Book Title: Last Train to Freedom
Series: n/a
Author: Deborah Swift
Publication Date: 8th May 2025
Publisher: HQDigital
Pages: 361
Genre: Historical Fiction
Any Triggers: WW2, so mild violence
Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/04/blog-tour-last-train-to-freedom-by-deborah-swift.html
Last Train to Freedom
by Deborah Swift
'Taut, compelling and beautifully written – I loved it!’ ~ DAISY WOOD
'Tense and thought-provoking' ~ CATHERINE LAW
1940. As Soviet forces storm Lithuania, Zofia and her brother Jacek must flee to survive.
A lifeline appears when Japanese consul Sugihara offers them visas on one condition: they must deliver a parcel to Tokyo. Inside lies intelligence on Nazi atrocities, evidence so explosive that Nazi and Soviet agents will stop at nothing to possess it.
Pursued across Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Express, Zofia faces danger at every turn, racing to expose the truth as Japan edges closer to allying with the Nazis. With the fate of countless lives hanging in the balance, can she complete her mission before time runs out?
‘Such an interesting and original book…. Informative, full of suspense and thrills.’
~ Netgalley Review
An Excerpt from Last Train to Freedom
Deborah Swift
Otto massaged his chest to try to relieve the tension. For more than a year he had done daily battle with the diplomatic mail in the quiet hush of this office. He’d watched spies and diplomats from every country come and go, and all had been received by Sugihara with a polite smile.
He suspected the time for smiling was over.
Sugihara’s diplomatic immunity would cease. Where would he, Otto, go then? He had a doctorate in East Asian languages and civilizations from Harvard but, still, this was his home. And if they had to move, what could he do about his mother? She wouldn’t want to leave. She barely went out of the front door now as it was.
He tidied the pens on his desk back into their pots, stacked his papers into a neat pile again, aware he was procrastinating. How he loved the painting above his desk! The vista of misty sky with a lone tiny figure set against milky half-hidden mountains. He liked the row of minute jade netsuke precisely arranged on the shelf above his desk, the little fox curled around its own tail, the jade frog, the little waterlily that opened to reveal a dragonfly, each one perfect, the size of a single typewriter key.
His eyes grew wet. It seemed strange to carry on as normal when it was all about to end. No, that would never do. He swallowed and stood up, turning to where Sugihara had returned to his desk to ask him if it was okay for him to go home.
Sugihara looked up at the scrape of Otto’s chair and gave him a nod. It was the same routine every day, and Otto was used to his employer’s manner of dismissal. Automatically, he shrugged on his jacket, despite the suffocating temperature, and headed for the door.
Voices beyond the window made him pause to look out and he stopped, a frown on his face. ‘What’s going on outside?’ he asked.
Sugihara came to stand beside him. Below the window a restless queue had formed, despite the late afternoon heat. A crowd dressed for winter, all with anxious faces, shuffling from foot to foot in the wash of low sun. Some carried luggage with them, and one old woman, her head bowed under a scarf, was sitting on her bags, obviously intent on being there for some time.
Sugihara’s eyes remained fixed on them. Without turning he said, ‘Would you mind going out there and asking them who they’re waiting for?’
Otto wasn’t keen on tackling this disturbance, but he could hardly refuse. His leather heels tapped briskly on the stairs as he descended and creaked open the wrought-iron gate at the front of the consulate. At his arrival, the crowd clustered like flies, but Otto closed the gate again and stayed firmly on his side of the barrier. The number of people made him uneasy, and he guessed they must be Jewish because one of the elderly men had the long sideburns, and most were talking in Yiddish. Jews were nothing new in Kaunas, about a quarter of the city’s total population was Jewish and they ran many of the city’s businesses with good-natured efficiency.
‘What is it? What do you want?’ Sweat formed around his collar.
Several men tried to answer all at once and he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Many seemed to be Poles or from other parts whose languages he couldn’t immediately grasp.
‘Slowly!’ he shouted. ‘One at a time.’
‘The Japanese consul is our last hope,’ yelled a wiry youth, gripping on to the metal railings.
‘We want the ambassador to issue transit visas to get us out of Lithuania.’ This older man was clearer and his Lithuanian better. The word ‘visas’ echoed through the crowd.
Otto held up a hand for quiet. ‘Why? What makes you think we can help?’
‘There’s a route to an island – Curaçao, somewhere in the Indies. A Dutch colony.’
It was a name he’d never heard of.
His blank look brought another tumble of words: ‘Vladivostok.’ ‘Shanghai.’ ‘Trans-Siberian Railway.’
‘We can pay,’ shouted a well-dressed woman in a dusty hat, two small children clamped to her skirts. ‘Please. We have to get out, or the Germans will kill us.’
Otto blinked. The Germans. Surely it was the Russians who were the problem right now. A burst of outrage in his chest at the insult to his father and his country of birth. ‘I don’t think we can help.’ He turned to go back inside but caught a glimpse of two men trying to climb, monkey-like, over the fence, and others pulling them back. If he didn’t do something, the whole building might be overwhelmed.
‘All right,’ he said, shouting over the hubbub in Lithuanian. ‘All right! Choose people to represent you. No more than five. Tomorrow five of you can have an appointment with Mr Sugihara to make your request. But only if the rest of you go away immediately.’
‘If we go, more will come,’ the young lad said morosely. ‘And we’ll lose our place in the queue. There are thousands on the way here.’
Thousands coming to queue. For what? Otto felt himself waver. He tried a shooing gesture with his hands. ‘Move away from the fence!’
Nobody moved. They remained stubbornly where they were.
‘We won’t move until we’ve spoken to the consul.’ This man in the grimy yellow cravat had steel in his eyes, and a belligerent tone. Otto took a step back. He felt like an exhibit in a zoo with all these people staring in. He was reluctant to turn his back on them in case they swarmed over, but he mustered his dignity, braced himself, and returned upstairs.
Sugihara was still at the window, calmly looking out, one finger holding open the blind. ‘They look tired, these people.’
‘From what I can make out, they’ve heard we can issue visas to get them through Russia to Japan. They’re fleeing the German army.’
Universal Buy Link: http://mybook.to/TransSiberian
Deborah used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV and enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction, something she loved doing as a scenographer. She likes to write about extraordinary characters set against a background of real historical events. Deborah lives in England on the edge of the Lake District, an area made famous by the Romantic Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Website: www.deborahswift.com
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Thank you so much for hosting Deborah Swift today, with an intriguing excerpt from her riveting new novel, Last Train to Freedom.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club