The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 45





NADIA HELD ON to Karel’s hips as he guided his motorbike toward the center of Chernobyl. Despite the urgency of the situation, she couldn’t stop thinking about Damian’s revelation that her father had lied about his past. He was a thief, not a war hero. The freedom-fighter image she’d romanticized was just a figment of her imagination.

Much to Nadia’s surprise, however, it didn’t bother her. Her mother was right. Her father had moved to America. He gave her citizenship and set an example by working tirelessly collecting garbage for the City of Hartford. He took his family to church almost every Sunday and did his best to be a family man, even if it was clear it gave him no joy. So what if he had a past? So what if he wasn’t a doting father? He hadn’t been part of the stolen-art and antiquities ring she’d uncovered in Hartford. Wasn’t that evidence he’d changed?

Not only did Damian’s revelation about her father not disturb her, his proclamation that she was a thief’s daughter felt strangely empowering. Perhaps if her father hadn’t changed and become a better man, her new identity would have bothered her. Instead, much to her own surprise, Nadia hung on to Karel loosely, comfortable in the moment, more confident she could outwit any adversary who tried to prevent her from getting to New York with the formula.

It was only 2:15, but the sky looked like dusk. Purple clouds swirled overhead. A squall had given way to a steady rain. Karel skidded and slid along the path from Oksana’s house, kicking mud onto their pant legs, his headlight barely illuminating the way. When they emerged on the main road, Nadia pulled a hand away from his waist to wipe rain from her eyes.

A clap of thunder erupted. The gate to the power station lifted. A truck passed through. Seven others waited in a queue to enter. A guard studied a driver’s papers beneath the hood of a poncho pulled down low. Derricks and cranes working on the shelter grumbled and groaned above the din of the bike’s engine and the relentless patter of rain.

Karel circled to the edge of forest at the far side of the station. He sliced through another muddy path toward the thicket of trees from which Nadia had emerged last night. Halfway down, one of the trees seemed to step forward into their path. Nadia shook the rain out of her eyes and looked again.

It was Hayder. He held the same covered carrier in his right hand.

Karel pulled up twenty feet away from him, as though he wanted privacy. Nadia climbed off the bike. Her hiking shoes sank in the mud.

“We will probably see each other again someday, yes?” he said.

Nadia hesitated. “Yes,” she said, smiling once she realized what he needed to hear. “I’m sure we will.”

“You are a poor liar, but thank you for trying.” He squinted. “Is there something you can share with a humble zoologist before you leave?”

“Such as?”

“You had a glint in your eye when you came out of Damian’s bedroom this morning.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You did. What did he tell you?”

“It was a family matter.”

Karel arched an eyebrow. “A family matter?” He revved the engine. “Come, now. You can tell me. He has the formula, doesn’t he? Did he give it to you? Are you taking it with you to the West?”

Nadia smiled. “Karel, I can tell you with one hundred percent honesty that I have only one formula in my possession. It’s the one I was born with, for getting into constant trouble.”

He studied her. “You have this talent for lying yet telling the truth at the same time. Somehow, it makes all your lies even more beguiling.”

“I have to go. I couldn’t have made it through the night without you. Thank you, Karel. Thank you so much.”

Nadia kissed him three times on the cheeks.

Karel nodded. “It was animal attraction from the beginning for you, too, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” She puckered her lips and blew him a kiss without her hands.

“Good-bye, Nadia Panya.”

Karel took off. Nadia sloshed down the path toward Hayder. She hadn’t given Anton much lead time. She’d called two hours ago asking for help. Hayder wasn’t pleased to have dropped everything to come get her out of the Zone. He looked like a king cobra ready to strike.

“This is what’s wrong with your f*cking country,” he said, shaking his index finger when she was within earshot. “You think the whole world revolutions around you.”

Nadia stopped in her tracks, rainwater trickling down her nose. The bicycles rested on a clearing beside him.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You couldn’t call Anton earlier to make the arrangements? You couldn’t call earlier this morning?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was indisposed.”

“In what?”

“Indisposed. Busy—”

“You couldn’t wait for the storm to pass? You couldn’t get laid low for a while?”

“No. I’m sorry. I need to leave now. It’s important—”

“What’s so important? What? It’s urgent, Anton. Come get me. It is the matter of life and the death, Anton. Whose life and death? Yours? What makes you so special?”

“I know. It was inconsiderate. I apologize, Hayder. I’m in your debt.”

“Yurdet? What is this place? I am not familiar with it.”

“Your debt. I owe you.”

“Damn right you owe me.” He nodded at the carrier in his right hand. “Lucky for you, I transplant my business to an earlier time. Lucky for you, my business people are stand-up. Like your Martin Luther King and Chuck Norris. Not many stand-up Americans, but there’s two of them. Okay, we go now.”

Hayder strapped his carrier to the back of a bicycle and climbed aboard. Nadia followed him. The dense canopy of trees provided some relief from the rain. Traction was better than during the trip from Oksana’s house. When they arrived at the fifteen-kilometer fence, a truck was waiting for them on the opposite side. The driver, however, was not Volodya.

Hayder stepped off his bike. Nadia followed his lead.

“Stay here,” he said with a cautious edge. “I don’t know this guy. It is not the same truck. Volodya drove me here. Volodya should be here. I go, check it out, be right back. You watch my box for me, okay?”

“Okay,” Nadia said.

Hayder pulled the wire fence open and slipped through it. The driver rolled down the window, but Hayder motioned for him to step outside. At first, the driver refused, but Hayder insisted. A hairy brute donned a baseball cap that matched his camouflage uniform and stepped out of the vehicle. They began to speak in earnest, the woolly mammoth and the cobra.

Nadia’s eyes fell to Hayder’s crate. What was inside? Last night she had assumed it was the tranquilized lynx, headed to a private zoo or, heaven forbid, a taxidermist. Was it another exotic animal? A different species of wild cat? Growing up, Nadia loved wild cats. The cougar and the cheetah were her favorites. Whatever was inside wasn’t moving. What was the harm in taking a peek?

Nadia glanced at Hayder. He was still in the middle of an animated conversation. She looked down at the crate. Saw the hinges on one side and the small clasp below it. Flicked the clasp and lifted the top before she could change her mind.

The three sides of the crate were reinforced with steel, as was the cover. A large metal object lay inside. It had a six-inch diameter. It looked like a motor of some kind. Beside it were two metal rods. Rigid steel dividers kept all three items from touching each other.

Nadia closed the box and secured the clasp. She looked up.

Hayder was running toward her through the rain, left arm extended, gun pointed at her face.

“What the f*ck are you doing?” he said, bug-eyed with disbelief.

“I heard a noise inside the cage. I thought it was an animal. I thought it was hurt.”

A maniacal laugh escaped his lips. “An animal? What kind of crock are you shitting here?”

“You took a lynx out yesterday, didn’t you? When I went to Pripyat last night, a poacher tranquilized a lynx in the Hotel Polissya. I just assumed that’s what you took out…and when I saw you with the same carrier…I thought I heard a noise. I swear.”

“Lynx? What lynx?” Hayder blinked hard twice, as though processing her words. His eyes widened with supposed recognition. “Mother of God. You are not here on the personal family business, like you tell Anton. You are here to hurt my business. You hunt scavengers, don’t you?”

“What? Hayder, no—”

Twin bolts of lightning cracked the sky. A clap of thunder erupted.

Hayder pressed the gun to her forehead. “Who sent you, bitch? Did the American government send you? Did the CIA? What is your real business here?”

“Hayder, please. You’re being paranoid. I’m sorry I opened your case. I didn’t mean any harm. I am not here to mess with your business. I’m exactly who I say I am.”

“No. No, you’re not. You’re the American. You’re the liar. And now you’re dead.”

“Hayder, stop.”

The voice came from the direction of the fence. The voice was familiar. Nadia strained to peer over Hayder’s shoulder.

It was Anton. He slipped through the fence and bounded up to Hayder. Radek’s van was parked behind the truck.

“Hayder,” he said. “Put the gun down. What are you doing?”

“She opens my box, man. She opens my box. Why did she do that?”

“Calm down.”

“She’s the government, man. She’s the CIA. She’s here to shut me down.”

“Hayder. She’s not government. She’s an American tourist. I picked her up at the airport in my cab. America couldn’t care less about the Zone. They don’t even know what the Zone is. To them, it’s a type of defense played by basketball teams.”

“What?”

Anton made soothing noises as though quieting an infant. He reached out and gently lowered Hayder’s arm. The gun fell to his side.

Anton glanced at Nadia. The bags beneath his eyes looked inflated with air, the stubble on his beard no longer stylish but in desperate need of a shave.

“Anton,” Nadia said, bouncing on her tiptoes.

He stepped past Hayder, smiled, and hugged her. Nadia buried her head in a nook between his chest and his shoulder. He smelled of mango, nicotine, and musk. It was the most pleasant place to spend a moment, a month, a year, or longer.

“You okay?” he said, holding her face in both hands.

“Yeah. Sorry for all this. And for calling on the spur of the moment. It’s been crazy—”

He put his index finger on her lip and shushed her. “Let’s talk about it in the van.” Anton twisted his body so he could see Hayder, too. “I’ll pay the man. You get in the van.”

Hayder shook his head. “I am not sure about her.”

“We have to get out of here. We can talk about it in the van. Agreed?”

Hayder glanced at Nadia, bit his lower lip, and nodded reluctantly. He thrust his gun beneath his forest-green rain jacket and under his belt.

He sat in the back of the van with his crate beside him. Nadia had no choice but to sit directly in front of him. She imagined his gun pressed to her back from the moment her butt kissed the tattered and torn vinyl. Anton paid the woolly mammoth for his troubles. After the truck disappeared, he turned the van around and started toward the thirty-kilometer fence.

“When we get out of the Zone,” Anton said, “I’m going to drop Hayder off first. Then you can tell me what’s next for you.”

“That sounds good,” Nadia said. “Thank you for coming to get me. I think the reality is…I think the reality is, I’ll be going back to America shortly.”

Her words must have been comprehensible in Russian, because Hayder cackled in the backseat. “Yeah, go back to America,” he said. “Go back where you belong. The American dream is dead. You think you are better than the Russians and Chinese. You used to be. But you aren’t anymore. You used to care about others. Now you care only about your oil. The world used to love you. Now the world hates you. Yeah, you go back to America and have the good time. The American dream is over. You hear me? It is over.”

They slipped through the hole in the second fence and drove to Kyiv without talking.

At 3:45, Anton stopped at the first metro station on the outskirts of Kyiv, called Petrivka. He stepped out of the van with Hayder and had a brief conversation with him before climbing back in.

“We go for a quick bite?” Anton said. “You must be hungry. You have time?”

“Hungry and thirsty,” Nadia said, “and yes, I have time.”

Anton drove back on the highway.

“So, what was that all about?” Nadia said.

“What, the talk with Hayder? I was smoothing things over with him.”

“No. Not the talk. The crate and what’s in it. What’s he stealing from the Zone, Anton?”

Anton shook his head. “I have a policy. It’s best not to ask questions about other people’s business.”

“That’s not true. When you picked me up at the airport, you started asking me questions about my business as soon as I sat down. Remember?”

Anton didn’t answer her.

“What’s in the case, Anton?”

He licked his lips and remained mute.

“What’s in the case?”

He sighed. “Spare parts.”

“Spare parts?”

“Spare parts from automobiles, ambulances, and bulldozers. In this case, a starter.”

“A starter?”

“Yes, yes, a starter. From an ambulance. A starter is a motor. A battery supplies electricity to the starter. The starter gives power to the engine.”

Nadia remembered the vehicular burial ground on the way to Pripyat. “You mean from a radioactive ambulance? That starter is hot?”

“Yes, from an ambulance from the Zone. It may or may not be hot. Who knows?”

“Anton…”

“Okay, yes. It’s probably hot. And it will find its way into an ambulance in Kyiv someday. All the vehicles in the Zone have been stripped. Anything of value can be sold.”

“What about the two rods?”

“What rods?” Anton said.

“There were two rods, about six inches long and an inch in diameter—sorry, about fifteen centimeters long by three centimeters in diameter.”

Anton mumbled something under his breath in Russian.

“What’s wrong?” Nadia said. “Your partner holding out on you?”

“Partner? What partner? Who, me?”

“You have a nice apartment. With a beautifully equipped kitchen. Even if you supplement your income by driving a cab…Oh. Wait. What was it you said to me when we first met? Ukrainian salary. It’s hell.”

A moment of silence passed between them.

“Okay,” Anton said. “Hayder is a scavenger. And I am his driver. I help with logistics. A good starter on the open market, it’s worth three hundred US dollars. Three hundred US. You have to live here to understand how much money that is and how hard it is to make it.”

“But you’re helping put radioactive parts in vehicles in Kyiv. Some mechanic is going to touch that with his bare hands.”

“Well, then that’s his bad luck. Water overflows from the cooling ponds, seeps into the streams, and empties into the Dnipro. I drink that water every day. This isn’t America. This is Ukraine. You have no idea how good you have it. Here, life is hard, then you die.”

They drove for a while without saying anything more. The rain subsided. White clouds chased each other across the sky. The sun peeked between them.

“After we eat, I’ll be leaving,” Nadia said. “Tonight.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

He took an exit and merged onto a main thoroughfare. Nadia didn’t recognize the street, but a sign said NOVOKOSTANTINIVSKA STREET.

“I meant to ask you,” Nadia said. “Why did you drive the van through the fence in Chernobyl? I thought all cars that are in the Zone stay in the Zone.”

“They do.”

“But now the van is hot, isn’t it? I mean, at least its tires are.”

“Yup. I have to have them stripped, burned, and replaced tonight before I give it back to Radek.” Anton took a sharp left. “But it was worth it.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you. Thank you for caring.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He smiled, turned right, and mashed the gas pedal. The Volkswagen hesitated before surging forward. Nadia’s head snapped back against her headrest. In front of them rose a dilapidated gray warehouse on an abandoned lot. A pair of doors swung open sideways, as they would on a barn.

The van hurtled into the building. The brakes screeched.

Nadia lurched forward until the seat belt strangled her. She fell back. The belt loosened and slid back down around her chest.

A black Audi and two black SUVs were parked in front of them. One of the SUVs was a Porsche Cayenne. Nadia didn’t recognize the six men lollygagging in front of the SUVs, but she’d seen the other three before. Victor, Misha, and the distinguished-looking man she’d evaded in the Caves Monastery were waiting for her.

“What I meant,” Anton said, “is that you’re worth more alive than you are dead.”