Empire of Lies

56

As he walked down the center of the dining car, Kamal felt a familiar electric charge radiate across his entire body.

It was a sensation he knew well. He felt it every time he was about to launch into a dangerous situation, a frequent occurrence over the last few years. It was a state of heightened mental and physical alertness. Every sensor in his body was spinning at full capacity, fast-tracking and processing the onslaught of physical and mental inputs charging in while continuously adjusting the optimal response and making sure his body was fully primed to execute it.

Not just his life but Nisreen’s hung in the balance. And he wasn’t about to let her down. Not now, not here, not after everything she’d gone through.

With Taymoor right behind him, he reached the end of the carriage and stepped through the narrow doorway into a small vestibule. It had a small washroom followed by an exit to the passageway that linked the dining car to the next carriage, the one Kamal and Nisreen’s cabin was in.

Kamal was quickly processing his options when the door to one of the washrooms opened. A morbidly obese, sweaty-faced man came out to find himself facing them, blocking the tight passage. Kamal considered the moves he could make, but the man would loom large in all of them, and that wouldn’t do. He needed to find an out that didn’t put innocent civilians at risk. After an awkward pause, Kamal squeezed by him, then turned to watch Taymoor do the same, the man looking sheepish before he waddled off.

Kamal opened the door and stepped out. The two gangways of the carriages were nestled inside an accordion wall that protected passengers and crew from the soot that the locomotive belched out and any rain or snow. Although the ride was smooth, the gangways were doing a jittery dance with each other, and it took a reasonable amount of care and a careful grip to step from one carriage to the other.

The door into the next carriage opened just as Kamal reached it. A steward was about to walk out, but he held back when he saw Kamal and waved him through.

“Please, after you, khawaja.”

Kamal accepted with a courteous nod and squeezed past him.

The steward made a move to go through; then he saw Taymoor following. He pulled back again and waved Taymoor through, wishing him a good evening.

Kamal turned to see Taymoor glance over at the man as the steward tucked into the space behind him and headed out, pulling the door shut. A split second of distraction, eyes flickering away from their target for the briefest of moments—that was often all it took, and he had it now. Maybe the last time it would happen before they got to wherever Taymoor was keeping Nisreen.

His ex-partner also didn’t have his weapon drawn.

He lashed out.

He lunged at Taymoor in the narrow vestibule, rotating at the waist to generate power before launching a hammer strike that caught him squarely on the side of his neck and snapped his head sideways. He’d rendered other opponents unconscious with that move before, but Taymoor was still standing, a rabid scowl now aimed at his ex-partner as he turned back to face him. Kamal wasn’t waiting—he followed with a quick, thudding hook punch to his ribs, but Taymoor knew the moves, and he’d taken a punch or two in his time, which meant he recovered faster than Kamal would have liked, having managed to deflect most of its impact. Still, Kamal was on a rampage, using fists, elbows, and knees to subdue his opponent, the picture of Nisreen as a prisoner more than overwhelming any latent temperance brought on by the fact that Taymoor had been his partner. He also knew that he had to end it fast, before any of the crew or another passenger saw what was happening and rang the alarm.

Taymoor certainly wasn’t holding back. Kamal kept up the onslaught, and although Taymoor had well-honed fighting reflexes, that first strike had put him at a disadvantage. Kamal kept chipping away at him with strikes until landing a solid punch to the solar plexus again. Then Kamal leapt at Taymoor, put him in a headlock, and started to choke him, Kamal’s body in full fighting mode and mind racing ahead, reeling through potential outcomes. If Kamal could render him unconscious, then pull him into one of the washrooms and tie him up—but then what? Vienna was still far away, and either the crew would be alerted to a washroom that was continuously locked or Taymoor would regain consciousness. There was no way he’d get Taymoor to their cabin, not on his own.

The tangle of thoughts was ripped apart when Taymoor surprised him with a savage backward head-butt, catching him in the jaw. The blow rattled his skull, and his hold over Taymoor loosened momentarily, an opening that his ex-partner was quick to exploit. They traded more ferocious, frenzied blows, Kamal now forced into the deflecting role, Taymoor crowding him against the exit door when a shout, the scream of a woman, interrupted them both. A quick glance identified its source: an elderly woman at the far end of the carriage had spotted them. She stood rooted in place with a clenched hand against her mouth before disappearing back out of the carriage.

Kamal had seconds to end this.

Taymoor had also fallen for the distraction, and this gave Kamal the gift of an unprotected target and a nanosecond to enjoy it. Kamal pooled all the energy remaining in his battered body and channeled it through his right shoulder, down his arm, and into his fist, unleashing it into the side of Taymoor’s face, his skin and bones turned into an anvil of anger and survival. The blow was immense. Blood, spit, and air streaked out of Taymoor’s mouth, and his eyes rolled back as he wobbled in place, his knees weakened by the crushing blow. Moving quickly, Kamal gave him a monster thumb strike to the throat, grabbed him and spun him around so he was facing out, and shoved him against the small return that housed the exit.

“I’m sorry, brother,” he hissed into his ex-partner’s ear as he reached out and pulled the door of the carriage open. A biting cold air rushed in, along with the loud clatter of the train’s advance.

He shoved Taymoor out of the carriage.

His ex-partner fell from view instantly, swallowed up by the darkness. Kamal leaned out to see where he landed. It was too dark to see much, but the train was still climbing into the mountains, and the landscape slipping by was thick with trees.

He quickly closed the door again and, pushing back the pain that was throbbing across his face from the repeated blows he’d suffered, he sprinted down the corridor to their cabin. He needed to disappear before the conductor or any train security personnel rushed to investigate what the old woman had seen. He also thought he had a fifty-fifty chance of finding Nisreen there. There were two places Taymoor could have sequestered her: their cabin or his. Of the two, theirs was the easier option. To use his, Taymoor would have had to lead her there at gunpoint: in the case of foul play, their bodies would end up there, which could cause Taymoor some serious complications if and when they were uncovered.

His pulse quickened as he found the door to their cabin unlocked, a quickening that came to a dead stop when he saw her inside, lying on the ground with her eyes closed. He dove down and checked her pulse, then put an ear to her mouth.

She was breathing.

“Nisreen,” he whispered as he kissed her on the forehead while cupping her cheeks. “Nisreen?”

She didn’t reply.

He tried to awaken her, gently, but she wasn’t responding. He checked her eyes, tried pinching her, but he knew the signs. He’d encountered them before. She was drugged.

He didn’t know what Taymoor had given her. He looked around but couldn’t find a trace of anything, no clue as to what it might be. He knew from experience it could be one of any number of compounds, although he didn’t know what was around back then. Pills, gases, and potions to deal with insomnia or to put surgical patients to sleep were plentiful in his time, but here, eight decades earlier, the science of soporific drugs and sedatives had to be much more primitive. The drug had to be something Taymoor could get ahold of without much difficulty, and something that he could administer easily. He could have forced her to drink it or to swallow it if it was in pill form, but Kamal suspected it was more likely that he had injected it. He looked for signs of a needle puncture on her arms but couldn’t find any.

Whatever it was, it was critical to know how long Nisreen would be under its influence. The next stop was Vienna.

He tried waking her up again, to no avail. He put a pillow under her head, then sat down on the floor beside her—then he heard some commotion outside the cabin.

He got to his feet and put his ear to the door to listen. He could hear the voice of the conductor knocking on the door of another sleeping compartment, announcing apologetically that they were just checking if the passengers were alright. The woman who had seen him fighting with Taymoor must have reported it, just as he’d feared.

He didn’t have time to lose.

He pulled back the bedding on Nisreen’s bed, lifted her off the floor, and set her down on the bed. He then tucked her in, making sure enough of her face was showing so there was no question that she was a woman. Then he stripped down to his long, white tunic and ruffled up his bed. He turned off the lights just as the knock came.

He left the conductor to knock again and then, in a tone of feigned grogginess, cleared his throat and said, “One moment,” before cracking open the door slightly.

Light broke into the room, illuminating the beds and Nisreen’s face. In the narrow corridor outside, the conductor was standing close to the door, looking in. A security guard was behind him and, farther back, Kamal could make out the curious face of the elderly woman.

He inched back to avoid giving her a clear look at his face in case she could identify him. He also didn’t want to give the conductor too close a look at any of the swelling and bruising he could feel on his face.

“What’s going on?” he asked, raising a hand to shield his eyes and narrowing them as if he was bothered by the brightness, and speaking in a low tone as if he didn’t want to wake Nisreen up.

“Profuse apologies, effendi,” the conductor said, “but a passenger reported seeing a fight in this carriage, and we’re just making sure everyone is safe.”

“We didn’t hear anything,” he half whispered, edging back into the darkness to give the conductor a clear view of Nisreen. “My wife felt a bit unwell during dinner—I think it might be the winding climb up the mountain, she’s not used to it—so we turned in early.”

The conductor peered in, giving the scene a quick study. Kamal’s body language and his facial expression rushed him on. To further move him along, Kamal said, “I appreciate your diligence. I’m sure you have everything well in hand.”

He moved sideways, as if preparing to close the door. The conductor hesitated, then demurred and gave him a polite nod. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, effendi. May you both wake up in good health.”

“A pleasant night to you, too.”

Kamal shut the door quietly, then locked it. He stood with his ear to the door, trying to hear what was being said. He held his breath as he heard murmurs of deliberation between the conductor and the old woman, but then she said that she didn’t get a clear enough look to know if he was one of the men involved in the fight. She added that it had been so quick and so intense that she hadn’t really had a good look at either one of them.

He heard them shuffle away from his cabin and then knock on the next door.

He breathed out.

He’d dodged that bullet—for now. But he knew how these things played out. The conductor would be thorough. And at some point, most likely before they reached Vienna, they would find Taymoor’s cabin empty. And that would lead to all kinds of questions. Questions that might lead to a second sweep of the train—one they might not be able to dodge as easily—or a security cordon once they rolled into Vienna.

He needed Nisreen to wake up soon.