Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(84)

“The owners of which are rebuilding the Warsaw Metro. Which is mostly tunnels.”

Rudi nodded. “Just so.”

Forsyth thought about it. “So what are you saying? That the Warsaw Metro comes out in Moscow?” A few years ago, it would have sounded ridiculous. These days, with people taking weekend breaks in the Community, it actually didn’t sound unreasonable.

“That would be something worth killing to protect, wouldn’t it?” Rudi said. He looked over Forsyth’s shoulder. In the far distance, one of the waiting staff was making the long, long journey towards their table. “If it were true.”





“IT’S AN INTERESTING situation, when you sit down and think about it,” Rudi said, picking his way delicately between piles of equipment and building material.

Forsyth stopped and miserably shone the beam of his torch on the tunnel walls, the roof, the trackbed. He wished Rudi would shut up. He wished he was somewhere else.

“Why, for instance, would Crispin hide a map of the Warsaw Metro in the Warsaw Metro?” Rudi went on. “Apart from the poetic resonance, of course.”

Forsythe glowered at him.

“I’m not the person who was supposed to come and help you, you know,” said Rudi. “Leon got the Japanese government to contact Les Coureurs on your behalf; I’m running a data scraping operation at the moment, and that intercepted the job request.”

“A what?” Forsyth couldn’t believe they were having this conversation.

“Data scraping. I’m trying to locate Coureur Central; I have some questions I want to ask them.”

“Aren’t you a Coureur? Don’t you know where it is?”

“No, nobody knows where it is. Or who it is. And yes, I am a Coureur.” Rudi smiled at him. “If you think that sounds confusing, you ought to spend half an hour as me.”

They started walking again. They’d entered the Metro two stations up the east-west line from Stare Miasto. Forsyth, already petrified to be back in Warsaw, had thought their excursion would come to a premature end at the station’s security measures, but the system had let them through unchallenged, and that was when Rudi had launched into a seemingly endless and random musing about... well, Forsyth kept losing track, so he wasn’t entirely sure what it was about any more.

“The question is why a commercially-available map of the Warsaw Metro should be so important to so many people,” Rudi said. “And I don’t buy the idea that Crispin told his Georgian friends the hard drive contained nuclear launch codes, by the way; that would just be suicidal.”

“You don’t know Crispin.”

“True. But I’m making an assumption that he’s not stark raving mad.”

Forsyth shook his head. “We should try not to make so much noise,” he said.

“So if there’s nothing illegal or even faintly unusual on that hard drive,” Rudi went on as if he hadn’t heard, “why bother hiding it down here? Why bother hiding it at all?”

“We’re going to get killed,” Forsyth said.

Rudi thought about it. “No,” he said finally. “No, we’re not.” But he did at least shut up for a while.

It was a long, difficult walk to Stare Miasto; Forsyth had forgotten just how tiring it could be walking along the unfinished tunnels. It was almost four in the morning before they reached the complex of ramps and cross-tunnels outside the Old Town station.

Rudi wandered about the tunnel, shining his torch here and there. “You said they fired on you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“A lot?”

Forsyth, on the other side of the tunnel, glared at him.

“Hm,” said Rudi. “Okay. Show me this phantom platform, please.”

Forsyth led the way to the down ramp. The floor underfoot was gritty. They passed the opening which led to the north-south tunnel and the spiral of the ramp kept going down for another couple of turns and opened into a narrow, straight corridor. There was light at the far end. Rudi stopped, then walked back up the ramp to the north-south exit, shining his torch on the walls, then came back down to stand beside Forsyth.

“And this shouldn’t be here?” he said.

“I keep saying,” Forsyth murmured.

“Okay.” Rudi turned off his torch and set off down the tunnel towards the light. After a few moments, muttering under his breath, Forsyth did the same.

The light brightened as they approached the end of the tunnel, and then all of a sudden they were standing on a broad, deserted Metro platform. Rudi stood looking about him. He looked at the tracks, the walls. He stepped between a line of pillars and found himself in a long arch-roofed hallway. There was a sign on one of the pillars in Cyrillic.

“Kitay-Gorod,” he read. His voice echoed down the empty hallway.

“Now do you believe me?” Forsyth asked in a strained whisper.

Rudi walked across the hall, between another set of pillars, and out onto the opposite platform. “I’ve never been to Moscow before,” he said.

“Can we go now, please?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes, of course.”

Walking back up the tunnel – the entrance seemed to Forsyth to be concealed by some kind of optical illusion – Rudi said, “Do you remember I was telling you about Professor Mundt?”