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

by Orest Stelmach

  Bobby dropped his head and raised it just as quickly. It was a flash of dismay, something he’d perfected in front of the mirror for those instances when he had to inadvertently reveal he’d been duped. As though he’d let his emotions slip and only a practiced eye could have noticed it. He saw the car dealer’s lip turn up a smidge. He thought Bobby was disappointed. The car dealer thought he’d gotten the better of him. It was the exact reaction Bobby was trying to provoke.

  By positioning himself at the front of the line, Bobby knew the driver and Eva were somewhere behind him. The density of the crowd prevented him from turning around and trying to spot them. There was no place to hide, too big a risk the driver might see him. The only risk to his plan was that he would be delayed at immigration, and the driver and Eva would sail through via a different line.

  After the ferry docked, the passengers made their way off the gangplank into the building. Signs instructed the passengers to form two lines. The lines to the far left were for Russian citizens. The ones to the right were for foreign nationals. The twelve people ahead of Bobby and the car dealer headed straight toward the local line. The car dealer put his hand on Bobby’s back and nudged him to the left to become the thirteenth. Bobby stepped to the right, slipped away from his touch, and bared his American passport.

  “I need to use the other line,” Bobby said. “But I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”

  The car dealer stared at the blue passport.

  “And no beer for me. I don’t like alcohol. Slows my legs down. But you can buy me a lemonade. After I give you your money.”

  Bobby left the car dealer standing open-mouthed and blinking rapidly. Bobby removed his comfort mask and bolted to the second line for visitors to Russia. When he saw the United States passport, the immigration officer looked twice at Bobby. He asked Bobby about the purpose of his visit to Russia, and how long he was planning to stay. Bobby gave him the same story about being on a grand adventure and writing for the school newspaper. He showed him his return ticket to Japan, scheduled to depart in forty-eight hours, well within the seventy-two hour limit. The immigration officer took his paperwork and entered some information into a computer. It took him less than thirty seconds to do so, but by the time he returned the passport to Bobby there was a line of twenty arriving passengers behind him.

  “Welcome to Russia,” the immigration officer said.

  After he heard these words and knew he was free to enter Vladivostok, Bobby added the spiel he’d been rehearsing in his mind.

  “There’s one more thing. A man walked up to me on the ferry. I think he mistook me for a Siberian native. That’s not surprising, you know, because of my background, my face. I was born in Alaska. He asked me if I wanted to buy a gun. He said he and his friends had a lot of guns. He said they had them stored in the cars they were bringing over from Japan. In places the cops would never look. He said they were selling guns to something called the Sibiryak movement, to help them free the slaves from Russian imperialism. I have no idea what that is. Maybe you do. I don’t want to be wasting your time. Maybe this is none of my business . . .”

  The Sibiryak movement sought to unite Siberians across all ethnic backgrounds to pursue common social and economic interests. This was a socially acceptable way of saying some Siberians wanted independence from the rest of Russia. It reflected the tensions between Siberian people and those from urban areas such as Moscow, and the difference in living standards.

  The immigration officer asked Bobby some questions. They resulted in him repeating the entire story.

  “Where is this man?” the immigration officer asked.

  Bobby pointed to the car dealer, who was looking right at them from his place in line. He was eighth now, Bobby counted. The local line was moving four times as quickly thanks to Bobby’s fiction.

  The immigration officer picked up a phone, waited for a voice on the other end of the line, and rattled off an abbreviated version of what Bobby had just told him. Then he hung up and pressed a button under his desk.

  Ten seconds later, three men in gray uniforms burst out of a side door carrying rifles. A sour-looking man in a black suit followed. Two of the men with rifles flanked the line for locals. The third followed the black suit. They marched to the line for foreigners. The immigration officer whispered into the ear of the man in the black suit. The latter cast an ambivalent look at Bobby, and then a considerably more disapproving one at the car dealer.

  The man in the black suit asked Bobby to step forward and wait beside the booth. Bobby complied. The man in the black suit told the immigration officer to continue with the next passenger. Then he motioned to the remaining guard and approached the car dealer.

  Bobby spied the look of concern in the car dealer’s expression. Gone was the arrogance of ten minutes past, when he thought he was about to earn a year’s wages in a day. It was replaced by fear. The man in the black suit was probably FSB, the secret police of the Russian Federation, successor to the KGB.

  The man in the black suit asked the car dealer for his passport. The two guards who’d been flanking the line moved in and surrounded him. The man in the black suit spoke again. The car dealer shouted back at him.

  People hushed. They turned their attention to the commotion in the locals’ line. Even the immigration officer who had helped Bobby stopped reviewing the next arrival’s passport. Like everyone, he was entranced by the prospect of an arrest or, even better, a fight. Anything to relieve the boredom of the job.

  Bobby slipped out the front door.

  The streets of Vladivostok left no doubt Bobby was back in Russia. It smelled of petroleum and cabbage instead of sea salt and fish. The shops and commercial buildings surrounding the ferry building appeared in desperate need of renovation. A gray sky loomed above. Bobby couldn’t tell if it was a function of smog or clouds.

  He found a café with a view of the ferry building’s entrance. He stepped inside and remained beside the door. The waitress was busy taking orders from new arrivals. His watch said 8:15 a.m., but the clock on the wall told him it was already 10:15 a.m. Bobby hated forward time changes. They left him with the sense he’d lost two hours of his life, and he detested the thought of losing a minute.

  He adjusted his watch for the two-hour time difference. He spotted a payphone on the other side of the lobby and thought of Nadia. She would be worried. If only he had time to call her.

  The sound of coarse Russian reminded Bobby of his location. He was back in a place where the rule of law didn’t exist the way it did in America. Musicians were jailed for criticizing the government. The media pedaled propaganda or risked stiff consequences. A kid on his own chasing a girl held captive by powerful people could vanish if he were caught.

  The sight of the driver and Eva exiting the ferry station cleared his mind. Eva was her usual self, sedated, leaning against the driver, head held low, face obscured. The driver looked around. His eyes settled on something. Bobby followed his eyes.

  Two men in suits sliced their way through the crowd toward Eva and the driver. They weren’t beefy types in black leather jackets. Instead they looked like corporate executives who ran marathons. Dark pinstripe suits with gel in their hair, both in their early thirties, Bobby thought.

  One of them exchanged a quick word with the driver. The other put his arm around Eva and guided her toward the street. They moved with a sense of purpose. The men with the pinstripe suits helped Eva into the back of a black Mercedes SUV, the type with the grille in the front that looked like a quasi-military vehicle.

  Bobby lowered his head and ambled past the SUV toward the taxis behind it. The line was twenty people deep, which did not bode well for those who were waiting. Bobby had experience with taxis in Ukraine, though. He ignored the attendant and the line of people and marched straight to the last cab in line.

  The cab driver tried to wave him off. Bobby heard passengers
by the curb hurling insults at his back. He ignored both of them and climbed into the back of the taxi.

  “Imbecile,” the cab driver said. “There is a line. Get out of my car. Get out of my car now.”

  Bobby flashed a thick roll of rubles. Summoned his finest fluent Russian. “Follow that Mercedes jeep,” he said.

  The cab driver’s eyes widened. “You look too young to be a spy.” He paused as though gathering courage. “Are you a spy?”

  “Sure. Aren’t you?”

  The roll of money exerted its gravitational pull. The driver’s eyes yielded to it, and then whipped around toward the windshield.

  “Your wish is my command,” he said. “Should we hang back and avoid being seen?”

  It was not the first time a cab driver in Vladivostok, home of the Russian Navy, had been told to follow someone.

  “Yeah. That would be best.”

  They drove for an hour and seven minutes. The Mercedes’ destination became apparent ten minutes before its arrival. A small passenger plane made its descent through the clouds on the horizon. A bulky cargo plane climbed toward the same clouds five minutes later.

  They were headed toward the airport.

  Bobby suppressed a sense of hopelessness and reminded himself of what his father had taught him. It was a mantra among the vor v zakony, the secret organization of professional criminals in the countries of the former Soviet Union that dated back to Stalin’s days. The greatest opportunities presented themselves when all hope was gone.

  The Mercedes drove to a special terminal for private planes. A guard opened an electronic fence. The SUV drove past it and the guard closed the gate behind it. Bobby paid the driver 1,500 rubles, the equivalent of fifty dollars. It was probably a rip-off, but there was no time to haggle. He walked inside the terminal like he owned the place with no plan in mind.

  There was a small waiting area. A floor–to-ceiling window offered a view of the terminal and its runway. Bobby watched the men and the girl he thought was Eva board a sleek private jet.

  Thirty seconds later they took off for a destination unknown.

  Bobby watched the ground controller through the window. As he returned to the terminal, Bobby pulled the duffel bag from around his shoulder. He gripped it with both hands and waited for the ground controller to arrive at the door.

  Bobby rushed toward the door. He took deep breaths to make himself appear to have been running.

  The ground controller stepped inside the terminal to find Bobby sucking wind and looking frantic. The ground controller appeared startled. He looked at Bobby uncertainly.

  “I’m looking for a private plane with three men and a young woman,” Bobby said. “It’s supposed to leave here any minute.”

  “It just left,” the ground controller said.

  “Oh, no,” Bobby said, closing his eyes as though disaster had struck. “My boss was on that plane.” Bobby raised the duffel bag. The ground controller looked at it. “I was supposed to give this to him.” Bobby shook his head. “I’m a dead man.”

  The ground controller shook his head. He appeared sympathetic. He understood there was a 50 percent chance Bobby was being serious. In these parts, if a man said he was dead because he didn’t deliver a package to some people who owned a private jet, he might not be kidding. The ground controller wanted to help him, Bobby could sense it.

  Bobby raised his eyebrows. “Maybe if I get it to him today I’ll still be okay. Maybe he’ll understand I got stuck in traffic. If I’m only a few hours late. Where is the plane going?”

  “Irkutsk.”

  Irkutsk was also one of the largest cities in Siberia. About half a million people lived there, similar to the population of Vladivostok. It sat below the Angara River, forty-five miles below Lake Baikal, the deepest, largest, and oldest body of freshwater in the world. Bobby’s father’s Siberian friends had told him about Lake Baikal. The part of the lake known as the Baikal Riviera contained sprawling mansions popular with government officials, wealthy oligarchs, and organized crime leaders, not that those three categories were mutually exclusive. Lake Baikal was also four hundred miles long and forty miles wide. It would not take long for a party of four to disappear without a trace. Bobby needed to get to Irkutsk quickly, while there was still some trail left to follow.

  “When is the next flight to Irkutsk?” Bobby said.

  “Ten thirty tonight.”

  “That late? Nothing earlier?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Any private planes leaving earlier? Maybe a cargo plane, for instance?”

  The ground controller started to shake his head and stopped. He studied Bobby the way a man did when he was trying to decide if he could trust another.

  “It’s my life,” Bobby said. “And I can pay.”

  The ground controller studied him some more. “I may know a man who’s delivering a load to Irkutsk today. He has a good heart. He’s the kind of man who might want to help a youngster out of an unpleasant jam.” He cleared his throat. “You have money, you say?”

  Bobby paid the ground controller the equivalent of fifty dollars. He paid a pilot another one hundred dollars for a ride in his plane to Irkutsk. The plane was filled with crates of consumer goods imported from China, Korea, and Japan. Bobby sat in the far back in a jump seat. Across from him was another such seat.

  The plane left the airport at 12:30, an hour after the private plane had departed with Eva. A few minutes before departure, the pilot came in the back to make sure Bobby was secure in his seat. He also brought another passenger with him, a scruffy looking man with Siberian features. Bobby kept his disappointment to himself. He’d been looking forward to some solitude, and maybe a few hours of sleep. Once he landed, he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to get some rest again.

  But the man strapped himself into the jump seat opposite Bobby and put him at ease. It was quite remarkable, Bobby thought. The guy seemed to be able to read Bobby’s mind.

  “Don’t worry, my friend,” the Siberian said. “I won’t bother you during the trip. I need some sleep myself. I have some good buckwheat bread here. And a few bottles of lemonade. Have some with me? The grains will relax your mind. Help you sleep.”

  Normally Bobby would have said no immediately. In fact, he would have been wary of the stranger. But there was nothing threatening about him, and Bobby couldn’t escape him for the next four hours if he tried. He might as well make the best of it, and not antagonize someone who could potentially help him once they landed. Besides, he was hungry. And the previous talk of lemonade had left him with a taste for it.

  “Do you live in Irkutsk?” Bobby said.

  The Siberian smiled. “I do.” He pulled some bread and two bottles of lemonade from his own duffel bag. “My name is Luo. What’s yours?”

  CHAPTER 37

  BY MID-AFTERNOON, JOHNNY regretted having gone straight to work from the airport.

  He’d left Japan on Friday morning. The flight took less than thirteen hours, which happened to be the time difference between Tokyo and New York. He arrived in Newark at about the same time he’d left Tokyo, 7:00 a.m. A blue sky, the sound of the English language, and the absence of boomerangs flying through the air boosted his spirits. He was still alive, he had his career, and his girl was in good hands, or at least super-wealthy hands. On top of that, the sun was peeking through a puff of cloud when he got in line for a taxi. What the heck did he have to be depressed about?

  Johnny went directly to the office and resumed working on an immigration case. After lunch he went to Superior Court to meet a new client. He needed two cups of coffee with shots of espresso mixed in to keep his eyes open the rest of the afternoon.

  Shortly after 4:00 p.m., he walked to the parking garage near the courtroom and climbed into his car. His phone rang. He held his brea
th as the number of the party calling him appeared on the screen, hoping it belonged to Nadia. It didn’t. It belonged to his boss.

  “How are you holding up?” his boss said.

  “On fumes,” Johnny said.

  “I need you to do something first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “Yeah. Client’s request. He’s on the job today, off tomorrow.”

  “A cop?”

  “Yeah. Local. He’s under investigation for an indictable. I don’t know the details. I’m hearing they may file charges against him any day.” The state of New Jersey referred to cases where the accused could be punished by more than one year in jail as indictable offenses, not felonies, the way most states did.

  “You know my preference where cops are concerned.” Representing cops did nothing to improve one’s reputation with those who regularly needed criminal lawyers.

  “Yeah, and I don’t like whitefish but my wife serves it twice a week. Besides, you haven’t heard the rub yet.”

  “Which is?”

  “The guy asked for you personally.”

  “You’re kidding me. What’s his name?”

  “Richard Clark.”

  Johnny searched his memory. “Don’t know him.”

  “Well, he knows you. Says he knows you real well. He’s going to meet you at the Tropicana at 9:00 a.m. for breakfast.”

  The Tropicana was a diner in Elizabeth. “Now you’re talking. I’m having pancakes and you’re buying.”

  Johnny hung up. Much as the prospect of a tall stack with bacon on the side made his mouth water, the cop’s request for Johnny to represent him left him uneasy. The cop knew something Johnny didn’t, and he knew it would bother him until he learned exactly what it was.