The Mystery of the Russian Ransom

by Roy MacGregor

  Travis could also feel a huge emptiness beside him. Sarah should be sitting there. They should be tapping gloves after a nice play.

  But Sarah was not there.

  8

  I did not sleep well. I cried myself to sleep thinking of my mom and dad and how worried they must be. If only I could get a message to them! And I had a nightmare, a bad one.

  The Owls were playing hockey. It must have been a tournament, because I didn’t recognize the rink. The ice surface was huge; it seemed to go on forever – more like a frozen lake than any rink I’ve ever seen.

  We were playing against a team that was really, really dirty. They were bigger and older than us, and they were going after all our little guys – especially Simon Milliken and Travis. At one point, they charged Travis so hard he went right through the boards. I don’t know where the boards came from, because there were none when the game started. They had to bring an ambulance on the ice to take Travis away on a stretcher.

  Every bone in his body was broken. His legs and arms were bent in all the wrong directions. His skates looked like they were on backward. The medics had bottles of blood dripping into his arms.

  But then I saw Nish. He’d decided to streak the game and had come out in nothing but his boxer shorts and skates and Jeremy Weathers’s goalie mask, and the other team was chasing after him and slapping his butt hard with their sticks. He was screaming as he skated past me – his chubby legs were churning like helicopter blades as he tried to escape.

  I woke up crying and laughing. And then I realized where I was and I just kept crying.

  I fell back asleep eventually. I don’t remember what I dreamed, if I dreamed anything, but I must have been asleep because I didn’t notice that someone had unlocked the door and come in.

  I don’t know if it was Olga or not. All I know is that someone came in and put something on the floor at the end of my bed.

  A hockey bag.

  And inside, all brand-new equipment – exactly my size.

  9

  It had been the Dmitri Show. The Owls were still laughing about it after their 6–1 march over the team from Minsk. Dmitri had four goals – his hard backhand sending the water bottle spinning three times off the back of the net – and set Travis up for a five-point game.

  Nish had scored the sixth and final goal on an end-to-end rush when he split the Minsk defense, pulled out their poor goaltender, and slipped the puck perfectly into the back of the net. Then, when Travis, Dmitri, and Andy had skated toward him to tap his pads, Nish had burst right by them and skated hard to the blue line, where he went down on his knees and spun all the way up the ice.

  Nish never saw the ice again. He sat like an angry troll at the end of the bench, his helmet off, his wet black hair smeared across his forehead, his face as red as a tomato.

  Muck never said a word to Nish. That was Muck’s way. He let his actions speak for him. He’d let Nish figure out for himself why he’d been benched.

  When the horn sounded, the celebration was subdued. Travis felt bad for the outplayed Minsk team. He felt empty while tapping gloves with his teammates to mark the victory when Sarah wasn’t there. The Owls lined up to shake hands with the Minsk players but without much emotion at all. For someone just walking into the Ufa Arena at this moment, it would have been difficult to say which team had won and which had lost.

  With a stern warning that they were to stick together in groups of at least four, Muck let the Owls wander about the rink and the nearby shopping mall. He and Mr. D, as well as Mr. Yakushev and Mr. Petrov, were going to talk with the parents who had come to Ufa with the Screech Owls. Nish’s mom hadn’t been able to afford to come. Travis’s parents had stayed behind, too, because Mr. Lindsay had a long-planned business trip to New York City and his mother had already bought tickets to two Broadway plays that she had wanted to see for years.

  For the Owls’ parents, the trip to Russia was expensive – Mr. Petrov’s generosity only went as far as the team – and many of them had decided not to come. So, for the most part, the Owls were left to themselves.

  Travis headed for the mall with Sam, Jenny, and Jesse Highboy. He knew that Sam and Jenny were having a rough time with Sarah’s disappearance, and he thought they’d find some distraction over there.

  The mall was brand-new. They went up the escalator to the second floor and stared in disbelief at a little shop called Sniper that was selling handguns, pellet guns, crossbows, and even an assault rifle.

  They went up another floor and found the food court, where there were takeouts offering all sorts of Russian and Ukrainian and Chinese food, but also a Subway and a McDonald’s. All four of them wanted to try a Russian Big Mac and ordered the Big Mac meal. They might never have left North America: it tasted exactly the same.

  In the basement level, the mall had a sort of farmers’ market. The stalls held more meat and vegetables and fruit and candy than any of the Owls had ever seen in a store in Tamarack. They stood at the butcher’s for a while and watched a burly man with a handlebar mustache wield a heavy cleaver as if it were an ax. He was splitting logs. He swung as high as he could and brought the cleaver down with a heavy thud on the side of what Travis thought was a huge pig. The butcher’s white apron was streaked dark red with blood.

  “I will never eat meat again!” Sam said loudly.

  “I feel sick,” said Jenny.

  “You guys are silly,” said Jesse. “Where do you think your Big Macs came from – out of thin air? I see this all the time when I go home to James Bay. But usually it’s my grandmother swinging the ax. My grandfather’s too busy gutting the moose or caribou or whatever it is he’s killed.”

  “I’m gonna hurl!” Sam shouted, in a perfect impersonation of Nish.

  The four friends stood there, laughing. It struck Travis that this was probably the first time he had seen Sam and Jenny happy since Sarah had disappeared.

  And when they stopped, the emptiness returned.

  Normally, Sarah would have been there to join in making fun of Nish.

  10

  I didn’t know what to do with the hockey equipment. I checked it out – the very best Nike, Easton, and CCM stuff you can buy – but I didn’t try it on. I couldn’t figure out what it was there for. A gift? Something to take my mind off what was happening to me?

  Olga came and told me I should get dressed in the equipment but leave my skates off. She left the room, so I went ahead and tried it all on. It was the nicest equipment I’ve ever seen.

  I put my hair in a ponytail, pulled on the helmet, and checked it all out in the little wall mirror. It looked smart! Really, really nice equipment.

  Someone’s coming.

  She returned to get me. I carried a skate in each hand and walked behind her, still wearing my new sneakers. We walked along a different hallway, and I could feel cold drafts from time to time, especially when we came to closed doors and opened them.

  We entered another door that led to an arena. I couldn’t see the ice, but I didn’t need to. Anyone who has played hockey all her life instantly knows the smell of an arena. It is as distinctive as the smell of vinegar or banana – or Nish’s disgusting hockey bag.

  She took me into a room where a man was sharpening skates – again, a sound and a smell that are so completely distinctive to the rink. There was a wall of new sticks – Nikes and Eastons – all the top-of-the-line composite models.

  The man didn’t seem to know any English, but he made it clear with hand signals and smiles that I was to take my pick. I sorted through a bunch of lefts, took a curve I liked – the handle was stamped “N. Yakupov” – and the man held up two rolls of tape, white in one hand, black in the other. I picked black because Muck always said a goalie has more trouble picking up a black puck being shot by a black stick blade than a black puck coming off a white background. Makes sense to me, so I’m a black-tape player. I also tape my sticks toe-to-heel, like Muck does, while some of the Owls – Nish, for example, and Fahd – go hee
l-to-toe.

  Once the stick was ready, Olga told me to put on my skates, which the man had carefully sharpened while I was taping my stick. He was no Mr. D, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

  In a couple of minutes, I was ready. I was dressed exactly the way I most like to be dressed. I was wearing all the best hockey equipment I could imagine. I had a brand-new composite stick that weighed so little it could have been made of air. And yet I felt strange.

  “Come, Sarah,” said Olga.

  I followed her out of the equipment room, turned left, and we walked to the ice surface. It was a beautiful new rink, international size, with good lighting and no windows. The only sound was the Zamboni leaving the ice surface and then the loud, hollow click of the doors closing to the Zamboni chute.

  “Go ahead,” Olga said. “Skate.”

  I went out in total silence. How different from heading out with your teammates. No crowd, not even a few parents, to cheer you. No opposing team to measure. No whacks on the shin pads and butt from your teammates. No team yell before the puck drops.

  The fresh ice glistened. I skated around with my head down, just watching my new Easton skates make lovely parallel lines in the ice. I dug hard in the corners to see if I still had my usual jump. I did. It felt good to be back doing what I love most of all.

  I checked out the arena, the penalty box, the benches. There were cameras, too, set every so often down both sides of the rink and in the corners. I couldn’t tell if they were on.

  What do they want of me?

  The equipment man came down the corridor with a bucket of pucks and tipped them out onto the ice.

  I figured I might as well try out the new stick, so I went over and tried my new trick, banging the back of the curved blade down hard on the puck and, once it “stuck” a bit, flicking the puck up so I was carrying it. I did this a few times and then worked on flipping the puck into the air and catching it. That worked a few times, but it’s something I’ll need to work on if I hope to skate around the entire rink flipping and catching pucks like pancakes in a frying pan.

  I heard noises and looked up. Two men wearing tracksuits and helmets came out onto the ice. They had skates and sticks and looked like coaches.

  One spoke to me, and he knew my name.

  “Hi, Sarah,” he said. “My name is Pavel, and this is Sacha. We’re going to put you through some drills, okay?”

  What was I supposed to say? “No way – and you can call the police right this minute!”

  It was better than sitting in my room moping. So we started passing pucks around and skating hard. They had me do some sprints up and down the ice – “bag” skates, Muck called them, and said he hated them when he was in junior – and then some agility moves carrying a puck through a series of pylons.

  It was sort of like a skills competition – but one in which I was the only player.

  Then I noticed someone watching at the far end of the ice. It was a tall man with a fur hat pulled way down, almost over his eyes. I could not see his face.

  It gave me the shivers to look at him and know he was staring at me.

  11

  “You have got to be kidding me!”

  Travis stared hard at Lars, but Lars was nodding his head wildly up and down, his eyes wide as bright blue pucks.

  “Seriously?” Travis asked.

  “Seriously,” Lars confirmed.

  The four Owls had come back to the rink and were waiting around for the shuttle bus to take them back to the hotel. Ever since the incident with Sarah, Muck and Mr. D had banned them from walking through the park.

  They had bumped into Nish in the hall near the souvenir stands and food kiosks. After Nish said he was going to find something to eat and wandered off, Travis, Sam, Jenny, and Jesse went into the stands to watch the game going on – a peewee team from Finland up against one that came from Kazakhstan. Dmitri was there, watching the play intently.

  The team from “Kaz,” as Dmitri called it, was actually pretty slick and well coached. Dmitri said they played the old “Soviet” system of hockey – units of five, defense and forwards rotating as the situation demanded – but Travis wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Like Muck, Travis wasn’t much for using fancy words and phrases to describe how a game was played. It never seemed to need words when you were actually playing it.

  Just as the game was ending, Lars came running up to the five Owls with his news.

  “Nish has been arrested!”

  “What do you mean?” Travis asked. A hundred images flashed through his mind – including, most prominently, Nish “flashing” some Russians as part of his stupid plan to get into Guinness World Records by mooning more people than anyone in history.

  “You’ll have to see for yourself,” Lars said.

  The group of Owls hurried around to the other side of the Ufa Arena. In an open area, they found a giant table-hockey game where fans could move the two life-size players by working large controls along the side.

  Over in the corner, a group had gathered. Travis could tell from the distinctive fur hats with badges on them that several of the people were Russian police. Through a small opening in the circle of adults, he could also see Nish, standing in the middle with a policeman on either side of him, both of them with a solid grip on his arms.

  Nish had his choirboy look on, but Travis didn’t think he looked all that innocent.

  Muck and Mr. D and Dmitri’s dad were also there. Mr. Yakushev was in discussion with the police, and then he turned to translate for Muck and Mr. D.

  “They say he climbed onto the game and started playing with a real stick while other kids were trying to play properly,” Mr. Yakushev said.

  “Apparently he even threw a hip check into one of the players.”

  One of the policemen pointed angrily at the giant table-top game, and everyone’s eyes followed his finger. Travis saw instantly what the policeman meant. One of the forwards was badly bent, as if something large had crashed into it.

  “Did you do that?” Mr. D asked Nish, who instantly turned red and beamed.

  “He tripped me,” Nish explained, with his choirboy smile.

  “Not the time or the place for joking, young man,” Muck said. “You should immediately apologize.”

  Nish winced. He hated apologizing almost as much as he hated vegetables.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a very small voice.

  “Speak up,” Muck ordered. “I want everyone to hear you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nish said louder. “I’m sorry I hurt the game.”

  Mr. Yakushev translated Nish’s words into Russian.

  “Now tell them you will pay for any repairs,” Muck told Nish.

  Nish looked up as if he’d just taken a slap shot to the stomach. That was another thing about Nish. He hated spending money. And he never had any.

  “Say it,” Muck said.

  “Okay,” Nish said with a sullen look. “I’ll pay for whatever needs to be done – but I have no money.”

  Mr. Yakushev translated for the police. Travis figured he’d left out the bit about Nish having no money.

  The policeman nodded at his colleagues and they released their grip on Nish’s arms.

  The officer walked up to Nish, put his face right up to the young hockey player’s, and bawled him out loudly in Russian for a full minute, then suddenly stopped, turned, and walked angrily away.

  “Man,” Nish said. “That is baaaaaad breath!”

  “Just be thankful you have any breath of your own left in you, young man,” said Muck. “This was even stupider than usual for you. Another trick like that, and you’ll not only not be playing, you’ll be on your way home.”

  Muck walked away as abruptly as the policeman had, and before long the crowd had all departed.

  Nish blinked after them; only a small group of Owls were left now at the side of the giant table-top game.

  “Can’t anyone around here take a joke?”

  Sam had had
enough. “Don’t you get it?” she said to him. “You are the joke.”

  12

  Olga brought me a gift this morning. She was smiling again and very friendly. Too friendly. And why a gift? What is she expecting in return? I have nothing here but my pack. I have no money.

  “Open,” she kept saying. I didn’t want to open any gift. Then I’d have to say thank you or something. Thanks for keeping me locked up away from my mother and father?

  But she wouldn’t leave until I opened it, so I gave a big sigh she couldn’t possibly miss and I opened the bag she’d brought. I pulled out a wooden doll. It was mostly round and smooth and beautifully painted, a young girl with fair hair, a nice smile, and cheeks as red as a fire engine.

  Olga said the doll looked like me. I couldn’t really see that, but I did sort of like it – even if I stopped playing with dolls years ago.

  “Matryoshka,” Olga said several times until I was able to repeat it: “ma-tree-oosh-ka.”

  “That is name of doll,” Olga said. “They are called matryoshka. I will show you.”

  Olga twisted the doll sharply so that it came apart in the middle. She pulled off the top. Inside the doll was another doll, exactly the same.

  “Neat!” I said.

  “Wait,” she said. “There is more.”

  She pulled out the inside doll and twisted it apart, revealing yet another doll: exactly the same but smaller, so that it fit inside the other.

  She did this five times until there were six identical dolls lined up, each one an exact copy of the other, except smaller. I put the smallest one back inside the second-smallest one, then that one back inside the third-smallest, until finally there was just the one again, so perfectly painted it seemed there could only be the one doll.

  “It is yours,” Olga said. “Gift from Olga to Sarah.”

  “Spasiba,” I said to her. She had taught me the Russian word for thank you.

  It seemed odd to be receiving a gift from your kidnapper, and even odder to be grateful for it, but everything about this experience is odd.