The Boy From Reactor 4 (28 page)

CHAPTER 46

T
HE HOCKEY COACH
might kill him.

He might have to kill the coach first.

Adam’s folding knife bounced around his warm-up pants pocket as he ripped through a set of burpees:

Squat down, thrust the legs back, fall nose to the ground, and do a push-up; squat up, leap as high as possible, bringing knees to chin, and land, prepared to squat down immediately into the next rep.

“You look anxious today, loser,” the coach said. “Like something is weighing on your mind. Like you’re planning a trip somewhere.”

He stuck his face a few centimeters from Adam’s head as he landed on the top block.

A whiff of raw garlic breath. Adam gagged.

“You planning a trip somewhere, loser? You think you’re going somewhere without my knowing about it? Without my approval?”

Adam jumped down the blocks on his right foot and switched back to his left. The coach knew. The coach knew he was leaving. Either his father had told him or the fat bastard had figured it out himself.

The coach might kill him.

He might have to kill the coach first.

Adam resumed box jumps off his weighted left foot.

“Your report card came today,” Coach said. “All ‘outstandings,’ except for one ‘very good.’ That is impressive for the son of a scumbag thief and an ugly whore from Alaska. For the product of a radioactive cesspool. When I was your age, my coach was Anatoly Tarasov. The father of Soviet hockey. He always said, ‘Education is important. An educated hockey player is easier to coach.’”

Adam landed on the top block and turned. Sweat streamed down his cheeks. He hopped down to the middle and lower blocks and turned.

“Of course, in your case, education makes no difference. You’ll still be the village idiot forever. Let me tell you where you’re going. You’re going nowhere. That’s where you’re going.”

The coach cracked the whip in the air.

“Stop! Rest for ninety seconds. Lateral box jumps next!”

Ninety seconds later, Adam began jumping sideways from the ground to one box, back to the ground, and up to the next. Each jump was successively higher.

“In 1979, I played in the Challenge Cup in Madison Square Garden,” Coach said. “NHL All-Stars versus Soviet National Team. We split the first two games, but we won the last game six to nothing. Yes. Of course we won.”

Adam tried to focus on the height of his knees and ignore the story. He’d heard it only five hundred million times before. Hard as he tried to ignore the coach, though, he couldn’t.

“New. York. City,” Coach said, emphasizing each word as though it were the name of a woman he once loved. “New. York. City. The restaurants. Oak Room in the Plaza. Steak fit for a czar. The theater. Angela Lansbury.
Sweeney Todd
. The people. Black, white, yellow, millions of them walking up and down Broadway. I will never forget it. That is a place where I’ve been, loser, and you will never see. Pick up your feet!”

Adam jumped.

Coach cracked the whip on the ground below him. Missed his feet by a centimeter.

Adam’s knees shot up and touched his chest.

“Chin music, loser. That is what I call chin music. Twenty seconds more!”

When time was up, Adam collapsed to the ground. The coach gave him two minutes’ rest before moving into clapping push-ups. Adam clapped his hands twice during each exercise, performing three sets of fifty repetitions for a total of 150 clappers in four minutes.

He lay faint on the ground when he was done, lungs heaving, legs bent to keep the blood flowing to his face.

“Want to see another place you’ll never go, loser?”

Adam glanced at the coach from an upside-down position.

The coach pointed to the top of the hill with his whip. “There will be sunbathing in Siberia before you ever see the summit of that hill, loser. No strength. No heart. No soul. Wrap the rubber band around your waist. Sprints in one minute. Prepare to fail the way you always do. Prepare yourself!”

Ten seconds later, Adam staggered to his feet and collected the rubber band. It was ten centimeters thick and fifty meters long. He wrapped one end around his waist and tied it into a knot.

He’d tied it loosely on purpose two years ago, when he’d decided he’d had enough of the fat bastard. When the coach gave it a yank, the band came loose and Adam kept running until he heard the gunshot. The coach always kept a handgun in his waistband. Adam didn’t make it to the top of the hill that day, either, and had always tied the band properly from then on.

After tying the band around his waist, Adam stood at the starting line at the bottom of the hill. The coach tied the other end of the band around his own waist. Adam noticed the bulge on the coach’s lower back where he always kept his gun.

The coach brought the whistle to his lips. Adam looked up at the hill. Something moved in his peripheral vision. A man
stepped out from behind a Dumpster by the far side of the porcelain factory so that Adam could see him. Adam recognized the chaotic hair and scarecrow body of his father’s friend Karel, the zoologist from the Zone.

Karel raised the second and third fingers of his right hand to form a V.

That was the signal. The signal they’d agreed on.

It was time.

Adam considered the coach’s warning, that he was going nowhere, and the gun behind his back. He stuck his hand in his pocket and gripped his folding knife.

The coach blew the whistle.

Adam pulled his right hand out of his pocket, knife in fist, thrust it up in the air, and took off up the hill. After three swings with both arms to catapult himself forward, he unsheathed the knife. He tightened his fist around the handle and pumped his legs furiously. The horizon blurred.

Twenty meters. Thirty meters. Forty meters.

Adam hit the wall. The rubber band tightened. His steps shortened. Resistance increased. He stopped moving forward.

As soon as he felt the familiar tug, Adam turned and sprinted ten meters back down the hill. The hand with his knife swung by his side. He locked eyes with the man who’d fed and trained him for most of his life. The coach’s eyes went to the blade and back to Adam. His lips parted with surprise as Adam raced toward him.

The ten-meter sprint downhill had created slack in the band. The coach couldn’t pull him in if he tried. At least not for a few seconds. And that was all he would need.

Adam slid to a halt. Sliced the rubber band with his knife. It fell to the grass. He turned again, put his head down, and raced back up the hill. His legs moved in slow motion. He had nothing left. He expected bullets to whiz by him any second. They didn’t.

When he got to the top of the hill, he looked down. Karel was in his car, looping around to pick him up on the road half
a kilometer away. The coach stood in the same place where he’d been, arms folded across his chest, whip at his feet, rubber band still tied around his bulging waist. He thrust his head back with pride. It was the same pose the parents in Korosten struck when they bragged about their sons after games over beer.

Adam squinted to see if he was just imagining it, when he remembered there was no time. His father had given him explicit instructions to follow when Karel gave him the signal.

Run.

CHAPTER 47

T
HE BODYGUARDS SURROUNDED
the Volkswagen. Nadia looked daggers at Anton, wishing there were a pocket chain saw handy in the glove box. His eyes dropped to the steering wheel.

“You slimy prick,” she said. “Since when? Since the airport?”

He glanced at her with a pained expression. “No, no. That was all genuine. My love for you was real. They were waiting for me at my apartment this afternoon.”

“Really?”

“Really. They gave me two choices. Which is to say, they gave me one choice. I’m sorry, Nadia. Really, I am. This is Ukraine. The politics change all the time. It’s a constant power struggle. The winners know how to go with the flow.”

“Yeah. You’re a real winner, Anton. You’re a walking testament to why Ukraine’s leading export is its women. Do the men in this country realize how pathetic that is?”

He snarled. “Hey. You wanted to get in the Zone. I got you in the Zone. You wanted to get out of the Zone. I got you out of the Zone. At my own risk. I asked for nothing in return. Nothing. And let’s remember how it was two nights ago. You were the one begging for it,
from me
.”

“You bastard.”

He shrugged. “Hey. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“What?”

“I told you when I drove you from the airport. Ukrainian salary. It really is hell.”

Nadia shifted in her seat and squared her hips toward him. “So is an American woman.”

She pummeled his nose.

Bone crunched. Blood spurted. Anton screamed.

Nadia stepped out of the car.

“We missed you at the Veselka Restaurant,” Victor said. “Your ponytailed lawyer friend didn’t cut quite the same figure across the table from me.”

Nadia didn’t answer him. There was no benefit to saying a word.

“Let me have her, Kirilo,” Misha said.

The distinguished man from Kyiv sliced through the circle of bodyguards. He looked fat yet fit, like a former heavyweight prizefighter who carefully balanced his love of food and fitness. His clothes and carriage spoke of confidence and power. He gave Nadia a quick once-over that ended with a dismissive smirk.

She’d seen that smirk on Wall Street: how could a woman have given him this much trouble?

“You remind me of what my daughter might look like in fifteen years,” Kirilo said. “You have the same coloring. She’s the joy of my life, my daughter.”

Without warning, the back of his hand crushed Nadia’s face. As she toppled to the cement, pain shot through her jaw. Her eyes watered. Her nose stung. A bitter taste flooded her mouth.

“Let me have her,” Misha said. “I can make a woman do anything in fifteen minutes flat.”

Kirilo motioned to a man who looked more like a malnourished librarian than a bodyguard. “Pavel, take her to the office. Search her and make her comfortable.”

Pavel and two burly men grasped Nadia by her elbows and guided her toward an office in the far corner of the warehouse. They passed a harness attached to an elaborate pulley, one that could be used to hoist engines from a truck—or crucify uncooperative American women. A pair of stylish black shoes and slacks appeared beneath the pulley as a man circled around it. Brad Specter cast an indifferent look at her as she walked by. His footsteps stopped short as the bodyguards pushed her into the office.

The office contained portable orange shelving, a bare metal desk, and three chairs. A row of well-worn manuals lined one shelf. Nadia deciphered the Russian words for “truck repair.” The bodyguards tied her feet to the chair and her hands behind her back with duct tape. One of the men tore a final piece of tape with his mouth and sealed her lips.

They searched her body without inhibitions and did the same with her purse.

Kirilo entered the office. He removed his coat. As he placed it on the table, it didn’t bend, as though he were performing a sartorial levitation. He ripped the duct tape off Nadia’s mouth.

Her lips stung, but she didn’t scream.

“I hear you speak the language well for an American,” he said.

“I can get by,” Nadia said.

His eyes widened. “Refined. Like a college professor. You know about Ukrainian Hetman? Military commanders during the Cossack era?”

“I studied history. I know some things about them.”

He sat down on the corner of the desk and tapped his coat with his left hand. It made a solid noise, as though it were reinforced with steel.

“Then you know more than I do,” he said. “I never studied anything. I got my education on the street. I had to fight for everything I have. A smart man on the docks of Podil once
told me—before I drowned him for his fishing boat—that the Cossacks believed that when you killed an enemy, the power of that enemy became yours. It literally seeped out of his soul into yours. The stronger the enemy you defeated, the more powerful you became.”

“I’m not your enemy.”