The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 59





NADIA SAW THEM just as they got off the train. She grabbed Adam by the collar and yanked him behind a massive iron pillar on the platform of Track 6.

“Oh my God. That’s them,” she said.

“Who?”

“Them. Don’t look, don’t look.”

Adam slipped the knapsack off his back and stood sideways beside Nadia to make himself smaller.

They approached. Nadia rotated her body around the pillar to hide. Adam followed her lead. She heard footsteps, recognized a familiar voice.

Specter.

Another rotation and they passed. Nadia glanced at their backs. Specter was twenty feet away from her. He was so close.

Specter disappeared down the stairwell toward the central concourse with the others.

Nadia nudged Adam. They hurried onto the Amur-Yakutsk headed north, the same train the others had just gotten off.

The doors closed. The engine hissed. The train rolled away from the station. Nadia peered through a narrow gap between the curtains on the window in her cabin.

Specter and Kirilo exploded out of the stairwell, three bodyguards close on their heels.

“Let me look,” Adam said beside her.

She held him back with a straight-arm.

Kirilo and Specter raced for the edge of the platform. Nadia’s viewing angle narrowed until she lost sight of them.

“What if they jump on the back of the train?” Adam said.

“Lock the door,” Nadia said.

She bolted out of the cabin, sprinted down the corridor, passed through a doorway, and entered the rear car. Weary faces looked up at her from benches. She didn’t recognize any of them.

She slowed as she approached the window of the rear door, fearful that Kirilo or one of his bodyguards could be climbing aboard. The bottom of the window was filthy, covered with grime. The top, however, was still translucent.

From a distance, she could see five men turning back on the platform toward the stairs.