“Which makes it the last place anyone would look for her,” Victor said.
Kirilo swore under his breath. “What is the fastest way for us to get on the Baikal-Amur headed north?”
The attendant eyed the pyatichatka again. “Once you pass Irkutsk, the train turns back north. You can get off at Bamovskaya, take the Amur Yakutsk line, and cut them off.”
Kirilo handed her the five hundred–ruble note. “Where can we cut them off, dear?”
She snapped the bill out of his hands and buried it in her pocket in one motion. “At Tynda,” she said. “You can cut them off at Tynda.”
CHAPTER 57
THE TRAIN RUMBLED north by northeast, pitching and tossing Nadia in her ramshackle seat every half hour. She spent the hours sleeping and gazing out the grimy bolted-down window of their second-class cabin. Whenever she checked to see how Adam was faring, she found him slumped in torpor. He didn’t mind the endless travel. It must be some Eastern European thing that living in America expunged, Nadia thought.
Mile after mile of conifers stretched across the taiga amidst patches of red-and-gold birch trees. Signs of industry and life rolled into view occasionally. Factories sprawled along the Bratsk High Dam, while coots and geese buzzed the marshes. The vista gave way to the untamed forest and served as a reminder that Siberia was larger than the United States and Western Europe combined.
Twenty-four hours after Nadia and Damian had boarded, they passed Severobaikalsk. The train plunged along its tracks past groves of stunted pines into a valley surrounded by jagged mountains with snowcapped peaks. The afternoon sun shimmered on the northern tip of icy Lake Baikal. It was the Pearl of Siberia, the attendant said when she brought hot tea, and the world’s largest freshwater lake. They passed through four tunnels along the lake and emerged surrounded by glazed tundra. From there, the permafrost extended forever.
Adam kept busy by reading the same torn and tattered hockey magazine over and over again. The cover featured an action shot of a huge player with a penguin on his jersey driving toward the net. Wavy black locks flowed from his black helmet, fierce determination etched on a surprisingly cherubic face. From her viewing angle, Nadia could see the name Jagr in bold letters beneath the picture.
“You have a favorite team?” Nadia said.
He lifted the magazine and flashed the page he was reading. The top of the page said, New York Rangers. The page was a mess. The left side had a hole the size of an adult’s fist punched through it.
They bought food and bottled water on the platforms during stops along the way. Forty-eight hours after they’d boarded, the Baikal-Amur train headed to Sovetskaya Gavan, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Pacific Ocean, and Nadia and Adam made a scheduled stop. The local time was 7:31 p.m., five hours later than Moscow. It was now Thursday, April 29.
The name on the train station read TYNDA.
Nadia and Adam climbed off the train onto the platform at Track 2. Their matronly attendant did the same.
“Where can we catch the northbound Amur-Yakutsk to Tommot?” Adam said.
“Track Six,” the attendant said. “It arrives at seven forty. In nine minutes.”
CHAPTER 58
KIRILO AND HIS two bodyguards stepped off the northbound Amur-Yakutsk at Tynda on Track 6 at 7:42. Misha followed, propped up by Specter, looking like a corpse who’d escaped from the morgue. His pair of bodyguards brought up the rear.
Kirilo marched up to a transit employee on the platform.
“Which track for the Baikal-Amur? The one that’s just arrived, from Tayshet?”
“Track Two,” the employee said.
Kirilo had expected a small railway station. What the hell did they have out here that required twelve or more tracks? Timber? What else could it be?
They bolted up the stairs to Track 2, where the Baikal-Amur had arrived twelve minutes earlier. The train sat on the track, waiting to depart. Kirilo and Specter hurried to the far end. A woman wearing a blue vest and a matching cap puffed on a cigarette.
“I’m looking for my niece,” Kirilo said. “She’s American. Traveling with her adopted son. An unfortunate sort. Have you seen them?”
The attendant’s eyes flickered for a second before registering confusion. She looked Kirilo up and down. “An American, you say? Gee, I don’t know if I’ve seen any Americans.”
Kirilo whipped out his wallet and held out a pyatichatka. “Is your memory getting any better, dear?”
The attendant snatched the dough. “Oh, that American. Sure. They were in Car Two, Cabin Four.”
“Were?” Kirilo said.
“Yes. Were. They got off when we arrived.”
“Do you know where they went?”
She scratched her chin. “Gee. They may have asked me how to connect to a train, but I’m not sure I remember which one.”
Kirilo gave her another pyatichatka.
“Oh, that train. Sure,” she said. “Now I remember. It was the Amur-Yakutsk.”
“What?” Kirilo said.
“The Amur-Yakutsk. They’re headed north to Tommot.” She glanced at her watch. “It leaves at seven fifty-five. In two minutes.”
CHAPTER 59
NADIA SAW THEM just as they got off the train. She grabbed Adam by the collar and yanked him behind a massive iron pillar on the platform of Track 6.
“Oh my God. That’s them,” she said.
“Who?”
“Them. Don’t look, don’t look.”
Adam slipped the knapsack off his back and stood sideways beside Nadia to make himself smaller.
They approached. Nadia rotated her body around the pillar to hide. Adam followed her lead. She heard footsteps, recognized a familiar voice.
Specter.
Another rotation and they passed. Nadia glanced at their backs. Specter was twenty feet away from her. He was so close.
Specter disappeared down the stairwell toward the central concourse with the others.
Nadia nudged Adam. They hurried onto the Amur-Yakutsk headed north, the same train the others had just gotten off.
The doors closed. The engine hissed. The train rolled away from the station. Nadia peered through a narrow gap between the curtains on the window in her cabin.
Specter and Kirilo exploded out of the stairwell, three bodyguards close on their heels.
“Let me look,” Adam said beside her.
She held him back with a straight-arm.
Kirilo and Specter raced for the edge of the platform. Nadia’s viewing angle narrowed until she lost sight of them.
“What if they jump on the back of the train?” Adam said.
“Lock the door,” Nadia said.
She bolted out of the cabin, sprinted down the corridor, passed through a doorway, and entered the rear car. Weary faces looked up at her from benches. She didn’t recognize any of them.
She slowed as she approached the window of the rear door, fearful that Kirilo or one of his bodyguards could be climbing aboard. The bottom of the window was filthy, covered with grime. The top, however, was still translucent.
From a distance, she could see five men turning back on the platform toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 60
FOUR TAXIS WAITED outside the train station at Tynda.
“Who knows the road to Tommot?” Kirilo said.
All of them raised their hands.