William Alexander Scoales

Train Out of Romania William Alexander Scoales

The year is 1976. Romania is under Communist control. The Second World War has been over for some thirty years. Just not all of it, such as the train leaving Bucharest Station for Western capital cities is noticed by a cell of Marquis, the underground resistance active in France during WWII. Especially the accompanying photograph of one of the train's passengers. The aging fighters that had somehow survived the German occupation make a long awaited move to make positive identification of the passenger in the photograph. They are long in the tooth and long in memory of wartime events that are impossible to dismiss. As the train reaches the Italian border, an American investigator living in a small village just outside Paris finds himself a material witness to murder. The murder proves to be a tripwire that explodes and release chaos which in turn connects the murder to the train passenger, the French Resistance fighters, and the American and his newly acquired aristocratic clients. As the train moves across Italy and France, the bizarre mix of characters are moved about on the game board of these two countries like chess pieces and play out the "Game" that, just like war, doesn't seem able to find its end.