The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 8

PUMA SAT SOBBING quietly in a chair. Her twin revolvers lay unloaded beside the pictures of her daughter on the desk. Victor rubbed her shoulder as he circled around her like a nurse comforting a terminal patient.

“There, there,” he said. “It’s not your fault. I had my suspicions when an old friend from the Bratsky Krug called to tell me they were sending you with a special package. I thought you might be working for my cousin. But I wasn’t sure until the guns appeared in your hands.” Victor pointed to the package she’d brought. “Is that for me?”

She nodded.

“May I?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer before removing the paper. In the framed photograph, Victor stood posing beside two members of the Krug in front of a three-story cinder block building. The grim looks on their emaciated faces told their story.

“Brygidki,” Victor said, holding the picture for her to see. “It used to be a nunnery in Lviv until the NKVD—the secret police under Stalin—took over. I did seven years for stealing a shipment of grain. One day, the NKVD took a local priest and crucified him for giving a sermon in the underground church before Christmas. They nailed him to a wall. Cut a hole in his stomach while he was still alive and put a dead fetus in it.”

Puma looked away, fresh tears flowing.

Victor scowled. “Why are you crying?”

“Anya. My daughter. She is sick. That’s why I took this job.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She has trouble swallowing and breathing. She needs thyroid surgery, or she will die.”

“I see.”

“Her father was a liquidator in Chernobyl. He bulldozed cars, trucks, and ambulances under the ground so the nuclear particles on top of them wouldn’t blow to Kyiv. They told us not to have children… but… these pictures of Anya… How did you get them?”

Victor glanced at the snapshots of a sad, malnourished girl playing on a swing with a babushka. “They were taken by the sons of an old friend of mine—twins, to be exact—and sent by computer. Young people. They know all about these things.”

“Where is she now?”

“She is wherever her grandmother has taken her. No one has touched her. And no one will.”

“She won’t be hurt?”

“Not only won’t she be hurt, I’ll arrange for her to have her surgery at the best facility in Kyiv, where they are experts on this disease. You have my word as a thief.”

Puma regarded Victor with disbelief. “You would do that? You would pay for my Anya’s surgery?”

“Yes.”

Puma’s eyes sparkled. She raised Victor’s hand to her lips, but he pulled it away before she could kiss it.

Victor squeezed her shoulder. “It’s time.”

She blanched. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Victor opened the door. Stefan and two of his men came in. Stefan saw the guns on the table. He looked at Victor, the guns, Puma, and back to Victor again. They stared at each other without saying a word.

Stefan ordered his men to take Puma away. Victor nodded his head with approval as she left with the stoic expression of a true thief.

Stefan closed the door behind them. He walked over to Victor’s prized possession, the only painting in the room. A dove fluttered in the palm of a maiden dressed in a colorful peasant shirt as she danced in a field of wheat. The deceased artist, Edward Kozak, had arrived in New York on the same boat as Victor.

“The maiden and the dove, the dove and the maiden,” Stefan said. “I love them so.”

“Me too. Especially since that appraiser said it’s worth a hundred thousand.” Victor told him about the surgery for Puma’s daughter. “Find out how much it will cost. Then call Milanovich in Moscow and ask him for a loan.”

Stefan nodded at the painting. “You could sell…”

“Never. I’d rather die. Make the call.”

“We have no money, and now you’re going into debt with Moscow for sentimental reasons. You’re scaring me. I think you’re going senile and maybe I should leave you.”

“The day I stop scaring you is the day you should leave me.”

“We both have to truly believe the money situation is hopeless. Only then will we get a windfall.”

“Hopeless? By God, you are going senile. Why?”

“Because the greatest opportunities present themselves when all hope is lost. Now, I have to go,” Victor said, reaching for the beret and coat on the corner hanger. “I’m late for my chess match in the park.”