The Boy from Reactor 4

Marko came around from behind a bar the length of a destroyer and gave her a lukewarm hug. With his shiny head and gray goatee, he looked like a prematurely old Cossack. A blast of mint gave way to the inevitable stench of alcohol.

“Oh, man,” she said in Ukrainian. “You’re drinking again.”

He blinked. “I can control it.”

“Last month, you told me you were sober for twenty-three days straight. What happened?”

“I think I can handle one cocktail.”

“Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me, Marko.”

“Just stop. You call me from your car all frantic and shit, telling me to be careful like my life is in jeopardy. Then you show up here with your holier-than-thou attitude. I don’t need this, Nancy Drew. I really don’t.”

Nadia looked around to make sure someone hadn’t crept close enough to listen. She pulled her checkbook out of her purse.

“I’m giving you an early birthday present,” she said. “It’s going to be a big one to make up for all the years we were incommunicado.” She wrote her brother’s name on the check. “I want you—no, I need you—to leave the country for two weeks. Immediately.”

He laughed in disbelief. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ain’t no one leaving the country”—he stopped laughing—“unless it’s you. What the hell’s going on?”

Nadia started filling in the amount. “I don’t have much money left, or I’d make it more. Three thousand dollars. The Bahamas. Or maybe Aruba—”

Marko grabbed her wrist and lifted the pen off the check. “Stop. Stop writing.”

Nadia tried to force the pen down, but Marko wouldn’t let her hand budge.

“Talk to me, little sister,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s this all about?”

She pulled her hand away and rubbed her wrist. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She looked around again. No one suspicious. “It’s not safe for me to do so.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you anything except that your life is already in danger. If I tell you more, someone could try to get it out of you, and I won’t put you in that position. You have to trust me on this.”

“Trust you? Listen to yourself. I’m your brother, and you won’t trust me by telling me what’s going on.”

Nadia remembered when Marko had secretly tracked her during her three-night survival test on the Appalachian Trail to make sure she didn’t get hurt. She was twelve years old at the time. Her father had insisted she become the youngest girl in the history of the Ukrainian scout organization PLAST to earn the survival merit badge. Marko had saved her from a pair of criminals who’d escaped from prison. Now his life was in jeopardy because of her.

“I’m so sorry this is happening,” she said. “I’m so sorry we’re having this conversation.”

Nadia resumed writing the check.

Marko said, “Does this have something to do with that antiques ring you busted up last year?”

Nadia didn’t answer.

“Does it? Were the people you put away just a front for someone else?”

Nadia signed the check.

“Oh no,” Marko said. “They were, weren’t they? Oh, shit. Uke or Russian?”

Nadia tore the check out of her book and slid it across the bar toward him. “Will you please leave the country? For your own protection.”

Marko glared at her, slipped off his stool unsteadily, and raised both pant legs. A gun was strapped to the left, a twelve-inch Bowie knife to the right. “Got all the protection I need right here.”

“No. No, you don’t,” Nadia said. “Not from these people.”

Marko’s face darkened, as though he understood her message.

“I’m begging you,” Nadia said, pushing the check closer to him. “Please go on a vacation. For me?”

Marko tore the check into eight pieces.

“Asshole,” Nadia said under her breath. “I knew this would be impossible.”

“Then why did you bother coming?”

She added a dollop of sarcasm to her voice. “Because I hate you and I want you to get hurt.”

Nadia gathered her purse and started to leave.

“Yo, Nancy Drew,” Marko said.

She turned. As a child, Nadia had escaped from her parents’ demands that she be the perfect student, Ukrainian, and daughter by reading mysteries. She always had a Nancy Drew in her hands, and it was Marko who supplied them. He delivered newspapers before school and bought her books with the proceeds.

“I’m leaving for Bangkok on Monday. Bunch of us are hiking to Burma. Two weeks. You need me to cancel and stay, just say the word.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me that from the beginning?”

“That would have been the normal thing to do. Not our family way, though, is it?”

Nadia managed a smile. “Watch out for the snakes.”

“You too, Nancy Drew. You too.”

CHAPTER 16