Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev

Author:Sergei Lebedev
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939931917
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Published: 2021-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Shershnev opened the railway line magazine. He needed a distraction. An ad: a happy couple running along a white sand beach, a hammock, a bottle of wine, palm trees. Reduced fares on direct flights to Asia.

He was unhappy from the start with the travel plan imposed by the bosses and the cover story they provided. He would have done it fast, in one day. Fly in, complete the op, fly out. That’s how the agents from the neighbors took out Vyrin.

But they came up with an allegedly touristic route for them—probably because of the scandal that followed Vyrin’s death and the increased counterintelligence regimen. They land in one country, sort of coming in through the back door; travel to another country, rent a car there . . . It might be good for covering up their intention, but the route was too long and fraught with problems, missed connections, inevitable in travel.

And so it began. They had printed tickets for the train, car 2, seats 49 and 47. When the train pulled into the station, there was no car 2: 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

He ran with Grebenyuk to the locomotive: Maybe there was another train right ahead? And then came the cars numbered in the twenties? No, the numbering started with car 22.

It wasn’t a trap. Not a trick. Just the usual stupidity, a glitch in the reservations system. Shershnev saw the train was full and didn’t know if they would be allowed to board with the wrong tickets. Back home he would have shown his ID and they would be found seats in business class. But here? What if they had to go get new tickets?

It all worked out, of course. The conductor apologized and told them to take any seat they could. But Shershnev couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was a weak but clear resistance to their mission, emanating from no one, coming out of nowhere. That happens in the spring sometimes, when you go out skiing in the morning and the snow starts getting sticky in the sunshine—not enough to slow the skis but enough to lose the smoothness and ease, and you need to exert more effort.

Shershnev knew that the subject had taken the same path many years ago. Allegedly on a business trip to negotiate the purchase of equipment. A delegation of a dozen or so. He probably would not have been allowed to go to America. Even in those lax times. But the subject traveled to a country that just a year or two ago had still been socialist. Where friendly security services were still in place; where Soviet intelligence had recently had not just a residency at the embassy but a full-fledged and, most important, legal presence. The subject moved into a hotel with the rest. He visited the manufacturing complex, had dinner with the group that evening. And he vanished during the night.

They established that he had gotten train tickets. Back then his route remained within the borders of one country.

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