 Chapter Three: “Train Sighting” Part 1:The Spy Who Shoved Me
Part 2: Vampire in the Balkans Oct 16: On the Train to Budapest Vienna 10:05am: No Rest for the Bleary Jurgen settled into a seat in one end of the least crowded car. The trip from Talinn had been tiring but mercifully uneventful. Good thing too. He was getting increasingly uncomfortable in public places. “Too risky,” he thought. “Be glad to get to Kea. I hope some better plans are in place than the ones we’re using now. This flitting all over Europe is making me nervous.” He buried his head in a Russian language newspaper and tried not to think about his headache. He’d had it off and on for two days now. “Too much vodka and too little sleep,” he murmured ruefully. He glanced up when some boisterous Americans got on the car. They didn’t look like tourists. No cameras. He hoped they would quiet down. The train chugged out of the station, quickly leaving charming Vienna behind. Too bad he didn’t have time to enjoy it. A short while later, Jurgen looked up to see one of the Americans coming down the aisle in his direction. To his dismay, the guy sat down across from Jurgen. “Oh great,” he thought, “Just what I need.” He glared at the man, hoping it would discourage conversation. It didn’t. Budapest 7pm at a local bar: The Spy Who Shoved Me Being stuck on that train full of foreigners all day wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been for that creep that roughed me up. Hold on, I'm getting' ahead of myself, I need to start at the beginning. First, get me another beer, I done drained this one. What, my accent? Oh yeah. That's 'cause I hail from Houma, Louisiana, in the good ol’ U. S. of A. Everybody down home sounds like this. Cajuns we be, and proud of it. So anyway, I was stuck on this train on our way to Romania, one of them Iron Curtain countries. Only now the Cold War's over and they's catch'n up with the rest of the world. Me and the team was installing' network cable in some old Soviet office buildings. We had to show the locals how to do it, you know, training 'em in pulling cable, terminatin' the connections, and all that stuff. We'd just come from a couple of days in Vienna, samplin' the local beer and was ready to get started. Only thing was, the customer was too cheap to fly us and we had to take the train. So anyway, there I was riding' the rails 'cross Europe with the other guys for two days. Man, was it borin'! There was magazines and some newspapers, but I couldn't read any of them. Hell, I couldn't even figure out the alphabet on some of them! You got no idea how dull it was, no beer, nobody to talk to. The other guys mostly jus' wanted to sleep so I was all alone. Then I saw this guy sittin' all by hisself down at the other end of the car. He was wearing some kinda overcoat and had one of those funny foreign hats pulled halfway down over his eyes. Don't know why he picked the empty end of the car, maybe he was shy or something. So I went and sat down across from him and said "How-day, how y’all doin’?" Nothing, not a word, he just looked up from his newspaper and kinda glared for jus' a second and went back to reading. Then I noticed his paper was in one of them foreign alphabets, Roosian, I think. Don’t know why he be shy. Wasn't a half-bad looking guy. I ain't that good a judge of what women like, but he had blue eyes and a turn at the corner of his mouth that's sorta like that actor fella my girlfriend's so crazy about. "Can you read that stuff?" I said. This time he looked up at me a bit longer, paused jus' a moment and said "Yes, I can read it." Then, he turned back to the paper and kept reading. Hot damn, I thought, somebody to talk to! Now, where I'm from, anybody would rather talk than read, and I figured he was just shy and didn't know what to say. So I said "Whatcha reading?" He didn't answer right away, jus’ sat there staring at the same article. He looked kind of American, maybe in his 40s. "Where 'ya going", I asked. "Greece" was all I got back. All right! Finally something to talk about. "Greece, huh? We're going to Romania. They used to be Commies, but now they're all getting computers and Internet. So we're helping them train installers and such." He finally put down his paper and looked at me. "So, what takes you to Greece?" I asked. "Valves," he said. Jeez, this guy don't seem to have much to say. "What kinda valves?" I asked him. Then he started to get up and said "Refrigerant valves." Pretty soon he was out in the aisle, moving real deliberate like and starting toward the next car. I guess he just needed to stretch his legs a bit, so I got up and followed him to the door at the end of the car. I called out to him as he opened the door, "Say, where you from?" Then he stopped and turned around real slow like and said "Russia." 'Bout this time he was going through the door to the next car when I asked him if he could say something in Russian. He said “Ot'ebis, zalupa” or something like that, kinda mean like. Didn’t sound real friendly, if you want to know. By now we were both in that little place 'tween the cars. I was about to ask him what his favorite beer was when all of a sudden he came right at me and slammed me up against the wall real rough like. Then he grabbed my coat with both hands and got right up in my face. For a second there I thought he was going to try and kiss me or bite my nose off or something. Instead, he just spoke in a creepy half whisper, real slow, "I'm a spy and assassin. Leave me alone or I'll throw you under the wheels of this train." Next thing I knew he had let go of me and was smilin’, straightening out my lapels, and saying in a real friendly voice, "OK?" Well, I tell you I was pretty shook up and all, so it took me a minute to catch my breath and say "Sure, pal, whatever you want." And then, he just grinned, winked at me, and disappeared into the next car. Say, this beer's done gone flat on me. Can you reach around there and hand me a cold one? I gotta tell you, some people are just half-weird and that's all there is to it. I mean, jeez, he coulda just said he didn't want to talk without making up that all that spy crap. Sometimes I just don't know about people, know what I mean? On the Train to Budapest 11am: Jurgen Gets His Act Together Jurgen went through two cars before he sat down just to make sure that annoying pest wasn’t following him. He knew he shouldn’t have gotten so angry with the jerk. “I better get a grip on myself. Really stupid of me to say the things I did.” He kneaded his temples. The combination of headache, lack of sleep and nerves had put him more on edge than he had realized. He closed his eyes and began the centering exercises his martial arts instructor Kwai Chang had taught him years ago. These mental exercises would help clear his mind and focus his thinking. He had used them many times in tight situations. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the meditation, calm and alert. His headache was gone. He looked around, examining the occupants of the car, looking for the nearest exits—all the normal things he was trained to do to stay out of trouble. "Should have done this sooner," he reflected. He relaxed and returned to his reading. 12:20pm: A Vampire in the Balkans Jurgen decided to stretch his legs. He started for the next car. Stepping into the space between the cars, he started to open the door to the next car and froze. Harker! Harker was sitting on a seat two rows down from Jurgen’s end of the car. Jurgen pulled back so he wouldn’t be spotted. Harker was one of Section’s most cold-blooded assassins and that was saying a lot. Harker actually enjoyed killing and was quite good at it—methodical, careful; he never failed. They called him the “Vampire” (but only behind his back) because he had one broken tooth that came to a point, almost like a fang. His cold eyes added to the eerie effect. Harker even gave Jurgen the creeps. He’d heard stories… “What’s he doing here?” wondered Jurgen. “I don’t like this at all. Got to get off this train as soon as possible.” Jurgen quickly withdrew to the car he had been in. “Could Harker be after me? No, that seems unlikely and yet…can’t take chances. If he spots me at the station in Budapest, I’m history.” He got his knapsack down from the rack. He sat down next to the door on the opposite end of the car, waiting for an opportunity. About ten minutes later, the train slowed a bit as it came to a sharp curve. Moving quickly, Jurgen slid out the door, then jumped and rolled with one fast blur of motion. But what happened next wasn't like the movies where the hero stands up and walks off without a scratch. He landed hard, tumbling down the steep incline too fast, out of control. A sharp rock loomed up. Jurgen hit his head and everything went black. He sprawled unconscious, with blood oozing from his forehead. Continue to Chapter Four |