The train would soon turn north, after which the climate would make escape impossible. That meant he needed to make his bid for freedom soon.
He affected a casual pose as he joined a group of guards for poker. They played hand after hand late into the night. Dimitri didn’t have anything to barter with, but the guards didn’t mind. He was good company, and they had a grand time.
By ten o’clock, Dimitri was examining the cards a young guard had tossed on the table before him. Dimitri’s three-of-a-kind beat Mikhail’s two pair, but he tossed his cards facedown and grinned in good-natured defeat.
“You’ve won again, Mikhail,” Dimitri said with a jaunty salute. “Let’s have another round, shall we?”
“Not unless you and Oleg do the Hopak dance,” Mikhail said, and Dimitri groaned.
The Hopak squat dance hurt his knees, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. The speed and energy required in the classic folk dance was something few men could master, but the guards loved it, and they were drunk enough to want a show. Oleg was ten years younger than Dimitri’s thirty-four years and could trounce him in the fast and furious squat kicks.
It didn’t matter. The more resigned to his fate that Dimitri seemed, the better. He and Oleg stood back-to-back in the aisle. They held their arms straight out for balance, then sank down into a squat. The others stomped and chanted a rousing accompaniment as Dimitri began the rhythmic kicks.
The ache in his thighs turned to a burn, making his legs feel like weights. Dimitri toppled over within a minute, but Oleg kept at it. Dimitri lay where he fell and shouted his support to Oleg. Other men funneled into the aisle to give it a try, and Dimitri staggered back to a bench to look out the window while the others caroused.
The moonlight cast thin illumination over the endless pine forest. It would be good cover for his escape. He grabbed a shot glass of vodka, stood, and raised it over his head.
“Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!”
The guards cheered, stamped their feet, and drank. Dimitri deliberately sloshed his onto the ground, then grabbed a bottle to refill everyone’s glass but his own. The drunker they were, the better his odds.
Tonight was the night, and fear mingled with elation. One way or the other, he would meet his fate soon.
Dimitri waited until everyone in the compartment had fallen into a stupor, but the train kept barreling eastward. He held his breath as he rolled off the bench and studied the guards. Their snoring and wheezing did not alter as he crept to the doorway, holding his hand over the mechanism as he twisted the handle.If anyone caught him, he would claim he needed to relieve himself, but he got through the door with no one stirring.
Wind tugged his hair as he stood on the open-air platform between the railcars. The train moved at only thirty miles an hour, but the railroad bed was covered with stones, and it would be a hard landing. Would this be the end? The weeks and months ahead were going to be hard, but it was time to act.
Dearest God above, you know what I saw. You know that it can happen again if someone does not put a stop to it. Let me be that man. Let me escape and find my way to freedom. In your name I pray.
He crossed himself, drew a deep breath, and leapt into the darkness.
He landed on his heels but toppled forward, smashing his face against the gravel. But there was no time to waste. He scrambled down the gravel embankment and into the cover of the spindly trees ahead. Pain throbbed in the side of his head, and blood trickled down his face.
The next hours were nothing but a blur of fear as he staggered through the forest, twigs and saplings whipping at his face. Guilt gnawed at him. The guards had been decent men, but once he was discovered missing, things would be hard for them.
He couldn’t afford to worry about them. He was hungry, thirsty, and had four thousand miles to travel before he reached the safety of the Pacific Ocean.
Four thousand miles.
If he obsessed over the magnitude of the journey ahead, he would never make it. With each step he was a tiny bit closer to Port Arthur and salvation. He had nothing in the world but the clothes on his back, a tin cup he’d stolen from the guards, a bit of flint, and the will to survive. There were gold coins sewn into his coat, three diamonds hidden in his shoe, and the single diamond buried in his scalp. They were useless in the middle of the forest, but he would pass villages along the way. Eventually he would reach Port Arthur, board a ship, and seek out his onlyfriend and last remaining asset in the world. Both were in New York. Natalia Blackstone would help him.
Natalia! Had there ever been a more beautiful name? He repeated her name like a talisman as he trekked through the hideous wilderness. Natalia held the keys to the one investment the czar had not been able to seize: a four-percent share in the Blackstone Bank.
It was worth millions. If he could get to New York, he could use that money to shine a spotlight on the atrocity he’d witnessed, but first he had to evade pursuit and survive the immensity of the Russian taiga, the seemingly endless expanse of cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees.
It was October. His breath wasn’t coming out in white puffs, so the temperature wasn’t freezing yet, but that would change as winter deepened. Could he get to Mongolia before the weather made it impossible? The pain from the wounds on his face was savage but wouldn’t kill him. Neither would the stitch in his side or the blisters forming on his feet.
But the cold could kill him, so he had to get to Mongolia ahead of the winter. From there he could use his assets to ride on river barges or buy a horse to take him to Port Arthur.
It felt like forever before the first hint of dawn cut through the forest. Only tiny patches of sky were visible through the canopy of pine needles above him. It was time to find a place to hide while he tried to sleep, but everything looked the same in all directions. Therewasn’tany place to hide. Just tall, spindly tree trunks that left him exposed to the sight of any man or beast wandering in the wood.
The best he could do was make a bed of pine needles. He dragged a smattering of broken tree limbs to his makeshift bed to screen him from prying eyes. Dry bark scratched his face and the needles itched. Cold, clawing fear tensed his muscles, but he closed his eyes and tried to pray.
Dear Lord, please let me live long enough to reach Natalia Blackstone.
5
It was the middle of October before Natalia made good on her promise to tour a steel mill with Liam. She had been prepared for the heat. She had been prepared for the harsh orange glare of molten metal. But she hadn’t been prepared for the wall of noise that hit her the moment she stepped inside the mill. The deafening roar of machines and motors was nonstop. Chains clanked, boilers hissed, and hammers forged liquefied metal into finished steel. By the end of the tour, her eyes hurt from the glare, and her clothes were damp with sweat.
