficient, but he had no doubts that whoever the surveillance team worked for were. He noticed an athletic and alert young woman with a buggy but no child in his peripheral vision twice. The child might be with the father or there might be no child at all. Passing windows, he watched her reflection to see if she was watching him, but at no time did she look his way.
Victor headed to the men’s room and spent five minutes waiting in a stall before coming out to find the woman was nowhere to be seen. He checked the departure boards, found an appropriate train, and joined the queue for the ticket counters. He behaved like any other Belarusian, not worthy of attention, but he caught a short man look his way. It was only one time and maybe it meant nothing but maybe it meant everything. The man had a round face, bald, about twenty pounds overweight, wearing a train company uniform. Victor looked
at his watch for a few seconds and stepped out of line. He entered a pharmacist and perused the shampoos before looking up in the direction of the bald guy. He wasn’t there.
‘Hrodna,’ Victor said in Russian when he reached the ticket counter. ‘The next available train.’
‘Seats are only available in first class.’
‘That’s fine.’
He waited until three minutes before the train to Hrodna was due to depart before walking to the platform. He watched every man or woman that came on to the platform after him. If he had a shadow, they would be forced to wait too so as not to risk getting on the train to find he wasn’t following. No one hung around, or otherwise made him suspicious. Victor waited until just one minute before the departure time before boarding. No one followed.
He found his seat in the first class carriage at the front of the train. It was on the aisle, set facing forward, with a table. Victor sat down. A man was sitting opposite.
‘Boy do I hate trains,’ the man said in American-accented English, talking loudly. ‘All the waiting around. I mean, let’s go already. Know what I’m saying?’
Victor looked at him, but didn’t answer.
‘Walt Fisher,’ the man said, offering his hand across the table. ‘I figure you’re not a Ruskie.’
Fisher looked mid-forties, dressed in a striped shirt, top button undone, tie loose, suit jacket draped over the seat next to him. His cheeks were flushed and fine droplets of sweat lined his hairline.
‘You mean Belarusian,’ Victor said, deciding it wasn’t worth pretending not to speak English. He shook the hand. It was warm and moist.
‘Whatever. Belarusian, Russian, is there a difference?’
Victor shrugged.
Fisher nodded. ‘
Exactly
.’
‘How did you know I’m neither?’ Victor asked, genuinely intrigued.
‘They don’t travel first.’
‘Ah,’ Victor said, not commenting on the various Russian-language conversations going on nearby.
Fisher allowed himself a smug grin. ‘You have a name, son?’
‘Peter.’
‘You’re a lime— you’re a Brit, ain’t you?’
‘Very perceptive,’ Victor said, adding a more stereotypical British emphasis on the mid-Atlantic accent he’d been using.
‘I hope so, friend. That’s nigh on ninety per cent of my job.’
Fisher stank of bourbon and, aside from the volume of his voice, seemed harmless enough. Some people just liked to talk.
‘Just been brokering a big-ass deal with the Reds,’ he explained, before adding, ‘Is it still okay to say that?’
‘No more or less so than “limey”.’
He let out a booming laugh. ‘Yeah, sorry about that. Habit.’
‘No offence taken.’
‘In mergers and acquisitions,’ Fisher announced. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m a consultant.’
‘What field?’ Fisher clicked his fingers before Victor could respond. ‘No, don’t tell me.’ He bit his lip and pointed. ‘Human resources.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
Fisher clapped his hands together, pleased, proud. Other passengers looked over in response at the sudden noise. ‘Soon as you stepped onboard I said to myself: here’s the man who does the hiring and firing.’
‘Mostly firing.’
‘Sounds cutthroat.’
Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘You have no idea.’
Three minutes after the departure time the train hadn’t started moving. No announcement had been made. Victor liked punctuality, even more so when he had enemies in the same city. He stood up to take a better look out of the window. Fisher watched him. Victor couldn’t see anything to explain the delay. Nothing to worry about then. Probably.
‘So anyway,’ Fisher said. ‘On the way here …’
Victor sat without talking as Fisher recounted a story about his supposedly hilarious journey from his hotel to the train station. Fisher was drunk and talkative and by exchanging pleasantries Victor had given his new best friend licence to talk for the entire trip.
Another time Victor might have enjoyed playing the part of Peter the human resources consultant to pass the time, but Fisher was too inebriated to control the volume of his voice, and he was drawing too much attention. That attention was naturally focused on Fisher, but those passengers might also remember who Fisher was so loudly talking to.
When the train hadn’t moved after another four minutes, other passengers were becoming disgruntled. There were lots of heads turning to look out of windows and mumbled annoyance. A stewardess with a trolley was making her way along the aisle offering drinks. When she reached Victor he asked for a mineral water. Fisher requested a bourbon.
‘Still or sparkling?’ she asked Victor.
‘Sparkling, please.’
She looked through the bottles on her trolley for a moment before turning back to Victor. She frowned.
‘I’m sorry, sir, it appears I only have still today.’ She seemed genuinely apologetic.
‘Don’t worry about it, still is fine.’
‘Are you sure? I can go and look for some.’
‘You’d better not,’ Victor said. ‘If you don’t serve these people some alcohol first you might not make it back alive.’
She smiled while she served Fisher his bourbon. The smile was inviting, pinks lips glistening. ‘I think I’ll brave it. Be right back.’
As soon as she was out of earshot Fisher slapped the table with the flat of his palm. People looked again. ‘You lucky son of a gun, you’re in there.’
Victor remained silent.
The stewardess brought Victor his sparkling mineral water and placed it on the table with a clear plastic cup of ice.
‘Thank you so much,’ Victor said, giving her his best smile. ‘You’re an angel.’
She smiled again. Maybe Fisher was right, maybe he was in there.
‘Honestly,’ she said. ‘It’s quite all right.’
Her tone told him he had breached her professional wall. It hadn’t
been hard. First-class passengers rarely had the inclination even for eye contact. One who was polite, offered praise, and made her smile probably became an instant confidant.
‘Could you tell me what’s with the delay? Victor asked.
Her brow creased in deliberation and she quickly looked from side to side before leaning closer to him.
‘I’m not supposed to say,’ she confessed. ‘But we’re holding the train.’
‘What’s the reason?’
‘The company haven’t told us.’ She leaned even closer and he felt her breath on his cheek. ‘But if you ask me there’s someone on this train who shouldn’t be, if you know what I mean. I think they’re sending some people over as we speak.’
Victor didn’t have to pretend to be concerned. He waited until she was serving someone else before standing. He walked down the aisle, into the vestibule, and entered a toilet. He waited ten seconds and flushed the bowl, using the noise to screen the clatter of broken glass as he smashed the mirror above the sink with an elbow.
From the basin, he selected a piece of glass about six inches in length, roughly triangular in shape, long sides and a short base. He slipped it, point up, between his suit jacket and shirtsleeve on his left arm. He folded the cuff of his shirt back to act as a stopper and shook his arm to make sure it was secure.
He left the toilet and moved to the near exit. The door was already open. Cold air blew in from the platform. On the other side, six feet away, were three men. The first man was tall and lean with a hard angular face, dressed in a suit and overcoat. The other two were shorter, wearing dark trousers and casual jackets, the first with a patchy beard, the second wearing rimless glasses. They weren’t cops, and they looked different from both Petrenko’s men and the surveillance team members. They hesitated, surprised to see him, unsure what to do. Not that experienced then.
He stepped off the train and walked straight at them.
They halted, confused by his actions, nervous because of the sudden change in the hierarchy of predators and prey. The one with glasses gripped the pistol at his belt.
‘What are you going to do,’ Victor asked him as he neared, ‘shoot me here with thirty people watching?’
The man’s eyes were narrow behind his glasses. He didn’t respond but the hand moved a little away from the gun.
Victor stopped three feet away. ‘Shall we take this elsewhere?’
Both shorter guys immediately glanced at the tall man but he didn’t look back, didn’t see them. He stared straight into Victor’s eyes, unblinking. His angular face showed nothing, but Victor could feel his thought process, weighing up the many pros of taking Victor somewhere a little more private as opposed to the many cons of shooting him in front of a train full of witnesses.
‘No reason why we can’t be civilised about this,’ Victor added.
‘Yes,’ the tall man said with a little smile, ‘let us be civilised.’
There were no other travellers on the platform, but the bald guy in a train company uniform was staring in Victor’s direction. The tall man backed away a step, his gaze never leaving Victor, and motioned with his hand for him to walk forward.
Victor did and the two shorter guys immediately moved to his flanks. They were both muscular, serious expressions, confident enough in Victor’s passivity not to grab hold of him or to keep hands close to weapons. The bald guy continued to stare.
Victor remained stationary while the shorter guy with the patchy beard patted him down on his thighs and hips, and around his waist and under his arms. It was done quickly to avoid attracting attention. Which was smart. But the frisk didn’t go anywhere near Victor’s left wrist. Which wasn’t smart.
The searcher found the SIG in the back of Victor’s waistband and slipped it into one of his own pockets. ‘He’s good now,’ the guy said.
The tall man motioned with his head.
With the guy wearing glasses in front and the other two men behind him, Victor was led along the platform, but away from the concourse, towards the bald guy in the uniform, who opened a worn-looking metal door. He then hurried away, doing his best to avoid eye contact with Victor.
The tall guy nudged Victor in the back. ‘Eyes forward, my friend.’
He followed the first man into the corridor beyond the metal door. It was dark and cool with bare brick walls, dimly lit. The door closed behind Victor and he heard the muted sound of the train to Hrodna pulling away from the platform. He hoped Walt Fisher found someone else to talk to.
They took a left turn and he was led down a series of long
featureless corridors until the only sounds were those of their shoes on the floor. Victor kept his head fixed forward, but his eyes moved continuously, taking in everything about the location, memorising the route and looking for advantages. All the corridors were the same: bare brick, plain doors, sprinkler nozzles in the ceiling. Nothing to tip the odds in his favour.
They turned another corner and the lead guy opened a door. He gestured for Victor to enter the dark room beyond. He walked in first and the light was switched on to reveal a small room, ten feet square. Cardboard boxes were stacked against one wall and a simple table with plastic chairs against the other. A mop and metal bucket stood in a corner. The air smelled stale and dusty.