Milanovich’s death would create a power struggle in his organization. The only way to avoid mass bloodshed would be a division of the empire. Such a negotiation would take a year or more to materialize. It would be preceded by threats, challenges, and skirmishes. During that time frame, Victor would solidify his hold on his businesses in the New York City area. Instead of paying roof to Milanovich or anyone else, his hard-earned cash would go into a savings account for his grandson. No longer would his heir be denied part of his rightful inheritance because of a greedy old man’s insatiable appetite for money.
Victor had begun plotting his coup as soon as he was jailed in New Jersey a week ago. His lawyer had acted as conduit, relaying instructions to his men in New York and Kyiv. Victor’s mission had been threefold: get the charges against him dismissed, kill Milanovich, and acquire the formula. He’d accomplished two out of his three goals, and they were the most important. The formula was a luxury. He didn’t need it to survive, but it would have been the crowning moment of his career if it had happened. His earlier talk of revenge was mere theatre. Victor was a thief. Revenge was an emotion. Based on Victor’s experience, emotions weren’t going to enrich his grandson.
As for the boy and the girl, Victor was reminded of the time his daughter, Tara, took him to an animal shelter in New York City to find puppies for both of them. When she saw two mutts in a special cage, Tara inquired about them. An attendant told her they were destined for euthanasia. No, we’ll take them, Tara said. Initially Victor didn’t understand her decision. They’d come for puppies. Why would they want some scraggly looking mixed-breeds? In Victor’s experience, the strong ate the weak. Why would she care about two mutts?
Tara had put her arm around her father and whispered three words in his ear.
Let them live.
CHAPTER 56
THE EXPLOSIONS KNOCKED Bobby and Eva off their feet. Bobby rose quickly, regained his senses, and looked for Eva. To his surprise, she’d already gotten up. She stood two steps ahead waiting for him. There wasn’t a hint of anxiety in her expression. It was as though they were back in the Zone, searching for scraps amidst the radioactive rubble, looking out for each other.
A double glass door opened up onto a veranda. Smoke billowed from the direction of the front entrance. The rat-tat-tat of gunfire filled the air. Two guards were perched beneath the concrete banister shooting at someone in the distance. Men shouted instructions to each other.
Bullets whizzed over Bobby and Eva’s heads.
They dropped to the ground.
“Someone’s shooting at guards from beyond the entrance,” Bobby said. “Nadia and the rich guy. They must not have come alone.”
He glanced at the outdoor staircase to the right. It wound its way up to the third and fourth floors of the castle.
“There’ll be no guards in the back,” he said. “They’re all here returning fire. Think you can rappel down a cliff?”
“If you can do it, I can do it,” Eva said. “We’re the same.”
Bobby and Eva waited until the bodyguards raised their rifles and fired at their targets on the ground beyond the castle. Then they raced up the staircase, keeping their heads low. They wound their way around the entire building until they ended up at the top level where Bobby and Luo had arrived. They didn’t encounter any guards. They were all preoccupied with the attack on the property as Bobby had suspected.
Cracks of gunfire echoed around the castle. Bobby found the rope and grapple where Luo had hidden them. He removed his climbing gloves from his pocket and gave them to Eva. Told her she’d land on a grassy knoll beneath the foundation.
Eva nodded, climbed over the guardrail, and descended down the side of the cliff. She supported herself effortlessly. After six steps she gained confidence and accelerated her pace. From Bobby’s vantage point looking down past the guardrail, Eva appeared to be gliding backward from heaven to earth.
When she reached the bottom, Bobby pulled the rope back up. He heard voices. Men. At least two of them. They weren’t coming from the outdoor stairs. They were coming from inside the Swallow’s Nest. More guards were coming to fortify the flanks along the front walls, Bobby thought.
Bobby picked up his pace. He swung the rope over the guardrail and rappelled down the side of the cliff with long, bold kicks to the face of the cliff. The rope burned his hands but he barely felt the pain.
Eva was waiting for him at the bottom of the cliff. He slid onto solid ground beside her. She’d already found the knapsacks and pulled the skates out. They sat down on the ground and took their shoes off. Eva wasn’t wearing socks.
“Your father bought you a pair just in case,” Bobby said. “They’re in your skates.”
Eva froze. “My father?”
Bobby nodded but continued lacing his skate. “The guy who saved us. The guy with the boomerangs. His name was Luo. He was your father.”
Eva stared at Bobby. “I don’t know what to say to something like that.”
Bobby shrugged. “I hear you. We can talk about it later. The reason I mentioned it is I didn’t want to take credit for what your father had done.”
“You have a flashlight?”
Bobby glanced at Eva, concerned she was losing a grip on the urgency of the situation. “What?”
“A penlight. A flashlight. Do you have a flashlight?”
“We can’t shine a light. You want them to see us? Put your socks on. We have to move.”
“I will not put my socks on until you shine a light on my right foot. You can come up close and shield it with your other hand to keep it dim.”
Bobby knew better than to argue with her. No one was more stubborn than Eva, except possibly for the man in the mirror. He slid closer to her. She stuck out her right foot. Bobby cupped his left hand around the circumference of the flashlight.
“Shine it at my toes,” Eva said. “Just a quick flash so we don’t make too much light.”
Bobby turned the flashlight on, caught a glimpse of normal-looking toes, and turned the light off. “You’ve got a callus on the bottom of the big one but otherwise they’re fine. Can we go now?”
Eva grabbed her toes and pulled them back. “Now shine it again.”
Bobby flashed the light again.
Black insects nestled deep in the groove where the toes met her foot. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the insects weren’t moving. They were dead.
“That’s disgusting,” Bobby said. “What are they? Some sort of ticks?”
“Look closer.”
Bobby put his face up against Eva’s foot and shined the light one more time.
The black limbs weren’t feet and antennae. They were lines. In fact, Bobby wasn’t looking at a row of insects. He was staring at a drawing. The drawing consisted of tiny chemical symbols.
“The formula,” Bobby said.
“Tattoo,” Eva said. Her teeth shone in the dark. “Dr. Arkady said no one ever looks under the toes.”
Eva slipped on her socks and put on her skates. Bobby finished lacing his own. They strapped on their head lights.
“We’re going to change the world,” Bobby said. “And we might get rich, too.”
“As long as we stay together,” Eva said.
Bobby looked into her eyes. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Do you?”
“No. No problem at all.”
They skated onto Lake Baikal side by side. A quarter moon hung over the ice. Stars glittered in the sky. Bobby glanced at Eva. She looked at him. Neither of them showed any emotion but they squeezed their hands at the same time. Bobby wondered how life could possibly get any better, but it soon would. They had each other. They had the formula.
He guided Eva left to backtrack along the route he’d taken with Luo. The buhanka was waiting for them. They’d figure out where they were going once they got there.
A spotlight shone directly in their path. Bobby pulled to a stop. Eva slid past him but hung onto his hand and came to a halt. The voices from the Swallow’s Nest became animated.
A gunshot sounded. It came from the castle but could have been fired in any direction, Bobby thought. Then he heard the clunk in the ice around them.
Someone was shooting at them.
Lights to the left, castle to the right, the center of the lake was the only escape. Bobby turned toward the center of the lake and pulled Eva with him.
Light shone on the ice ahead. The spotlight had been moved.
Another gunshot.
Bobby and Eva ducked. Bobby changed direction a bit to avoid the spotlight but it moved accordingly.
Bursts of gunfire followed.
Then silence. Bobby thought he heard someone shout his name—
The ice trembled beneath his feet. At first he suspected his nerves were making him shake. But then a cracking noise sounded, like a thousand trees being split in half. The ice began to shake. Eva squeezed his hand harder. Bobby glanced at her, saw the terror in her eyes. The cracking noise rose to a thunderous crescendo. The ice buckled under Bobby’s legs.
He fell.
A force pulled Eva’s hand from his hand. Adrenaline shot through his body. Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Whatever you do, don’t let go of her hand—
Eva’s fingers slipped through his grasp.
“Eva,” he shouted, hand stretched to the side, grasping at the cold air as he completed his fall.
Bobby landed hard on his hip. He glanced in Eva’s direction.
She was gone. The ice where she’d been standing had vanished. It was impossible. She’d just been there three seconds ago, but now she was gone.
Bobby screamed her name. No one answered. Bobby remembered what Luo had told him during the drive. Baikal sat on the deepest continental fissure on Earth. They were almost as active as the ones in the seas of Japan. For that reason, the lake experienced earthquakes. Bobby wondered if the shooting had caused this one.
He crawled to the precipice of the ice. A six-foot-wide fissure had formed in the lake. Ice shimmered beyond the chasm. Bobby hung his head over the ice and looked into the hole. He screamed her name again. Still, no one answered. At first the hole looked black, but then an image formed under the glint of the moonlight. At first it looked like a multi-spoke wheel, but then some of the lines disappeared. The image became clearer.
It was a Ferris wheel in black and white.
Bobby thought he was dreaming. He batted his eyes twice rapidly to clear his head and looked again. The Ferris wheel was still there. The image reminded Bobby of something else Luo had said. That fishermen swore they saw trains, castles, and ships at the bottom of the lake. Just as he was seeing an amusement park now.
Cars sat suspended in midair atop iron cross beams. A ladder appeared. It was attached to one of the beams. It looked exactly like the ladder he and Eva had used to climb to the top of the Ferris wheel in Pripyat. Roofing, they’d called it. They’d climbed together to the rooftops of the Cultural Center, the hotel, and the abandoned apartment buildings, too.
And as his eyes followed the ladder toward the highest car, Bobby saw her one last time, resting at the top, looking down at the wasteland where they used to scavenge.
The ice moved.
Bobby raised his head. The two big blocks of ice were sliding toward each other. The hole into which Eva had fallen was closing.
Bobby lay helpless. He looked down into the narrowing chasm and screamed Eva’s name over and over.
The fissure disappeared. The lake became one again.
Eva was gone.
Only then was Bobby aware of voices, people shouting at him from the Swallow’s Nest. He rose to his skates. His first three strides were uneasy. Part of him feared the earth would open up again and swallow him. The other part of him wished it would do just that. His instincts guided him away from the Swallow’s Nest and the shore. Instead he headed toward the middle of the lake where four miles of ice awaited him.
He vaguely remembered the promise of biological experiments. They would hunt him. Even if Eva was dead they would hunt him forever just to assure themselves his blood didn’t contain further clues about the formula. He would miss Nadia and his hockey career, but he could never go back to America. He could never return to civilization.
Exactly where he would go and what he would do he did not know and did not care. His sorrow had extinguished all his ambition, and in his moment of despair Bobby knew to do only one thing.
Skate.
CHAPTER 57
AS BOBBY ROSE to his feet, Nadia screamed his name. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she continued shouting it repeatedly.
Simmy’s men overpowered Milanovich’s bodyguards. Afterwards, one of them found a grapple secured to the bottom of the guardrail. Nadia and Simmy rushed up the stairs. They arrived on the deck of the Swallow’s Nest to find Bobby and Eva skating away from shore. Then the ground began to shake beneath them.
Nadia held onto the guardrail with both hands and prayed the castle would not collapse. Her concern for her own safety proved fleeting. A thunderous cracking sound filled the air. The ice parted and Eva disappeared. Nadia stood helpless beside Simmy. She tried to imagine Bobby’s anguish.
The ice moved. The chasm disappeared and the lake became one. As Bobby rose to his feet, the spotlight from the Swallow’s Nest caught the blade of his skate. It cast a ray of light that shimmied up his clothes and face, and for a split second, Bobby appeared to glow in the dark.
And then, in a flash, he skated away into the darkness and he was gone.
“We have to do something,” Nadia said.
Simmy put his arm around her. “What would you have us do? I’m sure there are some skates around here. Which one of us is going to find him, let alone catch up to him?”
A premonition gripped Nadia. She would not see Bobby again. Ever. She tried to banish the thought, but it wouldn’t go away. He’d probably heard Milanovich’s promise to conduct biological experiments. Bobby was no fool. He would assume he’d be hunted for the rest of his life, regardless of whether Eva was dead or alive. Bobby would rather disappear from civilization or die. Toss in his anguish from Eva’s death, and he was probably ambivalent between the two alternatives at this point.
“He has the other man’s mobile phone, does he not?” Simmy said.
“I think so,” Nadia said.
“Then he will call.”
“Yes. He will call.”
She could hear the lie in her own voice. He wouldn’t call. Not for a long time, if ever. Not until the Milanoviches of the world had forgotten about him. Not until the world had given up on a formula that mesmerized even the richest of men and left bodies in its wake. A formula that seemed so real and valuable to Nadia up until five minutes ago. Now, faced with the reality that she might never see Bobby again, she couldn’t have cared less about it. For in the end life was about people, and the vanishing of a loved one rendered all material pursuits immediately irrelevant, faster than they’d become a compulsion in the first place.
Where would he go? What would he eat? Who would give him shelter? Nadia knew these questions would consume her, but for now she took comfort in what she knew with certainty. That Bobby was no ordinary boy. He was Adam Tesla, a boy from Ukraine, a country of survivors used to fighting adversity on a daily basis. He was smart, clever, and resilient.
No, he was not ordinary. He was extraordinary.
“Of course he will call,” Simmy said, “That which does not grow dies. A man can only grow if he is part of a community. Part of civilization. Bobby does not want to die. Therefore, by definition, he will return to you. He will probably find cell phone service on the other side of the lake across from Listvyanka. I predict he will call you tomorrow.”
�
�Yes,” Nadia said. “Tomorrow. Of course. He will call me tomorrow.”
And as she heard the deceit in her own voice again, Nadia was reminded of the most accomplished liar she had ever known. Victor Bodnar had let them go for some reason. She hadn’t thought about the potential reasons until this very moment. None came to mind except the obvious one.
He believed Simmy and she were worth more alive than dead. Whether he considered them as individuals or as a couple was an entirely different question, and one Nadia still hadn’t resolved in her own mind, though she was leaning toward the latter now.
More important to her was that Victor had let Adam go, too. He was out there on the ice, skating at warp speed toward a destination unknown. And as despair set in once again, it was her thought of Victor and Adam in the same breath that gave Nadia comfort. For Victor brought to mind another old thief, one she’d met in Chornobyl, and reminded her that wherever Bobby went, whatever his path in life, he would always be his father’s son.
He would always be the fox.
EPILOGUE
One month later
THE PLANE CRASHED in the Republic of Buryatia in Eastern Siberia. It was an AN-2 plane, built for light transport and agricultural use. According to media reports, Evenki reindeer herders came to the rescue of the pilot and seven passengers on board. They pulled the passengers from the wreckage before the fire in the cabin spread to the fuel tank and the plane exploded. They provided water, food, and warm clothing until authorities were notified of the accident by satellite phone and airlifted the passengers to safety by helicopter.
The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (The Nadia Tesla Series Book 3) Page 26
