The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 53





A THREE-TIERED GOLDEN chandelier hung from the soaring ceiling above the steps to the concourse at the Central Railway Station. Ornate murals of baroque castles with vivid blue stained-glass windows and churches with gleaming golden domes decorated the walls. The brass hands of a giant clock suspended above an electronic message board announced the time: 7:23.

As Nadia and Adam cut across the tiled floor toward a ticket booth, Nadia scanned the concourse for familiar faces. Tourists in khakis and jeans mixed with businesspeople in suits, sports jackets, and light coats. She didn’t recognize any of them. Still, Kirilo’s men could be watching her at this very moment, and Victor and Misha could be waiting for her around the corner. Anton’s words echoed in her ears: in Ukraine, the criminals and the government were one and the same. If she stayed in this country, it was just a matter of time until they caught up with her.

With Kirilo’s local influence, their first step would be to seal all borders. Nadia figured she had two tactical advantages. First, they didn’t know she was traveling with a boy. Border guards would be looking for a woman traveling alone. Second, and more important, she had a head start. If the police delayed her pursuers long enough, she and Adam might be able to sneak through Passport Control before Kirilo notified anyone. If not, they were at risk of being arrested imminently.

“Are you buying a ticket, too?” Nadia said.

“No,” Adam said. “I have mine. You want the eight-oh-nine express to Moscow. Coupe.”

“Coupe?”

“Second-class cabin.”

“What does that mean?”

“Four people per cabin.”

“We’re going to have strangers in our cabin?”

“No. No one else is going to stay in our cabin.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me.” He looked down at the floor, face flushed. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

The ticket agent asked Nadia for her destination, time of departure, and passport. Nadia paid the equivalent of $170 in hryvnia, waited an interminable few minutes, and received her ticket.

Passport Control was the same disorganized madhouse as when she had arrived at the airport.

Nadia jostled her way forward, glancing back every thirty seconds to make sure Adam was following. He kept his knit hat pulled low over his ears. Knapsack and duffel bag in each hand, he shuffled forward with his eyes planted firmly at his feet. Removed from the countryside, he seemed out of his element.

When the mass of bodies finally converged into a line, Nadia counted twenty-one people ahead of them. She tried to prepare herself to look nonchalant, which inevitably had the opposite effect. She focused on the formula and wondered how much a radiation countermeasure was worth on the open market. The thought of riches beyond her dreams was a pleasant way to calm her nerves.

The agent returned the passports to a family in front, and they moved along. After glancing at his computer, the agent scanned the line awaiting him. Nadia dropped her gaze to the floor so that their eyes didn’t meet, lest she appear anxious.

When she looked up again, she saw, to her alarm, a supervisor had joined the agent at his booth. Both of them peered in Nadia’s direction. Nadia swiveled her head, glanced over her shoulder, and realized they were staring at Adam.

“You!” the agent said. He pointed an index finger at the boy and then directed it toward Nadia. He must have seen her tense when he shouted at Adam. “Are you together? Is that your boy?”

Nadia’s gut instinct was to protect him, rude and insolent though he was. “Yes,” she said. “We’re together.”

“Step forward, please,” the agent said.

As Nadia and Adam cut to the front of the line, two beefy policemen with bulging sidearms joined the supervisor and the agent at his booth. Their expressions conveyed suspicion and fear.

The couple in front moved aside, pushing the line back to leave as much space between them and Nadia and Adam as possible, as though they knew she was about to be arrested for some sort of crime against the State.

At least she was an American citizen, Nadia thought. Whatever else happened, that still had to count for something.

Didn’t it?

The Passport Control agent opened Adam’s passport and studied his picture. The supervisor peered over his shoulder as the two cops stood by with their hands on their weapons.

“Take your hat off,” the agent said.

Blushing deeply, Adam grasped the edges of his knit hat with both hands. As he slowly peeled it off his head, his ears popped out. They rose from the side of his head and stopped halfway, just above the canal. They looked as though they’d been sawed in half with a hacksaw. Jagged grooves ran along the square tops like the edge of an unfinished cardboard puzzle. Nadia recalled a picture of similar ears on a child at the Chernobyl museum. She absorbed the visual shock without flinching, realized she was staring, and tore her eyes away.

People in line gasped. The agent, the supervisor, and the cops averted their eyes. Their collective gaze was one of acute discomfort. The cops folded their arms across their chests in a defensive posture. The supervisor nodded at the agent as though he’d known all along what was hidden beneath Adam’s hat. The agent himself pursed his lips in deep disapproval.

Nadia held her breath when he turned to her visa, but he didn’t bother checking it. He stamped their passports quickly and firmly. The cops pointed in the direction of their track as though they wanted to make sure Nadia and Adam got out of the country as quickly as possible.

The entire process had taken sixty seconds.

As they marched toward the train, Nadia’s initial feelings of horror swiftly transmuted to compassion. She had seen that stricken look on Adam’s face. He must be embarrassed by his ears every day of his life, and he was not to blame. Not at all. He was a teenager, at the point in his life when looks were so important. Now she understood why he distrusted people so much.

When they boarded the train, static cracked through the speakers.

“This is the eight-oh-nine Stolichny Express to Moscow. Train number one. Eight-oh-nine Stolichny Express to Moscow. Welcome aboard.”

They found an empty cabin. Nadia sat opposite Adam. Fresh white linen and burgundy blankets covered their beds. Above them, another pair of bunks remained folded against the wall.

Light poured in from the platform through the window. Outside, passengers rushed on board.

“Kyivans,” Adam said as he took off his hat again and sighed. “They know when someone is from the Zone. They can smell it off you. You see? Even before I took my hat off, they knew. The supervisor knew. Some of the people in line, they knew, too.”

Nadia was outraged for him. “And? So what? Why do they care?”

“No one wants to be near anyone who is from the Zone. Years ago, no one wanted to be near anyone who might be radioactive. Even though twenty-four years have passed, nothing’s changed. They couldn’t wait to get me out of the country.”

“Well, that’s just wrong.”

He scowled at her. “Would you be here if I didn’t have the locket?”

Nadia’s gaze fell to the gold shimmering around his neck. She looked up at his face. “That’s different. I wouldn’t even be in Kyiv if your father hadn’t written.”

“Good, at least you admit it. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the locket. Just so we both know where we stand.” Adam turned, fluffed up his pillows, and kicked his legs up onto the bed, filthy shoes and all.

Nadia had to hold in a burst of temper. “You told me you’d tell me why we’re going to Moscow when we got on the train,” she said. “We’re on the train.”

He folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

“Are you a man of your word?” she said.

He bolted upright. Tossed his legs back over the side and faced Nadia.

“We are going by train because they expect you to go by plane. We are going to Moscow because they do not expect you to go there. But mostly, we are going to Moscow because that is the route that was arranged for me by my father and his friends when they thought I would be alone. It is the route where there are people my father knows. Where there are people who will help me.”

“What route, Adam?”

He told her. There were five waypoints. Five people would meet them along the way and guide them forward. Once they got to the last waypoint, they were on their own.

She bought chips, candy bars, and bottled water in the restaurant car and consumed them in the cabin. She tried to share them, but Adam wouldn’t accept anything from her. He drank the hot tea provided by the carriage attendant and ate nothing. Nadia slept fitfully during the last four hours of the nine-hour trip, falling into a deep slumber just as the conductor announced their arrival at 6:39 a.m.

Language was not a concern. Nadia had studied Russian from seventh grade through college. Her mother had tried to dissuade her, for fear it would pollute her Ukrainian, but Nadia thought it might help her business career someday. It never did. But now it just might help keep her alive, she thought.

After a three-hour wait to clear customs, they emerged at Kievskaia Station in Moscow at 11:00. Exchanged her remaining hryvnia and dollars for rubles. Adam set his watch forward one hour. Nadia made a beeline for a McDonald’s and ate two hamburgers, a large fries, and a chocolate milkshake. She offered to buy Adam lunch, but he refused, eating a grotesque piece of sausage wrapped in onionskin paper and buying his own bottled water instead.

After lunch, they went shopping. Nadia had never had the opportunity to return to her hotel room. All her luggage was still in Kyiv. She bought a cell phone charger, blue jeans, a denim shirt, a fleece pullover, a ski jacket, ski gloves, and hat, hiking socks and boots, a compass, toiletries, and a roll of toilet paper. She changed into the shirt, jeans, socks, and boots, and stored everything else in the knapsack she’d also bought.

At 4:00, she ate an early dinner of bread and borscht at a cheap joint called the Elki-Pelki. The waiter seated them near the kitchen in the far corner of the restaurant. Nadia ordered Adam steak and boiled potatoes without asking him. When the food arrived, he played with the potatoes as though they were hockey pucks but didn’t eat anything. They hadn’t spoken the entire day except to discuss where they were going next.

After dinner, Nadia called Johnny Tanner in New Jersey and left him a voice mail that she would be calling him again for help within six to ten days. She also called her brother’s club and confirmed that he was still out of harm’s way in Thailand.

They still had time to burn, so they walked the ten kilometers to Yaroslavsky Station. The entire way, Nadia kept her head on a swivel out of sheer paranoia that Kirilo and Misha had somehow tracked her down. She and Adam covered the distance in two hours and arrived at 7:45.

Adam already had his ticket. He said a man who owed his father a debt had sent it to them. Nadia showed the vendor her passport and bought a one-way ticket for the Trans-Siberian Express. The train departed Moscow with Nadia and Adam on board at 9:25 on Saturday, April 24.

It was the No. 2 train, headed from Moscow to Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan.