He was suddenly as awake as he’d ever been, and in the dim confines of the cabin he could just make out a bald head and ice blue eyes. He kicked again, and this time his foot caught the man on the chin and sent him crashing backwards onto the floor.
Olivia woke up, shouting his name, but David was already leaping down from the bunk and on top of his assailant. The man’s hands flew up against David’s chest, so powerfully that David was thrown back against the bed, and there was a cry from the cabin next door and the thump of some other passenger banging on the wall.
“David!” Olivia screamed, “look out!” and that’s when he saw the glint of what looked like a knife.
There was nowhere to run and nothing to protect himself with except his duffel. He grabbed the bag and held it to his chest. The first blow was absorbed by the thick canvas, and the blade got stuck in the fabric before it could be pulled loose.
He pressed himself back against the window—railway lights flashing brightly through the glass—bracing himself for another attack when the door to the cabin was yanked open and a steward and a security guard barged in, throwing on the lights and shouting in Italian and French to stop right now! The guard, a burly guy wielding a baton, pushed the bald man away, and said, “What the hell is going on in here?”
“He broke in!” Olivia cried.
But the bald man, an agile and alert fighter a few seconds before, suddenly weaved on his feet and assumed an expression of drunken confusion.
“Broke in?” he slurred. “This is my cabin. Who’re they?”
“Who are any of you?” the guard said, demanding to see their passports and tickets.
“He’s got a knife!” Olivia said.
But the man shook his head and said, “What knife? I have a flashlight. I don’t see so well at night.” He held out a silver penlight, then dug around in his pockets to produce a train ticket.
David, his breath only beginning to return to normal, felt a crushing weight in the back of his head, like the worst hangover he’d ever had. The schnapps hadn’t helped. It had a medicinal aftertaste he still couldn’t shake.
The guard showed the steward the ticket, and the steward, after giving the man a long, hard stare, said, “You are in the next car.”
“I am?” the bald man said, putting a hand against the baggage rack as if to steady himself. “Who says so?”
He was doing a good imitation, David thought, of a bumptious drunk.
“I say so,” the steward said, taking him by the arm and steering him out of the cabin. Dragging his feet, the man let himself be led away. “Those people are in my cabin!” he shouted from the corridor, and the steward said, “Keep your voice down, people are sleeping.”
The security guard gave them back their passports and tickets and said, “He wouldn’t have gotten in if you’d locked your door properly.”
David was about to retort that they had; but given the state he was in, he couldn’t be sure.
The guard looked them both over, as if wondering why they were sleeping in their clothes, and in separate bunks, then shook his head, said, “Buona notte,” and pulled the door firmly closed. Through the glass panel, he gestured for David to flip the inner lock and draw down the blind.
David did both, before turning to Olivia, who wavered on her feet for a second before slumping on to the edge of the lower bunk. Holding her head down but pushing her hair back off of her face, she said, “This is not what I expected for tonight.” She looked down at her own clothes as if surprised that she was still in them.
“I had something else in mind myself.”
The rattling of the train was suddenly muffled as it hurtled through a tunnel in the French countryside.
“So, what do you think?” Olivia said. “Just a thief, and not a very good one?”
“Possibly,” David said. He had been pondering the very same question, as much as his aching head would allow him to, but from the look on Olivia’s face, she had come to the same conclusion he had. He double-checked the lock on the door and resolved to stay awake the rest of the way to Paris.
Chapter 20