Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

Her office was a bookkeeper’s dream, with stacks of accounting ledgers and textbooks lining the shelves. A high-powered lamp illuminated a sturdy wooden desk. A computer, a printer, and an array of well-organized office supplies rested on top.

Adam removed his backpack. The forger pointed to a plate of poppy seed rolls and a pitcher of milk. He grabbed a massive hunk of pastry and dug into it like a Cro-Magnon man.

“Let me see your passport,” the forger said. “Do you have two blank pages facing each other? Do you? You must have two blank pages facing each other, or I cannot help you.”

Nadia opened her passport to a pair of blank pages.

“Good. Stand in the corner against the white wall. We need to take a passport photo.”

Nadia backpedaled toward the corner. “Why? Since when do visas have pictures?”

“When you cross the border, a customs agent will check your visa against the computer. If your information isn’t there, you’ll be arrested. My son will download your application into the Russian Federation database. He will also enter your picture.”

A man in his thirties with wire-rimmed glasses and an air of ambivalence shuffled into the room. He held an instant camera and a blue knit sweater the size of a pup tent in his hands.

The forger gave the sweater to Nadia. “Put this on. Quickly.”

“Why?” Nadia said.

“It will look suspicious if you are wearing the same clothes as you are in your photo, no? Put it on.”

Nadia took her coat off and put the sweater on. She stifled her horror at how she must have looked. Yet the photo would be shoulders up, she reminded herself. Who cared?

She stood against the wall and cracked a sympathetic smile. The son snapped three photos in rapid succession and disappeared into a back room with the pictures.

“Now fill out this visa application,” the forger said. “In English, as though you walked into the Russian embassy in New York. Date it February nineteenth. I will fill in the name of your hotel in Moscow. It will also be the entity that’s inviting you.”

“Inviting me?”

“To get a Russian visa, you must be invited by an authorized party. Usually it’s a travel agency or a hotel. You are going to be invited by the Hotel Ekaterina.”

“Does it even exist?”

“Yes. It exists. My son will book a reservation for you in their system as well.”

When she was done with the application, the forger made a copy on the printer and took it to the adjacent room to her son. She returned and began typing as quickly as her fingers allowed.

“What is your connection to my uncle?”

She looked up. “Your uncle?”

“Damian. The young man’s father.”

“My brother spent six years with him at the gulag in Sevvostlag. When he got so weak he couldn’t produce his daily quota in the gold mine, your uncle got him an easy job picking needles off dwarf cedar trees. They used to grind them into soup as a cure for scurvy. That saved his life.”

“That was decent of him.”

“Decent had nothing to do with it. It was about money. He knew I sent my brother sweaters, cigarettes, and food every three months. That all went to your uncle, or whatever the guards didn’t take.”

Nadia glanced at Adam, who was on his second hunk of poppy seed roll. “How did you learn this trade?”

“I worked in the Ministry. Department of Tourism. First in Moscow, then Kyiv. When independence came, capitalism came with it. I lost my job and had to find another one.”

The forger printed a single sheet of paper, moved to a side table, and inserted it into a paper cutter. As she lined it up, Nadia walked over to the doorway where the forger’s son had disappeared. He sat in a small room, surrounded by six computer screens. The passport photo of a pale woman with a prematurely aging face and a forced smile appeared on one of the monitors. Nadia gasped. The son turned to see who’d made the noise, then returned to work.

Nadia paced the main room for five more minutes while the forger worked. Adam burped and leaned against a wall.

“Come look at your visa,” the forger said.

A yellow, intricately manufactured discoloration marred its complexion. The faint stencil of a blue coat of arms decorated the center. Russian words and numbers ran along the top in distinct shades of red. A multicolored stamp featuring churches, a ship, and a coat of arms was pressed on the left. Nadia’s name and date of birth appeared in dull blue toward the middle.

The forger took the visa and placed it in an envelope. “This is good for ten days, and ten days only. They are very strict about this. You must be out of Russia within ten days from today.”

“That will not be a problem,” Nadia said.

The forger held the envelope by her side. “Payment, please.”

“Excuse me?” Nadia said.

“Your uncle didn’t tell you?”

Shuffling noises behind them. Nadia turned. The son stood behind them with a rifle in his hand.

“No,” Nadia said. She glanced at Adam. He wiped crumbs off his lips, oblivious to the conversation. “My uncle didn’t tell me.”

“The bargain he struck with me was that I would give you a visa and you would give me all the jewelry on either one of your hands.”

“I never heard anything like that.”

The forger shrugged. “Surprise.”

Nadia looked down. Her stainless steel Bedat watch was wrapped around her left wrist. She’d paid $4,000 for it back when she’d had a job, earned a bonus, and could afford it. Her favorite ruby ring shimmered on her right hand. It was probably worth a fraction of the watch, but it had sentimental value. Her mother had given it to her when she graduated college.

Nadia glanced at Adam. His eyes were glued to the gun in the son’s hand. She turned back to the forger.

“Well,” Nadia said, “which hand is it going to be?”

“Let me see the ring.”

Nadia raised her right hand. The forger removed a loupe from her desk drawer and studied it.

“I’ll take your left hand,” the forger said. Sirens sounded in the distance. “Quickly.”

Nadia took the watch off and exchanged it for the visa. Nadia and Adam flew up the exterior stairs to street level and took off for the subway.

The sirens grew louder as they speed-walked out of sight.

THE ZOOLOGIST RAISED his hand from his plush velvet seat. It trembled from residual electrical current.

“No more,” he said.

Kirilo sighed and replaced the cattle prod in his coat’s lining. After bringing Karel a glass of water, he sat down on the sofa directly across from him, beside Victor. The River Casino’s gaming floor bustled with activity beyond the soundproof glass wall.

Misha returned from the restroom. Sweat dotted his forehead even though it was cool in the room.

“Diarrhea,” he said as he sat down on the couch.

Kirilo slid a few centimeters farther away from him. “You’re from America. Some of our fine water probably got into your system. Happens to tourists all the time. Victor didn’t really poison you, did you, Victor?”

Victor didn’t react; instead, he kept his head tilted at an angle at Misha.

“You old prick,” Misha said, wiping his brow. “If this is a joke, I’m going to more than even the score back in New York.”

This time, Victor grinned. “And if it’s not?”

Kirilo had gotten the zoologist’s name and address in Kyiv from the deputy minister of the interior. Pavel’s men had identified themselves as militsiya and dragged Karel out of his apartment. By 8:00, he was in his current seat. Twenty minutes later, after substantial prodding, he motioned for Kirilo to stop.