Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

“Not now,” Kirilo said.

“I thought I heard him say your daughter is on the phone.”

Kirilo tore out of the office.

Once he was out of sight, Specter rushed in and cut the binds around her ankles with a switchblade.

“What are you doing?” Nadia said, astonished.

Sirens blared outside the warehouse. “The police are here,” he said.

Nadia wriggled her legs free. “They are? How do you know that?”

“I called them. I gave them an anonymous tip that a big drug deal was going down.” He freed her wrists.

An emphatic metallic clang in the warehouse. Feet stomped, men shouted.

Nadia shook her hands loose. “Why are you doing this?”

Specter folded the knife and stored it in his pocket. “I’ll tell Misha and Kirilo I did this to make sure the cops didn’t find you all tied up and they didn’t arrest us for kidnapping. When we walk out there, tell the cops we’re together.”

“Why are you—”

“Listen,” he said, exasperated. “The story is, Misha and I do business with Kirilo, and we’re here to look at a warehouse for storing auto parts from the States. You and I just had a lovers’ quarrel. Tell them I’m a cheat. Ask them to drive you to the police station. Tip them a hundred hryvnia. They’ll do it in a heartbeat. Kirilo will get us out of this, but you’ll have a lead on us again.”

Nadia stood up, still mystified. “Why are you helping me?”

Specter gathered the duct tape and threw it over the top of the shelving. “What were you doing in Chernobyl? You need to get to the embassy and get out of this country.”

“No. I have to meet someone first.”

“Who are you meeting?”

“Who are you?”

Footsteps clattered through the warehouse toward them.

“I can help you,” Specter said.

Two men with the word Militsiya stenciled on their light-blue warm-up jackets burst into the room. They drew their guns.

“Police,” one of them said. “Hands in the air. Don’t move.”

Nadia and Specter raised their hands.

“I’m an American tourist,” Nadia said in perfect Ukrainian. “Thank God you’re here. You’ve prevented a murder.”

“Murder?” the other cop said.

“Yes,” Nadia said. “This is my cheating shit of an American boyfriend. I was about to kill him.”

POLICE SWARMED THE warehouse.

Nadia watched Kirilo’s eyes widen with disbelief when he saw her marching toward him with Specter. Then he gave Specter a nod of approval, as though he realized it was not in his interest for the police to find her tied up.

Fifteen to twenty policemen lined up the bodyguards against the wall, searched them, and checked their domestic passports. Nadia, Specter, and Misha stood beside Kirilo.

A police cruiser pulled into the warehouse. A cop emerged from the passenger side. Veins pulsated on his bald cinder block head as he chewed gum slowly. Ropes of muscle flexed under the ribbed white T-shirt beneath his powder-blue tracksuit. The index and middle fingers were missing from his right hand. He appraised each of them with a poker player’s expression before turning to speak with a uniformed cop.

“He looks familiar,” Kirilo said, just loud enough for Nadia, Misha, and Specter to hear. He squinted. “Have I seen him before? Wait… Is he an Eagle? By God, I think that’s it. I think he’s an Eagle.” He nudged Misha. “We may have gotten lucky here.”

Nadia had no idea what Kirilo was talking about.

The man with the missing fingers finished giving instructions and ambled over. “I am Detective Novak,” he said.

“You’ve made a mistake,” Kirilo said.

“Passport, please.”

“There are no drugs here.”

“Passport.”

Kirilo handed him a blue booklet similar to the US passport.

“There’s been no crime committed here,” Kirilo said. “This warehouse belongs to me. These two men are from America. We’re negotiating a business deal.”

Detective Novak compared the photo in the book to the man before him. “What kind of business deal?”

“Auto parts,” Kirilo said. “American-made auto parts for the do-it-yourself repair market. It’s big in America, and it’s going to take off here.”

The detective returned Kirilo’s passport and turned to Nadia. “Who are you?”

Nadia glanced at Kirilo and Misha. They stared at her, radiating a ferocity that belied their inscrutable expressions. Victor, meanwhile, stood calmly behind them.

“Until an hour ago, I was this man’s girlfriend,” Nadia said, shaking her thumb at Specter. “Now I’m his ex -girlfriend. I’m an American.”

“Passport,” Detective Novak said.

Nadia handed it to him. Kirilo, Misha, and Victor exchanged blank stares with one another, as though processing her story.

Detective Novak studied and returned her passport, and did the same with Victor and Misha.

“We got an anonymous tip,” Detective Novak said, arms folded. “It was made by a man with a lot of urgency. He was very specific about the location.” The detective glanced at Kirilo. “Why would someone send us here for no reason?”

“Do I look like I give a damn?” Kirilo took a step forward. “Do you know who I am?”

Detective Novak kept chewing slowly. “No. Should I?”

“The deputy minister of internal affairs is a personal friend of mine. He is an investor in my Black Sea energy project and a frequent guest at my villa in Yalta. Your police chief is also a friend. Didn’t I see an eagle fly over your shoulder when you stepped out of the car?”

Detective Novak stopped chewing. He blinked. “What did you say?”

“I said, we both know the same people. We’re both businessmen. Surely we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

Detective Novak frowned. “It’s you who’s made a mistake. There was no eagle flying over my shoulder. There are no Eagles of Kravchenko here. Procedure will be followed. Any more discussion, and I will take you all to the station and we will sit there all night getting to the bottom of this. Procedure will be followed.”

He turned, snapped his fingers, and shouted a pair of names. Two uniformed young cops with clipboards came running.

Misha looked at Kirilo. “Eagles of Kravchenko?”

Kirilo grunted. “In 2000, the president, Kuchma, complained about a journalist by the name of Georgiy Gongadze. Kravchenko, the minister of the interior, told him he’d ‘take care of him.’ Kravchenko said he had a team of elite detectives ‘without any morals, prepared to do anything.’ His words were recorded on cassette tape by a major who was in the meeting. They found Gongadze later, decapitated in a forest. They called the detectives the Eagles of Kravchenko. This fellow looks just like one of them, but apparently he’s someone altogether different.”

Detective Novak returned with the two cops. “Look at their papers again. I want names, addresses, and phone numbers. Hotel names from the Americans.” He turned back to Nadia, Misha, and Kirilo. “Now we will search the warehouse and the cars.”

The searches and interviews proceeded at a glacial pace. Nadia checked her watch every five minutes and fidgeted in place. Half an hour later, at 5:15 p.m., the cops finished collecting information and stepped away.

“I’m looking forward to finishing our conversation,” Kirilo said to Nadia. “I think we were close to coming to a business arrangement.”

Nadia ignored him.

Detective Novak returned with Kirilo’s coat. He removed a long, cylindrical object from a special pouch in the lining. It was made of stainless steel and had a green handle and trigger at one end. It reminded Nadia of a spear gun.