Dead Ball by Tom Palmer (snow like ashes series .txt) 📕

the traffic cop. He stared the drivers in the eyes and held both palms out like he was supposed to be here stopping the traffic. The car in the fourth lane slowed. Danny walked in front of it. The car in the fifth lane slowed. Danny walked in front of that too. But the next car in the sixth lane – a red car – did not stop. Or slow down. And it was coming at him fast. So Danny dived through the air, lifting off. It was all he could do.

He expected to be hit by the car. And when the pain came he knew he had, until he looked down to see he had actually made it. He had hit the pavement. The fast red car was long gone.

Danny got up.

What were the men in black doing?

They were still on the other side of the road. One was trying to dodge across the first lane, but kept running back, unable even to make it to the second lane. The other was on his mobile phone.

Danny knew what that meant.

Reinforcements. Another black people-carrier full of men.

He had to get away. And he knew exactly where.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

Danny had been on the tube in London – and in Newcastle – back home. If Moscow’s tube was anything like London’s, it’d be a mass of people rushing to and fro. Impossible to follow people because of all the bodies and confusion. He hoped.

Danny ran to the tube station he’d seen from the other side of the road. The building didn’t look like a tube station. It was more like the entrance to a museum or a library.

Danny hesitated and looked over his shoulder.

Were the men coming? Had they made it over the road?

Yes.

And they were coming his way. They’d seen him too. One of them pointed.

So he ran. Through the heavy wooden doors into the underground station. Past a small crowd of Muscovites. Vaulting the turnstiles, ignoring the shouts of a woman. Something in Russian. Stop, he imagined. Then down the escalator. More shouts. But he was going fast now. And he wasn’t going to stop.

The escalator was a shock, difficult not to stop and admire. It was seriously long and seriously steep. Not like a small escalator in a shopping centre at home, carrying you up from one floor to the next, this one was at least four hundred metres down, a journey to the centre of the earth.

But he kept on running. Hoping he wouldn’t turn his ankle. Or break his leg. Or just fall.

What Danny needed was a train waiting for him.

And there was.

He was a lucky man.

He headed left and dashed on to the train just as the doors shut. Danny stood and waited. He almost expected something to happen now. Something involving the men chasing him. Or the people who’d shouted at him as he ran – without paying – through the underground station.

Then he felt the train accelerate away from the station. He’d got away. Only now did he notice what the underground station was like.

It had a huge arched ceiling. It had statues. It had oil paintings. And – most strangely of all – it had dozens of chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling.

Danny blinked. This had to be a dream. Underground stations weren’t supposed to look like this. They were supposed to be filthy and dark and full of adverts.

Then the outside of the train was plunged into darkness and Danny noticed the reflection of dozens of people all staring at him.

When the train arrived in the next station Danny had got his breath back. He decided it was best to get off the train as soon as he could. Then on to another.

He followed hundreds of people through a series of tunnels. This tube station was even more spectacular than the other. Beautiful statues. Stained-glass windows. Massive marble columns. He had to be dreaming. Or maybe he was dead – and this was the afterlife.

For Danny it didn’t matter if he was dead or dreaming or neither: he wanted to get out of here. Find somewhere safe. If he could.

He reached another platform, waited a minute, then jumped on to another train.

He had no idea where he was or where he was going. All the words on the tube maps and guides were in Russian script. They meant nothing to him. He wouldn’t have been able to decipher them even if he’d heard of the place they were describing. He just needed to be going. Moving. Running away.

THE KREMLIN

‘Everything is in place, Sir Richard?’ Dmitri Tupolev asked.

‘Almost,’ the Englishman replied.

‘Almost?’

The two men were sitting in a large and elaborately decorated room at the top of a tower overlooking a high wall from which they could gaze down into Red Square.

Sir Richard stared down at the square before he answered. The people looked so small out there. He wondered which leaders of Russia had stared out through this window. And on to what great moments in history?

‘Is there something that displeases you, Sir Richard?’

‘The boy.’

‘Ah, the boy my men chased?’ Tupolev almost laughed. ‘He was just a boy. He ran so fast he must have been scared very much. He will say nothing. And if he does, no one will believe him. What did he see? An accident?’

Sir Richard frowned. He never expected to think this: but he felt Tupolev was being naïve.

Tupolev spoke again. ‘The important facts are: McGee has agreed to accept our offer. And Skatie is unable to take part.’ Tupolev smiled. ‘All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the game.’

Sir Richard nodded.

‘You’re not having second thoughts, are you, my friend?’ Tupolev said. ‘Not becoming all patriotic, wanting England to win?’

Sir Richard smiled. ‘No. That is the last of my worries.’

‘Then it is the boy?’

‘Yes, the boy.’

Tupolev just looked at Sir Richard. He was waiting for an explanation.

Sir Richard looked around the room. This had