“Must be an heirloom,” Newmeyer had said, glancing at the engraving in the ruddy light of the cab.
Newmeyer had then opened the pouch, found several rolled cigarettes inside, and removed one. Nikita had ex tended his tongue and Newmeyer placed it on the end. The Russian pulled the smoke between his lips and accepted a light.
Newmeyer had closed the top of the lighter and put everything back together with the rubber band.
Nikita blew twin clouds of smoke from his nostrils.
Newmeyer bent close to replace the tobacco pouch. As the Striker had leaned over their prisoner, Nikita suddenly bent forward at the waist, butting his forehead into Newmeyer’s head.
With a moan, Newmeyer fell back and dropped the pouch. Sitting up and grabbing it, the Russian used the heel of his hand to cram the pouch and lighter into the gears of the throttle. Then, as Newmeyer made a belated lunge for him, Nikita quickly pushed the iron lever away from him.
The train had sped up as the gears chewed down on the pouch and on the lighter his father had given him. Strips of leather and chucks of steel infused the gears, bending the teeth, locking them in a disfigured embrace.
“Shit!” Squires had said as Newmeyer fell back, holding his hand.
The officer had gone to the throttle and tried to push it in the opposite direction, but it refused to yield.
“Shit!” he’d repeated.
Squires had glanced, then, from the Russian’s untriumphant expression with eyes that seemed distant, out of focus, to Newmeyer. The Private wasn’t even rubbing his head, which showed the beginnings of a nasty bruise. He was crouched with a knee on the Russian’s chest and a look of self-loathing.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” had been all he could think to say.
Well. hell. Squires had thought. The sonuvabitch Rus sian was only doing what we’d have done, and he did it right.
And now the train was a runaway, building speed as it cleared the curve and headed toward the trestle. There was no time to gather up Grey and the Russian and jump off before they reached the gorge. And they had just about two minutes before the locomotive ceased to exist.
Squires jumped back to the window and peered down the track. On the horizon, he saw what looked like a cloud of locusts in the green glow of the goggles. It was the extraction craft-though it wasn’t like any chopper he’d ever seen. From the smooth lines and color he knew at once that it was a low-observable. He was flattered. Even Muammar Gadhafi hadn’t rated the debut of a Stealth aircraft, though they’d all been on alert, when Reagan and Weinberger crossed his “line of death” in the Gulf of Sidra and blackened the eyes of Tripoli back in 1986.
The helicopter was coming at them fast and low. The snow had stopped completely, visibility was good, and it probably wouldn’t take long for the pilot to figure out that the train couldn’t he stopped. The question was, was there enough time for them to be extracted some other way?
“Newmeyer,” Squires said, “help Grey to the roof. We’re getting out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” the crestfallen Striker replied.
Rising from the Russian, Newmeyer avoided his oddly detached gaze as he went over to Grey, bent beside him, and carefully hefted the Sergeant onto his shoulder. The barely conscious noncom did his best to hold on as Newmeyer rose. Then the Private watched, more alert now, as Squires twisted the Russian onto his chest.
“Go!” Squires said to Newmeyer, pointing to the door with his forehead. “I’ll be okay.”
Reluctantly, Newmeyer kicked the door open, pulled himself up onto the bottom of the window, and gently eased Grey to the flat roof of the cab.
Grabbing a fistful of the Russian’s hair, Squires reached back, undid the rappelling belt that had kept him on the floor, tied it tightly around his wrists, and walked him toward the door.
SEVENTY
Tuesday, 4:56 P.M., St. Petersburg
When she first saw the spy’s surprising twist on the stairs, Valya thought that she intended to shoot her and her instinct was to duck. The Russian started to go down, but when she realized that the spy was falling, Valya checked herself and darted after her. It was always surprising what one could get from a wounded or dying individual. Often their guard was down or they were so dazed that they said things, sometimes important things.
Guests gasped but stood aside as the woman rode down the twenty or so steps on her shoulder, appearing not to hit her head, then reaching the landing with an awkward somersault over one shoulder onto her side. She lay moaning in a fetal position, her legs moving weakly, as visitors gathered around. One called to a guard for assistance, while two others knelt, one of them doffifing his jacket and slipping it under her head.
“Don’t touch her!” Valya yelled. “Get away!”
The Russian reached the bottom of the stairs and pulled a snub-nosed pistol from an ankle holster.
“This woman’s a wanted criminal,” she said. “Leave this matter in our hands.”
The Russians backed away quickly. The foreigners saw the gun and did likewise.
Valya hopped over Peggy so that she was facing her.
Then she looked up at the stragglers.
“I said leave!” Valya shrilled, and swept outward with the back of her hand. “Go!”
The last of the gawkers did, and Valya looked back at Peggy. The spy’s eyes were shut and her right arm was under her chest, her hand against but under her chin. Her left arm was limp at her side.
Valya didn’t care what might be broken or damaged inside of her. Holding the gun under the woman’s chin, Valya rolled her onto her back.
Peggy winced, her mouth formed a pained little oval, and then she relaxed again.
“That was an unpleasant fall,” Valya said in English. “Can you understand me?”
With apparent effort, Peggy nodded a little.
“You British are dropping like autumn leaves,” Valya said. “First I terminated the comic book publisher and his team, now you.” Valya pushed the mouth of the gun into the soft flesh under Peggy’s throat. “I’ll see that you get to a hospital,” she said, “after we talk.”
Peggy’s lips moved. “Be … before-”
“No, no,” said Valya with a wicked grin. “After. I want to know some things about your operation first. For instance, in Helsinki, what was the name of-”
Peggy moved so quickly that Valya didn’t have time to react. She raised the closed fist that had been resting on her chin, the fist in which she held her lapel knife. The blade was pointing down, and Peggy jammed it into the depression above Valya’s clavicle and tore inward, toward the larynx. At the same time, she used the elbow of her left hand to push Valya’s other arm to the floor, in case the gun discharged.
It didn’t. The Russian woman released the gun and grabbed desperately at Peggy’s fist with both of her hands, scratching vainly to dislodge the knife.
“What I was going to say,” Peggy sneered, “was, ‘Before you worry about taking me to a hospital, make sure the fall was an accident!’ ” She pushed the knife harder and Valya gurgled and slumped to her side. “That agent you killed was my autumn leaf,” she added, “and this is for him.”
“Don’t move!” a voice shouted in Russian from the top of the staircase.
Peggy looked up at a slender, ascetic-looking man in the uniform of a spetsnaz colonel. At the end of his outstretched, very steady arm was a P-6 silent pistol. Behind him, still gasping and rubbing his throat, was the man Volko had attacked.
“I’m going to get out from under your friend,” Peggy replied in Russian. She turned to her side to throw Valya off. The woman’s eyes were shut and her face was white as her life poured haphazardly onto the marble floor.
The Colonel was walking down the steps behind his firearm. Peggy dumped Valya onto her back and rose, her own back to the steps.
“Arms up,” the officer said to her. If he felt any remorse about Peggy’s victim, she didn’t hear it in his voice.
“I know the drill,” Peggy said, turning wearily as she started to raise her hands.
When they were chest-high she turned suddenly, holding the snub-nosed pistol she’d picked up when she threw Valya over. There were no tourists in the way as she fired at Colonel Rossky, who stopped where he was, seven steps up, and took her salvo as if he were in a duel. He met it with fire of his own,
Peggy didn’t stay where she was. Immediately after firing her short burst, she threw herself to the left. onto the ground, and rolled until she hit the banister.
After several seconds, the echoing gunfire stopped and only a pungent, rising, rapidly thinning tester of smoke remained of the exchange-that, and the crawling red stains on the front of Colonel Rossky’s uniform.