The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 22

CHESTNUT TREES LINED Baseina Street. White-and-pink blossoms burst from thickets of fernlike leaves. The air smelled of spice and jasmine. Nadia couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than in America. Her father had pounded it into her head that she was the luckiest girl in the world to be born in the USA, and Nadia firmly believed it, as much now as she had then. But if there were a short list of alternatives, much to her shock, Kyiv might actually be on it.

The brief thought faded as Nadia wandered back toward her hotel. Her only lead was dead. Why would the woman who had promised to help Damian give him the wrong phone number? Why would she vanish without leaving a forwarding address? Clementine Seelick was acting as though she had lied to Damian, as though she didn’t really mean to help him.

A crowd bustled at the Palats Sportu, a metro station built in the shape of a stadium. A babushka sold dried meat, cheese, fruit, and nuts from a pushcart at the corner.

“Sunflower seeds?” she said, waving a bag at Nadia.

“No, thank you,” Nadia said.

She put her head down and hustled past the old woman. Guilt and shame washed over Nadia. Should she have bought a bag? The poor woman probably relied on the extra income to survive.

Nadia kept walking. The crowd thinned.

A man emerged grinning from behind a chestnut tree. He looked twentysomething, with a day’s growth over suspiciously gaunt cheeks. He wore a neat blue sports jacket with gray slacks and shiny cowboy boots.

“Hey,” he said to Nadia in heavily accented English, as though they were friends. “How are you?”

Nadia ignored him, but he caught up to her.

“You British or American?” he said.

“How can you tell I’m a foreigner?” she said in English.

“You answer babushka. A local not so polite. Local just walk by.”

He tripped over something on the sidewalk and brushed against Nadia’s side. She recoiled.

“I practice English. Is okay?” He pulled a lighter out of his right pocket.

Nadia kept walking.

He pulled something out of his left pocket and lit it. Took a drag.

The smell of weed invaded Nadia’s nostrils. She glanced at him with shock. Picked up her pace and turned.

A man and a woman blocked her path. They wore jeans and black Windbreakers over athletic physiques.

“Police,” the man said in Ukrainian. “Stop. Both of you.”

They flashed IDs and badges. His was gold, and hers was silver.

The policeman grabbed Nadia’s pursuer by his shirt collar. “Still dealing drugs to tourists, Kolya?”

“It was her marijuana,” he said, pointing to the extinguished joint by Nadia’s shoe.

“That’s a lie,” Nadia said in Ukrainian.

The two cops glanced at her sharply when they heard she spoke the language. The policewoman blocked her path. She stayed on her toes as though she expected Nadia to run.

“Passport,” the policeman said.

Nadia opened her purse and gave him her passport. He studied and returned it.

“Let me see your bag,” he said.

Nadia handed him the bag.

“My partner is going to search you,” he said. “Just take it easy and do what she says. You got nothing to worry about if it’s like you said.”

The policewoman told Nadia to raise her arms. She patted Nadia’s pockets. Reached into the left one and pulled out a small bag filled with white powder.

“That’s not mine,” Nadia said, outraged. She looked at the dealer. “This guy brushed up against me a minute ago. He must have slipped it into my pocket.”

The policeman studied the bag of powder. “We all know Kolya deals in cocaine, don’t we, Kolya?” He smacked the drug dealer in the head. Turned back to Nadia. Her purse was still in his left hand. “This is very serious. We are going to arrest you and take you to the station. Unless you’d like to pay the fine right here.”

“Fine?” Nadia said. She realized they could be thugs scamming her. She didn’t live in New York for nothing. “I’m not paying any fine. Go ahead. Arrest me. I want to call the American embassy.”

“Look,” the policeman said, pulling her purse out of the bag, “we’re getting cash out of this one way or another. Why do you have to be such a bitch? You want to get hurt? Is that the thing? Are you the kind of woman that likes to get a beating?”

An SUV screeched to a halt beside them on the street. All eyes went to the road.

It was a black Porsche Cayenne. A man stepped out of the vehicle. He wore a thin cashmere mock turtleneck, pleated slacks, and fine Italian loafers. He moved with the confidence of a bullfighter.

“What’s going on here?” Brad Specter said in fluent Russian.

The policeman frowned. “Who the hell are you?” he said, switching from Ukrainian to Russian. “Passport.”

“You’re the police?” Specter said.

“That’s right.”

Specter looked them over. “Really. You two… You two don’t look like police. Show me your badges.”

No one moved or said a thing. The man and the woman looked at his Porsche and each other.

Specter stepped closer. “I understand,” he said, nodding sympathetically. “We all have to make a living. Leave now and I’ll spare your lives. I won’t have all three of you shot tonight.” He reached out with an open hand for Nadia’s bag.

Kolya, the supposed drug dealer, stepped back. He tapped the man on the arm and motioned for the woman to retreat with him, as though he were in charge.

The man defiantly stood his ground. “Spare our lives? Fuck you, asshole. You don’t even know our names.”

“I don’t need your names,” Specter said. “I know your faces.”

The man swallowed deeply. He handed Specter the bag. Backpedaled slowly and joined Kolya and the woman. They turned and hustled toward the metro station.

“What are you doing here? When did you get here?” Nadia said.

Specter walked calmly to Nadia and returned her bag to her. “Please get in the car, Nadia. Your life is in danger.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. How did you know they weren’t cops?”

“Cops don’t hassle Caucasian tourists anymore. And if they did, they’d be wearing uniforms.”

“How did you get here so fast? I had a head start.”

“I was on the KLM flight with you.”

“What? But I… I searched the entire cabin. Even business. How could I have missed you?”

“I was in the backseat by the bathroom and the galley. I could duck into either when I saw you move. And you didn’t have a head start. I was tailing you the entire time. I saw you and your friend in Central Park. The guy with the ponytail.”

“Why did you stop to help me?” Nadia said.

Specter hesitated. “Just doing my job. Protecting Misha’s investment. Who lives at Yaroslaviv Val?”

“Ask the super.”

“I did.”

“Then you should know who lives there.”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I’m a foreigner, and I don’t speak Ukrainian. He said if I want to speak Russian to go to St. Petersburg and slammed the door in my face.”

“Yeah, he does that.”

“The man who got shot on Seventh Street,” Specter said. “He said something else to you, didn’t he? I could tell at Victor’s. I could tell you were holding back.”

Fate of the free world.

“No. I said it like it was.”

“Why did you run? Why did you piss Misha off? Don’t you understand that the way you’re playing it now, you’re dead no matter what?”

“Until he finds Damian, Andrew Steen, and the money, he needs me. I have the only lead. Which means you need me.”

“What did the man who got shot really whisper in your ear?” he persisted. “Who told you Damian is alive? Who lives at Yaroslaviv Val? If you tell me, I’ll help you get out of the country and get lost for a while. Eventually, Misha will move on to something else and forget about you. We’re like that. Sicilians, they remember and hunt. Ukes, we let go and move on. Tribal difference. Our ancestors suffered ten centuries of oppression. Letting go and moving on is in our genes.”

“Why would you do that for me? Why would you help me?”

Specter paused and looked away. “So I don’t have to do what I’m supposed to do once we find the money.”

“What are you supposed to do if you find the money?”

He turned back to Nadia with a blank expression on his face, the same one he’d shown her in Victor’s courtroom when he first walked in.

“Kill you.”