The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (The Nadia Tesla Series Book 3)

by Orest Stelmach

  “Bobby?” she said.

  But it wasn’t Bobby. It was a Japanese man speaking broken English. He said his son’s friend had found a cell phone at a gas station and this was the most frequently dialed number. He wondered if Nadia knew the proper owner and how he could go about returning the phone to him.

  Nadia asked him to ship it to their hotel in Shibuya along with his address so she could reimburse him for the postage and include a reward. He declined the reward like a classy Japanese gentleman. She thanked him for his kindness.

  “Oh, hell,” she said, after hanging up.

  Johnny pointed toward the plates of food with his chopsticks. “Try some appetizers? Mighty tasty. Can’t get shrimp tempura like that in Kyiv. Can you?”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE PAMPHLET AT the ferry station boasted a picture of a luxurious ship with a massive swimming pool. Even if he had swim trunks, Bobby knew he couldn’t afford the risk of exposing himself, literally and figuratively. Still, he enjoyed a quick little daydream, where the driver accidentally fell overboard and he and Eva had the pool to themselves. The rest of the passengers were passed out drunk from vodka and paid no attention to them. What followed in the pool was an even more unlikely fantasy, though it had helped him endure the trip beneath the truck. In fact, he would have sacrificed all hope for its becoming reality to confirm she was still alive and secure her safety.

  Bobby found a convenience store and a food kiosk in the ferry building. He bought a travel kit containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a razor, and shaving cream. It also contained a mask, the kind painters wore in America, and sick folks wore in Tokyo. A rack of cheap sunglasses offered protection from ultraviolet rays and prying eyes. Bobby ran straight to the rack as soon as he saw it. He tried on a few pairs and settled on a wraparound design that athletes and kids his age might wear. They were a bit flashy, but he looked even stranger when he tried on the aviator designs adults might wear. His father had warned him not to outthink himself. Sometimes the best disguise was being oneself.

  He bought a six-pack of bottled water and enough packaged food for two days. He knew from his experience on the Trans Siberian Express not to expect anything but boiled water on the ferry. Perhaps they would have food but it would be expensive. By bringing his own supplies he would arouse less suspicion. He might actually look like a regular commuter, someone who knew how to save a dime. He also bought a notebook, a pen, and two t-shirts from a souvenir stand, and a duffel bag. He stuffed his purchases into the bag so he appeared to have some luggage.

  Once he was finished shopping, Bobby converted his yen into rubles at the currency exchange desk. Nadia had changed 500 dollars into yen for him. Even though he had a credit card, she didn’t want him traveling without local currency in his pocket. He’d used the credit card to make his purchases so he had 460 dollars worth of rubles left when he made the second conversion. The currency traders made a nice living. Eleven more conversions and he’d be left with no money even though he hadn’t spent a dime.

  A wall in the ferry building contained ads from several hotels in Vladivostok. Bobby noted the cheapest one. He entered it as his destination on the proper Russian immigration form. He told the immigration officers he was on vacation with his aunt who was back in Tokyo. He was writing an article for his school blog about the students’ most unusual experiences. It was a contest, with the winner earning a place on a prominent New York City travel magazine’s blog. Boy did he want to win that contest. Such a victory could help a kid get into a good college. The top colleges were so competitive in the States, he told the officer, among other random observations about his high school experience. He spoke in English, enunciating carefully to hide any trace of his Russian fluency, not pausing to take a breath so as to frustrate the officer as much as possible.

  It worked. The immigration officer’s face turned eggplant as Bobby yapped away. With a long line of people waiting behind Bobby, the immigration officer stamped his passport and let him pass.

  Bobby found the driver and Eva sitting in a waiting area in front of a window facing the pier, their backs to the main lobby. No one could see their faces upon entering the waiting room, and those who walked past them to enter the pier had their eyes on the ferry. Eva rested her head on the driver’s shoulder. To a casual observer, it looked like an affectionate gesture from a daughter, wife, or lover. To Bobby, it spoke of needles or pills and a heavily sedated state. He resisted the temptation to try to catch a glimpse of her face. His goal was to follow them and not to be seen, he reminded himself. He would not be helping his cause by confirming she was Eva if the driver recognized him. The driver had a cell phone. He would call his associates. They would kill Bobby on Russian soil, dissolve his corpse in acid, feed it to pigs, or toss it into the foundation of a new high-rise in Vladivostok. No, Bobby thought. Keep to yourself.

  Eva was Genesis II, he thought. She simply had to be.

  When boarding started, Bobby watched the driver and Eva climb the gangplank and disappear inside. He waited five minutes to let them find their seats and minimize the risk he’d bump into them. Only then did he make his way onboard.

  One side of the ferry resembled an open sardine can filled with used Japanese cars. They nestled so closely to one another that there was barely any room to open their doors. Bobby wondered how someone could manage to squeeze in and out, as it appeared that only a stick figure would be able to slither behind their wheels.

  If the parking lot was a revelation, the swimming pool was a major disappointment. It bore as much of a resemblance to the picture in the pamphlet as Pripyat did to the utopian city built for the nuclear workers in Chornobyl. There were no lounge chairs or side tables with umbrella drinks. Patches of rust covered the handrails. The diving board had been snapped in half. Strips of cracked and peeling paint dangled along the sides and bottom of the basin. The pool itself wasn’t filled with sky blue water. Instead it was crammed full of motorcycles. A five-foot plank rested beside the shallow end, no doubt serving as the ramp to get the motorcycles in and out of the pool.

  The passenger side of the ferry was actually worthy of a brochure. Probably not a luxury cruise brochure, but certainly one for ferries. An immaculate lobby the size of a ballroom greeted passengers. Stairs led to the second floor where the first- and second-class cabins were located. Bobby was certain the driver had secured such a room for himself and Eva. The thought of him spending two nights with her sent chills down Bobby’s spine, but he soothed himself with logical reasoning. He couldn’t overtake the man when he was locked in a private room on a boat in the middle of the ocean. He had to bide his time. He had to concern himself with his stealth and her survival.

  Most passengers congregated in the restaurant. Bobby took his sunglasses off so as not to arouse attention, and put his mask over his nose. He pulled his hat down low to his eyes and glanced at his reflection in a lobby window. He looked like a sick young man acting in accordance with Japanese customs, keeping his germs to himself to prevent his fellow passengers from getting infected. The knit hat reinforced the notion that he had a cold. Even Russian passengers would pay him no mind. If they were on the ferry, they were probably regular commuters. They likely understood Japanese culture by now, and wouldn’t glance at the kid with the mask twice.

  The restaurant resembled a secondary school cafeteria, with a room full of tables and two serving lines along perpendicular walls. There were plenty of noodle soups and teriyaki dishes for purchase. Bobby was reminded this was a Japanese operation and not a Russian one.

  A second-class berth would have cost two thousand dollars and put him at risk of accidentally sharing the same room as the driver and Eva. For both these reasons he had no choice but to buy a second-class B ticket. It was a nice sales tactic. There was no third-class seat. Just two versions of second class, even though the B class was essentially general admission. He would share sleeping quarters with a hundred or
more other passengers in the tatami mat room. A tatami mat was a traditional form of Japanese flooring made from rice straw. Pillows and blankets were provided.

  Bobby spent his first day in the restaurant, going on deck to get a breath of fresh air as other passengers did the same. He kept to himself, and clung to groups of men when he needed to move about. Although he doubted the driver would emerge from his cabin except to get food, and he was confident in his disguise, he planned his movements to minimize the risk of being seen.

  The reason the ferry was filled with cars and motorcycles became apparent the first night on the ship. Russian dealers bought used cars and bikes in Japan and sold them in Vladivostok. Bobby counted nine dealers and an equal number of vodka bottles at their table. They downed shot after shot, toasting Toyota, Nissan, the Emperor, the Japanese hostesses who could milk a man’s wallet and glands dry, and the genius who planted those beautiful cherry blossoms.

  Bobby was reminded of something a teammate on the Fordham Prep hockey team had told him. The kid’s father owned a car repair shop with an export business on the side. According to him, used Lexuses were scarce in America because they were routinely shipped to Moscow.

  Bobby drifted in and out of sleep during the first night, never catching more than an hour of consecutive shut-eye without being woken up by ship and human noises alike. Mechanical devices creaked and groaned. A few old men got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. The drunken Russians showed up around 2:00 a.m. Someone farted so loudly Bobby thought it was the engine backfiring until the stench of rotten eggs hit him.

  Boredom set in during the second day. It mixed with a queasy anticipation of the unknown that awaited him in Vladivostok. The combination left him neither sleepy nor alert, but rather strangely unsettled. As he sat idling in the restaurant, Eva preoccupied him even more. Action and planning diverted his mind. In their absence, he thought of nothing and no one else. His imagination was consumed with the image of the face he’d seen through the truck’s window in Fukushima.

  Shocked, scared, confused. More mature then he remembered her. Cheekbones more pronounced, porcelain skin a bit damaged from the sun. The eyes—the sweet puppy-dog look completely incongruous with her tough, self-reliant personality—meeting his. Conveying her fear, looking for a connection . . . a flicker of recognition, a parting of her lips . . . And then the truck drove off.

  Bobby had never seized the opportunity to tell her what he felt in his heart before she supposedly died. The mere thought of doing so was absurd. They’d never discussed their feelings about each other. Besides, for years she hadn’t even acknowledged his existence. The thought of weirding her out by revealing his true affections for her sounded like the dumbest move a man could make.

  And yet he regretted not doing so. For if there were a sliver of a chance that she shared his affection, that would mean more to him than anything else. More than his hockey career, his American citizenship, more than life itself.

  If given another opportunity, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  The sound of footsteps interrupted his daydream. Heavy boots marching toward him. The sound was close, too much so for him to escape. Bobby cursed himself. He hadn’t been focused. And now someone had snuck up right behind him. Bobby didn’t turn, though. Instead he hoped he was mistaken and that man was simply walking toward the window to take a look outside.

  The footsteps stopped behind him. For a moment there was no sound, and Bobby thought that maybe he’d guessed right. But then Bobby felt a boot connect with the leg of his chair. It was just a poke, to wake him out of his apparent slumber. The man spoke in a baritone, his voice rough from years of cigarette smoking.

  “Hey, kid,” he said in Russian. “Don’t I know you?”

  CHAPTER 28

  JOHNNY ATE SUSHI as he listened to Nadia’s summary of what Bobby had told her on the phone. She rubbed one chopstick against the other as she briefed him. This wouldn’t have been unusual in most Japanese restaurants, as it was common practice to remove any loose slivers of wood before digging into food. But they were eating at a swanky hotel eatery. The chopsticks were made of polished wood and painted with a rich black lacquer. There were no slivers to remove. Nadia was rubbing them together because she didn’t have a pair of stress balls to squeeze.

  But by the time she was done, Nadia was nibbling on a giant shrimp caked with golden batter. This didn’t surprise Johnny. He knew how her brain worked. Recounting everything she’d heard gave her the opportunity to digest it all. She analyzed implications, calculated the upside and downside of various strategies. Johnny was sure she had a strong idea of what she planned to do next.

  To Johnny it was a no-brainer. They needed to get to Vladivostok ASAP.

  “He’s sure Genesis II is Eva?” Johnny said.

  “No. He wants to be sure, but he’s not. And neither am I. Nakamura referred to Genesis II as a ‘he,’ and Yoshi is a boy’s name, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  Nadia lifted her eyebrows.

  “It’s androgynous. Yoshi could be a boy or a girl. I knew one of the latter when I was an exchange student. Nakamura might have referred to Genesis II as a ‘he’ to keep her real identity all the more secret. Nakamura just met us. A smart man would keep the truth to himself until he was sure he could trust us, until it was absolutely necessary to reveal Genesis II’s real identity, including her sex.”

  Nadia considered his theory. “Nothing’s changed then. We can’t assume anything about Genesis II. We have no clue if he actually saw Eva or not.”

  “No. We don’t. Did you ask Bobby if he was being followed?”

  Nadia dismissed his question with a wave of her chopsticks. “He was under the truck when he left Fukushima. Stayed there for most of the trip. How could anyone have picked up his trail?”

  “Exactly,” Johnny said. “He was under the truck when he left Fukushima. Said another way, he got under the truck in Fukushima. And before he got under the truck, he was standing on a street in the Zone of Exclusion outside a house where he could have been seen.”

  Nadia gave him an incredulous laugh. “By whom?”

  “Who threw the boomerang?”

  Nadia froze. “The angel.”

  “Presumably he was standing behind you and Bobby. That’s the only way to explain the trajectory of both boomerangs. When you both looked back, you didn’t see anyone. But he could have been there, right? He could have been watching.”

  Nadia shook her head. “It didn’t occur to me. I keep forgetting about the angel. Which is amazing.”

  “No it’s not. You’re human. That was an emotional conversation. You did a great job staying cool in a situation where you had no control over what a kid was going to do. Anyone could have missed an angle or two.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you saying I missed something else?”

  “No. I was just saying.”

  “You’re right. I guess it’s possible he was being followed. And we might be tempted to think it’s a good thing.”

  “I hear you. Saved him once, save him again.”

  “Right. But there’s no such charity in the world, let alone in Russia. The angel is after the formula, let there be no doubt. Bobby is carrying half of it—we had no choice to appease Nakamura. Genesis II may or may not have the second half.”

  “Either way he needs Bobby,” Johnny said.

  “So do I.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Nadia checked her watch. “I’m waiting until 10:00 p.m.”

  Her use of the singular pronoun stung Johnny. It was a sign her plans didn’t include him. He waited for her to elaborate but she kept staring at her watch instead.

  “You plan to bring me up to speed on why you’re waiting for fifty minutes to go by, or are you going to make me sit here like your personal secretary waiting for her majesty
to decide when I’m worthy of being informed?”

  Nadia frowned. “Sorry, I was thinking.”

  “Why the fifty minutes?”

  “It was something Bobby said.”

  “What?”

  “He said he’d be on the boat for two and a half days. Actually, it doesn’t leave for forty-five minutes. So it’s two days, twelve hours, and forty-five minutes.”

  “And?”

  “He said that would leave me enough time to go to Kyiv and make inquiries.”

  “What of it?”

  “It’s a crazy idea, isn’t it? Think about it. Logistically, it’s impossible to do it on commercial airlines.”

  “Why? Departure times? How do you know until you look into it first?”

  “Flight time from Tokyo to Kyiv is twelve hours. Flight time from Kyiv to Vladivostok is ten hours. That’s twenty-two hours flight time in the air. That excludes check-in, getting through customs, immigration. All that fun airport stuff.”

  “Call it four hours more for that stuff. Twenty-six hours travel time. Bobby’s going to be in the boat for sixty hours. That leaves you . . . thirty-four hours. That leaves you with a day and a half in Kyiv.”

  “You’re assuming the proper departure times exist. That I can time all my business to get to the airport on time.”

  Again with the singular pronoun. Johnny wished he didn’t care so much. No matter how closely they bonded she always reverted to being an individual. “You’re right. I’m assuming you’re not screwed at the airport. Like I said, you won’t know until you check, and even if the logistics work, there’s risk.”

  “No,” Nadia said. “There isn’t just risk. There’s a guarantee of failure.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I come into Russia on a commercial airliner I have to go through the normal immigration procedure. I won’t be on the ferry from Takaoka like Bobby. They won’t let me into Russia for seventy-two hours without a visa.”