“Water tank. There’s a maintenance hatch. Water’s warm from the boiler.”
“You get in up to your neck and close the lid. Dogs won’t smell you through water. And nobody’s going to jab a bayonet into the tank and risk puncturing it.”
It sounds insane. Sit in water when it’s thirty below outside? “Won’t I boil?”
“No. It’s warm, not hot. Like a bath. You breathe through this.”
Gleb pulls a length of rubber hose from a tool box. “Here. And pray if you’re the praying kind.” An hour later, the train begins to slow.
Junction station. Through the cracks in the tender, bright searchlights sweep. Dogs bark. Whistles blow. Men shout.
“Everyone stay where you are! Papers and full train inspection!” a loudspeaker booms over the snowy yard.
Katya sits inside the iron tank. The water is dark and oily and comes up to her chin. Warm. Almost too warm.
The air is stale and smells of rust. She holds the hose in her mouth, the other end poked through a tiny gap. She hears boots on the metal above her.
The hatch clangs open. A flashlight beam skims the surface of the water. Katya ducks under and holds her breath.
Her heart pounds so hard she feels it in the water. She counts in her head. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Her lungs are burning.
Above her, an angry voice says, “Nothing here. Just water. You check the coal?”
“Checked it. Nobody. Move on.” The hatch slams shut.
Katya comes up and drags air through the hose. Safe. For now.
The train sits at the station for another hour while the crew is changed. Gleb leaves without a word. A younger fireman takes his place.
He knows nothing. He starts shoveling coal into the firebox, humming to himself. Katya stays in the tank and doesn’t move.
If she climbs out now, he’ll shout for the whole station. So she waits. At last the train lurches forward and picks up speed.
Katya climbs out once they’re well clear. She is wet, black, and looks like something dragged from a river. The young fireman turns, sees her, and drops his shovel.
“Who are you?” Katya points the pistol at him. “Quiet. I’m a ghost. You got dry clothes?”
The boy nods frantically. “In the box… work clothes.” “Get them. And turn around.”
Katya changes fast into dry railroad work clothes. They’re much too big, but better than wet prison gear. She rolls up her old camp clothing and throws it into the firebox.
The flames eat her past. Prison number. Camp smell. All of it goes up the stack in smoke.
Now she’s just a dirty rail worker in oversized coveralls. “Listen,” she tells the terrified young man. “I get off before North City. On the slow section.”
“You never saw me. Understood?” He nods. “Yes, ma’am.” “Don’t call me ma’am, kid.”
Katya sits against the warm boiler wall. She needs to dry out and think. North City is still a night away.
At that same moment, a telephone rings in the stationmaster’s office. A security officer picks up. Captain Ivashin is on the line. He made it to a phone after all.
“Reporting,” he barks, voice raw. “The fugitive escaped aboard freight train 402.”
“Description: female, prison coat, armed with army pistol. Extremely dangerous. Skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Expert marksman.”
The officer frowns. “Captain, we searched 402. Nothing. Dogs got no scent.”
“Then you searched badly,” Ivashin snaps. “She’s on that train. I know it. Lock down the city.”
“Seal the station. Search every woman. Every one.” “Understood,” the officer says.
Ivashin hangs up. He sits in a medical station with his hand newly bandaged. No break, but a bad injury.
He knows Katya too well. He knows she won’t walk into a station if she can avoid it.
She’ll jump before town. “Get me a truck,” he orders. “And a full squad. We intercept the train ourselves.”
North City is a major rail hub. A town built on tracks and freight. The train approaches at dawn.
Its speed drops. A signal glows ahead. Katya peeks out from the tender.
Along the tracks, every fifty yards, stand armed soldiers. It’s a cordon. Ivashin hasn’t just sealed the station. He’s sealed the approach.
It’s a trap. The train is entering a corridor of armed men. Jump now and she lands in their hands—or under their bullets.
Stay on and she rolls into a station full of more soldiers and dogs. “Damn,” Katya mutters. She looks at the young fireman.
“You got papers?” “Passport in my jacket.” “Give it here.”
He hands it over. Ivan Sidorov, born 1925. Katya looks at the photo. Young face. Not even close.
Useless. She gives it back. “Stay alive, Ivan.” The train slows almost to a crawl.
Then Katya sees the bridge ahead. Under it, a river. Black ice with open leads in it.
That is the only way. Jump to the rail bed and she gets shot. Jump into the river and she may break through the ice and drown…
But it’s a chance. “So long, infantry,” she says to the fireman and climbs onto the tender.
The soldiers in the cordon spot movement. “There! On the tender! Fire!”
Automatic fire rattles. Bullets spark off metal. Katya runs across the slick top of the tender. Coal shifts under her boots.
Ahead is the open span of the bridge. Twenty feet down. Ice below. Bad odds.
She runs harder and jumps.
She falls with her arms spread wide like a shot bird. Wind screams in her ears. Then impact.
The ice breaks with a cracking boom. Water hits like a hammer and knocks the air out of her. Darkness. Cold. Current pulling under the ice.
Soldiers on the bridge rush to the rail and fire into the water. “She went under!” “Nobody lives through that!”
Ivashin arrives at the bridge five minutes later in a truck. He stares at the broken ice and black water.
“Get divers,” he orders. “Find the body.” “Captain,” a lieutenant says carefully, “the current is too strong. We won’t find anything. She’s dead. Nobody survives that.”
Ivashin stands there a long time, clenching his good hand. He feels the emptiness of not knowing.
His enemy is dead—or she fooled death again. He cannot prove either one.
For the official record, the case is closed. Inmate Melnik died during an attempted escape.
Two weeks later. A city market. Crowded, noisy, ordinary. Among the stalls of potatoes and old clothes walks a woman.
She wears a plain country coat and a wool scarf pulled low. Her face is gray and tired, but her eyes are alive. Alert. Careful.
She stops at a quiet stall where forged papers are sold. In a country still recovering from war, you can buy almost anything on the black market. A dead person’s passport. A release certificate. A military ID.
“What do you need?” asks the one-legged man behind the stall. “A passport,” the woman says softly. “Clean.”
“Name?” He waits. Katherine Melnik no longer exists. She died in the river.
“Vera. Vera Moroz.” “Got one. Costs plenty.”
The woman reaches inside her coat and takes out an old silver locket. The one with the faded picture of her daughter. Her hand trembles.
It is the last thing tying her to the life she lost. But dead people don’t need lockets. Living people need papers. She sets it on the rough wooden counter.
“Take it. Real silver.” The man bites it, nods, and hands her a worn passport booklet.
“There you go, Vera Moroz. Welcome to your new life.” She takes the passport and slips it close to her heart.
Then she turns and disappears into the crowd. One more woman among millions. She survived. She beat the system. She beat death.
But the price was her real name, her past, and her memory. Another year passes. Vera works as an orderly in a hospital in an eastern industrial town.
No one there knows this quiet woman can hit a squirrel in the eye. One day the hospital receives a badly injured patient. Car crash.
The new police chief hit a truck on the highway. Vera is called into the operating room to assist. Hand instruments. Mop blood. Keep out of the way.
She walks in. On the operating table lies a man covered in blood. His face is battered, but still recognizable.
Ivashin. Recently transferred here as a senior official. He opens his eyes through pain and medication.
He sees the woman in white and stares. Recognition flashes in his cloudy eyes. “You,” he whispers. “The one from the river.”
Vera freezes. In her hand is a scalpel she is supposed to pass to the surgeon. The surgeon has turned away for a second. The nurse stepped out for gauze.
They are alone. Ivashin smiles a crooked, bloody smile. “I knew it. I’d find you again.”
The operating lamp hums overhead. Bright light glints off steel instruments. The room is close and hot and smells of ether and blood.
Katya stands over Ivashin. In her right hand is a scalpel sharp enough to shave with. One small move, just a little to the side of the carotid artery, and the surgeon’s hand could “slip.”
A tragic accident on the table. No one would suspect the quiet orderly handing instruments. No one would know this man is her private demon. The one who hunted her through the winter woods.
Ivashin stares at her. His pupils are wide from pain and medication, but his gaze is clear. He knows exactly who she is.
And he waits. There is no plea in his eyes. Only challenge.
“Go ahead, sniper. Finish it. You’re a killer too.” Time stops. A second stretches out.
The operating room door swings open. Old Dr. Yakov hurries in, pulling on gloves. “Vera, why is this patient not prepped? Clamp. Gauze. Pressure’s dropping.”
The doctor’s voice breaks the spell. Katya flinches. She looks at the scalpel in her hand, then at Ivashin’s throat.
The sniper inside her says:
