Chapter 9 - The Man Behind the Wall
I moved toward the sound before the colorful woman could stop me.
The voice came from behind a row of crates marked with faded railway symbols. Together we pushed them aside, revealing a narrow steel door built into the brick wall.
There was no handle.
Only a circular lock.
The same size as my daughter’s pendant.
My hands began shaking.
“He’s alive.”
The woman did not answer.
“He has to be alive.”
She lowered the lantern.
“Sometimes this network uses recordings.”
“No.”
“You need to prepare yourself.”
“No.”
The voice came again.
“Anna.”
My name.
Then the words that destroyed every doubt.
“Your mother kept the blue curtains because she said winter light made the kitchen look warmer.”
I stopped breathing.
No stranger could know that.
It was a private memory from our first apartment.
A detail my daughter had never heard.
I pressed both hands against the cold metal door.
“Daniel?”
Silence.
Then a slow exhale.
“Don’t say my name loudly.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“Where have you been?”
“Trapped.”
“For twenty-two years?”
The answer came after a painful pause.
“Not in one place.”
The colorful woman searched along the wall.
“There must be another entrance.”
Daniel spoke through the door.
“No. The lock opens from your side.”
“With what?”
“The key our daughter wears.”
My stomach twisted.
My husband had taken it.
“Why did you give it to her?”
“Because they would search me, but they never expected a child to carry evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“The key is not only a key.”
The colorful woman looked at me.
Daniel continued.
“Inside the pendant is a strip of microfilm. It contains names, payments, routes, false death records, everything.”
I thought of the crate with my death certificate.
“How many people are involved?”
“More than you can imagine.”
Footsteps sounded above us.
Many footsteps.
The passengers from the black train were entering the old station.
The colorful woman extinguished the lantern.
Darkness closed around us.
A beam of light appeared at the far end of the tunnel.
Then another.
Voices murmured.
We crouched behind the crates.
Daniel whispered through the door.
“Listen carefully. They are not all on the same side.”
“What do you mean?”
“The white-haired woman wants the archive. Your husband wants the final carriage. They need each other, but neither trusts the other.”
The footsteps drew closer.
I covered my mouth.
The white-haired woman entered the tunnel with two gray-uniformed guards.
She stopped beside the crate bearing my name.
“The passenger was here,” one guard said.
“She still is,” the woman replied.
Her gaze moved across the darkness.
Then she looked directly toward our hiding place.
“Anna,” she called calmly, “your daughter is no longer in her apartment.”
My heart stopped.
“She has been transferred to the train.”
A low mechanical hum began beneath us.
The tracks vibrated.
The black train was preparing to leave.
The woman smiled into the darkness.
May you like
“And once it reaches the final station, you will never see her again.”
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