Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [66]
‘Good luck, comrade Fitz. I hope you found out what you wanted.’
Fitz had boarded the train, shoving his bag under the seat so only he could reach it. He’d rolled the blanket he had managed to hang on to and set it against the smeared window as a pillow. He’d not slept properly for days, dozing on benches, in trucks, almost on his feet. The night in the farmhouse was like a dream. He’d woken in that big bed that still smelt of its old owners overlaid with last night’s smoke, and stared at the ceiling for an hour trying to decide whether to ask Sasha who he really was. Then he had heard the other man mumble in his sleep and Fitz had lost his nerve.
Now he was finding it hard to doze off, even though he was exhausted and the train had been sat in the station for an hour since he had got onboard. There would be checks at the French border, the French having grudgingly signed a non-intervention pact preventing them from sending men or arms. Then more checks along the line, at randomly created militia checkpoints. And, always, the risk that the line would be bombed. It might be another hour before the train moved off but Fitz just couldn’t settle. He’d close his eyes but the images would jump behind them, red and black as the city burned, the darker black of blood on dark cloth, Sasha’s mashed up lyrics to ‘When I Get Low I Get High’, the Heinkels opening fire on the road.
‘Billet, s’il vous plaît,’ someone asked and Fitz reached for his inner pocket before he opened his eyes. Before he recognised the voice. He grinned.
‘OK. You are definitely following me.’
Sasha flopped into the seat next to him. ‘New orders. They need more of us in Barcelona.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Fitz. We are more discreet than that. The old mother three seats back with the cage of live chickens? She is the one following you.’
Fitz started to look round, then caught the Russian’s grin. ‘Very subtle,’ he remarked.
The train jolted, nearly making him slide out of his seat. They chugged out slowly, unevenly, leaving behind the busy town. Fitz looked at his travelling companion again. It was dubious, at the very least. On the other hand, it was someone who could keep him from closing his eyes and failing to sleep. Digging about in his bag, he produced a dog-eared pack of cards and held them up. ‘I’ll deal.’
Their tickets were checked by the guard as they crawled towards the border. At the border itself, Sasha shook Fitz awake as they were forced to get off the train at a brightly lit station high in the mountains. There was no town or village attached, just a small company of French border guards who made them stand about in the cold as they searched through and under the train. Fitz wanted to panic when he realised they were slowly reading everyone’s papers. Had the Doctor really forged his passport well enough to convince border guards? Then he worried that they would sense his panic and haul him off into the closed station building where a couple of passengers had already been taken. Then he was handing over his papers and hoping the guard thought his shaking hand was from the cold. The man looked over the passport with a slowness that suggested the Doctor had somehow managed to cock it up utterly. Then the red stamps on their letters of transit were noticed, regarded with suspicion mingled with fear, and they were being bundled back into the carriages. The heating had mysteriously turned off during the inspection and they rattled through the night chattering with cold.
By the time the train had made it through the border check on the other side, where the red letters were regarded with even greater contempt by the CNT checkpoint, and the checkpoint half way down the coast, Fitz had won twenty-seven theoretical US dollars off Sasha. Or, more prosaically, twenty-seven used matches that they were pretending were dollars. As the train made the final slow creep along the coast – the wonderfully