Still looking confused, the young woman mumbled something unintelligible. A second receptionist, who was helping another guest, leaned toward her and whispered something in Romanian.
Again, the spark of realization. “Okay, yes,” the first receptionist said, smiling. “Bus. Yes. Name you?”
“Maureen Powell.”
“Again, please?”
Instead of repeating herself, Alex pulled out her Canadian passport and opened it to the information page. A moment later, she was in possession of the ticket that would take her into Ukraine.
The receptionist pointed toward the door. “Bus come…” She paused, searching for the right words, then turned to the other receptionist for help.
Her colleague looked at Alex, and said, “Bus arrive twenty minutes. Can sit and wait.”
“Thank you,” Alex said.
She used a bit of her Romanian currency to purchase a pastry and a bottle of water from a small shop in the lobby, then took a seat. It wasn’t long before others started drifting in with their bags. A few arrived from outside, but most seemed to have been staying at the hotel. They all looked to be in their early twenties. While a few were toting suitcases, most had backpacks like Alex.
The bus arrived ten minutes late, but it didn’t take long to get their bags stowed away and everyone on board. Alex sat next to a Dutch girl named Heike who was touring with two others, Romee and Anika, sitting in the next row up. Heike was apparently in the mood to talk — in nearly accent-free English — so Alex nodded politely and threw in a few words here and there as the bus passed through the city and into the countryside.
It wasn’t long, however, before they stopped at the border crossing into Moldova. Alex’s passport performed as advertised, raising no red flags with the immigration officials. Once everyone on the bus was cleared, they were off again, only to stop less than two kilometers farther on at the Moldovan border with Ukraine.
Passport checks again, this time with a thorough inspection of the bus’s luggage compartments. One of the passengers who’d been sitting near the back was hauled into a room by two unsmiling officials. They all had to wait over half an hour until the door opened again and the young man returned, looking both scared and relieved. The word circling around the bus later was that the guards had accused him of trying to smuggle drugs into the country, but had been unable to find anything to back that up.
With the exception of a few places where they passed along the Black Sea, the road was lined with farmland nearly all the way to Odessa. Twice they made stops, letting a few of the backpackers off at each.
They finally entered Odessa just after three p.m., and reached their final destination, the Bristol Hotel, fifteen minutes later. As they’d neared the city, Heike had asked Alex how long she was planning to stay there. Alex had made the mistake of saying she would be catching a train out of town that very evening, because it turned out that Heike and her friends were heading to the train station as well.
Not wanting to look like a jerk, Alex agreed to share a cab ride with them.
The cabbie didn’t look too happy as the four girls squeezed themselves and their gear into his car. Several times during the ride, he spit out something in Ukrainian that was undoubtedly meant to express his displeasure. Feeling a bit guilty, Alex slipped him double his fare when they disembarked at the Odessa-Glavnaya station. The act gained her a frown and a grunt that she assumed was thanks.
The Dutch girls were headed to Moscow. Unfortunately, the Moscow train had left two hours earlier. The best they could do was catch an overnight to Kiev, and get on another train there.
Alex’s train to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, was scheduled to leave at midnight, an hour after the girls’ train departed for Kiev. She so wanted to say goodbye right there at the ticket counter, but when Heike invited her to join them for dinner, Alex said yes. She was playing a role, after all, and summer backpackers were in large part a social group.
The trouble happened a few hours later. If Alex had really been someone else, she could have walked away and let the girls deal with it on their own.
Unfortunately, role or no role, she was still Alexandra Poe.
They were in an area right off the main central portion of the station, sitting on the floor. The other girls were passing around their cameras, showing off the pictures they’d taken that day. Romee had not fully closed one of the zippers on her backpack, leaving an opening just wide enough for a small, emaciated teenager to slip his hand inside before they even realized it was happening.
Alex had her back to the guy, so she first noticed that something was up when Anika jumped to her feet, yelling, “Hey! Hey!”
Alex whirled around. “What?”
Anika pointed at the guy running away. “He took something from Romee’s pack!”
As Alex jumped up, Romee pulled the zipper all the way open. “My passport! He has my passport!”
Alex jumped over the bags and raced down the hall. Waiting passengers surprised first by the running boy, then by Alex, jumped out of the way. A few shouted in anger.
Ahead, the kid pushed through a group of people who hadn’t seen him coming, then shoved open a door and ran outside.
“Move, move, move!” Alex shouted. She weaved through them, burst through the doorway, and found herself standing before a row of train platforms. Several were filled with passenger cars waiting to leave the station, while others sat unused.
The boy, apparently deciding that speed was better than deception, had run straight down the platform directly in front of Alex. There was a train on one side and none on the other. The boy was sticking to the empty side where few people were walking.
Alex kicked it into high gear. She may have been six or seven years older than the kid, but those years had been productive ones when it came to improving her physical abilities, so she immediately began closing the gap between them.
The gray and red brick platform curved slightly to the left before descending to the level of the tracks and disappearing. Halfway down, the kid looked over his shoulder and nearly stumbled when he saw Alex still behind him. He caught himself and began pumping his arms harder, but it was clear he was already going as fast as he could.
Somewhere back toward the station, Alex heard a whistle and knew the police were on their way. She didn’t bother to check.
At the far platform a train started pulling away, its clickety-clack growing faster and faster as it gained speed.
“Stop!” Alex shouted as she closed to within fifty feet of the boy.
He shot another look back, this time without losing his balance, then raced to the end of the platform and onto the ground between two of the tracks.
Shit.
Alex pounded down after him.
With the platforms gone, the tracks closed in on each other, giving the sense that the train now leaving the station was heading right at them. The illusion must have been enough to scare the boy. He angled his path to the right, hopping over the nearby rails, and getting farther away from the moving locomotive.
“Stop!” she shouted again. In case he didn’t understand, she tried, “Halt!” but she was wasting her breath.
There was another whistle, this one much deeper and more powerful than the earlier police whistle. It was also coming from in front of them, not behind. Alex looked past the boy at the tracks ahead. Less than a quarter mile down, coming around a bend to the right, a train was heading toward the station, and appeared to be on the same tracks that she and the kid had just hopped over.
The boy seemed to notice this, too, and moved again to the right, jumping over the next set of tracks. But as he went over the final rail, his toe caught the top, sending him flying through the air, his arms outstretched in front of him as if he were Superman.