Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

He sailed over the crystal and disappeared beneath the earth. A scream filled the air. It grew more distant with each second but its echo continued. It seemed to last forever.

Nadia remembered the guide’s warning about fissures in the floor. Fissures large enough to swallow a human. She realized she must have leapt over the hole to avoid the sharp rock.

The other man was equally transfixed by his colleague’s fall. Nadia didn’t waste time. She hurried along the passage toward the entrance to the cave. Kept her flashlight on. Didn’t turn back. The rawboned man with the rifle was injured, she thought. He couldn’t keep up with her.

She stopped after ten minutes to consult her map. Oriented herself, and hurried on to the original cave entrance.

A ray of light. A collection of small rocks and boulders obscured the opening. Nadia tossed them aside. Daylight streamed into the cave. So did the sound of rain. She cleaned out dry sticks, leaves, and branches. A large pile of animal dung appeared fresh. From her experience, it looked like it belonged to a bear. She looked around again. No animal in sight.

She slipped through a circular opening and emerged on a mound of grass. Rain pelted her. Nadia stayed low and looked out. The field looked familiar but the other entrance to the cave was nowhere in sight. She crept around the mound and glanced in the opposite direction.

An old Range Rover was parked a hundred yards beside the main entrance to the cave. Her guide’s car was gone. Fog obscured the Rover’s windows. Someone was inside, she thought.

Nadia sat and waited. Stuck her hands out to let the rain wash the blood away and clean her wounds. Marko had been talking. Then she’d heard the thump. And not another sound from Marko.

He was dead. He had to be dead. It was only logical, and yet she couldn’t contemplate the thought. A sense of loss paralyzed her. Marko had just reached the point in his life where he was comfortable with himself. He wasn’t drinking. He’d discovered contentment and joy. She sat there trying to imagine a life without him and couldn’t fathom it. And it was her fault. He was here on her behalf.

She sat in a quiet stupor for ten minutes until a noise rousted her. The rawboned man with the rifle emerged. She was shocked how quickly he made it out given how badly he’d been limping. Ex-military, she thought. He looked like it, and moved like it, too.

Rain pummeled him. He slipped the rifle off his shoulder and looked around. Found the Range Rover. Sealed the lid to the cave and limped over to the vehicle. He opened the passenger’s side front door and lowered his head to speak to someone inside. The driver, Nadia thought. A few seconds later he opened the rear passenger door.

Marko stepped out of the Range Rover.

He was alive. A sense of euphoria swept Nadia. It left her giddy.

He had a bandage on his head. His hands were cuffed in front of him. The man with the rifle took him by the arm and directed him to the front passenger seat. Even put his hand over Marko’s head to make sure he didn’t bump his wound on the way in.

Marko carried himself with a fearlessness that belied his situation. He even stopped to say something to the man with the rifle before climbing in the front seat.

Another pair of men must have followed the two she’d encountered, Nadia thought. Perhaps they’d gone to search the other khatki , or the water source on the opposite side of the Gypsum Giant. They probably had shortwave radios. As soon as they heard shooting they must have come running. From there they took Marko to the car while the other two pursued her.

The thump must have been a warning shot. Followed by a rifle butt to the head.

Marko was alive.

Nadia’s joy was short-lived. Karel. She’d put him out of her mind. The image of his head bursting open flashed before her eyes. His final words rang in her head.

Valentin. He knew the name. There was a connection between Bobby and Valentin. It involved something called the Zaroff Seven.

And one more thing. It was so unbelievable as to be laughable. But Karel hadn’t wavered in his conviction. Not for a moment.

The formula was real.

NADIA WAITED FOR the Range Rover to drive out of sight. After ten more minutes to make sure they didn’t double back, she walked five miles in the rain to the village of Strilkivtsi. Along the way, she sipped water from the bottle in her knapsack and considered her discoveries.

Karel had insisted the formula was real and was contained in the locket. But if it wasn’t on a piece of microfilm inside the compartment where was it? In a steel capsule within the body of the locket? Or was it etched somehow? That sounded more likely. The thought had never occurred to her before because the contents of the locket had proved it was all a ruse. Or so it seemed at the time. But wouldn’t that have been just like her uncle to hide it so well?

Then the painful question dawned on Nadia. Did Bobby know? Had he been lying to her the entire time? And where was the locket? In jail, she suspected, with Bobby’s other personal possessions. He never took it off his neck except to sleep.

Her thoughts turned to her brother. If her pursuers wanted Marko dead, they would have killed him in the Priest’s Grotto. But they didn’t. That meant they had a use for him. Maybe they wanted to see what he knew. More likely they wanted to use him to get to her. Nadia wasn’t sure why but that’s what her instincts told her. Alerting the authorities about his abduction could backfire. Her pursuers could change their minds and decide keeping Marko alive wasn’t worth the risk of being found. If she notified the American embassy in Kyiv they would seek help from the Ukrainian police. They had a less than sterling reputation for integrity.

No. Frightening as it was, Nadia’s optimal course of action was to wait. She had her cell phone. Marko knew her number. Soon she would get a call, and her pursuers would reveal themselves and their motives. Both were tied to Bobby’s past, Ivan Valentin, and his son’s murder. They’d begun following her as soon as she started asking questions about Valentin. She was sure of it. In the meantime, she took small comfort in knowing that Marko could take care of himself.

Nadia paid a seamstress’s son five hundred hryvnia to drive her from Strilkivtsi to Lviv. It was the equivalent of sixty dollars. She listened to her voice mails during the trip. One was from Johnny. There had been a break in the case against Bobby. The witness had changed his story. The victim had been carrying a rifle and a hunting knife. The witness was broke. The rifle and the knife were worth money. The latter had an ivory handle. He’d taken them both for the money. The victim was also carrying a map of Hart Island. Johnny said it was a public cemetery. Nadia vaguely remembered reading an article about the burial of homeless people on an island. It was a place one needed a permit to enter.

They arrived at the Leopolis ten minutes past noon. New York was seven hours behind. That meant it was 5:12 a.m. Too early to call a friend, she thought. Unfortunately she had no choice. She called Paul Obon, bookman and source of knowledge on all things Ukrainian. She indentified herself and apologized for calling so early.

“Who is this?” he said.

“It’s Nadia, Mr. Obon. Nadia Tesla. Your favorite customer.”

He muttered her name under his breath as though making sure he wasn’t dreaming. “Nadia? What time is it?” His voice trailed off. A second later he sounded awake. “What’s wrong? Something must be wrong.”