The Boy from Reactor 4

“Someone else who wants the money,” Victor said. “Whoever it was came back and removed the body to make sure there was no trace of it. To make sure no questions were asked.”

Misha said, “So there’s ten million dollars in play and two players. Us and someone else.”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Victor said. “Here’s what I propose. The three of us will find out what we can about this Andrew Steen in Kyiv. Meanwhile, you go home and ask your mother about Damian. And the money.”

“My mother?” Nadia said.

“Yes, your mother,” Victor said. “I knew her when I was growing up.”

“You knew my mother?”

Victor shrugged. “It’s a small community of immigrants. It was innocent, I promise you. As a child, she was like a squirrel always burying treasure. She probably has more secrets than the Kremlin. We meet again at Veselka in twenty-four hours. Three p.m. sharp.”

Victor looked at Misha and the Wolverine. They nodded. He picked up the pictures of Nadia’s brother, glanced at them, and looked at Nadia as though reminding her of his leverage.

As she squeezed out the door past Specter, Nadia’s shoulders brushed his arm. When she glared at him, she thought she spied compassion in his eyes.

Outside, Nadia wobbled down the steps. At ground level, a sign hung in the display window for a clothing boutique beneath the apartment: CRY WOLF, NEW YORK CITY.

“Ah, fresh air,” a voice said from the stairs above her.

Nadia turned.

Victor leaned against the rail.

Nadia studied him for a second. “May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“If I offered you ten million dollars or a clear conscience, which would you take?”

He considered the question. “Both,” Victor said. “I am a thief.”

The light flickered behind his eyes, but faded before he could finish his sentence.

CHAPTER 14

THE SUN CAST purple streaks as it disappeared over the horizon. Shadows gathered along the perimeter of Tompkins Park.

After their usual Sunday dinner at the East Village Restaurant, Victor and Stefan strolled through the park, watching the dogs play.

“You believe her?” Stefan said.

“We know there was an old man,” Victor said. “We know there was a shooting, and we know the man whispered something in her ear. We know all this because we have a witness. Specter. As for what he said to her, it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? How can you say that?”

“Because one man shot another man in the street in broad daylight, and it had nothing to do with a woman. Since perestroika happened and capitalism came to our homeland, why do men shoot each other in the street?”

“Money,” Stefan said.

Victor grunted. “Exactly. Money. So whether the dying man told her about Damian’s ten million dollars—which he very well may have—or something a bit different…”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s money.”

“Yes. It has to be money.”

A petite woman in black tights with a perfectly formed ass walked a pug on a leash ahead of them.

“Two cloves of garlic,” Stefan said. “All they need is a loaf of bread and some salt.”

Victor let Stefan enjoy the view for a moment. “Bread costs money,” he said. “Have you wired that money out of my personal account to Tara yet?”

“How could I? Banks don’t open until tomorrow.”

“Change in plan. Wire her seven thousand. Get the other five thousand in cash. And I want to get it to her tomorrow so she can leave town before Misha does some damage she can’t walk away from.”

“I’ll take care of that and the girl’s surgery in Kyiv first thing in the morning. Speaking of Misha…”

“Yes?”

Stefan looked away. “He offered me a job.”

“Of course he did. And you accepted.”

Stefan regarded him with a look of surprise. “You don’t seem surprised. Or upset.”

Victor veered off the trail toward the wrought-iron fence, where darkness would hide the embarrassment on his face.

“The other day,” Victor said, “when you joked I was scaring you because I was senile and you said you might leave me, what did I tell you?”

Stefan kicked a pebble out of his way. “That the day you stopped scaring me is the day I should leave you.”

Victor stopped walking and faced his sovetnik of twenty-three years. “So tell me, Stefan. Do I still scare you?”

“No, Victor. You don’t scare me anymore.”

“Then it’s time for you to go,” Victor said.

They left in opposite directions.

When Victor got home, he sank to the floor in the corner of his dark kitchen. The cat meowed and jumped in his lap. He wrapped his arms around it and kissed its head.

“It’s just you and me,” he said. “It’s just you and me, Damian.”

CHAPTER 15

ON SUNDAY EVENING, long after most churches conducted their services, another form of worship began at 7:00 p.m. at Brasilia in Willimantic, twenty miles outside Hartford.

Giant speakers suspended above a runway stage thumped with a Joan Jett rock-and-roll anthem. Two women gyrated on the floor, arching their backsides within inches of the faces of their worshipping clientele. Nadia counted thirty-three customers scattered around her brother’s club. None of them wore fine black leather coats, and none of them looked familiar.