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AN INTERRUPTED
JOURNEY
Nik Morton
She said,
‘I know all about you. I’m going to kill you.’
Daniel
Prestwick nervously brushed back his wavy brown hair. All about me? What was she talking about? His mouth was dry, his
palms wet, and he was incapable of saying anything. All he could do was stare
at her angry blue eyes and that gun!
It must be Rag Week or something? She can’t
be serious!
She fired
directly into his chest.
*
Zora replaced her automatic pistol in its holster beneath
her jacket. As she knelt by the prone figure she heard shouting from further up
the corridor. The racket of the train had not altogether drowned the
pistol-shot.
She stopped
her professional search of the man’s body, slid open the compartment door and
peered intently along the swaying corridor.
Bermanos
and Lyudin would be waiting a little further up the railway track.
The
carriage’s other occupants hammered on doors, enquiring about the sound of a
shot, heading in her direction.
She pulled
the emergency handle.
The small
group of disturbed sleepers were bundled into one another as the train braked.
Zora swung
open the carriage door and leapt out into the pitch night, the cries of the
train’s passengers drifting away.
Her feet
hit soft turf and she rolled over – as she’d been trained with paratroops –
rolling down the damp grassy slope.
*
A torch beam joined in the chaos and probed a wide arc from
the diesel engine to encompass the coarse grass of a field across which ran a
dark figure that appeared to be female.
Then, as
the engine driver and guard descended the slippery slope in pursuit, they heard
a massive chomping sound.
They
hesitated, suddenly afraid.
The guard’s
torch beam illuminated a small helicopter.
*
Breathless now, Zora loped beneath the whirring
rotor-blades. Sliding into the cockpit, she looked back at the torch beam. She
gave co-pilot Bermanos a sidelong glance and clicked her fingers.
He
understood the simple gesture and grabbed a bazooka-like weapon alongside his
seat and placed it in Zora’s waiting hand.
She rested
the weapon on her shoulder, aimed at the torch beam’s source. The thing jarred
her shoulder and she heard the whooshing sound of the ejected missile. Minor
singeing of the cockpit’s upholstery resulted, burnt by the back-blast.
The two
dismayed railmen backed away as they noticed the cockpit light up. They ducked
instinctively and lay very still on the damp grass. Acrid smoke filled their
nostrils and mouths and made them cough and retch – smoke temporarily
paralysing the nervous system.
Lyudin
gently levered on the joystick and the helicopter climbed gradually into the
night.
*
The doorway of the compartment was crammed with a knot of
onlookers. The speculative mumbling increased as a tall brown-haired man waded
through the corridor of sensation-seekers.
Paunches
and breasts, concealed by gaudy and colourful night-attire, gave way. His
unwavering deliberation in the way he headed for the compartment gave the
onlookers the impression that he was some kind of authority – a policeman,
perhaps?
When the
lean newcomer reached the doorway he was confronted by a corpulent hirsute
fellow in blue-striped pyjamas who said, grumpily, as he scratched the hairs
covering his belly, ‘And what, sir, gives you the privilege to push your way to
the fore?’ He jutted out his lower lip.
‘Are you a
doctor?’ the man asked, ignoring the animosity.
‘Yes, I
am.’
‘Good.’ The
tall man’s blue eyes sparkled as they met the doctor’s. He turned, said to the
attentive crowd, ‘Everything is under control. Please return to your
compartments. There’s been a slight accident, that’s all.’ He gently pressed
the foremost spectator’s chest and the crowd receded into the corridor, a
little indignant. ‘The train will be late.’ He closed the compartment door and
rolled down the blind.
‘Gun-shot
to the heart,’ said the doctor. ‘Mr, er –?’
‘Strong.
Adam Strong, doctor.’ Strong began examining the contents of the dead man’s
pockets. As he scanned the wallet he wondered about the similarity between the
deceased and himself – in looks, build and eye-colour... And Strong’s line of
work forced upon him the more than coincidental contingencies of his resembling
a murdered man: he was employed in the ostensible firm of International
Enterprises, a branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
‘I’m Dr
Stafford Ord,’ said the doctor, intruding on Strong’s thoughts.
‘I’m a
detective sergeant on leave,’ Strong lied. ‘Such a violent death necessitates
an on-the-spot–’
Then the
bazooka blast mutely reached them.
The sound
animated Strong immediately. He raised himself from his haunches and leapt out
the compartment door.
Landing on
the cinder track, he sank to one knee, picking out the loud sound of a
helicopter from the other side of the carriage.
Gingerly,
his bare feet impregnated by cinders and chippings, he ducked beneath the
train’s undercarriage.
Diesel
fumes and oil and the smell of metal filled his nostrils as he reached inside
his housecoat. Still under the motionless carriage, he withdrew an ArmaLite
rifle from its sheath strapped to his waist. Swiftly his deft fingers removed
the barrel lock and ammunition from the fibreglass stock, then assembled the
lightweight eight-shot automatic.
Strong
emerged and slid down the grassy slope, jumped the fence. But his housecoat
snagged on barbed wire so he discarded it and then ran towards the diminishing
sound of the helicopter.
Through the
night-sight he watched the aircraft, about twenty feet above him and still
climbing.
His first
shot pierced the cockpit and splintered the glass.
Shocked,
Bermanos screamed and fell into the rear of the cockpit.
Zora
growled, ‘Quick – NG9!’ She was handed the bazooka and a large capsule in its
mauve housing; mauve signified it comprised a chemical nerve-agent. A second
bullet shattered some instrumentation: the altimeter read thirty feet.
The blast
from the bazooka thrust out an orange-tinted glow and the capsule rushed down
at Strong.
*
Diving to one side, Strong rolled over and over, away from
the dangerous cloudburst.
His limbs
were shaking uncontrollably as he reached the fence: motor nerves losing
control.
He shakily
picked up his housecoat, placed it on the barbed wire and clumsily clambered
over using his arm on the material-covered wire for support. He thumped
drunkenly onto the grassy slope.
Vision
blurred. Hands felt leaden. Couldn’t sense the damp grass: sensory nerves
affected already...
As he
crawled under the carriage, he could smell and feel nothing. Everything was
grotesquely distorted.
Mustering
all his latent strength, Strong pulled himself up to the doorway of the dead
man’s compartment, croaked, ‘Doctor Ord...!’
The rhesus
face of the medical man appeared unreal.
‘Compart -
ment - four - on bed - jacket - quick - b-b-bring it!’
Doctor Ord
bent down to raise Strong into the carriage but the agent weakly waved refusal.
‘Please - compart - ment - four...’
As the
doctor rushed away Strong dimly heard the voices of disturbed travellers
descending to the track, echoes of frustration and indignation: the usual
commuter complaints, he thought absurdly...
It was
becoming impossible for Strong to keep his unseeing eyes open. It seemed as if
a mountain had erupted and cast its detritus out and over his world, buried him
alive, the choking, tasteless dust – the nerve-gas – sending its biochemical
message of death to his brain.
Dr Ord
hurried into the compartment carrying Strong’s jacket over his arm.
Somehow,
Strong registered the doctor’s presence. ‘Ball-point pen – atropine inside!’
Ord
obediently removed the pen and unscrewed its case to discover a miniature
liquid-filled hypodermic syringe. He was suddenly afraid of what this man was,
this man who possessed secret nerve gas antidotes and God knows what else.
He ripped
open Strong’s pyjama jacket and noticed the rifle holster round the man’s
waist, soaked in a thin film of sweat, as was Strong’s entire body. He
professionally punctured the skin and injected the atropine.
*
‘You killed the wrong man,’ said the bald cadaverous Onetti.
‘My sources say Adam Strong survived and is recuperating.’
Unflinchingly,
Zora replied, ‘I followed instructions. He was supposed to be in that
compartment.’
Onetti
sighed. That was the trouble with brainwashing people to be killers. They never
used any initiative! ‘Never mind, my dear,’ he said. ‘It was just bad luck
there happened to be someone closely resembling Strong.’ He shrugged, the
wasting of an innocent life forgotten. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’
A Network South-East spokesperson regretted the delay of last night's
Inter-City express from Kings Cross London to Newcastle and said that it was
due to a foiled terrorist attempt to blow up the line outside Thirsk. (Reuters)
Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.
Note: The character Adam Strong featured in my first ever
novel way back in 1964, unpublished. He worked for an adjunct of MI6,
International Enterprises, which features in the first Tana Standish psychic
spy novel, The Prague Papers, now an e-book. Some
ideas are so tenacious, they survive…
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