The Boy Who Stole From the Dead

by Orest Stelmach

  “You got it.”

  “We should put him even more at ease before I leave, though.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Laughter.”

  “That might be tough. Neither of us has a sense of humor.”

  “Did you know Sherlock Holmes is the butt of many Russian jokes?”

  Marko started to grin, then narrowed his eyes. “You serious?”

  Nadia nodded. “Holmes and Watson pitch a tent and go camping. Holmes wakes Watson up in the middle of the night and says, ‘Watson, what do you deduce from all the stars in the sky?’ Watson says, ‘It tells me there may be life beyond Earth.’ Holmes says, ‘Watson, you’re an idiot. Someone stole our tent.’ ”

  Marko shook his head and chuckled. Actually showed his teeth.

  Nadia couldn’t tell if she’d really made him laugh or not but she smiled nonetheless. She liked that one. “Ladies’ room. Be right back.”

  She took her canvas bag and walked toward the front door to the restaurant. Not too slowly, not too quickly. Like any woman going to freshen up.

  She swung the door open. A hostess greeted her without a smile.

  “I’m sitting outside,” Nadia said. “Which way to the bathroom?”

  The hostess pointed to a corridor beyond the dining room.

  Nadia marched into the ladies’ room. It was empty. She locked herself in a stall. Slipped out of her blazer, skirt, and blouse. Took new clothes out of her canvas bag. Put on a sweater, jeans, and a light jacket. Wrapped a black scarf around her hair and put on her sunglasses. It was the same scarf she’d used to escape the Caves Monastery in Kyiv last year. She’d packed it as a precaution and for good luck. She grabbed her purse and stuffed the rest of the clothes in the canvas bag. Left the bag in the stall.

  She walked out of the restroom and turned right, away from the front door. A tray clattered outside. A woman shrieked. Something crashed to the ground. Men shouted.

  Marko had taken down the man with the pointed chin, she thought. Just as they’d planned.

  Nadia burst through a door marked “Employees Only.”

  One cook stood poised over five omelets. Another hovered over ten pancakes. A server turned to Nadia. It was the same woman who’d taken their order. She showed no signs of recognizing Nadia.

  “I can’t go back out there,” Nadia said. “My boyfriend said he’s going to kill me. Is there a back door?”

  Stunned faces. The server pointed to a door behind a stack of potato sacks.

  Nadia hurried out of the restaurant. She emerged in an alley beside empty vegetable crates and a dumpster. A pile of ashes and a zillion cigarette butts. Even though she’d changed clothes, Nadia preferred not to be seen exiting the rear of the eatery. At least one man would be watching the back street. She was sure of it.

  She cut right across an alley joining the adjacent buildings. The last building had a sign on the rear entrance. Central Square Hostel. A man was wheeling boxes from a laundry company inside. He paid no attention to Nadia.

  She turned left down an access road for deliveries and emerged one block north and half a block east of where she’d been sitting. A quick glance left. A delivery van blocked her view. She craned her neck. Quickly snapped it back. The Renault was parked near the back of the restaurant, a block away.

  Nadia marched in the opposite direction, north by northwest, block by block, without consulting her map. She only had to travel a mile to get to her destination. She knew from memory she was heading in the right direction. It didn’t matter if she was off a block or two from the optimal course.

  After ten minutes of walking, the neighborhood turned residential. Neoclassical apartment buildings lined one-way streets. Cars parked diagonally on one side of the road, bumpers pointed toward the curb. A smattering of pedestrians hurried to work. Nadia stopped near two mothers chatting beside a day care center to consult a map. There were no cars or pedestrians behind her. She was certain she’d lost both tails. She oriented herself and moved on.

  She arrived on Yakova Rappaporta Street ten minutes later. A red-and-yellow brick castle with a silver dome towered over the other buildings. It looked like a mosque but contained etchings of the Star of David above some of its windows.

  Yakova Rappaporta became Vilna Street. Vilna was the Ukrainian word for “free,” as in freedom. Karel’s apartment was located in a three-story stone building with a wrought iron balcony overlooking a grove of trees planted along the sidewalk. Blue and black graffiti marred the walls.

  Nadia entered a foyer through a red wooden door. She found the name Karel Mak next to a buzzer for apartment #3B. She rang the buzzer several times. No one answered. She’d prepared for the possibility he wouldn’t be home, or answer his doorbell if the visitor didn’t have an appointment. Nadia rang the buzzer marked “office.”

  A cranky woman answered. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m looking for Karel Mak. I’m a friend of his.”

  “Impossible. Karel has no friends. Go away.” The static died.

  Nadia counted to ten. Pressed the buzzer again.

  “Who’s there?”

  “I really am a friend of Karel’s. I’m from America. I met him last year—”

  “Impossible. Karel’s never been to America. Go away.” The static died again.

  If the woman knew he’d never been to America, that meant they were friends. Nadia didn’t wait this time. She pressed the buzzer three times in rapid succession.

  “I’m calling the police,” the woman said. Furious now.

  “I didn’t meet him in America. I met him in Chornobyl village.”

  A pause. Three seconds later a louder buzzer sounded. The door unlocked. Nadia walked into a foyer. A hallway led to apartments. A staircase led upstairs. There was no elevator.

  A door opened down the hallway. A svelte old woman stepped out. She had sunken cheekbones and wary eyes. From a distance she looked middle-aged but up close she looked ancient. The lines in her face contrasted with her brown hair color.

  She wiped her hands on an apron. “I’m making breakfast. Come, kotyku. Come.”

  Kotyku was the endearment Nadia’s mother had used growing up. It meant “kitten.” The sound of the word slowed Nadia’s pulse.

  She followed the woman to her apartment. A mezuzah was attached to the doorframe. Nadia had learned about it from her Jewish neighbors in New York City. It was a small case that contained a piece of parchment with a passage from the Torah. The mezuzah fulfilled the Biblical requirement to post the specified passage at the entry to one’s home.

  Nadia stepped inside. The woman closed the door. She turned and pointed a pistol at Nadia with both hands. They shook lightly.

  “I survived the Lviv ghetto. I’ll survive you. Now who are you and what do you want with my son?”

  CHAPTER 35

  THE GENERAL COULD barely contain his euphoria. He’d been waiting for this morning for a month since making arrangements for her arrival. He could tell from the website she was a temptress. A seductress. The man who had the privilege to hold her, use her, and possess her would realize new heights of pleasure. Of that he was certain.

  His wife understood he had passions even age couldn’t extinguish. He had to give her credit for that. At first she balked when he told her he was building an enormous studio behind their mansion. It would look hideous beside the English garden, she said. But then he explained the benefits of its creation. He would travel less often. He’d get satisfaction in his home as opposed to seeking recreation outside it. This was the type of compromise that prolonged marriages, he explained. He told her he was going to sound-proof the studio. That he would host visitors, on occasion. And that she should never step foot into that building if she valued her life.

  When he told her precisely what he’d be doing in the studio she finally understood. Marr
iage was not his primary fulfillment. He could see the look of resignation in her eyes. The realization that his trips abroad had not been merely business, but the source of the joy that kept him alive. Alive, by God, like a man was supposed to feel.

  The General sipped his coffee at the desk beside the king-sized bed in the studio. The bedroom flanked the living room which opened up into a small kitchen. A wall separated the living quarters from the rest of the studio which was comprised of a single ballroom.

  He stepped into the ballroom, cup in hand. Two partitions formed a triangle against a side wall. She was there, waiting quietly for him, the way a good mistress should. He loved this moment. The sense of anticipation. Prolonging that moment of rapture when he first put his hands on her—

  His cell phone rang.

  He cursed it. Walked to the kitchen, put his cup down, and answered it.

  “We lost her,” Saint Barbara said.

  The General heard the words but couldn’t believe the message. “Sorry. Say again? I thought I heard you say you lost her. We must have a bad connection.”

  “You heard right,” Saint Barbara said. “We lost her.”

  “Explain.”

  “They checked in to the Leopolis. Then they went to breakfast at Rynok Square. They ordered food. Shared a laugh. Then she went into the bathroom and never came out.”

  “What do you mean she never came out? Did your man check inside the bathroom?”

  “He tried. But her brother collided with him. Made it look like an accident. By the time he checked the bathroom, she was gone.”

  The General ground his teeth. “Then if she was gone, obviously she came out the bathroom. Come on, man. You’re smarter than this. Are you ill?”

  “I didn’t mean she never came out. I meant they never saw her come out. Not the man in the front. Or the man in the back.”

  “How can that be?”

  “The man in the front found a bag in the bathroom. It had her clothes in it.”

  The General chuckled. “Smart girl. She keeps this up I may fall in love with her.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Don’t panic. She was in Ukraine and Russia last year, yes?”

  “That’s what Border Control said.”

  “And there was a watch list on her passport when she was in Russia. Who put it on and then took it off?”

  “The deputy minister of the interior.”

  “Call him. Tell him I said hello. See if you can trace her steps from the moment she landed in Kyiv last year. This time she didn’t go anywhere except Simeonovich’s office. Who else does she know in Ukraine? Whom did she meet with last year? Remember the urgency. She is the boy’s guardian. The boy killed Valentin’s son. She will pay. It is a matter of honor. Call me back in an hour.” The General glanced at the partitioned area. “Make it two hours.”

  He hung up.

  As a rule, the General shut his cell phone off whenever he was busy with the fulfillment of his dreams. This time, however, he kept it on. News of this Tesla woman was starting to qualify as such.

  He marched to the side wall. Took a deep breath, pulled the partitions apart, and stepped back to eye his prize. He lost his breath.

  She lay fully assembled on a table next to the carrying case in all her glory. The Nosler Model 48 Professional. Satin black composite stock. Match-grade stainless steel barrel. One piece steel-hinged floor plate. Magazine release in the trigger bow for fast reloading. In the trigger bow, he thought. How ingenious. How intoxicating.

  The General lifted the rifle off the table and held it for the first time. 3.4 kilograms of pure ecstasy. Expensive, though. Three thousand American. But that was a good thing. Quality never came cheap except with tramps and traitors. The rifle was sub-moa, which meant he would be able to shoot a grouping of bullets approximately one inch apart at one hundred yards. To help him achieve that goal, the General had purchased some high end glass, a Schmidt and Bender scope. He caressed the barrel. He named all his rifles after women. He would call this one Nadia.

  The ballroom featured curtains and a stage but it was actually a shooting range with proper ventilation and reinforced walls and roof. Seven stations faced seven targets. The General brought the rifle and carrying case to the center station. He doubled up on ear protection. First the plugs followed by the earmuffs.

  He loaded the rifle, assumed a balanced shooting stance, and acquired the target. It was a hundred meters away.

  The General fired. Afterward, he retrieved the paper target.

  There was a hole in the woman’s head.

  CHAPTER 36

  NADIA STARED INTO the barrel of the gun. The woman was serious. The mere mention of a World War II ghetto gave her instant credibility. She had witnessed horrors beyond Nadia’s comprehension. Who knew what she’d done to survive? Shooting a stranger dead in broad daylight was unthinkable to most people. But to a mother with such a background who thought she was protecting her son, not so much.

  “My name is Nadia Tesla. I met Karel at the café outside the power plant in Chornobyl last year. I told him I was a journalist but he knew better. He knew I was there to see my uncle who’d sent me a message to America that he had something valuable. Something very valuable. Karel took me to see my uncle, and then he showed me wolves.”

  “You say your name is Nadia Tesla? What did my son call you? Did he call you Nadia? Or did he call you Panna Tesla?” Panna, with a pause on the ‘n,’ was the Ukrainian word for Miss. “I raised my Karel to be a gentleman. I’d like to know if I succeeded.”

  Nadia sensed it was a test. “He didn’t call me by either of those names. He called me Nadia-Panya.”

  She raised her chin and studied Nadia, as though for the first time. “Oh. So you’re that Nadia Tesla.”

  Nadia’s father had used that line all the time. Nadia could see his lip curling up as he said it. She knew she was out of harm’s way. It was a classic, old-school Ukrainian line that implied the given person was one of the good guys.

  “Who are your parents? Where are they from?” Karel’s mother said.

  “My father was born in Bila Tserkva. My mother was born in Kyiv. They moved to Lviv when they were teenagers. Then they immigrated to America. My mother’s retired. My father passed away when I was thirteen.”

  She waved the gun at Nadia. “What are their names, kotyku? Their names?”

  “Maxim and Katerina.”

  She studied Nadia again. “Oh. Those Teslas.” She turned and put the gun in a drawer.

  Nadia didn’t bother asking if Karel’s mother knew her parents. She knew the answer was no. She’d asked their names to make sure they didn’t stir a memory. A bad one, Nadia suspected.

  “Is Karel here?” Nadia said.

  “No. Karel is gone.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Have you had breakfast yet? When did you get into town?”

  She insisted Nadia sit down at the kitchen table. For the second time since Bobby had been arrested, a woman with a gun served her tea. If there were a third time, Nadia was certain it wouldn’t go so well.

  Nadia explained that she’d flown to Kyiv on business, and come to Lviv to see her parents’ adopted hometown.

  Karel’s mother poured water into cups. “What religion are you? Orthodox or Catholic?”

  “Catholic.” Nadia remembered the Mezuzah. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if you had said neither, that you are an atheist, that would have told me something about you.”

  “What would it have told you?”

  “That you are like my son.” She smiled. “He was born a Jew but became a scientist. He only believes in that which he can prove. Though he’s searching. He’s questing. He’s trying to find a being higher than the equation.”

  She served tea with rugelach and poppy seed cake. Nadia s
tarted with the poppy seed cake. She could never resist it. This one had raisins and nuts and melted in her mouth. Nadia sensed that Karel’s mother was as lonely as she was wary. Her best approach to find Karel was to continue the conversation and be sociable.

  “I noticed the castle up the street with the star of David on it,” Nadia said. “What is that building?”

  “That was the Jewish hospital,” she said. “It was dismantled in 1965. Now it’s a tourist destination.”

  “Why was it dismantled?”

  “Because it had fallen apart. It was no longer necessary after the war because the Jewish quarter ceased to exist.”

  “What do you mean, ceased to exist? You’re still here, right?”

  “Yes. I’m still here. In 1939 before the war, there were one hundred and twenty thousand Jews living in Lviv. In 1941 that number grew to two hundred and twenty thousand. Refugees from Western Poland. That was half the city’s population. Today there are only two thousand of us left.”

  Nadia didn’t know what to say. She knew what the Nazis had done. Everyone knew. But the Nazis had been gone for more than half a century.

  “The first daily Yiddish newspaper in the world, the Lemberger Toblat, was published in Lviv in the nineteenth century, when it was under Austrian rule. Lviv was a center of Yiddish literature. Ukrainians and Jews who lived in Lviv got along very well. Until the cooperatives came.”

  “The cooperatives?”

  “Ukrainian communities consisted mostly of farmers. Jewish communities consisted mostly of shopkeepers and moneylenders. When the farmers pooled their resources to buy and sell products without a middleman, it created tension. Many Jewish people lost their jobs.”

  “Did any of your family survive the war?” Nadia said.

  “No. My parents were shipped to Belzec in May, 1942. That was four months after my only brother was hanged to death from the gallows the Nazis set up in the town square. He was part of the armed Jewish resistance. His last words were ‘the sun still shines.’ He was captured by the SS paramilitary death squad, who were assisted by the Ukrainian auxiliary police. Most Ukrainian kept to themselves during the war. But some didn’t. That was the second of two major pogroms in Lviv. You know what a pogrom was?”