The Boy from Reactor 4

by Orest Stelmach

  CHAPTER 82

  VICTOR’S PHONE RANG. Kirilo watched the Bitch step into the storage room to take the call. In the meat locker, Victor’s two men were removing the binds from Johnny Tanner’s hands and feet. Kirilo’s two bodyguards looked on beside a slab of ribs. Thirty seconds later, Kirilo’s own phone rang.

  “Papa, I’m free!” Isabella said.

  “Bella. Is it really you?”

  “Yes, Papa. It’s me!”

  “You’re free? What do you mean, you’re free?”

  “They let me go.”

  “They let you go?”

  “Yes. They just let me go. They said they could see people were following us, but they couldn’t tell if it was your men or someone else. Since they couldn’t guarantee my safety anymore, they drove me to your apartment in Kyiv.”

  “What? You’re home?”

  “Yes! I’m home.”

  “I’m overjoyed. How are you? Are you okay?”

  While Isabella answered, Kirilo cupped the phone and whispered to Pavel, “Isabella’s free. Go get Stefan and the other man. Tell them to be ready.”

  “I’m going to take a bath and order something to eat,” Isabella said.

  “Good, good,” Kirilo said, returning his attention to the phone. “Lock all the doors. I’m going to arrange for some men to come guard the house. When they get there, call me before you let them in.”

  The men who were tracking the Timkiv twins on his behalf must have gotten close, Kirilo thought. Victor, not knowing if it was his men or someone else, didn’t want to take the chance that something would happen to her on their watch, so he let her go. This meant Victor had never truly intended to hurt Isabella under any circumstances.

  Still, the Bitch had to die.

  Pavel, Stefan, and Kirilo’s other bodyguard were descending down the stairs to the cellar.

  Kirilo rushed out of the meat locker and slammed the freezer door shut. He slid the deadbolt in place, leaving Victor’s men, his two other bodyguards, and Johnny Tanner trapped inside.

  Victor dropped his phone and reached for his gun.

  “Don’t,” Kirilo said, pointing at Stefan and the other bodyguard, who’d already brandished their weapons and were aiming them at Victor from the bottom of the steps.

  Victor raised his arms with a look of resignation.

  Fists pounded against the meat locker door. The men inside screamed for someone to open it.

  Kirilo walked up to Victor, took his gun, and handed it to Pavel. Kirilo ripped his belt from around his waist. He wrapped it around the Bitch’s neck and savored the look of futility in his eyes.

  “The key to leverage is to maintain your advantage,” Kirilo said. “Because the minute you lose it, you’re dead.”

  Kirilo stared into Victor’s eyes and pulled on the ends of the belt.

  Two thumps sounded in rapid succession behind Kirilo. The sounds were muted but loud enough for him to recognize them. They were gunshots. Muted by a silencer.

  Kirilo swung around, dragging Victor with him like an unwilling dance partner.

  Pavel and the bodyguard were lying on the floor with holes in their heads. Stefan aimed his gun at Kirilo, a silencer attached to its barrel.

  “Release him,” Stefan said.

  Kirilo removed his belt from Victor’s neck.

  “You were right,” Victor said. “Ten million divided by two is not much more than ten million divided by three. But this formula…It really is a different matter.”

  Victor took the gun from Stefan.

  It was all happening so quickly, yet in slow motion. Kirilo wanted to bargain, to offer Victor a deal in exchange for his life, but he knew it was hopeless. Victor was going to kill him. The Bitch was going to kill him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Isabella,” Kirilo said, pleading with his eyes, embarrassed at the weakness in his voice.

  “I would never harm my niece,” Victor said. “You have my word as a thief.”

  The last thing Kirilo saw was an image of his daughter, innocent and sweet.

  The last thing he heard was the suppressed sound of a gun firing a bullet into his brain.

  CHAPTER 83

  VICTOR HELPED STEFAN move the bodies into a closet until he could dispose of them the way they disposed of all the bad meat at the deli.

  “You’re the best chess player the world never knew,” Stefan said.

  “No. The best chess player the world never knew died in Chernobyl village last week. Did your men have any problem getting into my apartment?”

  “No. No problem.”

  “How is she?”

  “The maiden and the dove, the dove and the maiden.” Stefan sighed with uncharacteristic delight. “They look at home on my living room wall. I love them so.”

  “Of course you do. You have one hundred thousand reasons to love them. Have you heard from my—have you heard from Tara? Did she get the money you wired for me?”

  “She did. She is good. She’s still hiding in upstate New York. You should call her and tell her to come home. Your word was good, Victor. Misha will never harm her again.”

  “No,” Victor said, remembering the moment when Kirilo killed him. “No, he won’t. But first, we have to take care of business. You’re going to have to dispose of the two inside the meat locker, too.”

  “What about Johnny Tanner?”

  “No, no. A man does not survive in America by killing officers of the court. Send him out to me while you take care of Kirilo’s two men in the meat locker. I’ll make sure he understands that he was never here, that a dozen people will swear we were playing chess in the park all morning, and that no one in this neighborhood ever saw him, even if they did. He’ll listen. He’s a survivor. Look at him. He’s from the streets. He won’t risk his life or Nadia’s.”

  Thirty seconds later, Johnny Tanner emerged from the freezer, shirt and suit jacket in hand, looking surprisingly composed. Stefan remained inside and closed the door behind him. While Johnny Tanner dressed, Victor explained the reality of life to him, in accordance with what he’d told Stefan. A cell phone in one of the lawyer’s pockets vibrated twice before Victor finished.

  “Do we understand each other?” Victor said.

  “I don’t know,” Johnny Tanner said as he straightened his tie. “If any harm comes to Nadia, I’m going to find you and square it, and if I don’t, I got friends who will. So you tell me. Do we understand each other?”

  His cell phone vibrated again.

  Victor waved his gun at Johnny’s pants pocket. “Is someone calling you?”

  “No. Voice mail.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s hear your voice mail. Maybe a mutual friend of ours left you a message. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

  CHAPTER 84

  AS SOON AS Nadia entered the Underground, she didn’t have to wonder anymore if anyone had found the body of the man who was shot before her eyes. There, at a small table, reading a Ukrainian newspaper and looking decidedly alive and healthy, sat Yuri Banya, the man who’d pretended to be Max Milan.

  Yuri said to Nadia, “I’m not surprised to see you. We knew you’d figure it all out eventually.”

  “You’re giving me more credit than I deserve,” Nadia said. The scene that had started it all flashed in her mind. Banya. A gunshot. A big old American sedan. “I haven’t figured anything out. I thought you were dead. But you’re alive.”

  “Yes. Last I checked.”

  “And looking none the worse for wear.”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “In fact, you don’t look like a man who cheated death…How many days ago was it? Seventeen? No, eighteen. You don’t look like a man who spent eighteen days in a hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest.”

  His eyes twinkled. “I’ve always been a fast healer.”

  “I’m looking for a boy. My nephew—”

  “Adam,” Yuri said. “Y
ou’re looking for Adam. He’s here.”

  “He is? Where? Is he okay?”

  “Yes. He’s fine. He’s using the bathroom in back. Maria is fixing him a sandwich and some borscht. He’ll be out in a minute. Have a seat, please.” Yuri gestured with his hand toward a chair.

  Nadia glanced at the chair and spotted Adam’s knapsack and bag against the wall beyond it. A wave of relief washed over her. Instead of sitting, though, she remained standing. Something Yuri had said sounded wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it hit her.

  “You said, ‘We knew you’d figure it out.’ Who’s ‘we’?”

  Feet shuffled. A curtain parted. A tall, gangly man with a round face and a shock of red hair came into the room. He stopped beside Yuri, bowed, and smiled.

  “Good morning, Nadia,” he said, as though they were friends.

  Nadia mumbled a greeting in return. She didn’t recognize him, but something about him looked disturbingly familiar. She’d seen that shock of hair somewhere before. It was the stuff of nightmares, the kind that caused her to wake up in the middle of the night elated that she’d only been dreaming. Except in this case, he’d been all too real…

  “The big old American sedan,” Nadia said. “You were the shooter. The supposed shooter, I should say.”

  “This is my old friend,” Yuri said, “Simon Stanislavski.”

  “Blanks,” Simon said. “I was shooting blanks.”

  “Why?” Nadia said.

  “We had to motivate you,” Yuri said.

  “Excuse me?” Nadia said.

  “We had to motivate you to go to Kyiv,” Yuri said. “If there wasn’t the promise of untold millions, whether in cash or from the sale of a formula, would you have gone to Kyiv?”

  “What?” Nadia said.

  Yuri said, “If you got letters in November and January, the way your mother did, and learned your long-lost uncle was alive, a long-lost uncle who was the most notorious thief and con man the country ever knew, would you have packed your bags and gone just because he asked you to?”

  Nadia tried to process everything they were saying and form a logical conclusion, but her brain didn’t seem to want to go there.

  “Damian sent letters to your mother in November of last year and in January. He was honest. He said he was dying and he had a boy, a good boy, for whom he wanted a better life. Your mother never answered. It was no surprise. Damian was a thief. People thought he was long dead. And who wants a boy from Chernobyl?”

  “No one wants a boy from the Zone,” Simon said.

  “So he wrote a third letter. This time he talked about having some information that could change the fate of the free world. And he asked us to lure you in. To lure you into the con.”

  “We were members of his crew in Kyiv back in the day,” Simon said.

  Yuri said, “We’re two of the three who got away.”

  Nadia collapsed into a chair. She stared at the geometric pattern of the wood grain in the table. The pattern seemed to be moving in a circle for her benefit.

  “You’re saying that everything that happened on Seventh Street was an act,” she said. “A ruse just to pull me in. You said, ‘The sale of a formula.’ Not the formula. A formula. Which suggests there is no real formula. That it was all just a sick game of some kind. That everything I went through was for nothing. For nothing at all.”

  The men exchanged gratified looks with each other and turned to Nadia.

  “No,” Yuri said. “Not for nothing. It was most definitely for something. It was for someone.”

  “No one wants a boy from the Zone,” Simon said. He stepped over to the bar and reached up into a storage rack for glasses.

  “What?” Nadia said.

  “No one wants a boy from the Zone,” Simon said.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Yuri said.

  Simon raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “There is a country.”

  “Really? Where is this country?”

  “North of the equator and just south of heaven.”

  “What’s so special about this country?”

  “It takes everyone,” Yuri said. “Everyone has a chance to prosper.”

  “Everyone? You really mean everyone? Does an Arab have a chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does a Jew have a chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does a black man have a chance?” Simon said.

  “A black man can become president.”

  “What about a boy from the Zone?”

  “Even he may have a chance,” Yuri said. “Especially in one particular city.”

  “Oh? What kind of city is this?”

  “It is a city that was built on the backs of the unwanted.”

  “And where is this city?”

  “At the mouth of the river where the woman stands guard by the harbor.”

  Simon poured three vodkas. Yuri and Simon raised their glasses. Yuri and Simon glanced at Nadia as though waiting for her to do the same. She did not.

  “Three days ago, a thief died,” Yuri said. “But still he steals from his grave. Today he steals freedom for his son.”

  “To the best there ever was.”

  “To Damian. Na zdorovye.”

  They downed their shots.

  “When I saw Damian,” Nadia said to Yuri, “he told me that, given your body had disappeared from Seventh Street, someone had yet to reveal himself to me. That someone…was him. He was pulling my string the entire time.”

  “We had no idea you were in trouble with Victor and Misha because of that antiques business,” Yuri said. “We had no idea you would be followed and your life would be in danger.”

  “That…That was never part of our plan,” Simon said. “This should have been much, much easier.”

  Nadia glanced at Yuri again. “On Seventh Street…When you asked me if I was the Nadia Tesla who worked on Wall Street and I said, ‘Not anymore,’ you seemed disappointed. Upset, even. Why?”

  Yuri shrugged. “It costs money to bring a boy to America. To raise him. To live in New York. Simon and I live on a fixed income. We barely get by. And that’s in southern New Jersey.”

  Nadia laughed. “Well, there’s one on you guys. I’m unemployed and rapidly depleting my savings.” She tossed the vodka down her throat, coughed up a storm, and cleared her throat. “So if there’s no formula, what’s in the locket?”

  “Locket?” Yuri said. He glanced at Simon, who shook his head. “What locket?”

  A toilet flushed in the distant background. Everyone turned toward the curtain leading to the back room.

  Adam walked into the bar looking refreshed. His eyes widened with excitement when they met Nadia’s. His lips parted, but no words came out, as though he couldn’t find the words to express himself.

  Nadia bounded up to him and folded her arms across her chest. “Why did you run away from me? Why didn’t you wait?”

  “I saw the government men. They were there for me. They were there to send me back, weren’t they?”

  “No. They were there to arrest some other man. It had nothing to do with you or me.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Nadia lowered her gaze and found a few links of the necklace peeking out from beneath his shirt. “Where’s the locket?”

  Adam swallowed, like a boy who’d done something wrong and knew he was about to be scolded, and touched his upper chest area.

  “It’s time we opened it and took a look at exactly what’s inside,” Nadia said.

  A shuffling noise from the direction of the front door broke the silence.

  Nadia turned.

  Victor Bodnar stood in the foyer. Stefan and another huge bodyguard held guns in their hands behind him.

  “Yes,” Victor said, smiling. “Exactly what I was thinking. Let’s see what’s inside that locket.”

  CHAPTER 85

  VICTOR LOOKED TWICE at the two old men as he walked past their table. They looked vaguely
familiar and recalled memories from his youth, but he couldn’t place them. He quickly turned his attention back to the necklace around the boy’s neck. All the riches of the world finally within his grasp. He never could have imagined they’d be in the form of a piece of microfilm in the possession of a boy from the Zone.

  Adam’s face was burned and his lips chapped from crossing the strait. Nadia’s face was similarly damaged, and she looked as though she’d lost ten pounds since he’d seen her last in Ukraine. Victor detected fear in Adam’s eyes, but it was noticeably absent in Nadia’s. In its place was an element of disbelief. She was probably surprised he’d found them, Victor thought.

  Stefan and Victor’s other man aimed their guns at Nadia and Adam.

  “Be a good boy and remove the necklace from your neck,” Victor said. “And open the locket.”

  Adam lifted the necklace over his head, ruffling his hair and exposing his ears in the process. Victor saw they were half ears and felt a measure of compassion for the boy. As Adam struggled to unlock the tiny clasp, Victor had to take a deep breath to remain patient. When it finally unsnapped, Adam opened the locket.

  A piece of paper the size of a stamp fell out into his palm. Adam unfolded the paper into a three-inch-by-three-inch square. He held it up for everyone to see. Victor squinted, but without his glasses, he couldn’t read it. He could tell it wasn’t microfilm, however, and experienced an immediate sting of disappointment.

  “What is that?” Victor said, reaching into his jacket pocket for his glasses.

  Nadia regarded him with a wistful smile. “No one wants a boy from the Zone.”

  Victor found his glasses, slid them out of their case, and wrapped them around his head. “What? What’s that you say?”

  He studied the paper. It was a torn and tattered picture of the Statue of Liberty. It was the symbol of freedom and all that America offered, and if it was this picture the boy had been carrying around all this time…

  Victor spun around toward the two men. Banya. Yuri Banya. And Stanislavski. He couldn’t remember the latter’s first name, but he realized who they were and why he recognized them. They were part of Damian’s crew, long thought dead by everyone—