The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (2 page)

“The gossip was the American woman had met with a squatter. A sick old man who lived with a babushka that took care of him.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No.” Hayder eyed the money. “I wish I did.” He frowned at Luo. “You know, if all you wanted was information, we could have done this over coffee.”

“We both know that’s a lie,” Luo said. “You needed to know I’m serious.”

Hayder paused, then nodded. “What now?”

“My men will release you. You’re free to go. The money is yours. It’s payment for your silence. But if I hear you asking questions about anything we discussed today, you won’t be asking many more questions after that. Do we understand each other?”

“Yeah. We understand each other.”

Luo summoned the men he’d hired and told them to release their prisoner. They were old army buddies. A military career had left him with friends all over the former Soviet Union. Most of them were more than willing to moonlight for a few extra bucks.

Luo’s next lead was in Chornobyl. He actually had to go to the radioactive wasteland himself. Only idiot tourists went there. He dreaded the notion, but his pursuit of the treasure left him no choice. He was obsessed with it.

He had lived long enough to become what he once hated, but that wasn’t what shocked him. The big surprise was that he couldn’t have been happier about it. No other endeavor had ever fulfilled him so much. Nothing he had ever done had given him such joy.

CHAPTER 1

B
OBBY’S FINGER HOVERED
over his keyboard. With one stroke he was about to cancel his Facebook account. Making his life public had exposed him. Increased the odds someone from his prior life would recognize him. He’d gone ahead and created an account anyway. He had fans. Female fans. Gorgeous female fans. From places like Detroit, Chicago, Montreal, and Toronto. Even Sweden and Holland. They watched his videos on YouTube and sent letters to Fordham. It was all so flattering. He couldn’t refuse.

But now his conscience was nagging at him. He’d promised Nadia, his cousin and guardian, to stay away from social media. No one else could know about his past. No one.

He pressed the
RETURN
key and followed the proper procedure to confirm his account had been cancelled. Less than a minute later his smart phone buzzed. He checked the screen.

A text message. From Derek Mace, his best friend and personal bodyguard on the Fordham Prep hockey team.

Yo, Bobbyorr, you there?

The team had bestowed the nickname because he reminded them of the Bruins legend.

Bobby typed his answer.
What’s up, killer?

You’re really out?

Yeah.

My mom heard you beat the rap.

She heard right.

You’re out for good?

As long as I stay out of the penalty box.

Awesome!

Yeah.

How was jail?

Bobby remembered the claustrophobia, the trembling in the middle of the night, the beatings, and the ten days in the infirmary that followed.

It wasn’t.

Wasn’t what?

A place you ever want to visit. I have to go now.

Wait. We have to celebrate.

Thanks, but I’ll pass.

I have your favorite snacks and refreshments. Crème soda and popcorn.

That was their code for beer and pot. Bobby remembered drinking and getting stoned with Derek, some of their other teammates, and a bunch of girls. That was before he was charged with the murder of an English businessman. After almost ending up in jail for the rest of his life, the thought of doing something so stupid was unimaginable. Honest to God, he thought, it was as though someone else had borrowed his brain.

On a diet. No more crème soda or popcorn for me. See you next week.

Bobby turned off his phone.

He shut down his other social media accounts and connected to his public e-mail account. He’d created it so he could isolate messages from strangers via social media.

Three messages leaped off the screen. They’d been sent intermittently during the last two weeks from the same sender. The subject line had been left empty in each case.

The sender’s name was
GenesisII26486
. He recognized the numbers immediately. April 26, 1986. The date of the explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. More importantly, he recognized the phrase
Genesis II
. It stirred memories, tapped his heart, and left him stunned. The subject of the e-mail had been left blank, as though the author knew the sender’s name alone was enough to capture his attention.

The sender was right. The only person who knew the meaning of
Genesis II
besides him was dead. The e-mail meant someone else knew the secrets of his past. The questions were who had discovered him and how had he obtained his information?

Bobby opened the e-mail.

There was no message, just a link to an attachment. Bobby clicked on the file. It took forever to load. A photo unfolded on the screen. He stared at it dumbfounded.

“Nadia!” he said.

She came running from her bedroom. He stood up and met her in the doorway. Relief washed over her face. It gave way to confusion.

Bobby stepped aside to let her in.

“Computer,” he said in Ukrainian. He would have liked to have said something more but he was too shocked to form a complete sentence. Besides, nothing more needed to be said.

Nadia looked at the screen. Bobby stared over her shoulder.

It was a photo of a necklace and a locket in the palm of a boy’s hand. It looked identical to the locket Bobby’s father had given him in Ukraine. They’d learned three weeks and three days ago that Bobby’s locket contained part of a precious formula. The other half of it was missing. There was no way to know if the second half of the formula even existed.

“Why did you take a picture of yourself holding the locket?” Nadia said.

“I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

“No one.”

“I’m confused.”

“That’s not my hand.”

Nadia’s eyes widened.

Bobby edged past her and slipped into his chair. “There’s another locket.”

“There’s another boy,” Nadia said. “When was this sent?”

“There are three e-mails. The last one was sent five days ago. I just opened it.”

“Who sent it?”

“The sender’s name was
GenesisII26486
.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

Nadia had proven her love. Bobby knew he could trust her. Still, for reasons beyond his comprehension, he couldn’t admit he knew the meaning of the phrase. He desperately wanted to, but he couldn’t stand the thought of talking about his past. He just couldn’t.

“The last five numbers are the date of the Chornobyl explosion,” Bobby said. “In Ukraine they put the day first, the month second. But
Genesis II
. No. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Can you get any more information about where it was sent from?”

Bobby summoned the source information. Half a page of gibberish came up. Bobby pointed at the screen with his pen.

Sender> Okuma-asahi.net.

“This is where the message originated,” he said.

“Asahi,” Nadia said. “That sounds Japanese.”

“Must be the local Internet provider.”

Bobby searched. Asahi Net was, in fact, one of Japan’s top broadband providers. While the sender’s name had struck a familiar chord, the Japanese source baffled him.

“What about Okuma?” Nadia said.

Bobby searched again. A
Wikipedia
page offered five subjects named Okuma. Nadia and Bobby scanned the list. Bobby didn’t look beyond the fourth entry. He knew Nadia was staring at the same entry without even bothering to look at her.

Okuma was the name of a Japanese town in the Futaba District. It was part of a larger district known throughout the world for all the wrong reasons. The second boy had sent the message from this location.

Fukushima.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nadia said.

“Fukushima,” Bobby said. “The only place other than Chornobyl to experience a level seven disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale.”

“You know anyone in Fukushima?”

“No.”

“Tokyo?”

“No.”

“What about Facebook friends? Or your other social media followers?”

“Nope. Hockey’s not a big deal in Japan.”

“Have you answered the message?”

“Not yet.”

Part of Bobby wished he’d been honest with her. But the other part shut him down. He could always confess later.

“What should we do?” she said.

Bobby thought about her question for a moment. “Play the fox,” he said.

Bobby knew his father, a notorious con artist, had given her the same advice when she’d met him in Chornobyl on his deathbed.
With foxes, we must play the fox.

Nadia smiled. Not a blatant full-tooth smile like the hockey moms gave everyone when they came into the rink to pick up their kids. Just a subtle one to let him know she got it. She was cool that way, too. She knew how to hide her emotions, not make a big deal of things.

They debated what to write. Nadia advised him to be conservative and say as little as possible. Let the sender do the talking. Eventually he would reveal himself. But Bobby was his father’s son. He had started to realize that during his stint in jail. The sender would be expecting a tame approach. The optimal course of action was to provoke him with the unexpected.

Bobby suggested they answer with a question.
What are the stakes?

The answer was
the fate of the free world
. It was the line that had started it all more than a year ago, when a man whispered it in Nadia’s ear before collapsing on a New York City street. If the full formula existed, it could affect the fate of the free world. A nuclear power with a cure for radiation would have an advantage over its enemies. If the second locket contained the rest of the formula, the boy who possessed it would understand the message.

Bobby sent his reply. Nadia went back to bed. Bobby set his computer to ping with the arrival of a new e-mail. He tried to sleep but couldn’t.

The computer pinged three times over the course of three hours. The first two e-mails were spam. The third wasn’t.

Bobby read the message, saw the light on under Nadia’s door and called her. She hurried to his room in a robe and pajamas. She peered over his shoulder and read the response.

The fate of the free world depends on us.

A minute later, a second e-mail arrived with instructions.

Sunday. Tokyo. The mural at Shibuya train station. Noon. Meet in front. Just you and Nadia. My friend will find you.

Genesis II.

Bobby found information about a mural at Shibuya station on the Internet. It was called the
Myth of Tomorrow
. It was an abstract picture consisting of fourteen panels.

It depicted a human figure being hit by a nuclear bomb.

CHAPTER 2

N
ADIA TOLD
B
OBBY
to get some sleep. He’d just been released from jail that morning. She’d informed his teachers at Fordham Prep that he would return to school next week. She wanted him to rest and recuperate first. They’d agreed it was a prudent idea, noting it was mid-April, and there was plenty of time for him to catch up before June.

She lay awake in bed until 5:00 a.m. Questions swirled in her head. She needed a shower, a cup of coffee, and a discussion with Johnny Tanner. Johnny was her attorney and best friend. He knew the truth about Bobby’s true identity, that he was Nadia’s cousin from Ukraine and his real name was Adam Tesla. Johnny had helped them escape the clutches of Russian mobsters when Bobby had first arrived, and defended him successfully against the recent murder charge.

Nadia left a message at 6:00 a.m. Johnny returned her call half an hour later.