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Back The Double
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. Acknowledgements

As they approached the station, a whistle shrieked, and the train pulled away from the siding. Exactly on time, surely, as the minute hand on the clock moved to 2.37. He closed his eyes and savoured the words, two thirty-seven. Too late to have given his minder the slip and make a run for it. Couldn’t this one train, out of thousands in this clockwork country, be delayed for half a minute? Perhaps even the village and all its inhabitants were puppets under Gessen’s control, with everyone conspiring against him.

He lingered in front of the departure schedule, his face bathed in the glow of the Christmas lights strung in the kiosk. With an hour to kill and not a cent in his pocket, there wasn’t much he could do here. Would it be impertinent to ask the attendant for a few francs? Perhaps if he pressed his face against the bakery window, the red-cheeked woman inside would take pity on him and hand over a coffee and a pastry. But when he stuck his head inside the door and gave her a pitiable look, she shook her head and frowned.

Mist clung to the pines above the deep layer of snow. Frigid snowmelt gushed out through fissures in the rock and roared through a viaduct, draining the runoff from the mountain. Now that he was in the midst of it, the village seemed less idyllic than he’d imagined from the view above. Much of it lay in the damp shadow of the mountains, and the few desultory shops held little of interest. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat and bent his head into the wind. The attendant followed behind. Ahead, the high peaks of the mountains loomed. He passed a ski shop, a tavern, a kiosk. Hungry for news of the outside world, he scanned the headlines in French and German. No English papers, though hardly a surprise in this hamlet in the middle of nowhere.

Would there be an item on his disappearance? Missing: Eminent Cambridge don. Believed kidnapped. Or was he just a footnote now in the dusty archives of the university? No one was looking for him, as far as he knew. His coded letters to Magda had failed to induce his would-be rescuers to storm the clinic.