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.’ She freed her hand and her eyes glittered.‘In one day? Hardly.I didn’t want you to stay with that butcher,’ he muttered.‘And I was planning to tell you everything right from the start.Only I wanted to swap the secret for you.’‘And swap me for other people’s lives!’ Sasha said angrily.‘That’s not worth a single life!’‘I’d swap mine for it,’ said the musician, jiggling his eyebrow.‘It’s not for you to decide! Get up! We’ve got to run back.Before he reaches Tula.’ She jabbed one finger at the watch, whispered as she worked out the time and gasped.‘There’s only three hours left!’‘What for? I can use the communications here.They’ll call Hansa and explain everything.We don’t need to run anywhere.Especially since we might not be in time.’‘No!’ said Sasha, shaking her head vehemently.‘No! he won’t believe it.He won’t want to believe it.I have to tell him myself.Explain to him.’‘And then what will happen? Are you going to give yourself to him in your joy?’‘What business is that of yours?’ she snapped, but then, instinctively sensing the right way to handle a man in love, she added in a gentler voice.‘I don’t want anything from him.And now I can’t manage without you.’‘You’re learning from me how to lie,’ the musician said with a sour smile.‘All right,’ he sighed helplessly.‘Let’s go.’It took them half an hour to reach Sport Station: the sentries had changed, and Leonid had to drum into their heads all over again how a girl with no passport could cross the borders of the Red Line.Sasha watched the time tensely and the musician watched her – it was very obvious that he was hesitating, struggling with himself.On the platform, scrawny new conscripts were piling up bales of goods on a stinking old trolley, tipsy workmen were doggedly pretending to caulk the broken veins of pipes and little kids in uniform were learning off a serious adult song.In the space of five minutes two attempts were made to check their documents, and the next check – when they were almost in the tunnel leading to Frunze already – dragged out beyond all endurance.Time was flying past.And the girl wasn’t even sure she still had those pitiful two and a half hours – no one could stop Hunter.The young soldiers had already finished loading the trolley and it was moving towards them, panting as it picked up speed.And Leonid made up his mind.‘I don’t want to let you go,’ he said.‘But I can’t hold you back.I was thinking of making us arrive late, so there’d be nothing left for you to search for.But I realise that still won’t make you mine anyway.Being honest is the worst way of all to seduce a girl, but I’m tired of lying.When I’m with you I feel ashamed of myself all the time.Choose for yourself who you want to be with.’The musician grabbed his miraculous passport out of the dawdling sentry’s hands and punched him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground.Then he grabbed Sasha’s hand tight and they stepped onto the trolley, which had just drawn level with them.The dumbfounded driver looked round and found himself staring into the barrel of a revolver.‘My father would be proud of me right now!’ Leonid laughed.‘The number of times I’ve heard him say I’m wasting my time on nonsense, that I’ll never amount to anything with that blasted whistle of mine! And now at last, here I am behaving like a real man, and he’s not here.Jump!’ he ordered the driver, who was holding his hands up high.Although they were travelling at speed, the man obediently stepped off onto the rails, howled as he went tumbling over and over, then fell silent and disappeared into the blackness that was chasing hard after them.Leonid started throwing off the load, and the motor snorted more briskly with every bundle that fell onto the rails.The lethargic headlamp on the bow of the trolley blinked weakly as it peered forward, lighting up only the next few metres.A brood of rats darted out from under the wheels and their squealing was like someone scratching on glass, a startled line walker sprang aside and somewhere far behind them an alarm siren started wailing hysterically.The ribs of the tunnel flickered past faster and faster.The musician was squeezing out every ounce of speed the trolley was capable of.They flew through Frunze Station: taken by surprise, the sentries scattered like the rats, and the trolley was already hundreds of metres away from Frunze before it started howling furiously in unison with Sport Station.‘Now things will get hot!’ Leonid shouted.‘The important thing is to slip past the crossover line to the Circle! There’s a large frontier post there.They’ll try to intercept us! We’ll go straight along the branch line to the centre!’He knew what to worry about: from out of the side branch that had taken them onto the Red Line a powerful searchlight lashed into their eyes as a heavy freight trolley came rushing towards them.Their tracks would converge in a few dozen metres, it was too late to stop.The musician pressed the worn, shiny pedal to the floor and Sasha squeezed her eyes shut.They could only hope the points were set in the right direction and wouldn’t direct them into a head-on collision.A machine-gun rumbled and bullets whizzed by just centimetres from their ears.There was an acrid smell of burning and heated air, the roar of another motor flared up and faded away, and the trolleys missed each other by a miracle – the battle trolley flew out onto their track only a moment after Sasha’s trolley passed the fork before sweeping on, shuddering, towards Culture Park.The battle trolley had been flung in the opposite direction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]