Something caught his eye under the wedged sheet, something that sent a chill through him. Kasper gasped as he recognized the titanium under-panel and the construction of it. Something thumped inside the room, compelling him to find a way in.
‘Use your head. You are an engineer,’ he told himself.
If this was what he thought it was, he knew how to open the door. Briskly, he stole back to the back room where Nina was, hoping to find what he needed among the tools.
“Oh, Kasper, you will give me a heart attack!” Nina whispered when he rounded the door. “Where is Sam?”
“Don’t know,” he replied hastily, looking totally preoccupied. “Nina, please find me anything in the way of a magnet. Quickly, please.”
She could see by his urgency that there was no time to enquire, so she started rummaging through the panel boxes and shelves to look for a magnet. “Are you sure they would have magnets on the train?” she asked him.
His breathing accelerated as he searched. “This train runs on a magnetic field, emitted by the tracks. They are bound to have loose pieces of cobalt or iron in here.”
“What does it look like?” she wanted to know, holding something in her hand.
“No, that is just an angle cock,” he remarked. “Look for something more dull. You know what a magnet looks like. That kind of material, but just bigger.”
“Like this one?” she asked, provoking his impatience, but she was only trying to help. With a sigh, Kasper humored her and took a look at what she had. In her hands, she had lifted up a gray disc.
“Nina!” he exclaimed. “Yes! That is perfect!”
A peck on her cheek rewarded Nina for finding a way into Tuft’s room and before she knew it, Kasper was out the door. He ran right into Sam in the dark, both men crying out at the sudden start.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked in an urgent tone.
“I am going to use this to get into Tuft’s room, Sam. I am almost certain he had Olga in there,” Kasper rushed, trying to push past Sam, but Sam blocked him off.
“You cannot go there now. He just came back to his compartment, Kasper. That is what drove me back here. Get back inside with Nina,” he commanded, checking the corridor behind them. Another figure was coming, a large and imposing figure.
“Sam, I need to get her,” Kasper moaned.
“Aye, and you will, but use your head, man,” Sam replied, pushing Kasper unceremoniously into the storeroom. “You cannot get in there while he is there.”
“I can. I will just kill him and take her,” the distraught physicist whined, grasping at reckless possibilities.
“Just sit down and relax. She is not going anywhere until tomorrow. At least we have an idea where she is, but for now, we need to shut the hell up. Wolf is coming,” Sam said sternly. Again, the mention of his name made Nina feel sick. The three cowered down and sat dead still in the darkness, listening to Wolf marching past, checking the corridor. Shuffling his feet, he stopped in front of their door. Sam, Kasper and Nina held their breath. Wolf fiddled with the door handle of their hiding place and they braced themselves for discovery, but instead, he locked the door firmly and walked away.
“How are we going to get out?” Nina wheezed. “This is not a compartment that can unlock from the inside! It has no lock!”
“Don’t worry,” Kasper said. “We can open this door like I was going to open Tuft’s.”
“With a magnet,” Nina replied.
Sam was confused. “Do tell.”
“I think you are right that we have to get off this train the first chance we get, Sam,” Kasper said. “You see, this is not really a train. I recognize its construction, because… I built it. This is the vessel I have been working on for the Order! This is the experimental vessel they planned to use, to rip the barrier by speed, weight and velocity. When I tried to get into Tuft’s room I found the underlying panels, magnetic sheets I arranged on the vessel at the construction site at Meerdaalwoud. This is the big brother of an experiment that went horribly wrong a few years ago, the reason I deserted the project and Tuft’s employ.”
“Oh my God!” Nina gasped. “This is an experiment?”
“Aye,” Sam agreed. It all made sense now. “What Masters explained was that they will use the Einstein Equation Purdue found in the Lost City to accelerate this train — this vessel — to hypersonic speed to enable a punch in dimensions?”
Kasper sighed with a heavy heart. “And I built it. They have a pod that will capture disrupted atomic energy at the site of impact and harness it, like a capacitor. They have many in several countries, including your hometown, Nina.”
“That is why they used McFadden,” she realized. “Fuck me.”
“We have to wait till morning,” Sam shrugged. “Tuft and his goons are disembarking at Tyumen, where the delegation will inspect the Tyumen power station. The catch is that they are not getting back on with the delegation. After Tyumen, this train is heading straight for the mountain past Novosibirsk, accelerating every second.”
The next day, after a cold night of hardly any sleep, the three stowaways heard the Valkyrie enter the station at Tyumen. Over the intercom, Bessler announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our first inspection, the town of Tyumen.”
Sam was holding Nina tightly, trying to keep her warm. He psyched himself up with short breaths and looked at his companions. “The moment of truth, people. Once they are all off the train, we each take a compartment and look for Olga.”
“I broke the magnet in three, so that we can gain entrance where we need to,” Kasper said.
“Just play it cool if you run into waiters or other staff. They don’t know that we are not with the group,” Sam advised. “Let’s go. We have an hour, tops.”
The three split up, moving through the stationary train, bit by bit to find Olga. Sam wondered how Masters got on with his mission and if he had managed to sway Purdue not to complete the equation. As he searched in cupboards, under bunks and tables, he heard the galley bustling as they packed up to leave. Their shift was finished on this train.
Kasper continued with his plan to get into Tuft’s room, and his second plan was to keep the delegation from boarding the train again. Using magnetic manipulation, he gained entrance to the room. As he stepped into the room, Kasper let out a scream of panic that both Sam and Nina heard. On the bed, he saw Olga, restrained and brutalized. Worse, he saw Wolf sitting on the bed with her.
“Hello, Jacobs,” Wolf grinned in his impish way. “I was waiting just for you.”
Kasper had no idea what to do. He thought Wolf had accompanied the others and seeing him perch next to Olga was a living nightmare. With a wicked cackle, Wolf lunged forward and grabbed Kasper. Olga’s screams were muffled, but she fought so hard against her restraints that her skin peeled off in places. Kasper’s blows were futile against the steel torso of the thug. From the corridor, Sam and Nina stormed in to aid him.
When Wolf saw Nina, his eyes froze on her. “You! I killed you.”
“Fuck you, you freak!” Nina defied him, keeping her distance. She distracted him just long enough to Sam to take action. In full force, Sam kicked out Wolf’s knee, splitting it at the patella. Roaring in pain and fury, Wolf sank, leaving his face wide open for Sam to hail down his fists. The thug was used to a fight, and got a few shots into Sam.