The Boy from Reactor 4

He looked at her like the principal who’d just shelled out detention instead of expulsion to the school sociopath.

“How about the subway station at Astor Place?” Nadia said. “It’s a five-minute drive, at most. Please.”

He waddled up to her and stuck his chins in her face. “I think you’ve wasted enough taxpayer money tonight, don’t you, Miz Tesla? And if you pull a stunt like this again, you’re going in. Do we understand each other? Have a nice evening.”

When Nadia stepped outside, rain was pouring from the sky. Pedestrians scattered for cover. Head on a swivel, she sloshed her way to Third Avenue. All the taxis were occupied. The subway was the only way home.

She hugged the curb to stay out of the shadows in case someone was waiting to kidnap her. Cars plowed through puddles. Water thrashed her shoes, clothes, and face. She soldiered on, wishing it were all a practical joke, uncertain if she would make it home alive.

CHAPTER 6

THE COURIER WORE an elegant black business suit a size too big for her wiry body. Her platinum-blonde crew cut shone in the dimly lit room. She could have been a former lingerie model or a ravenous zombie from a postapocalyptic world. For a Slavic woman trying to keep her figure past her thirties, it depended on the lighting. It didn’t matter. At his age, Victor wouldn’t turn either one away.

A sealed bottle of vodka, two empty shot glasses, and a manila folder rested on Victor’s desk. The courier stood before him, a slim, rectangular object in her hand. It looked like a book or picture frame wrapped in simple brown paper. String hung loosely around it, and the paper had been dislodged when Stefan searched her for weapons.

She placed the package on the table and pulled an index card from an inside jacket pocket. She read from the card in Russian, not Ukrainian:

The mind withers in the wind.
A thief grows old.
Time to retire and reflect,
And rob and steal.

“S Dniom Rozdenija,” she said, wishing him happy birthday. “From Ilya Milanovich and the Bratsky Krug.”

The Circle of Brothers. The twenty most senior former Soviet bloc criminals in the world. Most of them were Russian, while he was Ukrainian, so they would always be extra wary of each other. Still, it was a classy move on their part. Victor closed his eyes and let her words hang in the air for a few seconds, nodding with appreciation.

“Thank you. It is good to be remembered by old friends, especially when they are oceans away.” He pointed toward the vodka. “Let’s have a drink. But first, tell me a little bit about yourself.”

The courier put her left hand on her hip and thrust it to one side. Victor felt a slight stirring in his groin he hadn’t experienced for months. Victor knew she wasn’t part of his birthday gift, but he was certainly willing to play along. She circled around and sat on the desk facing him, legs spread wide. Victor caught a whiff of orange blossoms, violet, and tobacco.

She nudged her right shoe off with her left one. It thumped to the floor. Her toes were snuggled in panty hose. She slid them onto his crotch and extended her right hand toward him, palm down. Tattoos. The kind earned in a Russian or Ukrainian prison. And in the outside world as a reward for criminal achievements and loyalty. They told a person’s life story in pictures.

Victor put on his reading glasses and studied the tattoos in the center of her hand in a clockwise fashion.

A circle with a bull’s-eye in the middle. “You grew up an orphan. You spent time in the Round Stone, an educational labor colony.” Her toes massaged him. “They taught you well.”

A sickle with a stake driven through it. “You began stealing out of hunger during your Soviet life.”

Five bold dots: four watchtowers and a convict. Prison. “You’ve been through the Crosses.”

A little girl clinging to a goose flying through the air. “You are a single mother.” She pressed harder with her toes. “You know when to put your foot down.”

The word OMYT in bold letters. Russian for “whirlpool.” “It’s hard for a man to get away from you once he’s in your clutches.” Victor closed his eyes for a moment and savored the pleasure. “Why would he want to?”

He shifted his attention to her knuckles. If she was known in the criminal world by a certain name, this is where it would be spelled out. He read the letters on four fingers just above the nail.

“Puma,” he said.

She pulled her foot back and dropped it to the floor.

“No. Don’t stop—”

Puma hissed and flashed two more tattoos on the back of her other hand.

A leopard grinned with its mouth open, gun in its left paw and knife in its right. “Death to bitches and traitors,” Victor said, breathless.

Puma snarled. “When you’re a woman, men search your breasts real careful…”

An X beside three skulls and crossbones: An executioner. A hit man.

“But no one ever pats down the forearms,” she said.