The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 43





DAMIAN AWOKE AT 7:45 A.M. Nadia waited patiently as Oksana made him tea and fed him stewed prunes. After she was done, Nadia went into his bedroom.

Damian didn’t waste any time. “Karel says I have Chernobyl syndrome,” he said, propped up and lucid. “That the structure of my brain is changing. I have fevers, rashes, and paralysis of the legs. The fevers come and go. I faint during the day for no reason. My brain is like a computer going bad.”

“Why aren’t you in a hospital?” Nadia said.

He smiled. “Hospitals are for citizens, not for ghosts. I don’t exist. There’s no record of me. No hospital in Ukraine would admit me. Besides, Karel brought a doctor from the power station who looks in on squatters from time to time. He told me I have two to three weeks to live. That was two weeks ago.”

Saddened by this news, Nadia started to reach for his hand.

“No, no,” he said, pulling it back. “It’s not safe for you to touch me at this point. I’m too hot.”

Nadia fidgeted, uncertain what to do. She had wanted this connection to her father, to the family she had never known, and now her nearest relative over here was at death’s door. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m at peace now that I know you’ll take my son with you to America.”

“What?” She had forgotten about that part. “Oh, no. That’s not—”

But Damian was already off down memory lane. “I met his mother in the café eighteen years ago. She was for hire. They earn extra here in the Zone, where a woman never knows if a man is infected with a lot more than a venereal disease. I paid. We danced. She fell in love. I did not pay again.”

“I’m sure you charmed her.”

His eyes bored into Nadia. “A true thief can make anyone his willing accomplice.”

“What happened to her?”

“She was addicted to painkilling medication. And other drugs. She died of an overdose.”

“Oh. I’m very sorry.” Nadia returned to what they’d been talking about before. Ever since she had come to Ukraine, she had been followed by men who were trying to kill her. How could she bring a boy into that situation? “What is your son’s name?”

“Adam.”

“Where is he now? I ask, but please understand, there’s no way—”

“He lives with a man who used to work in the shelter with me. He played on the Soviet Olympic Hockey Team in the 1970s. When he killed a man in a barroom brawl, he was given the choice of life in prison or fifteen years’ labor in the shelter because of his status as a national hero of the old Soviet Republic. He chose the latter, and this is how we met.”

She was relieved to hear that the boy lived somewhere else. She couldn’t imagine a child growing up here. “That explains the hockey uniform.”

“Eh?”

“The hockey uniform. In the picture you sent.”

“Ah, yes. You saw the picture. Good, good. How is your mother?”

“She is well.”

“And your father, he died.”

“Yes. Did you know my father?” she asked hopefully.

“Of course.”

“He told me about his time with the Partisans. It sounded so exciting, so noble.”

Damian studied her for a moment, as though debating something internally, and shook his head. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

“Lie to me? Lie to me about what?”

“Yes, your father joined the Ukrainian Partisan Army. After he moved to Lviv with your mother. But he was with me first.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean, he was with you?”

“What do you think it means?”

Nadia felt like a building block of her past had been yanked loose. “I don’t know.” But of course, that was a lie. She knew exactly what he meant.

“Your father was one of my crew. One of the three that got away.”

“What are you saying?”

“Your father was a thief, Nadia. You are a thief’s daughter.”

The walls closed in on Nadia. Her father wasn’t who she’d thought he was. Whatever her issues with his parenting, however demanding, strict, and unrelenting he’d been, she had always respected him. He was a man of integrity. Maybe she didn’t always like him, but she looked up to him. Now it turned out he’d been a thief, a criminal, and, by definition, a liar.

“Surely you’ve noticed that you have a certain resourcefulness. Who do you think you inherited that from?”

She was a thief’s daughter, Nadia thought. It was in her genes. And all this time she had thought she was just clever.

Damian saw how shocked she was. “What does it matter? Let go of the past. Look to your future. Your father would want it that way. You are his legacy. My boy is my legacy. He is a good boy. You must take care of him.”

They were returning to the big problem. “Uncle Damian, that’s just not realistic.”

“He has never been hugged,” Damian said, ignoring her comment.

“What?”

“He has never been hugged. His mother never touched him after she gave birth. She had problems, and she wasn’t the mothering type. Oksana takes care of me for the money. As for the coach and me…Men don’t hug their sons.” Damian nodded confidently. “You will hug him.”

Nadia shook her head as she searched for the right words to tell him that just wasn’t realistic.

“There are the hockey games, of course,” Damian said. “But they don’t count.”

“Excuse me?”

“The hockey games. Hockey is the main sport in Pripyat. There is a winter league for all the workers in the Zone. Coach brings my son to the games. He is the best player in the league. He is a defensemen. Defensemen usually don’t score many goals. But when he scored his first goal, at age thirteen, he got hugs from his teammates. They do that in hockey. So he started scoring more goals. Lots and lots of goals. But now that won’t matter so much. Because you are a woman. And you will give him proper hugs.”

Nadia needed to stop this fantasy before it went any further. “Uncle, I’m sorry. It’s just not possible.” Rather than discuss the dangers with a dying father, she tried to point out, “He doesn’t even speak English…How would he manage in America?”

“Once you sell the formula, you can use the money to help him build a life.”

“Excuse me?”

“The formula. Karel told me he took you to his laboratory.”

“And he told me Arkady never gave him the formula.”

“He didn’t. He gave it to me instead.”

“He what? He gave you the formula?”

“Yes.”

“Why you?”

“Because he trusted me.”

“Why?”

“Because I made him my willing accomplice.”

The gears in her head started to whirl. “Where is it? Is it here? Is it written down or stored on an electronic device? You must have several copies.”

“Arkady was an old Soviet scientist—he wrote it on a piece of paper and reduced it to a strip of microfilm. Then he burned the paper.”

“You mean there’s only one copy?”

“Yes. There is one, and only one, copy.”

Nadia nodded and let a few seconds pass. “Where is the microfilm?”

“In a locket. On a necklace. Around my son’s neck.”

Nadia straightened to her full height. The calculations weren’t hard to make. Hell, for the money this kind of trade secret would bring, she could buy her way out of trouble. She could hire an English language instructor and tutors and send him to private schools.

“Don’t share any of this with Oksana,” Damian said. “She takes care of me because she thinks there are ten million American dollars buried in the house somewhere.”

“The money you stole fifty years ago from the Soviet apparatchik?”

“How did you hear about that?”

“From a thief named Victor Bodnar.”

He cracked a wistful smile. “Victor Bodnar. The pickpocket lives.”

“Whatever happened to that money?”

“The KGB found it. After they tortured and killed three of my men.”

“I heard about that, too.”

“I have no money. What little I had I gave to Oksana for her to take care of me.” The creases in his face deepened. “Wait a minute. Are you in debt to Victor Bodnar?”

“He thinks so,” she said. “So does one of his associates. A young avtoritet originally from Moscow. And now there is another man from Kyiv with them. Older, distinguished.”

“These men are following you?”

“Yes.”

He paused and stared at Nadia. “This is not good. This was not part of my plan. If one of the men is from Kyiv, he must be both thief and government. They are one and the same. They have all the country’s resources to find you. You should assume they are close.”

“Oh, I don’t think so—”

“You will never get through customs if you try to leave Ukraine the way you came in. The man from Kyiv must have people waiting for you at the airport.” He seemed to make a decision. “I will get a message to my son that the time has come. He will meet you in Kyiv tonight.”

“You can’t be serious. Then what?”

“The formula must get to America. You will figure out how to sell it once you are there. You will sell it to men of science. Not to your government. Promise me that.”

“Uncle, the American government and the Ukrainian government are not the same—”

“Promise.”

“Okay, I promise not to give the formula to the government.”

“Good.” A cunning look came into his eyes. “The only way you will escape the men who are following you is by going where they will be least expecting you to go.”

“And where’s that?”

“Along the route I arranged for my son once I gave up hope you would come. Before, I didn’t know how he would sell the formula once he got to America, but now that won’t be a problem. Now there will be two of you, and you will help each other.”

Nadia didn’t want them to get ahead of themselves. “Tell me more about this route you’ve planned.”

“My son knows everything you need to know.”

“Look, if I’m going to be taking care of him, I think I deserve to know details.”

The old thief shrugged. “My son has all the details.”

“Can you at least give me a general outline?”

He stared at her with a blank expression.

Nadia sighed. “Okay. I get it. Where and when do I meet him?”

“He is coming from the north. There is a metro stop at Dorohozhychi. He will meet you across the street. At the new bronze statue at Babi Yar.”

“When?”

“Six o’clock. And now I have a question for you. The stranger who delivered my message to you in New York City. What happened to him?”

Nadia told him the story.

“Was he a friend of yours?” she said.

“Yuri Banya. He was one of my men. One of the three who escaped to the West before the KGB caught the rest of us. He pretended to be this Max Milan, an upstanding member of the community, to make sure you met with him. He was supposed to send me a message after he met you, but I never heard from him. You say he was shot, but later, when the police went to look, there was no body?”

“And he still had a pulse when I left him. Did you tell him about the formula?”

“No. He only knew words. But if someone interrogated him—”

“Find Damian. Five-androstenediol. Fate of the free world.”

“Or had heard them already and didn’t want you to hear them,” Damian said.

“What if Yuri shared the message with someone else? Someone who realized what ‘five-androstenediol’ and ‘fate of the free world’ implied?”

Damian’s expression tightened. “Three things are certain. Someone shot him, and someone lifted him off the street. And someone has yet to reveal himself to you.”

Nadia let his words sink in. Someone has yet to reveal himself.

“I’m fading,” Damian said abruptly, his eyes drooping. “I can feel it. You should go. Karel will help get you out of the Zone.”

Nadia looked at his emaciated frame. They’d had so little time to spend together. “How do I say good-bye to an uncle I just met and will never see again?”

“You don’t. Just take care of my boy.”

It was a surreal moment. She’d solved the mystery of Damian, discovered he was her uncle, and traveled across the globe to find him. Now here he was, on his deathbed.

She would never see him again. She should have felt an overwhelming sadness, but she didn’t. How could she? She’d just met him. Still, she had to do something. She couldn’t just walk away.

Nadia stepped sideways to the foot of his bed. His legs were covered in blankets. She gently grasped the meat of his left foot over the blanket, squeezed with both hands, and held it for a count of ten. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. Nadia slid her hands up to his toes and did the same. His eyes closed. After the second ten-count, she lowered the left leg to the bed and performed the same routine on his right one. The pain in his expression evaporated. When she was done, she stepped away from the bed and let her hands fall to her sides.

“So you can dance with the angels,” she said. The words sounded ridiculous as soon as they left her lips. He was a thief, a notorious criminal. If there was an afterlife, odds were low he’d be waltzing with celestials.

He laughed so hard he winced. Although he didn’t say anything, the pain in his face melted into an expression of gratitude.

She lowered her head and started for the door.

“Nadia?” he said, gravel in his voice.

She turned.

“One more thing.”

“Yes?”

His eyes opened to weary slits. “Remember what the hare said to the hen when he opened the barn door.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What’s that?”

“With foxes, we must play the fox.”