The Zimeysa Station reminded Alex of the train station in Munich, Germany, where he and his father had once spent the night. That had been awful: The whole family had been vacationing in March, and it was very cold; and on this day Alex and his father had missed the last train out of Munich, which they were supposed to catch in order to meet up with Mom and the girls, who had moved on to a villa south of Rome. He and his dad had gone to visit the concentration camps in Dachau, a bus trip, and the Dachau bus had been late getting back.
Missing the train meant that they had to cool their heels till early in the morning, which meant walking. They visited a local university and watched some TV in the student union, moved on to watch the last round of the Glockenspiel in a square called Marienplatz, and then settled in at the station itself. Alex and his father had huddled together against a brick wall next to a closed postcard-and-soda kiosk, Dad’s jacket thrown over them. The gaping maws at either end of the station, where trains entered and departed, let the air in, and no amount of heat lamps stopped the sensation that they were on the streets. Sleeping on tile, backs against the bare wall, the cold leached into Alex’s entire body. It made socks and underwear, layers of shirts, gloves, all seem to disappear. They shivered together until seven in the morning, heading to Rome with the first train. Alex had been eight years old.
It had not occurred to him until he was ten that Dad was not without means and probably could have found them a hotel room if he had so desired. Alex actually asked his father about this—catching him as he was heading out to teach at Boston University, where they had been at that time. Dad had mumbled something about how fun it had been to relive his misspent youth, which was a terrible excuse for misspending Alex’s youth as well, but then Dad had been out the door.
Of course now Alex knew that just as likely, Dad had spent many of his train-station-huddling days in the employ of the Polidorium, a fact he had decidedly failed to mention.
At any rate, even in October, the Zimeysa Station was frozen stone cold, and as Alex walked up and down the platforms, he was glad that whatever else may occur, he would not be sleeping here. He’d been trained to survive in Wyoming blizzards, but anyone who felt like doing that by choice had to be crazy.
Oh, what he could have done then with what he had now—even without his backpack, his go package, Alex’s pockets were lined with useful accoutrements: Besides wooden stakes, hydraulic-powered Polibows, and grappling guns, he had nifty stuff like space blankets that folded into the size of a deck of cards and small canisters of styrene that could be lit to provide warmth. And his dad probably had as well. Madman.
Nothing, not a whisper, not a bleat of static, no reverberations in his head, nothing. The only static Alex heard as he walked along the trains came off the occasional announcements, as a chipper female voice announced in French and lovely British English each arrival and departure and change of track.
Alex stopped at a magazine rack underneath an enormous white clock at the end of the station, pretending to scan the covers. He turned around to look down the six tracks. He glanced up to a spiderweb of stairs at the far end of the terminal, which allowed passengers to travel up over the tracks and down to the central platforms. At the top of the stairs, on a sort of marble terrace, Alex saw Sangster sitting at a small table with Armstrong, sipping a coffee and reading a book. Alex went to the right and started walking down the line again, down one platform, up the next, and down. Nothing through the whole sweep, and the trains emptied out. In came the next batch.
Sangster spoke through the Bluetooth in Alex’s ear. “Eastbound trains on tracks two, three, and six,” he said. Alex nodded. Sangster was saying that those trains were likely to stop at Geneva next.
Alex headed for track 2. People were striding across the platforms and he bumped