He looked again at the woman, sitting crying quietly in the corner opposite him, her eyes on the Kalashnikov as if hypnotized by the wicked-looking weapon. Leaning forward be said kindly, “Cheer up, Mother. I’m not going to hurt you. But I’m afraid I’ll have to tie you up for a while.”
She didn’t say anything, just sat there looking back at him. her dark eyes wide like pools of black ink. As the train, travelling very fast now — touching eighty was Shaw’s guess — rushed on through the night deeper and deeper into Soviet territory, Shaw reached into his pocket for a clasp-knife. Cutting away at the blinds on the outer windows, he soon had them in strips which he knotted together. He tied the woman’s hands behind her back, securely, then cut a further length and looped this around her ankles, hauling them tight together, and led the other end over a steam pipe beneath the seat. She would be immobilized now until the train stopped. There was no reason why anybody should look into the compartment after he had gone, but a wedge might help… Shaw took a couple of cartridges from his own gun and opened them gingerly with his knife. Pouring away the powder, he slipped the bullets into his pocket. Then he sat back and waited, with the Kalashnikov across his knees.
Some time later the train’s rattle changed its tempo, slowing down. Shaw got up again then and securely gagged the woman with some of her own clothing.
Then, once again, he waited.
It seemed to him a long wait. Then at last the express began to climb more slowly, the motion becoming more and more laboured. They had reached the steepest part now.
Shaw got up, murmured, “Good luck, Mother!” and went out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him. The corridor was empty. Bringing out the lead bullets from his pocket and using the butt of his Webley as a hammer, he tapped them quickly and efficiently into the jamb of the sliding door where they wouldn’t easily be seen. When he tried the door, it was jammed solid. Carrying his case, he walked ahead to the exit door at the forward end of the coach. As the train snorted almost to a halt at the top of the gradient, he opened the door. He waited until the train had started to gather a little speed again and then he got down onto the step, his case in his hand. Hooking two fingers round a metal grip in the coachwork, he shut the door as quietly as he could and then he jumped outward and forward.
He hit the track with bone-crunching force, close to the tunnel and between high banks of rock. He rolled over and over, half a dozen times. As he struggled to a sitting position, dust-covered and winded, the end carriages of the long express went on past him, the engine well into the tunnel now and filling it with its reek as it chuffed on for Smolensk, the lights from the rear windows where people were still awake throwing flickering shadows on the side of the track. When the train had passed him, he got up and stepped on to the rails behind it, watching its tail-light fading into the distance, beneath the great craggy overhang of the mountain. Then he walked on ahead into the tunnel’s mouth, flicking on a torch which he had taken from his case, shining it on foul, slimy walls.
He had to clear the whole long length of this Carpathian tunnel before daybreak — and before the Smolensk Express made its first stop, also at daybreak, and that woman began talking.
He was on his own now, all right.
Eight
Only two trains — one up, one down — passed Shaw during that walk along the tunnel and he was reasonably certain he hadn’t been spotted from either of them.
The up train had come along comparatively slowly and Shaw had been able to get off the track into a working recess in time. He had covered his face with the Russian’s greatcoat and all had been well. As for the down train, no one would ever have had a chance to spot him from that. It had come down upon him with its great bell clanging, clanging violently… the huge engine racing at him out of the darkness, enveloped in steam and smoke and flying sparks, thundering along the track. That time, Shaw had been nowhere near a recess. When he had heard the approaching racket and felt the shudder and shake of the rails, he had simply crouched right down and clung to the up rail until the monstrous whirlwind had passed in its steam and uproar and high, racketing din. Its terrible slipstream had torn and ripped and flayed at his body as the blur of lights had flashed past at something like ninety and he had been battered, deafened by the din, scarcely able to think for some moments after it had ceased.
Then — filthy dirty — he had scrambled up and walked on into the evil stink of fumes and the whirling dust and grit which filled the whole tunnel and tore at his throat and nearly choked him.
He stumbled along altogether for three hours and when he emerged thankfully into the open and took a deep gulp of fresh air into his clogged, tortured lungs, the sky was still dark and a steady drizzle soaked into his clothing. Tired and stiff, colder than ever and hungry, he slumped to the side of the track a little way farther on, clear of a deep cutting, and eased his aching feet and leg muscles. A little later he pulled himself up again and looked around.
Not far off he could make out a hump of ground. He made his way up the slope towards it in order to reconnoitre; he couldn’t afford a proper rest yet, had to get clear away from the railway line as fast as he could before he could let up in any way.
He found that he was looking out over a valley.
Seeing Gorsak’s map in his mind’s eye, he searched through the darkness for signs of a road running through the valley, and after a time he fancied he could see a faint lightening of the blackness, a long thin streak which could well be that road. After some ten minutes this was confirmed when he saw headlights moving along it, flickering off the track into scrubby undergrowth and trees. Then, a little later again, he saw away in the distance a few widely dispersed lights — probably in the homes of families already waking to a day’s work. It was still too dark for him to be certain of whether he was looking at a town — there had been one on the map — or merely a few scattered cottages, but whatever it was he would do well to avoid being seen in any kind of community too close to the railway.
Within the next two hours the express would reach its first stopping-point inside Russia and then the search would be on.
Meanwhile, that road offered hope.
Half an hour later Shaw’s wishful thinking had materialized in the form of a small closed van which had come along that road.
Shaw, wet through by now although he was hidden in a clump of trees near the road, had carried out an eminently successful ambush on that van, aided once again by his uniform and the Russian’s chromium-barrelled Kalashnikov.
Afterwards he had left the driver and his mate stone cold in those same trees and he didn’t see any reason why they should be discovered for some time yet.
The uniform greatcoat was now concealed in the back of the vehicle and the “sentry” had vanished under a resumption of the windcheater and the corduroys, which made admirable garb for a van-driver. He drove on through the town which he had observed earlier — it was just a small country township — and, once on the other side and putting mile after mile between himself and the railway-line to Smolensk, he came to a crossroads and turned left for Petroslav as Gorsak had advised. The rain had stopped now and it was almost daylight. It was a long drive into Petroslav but Shaw took it flat out, easing down only once or twice when he spotted an oncoming vehicle ahead — there was no point in drawing attention to himself by appearing to be in too much of a hurry. If he could make the rail-centre of Petroslav quickly, then he fancied he would be quite far enough from the area of likely search for him to show himself.