The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 69

DAYLIGHT ARRIVED SHROUDED in fog. On the shore of the rocky beach in Uelen, Nadia couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of her.

Two other Chukchi men met Nadia and Adam. They wore the same sullen, inscrutable expressions and had identical weathered appearances. They were somewhere between twenty and fifty years old. It was impossible to discern more.

Their wooden boat seated four. It had oars in the front and the back where the Chukchi sat. It also had an outboard motor surrounded by a rib cage of pipes. When one of them started the engine, it whirred gently like an electric razor, suggesting the extra pipes were a noise-reduction system. Nadia and Adam didn’t speak, and the Chukchi didn’t ask them any questions.

The lagoon had melted. The boat chopped and skipped over water toward an invisible target. The cliffs surrounding the inlet tempered the winds. Small waves slapped the boat and rolled by without incident. The Chukchi in the lead checked his compass every five minutes and made minor adjustments in navigation.

Time passed. Nadia didn’t know how much, but it had to be pushing two hours. Russia’s Big Diomede Island was somewhere up ahead. Two miles beyond it was Little Diomede Island. American soil. Adam wore his anxiety on his face, continually mashing his upper lip into his lower one. He appeared stiff, as he had when the policewoman had accosted him on the train.

The boat came to a stall in a pocket of slush. The Chukchi killed the engine and rowed through the icy sludge to water. They started the engine again, but the boat promptly groaned to a halt again. The Chukchi in the back muttered something to the one in front. That one nodded. From then on, they kept the engine off and rowed. They navigated through an unpredictable maze of water, slush, and ice. When a wave crashed over the edge of the boat and doused the deck, the Chukchi continued rowing as though nothing had happened.

Nadia looked around for something to do, but there was no way for her to help. She was baggage. Feeling impotent, she suppressed an urge to scream.

The current nudged them southward while the Chukchi forged eastward. That was the plan. Uelen was northwest of the Diomedes Islands.

Water gave way to more slush, and the latter yielded to more ice. They stopped rowing. The Chukchi in the lead turned and held his finger to his lips.

“Keep your voice low,” he said. “Keep your voices low.”

They rowed for another five minutes until they careened in a circle and ended up pressed between two blocks of ice. The Chukchi muttered something incomprehensible to each other and set their oars aside.

The Chukchi in front turned and whispered to Nadia. The wind swallowed his words, however, and Nadia had to ask him to repeat everything he had said.

“Ice from here to Imaqliq,” he said. “Four, five kilometer to Ignaluk. Chukchi can do. American? Not sure, though.”

By “Imaqliq,” he must have meant the Russian Island, Big Diomede. By “Ignaluk,” he must have meant Little Diomede. Five kilometers was a little more than two miles. Big Diomede was in the way, but the fog would protect them. The Russians had no reason to know Nadia and Adam were coming anyway. The lookout would never see them.

Nadia pulled out her compass and looked at the Chukchi. “Where is Big Diomede?”

The Chukchi frowned.

“Imaqliq. Where is Imaqliq?”

The Chukchi turned and pointed forward into the fog at a forty-five-degree angle to the right. “That way,” he whispered. “Close. Real close, though.” He pointed to Nadia’s compass. “Fog lift soon. You see Imaqliq and Ignaluk. Beach on Ignaluk on west side. Remember, though. West side.”

Nadia and Adam stepped carefully out of the boat onto a massive sheet of ice. The boy was no longer sullen. He was oddly cautious, looking to step where she’d stepped. The Chukchi tossed them their bags and two pairs of webbed rubber spikes. Nadia and Adam stretched the rubbers and slipped them over their boots for traction.

“Russian side—sea is warm. Chukchi warm. Many pieces ice,” the Chukchi said. “American side island—sea is cold. America cold. Big ice, though. Travel good, other side. Tell cousin said hello.”

“Cousin?” Nadia said.

The Chukchi didn’t answer. He and his partner turned their boat around and disappeared into the thick white clouds.

Nadia helped Adam with his backpack and other bag, and he did the same for her. She studied the compass and pointed south with her arm. They took three steps and stopped.

A strange mechanical noise sounded above them. Nadia looked up into the fog. It sounded shrill, like a motor, grew louder as it approached, and became deafening. Adam squatted to the ice out of sheer instinct, as though he feared they were about to be bombed. Nadia stood tall, to appear brave for the boy, but when the noise got even louder, she bent down beside him.

Under her breath, so that Adam couldn’t hear, she began a constant rotation of Hail Marys. Halfway through her third round, she realized she was squeezing Adam’s arm tightly. She pulled her hand away, repulsed she might have shown weakness. If this was going to be the end for her, so be it.

But she’d be damned if she went out any way other than fighting.