Chapter 6 - PLATFORM NINE
Z
The archivist wouldn't tell me what was inside the sealed notebook.
She couldn't.
The restriction had been filed by my father's estate attorney, and the instructions were explicit: no access before the seventh anniversary of his death unless a court order authorized it.
Three days.
I had waited seven years.
I could wait three more.
At least, that was what I told myself.
Outside the library, I called Nikolai.
He answered on the first ring.
“Did you find something?”
“My father left a sealed collection at the university. I can access it in three days.”
“What's in it?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he leave instructions?”
“Only the restriction.”
Nikolai was silent for a moment.
“Aria, I need to tell you something.”
I stopped walking.
“Go ahead.”
“Elena's disappearance wasn't the first time someone connected to the contract vanished. A clerk named Pavel Orlov disappeared two months before your father's accident.”
“Was he connected to the shipment?”
“Yes. He handled document registration.”
“Did anyone look for him?”
“My father did. The investigation went nowhere.”
“And you?”
“I was twenty-five. I believed the explanation I was given.”
“What explanation?”
“That Pavel had taken money and fled.”
“Did he?”
“We don't know.”
I looked toward the street.
“That's becoming a theme.”
“I'm aware.”
I heard the strain in his voice. It was the first time he sounded less like a man in command and more like someone who had inherited a story full of holes.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because the photograph you received mentions platform nine. Pavel was last seen at a train station.”
“Which station?”
“Penn Station. Platform nine.”
I felt the cold creep up my arms.
“Was my father there?”
“We don't know.”
“Then how did the person who sent the photograph know to mention it?”
“That's what I want to find out.”
I closed my eyes.
“I'm going to the station.”
“Not alone.”
“I knew you'd say that.”
“I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you not to walk into a situation someone may have prepared for you.”
I hated that he was right.
“Fine. But no bodyguards hovering over me.”
“I'll send Samuel Reed. He can wait at a distance.”
“Reed is the investigator who gave me the accident report?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I trust him?”
“You shouldn't. Yet.”
I sighed.
“You really need a better answer than that.”
“I'm working on it.”
***
Penn Station was crowded and bright.
People hurried past with suitcases and paper cups, their faces fixed on the ordinary urgency of getting somewhere.
I stood near platform nine and looked at the departure board.
Nothing seemed unusual.
No one was watching me.
No one approached.
For ten minutes, I almost convinced myself the message had been a cruel prank.
Then I noticed the newsstand.
A man in a gray coat stood beside it, reading a newspaper.
He was in his sixties, with white hair and a slight stoop.
When I walked past, he spoke in Hungarian.
“Your father said you'd come eventually.”
I stopped.
The man folded the newspaper.
“Don't turn around,” he continued. “Walk toward the stairs. There's a coffee shop across the concourse. Sit at the table nearest the window.”
My heart hammered.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who made a mistake a long time ago.”
“That's not a name.”
“No. It's a warning.”
I wanted to demand answers.
Instead, I walked toward the stairs.
The coffee shop was packed. I found the table he had described and sat down.
Three minutes later, the man appeared.
He placed a paper cup in front of me and took the opposite chair.
“My name is Pavel Orlov.”
I stared.
The missing clerk.
The man everyone believed had fled with money.
“You're alive.”
“Unfortunately, that has never been a reliable measure of safety.”
I glanced around.
“Why are you here?”
“Because Elena contacted me. She said Thomas Montgomery's daughter had become involved.”
“How do you know my father?”
Pavel looked toward the window.
“Your father translated a document that was meant to disappear. He discovered the translation submitted under his name was false. He wanted to correct it.”
“Then why didn't he?”
“He tried.”
“Was he killed because of it?”
Pavel's face tightened.
“I cannot prove that.”
“Do you believe it?”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
The answer hit me with the force of a physical blow.
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Who did it?”
“I don't know. I know who had the opportunity. I know who benefited. But I never saw the person who tampered with his car.”
“Why didn't you go to the police?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“The evidence disappeared. My statement was altered. The officer assigned to the case was transferred. Then someone left a photograph of my daughter outside my apartment.”
I swallowed.
“What happened to your daughter?”
“She lives abroad now. She believes I abandoned her.”
His voice broke on the last word.
For a moment, the noise of the station seemed to fade.
Then he placed a small key on the table.
“Your father gave me this the week before he died. He told me to keep it until his daughter was old enough to understand what it meant.”
I stared at the key.
“Understand what?”
“That the truth isn't always a document. Sometimes it's the person who remembers what was changed.”
He stood.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere I can keep breathing.”
“You can't just tell me my father may have been murdered and walk away.”
He looked at me with tired eyes.
“I can, because I've spent seven years learning that surviving is not the same as being brave.”
Then he walked away.
I sat motionless until my coffee went cold.
When I finally called Nikolai, he answered immediately.
“I found Pavel Orlov.”
There was a long silence.
“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
“Did he give you anything?”
I looked at the key.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A key.”
“To what?”
“I don't know yet.”
Nikolai exhaled.
“Aria, listen carefully. Don't take it anywhere until we know what it opens.”
I closed my fingers around the metal.
“I think it opens something my father wanted me to find.”
“Then we'll find it carefully.”
I looked across the crowded station.
For seven years, I had believed the story of my father's death was finished.
May you like
Now I understood that it had been interrupted.
And someone had spent all that time making sure no one could finish it.
