The Boy from Reactor 4

With Kirilo’s local influence, their first step would be to seal all borders. Nadia figured she had two tactical advantages. First, they didn’t know she was traveling with a boy. Border guards would be looking for a woman traveling alone. Second, and more important, she had a head start. If the police delayed her pursuers long enough, she and Adam might be able to sneak through Passport Control before Kirilo notified anyone. If not, they were at risk of being arrested imminently.

“Are you buying a ticket, too?” Nadia said.

“No,” Adam said. “I have mine. You want the eight-oh-nine express to Moscow. Coupe.”

“Coupe?”

“Second-class cabin.”

“What does that mean?”

“Four people per cabin.”

“We’re going to have strangers in our cabin?”

“No. No one else is going to stay in our cabin.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me.” He looked down at the floor, face flushed. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

The ticket agent asked Nadia for her destination, time of departure, and passport. Nadia paid the equivalent of $170 in hryvnia, waited an interminable few minutes, and received her ticket.

Passport Control was the same disorganized madhouse as when she had arrived at the airport.

Nadia jostled her way forward, glancing back every thirty seconds to make sure Adam was following. He kept his knit hat pulled low over his ears. Knapsack and duffel bag in each hand, he shuffled forward with his eyes planted firmly at his feet. Removed from the countryside, he seemed out of his element.

When the mass of bodies finally converged into a line, Nadia counted twenty-one people ahead of them. She tried to prepare herself to look nonchalant, which inevitably had the opposite effect. She focused on the formula and wondered how much a radiation countermeasure was worth on the open market. The thought of riches beyond her dreams was a pleasant way to calm her nerves.

The agent returned the passports to a family in front, and they moved along. After glancing at his computer, the agent scanned the line awaiting him. Nadia dropped her gaze to the floor so that their eyes didn’t meet, lest she appear anxious.

When she looked up again, she saw, to her alarm, a supervisor had joined the agent at his booth. Both of them peered in Nadia’s direction. Nadia swiveled her head, glanced over her shoulder, and realized they were staring at Adam.

“You!” the agent said. He pointed an index finger at the boy and then directed it toward Nadia. He must have seen her tense when he shouted at Adam. “Are you together? Is that your boy?”

Nadia’s gut instinct was to protect him, rude and insolent though he was. “Yes,” she said. “We’re together.”

“Step forward, please,” the agent said.

As Nadia and Adam cut to the front of the line, two beefy policemen with bulging sidearms joined the supervisor and the agent at his booth. Their expressions conveyed suspicion and fear.

The couple in front moved aside, pushing the line back to leave as much space between them and Nadia and Adam as possible, as though they knew she was about to be arrested for some sort of crime against the State.

At least she was an American citizen, Nadia thought. Whatever else happened, that still had to count for something.

Didn’t it?

The Passport Control agent opened Adam’s passport and studied his picture. The supervisor peered over his shoulder as the two cops stood by with their hands on their weapons.

“Take your hat off,” the agent said.

Blushing deeply, Adam grasped the edges of his knit hat with both hands. As he slowly peeled it off his head, his ears popped out. They rose from the side of his head and stopped halfway, just above the canal. They looked as though they’d been sawed in half with a hacksaw. Jagged grooves ran along the square tops like the edge of an unfinished cardboard puzzle. Nadia recalled a picture of similar ears on a child at the Chernobyl museum. She absorbed the visual shock without flinching, realized she was staring, and tore her eyes away.

People in line gasped. The agent, the supervisor, and the cops averted their eyes. Their collective gaze was one of acute discomfort. The cops folded their arms across their chests in a defensive posture. The supervisor nodded at the agent as though he’d known all along what was hidden beneath Adam’s hat. The agent himself pursed his lips in deep disapproval.

Nadia held her breath when he turned to her visa, but he didn’t bother checking it. He stamped their passports quickly and firmly. The cops pointed in the direction of their track as though they wanted to make sure Nadia and Adam got out of the country as quickly as possible.

The entire process had taken sixty seconds.

As they marched toward the train, Nadia’s initial feelings of horror swiftly transmuted to compassion. She had seen that stricken look on Adam’s face. He must be embarrassed by his ears every day of his life, and he was not to blame. Not at all. He was a teenager, at the point in his life when looks were so important. Now she understood why he distrusted people so much.