Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

NADIA AND ADAM stood shivering beside each other. Light poured from the headlights of an idling buhanka beside the makeshift helicopter landing pad. A Caucasian man gave Ruchkin an envelope. He and another Slav transferred the crates from the helicopter to the buhanka .

A light flashed three times at the base of the knoll.

“Your Chukchis are waiting for you,” Ruchkin said. “Go.”

Nadia and Adam thanked him. They descended down the snow-covered hilltop to a ridge, walking and sliding in diagonal fashion to keep from falling. The hike warmed them up after they’d been standing so long in the biting cold.

Two men sat in another buhanka . One of the men climbed out of the vehicle and walked over to Nadia and Adam. He bore a startling resemblance to Adam, more so than the Yakut or Evenk. His face was the roundest of the three, his features the smallest, and his complexion lightly tanned. His lustrous black hair fell beneath his fur hat to his shoulders, but he had the heavily lined face of a prematurely aged man.

“You Adam?” he said, in coarse, barely comprehensible Russian.

“Yes,” Adam said.

“Skinny, though. What, no food in Ukraine?”

“No,” Adam said. “I mean, yes. There’s food in Ukraine.”

“Then why you no eat?” The Chukchi turned to Nadia. “You American, though?”

“Yes,” Nadia said. “I’m American.”

“America poor, though. Not much money.”

Nadia hesitated, unsure of what he meant. “Well, yes, our economy’s in trouble. The American government has borrowed a lot of money to keep us out of the recession, but I wouldn’t say we’re poor.”

The Chukchi frowned as though he had no clue what she’d said. “You say America not poor? America has money, though?”

“Well…”

“Then if you buy Alaska, why you no buy Chukotka, too?”

“Oh,” Nadia said, feeling her face flush in the darkness. “Now I see what you meant about money. Yeah, you’re right. Big mistake. We should have bought Chukotka, too.”

“How did you know my father?” Adam said.

“Didn’t know father. Don’t know father. Not your father, or mine. We go, though.”

Adam and Nadia climbed into the back of the buhanka . Heat poured from the buhanka ’s vents, but the other Chukchi pointed at reindeer skins and told them to cover themselves anyway.

They traveled four hours over snow-covered paths and trails until they arrived at the edge of a salt pit.

The Chukchi driver pointed beyond the salt pit. “My cousin waiting at shore,” he said.

When Nadia and Adam circled around the salt pit, another pair of Chukchi were waiting for them at the edge of a lagoon.

They were in Uelen, the easternmost settlement in Russia, and the closest to the United States.

VICTOR WATCHED KIRILO pace around the meeting room in Provideniya’s Militsiya headquarters. It was 6:00 on Sunday morning. Major General Yashko sipped coffee while Deputy Director Krylov was on the phone.

Victor worried about the Timkiv twins and hoped they were moving Isabella every twenty-four hours, as planned. It concerned him that they were incommunicado. In Kyiv, he could sneak away to a pay phone every now and then. Out here, in Siberian hell, there were no pay phones. And he purposely didn’t carry a cell phone, for fear Kirilo would steal it and trace the number he’d dialed. The boys were professional and reliable, but they weren’t planners.

If they could just hang on for another twenty-four hours, Nadia would cross the international date line and the playing field would tilt in his favor. Victor was certain he knew where she was going. Once she was on American soil, Kirilo would be playing on Victor’s turf. The advantage of familiarity would shift in his favor. The probability of victory would shift in his favor as well.

One of Deputy Director Krylov’s lackeys burst inside.

“Border Patrol officers just found a buhanka with crates of vodka and brandy by the pier where the Yupik whalers take off in the morning. The driver said he took a delivery tonight. A woman and a boy got off the helicopter.”

“I’ll call you back, sir,” Krylov said into the phone, and hung up. “What? What’s this?”

“A pair of Chukchis were waiting for them in a buhanka . The driver said one of the Chukchis tried to buy a bottle off him. Said they had a long, cold trip ahead of them.”

“Did he say where to?” Major General Yashko said.

“Uelen.”

“Uelen?” Krylov said. “Why, that’s at the tip. Near Dezhnev.”

Kirilo stood up. “The Bering Strait,” he mumbled.

“Gvozdev Islands,” Major General Yashko said. “Forty kilometers from shore. Big island, Russia. Small island, America. Four kilometers between the two islands. Four kilometers from Russia to America.”

The major general hustled toward Krylov’s desk and reached for the phone. Krylov must have read his mind, because he stood up and made way.

“Have you got anyone on Gvozdev that can help?” Kirilo said. “Or is it all natives?”

Major General Yashko was busy dialing.

“It’s all natives on the American side,” Yashko said. “One hundred sixty-two at last count. And two sentries and a telescope. We shipped our natives to Chukotka in 1948 and razed our island. Now it’s a military base. About twenty square kilometers. Company strength. Helicopters, artillery. It’s under military command.”

Deputy Director Krylov nodded toward the major general.

“Get me the commander at Gvozdev,” the major general said into the phone. “Yes, yes, wake him up. It’s an emergency, dammit. Hurry!”

The major general cupped the phone, sighed, and glanced at Kirilo.

“Not by plane or by ship,” Kirilo said. “On foot. The strait is still frozen. They’re going to walk. They’re going to walk from Russia to America.”

When the major general started barking instructions, Kirilo glanced at Victor and did a double take.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Kirilo said.

“Why should I be?” Victor said. “Damian planned a route where people would help his son. The zoologist told us. Plus, the boy’s mother was from the American tundra. Don’t you get it? The boy’s mother is from Alaska.”

DAYLIGHT ARRIVED SHROUDED in fog. On the shore of the rocky beach in Uelen, Nadia couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of her.

Two other Chukchi men met Nadia and Adam. They wore the same sullen, inscrutable expressions and had identical weathered appearances. They were somewhere between twenty and fifty years old. It was impossible to discern more.

Their wooden boat seated four. It had oars in the front and the back where the Chukchi sat. It also had an outboard motor surrounded by a rib cage of pipes. When one of them started the engine, it whirred gently like an electric razor, suggesting the extra pipes were a noise-reduction system. Nadia and Adam didn’t speak, and the Chukchi didn’t ask them any questions.

The lagoon had melted. The boat chopped and skipped over water toward an invisible target. The cliffs surrounding the inlet tempered the winds. Small waves slapped the boat and rolled by without incident. The Chukchi in the lead checked his compass every five minutes and made minor adjustments in navigation.