The Boy from Reactor 4

“Of course it was true. Are you calling your aunt a liar?”

“You’re my cousin, not my aunt.”

“I prefer aunt. It gives me a sense of power with no real responsibility.”

“You’re not my aunt.”

“I disagree.”

“Are you really a reporter? Do you really know Aline Kabaeva?”

“No. But I read an article about her in a New York paper once.”

“Huh?”

When they got to their cabin, Nadia locked the door behind them.

“From now on,” she said, “we don’t leave the room unless we need to use the bathroom. And we watch each other’s back at all times. Agreed?”

Adam hesitated and then nodded. “Agreed.”

CHAPTER 56

KIRILO SLIPPED A five hundred–ruble note to the bartender in the restaurant car.

“Car Three, Cabin Two,” the bartender said, snatching the bill from the counter and burying it in his pocket. “She and the boy.”

“The boy? What boy?” Misha said.

“Ugly boy. Not Russian. Face like a reindeer’s ass after Christmas Eve. Looks like he’s from the North. Not Yakut or Evenk. More like Chukchi. Smells like he’s from the Zone, though.”

“The Zone?” Victor said. “Why do you say that?”

“I worked in Kyiv for twelve years. You get a feeling.” The bartender shrugged. “I can’t explain it.”

Misha’s neck buckled. Warned, Kirilo stepped away. Misha vomited. The bartender recoiled. Misha hurled again. Blood mixed with chunks of partially digested chips and nuts. The bartender groaned. A putrid smell filled the air. Kirilo gagged.

Misha straightened. Blood dripped from his nose onto the counter. He raised his sleeve to his ashen face. A red droplet seeped into the white cotton and spread.

His lips parted and his eyes widened. He glanced at Victor with a mixture of disbelief and disdain. “Did you really poison me, old man?”

Victor laughed. “Of course not. You really must have caught a bug or a parasite.”

Kirilo now knew Victor was lying. Misha looked worse every hour. But there was no sense in telling Misha. They couldn’t afford any delays to see a doctor, and even if they could, there was no hope for the moscal.

“You should really see a doctor,” Specter said.

Misha babbled incoherently for a few seconds before glancing at Specter. “What? Doctor? And let you guys make out with the formula? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Specter? No, no doctor.”

“Misha,” Specter said, “you’re not well.”

“The formula,” Misha said. A maniacal glint shone in his eyes. “All I need is the formula. Let’s go.”

They bounded down the corridor toward the third car. Kirilo let Misha, Specter, and the four bodyguards go ahead of him to put distance between the radioactive moscal and himself.

Kirilo checked his watch. It was 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday. It had taken them two and a half days to catch up to Nadia. When they had finally arrived in Moscow at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, some pipsqueak in Passport Control had flagged Misha as an undesirable based on his criminal record as a youth in Moscow. It didn’t help that Misha was sweating profusely, like someone who had something to hide. Kirilo explained that the deputy minister of the interior of Russia was an investor in his Black Sea energy project and would vouch for the American. The deputy was away at a conference in Prague, however, and couldn’t be reached until midnight.

On Tuesday morning, they flew to Yemelyanovo Airport and tried to catch the Trans-Siberian thirty-seven kilometers away at Krasnoyarsk, but the taxi arrived seven minutes late. They drove an additional four hundred kilometers and finally boarded it at Tayshet, halfway to Vladivostok.

When they arrived at Cabin 2, Misha tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. He cursed and kicked at it. Loitering passengers disappeared.

Something clanged inside the cabin. It was metal on metal, like a lead pipe accidentally banging into the steel frame of a bed.

“Who are you? What are you doing?” A very large female attendant barreled down the corridor. No wonder the restaurant car had no food to offer, Kirilo thought.

Kirilo had the pyatichatka out of his wallet before she arrived. He offered her the fifty-hryvnia bill.

“Please open this door,” he said.

She licked her lips at the money and frowned as though she wished she could accept it but couldn’t.

“It’s okay, dear,” he said. “The American woman is my granddaughter. The boy is a troubled child. She is adopting him. I am here to help them.”

“That’s no business of mine,” she said. “But I can’t open the door for you because it’s locked from the inside.”

“How do you get in if it’s an emergency?”

“They have to open it themselves.”

“What if they can’t?”

“Well, that’s never happened. But if we had to, we could break it down. Though, in this case, it would be a waste of time.”

Kirilo sighed with exasperation. “Why do you say that?”

“Because the woman and the boy aren’t in there. They got off the train at Tayshet.”

“What?” Misha said.

“As soon as we arrived at Tayshet, they got off the train and disappeared.”

The lock was unbolted from the inside. The door slid open. An ancient couple jabbered in Chinese. The man held a metal cane.