On ‘Cargo’ I’ve always been fascinated by Russia – firstly by the threat of nuclear annhilation (I used to live close by several of Britain’s most enticing targets), secondly by their exploits in space (Mir rocked… if the Shuttle is Star Trek, Mir was Blade Runner), thirdly by the sheer size of the place. I used to play wargames, and still have a 1944 Soviet tank army somewhere in the house. So it seemed appropriate to set ‘Cargo’ in the glorious city of St. Petersburg (a.k.a. Petrograd, a.k.a. Leningrad) and have some natives doing what they do best: working the free market. To quote Boney M: "Oh, those Russians!" I had some discussion with Marge Simon as to whether the transliteration of ‘No’ should be ‘Nyet’ or ‘Net’. The book I got out of the library was fairly up-to-date, and said the latter, so I hope I haven’t disappointed anyone.   Cargo   It was dark outside the windows of the armoured Mercedes. St. Petersburg should have been bright with lights, the Nevskiy Prospect a glowing ribbon, but the power had failed again. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour; it would glow pale and wan low in the southern sky, and turn the crust of snow into ice, before disappearing again for another twenty-two freezing hours. Dalton had been at the Moskva hotel for four days. He’d spent the time trying set up meetings with the names on his list of contacts, dangling American dollars like dog treats and waiting for someone to sit up and beg. To his utter surprise and increasing anger, everyone he spoke to feigned disinterest. He burned as he remembered the last conversation he’d had with the representative of a gypsum mine: "I’m an investment banker, for God’s sake! Do you want my money or not?" In Reconstructionist America, the outburst would have earned him a twenty dollar fine. The Russian had paused long enough to convey his contempt of Dalton. "Net," he had said, then cut the connection. The road was in an appalling state. They were driving on pack ice with studded tyres, something that was unknown in Detroit where the roads were heated from the underneath. The cold seemed to affect the manhole covers in such a way as to make them collapse when touched, turning them into the mother and father of all potholes. In the twilight, he could spot the prostitutes standing under the unilluminated street lamps. He was scandalised and depressed in equal measure. "I hate this place," he said out loud. His driver, a granite-faced man called Dmitri, grunted. Dmitri didn’t speak more than a few words of English. Dalton spoke no Russian at all, and had no desire to learn. It looked grossly complicated; nine extra letters in a bizarre alphabet, throat-scratching combinations of syllables, different tenses lurching off at every turn. Dalton’s dollars would have to do the talking for him, only they seemed as tongue-tied as he was. A GAI traffic cop, muffled up so that only his eyes showed, waved an orange light-stick at the sparse traffic, directing them down a side street. The Mercedes’ headlights picked out a trolleybus half-sunk in a collapsed sewer as they turned. "Dmitri? How much longer will this route take us?" The driver shrugged, taking both of his huge hands off the steering wheel to do so. "Desyat minuta," he said. "Ten." Dalton had finally set up a meeting. The owner of a fish processing plant wanted to see him. Once there, he’d have to drink impossible amounts of vodka before being able to arrange another visit to actually discuss business. This was the way they conducted themselves, and it seemed further than half a world away. The car was slowing down. Dmitri glanced his his rearview mirror and pulled up to the curb. "Why are we stopping?" Dmitri creaked the handbrake on. "Tyre," he said, spinning his index finger round and round. Leaving the engine running, he got out, letting a Siberian wind take the door to its fullest extent. The cold didn’t so much as steal in as launch a frontal assault with bayonets. "Hell’s teeth," Dalton said, clutching his coat around him. He was leaning out over the front seat, groping for the handle that was just out of reach, when the doors either side of him opened. Two men got in, pushing their Glocks into his well-padded ribs and pulling him back. A shadow passed by him, and another man slid behind the wheel. It wasn’t Dmitri, because he could see his driver walking away down the gutter, shoulders hunched against the winter. Three doors slammed shut, and Dalton first looked left, then right. It was as dark in the car as it was outside, but he caught the wet glint of teeth bared in a smile. He went stupid with fear. He scrambled over the lap of the man on his right. He managed to hook his finger in the door release. The barrel of a gun was pressed into the nape of his neck, but it didn’t stop him from pulling hard with his hand, then pushing with all his might. He was in a car that was picking up speed, hanging face down over an ice-rutted street. The open door hit a parked car, and it closed on his head. He was insensible with pain and shock, and still he tried to escape. Hands had taken firm hold of his legs, and he was being pistol-whipped over and over again, the blows raining down on his shoulders and back. He was pushed down into the footwell, where heavy boots could be brought to bear on the length of his body. They stamped on him until he subsided into a hard, sharp darkness that opened its mouth and swallowed him whole.     He was lying on a stinking, filthy mattress in a windowless room. Even his eyelids hurt as he blinked in the harsh white glare of an unshaded light bulb. His fingers twitched involuntarily, sending needles of sensation up his arm to his bewildered brain. He forced out a groan from his bruised chest and tried to sit up. Nausea rushed him, and he lay down again, a manoeuvre executed in excruciating slowness. After a while, he tried again, and succeeded in rolling to his knees. As he panted, his breath condensed around him in a cold, wet cloud. Everything ached, and at least it told him he was still alive. Dalton finally stood on his shaking legs and looked around him. He was still in his coat and gloves and scarf. His briefcase had gone. He patted his pockets; he found a cotton handkerchief. They’d taken his wallet, his money clip, his phone, his passport. Everything that told him who he was was missing. He started to wander. The stairs leading out of the cellar were rough wood. The handrail was missing, if it ever had one in the first place. It would have had in America. A black tarpaulin was draped over a pile of straight edges. He threw it back, hoping to reveal cases of stolen anti-tank missiles or a crate of phosphorous grenades. The boxes were marked with Korean and English and showed them to contain graymarket plasma screen televisions. He prised one open just to make sure, and rummaged through the polystyrene beads long enough to uncover the corner of a flat black rectangle. He searched every corner of his prison. He seemed to have the time, so he made use of it. The only thing he found was frost-rimed brick, and a battered tin bucket that was there as his toilet. The stairs were the only way out, and he’d been a fool to think otherwise. He wouldn’t have been put there if there hadn’t been secure, and just because they were Russians didn’t mean they were idiots. Dalton sat back down on his mattress and buried his face in his hands. He was still sitting like that when the lock turned at the door, and the light beyond was blocked by the figure of a man. Streams of voluble Russian passed between him and another two men who were following him down the creaking stairs. "Dobryy den," said the first man, stroking his Joseph Stalin moustache. He stood in front of Dalton and sized him up. He slapped himself on the chest. "Boris." "Paul Dalton," said Dalton. They already knew that. If they had his passport, they had his entire genetic sequence. "Da," said Boris. The two men behind him were his kidnappers. They reeked of spirits and carried their black pistols in their careless hands. It was a lethal combination and Dalton supposed that his death would be imminent. Boris held up Dalton’s mobile, and turned it on with a stab of his meaty thumb. The screen glowed. If only it had been broken. "You. Dalton. Call." His office number was a preset. It would take him mere seconds to confirm his fate. The firm of Hopkins-Wright Inc. had a policy never to pay out on ransom demands: it only encouraged criminals. Unfortunately, his managing director had neglected to tell Boris, who took Dalton’s wrist and twisted it until his hand made an open palm. "Call America. Dollars, da?" The phone was pressed on to him, and the three men looked expectantly at him. He should be eager to tell someone he’d been kidnapped, desperate to get the ball rolling and the money moving. Except that he knew there would be no money, just sympathy and regrets. The safety catch on one of the Glocks was clicked noisily off, and Dalton felt his stomach lurch upwards into his throat. He choked his bile down, and pressed a trembling finger down on the keypad. Star. Then again. Three. No signal. There was no signal in the cellar. The phone had been searching for a transmitter, and failed to find one. His relief broke out as a wash of cold sweat. "I… I can’t," he stammered. "Look. It won’t connect." He showed Boris the screen. Boris stroked his furry moustache again as he studied the unfamiliar words. He passed the phone back to Dalton, and gave some orders to one of the gunmen, who swayed back up the stairs into the space above. They stood, the Russians content to wait, the American glad for a few more moments of life. A young man, little more than a teenager, joined them. He carried an army knapsack and listened while Boris explained the problem to him. There was a lot of gesturing and laughing, directed at the shock-white Dalton. He bent down and took some wire from his pack, then approached Dalton. The light from the single bulb flashed on his wire-rimmed glasses. "You’d better give me the phone." "You speak English." Dalton was pathetically relieved. "It’s not that difficult. You learnt it." He took the phone from Dalton’s unresisting hand and unscrewed the aerial. "Has Boris explained what he wants you to do?" "No. I worked that out myself. I’m history." "Why’s that?" "Because my stupid company has a no-pay policy." He hissed the sentence through his teeth like it was killing him to say it, which it was. "Don’t let them hear you say that. They’re not the brightest bulbs in the shop, but you talk like that, you’ll end up under the ice on the Neva." The man bodged a connection with the hole left by the aerial, and hunted his pockets for a penknife. "What am I going to do?" "How rich are you?" He started scraping at the rust on a cast-iron waste pipe that ran the length of the cellar. "Can you raise ten million U.S. dollars?" "Ten? No, no, no… dear God, no." "Then they’re going to kill you." "Please, you have to help me. I don’t want to die here." "What can I do? I’m only a kid." The young man pasted the other end of the wire to the pipe with some conducting glue. He played with the phone, and held it out to Dalton. "It’s ringing." In a zombie-like state, Dalton pressed the phone to his ear. The receiver was picked up, and he listened to the welcome on the line. "Thank you for calling the National Weather Helpline, sponsored by Independent Nuclear Fuels, generating electricity for a cleaner environment. Please state which region you’d like a full forty-eight hour forecast for." He stared at the phone. He stared and stared until he was nudged in the ribs. "You’re going to have to say something to them." He raised the phone again, hearing only his own heartbeat. "Hello. Deborah? Yes, it’s Paul. Look, I’m in a fix, and I need to speak to Larry."     The door unlocked again, and Dalton shivered on his mattress. Perhaps they had found him out. Perhaps they were going to kill him now. It was the young man with the glasses, carrying his rucksack over one shoulder, and a heavy bundle of green cloth over the other. "Where’s Boris?" "Drinking and whoring. There’s not a lot else to do on these cold, dark nights." He shook out the army greatcoat he was carrying. "Put this on, or you’ll freeze to death." It was three sizes too big, which meant it fitted over Dalton’s own coat, and reached down as far as his ankles. His fingers struggled with the brass buttons. "Why are you helping me?" "Are you rather I didn’t?" "You work for these thugs. I suppose I didn’t expect this." "Just like you didn’t expect to be kidnapped. It still happened, and you were just as unprepared for that as you were to lie to save your skin." He opened his rucksack, and handed Dalton as greasy paper packet. Dalton inspected the contents suspiciously, and was none the wiser. "What are these?" "Pirozhki. I got them from the market. If you don’t want them…" He held up a bottle of vodka, and twisted the lid. The seal cracked, and the Russian sniffed. "Seems fine. It’s from the Liviz, so it should be unadulterated." Dalton bit into one of the warm pastry parcels. Inside was a mixture of rice and meat. "What’s your name?" "Petrovitch." "Thank you. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but they’re still going to kill me when the money doesn’t arrive." "Of course they are." Petrovitch upended the bottle and swigged. To Dalton, it was strange that someone so young was drinking. In his home state of Michigan, the age limit was twenty-one. "So what am I going to do?" "Die warm, fat and drunk." Petrovitch passed him the bottle. Dalton took it and gulped. His throat seared and gagged, but he swallowed anyway. His head grew light, and he sat on the mattress, eating his pirozhki and drinking the vodka. "You don’t seem like a gangster," he said. "It’s only a part-time job. Boris pays well, and I get to study in my spare time. The power’s often off, and he’s got his own generator. I find it difficult to read by candlelight." Petrovitch took the bottle back and had another nip. "Can’t you find anything else to do?" "Like what? All the soft money from the European Union dried up as soon as Armageddon started, as did all our immediate markets. We can barely feed ourselves, let alone export anything. The mighty United States of America decided to Reconstruct itself, and has only just realised that there’s an outside world it might like to trade with. What was I supposed to do? Starve? As jobs go, Boris is a pretty good employer." Petrovitch thrust the bottle back at Dalton. He was angry, and Dalton decided to apologise quickly. "Sorry." "I do blame you. You and your kind. Your country’s been navel-gazing and praying to God with your eyes shut for a decade while the rest of the world blew up. I get by the only way I know how." "So why take my side against Boris? Won’t he kill you, too?" "I’ve done nothing. You’re the only who’s lied so far." Petrovitch fastened his bag and swung it back over his shoulder. "Get some sleep. You’ll need to think fast if you want to stay alive."     His tongue was swollen in his mouth, and his eyelids were like sandpaper. Every time he moved his head, his inner ear told him that he ought to vomit. A boot nudged his arm, and he groaned. "Dalton? Gospodin Dalton?" Boris was leaning over him, and chuckling. His toe left Dalton’s prostrate body and kicked the empty vodka bottle. The grinding of the glass on the concrete floor sounded like heavy machinery. "Dobroe utro," he said, checking his watch. He hauled the American to his feet. "Walk, da?" Dalton staggered three steps, leaning heavily on his captor, before sinking to the ground again. Boris laughed and slapped him on the back. The force was sufficient to knock him down flat, and the sight of him sprawled like a stranded fish struck Boris as hugely amusing, and he called his two henchmen down to witness the hopeless foreigner who couldn’t hold his drink. After a while, he calmed down and lifted Dalton back onto his feet. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling imaginary hard currency between them. He looked in his pocket and handed him a piece of paper with strings of figures scribbled on it. Dalton was a banker, and he recognised account details when he saw them. Somewhere in Belize, there was a bank that was about to be sorely disappointed. He didn’t have ten million dollars to deposit anywhere. He nodded to show that he understood, and he heard Petrovitch being called. As the Russian attached the phone aerial to the sewer pipe, Dalton snatched a word with him. "What do I do?" "I’m half your age. If you haven’t worked it out by now, you don’t deserve to live." He gave him the handset. "Give your firm the bank details. Arrange for the transfer to be made just before close of business tomorrow." Dalton stood on a knife-edge. He had an uncontrollable urge to get down on his knees before Boris and beg for mercy, tell him that there was no money, and that he’d be his friend for life if he’d just let him go. Boris asked a question of Petrovitch, who shrugged and kicked Dalton in his unprotected shin. "Get on with it, or they’ll smell a rat." Dalton repeat dialled the weather information line, and listened to the friendly voice. "Deborah? It’s me, Paul. I’ve got the details. Pass me over to Larry. Yeah, I’m as good as can be expected. Get me Larry." Satisfied that all was going to plan, Boris stomped up the stairs, followed by his men. They left the door open, and Petrovitch made a gesture for Dalton to keep talking. "You recording this, Larry? Okay, I’ll give you the account where they want the money paid; it’s some slush fund in Belize. Ten million U.S., that’s right." Petrovitch was powering up a palmtop from his rucksack, and plugging in a portable scanner. He fetched out another lead, and slipped it into the back of the phone even as Dalton was holding it. "Don’t stop until I tell you," whispered Petrovitch. He held up a piece of paper on which he’d written: ‘You have stocks and bonds. Cash them. I need the money.’ Dalton faltered, then picked up again. He frowned and nodded, and indicated he wanted the pen. Petrovitch found a biro, and Dalton scribbled a question mark with his free hand. Petrovitch snatched the pen back. ‘Freedom costs,’ he wrote, then ate the paper to forestall any further argument. He reached through Dalton’s fingers and cut the connection, then dialled a local number. The speaker pinged with digital noise, putting Dalton off his stride. "Keep going. Someone’s posted at the top of the stairs." Petrovitch lifted the scanner to Dalton’s eye. A bright light sampled his retina, leaving him blinking away the after-image. Petrovitch crouched down and negotiated the liquidation of all the American’s savings. He came back once, for Dalton’s signature and his authorisation code. Meanwhile, Dalton was running out of things to say. "Repeat those numbers to me," he said. "I want to make sure you’ve got them right." He felt like an actor in a repertory company doing a read-through of unfamiliar lines. He glanced down at Petrovitch, who was busy doing illegal things to the First National Bank of Michigan. He caught sight of the amount he was losing, and blanched. He was being robbed blind by a man who had made no promises at all to keep him alive. It was over. Petrovitch flicked the palmtop off and began unravelling his cables. In a moment, everything was as it should be. One phone, one aerial extension. The Russian mimed an end by sawing at his pale throat, and Dalton stopped gabbling. "You’ve got all my money." "You can always make some more when you get home." "If I get home. I can’t trust you." "Dalton. Not now." Petrovitch took the phone and unclipped the aerial. "Can’t you call the cops?" Petrovitch laughed a short, harsh bark. "This is St. Petersburg." "You owe me, Petrovitch." "So you’ll die poor. Sue me." With that, he stalked back up the stairs, and the door slammed shut. The key was turned, and Dalton was left with nothing.     He spent the whole day in a state of high anxiety. One of the gunmen came and went with a ration of food, some water which he drank, and some vodka which he initially refused. He only accepted it when the Russian impugned his manhood in a series of increasingly obscene gestures. The truth be told, Reconstruction had changed him. Society had become quieter, more civilised, certainly more formal. Being drunk was not just frowned upon, it was punishable by both the criminal and civil code. He was not only unprepared to be kidnapped and ill-equipped to lie, he found himself being bullied into accepting situations that, had he been a stronger man, he would have resisted. He should have taken the bottle and smashed it in the man’s face, taken his gun and busted out by himself. At twenty, he wouldn’t have hesitated. At forty, he shrank away, and angrily threw the vodka on the mattress. Where was Petrovitch? Where was his money? Had he fallen foul of some scam-within-a-scam, where Boris knew that Hopkins-Wright would never pay up? Had he been suckered by the good-cop, bad-cop routine, or was Petrovitch working freelance? He stalked his prison, muttering to himself between mouthfuls of hard, black bread. He sounded like a man deranged, which was becoming increasingly true. He had only his life left to lose. There was no time in the cellar. He was alone with his circular thoughts. He tried calculating the time difference between St. Petersburg and Detroit, and then on to Belize. He used a rusty nail to scratch out his sums, and realised that it was still yesterday in the U.S. For him, tomorrow would be later on tonight. He had so much he had wanted to do. Retire at forty-five, get married to a much younger woman, send his genetically perfect kids to an Ivy League college. He’d busted his butt for his firm, and he’d already seen everything he worked for signed over to some itinerant hacker. Tonight he was going to die, and there’d be no-one to mourn his passing. There was nothing to do but wallow in self-pity and drink vodka.     He was still drunk when Boris arrived. "Gospodin Dalton, kak dela? Khorosho?" He dug his fingers into Dalton’s chin and lifted his head forcibly. He laughed at the red-rimmed eyes and the hopeless look seeping from them. He let go and patted him on the cheek. The gunmen were present at the foot of the stairs, and Petrovitch was busy wiring up the sewer again. Dalton looked twice, and the young man’s presence permeated his befuddled brain. Petrovitch was a dollar millionaire, yet he was still with the gangsters. "I see you’ve all come for your fun. See the stupid American get shot." "Dalton?" said Petrovitch, his calm tone at odds with his words. "Shut the fuck up. Now." He handed Boris his palmtop and dialled with Dalton’s phone for a net connection. "I’d just like to say that you’re all scheming bastards, and I hope you rot in hell." "It’s too cold for anything to rot, Dalton, even the excrement in your bucket. Watch and learn." Petrovitch talked Boris through the transfer procedure, how virtual money was bouncing through Belize to St. Petersburg, without anything actually changing hands, and that it was untraceable to boot. Boris understood the new ways. He liked them, especially when they made him rich. None of this nonsense of freighting suitcases of used notes and depositing them on park benches. Much better this way; quick, clean, and no-one important to him would get hurt. It grew tense and silent in the cellar. Even Dalton caught the feeling, something he didn’t expect at all. Petrovitch could have taken his money and vanished. But he was still here, and his motives were uncertain. Boris looked at his fine Swiss wristwatch, and peered at the screen. Petrovitch checked his own timepiece, a cheap plastic thing from China. Dalton swilled the last of the vodka around the bottom of the bottle and lifted it to his lips to drink. Petrovitch pointed to the screen. Boris smiled widely, showing all of his teeth, and ruffled Petrovitch’s hair. He gave a roar of triumph, and set off in a jig around the room. As he passed Dalton, he took the bottle and gulped the dregs down. "Boris is ten million U.S. dollars better off. He’s showing his thanks." The gunmen stepped forward. One of them had a blindfold. Dalton was in no state to resist. An arm whipped across his windpipe, and the cloth was roughly tied around his face. It was old, and it stank of fear. "You freaking bastards! You’re supposed to let me go now. Petrovitch, what have you done?" His hands were caught behind him, and a plastic cable tie zipped his wrists together. The empty vodka bottle was tapped across his temple, and stunned him into submission. He felt his feet leave the floor. He was over someone’s shoulder, and bouncing up the stairs. He could hear the Neva calling to him with its icy song. The time for resistance was long past; he could passively accept his fate, or rage inwardly. Nothing would alter the outcome. He flew, headfirst, and landed sprawling on something soft. The rear of a car; he’d know that smell anywhere. His legs were pushed to one side, and the car sank slightly. Someone had got in beside him. Two doors closed. There was now a driver who started the asthmatic engine and squealed away on slick concrete. They turned and turned and turned. Dalton tried to construct a map in his head, and ended up in knots. His brain couldn’t support the functions he required and so it subsided into a stupefied jelly, quivering but not thinking. He was manhandled over onto his belly. The bonds tying his wrists were severed with a single clean stroke of a blade, and the door against which his head was jammed sprung open. He was pushed out into a hard mound of pack ice, and by the time he sat up and dared to remove his blindfold, the car had gone, melting away into the night like a shadow. The lights were back on in St. Petersburg, and he watched the locals watching him, then moving on. Something was pressing into his right hand: he opened it, and saw a round metal token. "It’s a zheton," said a familiar voice behind him. "You use it on the Metro." "Petrovitch. What the hell just happened?" "You lived, much to my surprise." Dalton staggered to his feet, and scrambled over the snowdrift to the pavement. He was standing in front of the brightly lit entrance to a Metro station. Petrovitch, swaddled in a long coat and a fur hat down over his ears, was looking at the American. "What?" "You could be a bit more grateful. I saved your life." "It cost me a million bucks." "I didn’t realise your valued yourself so cheaply." Petrovitch turned and began to walk away. "Hey, wait. Where am I?" "Sennaya Ploshchad," said Petrovitch, still walking away. "I’m sorry. All right?" He stopped, and came back. "I’m trying to remember the expression to use for you." He ground his toe into the ice. "Ungrateful wretch, that’s it." "I said I was sorry." "Come on," said Petrovitch, "Let’s go before the Metro closes." He had a zheton, too, and let Dalton follow him through the lavishly decorated ticket hall to the barriers. He slotted his token into the machine, and pushed on. The escalators were enormous. They descended into the bowels of the earth, Petrovitch leaning on the moving handrail, Dalton sitting down on one of the treads. "How did you do that thing with the money?" Petrovitch made a self-deprecating shrug. "Not hard. Just faked it with graphics. Boris will find out in the morning that there was no deposit made, and by the time he tries to find me, I’ll be long gone." "Why did you do it? You had my stocks. You could have left then." "And Boris would have killed you with his bare hands. He does that, you know, puts his fingers around your throat and squeezes until you go blue. Sure, I could have taken the money, but I have a conscience, Dalton. Your million dollars was a consultancy fee, not robbery. I had hoped for more, but I took what I could in the time allowed." Dalton scratched at his stubble, and touched the bruise on his forehead. He ought to be angry, but he felt nothing. There was a gaping hole inside him. "I’ll have to report all this to the police." "Of course you will. You’ll get back to your hotel at about one in the morning. By the time you’ve explained to the receptionist that you really are a guest, they’ve checked all their records and the night manager has cleared you, you’ll be too exhausted to do anything but sleep. When you wake up, which will be around midday, it won’t seem so important anymore. Maybe you’ll talk to the police. Maybe you won’t. I won’t be in St. Petersburg, and I’m travelling under an assumed name anyway." He patted his rucksack. "I’ve bought myself a future." The escalator disgorged them at the echoing platform level. Dalton made to follow Petrovitch, who took his arm and pointed down a different tunnel. "Yellow train to Ploshchad Aleksandra Nevskovo. I’m off to the airport, and that’s on a different line." "What are you going to do, when you get where your going?" "I’m off to university. Physics. I booked a course today, using my new forged passport to get my flight. Off to a big city, where Boris will never find me." Dalton slowly extended his hand. "Goodbye, Petrovitch." "Take very good care of yourself, Mr. Dalton. Go home and stay home. I think it’ll be safer for everyone concerned." He turned Dalton around and gave him a shove in his back. "Last train in two minutes. You wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?" He didn’t. Dalton hurried off down to the platform and waited for the train to come screeching down the tracks at him. When it arrived, he collapsed into a seat and started to weep uncontrollably.