The Boy From Reactor 4 (11 page)

As traffic picked up, the driver accelerated his pace. He used breakdown lanes to pass on the right and darted between cars in lanes that didn’t exist. Nadia clung to her armrest.

“There are no atheists in Kyivan taxicabs,” he said with a grin. “In fact, you give me an atheist, I’ll convert him to the religion of your choice in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s terrific,” Nadia said. “But I’m already a believer. And if I wasn’t clear at the airport, I was hoping to arrive at the hotel alive.”

The driver laughed and drove more cautiously the rest of the way. When he pulled into the driveway, Nadia tipped him 20 percent.

“Here is my card,” he said earnestly. “My name is Anton. If you need reliable transport, call me. Anytime.”

Nadia looked at the card.
Anton Medved, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Kyiv Slavonic University
. Why was a professor driving a cab?

“Ukrainian salary,” Anton said, as though reading her mind. “It really is hell.”

Nadia thanked him and checked into the Hotel Rus. The drab concrete exterior of the former Soviet property conjured images of a soulless country. Her room was small but clean.

After a quick shower, Nadia dialed Clementine Seelick’s number in Kyiv and got the same beauty salon she and her mother had reached before. She gathered her valuables in her bag and asked the concierge for directions to Clementine’s address.
Just in case the taxi driver tried to take her for a ride or she ended up on foot for whatever reason.

In the taxi, she asked the driver if Start Stadium was on the way. He said it was a slight detour. Nadia asked him to drive by so she could see it. He obliged and stopped at a monument at the front. It was a bronze of a muscular athlete kicking a soccer ball into the beak of a wounded eagle. Nadia felt a lump in her throat. She could hear her father tell the story for the umpteenth time.

On August 9, 1942, Kyiv was under Nazi occupation. A group of German officers believed to be members of artillery and Luftwaffe units challenged a local soccer team consisting primarily of bakery employees. Some of those employees, however, had been members of Kyiv’s elite Dynamo team. The local team was warned about the risks of defeating a team consisting of Nazi soldiers, but as one Ukrainian player put it, “Sport is sport.” The game that followed would become known as the Death Match.

Before the match started, a Gestapo officer visited the Ukrainians in their locker room and instructed them to give the Nazi salute in a pregame ceremony. The players agreed, but then refused to follow through on the field. The match was tied 3–3 until the Ukrainians rallied for two more goals. They won 5–3.

Within six months, four of the Ukrainian players died. Among them, their three stars.

Yes, exaggerations followed. The Germans probably didn’t incapacitate the Ukrainian goalie by kicking him in the head. There was no evidence a Gestapo officer warned them to lose at halftime or face execution. It was unclear if the players’ deaths were a function of retribution. And director John Huston’s
Victory
, with Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone, where the players earned a victory and escaped to freedom, was pure Hollywood.

But they were legitimate Ukrainian heroes from World War II. A war during which eight million Ukrainians died, more
than in any other European country, and one during which Ukrainians were often collectively labeled Nazi sympathizers.

After the detour, the driver turned back and dropped her off on Yaroslaviv Val. It was a narrow, cozy street. Elaborate balustrades and balconies adorned the facades of architectural masterpieces. Nadia walked for five minutes until she found the five-story neoclassical apartment building. She buzzed the door to Seelick, 8B, took a deep breath, and waited.

No one answered.

A minute later, she buzzed again. No one was home. After two more tries, she buzzed the button for deliveries and asked to speak with the super.

A stout man with a handlebar mustache opened the door. Nadia told him she was looking for Clementine Seelick.

The super soured as soon as he heard the name. “She’s gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“This is a monthly rental. She left at the end of March.”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

The super looked Nadia over from head to toe and turned away as though he was insulted. “No. I don’t think she lived here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She had visitors. Male visitors, if you know what I mean. And now she’s gone. Are you interested in renting an apartment?”

“Who, me?” Nadia said. “No, thank you.”

The super grunted and slammed the door in her face.

CHAPTER 21

K
IRILO
A
NDRE HOISTED
himself to his feet, circled his Louis XIV desk, and faced his daughter. He’d been waiting for this moment since the British kid had asked Isabella to marry him. Kirilo clutched the antique music jewelry box.

“For you,” he said in Ukrainian, his voice cracking. “To wear on your wedding day.”

“What? For me? For real, Papa?” Isabella said.

“Yes, sunshine. For you.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t rush to open it. Instead, she caressed the mother-of-pearl inlay with her elegant fingers, taking pleasure in it.

Kirilo caught his breath. With each passing year, she looked more like her mother. Her black hair fell in silken strands to her shoulders. Her innocent oval face appeared sculpted by God himself from Venetian white marble.

After her mother died when she was sixteen, she told him she wasn’t going to be like all the other girls her age. She was saving herself for the man she loved. How proud he had been. Now she was twenty-one, and the time had come. Why did it have to happen so fast?

Isabella opened the box. It sprang to life with the melody of “Lara’s Theme.”

“
Doctor Zhivago
,” Kirilo said. “It was your mother’s favorite—”

“Oh, Papa. They’re beautiful.” Isabella pulled the strand of white pearls out of the box and gasped.

“They were your mother’s greatest treasure. She asked me to give them to you for your wedding day. They’re natural pearls. Made by oysters. By accident. Just like you. Here, let’s try them on.”

Isabella stood up. Kirilo’s hands trembled as he fit the pearls around his daughter’s neck.

“Well…” he said, forgetting his other words as quickly as they came to mind.

She ran to the mirror in his office bathroom, shrieked, and flew back into his arms.

“Thank you. Thank you, Papa.”

They discussed the wedding arrangements for a few minutes.

“It doesn’t have to be the Hotel Oreanda,” Isabella said. “We can have a simple wedding. At a smaller place.”

“Nonsense. I’ve booked all one hundred thirty-three rooms and suites for our guests. I’ve booked the entire hotel for the weekend.”

She beamed and kissed him hard on the cheek.

“Papa,” she said when she pulled away, “we want to live in London when we’re married.”

“London?” he said, alarmed. “Really? I thought your young man was going to open a restaurant in Kyiv. You know. Close by.”

“We were thinking about that, but given my experience in the music business—”

“Selling CDs at Virgin Records?”

“And Evan’s experience in the nightclub business—”

“Tending bar at Club Revolution?”

“What we really want to do is open a disco in London.” She tugged on his cardigan sweater. Her eyes moistened and twinkled.

Kirilo sighed. “If it’s a disco you want…”

She hugged and kissed him again. They discussed the wedding invitation list before she said good-bye.

Kirilo sailed to the sitting room next door to his office so he could watch her leave. The opportunity to look out the window and see his baby in a candid moment would be gone in six months.

Beyond his crushed-shell driveway, the turquoise water of Yalta Bay shimmered against the soaring backdrop of the Crimean Mountains. Resorts and spas sprang from the dense forest that surrounded the sandy beach.

Two equally skinny girlfriends waited for Isabella beside her Mercedes. Kirilo rotated a lever to open the window.

“Look what I got,” Isabella whispered. “Somewhere My Love” started up again as she pulled the old-fashioned white pearls out of the case. “He wants me to wear them at the wedding.”

One of the girls exploded with laughter. The other one looked at the jewelry as though it were a dead rat.

“Oh my God. You’ll look like…one hundred years old. You’re not going to, are you?” the second one said.

“Hell no,” Isabella said. “These crappy strands. They’re so old and unreliable. They can snap for no reason. What can you do? Accidents happen.”

They climbed into the car. A chorus of giggles erupted. The engine roared to life and drowned them out as the car sped away.

Kirilo’s vision went black. He collapsed against a wall and slid down to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees and focused on breathing.

He stayed in that position for an indeterminate amount of time. Two different men came by and asked him if he was okay. He didn’t bother to look at them. He just told them to fuck off.

Eventually, the stench of a thousand rotten eggs threatened to suffocate him. He wobbled to his feet and closed the window. After marching back to his office, he screamed his adviser’s name.

Ten seconds later, Pavel burst inside, breathless. His most trusted adviser had a doctorate in chemical engineering and was a member of the Institute for High Temperatures.

“What’s wrong, Boss?” Pavel said.

“The fucking Black Sea. Seventeen waterways shitting all over us. Some Riviera. They don’t have this in France, you know. They do not have this in France. Remind me why I should be happy about this stench?”

“It’s hydrogen sulfide. Energy of the future. Once the commission decides it’s usable, the distribution concession should come our way. Assuming you and the commissioner are still business partners.”

“He’ll be seated at my table at Isabella’s wedding.” The mere mention of her made him wince. “Have you heard from Puma?”

“No. It’s been twenty-four hours.”

“Then she’s dead. And the bitch is still alive. Victor Bodnar is still alive. That’s not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.”

Pavel lowered his head.

A hurricane wind shook the villa.

Kirilo frowned. “The helicopter?” He checked his watch. It was 5:30 p.m.

Pavel cleared his throat. “You have dinner with Steen. Andrew Steen. The money manager in Kyiv.”

“That shifty-eyed prick.”

“He’s meeting a man from America on a delicate matter, and he needs protection.”

Kirilo reached into a drawer for his battery-powered cattle prod. “Don’t we all?”

CHAPTER 22

C
HESTNUT 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.