Heart Strike (Project Kobra Book 3)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “She’s second-generation American. Her family are from Cuba.” Mischa grinned. “She’s a volcanologist.”

  Ilari’s eyes narrowed once more. “Not in love, huh?”

  “Nope.” It was easier to deny it, this time. “I’d be a fool to fall in love with an American, wouldn’t I?”

  “You would,” Ilari said heavily. “What’s the uncle’s name?”

  “Step-uncle,” Mischa said. “From Chernobyl. He lived in the city for years before heading to Britain to be educated.”

  “Most of the classic Muscovites got their education at Oxford and Cambridge,” Ilari said, his tone cranky. “Lorded it over us Ukrainians like their shit didn’t stink.”

  “This is just a man,” Mischa said, resisting the temptation to point out that he had been educated at Cambridge, too. “Elijah Aslan.”

  Ilari waved away a cloud of smoke. “Fine Ukrainian name,” he observed.

  “He probably changed it,” Mischa said.

  “Aslan…Aslanov…” Ilari said thoughtfully. He stirred. “Go kiss this woman you’re not falling in love with. Get it out of your system, then come back and give me a decent game, hey?”

  “And good day to you, too,” Mischa told him and left. He tried to suppress the eagerness building in him. Then he gave up and settled for not grinning like an idiot as he headed back to the apartment and Piá.

  [6]

  Civil Registry Office, Kiev.

  “What did you call this place?” Fabian asked Mischa, as they headed for the white building. It was a strangely shaped building which, from the side, reminded Fabian of a reversed and shallow bell curve. It skimmed from end to end in a graceful dip, with golden highlighting along the roofline exaggerating the curve.

  There were many steps climbing to the front doors placed at the narrow end of the building, which Mischa was heading for.

  “It’s called the Wedding Palace,” Mischa told her. “It’s the civil registration center for the Kiev area, which includes Chernobyl. If your uncle was born there, he’ll show up in the records here.”

  She stared at the building, stunned. “Well…that’s a lot simpler than I figured it would be.”

  “What were you expecting?” Mischa asked, sounding amused. “Were you planning on going from door to door, asking about him?”

  “Something like that. I thought, as he was from Chernobyl, there would be no records left. Not that normal people could access.”

  “They had computers in the 1980s, you know.” Now he was openly laughing at her. “They were even networked, sometimes.”

  Fabian gave up and laughed, too. “I was barely born…” she said defensively.

  Mischa rounded on her. “Oh, you are a babe in the woods, aren’t you? Or are you deliberately trying to make me feel old?”

  “Why? How old are you?” she said. Then, “I mean…sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I take it back.”

  “I’ll tell you, if you tell me.” He rested his boot on the first of the many steps up to the front door, his hand on his knee. “Let me guess. If you were ‘barely born’, that makes you…thirty-three.”

  She pursed her lips. “I did give it away,” she pointed out. “And you?”

  “I’m ten years older.”

  “Impossible,” she breathed. “You don’t look forty-three.”

  “No? How is forty-three supposed to look?”

  “I suppose, ten years older than me?”

  He laughed. “Then I am well ahead of the curve, because you look like a dewy twenty-three-year-old.” He traced her cheek with his finger. “Very edible,” he added.

  The touch of his finger sent little sparks to her heart and made it flutter.

  Mischa picked up her hand. “Come along. I’ll have to translate for you.”

  He didn’t race up the stairs the way average people did, either. He took them at the same pace as she did, which was turtle speed. Yet he made it seem perfectly normal.

  It was difficult to avoid liking him. Fabian reminded herself one more time that she was encouraging him because he made looking for Aslan enormously less complicated. It didn’t help that he was making the process fun, too. She felt as though she was on a treasure hunt, like the ones at kids’ birthday parties. Unravel the first clue, go to where it says to go and find the next.

  The next clue would be to confirm Aslan was in the records and did come from Chernobyl. After that, she wasn’t entirely sure what the next step would be. She suspected Mischa would know.

  Mischa spoke to the receptionist, who sat behind an iron grille. He leaned on the counter and smiled warmly at her. Then he pulled out his wallet and pulled out one of the pink two-hundred hryvnia notes.

  “Let me pay for it,” Fabian said quickly, pulling her own wallet out of her coat pocket. She had converted a lot of money to the Ukrainian currency in Odesa, because credit cards were far too traceable.

  Mischa waved her away, still talking to the receptionist. “There is a way to do this,” he added in a fast aside. He rested his hand on the counter, with the two hundred hryvnia curled inside his fingers. The receptionist glanced at it, then away. She replied.

  Mischa pushed the note toward her. She slipped it beneath the counter and tapped at her computer.

  An interior door buzzed and unlocked itself.

  “Spasybi,” Mischa added.

  Fabian knew that meant thank you.

  He picked up her hand and opened the interior door. “I arranged a private room,” he murmured under his breath. “Room seventeen, down the corridor on the left, she said.”

  “That was a bribe?” Fabian asked. “Two hundred!”

  Mischa gave a soft laugh. “It’s not even ten US dollars,” he told her. “And you should think of it more as encouragement than bribery. Civil servants always feel they are not paid enough. Without encouragement, they turn into petty tyrants. The woman could have easily declared that non-Ukrainians cannot consult the records.”

  “The records are for Ukrainians only?” Fabian said, startled.

  “Of course not. They’re public records. Anyone can access them. Here we are.” He opened the door with Cyrillic characters on it. Even the digits were unreadable here, Fabian realized, feeling even more grateful that Mischa was with her.

  The room was small. A narrow bench across the back of it held an old-style monitor with the huge, curvy back end, a keyboard and a mouse, both with wires. Fabian sighed when she saw the keyboard was covered in Cyrillic characters. There wasn’t even roman lettering in smaller letters beneath it.

  “God, I would have given up already if you weren’t here,” Fabian said. “I thought getting around in Iceland was difficult, with that tongue twister language of theirs, but they at least use the Latin alphabet—mostly. I’ve never felt so ignorant in my life and I’m a doctor!”

  “Of volcanoes,” Mischa added. He turned her to face him, as the door of the little room swung shut behind them. “I am with you, okay?” He took her face in his hands. “Okay?” he repeated.

  Fabian drew in a breath. Let it out. “Okay,” she said. “But—”

  “No buts,” he said quickly. “Think of it this way. Fate threw you off balance just when I was there, because it knew you needed me. And here I am, helping. Take the help and think of it as Karma catching up with you and rewarding you for all the good I know you’ve done in your life.”

  Guilt touched her, as she stared into his eyes. They were so blue, this close, it was mesmerizing.

  Perhaps she should come clean and tell him who she really was.

  Mischa let her face go and pulled out the plastic chair. “You sit. I type.”

  “Standing?” She settled in the chair, glad to rest her knee.

  “I can bend.” He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and bent in a sharp ninety degrees and nearly rammed his chin on the top of the monitor. “Perhaps I should lean, instead,” he said, as Fabian laughed. He straightened and stabbed the enter key on the keyboard.

  The monitor
came to life and showed a screen of options, all of them indecipherable.

  “Birth certificates,” Mischa decided. He moved the mouse and clicked.

  An empty form came up.

  “Year of birth? Do you know that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then we’ll have to search by last name.”

  “Is that an issue?”

  “There will be quite a few Aslanovs to go through.”

  “Aslanov?”

  “Aslan is not a Ukrainian name,” Mischa said. “He most likely anglicized it when he left Ukraine.”

  “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “That is why I am here, remember?” He pecked out the last name with his forefinger and hit enter a few more times, then waited, watching the screen.

  The screen filled with a long list of names. Fabian presumed they were names because there was a capitalized word, a comma, then another capitalized word, or two or three of them. The characters in the brackets beside the names were likely the digits for the year of birth.

  “He wasn’t born this year, so…” Mischa scrolled. “You said he was a teenager when Chernobyl blew?”

  “I got that impression, yes. He didn’t talk about it a lot.” Fabian recalled the dry records with their gaping holes and few facts.

  “Let’s presume he was nineteen, then, and move up from there.” He scrolled and scrolled, then slowed the revolving roster of names. “Mmm… More than I thought.” He scrolled a line at a time, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Fabian tried to shake off the sensation of powerlessness circling through her and be grateful instead that Mischa was here, the way he had suggested. He certainly didn’t seem to mind having to do all the work.

  “Here. Ilari Miroslav Aslanov. Born 1970. That would have made him sixteen when Chernobyl blew. The timing is right.”

  “Ilari?” Fabian repeated.

  “It’s Russian for Elijah,” Mischa said. “It’s a common name,” he added. He clicked on the name.

  The computer chewed over the request for long seconds. An individual record popped up, still completely unreadable to Fabian.

  “Ilari Miroslav Aslanov, born Pripyat, Ukraine. December 1970. Hello…”

  “What?”

  “His parents were both Russian.” He glanced at Fabian. “Actual Russian. St. Petersburg. Father is listed as a chemist.”

  Fabian jumped. “Yes, that’s what Aslan—what Uncle Elijah was, too.”

  “I think we’ve found him.” He scanned the screen. “Do you want a printout of this?”

  “Yes…or does that require more encouragement?” she asked warily.

  “It’s just a button.” He moved the mouse and the blue button depressed. A small hour glassed turned over and over, as the computer printed the record. The screen came back to the entry.

  “Done,” Mischa said softly.

  Fabian glanced at the time on the bottom of the screen. “Twenty minutes. I’m…stunned.”

  Mischa straightened and stretched the small of his back. “You’ve only confirmed he was born here,” he said. “If you really want to know about him, you’ll have to find out where he lived when he was in Kiev. You can’t go to Chernobyl, of course.”

  Fabian nodded. “I guessed that much. I don’t really want to know about when he was a boy, so much as I want to know what he got up to while he was here. I’m not sure how to go from a confirmed birth to finding traces of him in Kiev. Was there an emergency shelter or something for the Chernobyl victims?”

  “Dozens of them,” Mischa said absently. “Their records will only say he was in one of them and was released on a certain date.” He considered, frowning. “What do you know about his time here?”

  “I know he got mixed up with the wrong people. Gangs, I think.”

  “The gangs were all controlled by the Russian mob, back then,” Mischa said. His frown cleared. “I know who we can ask.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend of mine. Let’s get your birth certificate.” He took her hand.

  At the front counter, the receptionist slid Fabian’s printout over without comment. Mischa thanked her and handed Fabian the sheet.

  Fabian folded it and put it in her inside pocket.

  Mischa led her back outside and headed for where he had parked his car. “You don’t use a handbag the way every woman I’ve ever known does,” he pointed out.

  “No,” she admitted awkwardly, bracing herself for the usual long explanation. No one understood this one, especially women.

  “Is that because of your knee? A bag throws off your balance?”

  Surprised, she glanced at him. “Yes,” she admitted.

  He nodded, with a contented expression. He had unraveled the mystery to his satisfaction. He didn’t ask any of the usual questions about how did she carry around all the usual stuff women carried? Where did she keep her lipstick? The kitchen sink?

  Fabian eyed the distinctive Mercedes symbol in the grillwork of the compact red car as Mischa unlocked it. “I thought you would drive a Lada or something. Isn’t a Mercedes…I don’t know…un-Russian?”

  “What do you drive?” he asked, over the top of the car.

  “I don’t,” she said shortly. “Not anymore.”

  He drew in a breath. “I didn’t realize.” He grimaced. “That must be limiting.”

  “Yes.” Her throat tightened.

  Mischa’s smile eased back. “What did you drive, before?”

  She rolled her eyes. “A Kia.”

  “Un-American,” he shot back.

  She laughed and eased into the passenger seat.

  “We’ll have to cross the river.” Mischa started the car. “How would you like some Starbucks coffee?”

  “They have Starbucks here?” she said, astonished. “That’s not what I heard.”

  He shook his head. “Kredens Café. Better than Starbucks, or so I’m told by those who drink the stuff.”

  He drove back across the river, using one of the many bridges, and veered into dense traffic. It felt like a downtown area, with pedestrians and modern office buildings.

  Fabian sniffed mightily as they stepped inside the café, which felt and looked so familiar it might as well have been Starbucks. The smell of espresso was delicious. “I guess, once you’re hooked on caffeine…” she said self-consciously when she realized Mischa was laughing silently.

  While he ordered coffee and tea, Fabian looked around at the customers drinking lattes and espresso, talking in fast Ukrainian. Many of them were drinking tea. Fabian nearly laughed aloud, for the tea bags weren’t secured by a string and tag but, were actually held to one side of the bowl-shaped cup by a wooden peg.

  Back at the car, Mischa split a pastry oozing with dark, glazed jam and handed her one half. “It might be a late lunch, by the time we’re done,” he warned her.

  She took a bite, then a sip of the coffee and sighed.

  “Bliss,” he said, watching her. His eyes danced.

  “Yes,” she admitted, then bit into the pastry again. She was starving—which was unusual, these days.

  Mischa put his cup into the cup holder between their seats and drove out of the busy city center into an area which seemed a lot older. There were towering buildings—apartment blocks, Fabian realized. Only, each big tower was painted a bright color, including the roof. Yellows, reds, greens and blues.

  “Those are old Soviet building complexes,” Mischa said. “The Ukrainians are sensible and won’t tear them down, for housing is always at a shortage in Kiev. So they paint them, instead, to make them Ukrainian. Tourists love to take photos of them, too, which doesn’t hurt.”

  “They’re very…well, jolly,” Fabian admitted.

  “If you like color, I should take you into Vozdvyzhenka Barrio.” He wheeled the car around an intersection and slid into a space between a truck and a car, earning him a horn blast from the car. “In America, the old houses there with all the colors…they call them something.”


  “The Painted Ladies? Old Victorian and Edwardian houses.”

  “Yes. Those. Well, Vozdvyzhenka puts them all to shame. It is really something to see. But not today.”

  She was silently glad they would not be traipsing over a barrio today. Already, her leg was aching. She was glad to sit for a while.

  The colorful buildings gave way to gray, unadorned buildings and a far less salubrious area. Mischa turned corners in narrow streets, some of which wound in curves.

  He came to a halt on the edge of a street which was still cobbled, with a gutter running down the center. He glanced up and down the street, then glanced in the mirror to check behind. “This isn’t an area to leave a car sitting unattended, although we shouldn’t be too long.”

  He got out and came around to hold the door for her, making Fabian blush, which seemed to please him. “It is so simple to fluster you.” His smile grew warm. “And fun, too.”

  “I’m glad someone is entertained,” Fabian said dryly.

  He carefully locked the car, then moved down the road. There was no formal sidewalk. The cobbles ran right up to the sides of the buildings. They walked along the edge of the cobbles. Mischa didn’t take her hand, this time.

  Fabian noticed the absence with a touch of regret.

  He stopped at a door with a low concrete step beneath it and a small plaque above it. “Keep your coat buttoned and your hands in your pockets,” he advised her.

  Alarmed, Fabian thrust her hands into her pockets.

  Mischa pushed the door open. She followed him in.

  [7]

  Desniansky GUMVS, Kiev.

  an interior door was just inside, with glass panels starred with cracks. The glass would have fallen out long ago, except for the wire embedded in the pane’s interior.

  Mischa pushed the door open and held it for her. Warily, she moved inside and glanced around.

  Old, scratched wooden benches with slat backs. Despondent people slumped upon them. More people standing at counters protected by iron bars. Men in uniform behind the bars.

  There were enough similarities for Fabian to correctly identify the place. “A police station.”