The Boy from Reactor 4

“Brygidki,” Victor said, holding the picture for her to see. “It used to be a nunnery in Lviv until the NKVD—the secret police under Stalin—took over. I did seven years for stealing a shipment of grain. One day, the NKVD took a local priest and crucified him for giving a sermon in the underground church before Christmas. They nailed him to a wall. Cut a hole in his stomach while he was still alive and put a dead fetus in it.”

Puma looked away, fresh tears flowing.

Victor scowled. “Why are you crying?”

“Anya. My daughter. She is sick. That’s why I took this job.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She has trouble swallowing and breathing. She needs thyroid surgery, or she will die.”

“I see.”

“Her father was a liquidator in Chernobyl. He bulldozed cars, trucks, and ambulances under the ground so the nuclear particles on top of them wouldn’t blow to Kyiv. They told us not to have children…but…these pictures of Anya…How did you get them?”

Victor glanced at the snapshots of a sad, malnourished girl playing on a swing with a babushka. “They were taken by the sons of an old friend of mine—twins, to be exact—and sent by computer. Young people. They know all about these things.”

“Where is she now?”

“She is wherever her grandmother has taken her. No one has touched her. And no one will.”

“She won’t be hurt?”

“Not only won’t she be hurt, I’ll arrange for her to have her surgery at the best facility in Kyiv, where they are experts on this disease. You have my word as a thief.”

Puma regarded Victor with disbelief. “You would do that? You would pay for my Anya’s surgery?”

“Yes.”

Puma’s eyes sparkled. She raised Victor’s hand to her lips, but he pulled it away before she could kiss it.

Victor squeezed her shoulder. “It’s time.”

She blanched. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Victor opened the door. Stefan and two of his men came in. Stefan saw the guns on the table. He looked at Victor, the guns, Puma, and back to Victor again. They stared at each other without saying a word.

Stefan ordered his men to take Puma away. Victor nodded his head with approval as she left with the stoic expression of a true thief.

Stefan closed the door behind them. He walked over to Victor’s prized possession, the only painting in the room. A dove fluttered in the palm of a maiden dressed in a colorful peasant shirt as she danced in a field of wheat. The deceased artist, Edward Kozak, had arrived in New York on the same boat as Victor.

“The maiden and the dove, the dove and the maiden,” Stefan said. “I love them so.”

“Me too. Especially since that appraiser said it’s worth a hundred thousand.” Victor told him about the surgery for Puma’s daughter. “Find out how much it will cost. Then call Milanovich in Moscow and ask him for a loan.”

Stefan nodded at the painting. “You could sell…”

“Never. I’d rather die. Make the call.”

“We have no money, and now you’re going into debt with Moscow for sentimental reasons. You’re scaring me. I think you’re going senile and maybe I should leave you.”

“The day I stop scaring you is the day you should leave me.”

“We both have to truly believe the money situation is hopeless. Only then will we get a windfall.”

“Hopeless? By God, you are going senile. Why?”

“Because the greatest opportunities present themselves when all hope is lost. Now, I have to go,” Victor said, reaching for the beret and coat on the corner hanger. “I’m late for my chess match in the park.”

CHAPTER 9

NADIA JUMPED IN a taxi on Sunday morning and arrived at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church on Seventh Street at 10:00 a.m. When she got her job on Wall Street, she stopped practicing her religion, which is to say she changed her affiliation to the greenback. Sundays were for sleeping in after six consecutive twelve-hour days. Once she lost her job, however, Nadia started attending Mass regularly again, just like all the other pathetic people who worshipped only in times of need. The self-loathing this inspired was exceeded by the tranquility provided by her childhood sanctuary. She was learning to forgive herself. For losing her job, being childless, and living alone.

After the liturgy, Nadia stayed alert to her surroundings. An ethnically diverse crowd mixed beneath the warm sun on Second Avenue. Some headed to church in jeans, others to brunch in their Sunday best. The street teemed with pedestrians. No one could harm her without drawing attention to himself.

At Veselka on Second and Ninth Street, Nadia sat with her back to a wall, facing the entry to the Ukrainian soul food restaurant. She ate a plate of cheese-and-potato dumplings called vareniky and nursed a second cup of coffee until 1:00 p.m., when the Duma bookstore opened.

Paul Obon beamed when he saw Nadia and shook her hand with both of his. He was the living incarnation of the Monopoly Man, with a single strand of gray hair atop his bald head. He smelled of old books and rolled around the nooks and crannies of his cramped store with unfettered zeal.