Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

People in line gasped. The agent, the supervisor, and the cops averted their eyes. Their collective gaze was one of acute discomfort. The cops folded their arms across their chests in a defensive posture. The supervisor nodded at the agent as though he’d known all along what was hidden beneath Adam’s hat. The agent himself pursed his lips in deep disapproval.

Nadia held her breath when he turned to her visa, but he didn’t bother checking it. He stamped their passports quickly and firmly. The cops pointed in the direction of their track as though they wanted to make sure Nadia and Adam got out of the country as quickly as possible.

The entire process had taken sixty seconds.

As they marched toward the train, Nadia’s initial feelings of horror swiftly transmuted to compassion. She had seen that stricken look on Adam’s face. He must be embarrassed by his ears every day of his life, and he was not to blame. Not at all. He was a teenager, at the point in his life when looks were so important. Now she understood why he distrusted people so much.

When they boarded the train, static cracked through the speakers.

“This is the eight-oh-nine Stolichny Express to Moscow. Train number one. Eight-oh-nine Stolichny Express to Moscow. Welcome aboard.”

They found an empty cabin. Nadia sat opposite Adam. Fresh white linen and burgundy blankets covered their beds. Above them, another pair of bunks remained folded against the wall.

Light poured in from the platform through the window. Outside, passengers rushed on board.

“Kyivans,” Adam said as he took off his hat again and sighed. “They know when someone is from the Zone. They can smell it off you. You see? Even before I took my hat off, they knew. The supervisor knew. Some of the people in line, they knew, too.”

Nadia was outraged for him. “And? So what? Why do they care?”

“No one wants to be near anyone who is from the Zone. Years ago, no one wanted to be near anyone who might be radioactive. Even though twenty-four years have passed, nothing’s changed. They couldn’t wait to get me out of the country.”

“Well, that’s just wrong.”

He scowled at her. “Would you be here if I didn’t have the locket?”

Nadia’s gaze fell to the gold shimmering around his neck. She looked up at his face. “That’s different. I wouldn’t even be in Kyiv if your father hadn’t written.”

“Good, at least you admit it. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the locket. Just so we both know where we stand.” Adam turned, fluffed up his pillows, and kicked his legs up onto the bed, filthy shoes and all.

Nadia had to hold in a burst of temper. “You told me you’d tell me why we’re going to Moscow when we got on the train,” she said. “We’re on the train.”

He folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

“Are you a man of your word ?” she said.

He bolted upright. Tossed his legs back over the side and faced Nadia.

“We are going by train because they expect you to go by plane. We are going to Moscow because they do not expect you to go there. But mostly, we are going to Moscow because that is the route that was arranged for me by my father and his friends when they thought I would be alone. It is the route where there are people my father knows. Where there are people who will help me.”

“What route, Adam?”

He told her. There were five waypoints. Five people would meet them along the way and guide them forward. Once they got to the last waypoint, they were on their own.

She bought chips, candy bars, and bottled water in the restaurant car and consumed them in the cabin. She tried to share them, but Adam wouldn’t accept anything from her. He drank the hot tea provided by the carriage attendant and ate nothing. Nadia slept fitfully during the last four hours of the nine-hour trip, falling into a deep slumber just as the conductor announced their arrival at 6:39 a.m.

Language was not a concern. Nadia had studied Russian from seventh grade through college. Her mother had tried to dissuade her, for fear it would pollute her Ukrainian, but Nadia thought it might help her business career someday. It never did. But now it just might help keep her alive, she thought.

After a three-hour wait to clear customs, they emerged at Kievskaia Station in Moscow at 11:00. Exchanged her remaining hryvnia and dollars for rubles. Adam set his watch forward one hour. Nadia made a beeline for a McDonald’s and ate two hamburgers, a large fries, and a chocolate milkshake. She offered to buy Adam lunch, but he refused, eating a grotesque piece of sausage wrapped in onionskin paper and buying his own bottled water instead.

After lunch, they went shopping. Nadia had never had the opportunity to return to her hotel room. All her luggage was still in Kyiv. She bought a cell phone charger, blue jeans, a denim shirt, a fleece pullover, a ski jacket, ski gloves, and hat, hiking socks and boots, a compass, toiletries, and a roll of toilet paper. She changed into the shirt, jeans, socks, and boots, and stored everything else in the knapsack she’d also bought.

At 4:00, she ate an early dinner of bread and borscht at a cheap joint called the Elki-Pelki . The waiter seated them near the kitchen in the far corner of the restaurant. Nadia ordered Adam steak and boiled potatoes without asking him. When the food arrived, he played with the potatoes as though they were hockey pucks but didn’t eat anything. They hadn’t spoken the entire day except to discuss where they were going next.

After dinner, Nadia called Johnny Tanner in New Jersey and left him a voice mail that she would be calling him again for help within six to ten days. She also called her brother’s club and confirmed that he was still out of harm’s way in Thailand.

They still had time to burn, so they walked the ten kilometers to Yaroslavsky Station. The entire way, Nadia kept her head on a swivel out of sheer paranoia that Kirilo and Misha had somehow tracked her down. She and Adam covered the distance in two hours and arrived at 7:45.

Adam already had his ticket. He said a man who owed his father a debt had sent it to them. Nadia showed the vendor her passport and bought a one-way ticket for the Trans-Siberian Express. The train departed Moscow with Nadia and Adam on board at 9:25 on Saturday, April 24.

It was the No. 2 train, headed from Moscow to Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan.

AT 11:00 P.M. on Saturday, Kirilo sat in the front seat of a car bumping down a spooky abandoned road in the Zone. The deputy minister had finally secured emergency entrance passes for the Zone of Exclusion after a two-hour delay. Kirilo had to promise the deputy minister more shares in his alternative-energy fund in exchange for the discretion of two superintendents. No doubt the deputy minister was compensating the superintendents somehow. Now that he understood the value of the formula they were chasing, Kirilo considered it a bargain.

Kirilo slept during the drive to Chernobyl until they passed the thirty-kilometer radius to the power plant. The red forest and vehicle graveyards kept him awake and wondering if it really was safe to be in the region, no matter how brief his stay. Chernobyl was not a place people discussed, let alone visited.

Kirilo had gotten good news from Pavel at the River Casino earlier in the evening.

“Nadia Tesla left Ukraine on the night train to Moscow,” he said. “The deputy minister made inquiries for us. She entered Russia at ten fifty a.m.”

“And?” Kirilo said.