Keeping a secret

By Rick Hartford

“Please don’t leave,” she said.

He looked at her, his eyes sparkling.

“Eve, darling. Just wait in our suite in the railroad car,” he said. "I will return just before the train leaves the station.

“Trust me. Everything will be all right.”

It didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right. It was at that moment she could see the future so clearly, like a photograph being developed in a tray in a dark room under blood red light.

And then he was gone.

The train arrived, white steam billowing into the black air.

Passengers disembarked. Mostly working men still black faced from the coal mine, carrying their lunch pails.

There were a few more departures: an elderly woman with a parrot in a cage, a mime in makeup, still making ridiculous faces and hand gestures.

How could anyone suffer those people, Eve wondered. Then she thought that perhaps she was jealous of them. They were free to say what they wanted, while she was sworn to eternal silence. On impulse, she gestured to the mime and he came to her and she whispered in into his ear.

That’s what spies do to keep secrets safe. They share them with someone who will never reveal them.

Mimes and dead men.

People were now boarding the train.

She noticed four men with dead eyes and black leather attache cases.

Company men.

Trevor would not be far behind.

God Damn him.

Trevor.

With his smarmy ways, his fake grimace making him look like a mule eating briars.

It was foggy on the landing and only two people remained outside. Lovers having a last embrace. They hung onto to each other for the longest time, making Eve’s heart ache.

Wishing it was she and him.

There was the beam of a flashlight sweeping the platform. It blinded Eve and before she realized it there were two officials from the railroad in front of her.

“‘Madam,” one of them said. “Why aren’t you in your cabin? It’s departure time.

“What business is it of yours,” she said.

She turned into the entrance to the ladies room at the station. They blocked her. “There are facilities on the train,” the second man said, taking her arm.

“You’re hurting me!” she screamed. “Someone help me! I’m being kidnapped!”

But there was no one left to intervene. They frog marched her to her cabin and pushed her inside.

There were the Company men, lounging on the couch, the bed. One of them was standing. He lit a cigarette and put it in the side of his smirk.

“Trevor wants to speak with you,” he said.

The train started to move out of the station, picking up speed. The Orient Express heading deep into the night.

As if on cue the door opened and Trevor stepped in. She turned to him.

“He’s not coming back, I’m afraid,” Trevor said. “But before he passed he convinced us you alone had the code.”

“The code,” she repeated softly, as if she was in a trance.

Her hands were in her muff. She felt the reassuring point of the poison needle in her fingers.

Just as she was about to plunge the cyanide into her artery there was a loud crashing outside the door.

“What the…” one of the Company men said, lurching up and opening the cabin door into the hallway.

It was the mime.

He had a crooked smile as he held up his hands, pretending to have a pistol in each, finger pointed, thumb pulled back.

Then he pulled the “trigger” on both imaginary pistols and blew the smoke from the front of the imaginary barrel.

The Company men literally died laughing.

Her lover and fellow spy now stood in the doorway, real smoke coming from his automatic.

Trevor leapt to an open window and jumped into the darkness below.

Eve and her lover linked arms. “To the dining car, my love,” he said.

They turned and walked down the corridor, the mime putting his imaginary revolvers into their holsters.

The code would be safe with the mime.