The Whisper of Stars (23 page)

Jen took the card and nodded, straining to see any detail in the inky darkness, let alone the stores he referred to. When she turned back, the soldier was gone. The steel door banged shut, silencing the howling wind in a whistling rush.

Above her a small window allowed a little moonlight into the room, and she waited for her eyes to adjust. Eventually, across the room she could see the shape of a door and the familiar red dot of a wall-mounted card reader. She walked over, swiped the card and with a flash of green heard the heavy lock click open.

She caught herself thinking,
They don’t make them like they used to.
It was old technology and that was her father’s voice. She smiled and entered the stores. Inside were steel lockers stacked in neat rows along the edges of the room. In the centre, wooden benches with a hanging rail, and to her right, large metal cupboards. Ahead, she could see racks of uniforms and clothing and snow gear. She let out a huge sigh of relief. Traveling with the necessary clothing and equipment would have aroused suspicion. Finding them here was critical.

She began sifting through the rack. Snow boots, jacket, mask, and then the best find of all, an active thermal base layer. She hunted around for overnight equipment and found a tent and sleeping bag, not the grade she was hoping for, but they would have to do.

As long as she could stay hidden overnight, she might at least have a chance of surviving the hike over the mountain range. She opened a cabinet and inside, arranged in a neat shiny row, were automatic weapons. Even with the Histeridae as her ally, she couldn’t deny the feeling of security one of those would bring. It pained her to leave them but she knew they required DNA pairing to work, and that wasn’t something she could activate alone.

She spent the next hour carefully packing her gear, ensuring each item would be easily accessed when needed and that clothing would remain dry, and then settled into her bag. She didn’t expect to sleep but would at least stay warm. The sound of people had faded. Outside she could hear the wind howling ghoulishly between the buildings and the constant idling drone of aircraft engines. She tucked herself away behind a rack of uniforms and covered her head as best she could. If someone came in, they wouldn’t see her straight away. It would have to do. Within minutes she was asleep.

* * *

The sound of aircraft thrusters woke her. Jen pressed her face against one of the tiny storeroom windows. It was snowing outside, thin flakes darting playfully in every direction, searching and joining together before bursting apart again. When the trucks came she grabbed her gear, zipped her jacket high around her neck and crept outside. It was 5.11am. In the darkness, long lines of arctic trucks were parked in multiple rows, their red tail-lights blooming through the flickering layers of falling snow. She could hear the sounds of men and machinery, loading and hauling.

Hugging the wall, Jen crept away from the noise, crossing two buildings before arriving at a small perimeter wall. She vaulted the wall easily and began to run, staying out of the light, hoping her white combat fatigues would hide her from view. It felt good to have her body moving again, feel her heart pounding. The snow wasn’t too thick here, but it was hard going and within minutes her lungs were burning against the cold.

She cleared a kilometre or so before daring to look back. The airport glowed in the darkness like a jewel, its Cyrillic rooftop letters silhouetted clearly against a cluster of brilliant lights, its buildings colouring the snow with warm amber light. She checked her GPS before continuing. Her target was north, a freight train traveling the southern route of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was scheduled to pass through Dema Station at around 8.am. Jen would use it to travel the 450 kilometres to Samara, arriving just after sunset.

That was the plan.

Ahead was only darkness. She pressed on over humps and mounds, the creaking snow underfoot amplified by the soundless landscape. The journey was broken only by the occasional hedgerow or low stone wall. By seven, the threat of sunlight was building, an inevitable force that would soon beat the all-consuming greyness surrounding her. Jen could ascertain the difference now between land and sky, and make out shapes from the previously blank canvas. She could feel the frozen river underfoot too, solid and easier to walk on. A path through the hills opened up in front of her. When she reached the singular train track, nestled at the base of a hill, she knew that Dema Station couldn’t be much farther. Passing a small industrial plant, she saw the lights of traffic up ahead and jogged along an underpass tucked beneath the busy main road. As she approached the station her heart sank. The train was huge, over a kilometre long, but it was already moving through the station.

Her train.

Jen berated herself for not covering ground quickly enough but then stopped. This wasn’t the time. If she was going to catch that train – and there really wasn’t any other option – she needed to run. Now. The station was an oval-shaped network of lines, maybe ten, some of which were filled with parked carriages and trains. All the lines eventually filtered down to two and all left the station to the west. Jen pushed herself forward. It didn’t take long for her thighs to scream, fighting against the heavy snow. Luckily the train was on the nearest line but was at least 100 metres away and accelerating fast. There no way she could match its speed and jump up with snow this thick hampering her approach.

Don’t panic,
she commanded her racing mind.
Think!

She spotted a line of carriages parked behind it and made a mental calculation. Jen dipped her head and ran as fast as she could, diving over the tracks and in front of the powerful engine. As she tumbled to the ground she glanced back, hoping the driver hadn’t seen her. She didn’t see anyone, just the grinding power of huge wheels howling past her.

She was up and scaling the ladder of one of the stationery carriages. She reached the top and looked along the line of parked trucks. There were at least twenty of them, evenly spaced with gaps small enough to jump. On her left now the moving train streamed past, picking up speed at an alarming rate. A few more carriages and it would be gone for good. The next train was due in three days. Not an option.

Looking ahead, she was reminded of school, of long jump, of that feeling just before the event. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow fears to pollute her vision of the perfect jump. She leant down, took a breath and sprinted forward, hopping over the gaps, doing her best to maintain speed. It was impossible to gauge the distance, so when she reached the last parked carriage she just jumped. As her feet left the stationary carriage she couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to tumble, thrashing like a rag doll into the hurtling wheels below. The weightless moment ended and the vision of being sawn in two was shattered by her landing, her body suddenly accelerating, the momentum carrying her further and further towards the edge of the moving carriage.

Adrenalin rushed through her as she slammed down, arms thrashing wildly, searching for grip on the slimy tarpaulin. She cried out as she slipped over the edge of the moving train, clinging by her fingertips to the ice-cold metal of the carriage, scrambling for a foothold, boots sliding desperately against the carriage’s surface. Somehow she managed to un-sheath her knife, stabbing the blade through the canvas on the side of the carriage. Suddenly she was pushed flat by a compressed rush of air and all around her saw flashes of steel and lights. Again she cried out before looking back along the carriages and realising she had almost been plucked from the train by a signaling station. It winked playfully in the distance. Still the train accelerated.

Fucking hell, Jen, come on. Move!

Her right hand, solid with tension, was gripping the hilt of her blade. It had ripped the canvas open, torn along a few feet and come to a hard stop at the edge of the metal carriage. With her left hand she grabbed the flapping fabric and managed to swing her body, pulling herself up. The wind was deafening now, biting and burning her face, the snow heavier and more aggressive at this speed. She lay flat, face down for a few seconds, the tremendous roar of the train vibrating through her. The wind was so fierce she couldn’t open her eyes.

As she dropped through the ripped hole, Jen hoped – in fact, Jen prayed – that whatever was below would offer a soft landing.

Chapter 43

The aircraft made its final descent into Kurumoch International Airport just after 8am. Nathan peered out at the steam rising from tall buildings into the early morning sky. Street lamps, dotted like white suns, appeared against a blanket of snow. He disembarked and an hour later found himself facing an armed security guard.

‘What is your business here?’ the guard asked, his thick Russian accent hacking the words. He was overweight, bald and very pale. Nathan stared at him without blinking.

‘I’m a photographer,’ he answered calmly. ‘I’m here for the view.’

A steady stream of passengers walked by, heads down. The guard took Nathan’s equipment and spread it out over a black faux-leather table, taking a particular interest in one item – the access interface Nathan favoured so much. Bringing it was a risk but he couldn’t do the job without it. He nodded when asked to explain its use, managing to enact its necessity for light readings and such. To the uninitiated, the device could just about pass for camera equipment. The guard seemed tired and not overly concerned. He repacked the case badly and ushered him on. Nathan thanked him, and his luck.

It was nothing compared to what Jen is going to have to do, he reminded himself, unsure if the chill passing through him was coming from the exit. A red sign above the automatic door assured him it was −21 degrees Celsius outside, normal for the time of year. He tugged his hat, zipped his coat and stepped out into the icy air.

His vehicle was a standard hire car. Small, economical and more importantly for him, inconspicuous. Tomorrow he would check the meeting location, buy food and then hole up in Tolyatti, a town about 50km east of the Vault. Shared power lines would be his best way to hack in and pretty much everything in the area was powered by the nearby Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station.

As he left the airport, the car’s navigation system informed him the journey would take twenty minutes. Nathan leant back and peered out of the window. In the distance he could see huge factories, their tall, smoking towers and yellow lights cutting through the morning mist. The accelerating climate change had been tough on Russia in the early days. Now there were obvious signs it was doing better. He thought of Canada again, as he often did when he arrived somewhere new. It had been his dream once; it too had felt like a country on the brink of something positive, another place on the rise. Canada’s independence from the UN had been brave and empowering, especially at a time when most countries were clamouring to meet the criteria.

Independence.

A smart move, as it happened. The trust people placed in the UN and its role of global governance seemed increasingly misplaced. He wondered what he and Jen would do if they found something tangible. Something big enough to rock the foundations. Where would they go to break the story? Would they ever be safe again?

Probably not, he decided, realising that he should try and remember that. His life had a bigger purpose now. Yes, he would find out who killed his wife and he would get revenge, but there was more: the truth, all of it linked and stitched into his own story somehow.

If you’re going to light a match, you might as well fetch the petrol.

Nathan shrugged. His life? Future plans? Might as well forget it. He wouldn’t ever be safe and he shouldn’t cling to any such hope. He’d heard it said that soldiers died that way, desperately believing they would make it out of a war zone alive. The ones who lived were the ones who accepted that they were already dead.

Later that night, his idle mind had him pacing his hotel room. It wasn’t the cold that bothered him. It was the time on his hands. How would he manage for two days with nothing to do? The earlier news bulletin hadn’t helped. There were numerous reports of a blizzard coming in.

A blizzard. That’s not good, not good at all.

He pulled open a large sliding door and stepped out onto a narrow balcony. It was like walking into a freezer. He felt his body tighten, gut twisting to stay warm, face burning against the icy air. Below him a busy street and all around him sandy-coloured block stone buildings. It was a hard place, cold and depressing.

He looked east toward the foreboding ridge of the Zhiguli Mountain Range and the Shiryaevo Vault nestled beyond it. He thought of Jen and prayed she would make it in before the blizzard hit. He wasn’t sure who he was praying to, but he pushed the request out into the universe anyway. They needed all the help they could get.

* * *

Jen’s fall had been short, the train’s carriage filled nearly to the top with large sacks of grain. It was so cold that the sacks had begun to freeze, and Jen was starting to wonder how long it would be before she did too. The one blessing, she supposed, was being out of the wind. She listened to it whistling through the gap in the ripped tarpaulin above her.

Hours later she clambered up over the hessian sacks, covered her face and popped her head out. It felt as if someone had slapped her, the cold wind ripping at her skin. In the distance she saw what she needed. The Zhiguli Mountains, their jagged peaks cutting the skyline, steep slopes dropping sharply into the frozen Volga River. They were an unusual sight. At under four hundred metres some wouldn’t consider them mountains at all, but seeing them towering in front of her she could understand how they had captivated people’s imaginations over the years. Local folklore included unexplained fireballs in the sky and transparent ghostlike creatures appearing from the ground, often attributed to the work of aliens bending the Volga River to their will.

Jen ducked back inside the carriage and checked the time. Soon the train would arrive in Samara; she needed to be off before then. She tried to keep herself moving but could feel the dreadful numbing pain in her hands and toes returning. The active base layer she’d found in the airport storeroom was only just maintaining her core body temperature; her extremities were less fortunate. When the train lurched and slowed she was actually relieved – at least she could start moving again, give her blood a chance to warm up.