Trans-Siberian Express

by Warren Adler

Overview

An epic tale about a land and a people Winston Churchill declared, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

American cancer specialist, Dr. Alex Cousins is on a covert mission to the USSR. He is tasked with prolonging the life of Soviet Politburo Chief, Viktor Moiseyevich Dimitrov, who is suffering from advanced stage leukemia. But the tenuous confidence between the unlikely colleagues is shattered one night as Alex accidentally discovers Dimitrov's diabolical plans for a nuclear strike on China. Alex soon finds himself dispatched, homeward bound, on a six thousand mile journey aboard the Trans-Siberian Express; long enough, Alex realizes, to silence him from alerting the U.S. of the imminent destruction.

Reluctant, at first, to embark upon the journey, Alex is beckoned into the Siberian expanse by memories of his grandfather, Aleksandr Kuznetzov, who wove tales of magic and mystery into this seemingly desolate place. As the train lumbers east across snow-cloaked mountains, glimmering past a forest glow, watchful eyes rest on the American doctor. Surrounding him are people beaten and broken by life, each drawn to this emperor of trains in search of a brighter future. But most curious is Anna Petrovna Valentinova, the hauntingly beautiful history professor and Alex's alluring travelling companion. As Anna captivates Alex with illusions of her homeland, a passionate romance transcending political barriers unfolds under KGB surveillance.

A train attendant yearns for love, a deformed man seeks revenge on an old enemy, and a persecuted Jewish couple runs to a new home as the Trans-Siberian Express roars onward through a cavern of hopes and memories, coloring its tracks with tales of love, loss and nuclear intrigue from one end of Russia to the other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629212975
Publisher:	Rosetta Books
Publication date:	12/20/2013
Pages:	418
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.93(d)

Read an Excerpt

An early spring sun, all light and no warmth, was slipping behind the gargoyled, columned mass of the Yaroslav station as the black Zil pulled smoothly up to its main entrance. The policeman posted there stiffened as he noticed the large, official-looking car. The driver and his companion in the front seat, both small-eyed, high-cheekboned Slavs, got out and talked briefly with the policeman. Then they returned, pulled several pieces of baggage from the trunk and strode swiftly inside the station. Immediately the second car, a Chyka, pulled up. Five tall, dark-suited, somber men quickly emerged and fanned out. Two positioned themselves on either side of the entrance, conspicuous in their alertness, while the others walked through the station entrance and disappeared into the converging crowd of people. Inside the Zil, Alex Cousins glanced at his watch. It was 4:15. The train was scheduled to leave at five, precisely five, Zeldovich had said confidently. “They will take care of the details,” Zeldovich assured him. “Thank you,” Alex responded in Russian. He had no illusions about Zeldovich. It had been an uneventful trip from the dacha near Barvikla. Viktor Moiseyevich Dimitrov, the sixty-nine-year-old General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, had been expansive at lunch. His appetite had returned along with his color, and he had stuffed himself with huge portions of black bread and globs of sour cream heaped on top of deep bowls of borscht. The chemotherapy was working, Alex had observed, his doctor’s pride expanding as he reviewed the charted progress and the past six weeks of endless diagnosis, observation and treatment. Atbest, the disease was tricky, and as cunning as a jungle beast. Acute myeloblastic leukemia was a microscopic war between the proliferating white cells and the rapidly weakening red cells in Dimitrov’s blood. And the reds had been losing. Now Dimitrov, alert again, was no longer in the depressed manic state Alex had initially encountered. At lunch a waiter had brought a fat bass, broiled brown and dripping with butter. Dimitrov had watched its arrival, smiling broadly with boyish pride. Alex had been allowing him out to fish again in the Moscow River, which meandered a few yards from the rear of the dacha. Fishing was Dimitrov’s one passion, aside from the exercise of power, and returning to it had restored the General Secretary’s buoyancy, reassuring him that he had been snatched, however temporarily, from the grave. Alex had only picked at the fish. Despite his anxiety, he was excited by the prospect of this Siberian journey. Although, under different circumstances, he now would have been searching back in time, with all the emotion that nostalgia engenders, to prepare his mind for the mystique of the adventure. “It is a legacy of the soul,” his grandfather, that old Siberian fox, would have said. But to begin such a journey under duress seemed, somehow, incongruous, against the grain.

Editorial Reviews

Warren Adler's characters and descriptions are drawn so vividly you can't help but feel more a passenger swept up by the intrigue, the sounds, and the smells of the train than you do simply as an observant reader.

Clive Cussler

Highly recommended.

Library Journal

A tale packed stiff with intrigue, violence and surprise.

Publisher's Weekly