Page 74 of Emerald

Which is what makes it so extraordinarily irritating when I see three men watching me on the train.

It’s hard for thugs and mercenaries to blend in. How often do you see two or three men together who are all over six feet tall, bursting out of their jackets, and sporting military-style haircuts?

They can sit apart from each other on the train, they can try to act casual. One of them is even pretending to read a Russian magazine. But even there, he hasn’t got the rhythm quite right. He’s turning the pages too regularly, not skipping the boring articles and spending a long time on the stuff that interests him.

And, invariably, they keep glancing in my direction. Not often, and not all at the same time. But with enough regularity that I know they’re watching me.

At first, I think that Ivan must have sent them to keep tabs on me on the way home.

But I’ve seen enough of his men to have a pretty good idea what they look like. They’re all Russian by birth, and since most of them are related to Ivan in one way or another, there’s a certain family resemblance.

These three aren’t brothers or cousins. At least one of them looks Armenian, the other Polish or Ukrainian. The third one, the biggest of the lot, just looks plain mean. He might have been good-looking once upon a time, in a college football-player kind of way. But now his face is set in the sort of cruel, calloused lines that show that this guy has done some shit in the years between twenty and thirty-eight. No one wanted to sit in the seats directly around him. Which gives him a clear view right over to me.

I could get up, pretend to go to the toilets and try to switch cars, but I don’t want to isolate myself off by the bathrooms or between cars. For the moment I’m safest right here, amongst the muddle of businesspeople and students and tourists. All these witnesses.

I’m assuming these goons plan to grab me when we get off at St. Petersburg.

The train makes several stops before the Moskovskiy station. The closest to St. Petersburg is at Tosno. If I wanted to be really tricky, I’d get off sooner—I know the men will be more vigilant the closer we get to our destination. But I don’t want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I try not to look at the three men at all. I make conversation with my seatmate, a woman on her way to visit her sister in St. Petersburg. And I only allow myself to watch the soldiers out of my peripheral view, when I pretend to stretch or glance out the opposite window.

At each stop along our route, I seem to pay no attention as the doors open to allow passengers off and on to the train. But I’m timing the seconds between the warning chimes, and the moment when the doors seal themselves, so the train can take off down the track at 155 miles per hour.

The Tosno station is small. When the doors crack open, only two people from my car get off, and only one old woman gets on. She’s carrying an old shopping bag full of books and snacks for the short journey remaining to St. Petersburg.

I wait and wait, pretending to read on my phone, not even glancing up at the doors. The warning bells chime. I stay in my seat as the agonizing seconds tick by.

Right then, the handle of the old woman’s shopping bag snaps. Two oranges tumble out of the bag, rolling down the aisle of the train.

I hear the doors chuff as they ready themselves to close.

The man closest to me, the mean-looking one, is distracted by the oranges.

I leap out of my seat and sprint for the doors.

They’re already starting to close.

I can hear the three goons behind me, jumping out of their seats, shoving past passengers to chase after me.

They won’t make it before the doors close. I’m barely going to make it.

I jump down the steps, the doors sealing themselves behind me, trapping the Armenian and the Ukrainian inside the train.

But the football player has that ungodly speed of a forty-yard rusher, despite his size. And he’s smarter than the other two. He didn’t chase after me to the same door—he ran to the back of the train. The back doors try to close but he’s turned himself sideways and wedged his chest and shoulders through.

The doors make an outraged warning sound. He pries them apart with his beefy arms and keeps forcing himself through the gap, like a grotesque version of birth.

I don’t wait around to see if he’s going to be successful.

I start running down the platform.

Here’s the part of my plan that isn’t very smart at all.

Moskovskiy station is large and busy—I might have been able to lose myself in the crowd. And Ivan is waiting for me there.

Tosno station is deserted. The two passengers who disembarked have already disappeared. There isn’t an employee or a police officer to be seen. Even the tickets are sold from automatic machines.

I’m running down the open platform, my boots ringing against the cement. I can hear another set of footsteps behind me, much heavier and faster than my own.

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