Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

She was also concerned that Victor Bodnar had dropped the girl’s name. It was as though he was encouraging Lauren to go see her, which told Lauren she should do otherwise. It didn’t smell right. She had an eerie sense he was trying to manipulate her.

The answer was neither. She shouldn’t approach the lawyer or the girlfriend. Both visits were losing propositions. There simply had to be a better plan of action. There had to be a more promising source of information.

A mother, Lauren thought. A mother was the best source of information about anyone.

Lauren found the address in the White Pages. She drove 120 miles to a small town in central Connecticut called Rocky Hill. She pulled into an old condominium complex in the late afternoon. Parked in a small lot across the street from a corner unit.

She rang the doorbell. The curtain over the front door window parted. Lauren felt a person’s eyes upon her. The front door cracked open. A chain prevented it from swinging wider.

An elegant woman with short gray hair opened the door. Lauren recognized the family resemblance.

“Mrs. Tesla?” Lauren said.

“Yes?”

“Nadia’s mother?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Lauren Ross. Nadia’s friend from New York. I’m sure she’s mentioned me to you.”

“How could she mention you to me when she never calls me? You’d think a daughter would call her mother at least once a week.”

“Well, she’s been busy. What with the trial and all.” Lauren lowered her voice. “I know the boy’s story. I know he’s from Ukraine and he got into the country through Alaska. I know about Bobby.”

“You know about Adam?”

Lauren hesitated. “Yes. I know all about Adam.”

Nadia’s mother frowned. Gave Lauren a once-over. By the time she was done she was glaring. She’d blown it, Lauren thought. The hesitation had cost her.

“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about,” Nadia’s mother said. “Good night.” She swung the door shut. A bolt slid into place. A door chain rattled home.

Lauren returned to her car.

Adam, she thought. Bobby Kungenook was the boy’s alias. His real name was Adam. Forty minutes and thirty-two miles later a question occurred to Lauren at a rest stop on the Merritt Parkway.

What were the odds his last name was Tesla?

NADIA CHECKED OUT of the Leopolis Hotel the next morning. She took the #170 express train departing Lviv at 7:00 a.m. It arrived at Kyiv Central Station at 11:55 a.m. That left her with four excruciating hours to kill before meeting with the men who had Marko.

She ate lunch at Varenichnaya #1, a restaurant that specialized in Ukrainian dumplings. She’d eaten there last year, when she arrived in Kyiv for the first time. They offered twenty different kind of varenyky . She ordered three filled with potato and farmer’s cheese, and two stuffed with black cherries. She dabbed sour cream on the potato and cheese dumplings, and spooned cane sugar onto the cherry ones. She ate as slowly as she could to savor every bite. The meal distracted her. For those fifteen minutes she was able to leave the real world and relive what few pleasant childhood memories she had. Varenyky were a cornerstone of those memories. Whenever her mother made them from scratch, her father never shouted at the dinner table.

After lunch she walked a few blocks to Saint Sophia Cathedral. Aesthetics and religion drove her to the destination. A campus of white buildings covered an entire city block. She sat outside on a bench and stared at the cathedral. Green and gold cupolas topped a maze of turrets. A man once told her green was the color of genius and gold was the color of dreams. Nadia wasn’t sure about that, but the architecture soothed her soul almost as much as the comfort food. She’d been an altar girl growing up. When in trouble, we return to the sanctuaries of our childhood, she thought.

Inside, she studied frescoes and mosaics from the eleventh century. With an hour left, she kneeled down in the church and prayed. She prayed for Marko and Adam—it wasn’t right to use his false name in a place of worship—and for her parents, too. She prayed for Johnny and that there was one good Russian oligarch among the lot of them, and that he might be a man she knew. She prayed she’d survive the night.

Kyiv Central Station. 4:00 tomorrow. White Lexus. Wear pants.

Those were the nine words. Those were her instructions. It was the latter two words that struck fear in her heart but also gave her hope. The need for pants suggested physical exertion. She couldn’t imagine any other reason for the order. Exertion implied action. Action meant she and Marko would have a chance. Otherwise they would have let her wear a skirt and killed her at their leisure.

She returned to the train station at 3:55 p.m. and waited in front of the entrance. Five minutes later a white Lexus SUV with tinted windows pulled in. A young driver—at least six-foot-six—climbed out of the car and opened the rear passenger door. Nadia walked up to him. He cracked a smile to reveal four golden front teeth and bowed like a gentleman. He took her bag to stow in the storage area and motioned for her to sit in the back.

Nadia slid into the back seat. The rawboned man from Lviv sat beside her. She wondered if he was one of the Zaroff Seven. If not, he surely worked for them.

“Welcome,” said the rawboned man. He smiled, too. “Seat belt, please.”

The driver climbed back inside the car. He pulled into the exit lane and waited for a gap in the traffic.

“Where are we going?”

“We are going to a place where all your questions will be answered.”

“Is my brother there? Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Your brother is fine. You must realize. If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now. I know that you have many questions. About Ivan Valentin. About his son. We want to give you the answers you’re looking for. But on our terms. In our theater.”

“What terms?”

He pulled a translucent orange prescription vial out of his jacket pocket. Handed it to Nadia. There was no label on the vial. It contained a single pill. He unscrewed the cap to a bottle of spring water and offered it to her.

“The price of admission,” he said.

“To what?”

“Our theater.”

“What theater?”

“You know what theater.”

Irradiated trees, buried homes, and an abandoned Ferris wheel flashed before Nadia’s eyes. She stared at the pill with fear and revulsion. If she took it, she might awaken permanently incapacitated or prepared for torture. Taking the pill was insane. And yet, she knew she had no choice.

“You want answers? Take that pill and you will get all the answers you want. It’s a form of benzodiazepine. Like the Xanax so popular in America. You will wake up in a few hours in perfect health. You have my word as a gentleman.”

“Why is the pill necessary?”

“You’ll find out when you wake up. You must trust me. I know that’s very difficult, but if we wanted to harm you that would have already happened. Don’t you agree?”

Words from the mouth of Karel’s killer and Marko’s kidnapper shouldn’t have reassured her, yet for some reason they did. “Where will I wake up?” she said.

He smiled. “In the front row.”

She opened the vial. Let the purple pill slide into the palm of her left hand. If she thought about it too much, she might lose her nerve. She remembered Marko slugging her abductors with his makeshift club on the Appalachian Trail.