The voices became more animated. The boulder moved.
They’d killed Marko and were coming for her.
A sense of impending doom gripped her. Move, she told herself. Move.
Nadia aimed her flashlight forward. Made note of the curve in the wall and the jagged edges in the floor. Shut the flashlight.
Hugged the wall and disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 43
JOHNNY STOOD FACING Bobby as the guard guided him into the visitor’s room. Usually he preferred to sit across the table from his client so he didn’t appear to be an authority figure towering over him. So they could look each other eye-to-eye and on the level. But Bobby had been anything but on the level with him since he’d landed in Rikers Island. And now Johnny had the advantage he’d been hoping for. Forcing Bobby to look up at him would emphasize he had the upper hand.
The means with which he’d obtained his advantage was a source of constant guilt requiring liberal doses of rationalization. After Victor Bodnar called him with his news about the witness, however, he pushed aside the guilt. The witness had modified his original statement. As a result, everything had changed. If Johnny could get Bobby to retract his confession and tell him the truth, the DA would drop the murder charge. That much was certain. And if Johnny could prove self-defense, he had a real chance of getting the kid off completely.
The bad news was that keeping Bobby’s true identity a secret would get more complicated. But that had to be of secondary importance to a lifetime in jail, didn’t it? Johnny imagined Nadia’s reaction to his uncovering the truth about what happened that night. To seeing the charges against Bobby reduced and ultimately dropped. He pictured the look in her eyes. Johnny savored that image.
“What about Nadia?” Bobby said, as soon as the guard closed the door behind him.
“She was all right as of this morning,” Johnny said. “Time difference. We traded messages. That’s all I know for now.”
Bobby relaxed once he heard Nadia was safe. He rocked gently back and forth in his seat. Johnny knew from his prior visit that if he glanced under the table he’d find the boy’s right foot tapping away furiously. He’d never returned to being the apathetic kid since Johnny had showed him the picture of old man Valentin. From the moment of his outburst that Nadia would be killed if she dug into Valentine’s past, Bobby’s demeanor had turned into suppressed rage. He really was a short Ukrainian fuse ready to blow. And now Johnny had the match.
“So here’s the news,” Johnny said. “The witness who saw you kill Valentine? He went to the cops yesterday afternoon and changed his story.”
Bobby’s eyes shot up.
Johnny leaned over the table. “Oh. Have I got your attention? Turns out the witness saw Valentine come at you with a knife. He saw you defend yourself with your screwdriver. Then he saw you walk away. We know you went to the police station to turn yourself in. That much was true. But from then on, he didn’t tell the police everything. And neither did you.”
Bobby blinked.
“Remember when I showed you a picture of the victim? His hand was curled as though someone had pried something from his fist. Turns out that’s exactly what happened. Valentine was carrying a knife. Just like you said. A hunting knife. An expensive hunting knife. And that’s not all. He was also carrying a compact briefcase. He probably dropped it when he went for his knife. You know what was in that briefcase. Care to tell me?”
Blood seeped into Bobby’s face.
“A Sauer 202 takedown rifle with sound moderator. You know what a takedown rifle is?” Johnny paused. “Neither did I. It’s a rifle that can be disassembled without tools. You know what a sound moderator is? It diffuses the source of the gunshot. So it’s harder to tell what direction the bullet was coming from. What do you say to that?”
Bobby put his hands on the table. Moved his lips but didn’t say anything.
“There’s something else.” Johnny paced in front of him. “There was another item of interest in the briefcase. A detailed map of a very specific part of New York City. It’s called Hart Island. You know Hart Island, Bobby?”
Bobby closed his fists.
“No? Then let me tell you about it. It’s a small island at the easternmost part of the Bronx in Long Island Sound. It’s about a mile long and a quarter mile wide. Over time it’s been a Civil War internment camp, a psychiatric hospital for women, and a base for Ajax missiles. Now it’s the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. About two thousand people who die in New York City are buried there every year. People with no names, no families. Stillborn babies. Dismembered body parts of murder victims that can’t be identified. There’re about forty of those per year. No one’s allowed on the island except the people that conduct the burials. Ironically, that’s Rikers Island prisoners. How about that, huh? Can’t make that stuff up. No press is allowed. Ever. The ferry that runs from City Island to Hart Island is controlled by the city. Even family members have to apply for a pass from the prison system.”
Johnny walked around the table and knelt down on one knee beside Bobby. Now the kid was looking down at him. Johnny lowered his voice to a near-whisper. Channeled as much compassion as he could muster into his expression.
“Hart Island is the darkest place in New York City,” Johnny said. “It’s a forbidden zone. There’s no one there but the dead. Why would a young real estate executive from London be carrying a takedown rifle with a sound moderator, a hunting knife, and a map of such a place? Why did you agree to meet him there? Why did you have no choice but to kill him?”
Bobby’s knuckles turned white. His faced turned eggplant. For a moment, Johnny was concerned the kid was going to need medical attention. Then Bobby took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. By the time he was done, all the tension seemed to have seeped out of him.
“I want to see Iryna first,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER 44
NADIA SQUEEZED THROUGH the cave’s passageway. It curled into a semicircle around the inner chambers. She had to shuffle sideways, left arm by her side, right arm raised and parallel to the floor. Her hand gripped the flashlight. Her back scraped the wall. She heard the sound but felt no pain. The overalls were amazing. Then she remembered. The overalls weren’t scraping the walls. She was wearing a backpack. The backpack was scraping the wall. The backpack was the problem.
She stopped, lowered her right arm, and tried to shimmy out of it. The backpack slid halfway down her spine and got stuck. Nadia pulled on the straps. The backpack wouldn’t budge.
Light flashed behind her. Rock scraped against rock. The boulder, Nadia thought. A voice. The man with the rifle. No. Two voices. Two men. Entering the passageway.
Shit.
Nadia pushed off against the front wall and tried to compress her backpack’s contents. Plastic cracked. The water bottle, she remembered. Half-empty. She straightened. Pressed against the front wall, face turned sideways. Slipped the pack off her back.
Light bounced off the walls behind her.
Footsteps. Coming.
She grabbed the knapsack by the strap with her left hand and powered forward. She turned the light on. Caught a glimpse of the next twenty steps. Turned it off. Five steps. Ten steps. Fifteen steps. Twenty steps. Flashed the light again.
A solid crystalline wall stood in front of her. Three more steps and she would have smashed her face. A crawl space at the bottom of the wall.
Light flashed forty feet behind her. Closing.
Nadia flung the knapsack into the narrow passage. Dropped to her hands and knees. Shined the flashlight into the crawl space. Saw air beyond the knapsack. Slithered into the opening and pushed forward.
The air thinned. Sweat trickled into her eyes. Crystalline dust drifted into her nose. She tried to suppress a sneeze but to her horror, couldn’t. It didn’t matter if she made noise, she realized. They wer
e right behind her. They knew exactly where she was.
She crawled on her elbows and knees. Pushed the knapsack ahead. Kept the flashlight pointed at an angle to illuminate the ceiling and the tunnel. Considered the possibility the crawl space would end. Imagined being shot from behind, or dragged out by her legs. Or beaten with the butt of a rifle. Gritted her teeth and banished the thoughts. Crawled for twenty body lengths. Twenty-one, she counted. Twenty-two.
Light shone behind her. Voices.
The crawl space opened. Nadia scampered out of the tunnel. Stepped to the right, away from her pursuers’ line of vision. Turned in a circle and made a sweeping motion with her flashlight. Cast an arc of light at her surroundings.
The ceilings soared. Solid walls surrounded her on three sides. The fourth wall provided the only possible escape. It featured a narrow passage that gradually widened the higher one climbed. At a height of thirty feet, a human being could slip through the passage, Nadia guessed. But there was no floor. Just a crack below where the two side walls met. The only footholds were the two walls that defined the passageway.
Nadia turned the light off. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark. She could see twenty feet in front of her. She stashed her flashlight in her pocket. Slung the knapsack on her back again. She considered leaving it but decided she might need the lighter, water, and batteries if she got stuck overnight. She scampered up the left wall. She’d scaled fifty-foot trap rock ridges in the hills of Litchfield County. Climbed up cliffs twice that height on the Appalachian Trail. Sturdy crystalline crevices provided decent toeholds and perches. It was child’s play, she told herself. Child’s play—
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” a man said in Russian.
It was a different voice. Not the rawboned man from Lviv. It was the other one. The man who’d been following them. The one with the pointed chin.
Nadia took a running start and leaped into the crevice between the walls. She spread her legs. Reached out with her hands. Her feet landed at odd angles against the two walls. Her right ankle turned in. She slipped. Started to fall. Pressed hard with her right hand against the wall to keep from falling. The rock stripped skin from her hand.
She winced. Regained her balance. Propelled herself forward, legs straddling the parallel walls. Crystal shards scraped her hands. She kept her knees bent to exert maximum force. She covered five, ten, twenty, yards.
The walls ended. Nadia found herself perched on a cliff. She had to be more than twenty feet high. She couldn’t see the ground below. She reached for her flashlight.
Light shone behind her. Headlamps.
“I see her,” a man said.
Nadia didn’t have time for the flashlight. She found a toehold and descended down the cliff. The slope eased. Nadia ran down the final twenty feet. At the bottom of the cliff, a long horizontal strip of crystal protruded from the floor before giving way to a flat surface. Nature had honed it to a sharp edge. Momentum carried Nadia toward the crystal. By the time she saw it, there was no way she could stop.
She leaped. The running start carried her four or five feet past the jagged edge. Her right foot landed on a stone instead. She turned her leg. Lost her footing. Fell to the ground.
A straightaway awaited her ahead. Nadia ran. She managed fifteen strides before the gunshot exploded. The noise was deafening. She stopped in her tracks. Waited for the pain.
None came. He’d missed.
He’d also taken his sound suppressor off, Nadia thought. As though he wanted to make noise. It occurred to her that if they wanted to kill her they would have done so by now. It seemed as though they wanted to capture her instead.
“Stay where you are,” the man with the pointed chin said.
He waited until the rawboned man with the rifle appeared behind him. He was limping. He took one look at the cliff and stopped. He aimed his rifle at Nadia. The man with the pointed chin descended down the cliff.
Nadia eyed the sharp strip of crystal. With any luck he’d trip and fall headfirst onto it. She realized her odds were low. The man kept coming though, arm extended, gun pointed at Nadia. He gathered momentum as the cliff became manageable. Broke into a slow trot as Nadia had done. She held her breath. He didn’t appear to see the strip of crystal.
But then at the last second he looked down, as though his instincts had alerted him to possible danger. He leapt. It was a weak jump off one foot only, and the back foot at that. But it was enough to clear the razor’s edge that Nadia had been hoping would take him down.
He sailed over the crystal and disappeared beneath the earth. A scream filled the air. It grew more distant with each second but its echo continued. It seemed to last forever.
Nadia remembered the guide’s warning about fissures in the floor. Fissures large enough to swallow a human. She realized she must have leapt over the hole to avoid the sharp rock.
The other man was equally transfixed by his colleague’s fall. Nadia didn’t waste time. She hurried along the passage toward the entrance to the cave. Kept her flashlight on. Didn’t turn back. The rawboned man with the rifle was injured, she thought. He couldn’t keep up with her.
She stopped after ten minutes to consult her map. Oriented herself, and hurried on to the original cave entrance.
A ray of light. A collection of small rocks and boulders obscured the opening. Nadia tossed them aside. Daylight streamed into the cave. So did the sound of rain. She cleaned out dry sticks, leaves, and branches. A large pile of animal dung appeared fresh. From her experience, it looked like it belonged to a bear. She looked around again. No animal in sight.
She slipped through a circular opening and emerged on a mound of grass. Rain pelted her. Nadia stayed low and looked out. The field looked familiar but the other entrance to the cave was nowhere in sight. She crept around the mound and glanced in the opposite direction.
An old Range Rover was parked a hundred yards beside the main entrance to the cave. Her guide’s car was gone. Fog obscured the Rover’s windows. Someone was inside, she thought.
Nadia sat and waited. Stuck her hands out to let the rain wash the blood away and clean her wounds. Marko had been talking. Then she’d heard the thump. And not another sound from Marko.
He was dead. He had to be dead. It was only logical, and yet she couldn’t contemplate the thought. A sense of loss paralyzed her. Marko had just reached the point in his life where he was comfortable with himself. He wasn’t drinking. He’d discovered contentment and joy. She sat there trying to imagine a life without him and couldn’t fathom it. And it was her fault. He was here on her behalf.
She sat in a quiet stupor for ten minutes until a noise rousted her. The rawboned man with the rifle emerged. She was shocked how quickly he made it out given how badly he’d been limping. Ex-military, she thought. He looked like it, and moved like it, too.
Rain pummeled him. He slipped the rifle off his shoulder and looked around. Found the Range Rover. Sealed the lid to the cave and limped over to the vehicle. He opened the passenger’s side front door and lowered his head to speak to someone inside. The driver, Nadia thought. A few seconds later he opened the rear passenger door.
Marko stepped out of the Range Rover.
He was alive. A sense of euphoria swept Nadia. It left her giddy.
He had a bandage on his head. His hands were cuffed in front of him. The man with the rifle took him by the arm and directed him to the front passenger seat. Even put his hand over Marko’s head to make sure he didn’t bump his wound on the way in.
Marko carried himself with a fearlessness that belied his situation. He even stopped to say something to the man with the rifle before climbing in the front seat.
Another pair of men must have followed the two she’d encountered, Nadia thought. Perhaps they’d gone to search the other khatki, or the water source on the opposite side of the Gypsum Giant. They probably had shortwave radios. As soon as the
y heard shooting they must have come running. From there they took Marko to the car while the other two pursued her.
The thump must have been a warning shot. Followed by a rifle butt to the head.
Marko was alive.
Nadia’s joy was short-lived. Karel. She’d put him out of her mind. The image of his head bursting open flashed before her eyes. His final words rang in her head.
Valentin. He knew the name. There was a connection between Bobby and Valentin. It involved something called the Zaroff Seven.
And one more thing. It was so unbelievable as to be laughable. But Karel hadn’t wavered in his conviction. Not for a moment.
The formula was real.
CHAPTER 45
NADIA WAITED FOR the Range Rover to drive out of sight. After ten more minutes to make sure they didn’t double back, she walked five miles in the rain to the village of Strilkivtsi. Along the way, she sipped water from the bottle in her knapsack and considered her discoveries.
Karel had insisted the formula was real and was contained in the locket. But if it wasn’t on a piece of microfilm inside the compartment where was it? In a steel capsule within the body of the locket? Or was it etched somehow? That sounded more likely. The thought had never occurred to her before because the contents of the locket had proved it was all a ruse. Or so it seemed at the time. But wouldn’t that have been just like her uncle to hide it so well?
Then the painful question dawned on Nadia. Did Bobby know? Had he been lying to her the entire time? And where was the locket? In jail, she suspected, with Bobby’s other personal possessions. He never took it off his neck except to sleep.
Her thoughts turned to her brother. If her pursuers wanted Marko dead, they would have killed him in the Priest’s Grotto. But they didn’t. That meant they had a use for him. Maybe they wanted to see what he knew. More likely they wanted to use him to get to her. Nadia wasn’t sure why but that’s what her instincts told her. Alerting the authorities about his abduction could backfire. Her pursuers could change their minds and decide keeping Marko alive wasn’t worth the risk of being found. If she notified the American embassy in Kyiv they would seek help from the Ukrainian police. They had a less than sterling reputation for integrity.
The Boy Who Stole From the Dead Page 23