The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (22 page)

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Finally you say something that makes sense.”

“So we’re done here, right? Nice to see you again, can I go back to my nap?” Bobby reached for his chair.

“That’s funny. You were always good for a laugh. Not because you were funny. How could you be? You barely said ten words over the course of how many transactions? More than ten. How many pieces did you sell me from the Zone? Was it closer to twenty?”

Bobby shrugged. He’d sold him twenty-four different vehicle parts, from starter engines to full sets of wheels. Each time he’d been petrified he was getting infected with radiation again. Each time he’d prayed it was the last. To the best of his knowledge he hadn’t been infected again, and he executed his last theft with Eva five days before she died.

“Doesn’t matter now,” the car dealer said. His face took on a sunny disposition. “The important thing is we’re friends.”

“We are?”

“Of course we are.”

The car dealer was changing tactics. He must have realized that if he hoped to profit from whatever he imagined Bobby was scheming, bullying wouldn’t help him achieve his goal on a ferry. His mistake was that he hadn’t thought of that from the start. Not that Bobby wouldn’t have seen through him immediately. He would have had more respect for him, though.

The car dealer slapped him on the shoulder. “We’re good old friends. No, wait. That’s not true. We’re not just good old friends. We’re the best of friends.” He pulled Bobby’s chair back to one of the tables. “Come, my friend. Come sit down with me and tell me a tale.”

He wiped the smile off his face to make sure Bobby knew he had no choice. As soon as Bobby stepped toward him he resumed beaming. He grinned at Bobby as though it were his turn to speak, but Bobby knew better than to open up so quickly. He had to make sure the car dealer believed he was coercing him into revealing why he’d been in Japan and why he was on the ferry.

“Are you hungry? Have you been eating? You’re looking a little peaked, my boy. In fact, that was my first thought when I set eyes on you and thought I knew who you were. That looks like my old friend Adam Tesla and he doesn’t look well. I wonder if I can help him.”

“Lucky for me I ran into you.”

“Lucky. Yes indeed. You’ve had bad luck most of your life, haven’t you, Adam? But now your luck has changed. Something to eat?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Something to drink, perhaps. Coca-Cola?”

Bobby raised the bottle of water he kept by his duffel bag.

The car dealer looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then he pulled his chair closer to the table and leaned into Adam. “So tell me, what’s the deal?”

Bobby frowned. “What do you mean?”

The car dealer rolled his eyes. “Takaoka. Vladivostok. This ferry. You’re working an angle. It’s money. I can smell it off you the way I could smell you’re from the Zone even if I didn’t know you.” He tapped his nose with his finger. “A middleman can smell the money. It’s his gift.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Me, I don’t have any gifts.”

The car dealer turned serious. “You used to have two gifts, far as I can remember.”

Bobby raised his eyebrows. Two gifts. For the first time, he didn’t know what the car dealer was talking about.

The car dealer stared beyond Bobby. “You could skate, my boy.” Nostalgia peppered the car dealer’s voice.

His sincerity prompted Bobby to forget they were adversaries. At least for the moment.

“I used to watch you during the games on the cooling ponds. My God, could you fly. And handle the puck. No one ever saw a kid handle the puck the way you did.”

Bobby was reminded of his year at Fordham Prep and all the practice he was missing. The stakes notwithstanding, a melancholy washed over him.

“That was your first gift,” the car dealer said.

“I didn’t know I had a second.”

A sympathetic look flashed on the car dealer’s face. Once again Bobby was left at a loss. The car dealer was clearly being sincere. Bobby actually felt a genuine connection with the man. They’d both done business in the Zone. They’d both seen the hideous effects from radiation sickness handed down through generations. And they’d both profited from the wasteland the disaster had produced.

“Your second gift was your biggest one,” he said.

Bobby shook his head, modestly disturbed that he wasn’t able to keep one step ahead of the car dealer.

“The girl. The beauty who tried not to be one. The one with the legs that went from Kyiv to Minsk. What was her name again?”

“Eva.”

“The first time I met the two of you—tractor transmission, I think it was—she acted more like your sister. Last time you both did business with me? A month before she died. Last time I saw the two of you together? I could tell that she loved you.”

Bobby lost his breath. “How?”

“The two of you stepped out of her father’s car. You walked up to me with the goods. A wind was blowing. You both started shivering. You offered her your coat and she looked at you as though you’d insulted her.”

“I remember that.” Bobby could picture her glare, offended that he dare suggest she couldn’t handle the weather as easily as a man.

“She gave you a look, the kind a strong woman gives to a man. But you walked behind her and draped the coat over her shoulders anyways. And when you stepped forward to hand me the box with the goods, she looked at you again.”

“She did?”

The car dealer nodded. “I saw her. I saw her look at you. I saw the look on her face, and I knew right then.”

“What?”

“That she loved you.”

Bobby let the words echo in his ears a few times, then reminded himself that the car dealer had an agenda. He was trying to soften him up. Still, Bobby was certain the man wasn’t creative enough to have made up the story. It was much easier for him to summon a memory, and for that reason, Bobby had no doubt he was telling the truth.

“I heard she passed away,” the car dealer said. “Sympathies.”

Bobby nodded. If only he knew what was really going on.

The car dealer cleared his throat. “But that is the past, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s look to the future. Tell me. What are you doing so far away from home? You can’t possibly be on your own, can you? What’s the score?”

The car dealer knew that Bobby’s deceased father had been a notorious thief with connections all over the former Soviet Union, especially Siberia.

“Electronics,” Bobby said. “It’s big. When my father died, some friends of his gave me a job. I moved to Vladivostok. They sent me to Japan to meet with a guy. They didn’t want to take the risk of leaving the country themselves. You know, with their pasts and all that.”

“So much responsibility. You need an advisor. Lucky you ran into me. Do you keep your money at home or in the bank?”

It was blackmail. Plain and simple. The car dealer wanted to get paid for not revealing Bobby’s true identity.

“At home,” Bobby said. “My father taught me the safest place to keep my money was in a sack with dirty underwear. Most thieves are men, and most men don’t like digging through another man’s stinky skivvies.”

“Your father was the wisest of the wise men. He taught his son well. We will stay close to each other the rest of the trip. That way we can learn from each other.”

“Great idea,” Bobby said.

He needed another great idea soon, one that would let him escape from the car dealer and follow Eva and the driver when they arrived at Vladivostok.

CHAPTER 32

N
ADIA WAITED FOR
a lull in the conversation between Simmy and Denys. They had segued into a debate over which of the two reigning Russian stars in the NHL was the better player, Ilya Kovalchuk or Alexander Ovechkin. Nadia had heard Bobby talk about both of them with his friend Derek when they watched games in her apartment. She knew they were two of the golden boys of professional hockey, but she had her eye on something with a more tangible golden hue: the necklace hanging around Denys Melnik’s neck.

She tried to think of a clever way to approach the topic but couldn’t conjure one. That left her no choice but to be painfully direct.

“That’s a nice-looking necklace you’re wearing,” Nadia said.

Denys lowered his chin and grasped it. He pulled the locket out from beneath his shirt. It looked identical to the one Dr. Arkady Shatan had given Bobby’s father, who in turn had passed it on to him. But Nadia couldn’t be certain until she held it in her hands.

“This?” Denys said. “My mother gave it to me. She said Dr. Arkady made the locket himself. I guess he was one of those Renaissance men. He could do anything. The guy was a genius.”

“Do you keep something special inside it?”

Simmy studied Nadia. He kept a straight face, but Nadia sensed he was wondering about her motives for asking the question.

“No,” Denys said. He narrowed his eyes, pulled the tiny clasp open, and revealed the inside. “I used to have a picture of my girl inside but we broke up.” He shrugged. “It’s empty now but I still wear it. I don’t know why. I guess I just got used to having it around my neck.”

“May I take a closer look?”

“Sure.” Denys slipped the necklace off his neck and handed it to Nadia.

As soon as Nadia palmed the locket she knew it had come from the same mold as the one Bobby’s father had given him. Same oval shape. Same depth and dimensions. Same contours.

“May I open it?”

“Sure.”

Nadia opened the tiny clasp. The locket was empty. Its interior mold was also identical. Nadia smiled at him. “I’d like to buy it from you. I collect lockets.”

Denys made a disapproving sound. “I don’t want to sell it. Dr. Arkady made it. I used to hang out in his office waiting for my mother to finish work. He was a weird guy but he was always nice to me. I guess the locket has sentimental value.”

“Sentimental value,” Simmy said. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “You can’t put a price on it, except you can put a price on everything, can’t you?”

Nadia examined the locket further. There was no evidence of any etchings beneath the gilding, but there hadn’t been any such signs on Bobby’s locket either. The only way to be certain was to remove the gilding. What were the odds this locket contained some part of the formula? Close to zero, Nadia thought. But she had to know.

“Listen,” Denys said, eyeing Simmy’s wallet. “I really don’t want to sell it.”

“I like your style, my boy,” Simmy said. “You’re a good negotiator. There’s a career for you in business once you hit forty and your illustrious hockey career comes to a glorious end.” He cracked the billfold open.

Nadia reached over and put her hand on top of his. She added sufficient pressure to close the wallet. Simmy cast a look of surprise at her. She gave him a quick, firm smile. Just because he’d shelled out fifty grand for an airplane rental for her didn’t mean she was going to rely on him to cover every expense.

“Denys, please,” Nadia said. “I can’t explain why, but if you sold this locket to me it would mean a lot to me. I’m pretty sure this isn’t real gold. It’s just made of steel with a nice coat of gold paint on top of it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. My mother told me it was more a keepsake than anything valuable.” He glanced at Simmy’s wallet and turned back to Nadia. “What kind of price did you have in mind?”

“How about one hundred American dollars?”

Denys nodded as though it was a fair offer and lowered his head for a moment. When he raised it again he was blushing. “How about two hundred?”

Nadia gave him a traveler’s check for two hundred dollars, thanked him, and said good-bye.

“I need a knife,” Nadia said, on the way to the car.

“Music to a man’s ears,” Simmy said, “when a woman asks him for a knife. What for?”

“To scrape the gilding off this locket and see if there’s anything etched beneath it.”

“You don’t need a knife to do that.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You need one of my men to do it while we watch.”

They climbed in the SUV. One of Simmy’s men used the serrated edge of a hunting knife to strip the gilding from the locket. When he was done, he wiped it clean with a bandana, and handed it to Nadia.

Nadia examined the entire surface of the locket. There was nothing etched beneath it. She rolled her fingers over the bare iron and imagined running her fingers over the tiny indents that existed on the locket Dr. Arkady had given Adam. She wondered whether Genesis II had the same locket as Bobby or Denys Melnik. She wondered how Bobby was doing.

Simmy’s driver started the car and drove.

“I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” Simmy said.

Nadia considered his statement. “Not entirely.”

“How so?”

“We’ve discovered an identical locket. That means there are at least two of them. And we learned that Arkady Shatan made them himself. There very well may be a third.”

“Genesis II?” Simmy said.

“Yes.”

“Or shall we call her Eva?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s what I’m here to find out, right?”

“No. That’s what
we’re
here to find out.”