Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

Nadia lost her breath. “There is no Saint Damian?”

“No, there isn’t. And there is no ‘up ahead.’”

The curator picked up the candle and extended his arm beyond the coffin. The tunnel ended. There was a wall dead ahead.

“Some of the caves collapsed through the years,” he said. “This is the farthest point west. This… is the end.”

Light flashed behind Nadia. Human voices. Women chattering, thinking they were whispering when everyone could hear them.

The curator sighed. “Tour group.”

Nadia remembered the group of thirty to forty people.

“We’re totally screwed,” he said. “We’re behind them now. There’s no way for anyone to pass. They have to stop and turn in line. It’s going to take hours for us to get out of here.”

By the glow of lantern flashlights, Nadia saw people round the corner.

Clementine Seelick was not waiting for her. Instead, she’d sent Nadia to the bowels of Kyiv. Now she was eight hundred feet beneath the face of the earth, trapped behind a tour group—being led by Misha Markov and Brad Specter.

KIRILO STOOPED AND squinted over Misha’s shoulder as they squeezed through the tunnel. This was ridiculous. All three of them would be hunchbacks by the time they got out.

He had known it would be like this when he insisted on going along with the two Americans, but what choice did he have? The other American, Specter, had done his college dissertation on the caves and said he knew them well. The Upper Lavra connected with the Lower Lavra. A knowledgeable man knew half a dozen exits. Hell, some thought the tunnels went all the way to Moscow.

He’d be damned if the moscal and his man were going to get away with the clue to the money or whatever it was they were certain was so valuable before he got paid.

They approached a doorway. Misha raised his fist in the air for Kirilo and Specter to slow down. The tour group they’d passed at the Church of Nativity dawdled behind them. Kirilo could smell the perfume of the woman who’d screamed when he’d shoved her aside so they could get past her, some sort of rose-infused rat piss.

“You’re sure she’s here,” Kirilo whispered to Specter.

“I’m sure,” Specter said. “She lost two of my people and thinks she’s alone. Whoever she was trying to meet at Yaroslaviv Val used kids to deliver a note. That person must be here.”

“He’s the one we want,” Misha said.

“What will you do with the Tesla woman?” Kirilo said.

“The Varangian Caves,” Specter said. “In the eastern end of the Lower Lavra. Where the Vikings used to bury their loot in the tenth century. There are no bodies there. No one will ever find her.”

Specter turned the corner and burst through the doorway. Misha and Kirilo followed him inside the small room.

Seven monks in black cloaks stood chanting with their heads bowed. They didn’t look up, as though used to idiot tourists interrupting them. Specter shined the light around the room. Nothing. He looked at Misha, who nodded toward the door.

Kirilo backpedaled, and the other two men came out with them. This was not good. Ukrainians knew better than to mess around with the bodies of the saints or the monks who protected them. They were asking for trouble. He began to wonder if the money was worth tempting God himself.

A single candlelight illuminated a coffin in the distance. Specter shined the light farther down the tunnel. A tall, angular man shielded his eyes. Misha pulled a garrote out of his pocket. The three of them advanced quickly. They were upon him in thirty seconds.

“Who are you?” Kirilo said.

The man raised the badge around his neck while still shielding his eyes. “Lavra official.”

“Where are the others?” Misha said in Russian.

“What others?”

Kirilo measured him. “Do you think your body would fit in this tomb if I folded it in three?”

The man hesitated for a second. “One woman. Alone. She went back that way.”

“What way?” Specter said.

The man pointed over their shoulder. “This is the end of the caves. She went back in the direction you were coming from.”

Kirilo turned and shuffled back toward the refectory as quickly as the tight confines allowed him. When they got there, the tour group was five paces away. The monks were still chanting.

Misha shined the light from floor to ceiling on all the walls. There was no sign of the woman.

“Wait,” Kirilo said. “Shine the light again.”

Misha aimed the beam at the men cloaked in black.

“There were seven monks a minute ago,” Kirilo said. “Now there are only six.”

ABLAST OF rose perfume hit Nadia as she came upon a woman with a permanent scowl etched on her face. Behind her, a seemingly endless line of tourists shuffled down the tunnel.

“I’m sorry,” Nadia said. “I’m not well. I have to get out. Now.”

Feeling like a thief herself, she dropped to her knees and began to crawl through the tour group’s legs. As women yelped and protested and the occasional man asked if she was okay, Nadia gave thanks to the babushka outside the Lower Lavra entrance. She’d told Nadia that the black side of the shawl might come in handy in the event of a funeral. In fact, it might have helped postpone hers, for at least a few hours.

After she crawled through her thirty-third pair of legs, Nadia tried to stand up but couldn’t straighten her back. She had to lean against the wall and let her vertebrae recover. She would bet her uncle never had to do this.

She heard men shouting from the direction she’d come from. Misha, Specter, and a third man had figured out what she’d done. They were trying to pass the tour group themselves. Impossible. There was no way they were going to crawl on their hands and knees, and even if they tried, they were too big to maneuver through and around people’s legs.

Nadia took off toward the churches, looking for signs for the exit. As she wound her way through the underground city, the voices and footsteps behind her faded. She found the exit and emerged near the Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin.

Hiding behind a nook in the far wall of the church, she pulled out her cell phone and hit the redial button.

An energetic masculine voice answered above the din of traffic. “Yeah?”

“It’s Nadia.”

“Hey,” Anton Medved said, with a burst of enthusiasm.

“I’m being followed by at least three atheists. I need a taxi driver who can make them believers.”

A bellow of laughter cut short. “Are you all right?”

Nadia started to answer honestly but caught herself. “Yes.”

Anton paused, as though translating the rhythm and tone of her reply into words. “Where are you?” he said.

“Caves Monastery. Far Caves exit. Near the Church of the Blessed—”

“Walk two blocks north to the access road to Dniprovsky Uzviz. Wait on the southeast side.”

“Okay.”

Nine minutes later, Nadia climbed inside the car. The taxi smelled of sautéed mushrooms and musk. Motown blared from the speakers. Anton lowered the volume.

“What happened?” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, I’m okay. Thank you, Anton. Thank you so much.”

He whipped the car into a U-turn before Nadia could fasten her seat belt. Slammed the brakes at a red light.