The Boy from Reactor 4

by Orest Stelmach

  “There’s believing, and then there’s knowing.”

  Kirilo sighed. He’d known Steen for close to ten years, but $2 million would pay for Isabella’s wedding and the disco in London.

  He walked to his overcoat, removed the cattle prod from its pocket, and started toward the door.

  “What can you do?” he said as he fired it up. “Accidents happen.”

  CHAPTER 24

  VARVARA, THE DECORATIVE black pig with golden earrings, welcomed guests to Varenichnaya No. 1 from atop its podium near the entrance. In the dining hall, old wall clocks hung beside lace curtains. They mixed with porcelain knick-knacks to give the restaurant the feel of a pristine rural kitchen within a Ukrainian antique shop.

  Nadia sank her teeth into a varenik sautéed in butter and bacon and filled with farmer’s cheese. As the oversized ravioli melted in her mouth, her eyes watered.

  Anton Medved, the taxi driver, grinned from across the table. “They have twenty-one flavors. When you told me you were a fiend for vareniky—hey, why are you crying?”

  “It’s so good,” Nadia said after swallowing. She glanced around the restaurant, still amazed she was here, in her parents’ homeland. “My best memories from childhood are the food my mother used to make. No one screamed or yelled or…Everyone was happy when they had a varenik in their mouth.”

  A little after 9:00, the casual restaurant was filled with an eclectic mix of people. Regardless of age or demographic, they were all well dressed.

  “The average annual salary in Kyiv is three thousand US,” Anton said, “but a Ukrainian will still put on his best clothes when he goes out for any reason.”

  “I noticed,” Nadia said. “Even the criminals dress well.”

  Anton stopped dipping his blueberry varenik in sour cream and raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

  Nadia told him about her incident with the supposed drug dealer and police. She pretended Specter was a Good Samaritan who had helped her escape.

  “I’m so sorry you went through that,” Anton said. “You’re from the States. You have police that protect people.”

  “And what, you don’t?”

  Anton sighed. “You know what the slang word for ‘police’ is in Ukraine?”

  Nadia shook her head

  “Musor. You know what musor is?”

  Nadia shook her head again.

  “Musor is ‘rubbish.’ That is the reputation of law enforcement in Ukraine. But hey, this is Kyiv, and in Kyiv, we have a saying: things will get better. In the meantime, you have to take care of yourself while you are here. Remember, Ukrainians are the greatest con artists in the world.”

  Nadia had a flash of her uncle Damian. “What? Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. Ukraine itself has been conned for the last one thousand years. In 988 AD, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Batu, broke a treaty and decimated Kyiv. In the next five centuries, the Liths and the Poles took turns exploiting the countryside. The Russian Black Hundreds killed anyone who wasn’t Tsarist, and the Soviets brokered a truce and then tried to wipe all trace of our culture off the face of the earth. That is why Ukrainians are the world heavyweight champions of the long con. They’ve had more than ten centuries of training.”

  Nadia and Anton continued chatting about all things Ukrainian. For Nadia, it was another surreal moment: a casual meal and conversation in her parents’ native language with an actual native. When they finished their vareniky and beer, they split the bill.

  “How is your jet lag?” Anton said as they walked to his car at ten fifteen. “Would you like to go to a club? An underground music club? My friend Radek is playing tonight. He has a great thrashabilly-psychobilly band. It’s called F in Mathematics.”

  Nadia’s brain was floating in a fog. “No, thank you. I think I’ve had enough psychobilly for one day. Maybe another night.”

  “How about dessert? You must have some Kyivan dessert. You like chocolate, Nadia?”

  The magic word stifled her protestations.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were seated at the mahogany bar in Café Éclair. Light jazz music played in the background. The air smelled of rich cocoa.

  “I love this place. Look, the candles are made from chocolate,” Anton said. “Imported from Belgium.”

  The menu featured sixty-five different desserts, including enough mousses and meringues to satisfy all the monarchs of France. Nadia ordered a decaf cappuccino and a petite slice of tiramisu cheesecake. Anton asked for a double espresso.

  “Besides your cousins in Bila Tserkva,” Nadia said, “you have family?”

  “My parents died when I was young. I was married for two years, but my wife died in ’05. She was an intellectual from Lviv. She helped run the Pora youth group that built the grassroots support for Revolution Orange, when we overturned the fraudulent presidential election.” He paused until Nadia nodded, showing she knew about it. “How about you?”

  “I have a mother and a brother. My father’s dead. And I was married, too, but my husband died in a car crash a while back. He was a professor like you. Religion was his field.”

  They talked about their spouses until a waiter delivered their coffees.

  “So why did you call me, Nadia?” Anton said. “Not that it matters. We love Americans in Ukraine, and it’s my privilege to meet you. I enjoy our conversation very much.”

  Nadia studied his earnest expression. The concierge at Hotel Rus had helped her find the website for Kyiv Slavonic University. Anton Medved really was an assistant professor of sociology, and his picture confirmed his identity. She decided she could trust him.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Nadia said.

  “Who is this person you’re looking for? I know people who know people who know a lot of people.”

  “I’m looking for an uncle I never knew. But first, I have to find a woman who knows his whereabouts. To find her, I need a friend who knows Kyiv.”

  Anton spread his arms out and pointed at himself. “Who is this woman? What is her name? You have an address?”

  “I have a name, an address, and a phone number. Problem is, I went to the address today, and the super told me she doesn’t live there anymore. And the phone number belongs to a beauty salon. Which really doesn’t make sense, because supposedly she was waiting for me to call her.”

  “Huh,” Anton said, nodding. “You have the number?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” Nadia pulled her borrowed cell phone out of her purse and read from the memory. “Two-four-four, three-six-eight-three.”

  Anton stared at her and blinked. “What about the city code?”

  “She lives in Kyiv. It’s forty-four, right?”

  “That depends.”

  “What do you mean, it depends?”

  “If it’s a Kyivstar mobile phone, it’s sixty-seven.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone thinks there’s only one city code for Kyiv. That’s not true. If that number is a cell phone and it’s Kyivstar, the city code is sixty-seven. Not forty-four.”

  Nadia realized that she and her mother had been dialing the wrong number. “Is it rude to make a call in here? Should I go outside?”

  Anton waved his hand. “Please. Make your call. It’s too dangerous to step outside. The temptation for you to smoke pot or buy cocaine will be overwhelming.”

  Nadia was busy dialing, so she didn’t realize what he had said until after the phone started ringing. She chuckled belatedly and held her breath.

  One ring, two rings, three rings, four. Five rings, six rings—pause. A commercial female voice greeted Nadia in Ukrainian: “The party you have called is unavailable. Please leave a message at the tone.”

  Nadia left an urgent message in Ukrainian. Afterward, she called back and left the same information in English.

  When she hung up, Anton beamed at her. “Good?” he said.

  Nadia shrugged. “I’m not sure. I hope it was her and not someone else’s phone.”

  “I was just th
inking that if that wasn’t the right phone number, we can go to her apartment and I can talk to that super for you. A local might have more luck, you know?”

  “Thanks. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “I think it’s her. Everyone uses cell phones these days. Relax. It’s like I told you. This is Kyiv. Things will get better.”

  Nadia smiled and thanked him. She took a bite of her cheesecake. The coffee-flavored mascarpone melted in her mouth. She hadn’t found Clementine yet, but she was closer to the money today than yesterday, and she’d made a friend. She was in a foreign land, but she felt as though she was visiting her second home. There was ample reason to be optimistic.

  An engine wailed. Nadia glanced out the window, but the vehicle disappeared before she could see it. The sound was a sobering reminder, however, that a man in a black Porsche was tailing her. His ultimate job was to kill her. Nadia refused to succumb to fear. Emotions could only interfere with her agenda. If she found the treasure, she’d have something they wanted. She’d have resources to find a way home. Still, the echo of those words was a promise that, regardless of what they said in Kyiv, things were going to get worse before they got better.

  CHAPTER 25

  NADIA SLEPT FITFULLY for seven hours, bolting upright every time she heard a noise in the hallway or next door. Her subconscious feared any one of them might be the phone call she was waiting for. They weren’t. By 11:00 the next morning, she couldn’t sit still anymore. She put on a light coat and hiked down Khreschatyk, Kyiv’s primary north–south boulevard.

  During World War II, she remembered from her classes, the Soviet Army had mined Khreschatyk with explosives as it retreated from Kyiv. When the Nazis arrived on September 19, 1941, Red Army commanders detonated the explosives using radio signals from over four hundred kilometers away. More than three hundred buildings were demolished and one thousand troops killed. The Nazis responded by executing twenty thousand Kyivans. It was the first use of long-distance radio signals to trigger explosives in history.

  Clouds hung low on a bitter, overcast morning. The air smelled of flowers and gasoline fumes. Bumpy cobblestone promenades for pedestrians and small-vehicle parking flanked cafés, stores, and restaurants. Ornate Stalinist facades adorned an eclectic assortment of government buildings.

  Upon entering Independence Square, Nadia paused at a bronze sculpture of the four Slavic tribesmen who founded Kyiv in the fifth century, including the namesake, Kyi.

  The phone pulsated in her purse.

  Nadia jumped. Looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot. Yanked the phone out of her purse and cleared her throat.

  “This is Nadia.”

  No one answered.

  “Hello?”

  “What was the boy wearing in the picture?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What was the boy wearing in the picture?”

  “Is this Clementine?”

  “Answer the question. I’m hanging up—”

  “No, wait.” Nadia remembered the photo her mother had shown her. “Skates. The boy was wearing skates.”

  “Are you claustrophobic?”

  “No. Well…maybe a little—”

  “Too bad. One o’clock at the Caves Monastery. Don’t buy a ticket. Tickets are for tourists. Use the lower entry where the locals go.”

  “Okay—”

  “Meet me at the entrance to the Far Caves. Not the Near Caves. The Far Caves. Look for the green-roofed walkway. Come alone. I see anyone else, I disappear, eh?”

  The phone clicked dead.

  Clementine sounded American except for the “eh,” which suggested a Canadian influence. Her voice varied in tone and sounded unreliable, as though she were emotionally unstable or an addict suffering from withdrawals.

  After Nadia hung up, she looked around Independence Square. Logic dictated that Specter was watching her at this very moment. Perhaps a local was watching her for him. It was 12:05 p.m. She had fifty-five minutes to lose her tail and get to the Caves Monastery on time.

  Nadia sat down on a bench beside a lamppost and an elevated grassy promenade in front of the Central Post Office. She removed a pen, notepad, guidebook, and map from her purse. She’d studied the latter two in detail during her flight from New York.

  She planned her course of action with the mathematical precision of an experienced cartographer. The entire exercise took her fifteen minutes.

  The Caves Monastery was four miles southeast of her present location at Independence Square. Nadia ambled like a tourist south on Khreschatyk, back toward Hotel Rus. After twenty steps, she turned and took a mental snapshot of the scene behind her. Pedestrians crowded the promenades. She didn’t try to memorize faces, just shapes and colors. Three beats later, she resumed walking south.

  At the corner of Arkhitectora, she took a left to head east. The crowd thinned on the side street. Nadia accelerated her pace. Counted twenty paces. Stopped. Turned. A young couple, a businessman, and a babushka rounded the corner toward her.

  Nadia took another left onto a promenade beside the Cinema Ukraina. Jogged twenty paces. Turned. Waited.

  The couple walked by. The businessman and the babushka turned left and followed her.

  Nadia took her third fast left onto Institutska. Twenty paces later, she was back on Khreshchatyk, right where she’d started. She turned right and headed north, in the opposite direction of the Caves Monastery. Twenty paces later, she stopped and turned.

  The babushka rounded the corner alone. She wore an old gray sweater and a floral scarf around her head that obscured her face. She might have been seventy-two or twenty-seven. Twenty meters away, their eyes met. The babushka quickly pulled away to peruse a Benetton store window.

  Nadia checked her watch: 12:28. She power walked a kilometer farther north. When she got to the Golden Domes of the Cathedral of St. Mikhail, she asked a young man in a warm-up suit for the entrance to the funicular train. He pointed a block ahead toward the far side of the domes.

  Nadia looked around. No sign of the babushka. She glanced at her wrist: 12:38. She pulled out her guidebook and strolled onward, pretending to be sightseeing.

  The back of the cathedral hung on a cliff. An ancient-looking tram with a sky-blue roof and immaculate white body sat on steep rails, locked in place by heavy cables. People jammed the interior so tightly their faces seemed plastered against the window.

  Nadia started toward the cathedral’s rear entrance. She took deep, even breaths.

  A bell sounded.

  Nadia raced for the funicular.

  Snack vendors beneath green-and-white umbrellas gaped as she blew by them. She burst into the domed entrance. The funicular door started to close.

  “Wait,” she shouted in English, the language of opportunity. The guidebook said conductors loved to fine foreigners for any and all violations.

  The door slid to a close.

  Nadia leaped onto the edge of the tram. She wedged an arm and a shoulder inside. The door pressed against her.

  A heavyset woman reached out with one hand and pulled it open a few inches. A fat man with garlic breath in her way, however, would not move. Nadia pleaded with her eyes.

  “Push him,” the woman said, aiming her disgust at Nadia for not being more assertive.

  “Push,” they all shouted, as though her stupidity far outweighed his rudeness.

  Nadia spun, stuck her butt into the man’s upper thighs, put her head down, and pushed with her rear.

  The man swore under his breath. Nadia slid inside. The woman released her grip. The door slammed shut. Nadia looked up.

  A fist smashed against the glass door. A fierce young man in a blue warm-up suit pointed a finger at her. He hurled a single word at her. It sounded like Russian slang. Nadia didn’t understand the word but was certain it wasn’t a compliment.

  In the distance, the babushka sprinted toward the empty station like the world’s fastest granny. She was closer to twenty-seven than seventy-two a
fter all. Two people were tailing her, and neither was Specter. As the funicular rolled down the cliff toward Podil, the man in the warm-up suit touched the headphone wrapped around his left ear and jabbered into it.

  It was too late. The funicular was the fastest way from Upper to Lower Kiev. She’d be in Podil in ten minutes. In daytime rush hour, it would take a car half an hour to catch up.

  The tram was packed so tight it was impossible for Nadia to get to the front. She bought a ticket by passing one hryvnia to the conductor through the hands of her fellow passengers. A stamped ticket and fifty kopek were returned to her the same way. No one grumbled. This was the norm.

  The tram descended along a wooded cliffside and a white steel fence. Halfway down the mountain, the vista opened up to reveal the waterfront scene of the Dnipro River. Ships lay moored beside venerable warehouses at the harbor’s edge. Cranes and derricks elevated the skyline.

  At the bottom station, the funicular deposited Nadia in Podil, at the opposite end of Kiev from the Caves Monastery. She raced to the subway across the street. Trains ran every two and a half minutes. She boarded a train within sixty seconds of her arrival, repeating the last-second process she had used to board the funicular.

  Nadia got off at Arsenalna and hailed a Marshrutka, one of the thousands of Mercedes vans that ran along bus routes. She arrived at her destination at 12:58, certain she wasn’t being followed.

  Green-and-gold rooftops covered a campus full of white churches and cathedrals. The headquarters of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the Caves Monastery was a labyrinth of catacombs and tunnels covering seventy acres.

  Clementine Seelick, the only clue to Damian’s location, was waiting at one of the entrances to the caves.

  Nadia had two minutes to find her.

  CHAPTER 26

  AT 12:45, KIRILO was waiting for Misha at Felix’s Lounge on the third floor of the River Palace. After interrogating Steen, they’d stayed up all night gambling before packing it in for four hours’ sleep in private suites upstairs.