Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

She scratched her chin. “Gee. They may have asked me how to connect to a train, but I’m not sure I remember which one.”

Kirilo gave her another pyatichatka.

“Oh, that train. Sure,” she said. “Now I remember. It was the Amur-Yakutsk.”

“What?” Kirilo said.

“The Amur-Yakutsk. They’re headed north to Tommot.” She glanced at her watch. “It leaves at seven fifty-five. In two minutes.”

NADIA SAW THEM just as they got off the train. She grabbed Adam by the collar and yanked him behind a massive iron pillar on the platform of Track 6.

“Oh my God. That’s them,” she said.

“Who?”

“ Them . Don’t look, don’t look.”

Adam slipped the knapsack off his back and stood sideways beside Nadia to make himself smaller.

They approached. Nadia rotated her body around the pillar to hide. Adam followed her lead. She heard footsteps, recognized a familiar voice.

Specter.

Another rotation and they passed. Nadia glanced at their backs. Specter was twenty feet away from her. He was so close.

Specter disappeared down the stairwell toward the central concourse with the others.

Nadia nudged Adam. They hurried onto the Amur-Yakutsk headed north, the same train the others had just gotten off.

The doors closed. The engine hissed. The train rolled away from the station. Nadia peered through a narrow gap between the curtains on the window in her cabin.

Specter and Kirilo exploded out of the stairwell, three bodyguards close on their heels.

“Let me look,” Adam said beside her.

She held him back with a straight-arm.

Kirilo and Specter raced for the edge of the platform. Nadia’s viewing angle narrowed until she lost sight of them.

“What if they jump on the back of the train?” Adam said.

“Lock the door,” Nadia said.

She bolted out of the cabin, sprinted down the corridor, passed through a doorway, and entered the rear car. Weary faces looked up at her from benches. She didn’t recognize any of them.

She slowed as she approached the window of the rear door, fearful that Kirilo or one of his bodyguards could be climbing aboard. The bottom of the window was filthy, covered with grime. The top, however, was still translucent.

From a distance, she could see five men turning back on the platform toward the stairs.

FOUR TAXIS WAITED outside the train station at Tynda.

“Who knows the road to Tommot?” Kirilo said.

All of them raised their hands.

“Who’s driven it recently?” Kirilo said.

All of them raised their hands again.

“Who knows my brother Theodore’s hotel, the Tommot Vista Inn?”

Three of the men raised their hands. Kirilo approached the fourth, the youngest of the bunch. He looked as though he didn’t shave yet. He stood beside a beaten-up Volvo station wagon with his arms folded across his chest.

“How long a drive to Tommot?” Kirilo said.

“About six hundred kilometers. But there is no Vista Inn in Tommot. And I don’t know any Theodore.”

“Neither do I. I’d like to hire you.”

“It’s going to be expensive.”

“How much?”

The kid hesitated. “Eight thousand rubles. Plus gasoline. Half up front.”

Kirilo laughed. “Half up front. Good for you. Done. There are six of us.”

The kid looked them over, pausing when he got to Misha. “What’s wrong with him?”

Misha brandished his gun, pointed it at him, and grinned. “This is what’s wrong with me.” Spit flew from his lips and connected with the kid’s shirt.

The kid looked at his shirt with disgust and backed away. “You’d be better off with two cars,” he said to Kirilo. “More space. More comfortable.”

Kirilo could see the kid’s mind working. He was using comfort as an excuse to put Misha in someone else’s car. Smart boy.

“Fine.” Kirilo looked at the other drivers. “You decide who else goes.”

“All right. The road is bad. There are many holes. It’s a brutal drive. You sure you don’t want to wait for the train?”

“We’re sure.”

“In the dark, it’s going to be slow going.”

“The train arrives at Tommot in fifteen hours. We must be there before the train.”

“I’ve done it twice. It took me sixteen to eighteen hours. And that was daylight.”

Kirilo pulled out his wallet. “I will give you three thousand rubles up front. And another nine thousand if you make it before the train.”

The kid’s eyes lit up. “I think I can make it in fifteen, though.”

“I thought you might.”

THE GLACIAL PEAKS of the Stanovoy Range glistened in the dark. The train hurtled through a tunnel beneath them. A hundred miles past Tynda, they entered the Sakha Republic of Russia, also known as Yakutia.

The train crossed three rivers and rumbled past the coal mines at Berkakit and Neryungri. Smog hung over the stations at the mining towns. They passed abandoned collectives and empty wooden cottages with fenced-in gardens overgrown with weeds. When the train pulled in to Tommot at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, the Aldan River shimmered beneath the morning sun.

Adam followed Nadia as she skulked her way through the train station. She was fearful that Kirilo, Victor, and Misha had somehow caught up with her, but they were nowhere in sight. “Where do we wait?” Nadia said.

“Outside, in front of the station,” Adam said. “My father said the man will find us.”

“And he didn’t tell you what he’d look like?”

“Just that he is a Yakut, and he will look a little more like me, and a little less like you.”

“What is a Yakut?” Nadia said.

“They’re one of the indigenous people of Siberia. Close to five hundred thousand live in northern Russia. Great hunters. Really intense.”

The Tommot station was a plain cement building but boasted three yellow domes like a church. Nadia put on her hat, gloves, and winter coat. Adam did the same. A wind blasted them when they stepped outside. According to the oversized thermometer by the entrance, the temperature was negative five degrees Celsius. That was about twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

A man got out of a vintage SUV parked a few steps away. He looked like the offspring of a Slav and an Asian. A fur hat covered his bald head. Although the creases in his weathered face suggested he was in his late sixties or older, the bounce in his step said otherwise.

After glancing at Nadia, he looked at Adam cautiously. “There is much talk about you. Can it be true?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “She betrayed me for a Yakut.”

The Yakut smiled. “Old Cossack song. Your father loved it. Yeah, good. We go.”

The SUV was a square-shaped model Nadia had never heard of, called a Nissan Patrol. The exterior was dented and dinged, but the interior was spotless, the cloth upholstery impeccably maintained. They stored their bags in the cavernous cargo area, which contained three spare tires and four cans of gasoline. Nadia sat behind the Yakut so she could watch him. Adam sat beside him.

“My name is Fyodor,” he said as he guided the car away from the station.