The whistle blew.

The train pulled out of the station and as it gathered speed Alexandre Voltov sat further back into his seat.  They knew, as surely as he sat hidden behind this morning's newspaper, they knew he was on this train heading west toward safety and freedom and they had come.  There would be no failures this time.  Alexandre knew they would not allow him to alight at the next stop.

But he must think fast.  To delay allowed them all the more time to check each compartment.  

The whistle blew.  

A chance!  The whistle signaled a tunnel approaching.  If the darkness covered him before they reached his compartment he may yet have a chance.  

The train thundered into the blackness at the very moment the compartment door opened.  

The whistle blew.

A window smashed and they felt the rushing, roaring of the air as it snapped through the broken glass.  In the near blackness, a flash of silver catches the eye, its shape familiar and many centuries old.  They, dressed in black robes, stumble onto a crumpled shape on the ground.

The whistle blew.

As the train leaves the tunnel, the group of priests, holding their crucifixes before them, find the body of Alexandre Voltov sprawled over the table, glass embedded in the lacerated knuckles of his dead hands, a look of hope frozen onto his face.

They don't see the demonic shape which possessed the man flying from the mouth of the tunnel away into the twilight.

The whistle blew.

They had failed.