The Folks at Fifty-Eight by Michael Patrick Clark Read Free Book Online

voice calling the soldiers out to the corridor. Maybe there would still be time to get to the Tokarev before they got to Leipzig. She doubted it, but maybe. The soldier’s relief was obvious.
    “He is back, thank God,” he said. “What does he want now?”
    The soldier got to his feet, slid open the door and took a pace forward, but then suddenly grunted and fell back into the compartment. He lay sprawled at her feet, his eyes wild with terror, his hands covered in blood and clutching at the gaping wound in his throat.
    The second soldier panicked. He stood up and grabbed for the carbine. A foot kicked it away from shaking hands. An arm clamped around his neck. It lifted him up and spun him around, before the point of a flat-bladed knife punctured his right kidney. The soldier groaned and continued struggling. The arm moved from his neck. A hand grabbed at his hair. It pulled his head back to locate the blade, and then thrust it forward while another drew the lethal edge through his windpipe.
    The second soldier’s body slumped alongside the first. Stunned, Catherine Schmidt looked blankly up at the killer as he fired a question.
    “You are Catherine Louise Schmidt?” He had spoken in German, but the accent wasn’t German. It was North American. Still handcuffed, she nodded and got to her feet. He spat another question. “Which one has the keys?” She pointed to the second soldier, but still didn’t speak. The stranger rummaged through the soldier’s coat pockets before finding the key. He unlocked the handcuffs. She massaged the ache in her wrists as he drew the blinds and barked an order. “We have to get out of here now. Do you speak English?”
    “Yes, but what are you doing here? Who are you?”
    “They sent me to get you. My name is Hammond.”
    She meekly followed him to the carriage door and then watched as he threw it open and held it against the force of the rushing air current. He shouted to her above the noise.
    “There is no time to wait for the train to slow, so we have to go now. When you hit the ground, you roll, and then you stay still. Got that?” She nodded, not understanding who he was or what was happening, only knowing that he was getting her away from the train. He continued issuing instructions. “Don’t look up, don’t get up, don’t move, and whatever you do don’t look back at the train. You stay where you land until I tell you to move. Got it?” She nervously studied the open doorway, but said nothing. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to the opening. “Good.” He held the door wide and, with the briefest glance at the onrushing countryside, threw her into the abyss.
    She heard the howling wind suddenly quieten, and felt as if she had been falling for ever, but then hit the ground with a thump that jolted the wind from her lungs. She cartwheeled once and jarred her shoulder, and then began rolling down the slope at the side of the track.
    She hadn’t felt the pain of impact, she was too excited for that, not until she had lain where she stopped rolling for a full twenty seconds. She lay still as ordered, feeling the adrenaline ebb and hearing the train disappearing into the distance. Then she heard Hammond’s voice shouting at her.
    “Right, you can get up now. Come on, on your feet. Now we run. . . and I do mean run.”
    Suddenly her shoulder hurt like hell.
    ****
    As the nine a.m. train from Magdeburg to Leipzig was passing some fields to the south of Wiederitzsch, a haughty-looking woman in a fur-collared coat stood in the corridor and stared out of the window. She watched two people jump from farther up the train, and then saw them rolling down the embankment. One of them looked like the drunk who had staggered against her in the corridor. The other was the girl she’d seen handcuffed at the station. The woman in the coat was sure of that. For a moment of indecision she thought of sending for help, maybe even stopping the train.
    But then she remembered the feel of a