The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark

CHAPTER 51

Nadia recognized him immediately. He was the ancient weed in the garden, the immortal vine that couldn’t be eradicated with any poison.

There was just one problem. The man she was looking at was locked up on Rikers Island. Prisoners didn’t escape from Rikers. And the man standing in front of her wasn’t a member of the Zaroff Seven. Not only wasn’t he a former Soviet apparatchik turned oligarch, he’d fled their strict laws for America where a career criminal could ply his trade more freely and successfully.

“Victor Bodnar,” Nadia said. “It looks like you, but it can’t really be you.”

“Were you hoping it were someone else?” Victor said.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Anyone.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought there was a strange sense of honor about you, even though you’re a career criminal. I wouldn’t have imagined you’d hunt children.”

“A thief must go where opportunity takes him. And this so-called child,” he said, glancing at Bobby, “was the one responsible for my arrest. You didn’t expect such an action to go unanswered, did you?”

“Yes,” Nadia said. “I did. I’m an optimist, and you were behind bars.”

“There’s much space between the bars of your American jails. If a thin man stands at the proper angle…” He turned ninety degrees to the left. “He might disappear, like a pick into a keyhole.”

Ice clinked against glass. Milanovich stood at a server along the wall. He poured three inches of amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a glass. He didn’t offer anyone else a drink.

Two beefy men in suits occupied opposite corners of the room. Simmy stood beside Nadia. He’d stuffed his hands in his pockets while Victor was speaking. One pocket contained his cell phone, the other a pager with a direct link to the driver of the other SUV.

Nadia eyed the ring on Victor’s finger. His left lip curled upward a smidge, the closest thing to a smile Nadia had ever seen from him.

“This old thing?” Victor said. “An obvious thought. The boy Adam killed in New York? We looked into his background. Discovered his father’s identity. As I’m sure you did when you proved Adam innocent of the murder charge last month. He was a member of a hunting society called the Zaroff Seven. My colleagues made some inquiries about them. When we learned two more vanished mysteriously during the exact same time you were here, we knew who your antagonists had been.”

“And the ring?”

Victor slipped the ring off his finger. “Saw them wearing it in a book on hunting clubs. Old book, like me. Seems they’re famous for it, if you know who to ask. And the boss and I have a few connections, don’t we Maxim?”

“It’s not who you know, Victor,” Milanovich said. “It’s who you know that owes you.”

“A jeweler made us a dozen knockoffs,” Victor said. “We had our men wear them in case they were seen. By you. By anyone.”

“To make it look like the Zaroff Seven were doing the killing,” Simmy said. “Ksenia Melnik. I bet the babushka is dead, too.”

A moment of silence confirmed Simmy’s theory. Victor glared at Milanovich as though the murders were his doing, and Victor didn’t even know about them.

Nadia remembered the babushka and the story of the pet hunters, her rifle, and the root cellar. But mostly she remembered the old woman saving her life.

Victor tossed the ring to Bobby. “Keep it,” he said. “As a memento. They should make you an honorary member. After all, you are the prey that got away, aren’t you?”

Bobby studied the ring and did what any teenager would have done. He put it in his pocket.

“I knew you would come,” Victor said. “I knew you would come for your girl. And I knew you had enough brains, guts, and strength to succeed. I didn’t know how you would do it, but I told them to expect you.”

Bobby remained stone-faced.

“How did you find Eva?” Nadia glanced at the girl after speaking her name. She didn’t seem frightened. Instead she acted like Bobby’s female clone. Calm, cool, and calculating.

“The babushka led us to Ksenia Melnik,” Victor said. “She knew of the legend of the formula. Said Dr. Arkady loved the boy and the girl like they were his own. He called them Genesis II because they would carry the knowledge to change the human race for the better, but they could only achieve that goal as one. Ksenia Melnik knew the girl’s death had been staged to protect her from the Zaroff Seven. She knew she was a student at a university in Japan, one of the last places anyone would ever look for her.”

That didn’t explain how Eva knew to send Bobby an e-mail. How she knew her locket contained half the formula, and how she knew where the second half was. Dr. Arkady must have told her, Nadia thought. He must have deemed her the primary beneficiary of the inheritance he bestowed upon them, if there was one. Given she was older — and her relative maturity would have been much more palpable three years ago — that made sense.

“As fate would have it, there is no formula,” Victor said.

He pulled two lockets out of his pocket. The gilding had been scraped off both of them. One contained etchings. It was Bobby’s. The other didn’t. It had to be Eva’s.

“I’m not so sure of that,” Milanovich said. “We haven’t had a real conversation with her yet. The kind where a girl tells a man all her secrets in exchange for not being fed alive to my pet tiger. And that would be after the necessary biological and genetic tests were conducted on both of these mutants to see if their body chemistry has been altered by this formula. To see if there is money in their blood or bones.”

“This is ridiculous,” Simmy said. “What are we here, barbarians? Experiments on children for the sake of money? You want money? I’ll give you money.”

“There are two problems with that proposition,” Milanovich said. “First, if there is a formula for a countermeasure to radiation, and the insides of these young people can give it to me, you don’t have that much money. And if you do, you wouldn’t part with it, so stop playing the hero, Simeonovich. Even your woman doesn’t believe your bullshit.”

He was right. Nadia could see Simmy generously parting with some amount of money, but he wasn’t going to pony up a billion dollars or more.

“We can discuss that,” Simmy said. “You invested in a venture with time and labor. I can guarantee you a certain return. I can guarantee your portfolio grows.”

Milanovich took a sip of his drink and rubbed his chin. “Now that you put it that way — and you’re quoting me back to me — you have a point. Perhaps there is a number. But that still doesn’t solve the second problem with your proposition.”

“There’s a solution for every problem,” Simmy said.

“Not this one,” Milanovich said.

“Impossible. What is the problem?”

“You’d have to be alive to pay me.” Milanovich turned to the nearest bodyguard. “Kill him.”

The bodyguard thrust his hand under his jacket. He whipped out a gun and aimed it at Simmy’s head.

An object flew in out of nowhere. It connected with the bodyguard’s neck. His body crumpled. His severed head fell to the ground.

The same sound echoed behind them. Nadia turned.

The second bodyguard’s head rolled off his body. His body fell limp.

A fierce-looking man came flying down the steps. His gun was drawn. He pointed his gun alternately at Milanovich and Victor. What amazed Nadia was that he’d killed two men without firing a shot or making a sound. And he’d killed them in such an unconventional manner that everyone in the room was paralyzed. They were all just trying to comprehend what was happening.

Eva’s father, Nadia thought. The man Bobby had met. Was he Eva’s father?

Bobby pulled a knife from its sheath around his calf. He stood up and grabbed Eva’s hand with his left. Glanced at the man coming down the stairs. Nadia caught a glimmer of the excitement in Bobby’s eyes.

The man was Eva’s father. He had to be.

Then another bodyguard appeared at the top of the stairwell. Nadia shouted a warning, but it all happened too fast.

The bodyguard shot Eva’s father in the back.