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The Survivor



The train coming to a sudden stop jolted the man awake. He opened his eyes and winced.

Across the aisle, Colonel Paasonen stood up and straightened his tunic.

”I'll check it out”, he said.

The man in a dark suit nodded to him, not really feeling he was back in the world yet.

Outside the train, snow was falling. The grey-faced, balding man looked at the snowy landscape. Farther away, it was trees, and behind them fields. Closer to the train, though, there stood the burned husk of a building, with a legend in Russian on the side.

It was another abandoned railway station.

The man stared at the blackened pile of broken-up boards, silently crumbling under the white snow. Pretty soon now, there would not be anything to see there anymore. There would be nothing at all...

”Mister President.”

It was Paasonen, leaning towards him. He must have had nodded off again.

”It's sabotage, they say. Some harm has been done to the tracks. But they are sorting it out, and we'll soon be on our way again.”

The older man nodded, looking at the aide-de-camp with the slicked-back hair, his slightly southern features betraying his partly Hungarian heritage. The president had come to believe that he could not get along without Colonel Paasonen, not at all, and thus he had now denied the colonel's requests to take up a posting at the front for three times. The colonel was as smart and resourceful as he was tactful, and that was very important to the president who often these days was suffering from an ill temper as well as ill health.

”I have a message from Malmberg as well. The... event has been postponed for three hours. Something's happened at the German end.”

”Very well”, the president told his loyal aide.

It was indeed just as well, considering the delay their train was experiencing.

Pretty soon, he was asleep again.

The man stared at his hand. It was splattered with droplets of red. It took him while to understand what was happening.

He raised his head, to see the man in the carriage sprawled out in front of him, dead from a number of gunshot wounds. One of the richest men in Finland, killed in cold blood in front of his very eyes.

There was red everywhere.

The bastards were reloading their rifles.

”Now, Gerda!”, he shouted to his wife, grabbing her by the arm and taking off towards the trees, running.

Now, everything was moving in slow motion.

The man ran a few steps, and just like always, that was when he lost his grip on his wife's arm.

Like always, he didn't stop. He wanted to, he knew he should have, but he didn't.

He was running, hoping against hope that his wife was following him.

This time.

When the shots again rang out, the man knew nothing had changed.

”Mister President.”

It was Paasonen again. He nodded towards the window.

”Finland Station.”

So it was. The president looked out of the window, to see the grey ranks of Finnish soldiers outside, waiting for the official train of the President of the Republic. Behind the men who had fought hard to capture the city, along with Finland's German allies, stood a number of officers, General Malmberg in the centre. The Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish forces.

The president stood up, helped by Paasonen, and reached to get his cane. As if on que, there was his nurse as well, in her Lotta Svärd uniform, smiling reassuringly and giving him some of the medication Hitler had sent over.

Compliments of Dr. Morell.

It helped to dull the pain from his damaged spine. That it did.

As Ryti walked through the carriage, he wondered about Mannerheim. Clouded as his mind was, the president remembered the old General who had once dreamed of reconquering Petrograd from the Bolsheviks. This had been his city – if the world was in any way fair, this would have been his victory as well.

But the president had seen the White General die, too. In the hands of the Reds, like his wife had. In Tampere, in the explosion of the infernal machine at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the War of Liberty.

There had been a lot of red then, too.

A revenge for the man's treatment of the Finnish Socialists during and after the War of Liberty, it had been said.

Risto Ryti had always known that the treatment of the Reds in Finland had been exactly what they deserved.

As the president of Finland climbed down from the carriage, he could smell the smoke.

The great city was still burning.

The president was lost in his thoughts again, and his right foot almost slipped on the clean, white snow.

Ryti experienced a slight vertigo and felt his knees buckling under him. Deftly, Colonel Paasonen propped him up.

”Steady now, Mister President”, he said softly.

Yes, the older man thought, I need to keep my wits about me now.

After all, Hitler is waiting for me.

President Ryti raised his hand to greet the men and women who had been expecting him, and there under the slowly falling snow, he heard the band strike up the first chord of the March of the Pori Brigade.
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