Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

“Now you know everything,” Nadia said when she was finished. “Bobby came here for the freedom and the opportunity. The same way you have the freedom and opportunity to do whatever you want. You can go publish your blog. Tell the whole truth. Or you can join us. See where it takes you. You want to sleep on it, that’s fine. All I ask is that you decide within a week and give us a heads up if you go the blog route so we can prepare ourselves. Because for sure Bobby will get deported back to Ukraine, and that’s if they’re even willing to take him.”

Lauren agreed.

On the way home, an unfamiliar calm enveloped her. Her pace slowed of its own accord. She enjoyed sights and watched people. She’d lived in New York for eleven years but she couldn’t recall when she’d been more content. She was no longer in a hurry. There was no one left to save. Her mother was in a better place and she had arrived at her final destination.

Fifteen minutes after she left, Lauren called Nadia on her cell phone.

“Tell me about this powerful Russian friend of yours.”

NADIA DIDN’T TELL Lauren about Bobby’s experience with the Valentines in Chornobyl. She also didn’t reveal that the locket might actually contain a revolutionary formula. Neither one was relevant to Bobby’s real identity, which was the essence of Lauren’s story.

Lauren’s arrival wasn’t a surprise. When Nadia’s mother described the woman who’d come asking questions about Bobby, Nadia knew it was Lauren. She could reveal Bobby’s true identity by publishing her suspicions. Even if her story were inaccurate, it could lead to Bobby’s deportation. Nadia had liked Lauren when they first met, and crafted her solution based on instincts. It was a risk but so was giving an illegal immigrant from Chornobyl a new life in New York City.

After Lauren left, Nadia and Bobby went to the jewelry district on Forty-Seventh Street. She visited with a jeweler who’d designed an amethyst ring, earrings, and a bracelet as gifts for her mother over the years, back when she was gainfully employed and flush with cash. The jeweler removed the gilding from the entire locket. The process exposed a web of chemical symbols etched into the underlying metal.

Nadia’s heart pounded as they took the subway uptown to Columbia University. At 4:00 p.m. they met with Professor Eric Sandstrom, a radiobiologist. Professor Sandstrom studied the symbols. Enthusiastic exclamations ended with disappointment.

The etchings consisted of the known formula for 5-Androstenediol modified to include a protein substance of some kind. 5-Androstenediol was a direct metabolite of the most abundant steroid produced by the human adrenal cortex. Its potential as a radiation countermeasure was discovered by the Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute, and later studied by Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals for acute radiation syndrome. Initial studies on monkeys were successful. 12.5% of monkeys treated with 5-AED died compared with 32.5% of those treated with a placebo. In 2007, however, tests were cancelled due to a supposed decline in success rates. Scientists reported that an additional protein complex was necessary to further modify 5-AED and make it effective. To-date, such a modification had not been discovered.

Professor Sandstrom concluded the etchings on the locket were promising but incomplete. It appeared that only half the essential protein was defined. There was plenty of room left on the locket for additional etchings. His first thought was that a scientist had conducted some experiments and had gotten marginally better results from additional protein substances that shared the identified composition, but the results were not conclusive enough for humans. His second thought was that the formula was complete nonsense, and the etchings had been added to make the locket’s purported value stand up to a cursory inspection.

Three weeks and three days later, Nadia was working on a new project for the Orel Group at 10:30 p.m. at home when she heard a sound from Bobby’s bedroom. It was more masculine than a shriek, but louder than a gasp. It propelled Nadia to her feet and sent her running to Bobby’s door. He opened it before she got there. He looked either amazed or terrified, she couldn’t tell which. He moved out of the way like a barefoot zombie to let her in.

“Computer,” he said.

Nadia marched to his desk and looked at the picture on the screen. It was a photo of the necklace and the locket in the palm of Bobby’s hand.

“Why did you take a picture of yourself holding the locket?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“What?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

“No one.”

“I’m confused.”

“That’s not my hand. And it’s not my locket. The necklace has smaller loops. The locket is more circular.”

Nadia lost her breath. Bobby edged past her and slipped into his chair.

“There’s another locket,” Bobby said.

Nadia let the words sink in. “There’s another boy,” she said, as much to herself as to Bobby. “Is this an e-mail?”

“Just got it.”

“Who sent it?”

Bobby scrolled to the message details. The sender’s name was ‘GenesisII26486.’

“Does that mean anything to you?” Nadia said.

Bobby shook his head. “No.”

“Can you get any more information about where it was sent from?”

Bobby summoned the source information. Half a page of gibberish came up. Nadia couldn’t make any sense of it. Bobby pointed at the screen with his pen.

Sender> Okuma-asahi.net.

“Asahi,” Nadia said. “That sounds Japanese.”

“Must be the local Internet provider.”

Bobby searched. Asahi Net was, in fact, one of Japan’s top broadband providers.

“What about Okuma?” Nadia said.

Bobby searched again. A Wikipedia page offered five subjects named Okuma. Nadia and Bobby scanned the list. Nadia stopped when she reached the fourth subject. She knew Bobby was transfixed by the same entry without even asking.

Okuma was the name of a Japanese town in the Futaba District. It was a city whose name was known in infamy around the world. It was the only place besides Chornobyl to experience a level seven nuclear disaster, according to the International Nuclear Event Scale. The message from the second boy had been sent from this location.

Fukushima.

I am indebted to the many articles and books I sourced for historical context and setting. Among them were Mark Hollingworth’s and Steward Lansley’s Londongrad , and Peter Lane Taylor’s The Secret of Priest’s Grotto .

My sincere thanks to the following people for their invaluable assistance:

Professor Roman Voronka and Mykola Haliv helped with various matters Ukrainian, including editorial input and book reviews. They are the smartest and kindest men in any room. Kim Palmer, Pam Marra, Jeff Palmer, Mary Jane Cronin, Jim Cronin, John Jarosz, Eudokia Stelmach, Dan Simeone, and Bob Simeone spread the word. Thanks to Bob for also sharing his intricate knowledge of firearms. How lucky I am to call you family and friends. Olga Konuich, Lydia Gulawsky, and the other members of the Soyuz Ukrainok of Warren, Michigan, turned a conference call into a motivating experience. The Ukrainian Museum in New York City, Paul Stankus, Jud Ashman, and the entire Gaithersburg Book Festival provided generous hospitality. Kathy Ryan and Chernobyl Children International make wonderful partners and create an effective means for every reader to help save children’s lives with the purchase of a book. My intrepid editors, Alison Dasho and Charlotte Herscher, shepherd a book to creation and kill the darlings within like nobody’s business. The rest of the team at Thomas & Mercer including Alan Turkus, Terry Goodman, Jacque Ben-Zekry, Gracie Doyle and Paul Morrissey have supported and promoted this author beyond all reasonable expectations. For this I will always remain indebted to Daphne Durham, the high priestess of the Boy cult, and Andy Bartlett. My fierce and fabulous literary agent, Erica Silverman, remains my formidable and trusted partner and friend.