“Keep looking, Yanna. Maybe it was diverted.”
“Maybe it’s still at Khandaski.”
Roman shot a look at Genye wondering how much the guy understood. “Great minds think alike.”
“Listen, Roma, get to Smolsk. Vicktor and I have a little plan. He’ll meet you at Sarai’s clinic.”
He felt a rush of gratitude for his friends. “Don’t get into trouble, Yanna.”
“Us? Get in trouble?”
He could hear her smiling on the other end. “By the way, David has sent me three emails looking for you. Maybe you should give him a call.”
Maybe not. Roman had a few choice words for David that he should probably keep tucked inside his chest. He clicked off and stood over Genye as the man fiddled with the spark plug wires.
“Everything looks okay.” He closed the lid. “Fire her up.”
Roman braced his foot against the machine, grabbed the cord, and gave it a rip.
It sputtered, then nothing.
“Again.” Genye opened the hood, pumped the primer.
Roman pulled again. The machine coughed. He added some gas, then it roared to life. Smoke billowed out the back as it cleared the exhaust of age and rust.
Genye latched the hood and handed Roman an ancient helmet.
“Listen, you be careful, okay? I want Sarai safe.” He wore a smile, but Roman saw protection in those eyes. And after yesterday, when the guy had clocked him but good, he knew Genye meant it.
“Konyeshna.”
Genye nodded at Roman’s agreement, then glanced at the house. Sarai was coming out of the door. “She might not admit it, but she needs you. Try to see that.”
Roman stared after him as Genye turned and walked to the house.
“Ready?” Sarai entered the garage. She wore a clean pair of jeans—probably Anya’s—wool valenki boots, her black parka, a scarf, and a homemade green stocking cap that made her face seem tiny and sculpted. Her green eyes sparkled, and for a moment he wanted to answer no.
Not quite ready at all.
If he had his way, in less than twenty-four hours she would be safe…and not talking to him again.
Which would be a thousand times worse than having her argue and tease and occasionally pout.
Being around her had made him realize why his life felt so eerily calm when she entered his atmosphere. Because despite her maddening determination, she had a smile that could stop his heart cold, and when she laughed, well, he’d just about die to hear her laugh. He’d barely won their chess games. In fact, he’d checkmated her by sheer chance the first time.
Not that she had to know.
Still, something about being with her cut through the buzz that permeated his life and focused it.
Gave it meaning.
“Get on,” he said. She climbed on the back of the snowmobile and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Uh-oh.
Snow melded to her eyelashes and pelted her cheeks, and her pantlegs were soaked clear through. But as Roman drove the snowmobile through a drift and they went airborne, Sarai felt something rocket loose and take flight.
Maybe her brain cells. For sure the tight knot of stress that came from the all-work-and-no-play routine over the last two—no, six—years. Okay, probably most of her life.
They landed in a poof of snow and Roman whooped as he gunned the engine. Sarai screamed, but she heard adrenaline and laughter in her tone as she tightened her clasp around Roman’s waist.
Yes, she could get used to flying through the whitened, magical landscape, in and out of deer trails, thundering up and through snowdrifts, letting the machine drive her into the milky horizon with her arms around a man who looked both dangerous and delightful in his wool hat and snow-spiked hair. Crystals of snow gathered on his twenty-six-plus-hour beard, and his eyebrows looked iced over.
But his gaze seemed oh so very warm when he looked at her over his shoulder, slowing the snowmobile slightly. “You okay back there?”
“Fine!” She grinned. “Where did you learn to drive one of these?”
He gave her a one-eyed frown then turned his attention back to plowing through the snow.
Roman Novik, soldier. He probably had a plethora of talents she didn’t want to know about. She sank her chin onto his shoulder, relishing the feel of his solid back, his strong arms muscling the snowmobile.
She had to admit, when Genye had uncovered the rusted heap in his garage, she’d nearly turned and fled. But somehow, he and Roma had coaxed it to life, and with it, her curiosity. Oddly enough, Roman agreed to let her come along on his field trip.
She had to wonder if he might be up to something.
He was definitely up to something. It could be dangerous, he’d said.
At the moment, she didn’t care.
They plowed through another drift, and snow crashed into her scarf and down her back. “Ooh-rah!”
Roman glanced at her, smiling. “Having fun or something?”
She said nothing, just grinned.
They drove in silence, the engine cutting out conversation. Through the gray haze, Sarai saw oil wells to the south and west, some working, others frozen. The pungent smell of diesel cut through the crisp air and even the exhaust of the snowmobile.
Roman angled north, as if he might know where he was going. She hung on, and for a moment, she even closed her eyes, trusting in his ability to guide them.
They went over a knoll and zipped down the other side. Roman slowed the machine. “There.”
She followed his point, and her pulse did a small rush when she saw his destination.
A nuclear reactor.
“It’s huge.” She counted two smokestacks, and on either side, like a ring of iron giants, electrical towers cut into the gray sky. The plant itself looked like a factory, a huge box with few windows, laden with pipes. On one end, lined up like shotgun shells, stood maybe a dozen three-story silos.
Roman gunned the snowmobile right toward the plant. Oh joy.
Hadn’t he ever heard of a little accident called Chernobyl? “I thought you just wanted to see where it was. Roman, I don’t want to go any closer.”
“Now you tell me,” he said, but didn’t slow. “I told you that it might be dangerous. You said you wanted to come along.”
No, what she said was that she wasn’t worried because she had a hero. But, as usual, she’d been in serious denial.
Now that she saw the reactor, a coldness started in her stomach, then spread out through her arms, and it had nothing to do with the snow still pelting her cheeks. “Roman, I’m serious.”
He slowed the snowmobile. She looked beyond him and could see a road leading to the plant. Flanked on either side of the road, a guard stand and entry gate indicated security. Beside them, a tall white monument—or sign, perhaps—topped with a red-painted concrete flame betrayed its purpose.
“Calm down, it’s decommissioned,” Roman said over the rumble of the motor.
“Then why are there still people here?” She pointed toward a truck just beyond the gate.
“It’s decommissioned, but it’s still operational—in terms of cooling the spent fuel. They cool the nuclear waste in rods in a pool of water for about seven years and then store them in those huge silos. I’m sure there is a skeleton crew monitoring the cooling.” He pointed with his gloved hand. “Listen, no one will know we’re here. It’s scarcely manned, and all we’re going to do is a little poking around.”
A little poking around? But before she could object, he revved the machine and drove parallel to the road, cutting a wide angle around the plant, and stopped at the edge of a pine forest.
“If you want, you can stay here.” Roman got off the snowmobile. “I won’t be long.”
She angled a look at the plant, then back at Roman. Let’s see, stay here in the cold until he got hurt and left her stranded, or go with him and get arrested? Then again, once he returned he might just arrest her anyway.
She got off. “Lead the wa
y, hero.”
He nodded, then opened his jacket and pulled out—
“A gun?”
“Calm down, it’s just a precaution.” He tucked it into his outer pocket. “We’ll have to hike from here, but I think the blizzard will hide our approach.”
Oh, great.
She wondered if she should be ducking as they trudged out from the cover of the pine forest and crossed the hundred or so meters to the fence.
“I’m going to hoist you over,” he said.
“I can do it.” She dug her hands into the fence, but her thick boots refused purchase.
“Let me give you a boost—”
“You touch my backside and I’ll kick you.”
He stepped back, hands up in surrender.
She fought her way up, over and let herself fall into the snow on the other side.
He jumped up and vaulted it before she even climbed back to her feet. Show-off. She slapped away his outstretched hand.
He laughed.
She made a face at him.
Now he bent over as he ran toward a service door, as if hunching over might conceal the two intruders wearing black coats against a snow-white backdrop? For crying out loud…
Still, ten minutes later, they were inside the building. Silence felt thick, or maybe she just couldn’t hear anything over the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears. The smell of gasoline and concrete permeated the walls, and she couldn’t stifle a shiver. They were inside a nuclear plant.
She needed to get her head examined. Then again, that should probably be standard practice whenever she found herself in Roman’s airspace.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
“Tiha!” he said and put a finger to his lips.
Wait—wasn’t he a federal agent? Why all the sneaky sneaky? Shouldn’t he be allowed to just stroll in, flashing his badge or something?
He moved out into the hall and scrambled to another door. She stayed glued to his tail and shut the door behind her.
They were in an office, and from what it looked like, an abandoned office. Like all Russian offices, pictures of the plant, including floor plans and egress routes, hung on the wall. Roman shone his flashlight on the map, tracing a finger along a route.
“Here.” He tapped it twice, then looked at her. “I think you should stay here until I get—”
“Not on your life, bub. I’m Velcro on you.”
He raised one eyebrow, but didn’t smile. “Ladna. But keep up.”
Was he kidding? She’d probably run him over.
They exited to the hallway, and he did a James Bond, sneaking down the hallway, down stairs, through passageways until he came to a locked room. Yes, she read the radioactive sign on the door, even pointed it out to him, but he shrugged it away.
What, was he impervious to radiation poisoning? Hello, she didn’t want her teeth and hair falling out at the ripe old age of thirty-five.
He opened the door, shone his light inside. It reflected off a pane of glass. “Poshli,” he said as he beckoned her inside.
She smelled the odor of danger as she closed the door into total darkness. Or maybe the smell was the redolence of her own fear. As Roman stood and slowly panned his light through the glass, she felt cold and clammy. And bald.
“What does Vwesoka Obogashenie Oran stand for? It can’t be good. Especially with the symbol of radioactivity on it? And the word for “dangerous,” Opasnost? What is it, Roman?”
He turned to her, bracketed his hands on either side of her face. “Calm down. It’s uranium. Probably Highly Enriched Uranium, which was used to power this nuclear reactor. What I need to know is the lot number on those casks.”
“Wait, you lost me at uranium—as in radioactive uranium? The stuff used in nuclear bombs?”
“The very same. And someone has been selling it to terrorists outside of Russia.” He took off his hat, wiped his brow with it. Obviously, he wasn’t real thrilled to be ten meters away from the stuff either.
“The thing is, this uranium isn’t supposed to be here. If indeed it is uranium. It might just be the containers.”
He moved toward the door and she grabbed his arm. “Have you lost it completely? You can’t go in there! Not without protective gear and—”
“Relax, Doc—it’s only radioactive if ingested.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so very much better. Radioactive means radioactive in my book, Roman. Please, let’s get out of here. I—”
He clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled her tight against him. Very tight and protective-like. She could hear his heart pounding as they stood in the darkness.
Footsteps. Outside in the hall.
Please, please, keep going.
But, no. They stopped.
And that’s when she felt Roman reach for his gun.
She just knew he was going to get killed one day and she’d be around to see it…or worse, get killed right alongside him.
Why did she always have to be right?
8
He had to have kasha for brains. Or perhaps the temperature had dropped so low his brain synapses had frozen up, because while one side of Roman’s brain knew, just knew that her “okay, I’ll go along nicely” routine had been an act, the other side made him stand out in the yard watching the snow blanket the tin roofs of the two- and three-room village homes. Even when he heard an engine fire up and a vehicle pull away, reality didn’t whack him upside the head until he finally charged into the house.
Of course she’d gone out the back. Why had he ever considered her a calming force in his life? She felt more like a tornado.
He raced back outside, climbed into her Camry, hung a U-turn, and floored it out of Khanda toward Smolsk. Where would she go? He popped on his headlights, and in the encroaching darkness saw taillights of the ambulance she’d driven as she lumbered onto the main thoroughfare.
Hatlichna! She was headed toward Smolsk. Maybe he had talked some sense into her and her pride just didn’t want to admit it. Hopefully she would just keep driving straight and right into Buryatia Province.
Yeah, and maybe he wouldn’t be cleaning toilets in gulag this time next week.
Roman slammed his hand against the steering wheel. The car shimmied on the road, and he slowed. Snow layered the road like icing, and as he drove out of town into the blinding whiteness of the encroaching blizzard, he had to double-grip the wheel. The heater couldn’t keep up with the cold, and he felt his feet begin to grow numb. Ahead of him, Sarai’s taillights—at least he hoped they were Sarai’s—cut through the gauze of snow like a blood-red knife.
He shook his head. At this rate, they’d get back to Smolsk sometime tomorrow morning…early. But in sufficient time for their window.
And maybe, hopefully, he’d have a job to go back to. A job that right now centered on finding the supplier of Russia’s most dangerous—and toxic—commodity.
Highly Enriched Uranium.
Roman cut his speed as the taillights became clearer. Better to let her think that she’d left him standing in Smolsk. Then at least she wouldn’t do anything crazy like…
What? Ditching the one person who wanted to talk sense into her?
Or, maybe, fleeing from the one person who wanted to derail her goals. Sarai had always been a driving force, someone who parted the waters and got the job done. But at what expense this time? Her freedom and probably his.
In less than two days, the pictures in the newspapers and on television would morph from information gathering to at-large posters. And if Bednov turned serious, there might even be a reward.
In the middle of economy-ravished Siberia, reward money just might put food on a farmer’s table for an entire winter. Buy the family a new cow, some warm clothes, or coal.
Roman focused on the taillights. Where was she going? Hadn’t she said she needed to stay in town and check the other children? Renal failure. Her words had triggered suspicions, and now he let them free to roam about his thoughts. Barry Riddle h
ad suffered from renal failure. His passport had listed Irkutsk, and he’d been affiliated with Alexander Oil. However, Alexander Oil had wells across Russia, from Omsk to Yakutia to Sakhalin Island.
Still, what if Alexander Oil had property on or near a decommissioned reactor? Especially a reactor that might still have unused HEU in its storehouse?
The possibility probably merited a field trip, if not a sneak and peek, to the Alexander Oil offices. Frankly, finding the HEU supplier might be the only way to keep him out of gulag.
Sarai’s lights ahead turned off to the right. Roman eased off the gas, slowed, and took the turn at a crawl. Darkness had settled like a cloud, dissected only by his headlights and the thick snow. He kept back from Sarai’s car, hoping that her attention was so fixed on the road ahead she wouldn’t bother to look behind her.
Because, obviously, she wasn’t headed for Smolsk.
He tried not to let that fact dig a hole in his gut. Apparently, she had no problem cutting him right out of her life. Even after she’d discovered he’d risked his own neck for her.
Some things never changed.
Like the way her eyes turned the darkest shade of sea green when she was upset. Or the way she wrinkled her nose when she disagreed, as if even his words might be odorous. Still, he couldn’t help but notice that her freckles had never faded, and in summer probably made her look about twenty-two.
Or maybe she’d simply always be about twenty-two to him. Because the woman who’d gone toe-to-toe with him twice in the last eighteen hours and ditched him, ahem, also twice, certainly wasn’t the carefree ray of sunshine he’d fallen for in Moscow.
No, this Sarai version seemed driven. Even desperate.
As if she might be trying to prove something.
Well, weren’t they all? Except, what did Sarai have to prove? She didn’t have a legacy of alcoholism, of die-hard adherence to a passel of lies. She didn’t have memories of watching his father go from refined businessman to drunken bum, of taking the blows when his father turned his disillusionment on Roman’s mother. Or seeing his mother pack her things and leave.
Never Say Goodbye Page 9