The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online

name of the grocer. Feliks was beginning to toy with alternative strategies when at last he saw what he needed.
    A man of about thirty came out of one of the gardens wheeling a bicycle. The man wore a straw boater and a striped blazer which bulged over his paunch. He leaned his cycle against the garden wall and bent down to put on his trouser clips.
    Feliks approached him rapidly.
    The man saw his shadow, looked up, and muttered: “Good afternoon.”
    Feliks knocked him down.
    The man rolled onto his back and looked up at Feliks with a stupid expression of surprise.
    Feliks fell on him, dropping one knee into the middle button of the striped blazer. The man’s breath left his body in a whoosh, and he was winded, helpless, gasping for air.
    Feliks stood up and glanced toward the house. A young woman stood at a window watching, her hand raised to her open mouth, her eyes wide with fright.
    He looked again at the man on the ground: it would be a minute or so before he even thought about getting up.
    Feliks climbed on the bicycle and rode away rapidly.
    A man who has no fear can do anything he wants, Feliks thought. He had learned that lesson eleven years ago, in a railway siding outside Omsk. It had been snowing …

    It was snowing. Feliks sat in an open railway truck, on a pile of coal, freezing to death.
    He had been cold for a year, ever since he escaped from the chain gang in the gold mine. In that year he had crossed Siberia, from the frozen north almost to the Urals. Now he was a mere thousand miles from civilization and warm weather. Most of the way he had walked, although sometimes he rode in railcars or on wagons full of pelts. He preferred to ride with cattle, for they kept him warm and he could share their feed. He was vaguely aware that he was little more than an animal himself. He never washed, his coat was a blanket stolen from a horse, his ragged clothes were full of lice and there were fleas in his hair. His favorite food was raw birds’ eggs. Once he had stolen a pony, ridden it to death, then eaten its liver. He had lost his sense of time. He knew it was autumn, by the weather, but he did not know what month he was in. Often he found himself unable to remember what he had done the day before. In his saner moments he realized he was half mad. He never spoke to people. When he came to a town or village he skirted it, pausing only to rob the garbage dump. He knew only that he had to keep going west, for it would be warmer there.
    But the coal train had been shunted onto a siding, and Feliks thought he might be dying. There was a guard, a burly policeman in a fur coat, who was there to stop peasants from taking coal for their fires … As that thought occurred to him, Feliks realized he was having a lucid moment, and that it might be his last. He wondered what had brought it on; then he smelled the policeman’s dinner. But the policeman was big and healthy and had a gun.
    I don’t care, Feliks thought; I’m dying anyway.
    So he stood up, and picked up the biggest lump of coal he could carry, and staggered over to the policeman’s hut, and went in, and hit the startled policeman over the head with the lump of coal.
    There was a pot on the fire and stew in the pot, too hot to eat. Feliks carried the pot outside and emptied it out into the snow; then he fell on his knees and ate the food mixed with cooling snow. There were lumps of potato and turnip, and fat carrots, and chunks of meat. He swallowed them whole. The policeman came out of the hut and hit Feliks with his club, a heavy blow across the back. Feliks was wild with rage that the man should try to stop him from eating. He got up from the ground and flew at the man, kicking and scratching. The policeman fought back with his club, but Feliks could not feel the blows. He got his fingers on the man’s throat and squeezed. He would not let go. After a while the man’s eyes closed; then his face went blue; then his tongue came out; then Feliks finished the