Each time he returned to his cabin, Kulikova shrugged and said much the same thing. “What can we do? It is what it is, Charlie. At least neither of us is in a cell at Lefortovo.” He wasn’t sure if she was being pragmatic or fatalistic. Maybe both.
On the second day, after his attempt at the Novosibirsk depot failed, he asked the provodnik if any stores at the upcoming terminals sold cell phones. The provodnik did not know for certain but said Jenkins’s best bet was at the Krasnoyarsk station. The government had spent billions to upgrade the depot station and the city in advance of the 2019 Winter Universiade, a sports competition between youth from more than sixty nations. If not Krasnoyarsk, the provodnik suggested the terminal in Irkutsk, a city that had, at one time, been called “the Paris of Siberia.”
“If the terminals do not have a store, check the stores in the nearby plazas, but be aware that those two stops are for only one half hour, and you would have to go through security to get back into the station. If there is a line, you might not make it. The train will leave as scheduled.”
Kulikova echoed the provodnik’s warning. “Russian trains were once notorious for delays, but that has changed in recent years. They are now religiously punctual. The train will leave on time, with or without you, and we cannot risk it leaving without you.”
Jenkins decided he had no choice but to at least try the Krasnoyarsk station. If he had time, and the terminal was not busy, he would chance the stores in the plaza outside the station. Kulikova wanted to divide the task and search the station stores while Jenkins tried the ones in the plaza, but he dismissed that idea out of hand. He did not want to put her at any risk.
When the train stopped at nearly half past eight that night, Jenkins quickly exited, this time wearing the wig and mustache that aged him, and moving as an old man up the steps into the terminal with the other passengers. He shifted his gaze left to right, looking for anyone shadowing him. He searched the stores on one side of the station and then the other. He entered several and asked if they carried prepaid cell phones. None did, but the employees kept suggesting other stores in the railway terminal. By the time he had checked each store recommended, it was 8:52. He looked out the windows of the station to the stores in the plaza, saw a pharmacy, and, beside it, the retail store Svyaznoy, one of the larger cell phone retailers in Russia.
He checked his watch. The train would leave in ten minutes. He looked to the metal detectors at the entrance to the station. A line spiraled down the steps. Kulikova’s warning filled his thoughts.
The train will leave on time, with or without you.
Maria Kulikova paced her cabin. Four steps to the window. Four steps to the door. Each time she reached the window she looked to the platform and the commuters smoking furiously or standing in the shadows beyond the reach of the light from the decorative lamp poles. Charles Jenkins had disappeared up the steps of the railway station. She had wanted to go into the terminal with him, to divide the responsibility, but Jenkins had rejected that idea. She understood his commitment to his job, his duty to bring her home alive, but she didn’t like feeling helpless. Her desire to help was also pragmatic. What would she do if Jenkins did not return? Where would she go?
She took a deep breath and brought her thoughts under control. She’d do what she’d done for the past forty years. She’d find a way to survive.
She looked again to the terminal, then checked her wristwatch: 8:59.
Someone knocked on her door, startling her. Her heart skipped. It was not the code she and Jenkins worked out before he left. The wheels of the traveling cart squeaked in the hallway. Someone, the matron, perhaps, knocked a second time. Maria knew the matrons, as well as the provodnik, had a key to her carriage. She pressed her ear to the door and heard a different sound. She looked down at a piece of paper being slipped under the door.
She stepped back. The deadbolt remained in place. The door handle did not rattle. The wheels squealed as the cart continued down the carriage. Maria bent and picked up the slip of paper.
Get off the train in Irkutsk.
Look for a friend.
She stared at the note, not knowing whether to believe what had been written. It could be a trap. Then again, the deliveryman who came to the apartment had provided the train tickets. Jenkins’s contacts would therefore know which train Jenkins and Kulikova boarded, as well as their carriage number. But information could also be bought—and the Velikayas had money to burn—or coerced through the power of an office, and few had more power than the deputy director of counterintelligence.
While she debated the meaning of the note and its legitimacy, she felt the train lurch, then begin to slowly leave the station. Charlie.
They no longer needed a phone.
She shifted her gaze from the note to her watch: 9:03. She rushed back to the window and searched the platform and the steps leading up to the station.
Charles Jenkins was not there.
Another rap on the cabin door startled her, but this time the knocking came in code. Two knocks, then four, then one. Maria stepped to the door and unlocked it.
“There was a Svyaznoy store across the plaza,” Jenkins said as he stepped inside. “I didn’t have—”
Maria hugged him. Then she stepped back and held up the note. Jenkins opened it and read the words. “Where did it come from?”
“The cart matron slipped it under the door.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am not sure. But I heard the cart passing. The matron knocked. Then someone slipped the paper under the door. What do you think of it?”
Jenkins smiled. “My contact told me to think low tech again when high tech failed or could be compromised. This certainly fits that scenario. We’ll need to be careful. We’ll disembark in Irkutsk separately, as we boarded, until we can be certain.”
“Who is ‘a friend’?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it must be someone I will recognize or who will use those words to make him or herself known.”
42
Trans-Siberian Railway
Outside of Irkutsk