Blue Damask Read Online Free PDF

him.
         “Tell me about your mother,” she whispered.
         The whistle blew before he could answer, with his body or his mouth.  The train jerked and slowed.  Elsa leaned in front of Sonnenby to see out the window.  They were approaching another station. She sat back and looked up at him.
         “Your mother?”
         His face darkened and he paused before he spoke.  “I am not sure how asking personal questions will further your career.”
         Elsa shifted nimbly away from mother.  “You were decorated in the war.  You fought at Gallipoli.  Afterwards you were sent to Egypt to work for Intelligence.  You were assigned as a translator.  Your superiors gave you high marks for—“
         “No.”
         Elsa stopped.  They both sat in silence as the train slowed to a crawl and wooden buildings appeared outside the window.  She started again. “You were sent to the hospital for a wound in your side.  You were shot, I believe.”
         His eyes unfocused.  “Yes,” he said softly as if being struck with a bullet was a pleasant memory like an afternoon tea party or a day fishing on the river.  She very slowly leaned across the aisle and retrieved her notebook and pencil.
         “Go on,” she murmured as she turned the pages silently to get to the blank ones.
         His eyes glittered.  There was noise from the outside platform as passengers departed and boarded.  A short whistle warned that the train would soon continue.
         Elsa said, “You had been shot.”
         He turned to her.  “I was.”
         “But they moved you to the psych ward.”  She waited for him to continue.
          He just looked down at her.  This time his face was composed with a kind of sympathy.  She frowned and set her pencil down.  Sympathy?  No.  She did not see a true caring there.  It was more like resignation that she would never understand, and any further explanation would be a waste of time.
         Carefully she asked, “Did they put you in restraints right away?”
         “No,” he answered.  His voice was honey-slow but his eyes darted over the station and the passengers outside the window.
         She noted this.  She tensed.  She glanced at the curtains that separated the chamber from the narrow corridor where, hopefully, Davies remained at his post.  Sonnenby would not be able to leap through either window.  She wondered what he planned to do.  She could see the muscles of his thighs harden beneath his trousers and his feet moved, testing the length of the hobble.
         “Were you drugged?”  She pretended to take notes.
         “Yes,” he dragged the word out like he was in an opium dream, still watching the scene outside.
         Elsa tucked her pencil into the gutter of her notebook and slowly closed it.  His shoulders moved under the canvas.  She had a vague sense of having made a terrible mistake just before he swung his body like a lever.  He pushed himself over backwards and pinned her to the seat beneath him as he lifted both legs in tandem, bent the knees and struck the window with both feet together.  The widow shattered and broken glass bounced on the seat and floor around her.
         Elsa tried to breathe but Sonnenby’s weight pressed against her chest.  She twisted her arms and pushed.  He rocked and with the unintended help of her arms, righted himself and threw his shoulders against the opposite side of the seat.  He bent over his knees and she saw that he had freed one hand by putting his legs through the loosened arms of the jacket.  His fingers nimbly unbuckled one of the hobbles and he was out the window before she finished drawing in her breath.  The sliding door banged as Davies lunged through it.  He followed Sonnenby out the window with a daring leap, crunching the shards on the platform beneath his boots and pounding after him.
         Marshall entered, his face red with