The Boy From Reactor 4 (29 page)

“I’m glad you said that. It’s true. Not only are you not an enemy, but it’s possible we can be business associates. Look at your friend Anton. He helped us, he got paid, and he’s going back to his life. A bit bloody, thanks to you, but back to his life. There’s no reason we can’t strike the same bargain. Tell me what it is you found in the Zone, and we can come up with a fair price.”

“I didn’t find anything in the Zone. I went to meet my long-lost uncle. He’s on his deathbed, and my mother told me of his existence just recently.”

“Oh, really? What is your uncle’s name?”

Nadia kept her lips sealed.

Kirilo smiled and tapped a muted tune along the coat, from shoulder to hip.

“What did the man say to you on Seventh Street? We both know there’s no ten million dollars. Damian Tesla is your uncle. Where did you meet him? What did he give you?”

Nadia focused on her breathing and reminded herself: once she told him, she was dead.

He grasped the lapel to his coat and started to pull it back.

A knock on the door behind her.

Nadia tried to turn but couldn’t.

Kirilo glared at whoever was standing in the doorway. “What?”

“Pavel needs you.” It was Specter’s voice.

“Not now,” Kirilo said.

“I thought I heard him say your daughter is on the phone.”

Kirilo tore out of the office.

Once he was out of sight, Specter rushed in and cut the binds around her ankles with a switchblade.

“What are you doing?” Nadia said, astonished.

Sirens blared outside the warehouse. “The police are here,” he said.

Nadia wriggled her legs free. “They are? How do you know that?”

“I called them. I gave them an anonymous tip that a big drug deal was going down.” He freed her wrists.

An emphatic metallic clang in the warehouse. Feet stomped, men shouted.

Nadia shook her hands loose. “Why are you doing this?”

Specter folded the knife and stored it in his pocket. “I’ll tell Misha and Kirilo I did this to make sure the cops didn’t find you all tied up and they didn’t arrest us for kidnapping. When we walk out there, tell the cops we’re together.”

“Why are you—”

“Listen,” he said, exasperated. “The story is, Misha and I do business with Kirilo, and we’re here to look at a warehouse for storing auto parts from the States. You and I just had a lovers’ quarrel. Tell them I’m a cheat. Ask them to drive you to the police station. Tip them a hundred hryvnia. They’ll do it in a heartbeat. Kirilo will get us out of this, but you’ll have a lead on us again.”

Nadia stood up, still mystified. “Why are you helping me?”

Specter gathered the duct tape and threw it over the top of the shelving. “What were you doing in Chernobyl? You need to get to the embassy and get out of this country.”

“No. I have to meet someone first.”

“Who are you meeting?”

“Who are you?”

Footsteps clattered through the warehouse toward them.

“I can help you,” Specter said.

Two men with the word
Militsiya
stenciled on their light-blue warm-up jackets burst into the room. They drew their guns.

“Police,” one of them said. “Hands in the air. Don’t move.”

Nadia and Specter raised their hands.

“I’m an American tourist,” Nadia said in perfect Ukrainian. “Thank God you’re here. You’ve prevented a murder.”

“Murder?” the other cop said.

“Yes,” Nadia said. “This is my cheating shit of an American boyfriend. I was about to kill him.”

CHAPTER 48

P
OLICE SWARMED THE
warehouse.

Nadia watched Kirilo’s eyes widen with disbelief when he saw her marching toward him with Specter. Then he gave Specter a nod of approval, as though he realized it was not in his interest for the police to find her tied up.

Fifteen to twenty policemen lined up the bodyguards against the wall, searched them, and checked their domestic passports. Nadia, Specter, and Misha stood beside Kirilo.

A police cruiser pulled into the warehouse. A cop emerged from the passenger side. Veins pulsated on his bald cinder block head as he chewed gum slowly. Ropes of muscle flexed under the ribbed white T-shirt beneath his powder-blue tracksuit. The index and middle fingers were missing from his right hand. He appraised each of them with a poker player’s expression before turning to speak with a uniformed cop.

“He looks familiar,” Kirilo said, just loud enough for Nadia, Misha, and Specter to hear. He squinted. “Have I seen him before? Wait…Is he an Eagle? By God, I think that’s it. I think he’s an Eagle.” He nudged Misha. “We may have gotten lucky here.”

Nadia had no idea what Kirilo was talking about.

The man with the missing fingers finished giving instructions and ambled over. “I am Detective Novak,” he said.

“You’ve made a mistake,” Kirilo said.

“Passport, please.”

“There are no drugs here.”

“Passport.”

Kirilo handed him a blue booklet similar to the US passport.

“There’s been no crime committed here,” Kirilo said. “This warehouse belongs to me. These two men are from America. We’re negotiating a business deal.”

Detective Novak compared the photo in the book to the man before him. “What kind of business deal?”

“Auto parts,” Kirilo said. “American-made auto parts for the do-it-yourself repair market. It’s big in America, and it’s going to take off here.”

The detective returned Kirilo’s passport and turned to Nadia. “Who are you?”

Nadia glanced at Kirilo and Misha. They stared at her, radiating a ferocity that belied their inscrutable expressions. Victor, meanwhile, stood calmly behind them.

“Until an hour ago, I was this man’s girlfriend,” Nadia said, shaking her thumb at Specter. “Now I’m his
ex
-girlfriend. I’m an American.”

“Passport,” Detective Novak said.

Nadia handed it to him. Kirilo, Misha, and Victor exchanged blank stares with one another, as though processing her story.

Detective Novak studied and returned her passport, and did the same with Victor and Misha.

“We got an anonymous tip,” Detective Novak said, arms folded. “It was made by a man with a lot of urgency. He was very specific about the location.” The detective glanced at Kirilo. “Why would someone send us here for no reason?”

“Do I look like I give a damn?” Kirilo took a step forward. “Do you know who I am?”

Detective Novak kept chewing slowly. “No. Should I?”

“The deputy minister of internal affairs is a personal friend of mine. He is an investor in my Black Sea energy project and a frequent guest at my villa in Yalta. Your police chief is also a friend. Didn’t I see an eagle fly over your shoulder when you stepped out of the car?”

Detective Novak stopped chewing. He blinked. “What did you say?”

“I said, we both know the same people. We’re both businessmen. Surely we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

Detective Novak frowned. “It’s you who’s made a mistake. There was no eagle flying over my shoulder. There are no Eagles of Kravchenko here. Procedure will be followed. Any more discussion, and I will take you all to the station and we will sit there all night getting to the bottom of this. Procedure
will
be followed.”

He turned, snapped his fingers, and shouted a pair of names. Two uniformed young cops with clipboards came running.

Misha looked at Kirilo. “Eagles of Kravchenko?”

Kirilo grunted. “In 2000, the president, Kuchma, complained about a journalist by the name of Georgiy Gongadze. Kravchenko, the minister of the interior, told him he’d ‘take care of him.’ Kravchenko said he had a team of elite detectives ‘without any morals, prepared to do anything.’ His words were recorded on cassette tape by a major who was in the meeting. They found Gongadze later, decapitated in a forest. They called the detectives the Eagles of Kravchenko. This fellow looks just like one of them, but apparently he’s someone altogether different.”

Detective Novak returned with the two cops. “Look at their papers again. I want names, addresses, and phone numbers. Hotel names from the Americans.” He turned back to Nadia, Misha, and Kirilo. “Now we will search the warehouse and the cars.”

The searches and interviews proceeded at a glacial pace. Nadia checked her watch every five minutes and fidgeted in
place. Half an hour later, at 5:15 p.m., the cops finished collecting information and stepped away.

“I’m looking forward to finishing our conversation,” Kirilo said to Nadia. “I think we were close to coming to a business arrangement.”

Nadia ignored him.

Detective Novak returned with Kirilo’s coat. He removed a long, cylindrical object from a special pouch in the lining. It was made of stainless steel and had a green handle and trigger at one end. It reminded Nadia of a spear gun.

“You are carrying a concealed weapon,” Detective Novak said.

“It’s not a weapon. It is a cattle prod.”

“Do you herd cattle?”

“Do you value your career?”

Detective Novak smiled, walked up to Kirilo, and handed him the coat and the cattle prod.

“We’ve completed our search,” he said. “You’re free to go, as are your men.”

Kirilo stepped between Specter and Nadia and put his arm around her shoulder. “Come with me, dear. Let me give you a ride to your hotel in my Audi.”

Nadia wrangled out of his grasp and stepped forward. “Detective, may I get a lift to the station, please? I’m not with these men anymore.”

Detective Novak glanced from Nadia to the men and back to her again. He stopped chewing.

“I was going to offer to pay for the gasoline or any inconvenience,” she said, “but that would be an insult. So I can only say please.”

Detective Novak paused, resumed chewing, and smiled. He marched over to a police cruiser and opened the door to the backseat without saying a word. Motioned for Nadia to get in with a sweep of his right hand. After closing the door behind her, he stood before Kirilo, Misha, and Specter.

“I don’t want to see any of these vehicles following us to the station. The lady is no longer interested in your company. Is that understood?”

They didn’t answer.

“In fact,” Detective Novak said, glancing at one of his men with a clipboard, “check registrations for all these cars before these men leave.” He turned back to Kirilo. “For my report. To make it perfect. Because I value my career.” He winked.

He climbed into the passenger seat while another cop got in the driver’s seat. As he pulled away, Nadia snuck a peek out the window. Kirilo followed the car on foot for a few steps, as though letting her know they would be coming soon.

Specter stood tapping his cell phone. The motion suggested he wanted Nadia to call him later.

“May we take you to the Hotel Rus?” Detective Novak said.

“No, thank you,” Nadia said. “That’s very kind of you. If you wouldn’t mind…There is a destination…I’m leaving tomorrow, and I haven’t had a chance to see the new statue. The new statue at Babi Yar.”

CHAPTER 49

T
HE COPS KEPT
Kirilo, Victor, Misha, and the bodyguards in the warehouse for another hour. Kirilo fumed at the irritation until the cops finally left at 7:25.

“We have to stop her from leaving the country,” Kirilo said. “If she’s still here. Pavel, call the deputy minister of the interior. Get him on the line for me.”

Pavel pulled out his cell phone and stepped away.

“Who has a picture of her?” Kirilo said.

Misha pointed to Specter, who nodded.

“Good,” Kirilo said. “Get it to Pavel right away. I’ll see that the deputy minister gets it to Passport Control and that she’s held for suspicion of illegally entering the Zone of Exclusion. We don’t even have to make up a phony charge. It’s legitimate. The taxi driver confessed to it.”

“She has a head start,” Misha said. “She could be on a plane before they have her picture.”

“She won’t go to the airport,” Victor said.

Kirilo forced himself to look at his cousin. “Why do you say that?”

“She’ll be expecting us to be expecting her there. It’s how she came in. It’s the easy way out. It’s too big a risk, and she’s too smart to take it.”