The Boy From Reactor 4 (44 page)

“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

V
ICTOR 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—

It was a con, Victor realized. There was no formula. It was all about the boy. It was all about getting him to America.

Victor wheeled back to Nadia. He could tell just by looking at her expression that she knew he’d figured it out.

“A thief made me his willing accomplice,” she said.

Victor nodded.

“FBI. Drop your weapons.”

The order came from the doorway. Victor turned. Specter and a swarm of other men in blue Windbreakers buzzed into the bar, guns aimed at Victor and his men.

Something crashed to the floor.

Stefan and the other bodyguard fired. Muted thumps rang out from their suppressed weapons. An FBI agent collapsed before everyone dove for cover.

As Victor hit the ground, he saw a woman scurrying back into the kitchen with her hands wrapped around her head, leaving an empty tray, broken china, buckwheat bread, and a puddle of beet soup in her wake.

Specter and the agents fired back. The noise became deafening.

Victor crawled toward the curtain leading to the back, not giving a damn about the formula or Nadia Tesla. After all, he could take over Misha’s businesses now. He hadn’t prayed to God in decades. Yet here he was, on all fours, begging God for a clean escape so he could see his daughter again. So he could hold his grandson in his arms. His grandson.

Halfway to the curtain, Victor thought of Specter and the possibility of jail, but realized the man had never seen him commit a crime. The authorities had nothing on him. When Victor burst through the curtain, his religious inspiration left him. He became the greedy bastard he’d always been. Once he knew he was safe, and that he’d see Tara and her child again, he thought of what all men thought of when they were conscious. Money.

As he escaped the Underground through the back door onto the street, it occurred to Victor that if Stefan were killed, the dove and the maiden would be his once again.

CHAPTER 86

W
HEN THE BULLETS
started flying, Nadia tackled Adam. They stayed low. The floor shook before her eyes when bullets felled Stefan and Victor’s other bodyguard.

The firefight ended as abruptly as it had started.

Specter rushed over to them. Nadia and Adam were still on the ground.

“Are you all right?” he said.

His words sounded distant. Nadia realized her hearing was impaired from the gunshots.

Nadia glanced at Adam, who was rubbing his ears.

“I think so,” she said, collecting herself. She studied Specter. “Who are you, really?”

Specter pulled out a wallet and flipped it open to reveal an ID. “John Dzen. FBI. I work for the joint Hungarian-American task force on organized crime. We started there, ended up here. Where’s Victor Bodnar? He was here, wasn’t he?”