Poe (10 page)

Why were they gone, too?

Why
their
lives instead of hers?

There weren’t any real answers to these questions, of course. Fate had taken her colleagues—her friends. And there was little that she, or Cooper, could have done about it.

It wasn’t until the Stonewell jet came in sight of the Iberian Peninsula that Alex was finally able to close her eyes and fall asleep.

Galati, Romania

They landed an
hour before dawn at a small private airfield just outside Galati. An Immigration and Customs official met them on the tarmac, stamped their passports, and welcomed them to the country.

Once those formalities were complete, Cooper excused himself and jogged over to a building that served as the airfield’s terminal. Alex and Deuce used the time to stretch muscles that had been cramped by hours of flight.

Deuce eyed the dark countryside. “So, this is where Dracula’s from, right?”

Alex shook her head. “That’s north of here. Probably a couple hundred miles.”

“Oh,” Deuce said. He looked around some more. “That’s probably good, huh?”

“You do know Dracula’s fictional, right?”

“Sure. But it’s always good to be safe.”

There were times when Alex didn’t know if Deuce was messing with her or just being Deuce. It was part of his charm—when it wasn’t annoying.

A few minutes later, Cooper returned via a baggage van driven by a member of the airport crew.

“We’ve got to get you to your ride,” he said to Alex.

She picked up the bag she’d been given by Stonewell. The well-worn, faded green backpack and the nondescript clothes she was wearing helped reinforce the just-another-summer-backpacker-making-her-way-through-Europe cover.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Cooper opened the back door of the baggage van, and both Alex and Deuce climbed on board.

“Take the passenger seat,” he told her. There were no chairs in the back, only the hard metal floor.

She was about to argue, but decided,
Screw it
. Things were going to get very unpleasant for her pretty damn soon. Might as well take advantage of what comfort she could now.

She looked out the windshield as they drove into Galati, noting her surroundings as she always did. It took only a few minutes before that old feeling returned to her, that sense of elsewhere that always hit her when she was out of the States—not a bad feeling, not a good one. Just different, brought on by the sense of age in the buildings and the land and the people themselves.

The city was in the process of waking and traffic was light. A few cars, some bikes, and a handful of pedestrians. While above, the stars were quickly receding, daylight pushing ever forward across the sky.

When they reached the edge of the Danube, the city abruptly stopped. They drove parallel to the river for several blocks, then the van braked to a halt.

“This is you,” Cooper said to Alex.

He opened the door and they climbed out. He then looked at his phone for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “There.” He pointed toward a building down the street. “That’s Hotel Vega.” He glanced at his watch. “Your bus will arrive in forty minutes. The receptionist in the hotel is holding a ticket for you.”

Alex took a deep breath, and nodded.

“If something happens before you’re able to get to Crimea, call the number we gave you, then hunker down until we can come get you.”

“Right,” she said. “Got it.”

“If everything goes to hell once you reach the peninsula, get to the safe point. We’ll be checking it twice every day. At ten a.m. and p.m.”

She nodded again.

“Any questions?”

The only questions she had were for herself. Was she crazy? Was trying to track down her father worth the risk she was taking? She looked at Deuce and he had an expression on his face that told her it wasn’t too late to back out. That said he
wanted
her to back out.

“No,” she said to Cooper. “I’m good.”

“You sure?” Deuce said, eyeing her intently.

“I’m sure.” She smiled. “And don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid if you don’t.”

“Look where we’re standing, Alex. We’ve already failed that test.”

For a moment, none of them spoke, then Deuce opened his arms and she hugged him.

“We can go home right now,” he whispered.

“I’ll be okay.”

“I can’t watch your back in there.”

“I know.”

“So don’t you dare get yourself hurt.”

“It’s not part of my plan.”

He grimaced, shaking his head as he let her loose. “It never is.”

Cooper held out a hand. “No matter what happens, we won’t leave you in there.”

She stiffened slightly as they shook, the memory of Millwood and Chambers still a raw nerve. “Good to know,” she said, then donned her pack and adjusted the straps. “I guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

With a quick wave, she turned and started walking toward the hotel.

In unplanned unison, Cooper and Deuce called out, “Alex.”

She turned and looked at one, then the other, eyebrows raised.

The men glanced at each other, then Deuce blurted out, “Be careful.”

She gave him a smile, then looked at Cooper.

“That’s, um, actually what I was going to say, too,” he told her.

“I’ll do my best,” she said.

Without another word, she headed down the road.

Despite what others
might have believed, Alex was only fluent in English. She did, however, have an excellent grasp of her mother’s native Farsi, and a more than adequate, conversational knowledge of French—also thanks to her mother. But beyond those, she knew only a handful of phrases in Arabic, from her time in Iraq, and a few in German that were best not spoken in public. The last, compliments of Emerick.

None of those could help her now. She had zero knowledge of Romanian, a fact that was reinforced the moment the receptionist at the Hotel Vega greeted her.

“
Cu ce vă pot ajuta
?”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, offering her an apologetic smile. “I don’t understand.”

A light seemed to go on in the face of the woman across the counter. “Ah. England?”

“Canada, actually. You speak English?”

“Little bit. May I help you?”

“I think you have a bus ticket waiting for me to pick up.”

The woman’s brow creased as she bit her lip, uncertain. “Bus ticket. You have for me.”

“No,” Alex said, tapping her own chest with a forefinger. “For me. You have one for me.”

Still looking confused, the young woman mumbled something unintelligible. A second receptionist, who was helping another guest, leaned toward her and whispered something in Romanian.

Again, the spark of realization. “Okay, yes,” the first receptionist said, smiling. “Bus. Yes. Name you?”

“Maureen Powell.”

“Again, please?”

Instead of repeating herself, Alex pulled out her Canadian passport and opened it to the information page. A moment later, she was in possession of the ticket that would take her into Ukraine.

The receptionist pointed toward the door. “Bus come…” She paused, searching for the right words, then turned to the other receptionist for help.

Her colleague looked at Alex, and said, “Bus arrive twenty minutes. Can sit and wait.”

“Thank you,” Alex said.

She used a bit of her Romanian currency to purchase a pastry and a bottle of water from a small shop in the lobby, then took a seat. It wasn’t long before others started drifting in with their bags. A few arrived from outside, but most seemed to have been staying at the hotel. They all looked to be in their early twenties. While a few were toting suitcases, most had backpacks like Alex.

The bus arrived ten minutes late, but it didn’t take long to get their bags stowed away and everyone on board. Alex sat next to a Dutch girl named Heike who was touring with two others, Romee and Anika, sitting in the next row up. Heike was apparently in the mood to talk—in nearly accent-free English—so Alex nodded politely and threw in a few words here and there as the bus passed through the city and into the countryside.

It wasn’t long, however, before they stopped at the border crossing into Moldova. Alex’s passport performed as advertised, raising no red flags with the immigration officials. Once everyone on the bus was cleared, they were off again, only to stop less than two kilometers farther on at the Moldovan border with Ukraine.

Passport checks again, this time with a thorough inspection of the bus’s luggage compartments. One of the passengers who’d been sitting near the back was hauled into a room by two unsmiling officials. They all had to wait over half an hour until the door opened again and the young man returned, looking both scared and relieved. The word circling around the bus later was that the guards had accused him of trying to smuggle drugs into the country, but had been unable to find anything to back that up.

With the exception of a few places where they passed along the Black Sea, the road was lined with farmland nearly all the way to Odessa. Twice they made stops, letting a few of the backpackers off at each.

They finally entered Odessa just after three p.m., and reached their final destination, the Bristol Hotel, fifteen minutes later. As they’d neared the city, Heike had asked Alex how long she was planning to stay there. Alex had made the mistake of saying she would be catching a train out of town that very evening, because it turned out that Heike and her friends were heading to the train station as well.

Not wanting to look like a jerk, Alex agreed to share a cab ride with them.

The cabbie didn’t look too happy as the four girls squeezed themselves and their gear into his car. Several times during the ride, he spit out something in Ukrainian that was undoubtedly meant to express his displeasure. Feeling a bit guilty, Alex slipped him double his fare when they disembarked at the Odessa-Glavnaya station. The act gained her a frown and a grunt that she assumed was thanks.

The Dutch girls were headed to Moscow. Unfortunately, the Moscow train had left two hours earlier. The best they could do was catch an overnight to Kiev, and get on another train there.

Alex’s train to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, was scheduled to leave at midnight, an hour after the girls’ train departed for Kiev. She so wanted to say goodbye right there at the ticket counter, but when Heike invited her to join them for dinner, Alex said yes. She was playing a role, after all, and summer backpackers were in large part a social group.

The trouble happened a few hours later. If Alex had really been someone else, she could have walked away and let the girls deal with it on their own.

Unfortunately, role or no role, she was still Alexandra Poe.

* * *

T
HEY WERE IN
an area right off the main central portion of the station, sitting on the floor. The other girls were passing around their cameras, showing off the pictures they’d taken that day. Romee had not fully closed one of the zippers on her backpack, leaving an opening just wide enough for a small, emaciated teenager to slip his hand inside before they even realized it was happening.

Alex had her back to the guy, so she first noticed that something was up when Anika jumped to her feet, yelling, “Hey! Hey!”

Alex whirled around. “What?”

Anika pointed at the guy running away. “He took something from Romee’s pack!”

As Alex jumped up, Romee pulled the zipper all the way open. “My passport! He has my passport!”

Alex jumped over the bags and raced down the hall. Waiting passengers surprised first by the running boy, then by Alex, jumped out of the way. A few shouted in anger.

Ahead, the kid pushed through a group of people who hadn’t seen him coming, then shoved open a door and ran outside.

“Move, move, move!” Alex shouted. She weaved through them, burst through the doorway, and found herself standing before a row of train platforms. Several were filled with passenger cars waiting to leave the station, while others sat unused.

The boy, apparently deciding that speed was better than deception, had run straight down the platform directly in front of Alex. There was a train on one side and none on the other. The boy was sticking to the empty side where few people were walking.

Alex kicked it into high gear. She may have been six or seven years older than the kid, but those years had been productive ones when it came to improving her physical abilities, so she immediately began closing the gap between them.

The gray and red brick platform curved slightly to the left before descending to the level of the tracks and disappearing. Halfway down, the kid looked over his shoulder and nearly stumbled when he saw Alex still behind him. He caught himself and began pumping his arms harder, but it was clear he was already going as fast as he could.

Somewhere back toward the station, Alex heard a whistle and knew the police were on their way. She didn’t bother to check.

At the far platform a train started pulling away, its clickety-clack growing faster and faster as it gained speed.

“Stop!” Alex shouted as she closed to within fifty feet of the boy.

He shot another look back, this time without losing his balance, then raced to the end of the platform and onto the ground between two of the tracks.

Shit
.

Alex pounded down after him.

With the platforms gone, the tracks closed in on each other, giving the sense that the train now leaving the station was heading right at them. The illusion must have been enough to scare the boy. He angled his path to the right, hopping over the nearby rails, and getting farther away from the moving locomotive.

“Stop!” she shouted again. In case he didn’t understand, she tried, “Halt!” but she was wasting her breath.

There was another whistle, this one much deeper and more powerful than the earlier police whistle. It was also coming from in front of them, not behind. Alex looked past the boy at the tracks ahead. Less than a quarter mile down, coming around a bend to the right, a train was heading toward the station, and appeared to be on the same tracks that she and the kid had just hopped over.