And that’s when he spotted him again. Aw, the man was a bulldog, shouldering his way past passengers.
York, stay out of this.
And, he should probably run.
But there was nowhere to go. The train was accelerating between stations. Alan’s pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the rhythmic clack of wheels on rails.
“Alan.” York’s voice carried over the ambient noise.
An announcement, and he automatically translated.Lubyanka. Next stop Lubyanka.
Alan moved behind one of the passengers.The platform approached through the windows, distinctive blue-and-white tiles.
The doors opened. Alan glanced at York, and it was just instinct to give York a slight nod—six years of shared history condensed into that single gesture. Partnership. Friendship.
A hope that York had somehow risen above the terrible grip of his tragedies. Maybe figured out how to survive. Start over.
Then Alan stepped off into the press of morning commuters.
Behind him, York called out as he got off the metro too.
Keep walking.
Alan hustled toward the exit. The mass of people pushed him up the escalator—bodies pressed close in the Moscow rush. Their conversations created a wall of sound around him.
The escalator carried him up into pale morning light filtering through the station’s glass ceiling.
Somewhere below his feet, trains ran their routes through underground tunnels. Carrying passengers to work, to school...
Children.
The realization hit him at the top.
A package. Delivered to a woman in a red scarf. During the morning commute, when hundreds of innocent people would be?—
No.
What had he done? He turned, as if he could run back into the metro, track down the woman?—
The ground shook, the rumble starting deep underground—then a blast of dust and stone and heat routed up, cavitating the entire metro. People screamed, running past him, casting around him.
He was a stone in the flow of fleeing humanity.
No, oh no.He whirled, and slipped into the flow of the running crowd while more people fled out of the tragedy below.
He emerged into Theater Square and slowed, hands in his pockets, head down. Snow drifted from the gray sky, landing on his jacket. The cold bit at exposed skin, but he barely noticed.
He felt a buzz. His hands shook as he pulled out the burner phone.
Welcome to the family.
Alan stared at the screen until the words blurred.Family.The Bratva called their members family. He’d just been initiated into the Russian mob by delivering...
Get out of Moscow.
Because whatever was about to happen, York had seen him. And if the man had survived, at the very least, he’d report Alan to the CIA. And then the hunt would begin. The CIA would want answers about why one of their former operatives had been spotted in Moscow, near FSB headquarters.
They’d assume he’d gone rogue. Turned traitor. Sold out for Russian money.