The Boy From Reactor 4 (34 page)

“Hey,” she said to the cop. “I’m the boy’s guardian. Who are you?”

The woman flashed a legitimate-looking police ID. “You are in Kirov Oblast. We are the police. Passport Control. Papers. Both of you. Do not make me ask you again.”

Nadia turned over her passport and told Adam to do the same.

“Your papers are out of order,” she said after studying Nadia’s passport.

“Why?”

“Because you must register with the local prefecture upon entering Russia. You are in Kirov Oblast. There is no stamp of registration.”

“I’m on a train, just passing through. How am I supposed to register?”

Instead of returning the passports, she clutched them by her side. “You will get off with us at the next stop. You will register at the local prefecture. And you will have to pay a fine.”

Adam shrank in his booth.

“A fine?” Nadia said. The lies of a thief sprang to her mind. “I see. Well, we cannot and will not get off this train. I’m on important business.”

The policewoman smirked. “Oh, really? What kind of business?”

Nadia whipped out her New York City library card. “You see this? It says
New York Chronicle
. That is the biggest newspaper in America. I went to Moscow to interview Aline Kabaeva. You know Aline Kabaeva? She’s the Olympic gold medalist who’s now a member of parliament and a very close friend of Prime Minister Putin. After writing a story on women in politics in Russia, I’m enjoying your beautiful countryside with my nephew. But you…You don’t want me to enjoy it, do you? You want me to write another story instead?”

The policewoman’s lips quivered as though she didn’t know if she should be angry or afraid. The soldier put his hand on his sidearm uncertainly. He looked from his partner to Nadia and back to her again.

After a momentary pause, she returned the passports. “But you must register,” she grumbled. Her partner followed her to the next car, the badge sewn on his right shoulder barely hanging on by a few threads.

When Nadia turned back, she found Adam staring at her with wonder. She led the way back to their compartment. Worn and weathered passengers loitered in front of their cabins. Smoking was prohibited, but a white cloud hung in the air and the corridor reeked of nicotine. Nadia savored the thrill of outwitting the cop. She was a thief’s daughter. She could wrangle her way out of any situation, couldn’t she? Equally thrilling was the thought that she’d impressed Adam and earned a modicum of respect.

“Was that…Was that all true?” Adam said, close on her heels.

“Was what true?”

“What you said back there. To that
musor
. Was that all true?”

“Of course it was true. Are you calling your aunt a liar?”

“You’re my cousin, not my aunt.”

“I prefer aunt. It gives me a sense of power with no real responsibility.”

“You’re not my aunt.”

“I disagree.”

“Are you really a reporter? Do you really know Aline Kabaeva?”

“No. But I read an article about her in a New York paper once.”

“Huh?”

When they got to their cabin, Nadia locked the door behind them.

“From now on,” she said, “we don’t leave the room unless we need to use the bathroom. And we watch each other’s back at all times. Agreed?”

Adam hesitated and then nodded. “Agreed.”

CHAPTER 56

K
IRILO SLIPPED A
five hundred–ruble note to the bartender in the restaurant car.

“Car Three, Cabin Two,” the bartender said, snatching the bill from the counter and burying it in his pocket. “She and the boy.”

“The boy? What boy?” Misha said.

“Ugly boy. Not Russian. Face like a reindeer’s ass after Christmas Eve. Looks like he’s from the North. Not Yakut or Evenk. More like Chukchi. Smells like he’s from the Zone, though.”

“The Zone?” Victor said. “Why do you say that?”

“I worked in Kyiv for twelve years. You get a feeling.” The bartender shrugged. “I can’t explain it.”

Misha’s neck buckled. Warned, Kirilo stepped away. Misha vomited. The bartender recoiled. Misha hurled again. Blood mixed with chunks of partially digested chips and nuts. The bartender groaned. A putrid smell filled the air. Kirilo gagged.

Misha straightened. Blood dripped from his nose onto the counter. He raised his sleeve to his ashen face. A red droplet seeped into the white cotton and spread.

His lips parted and his eyes widened. He glanced at Victor with a mixture of disbelief and disdain. “Did you really poison me, old man?”

Victor laughed. “Of course not. You really must have caught a bug or a parasite.”

Kirilo now knew Victor was lying. Misha looked worse every hour. But there was no sense in telling Misha. They couldn’t afford any delays to see a doctor, and even if they could, there was no hope for the
moscal
.

“You should really see a doctor,” Specter said.

Misha babbled incoherently for a few seconds before glancing at Specter. “What? Doctor? And let you guys make out with the formula? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Specter? No, no doctor.”

“Misha,” Specter said, “you’re not well.”

“The formula,” Misha said. A maniacal glint shone in his eyes. “All I need is the formula. Let’s go.”

They bounded down the corridor toward the third car. Kirilo let Misha, Specter, and the four bodyguards go ahead of him to put distance between the radioactive
moscal
and himself.

Kirilo checked his watch. It was 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday. It had taken them two and a half days to catch up to Nadia. When they had finally arrived in Moscow at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, some pipsqueak in Passport Control had flagged Misha as an undesirable based on his criminal record as a youth in Moscow. It didn’t help that Misha was sweating profusely, like someone who had something to hide. Kirilo explained that the deputy minister of the interior of Russia was an investor in his Black Sea energy project and would vouch for the American. The deputy was away at a conference in Prague, however, and couldn’t be reached until midnight.

On Tuesday morning, they flew to Yemelyanovo Airport and tried to catch the Trans-Siberian thirty-seven kilometers away at Krasnoyarsk, but the taxi arrived seven minutes late. They drove an additional four hundred kilometers and finally boarded it at Tayshet, halfway to Vladivostok.

When they arrived at Cabin 2, Misha tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. He cursed and kicked at it. Loitering passengers disappeared.

Something clanged inside the cabin. It was metal on metal, like a lead pipe accidentally banging into the steel frame of a bed.

“Who are you? What are you doing?” A very large female attendant barreled down the corridor. No wonder the restaurant car had no food to offer, Kirilo thought.

Kirilo had the
pyatichatka
out of his wallet before she arrived. He offered her the fifty-hryvnia bill.

“Please open this door,” he said.

She licked her lips at the money and frowned as though she wished she could accept it but couldn’t.

“It’s okay, dear,” he said. “The American woman is my granddaughter. The boy is a troubled child. She is adopting him. I am here to help them.”

“That’s no business of mine,” she said. “But I can’t open the door for you because it’s locked from the inside.”

“How do you get in if it’s an emergency?”

“They have to open it themselves.”

“What if they can’t?”

“Well, that’s never happened. But if we had to, we could break it down. Though, in this case, it would be a waste of time.”

Kirilo sighed with exasperation. “Why do you say that?”

“Because the woman and the boy aren’t in there. They got off the train at Tayshet.”

“What?” Misha said.

“As soon as we arrived at Tayshet, they got off the train and disappeared.”

The lock was unbolted from the inside. The door slid open. An ancient couple jabbered in Chinese. The man held a metal cane.

“Where could they possibly be going that they would get off at Tayshet?” Victor said.

“The Baikal-Amur Mainline begins in Tayshet,” the attendant said. “It goes north and then runs parallel to the Trans-Siberian. It is a slower train.”

“Then why on God’s earth would anyone use it besides a local?” Kirilo said.

“It used to be a transit stop for
gulag
prisoners. Now it is the gateway to Yakutsk and the North,” she said.

Kirilo howled. “Yakutsk? The North? There’s nothing in the North but
gulags
and mines. No roads, no civilization, nothing.” Kirilo’s voice faded as he listened to his own words.

“Which makes it the last place anyone would look for her,” Victor said.

Kirilo swore under his breath. “What is the fastest way for us to get on the Baikal-Amur headed north?”

The attendant eyed the
pyatichatka
again. “Once you pass Irkutsk, the train turns back north. You can get off at Bamovskaya, take the Amur Yakutsk line, and cut them off.”

Kirilo handed her the five hundred–ruble note. “Where can we cut them off, dear?”

She snapped the bill out of his hands and buried it in her pocket in one motion. “At Tynda,” she said. “You can cut them off at Tynda.”

CHAPTER 57

T
HE TRAIN RUMBLED
north by northeast, pitching and tossing Nadia in her ramshackle seat every half hour. She spent the hours sleeping and gazing out the grimy bolted-down window of their second-class cabin. Whenever she checked to see how Adam was faring, she found him slumped in torpor. He didn’t mind the endless travel. It must be some Eastern European thing that living in America expunged, Nadia thought.

Mile after mile of conifers stretched across the taiga amidst patches of red-and-gold birch trees. Signs of industry and life rolled into view occasionally. Factories sprawled along the Bratsk High Dam, while coots and geese buzzed the marshes. The vista gave way to the untamed forest and served as a reminder that Siberia was larger than the United States and Western Europe combined.

Twenty-four hours after Nadia and Damian had boarded, they passed Severobaikalsk. The train plunged along its tracks past groves of stunted pines into a valley surrounded by jagged mountains with snowcapped peaks. The afternoon sun shimmered on the northern tip of icy Lake Baikal. It was the Pearl of Siberia, the attendant said when she brought hot tea, and the world’s largest freshwater lake. They passed through four tunnels along the lake and emerged surrounded by glazed tundra. From there, the permafrost extended forever.

Adam kept busy by reading the same torn and tattered hockey magazine over and over again. The cover featured an action shot of a huge player with a penguin on his jersey driving toward the net. Wavy black locks flowed from his black helmet, fierce determination etched on a surprisingly cherubic face. From her viewing angle, Nadia could see the name
Jagr
in bold letters beneath the picture.

“You have a favorite team?” Nadia said.

He lifted the magazine and flashed the page he was reading. The top of the page said,
New York Rangers
. The page was a mess. The left side had a hole the size of an adult’s fist punched through it.

They bought food and bottled water on the platforms during stops along the way. Forty-eight hours after they’d boarded, the Baikal-Amur train headed to Sovetskaya Gavan, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Pacific Ocean, and Nadia and Adam made a scheduled stop. The local time was 7:31 p.m., five hours later than Moscow. It was now Thursday, April 29.

The name on the train station read
TYNDA
.

Nadia and Adam climbed off the train onto the platform at Track 2. Their matronly attendant did the same.

“Where can we catch the northbound Amur-Yakutsk to Tommot?” Adam said.

“Track Six,” the attendant said. “It arrives at seven forty. In nine minutes.”

CHAPTER 58