He swore viciously.
He was conscious of a fervent hope that if the scream had been heard on the platform, then Gorsak would have heard it too — and would start up his own diversion as promised… and then in a split second he had dropped, his shoulder grazing painfully down rough concrete until he landed in the narrow space between seat and door. He was almost on top of the woman, a middle-aged woman who looked like a housewife. Steadying himself he jerked out his Webley and pressed it into her stomach, hard.
He hissed at her in Russian, “Quiet. The sentry will come now. You are not to say anything or I shall kill you.”
Keeping the gun lined up on her, he slid the silencer on and then flattened himself behind the door. Already there was a commotion outside, the Russian sentry’s boots clumping across the floor. Reaching out, Shaw slid back the lock and waited. A heavy, urgent hand thumped on the panel and a man’s rough voice demanded, “What’s the matter there?”
There was a moan from the woman and then the door was pushed open. Shaw heard the sentry’s heavy breathing as the man stared in stupidly at the woman, not sure what was going on. Shaw stood ready. There was a pause and then the sentry’s face came farther round the door and he looked right into Shaw’s eyes. As the mouth opened Shaw fired, point-blank.
The expression seemed to freeze into astonishment and the eyes went dark and sightless. Then the face crumpled and broke, and the blood came. It spurted and welled in a red river, a gush coming from the boneless cavity that had been the mouth, another from the back of the smashed skull. The man crumpled at the knees, his shattered face and head arcing down towards the woman. Her mouth opened but she made no sound. Then she swayed, in a dead faint. Shaw caught her and eased her on to the seat, then grabbed the sentry’s body and pulled it right inside the cubicle. Picking up the man’s gun he shut and locked the door, fearing at any moment to hear some of the frontier-guards move in from the platform. Even if no one else had heard the woman’s screams, it couldn’t be long now before the absence of both sentries, and especially the Russian one who should be out there on the platform, was noted. Luckily, the silence in Shaw’s immediate surroundings seemed to indicate that all the other cubicles were vacant — and probably, with the express almost ready to leave, no one else would come in. Empty bladders all round, as Gorsak had suggested. So far, so good…
Just then the shooting started, a distant burst and then a nearer one in answer.
It was, he fancied, just outside the station on the Hungarian side of the border. Gorsak — making his promised diversion! He’d timed it beautifully — maybe he’d seen someone going for the door of the lavatory £>n the Hungarian side. There was a rattle of automatic fire — that old Sten in action — drawing farther away. Then there were cries, and more gunfire came from nearer at hand, the Kalashnikovs pumping out their hundred rounds a minute. This was followed quickly once again by the now more distant Sten. Shaw fancied he heard the thud of bullets smacking into concrete nearby, then there was a scream from the station entrance and a few moments after, thankfully, he heard — or was almost certain he heard — the outlandish rattle and clank of Gorsak’s pathetic old bus, beating it away from the station flat out, and then the firing stopped.
Precisely ninety seconds later, with the Hungarian end of the platform still in total uproar and a bell clanging furiously on the Russian side for the Smolensk passengers to board the train which was about to pull out of the trouble-spot a little before time — for, as Gorsak had so obviously intended, the shooting had been taken as an attempt to rescue the handcuffed prisoners whom Shaw had seen entering the station earlier — a tall figure left the Russian ladies’ lavatory.
This figure was dressed in a Russian frontier guard’s greatcoat, a greatcoat which was a little on the short side for him. The coat was tightly buttoned to the neck and the man had a Russian steel helmet on his head. A Kalashnikov sub-machine-gun was slung from his shoulder and in his left hand he carried a suitcase. On his right arm he half-carried a woman who looked as if she had been taken ill, a woman who whimpered and muttered something about the train for Smolensk which she must at all costs catch. The Russian soldier uttered rough but kindly assurances. All eyes were on the area of the shooting, so no one bothered to look at these two — at least, not close enough to notice that the Russian’s boots and trouser-bottoms were not of the regulation pattern — and thus unremarked they made their way to the nearest coach of the Smolensk Express where the “sentry” helped the woman aboard. He swung himself up after her and banged the door shut behind him. Faces still stared fearfully out of the train’s windows, but the owners of those faces made way respectfully, ingratiatingly, when the “sentry” pushed along behind their backs, with the woman in front of him. The two went along the corridor and then the “sentry” thrust the woman into an empty compartment, shut the door very firmly, and pulled down the blinds. Out in the corridor the passengers — miserable, haunted people many of them, in poor, threadbare clothing — whispered amongst themselves. The unfortunate woman was under arrest for some misdemeanour, some transgression of the Soviet’s many complicated laws — or possibly even for being involved in the shooting, who could tell?
There was a shrill whistle.
The station bell stopped its clanging and there were shouts along the platform, and then a deep roar of escaping steam and the sound of pistons turning over and wheels racing on steel rails until the great engine got its grip. Then there was a jerk and a bump and a moment later the locomotive moved ahead, easing the Budapest-Smolensk Transfrontier Express smoothly, slowly, out of Khamchevko inexorably into Russia.
In his compartment Shaw mopped at his forehead, which was beaded with sweat under the heavy steel helmet. He could only hope that Gorsak and his Gelda were really clear and away now. Of one thing, at least, Shaw was quite certain: Nothing of this night’s work would ever come out through either of them. Gorsak would never be taken alive by the communists nor would he allow Gelda to be. He knew too much about communist methods for that.
The express gathered speed, rocking and swaying out of the borderlands, flying on through the night for the passage of the Carpathians, its great deep-toned bell clanging out at intervals like a knell, a sound of doom, sparks streaming back along the wind from the hurtling footplate’s inferno.
Now and again, whenever he heard footsteps clumping along the swaying corridor, Shaw let the blind fly up and. propaganda-wise, showed his head and shoulders to the curious, the sentry’s Kalashnikov much in evidence. The curious didn’t linger, but looked away quickly and passed on. Gun and uniform carried a lot of weight inside Russia and for the time being Shaw was extremely glad of it. He was quite safe now and would remain so until the express neared the tunnel under the mountain ranges and, on meeting the steep part of the incline, he had to jump for it.
There was still the woman, however, and Shaw knew quite well that a live witness in the form of this woman could wreck anything that Gorsak might have achieved by his drawing-off tactics.
But he couldn’t kill her.
He had to put his whole faith in his own speed after jumping off the train — and he knew that in fact he had a pretty good chance.