Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

On Tuesday morning, they flew to Yemelyanovo Airport and tried to catch the Trans-Siberian thirty-seven kilometers away at Krasnoyarsk, but the taxi arrived seven minutes late. They drove an additional four hundred kilometers and finally boarded it at Tayshet, halfway to Vladivostok.

When they arrived at Cabin 2, Misha tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. He cursed and kicked at it. Loitering passengers disappeared.

Something clanged inside the cabin. It was metal on metal, like a lead pipe accidentally banging into the steel frame of a bed.

“Who are you? What are you doing?” A very large female attendant barreled down the corridor. No wonder the restaurant car had no food to offer, Kirilo thought.

Kirilo had the pyatichatka out of his wallet before she arrived. He offered her the fifty-hryvnia bill.

“Please open this door,” he said.

She licked her lips at the money and frowned as though she wished she could accept it but couldn’t.

“It’s okay, dear,” he said. “The American woman is my granddaughter. The boy is a troubled child. She is adopting him. I am here to help them.”

“That’s no business of mine,” she said. “But I can’t open the door for you because it’s locked from the inside.”

“How do you get in if it’s an emergency?”

“They have to open it themselves.”

“What if they can’t?”

“Well, that’s never happened. But if we had to, we could break it down. Though, in this case, it would be a waste of time.”

Kirilo sighed with exasperation. “Why do you say that?”

“Because the woman and the boy aren’t in there. They got off the train at Tayshet.”

“What?” Misha said.

“As soon as we arrived at Tayshet, they got off the train and disappeared.”

The lock was unbolted from the inside. The door slid open. An ancient couple jabbered in Chinese. The man held a metal cane.

“Where could they possibly be going that they would get off at Tayshet?” Victor said.

“The Baikal-Amur Mainline begins in Tayshet,” the attendant said. “It goes north and then runs parallel to the Trans-Siberian. It is a slower train.”

“Then why on God’s earth would anyone use it besides a local?” Kirilo said.

“It used to be a transit stop for gulag prisoners. Now it is the gateway to Yakutsk and the North,” she said.

Kirilo howled. “Yakutsk? The North? There’s nothing in the North but gulags and mines. No roads, no civilization, nothing.” Kirilo’s voice faded as he listened to his own words.

“Which makes it the last place anyone would look for her,” Victor said.

Kirilo swore under his breath. “What is the fastest way for us to get on the Baikal-Amur headed north?”

The attendant eyed the pyatichatka again. “Once you pass Irkutsk, the train turns back north. You can get off at Bamovskaya, take the Amur Yakutsk line, and cut them off.”

Kirilo handed her the five hundred–ruble note. “Where can we cut them off, dear?”

She snapped the bill out of his hands and buried it in her pocket in one motion. “At Tynda,” she said. “You can cut them off at Tynda.”

THE TRAIN RUMBLED north by northeast, pitching and tossing Nadia in her ramshackle seat every half hour. She spent the hours sleeping and gazing out the grimy bolted-down window of their second-class cabin. Whenever she checked to see how Adam was faring, she found him slumped in torpor. He didn’t mind the endless travel. It must be some Eastern European thing that living in America expunged, Nadia thought.

Mile after mile of conifers stretched across the taiga amidst patches of red-and-gold birch trees. Signs of industry and life rolled into view occasionally. Factories sprawled along the Bratsk High Dam, while coots and geese buzzed the marshes. The vista gave way to the untamed forest and served as a reminder that Siberia was larger than the United States and Western Europe combined.

Twenty-four hours after Nadia and Damian had boarded, they passed Severobaikalsk. The train plunged along its tracks past groves of stunted pines into a valley surrounded by jagged mountains with snowcapped peaks. The afternoon sun shimmered on the northern tip of icy Lake Baikal. It was the Pearl of Siberia, the attendant said when she brought hot tea, and the world’s largest freshwater lake. They passed through four tunnels along the lake and emerged surrounded by glazed tundra. From there, the permafrost extended forever.

Adam kept busy by reading the same torn and tattered hockey magazine over and over again. The cover featured an action shot of a huge player with a penguin on his jersey driving toward the net. Wavy black locks flowed from his black helmet, fierce determination etched on a surprisingly cherubic face. From her viewing angle, Nadia could see the name Jagr in bold letters beneath the picture.

“You have a favorite team?” Nadia said.

He lifted the magazine and flashed the page he was reading. The top of the page said, New York Rangers . The page was a mess. The left side had a hole the size of an adult’s fist punched through it.

They bought food and bottled water on the platforms during stops along the way. Forty-eight hours after they’d boarded, the Baikal-Amur train headed to Sovetskaya Gavan, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Pacific Ocean, and Nadia and Adam made a scheduled stop. The local time was 7:31 p.m., five hours later than Moscow. It was now Thursday, April 29.

The name on the train station read TYNDA .

Nadia and Adam climbed off the train onto the platform at Track 2. Their matronly attendant did the same.

“Where can we catch the northbound Amur-Yakutsk to Tommot?” Adam said.

“Track Six,” the attendant said. “It arrives at seven forty. In nine minutes.”

KIRILO AND HIS two bodyguards stepped off the northbound Amur-Yakutsk at Tynda on Track 6 at 7:42. Misha followed, propped up by Specter, looking like a corpse who’d escaped from the morgue. His pair of bodyguards brought up the rear.

Kirilo marched up to a transit employee on the platform.

“Which track for the Baikal-Amur? The one that’s just arrived, from Tayshet?”

“Track Two,” the employee said.

Kirilo had expected a small railway station. What the hell did they have out here that required twelve or more tracks? Timber? What else could it be?

They bolted up the stairs to Track 2, where the Baikal-Amur had arrived twelve minutes earlier. The train sat on the track, waiting to depart. Kirilo and Specter hurried to the far end. A woman wearing a blue vest and a matching cap puffed on a cigarette.

“I’m looking for my niece,” Kirilo said. “She’s American. Traveling with her adopted son. An unfortunate sort. Have you seen them?”

The attendant’s eyes flickered for a second before registering confusion. She looked Kirilo up and down. “An American, you say? Gee, I don’t know if I’ve seen any Americans.”

Kirilo whipped out his wallet and held out a pyatichatka. “Is your memory getting any better, dear?”

The attendant snatched the dough. “Oh, that American. Sure. They were in Car Two, Cabin Four.”

“ Were ?” Kirilo said.

“Yes. Were . They got off when we arrived.”

“Do you know where they went?”