The Boy from Reactor 4

“A young man should always have emergency cash in his pocket,” she said.

Nadia plotted a route back to New York with Robert’s help. After checking flight schedules on his computer, she called Johnny and gave him the details of her arrival. He called her back a few hours later.

“I found your man,” Johnny said. “Professor John Horton, Department of Radiobiology, Columbia University. He lives near the United Nations. We can meet there. In a public place. One thing we haven’t talked about. You realize you’re returning to Victor Bodnar’s home turf, right?”

“It’s my home turf, too. I’m tired of running, and I have nowhere else to go. Besides, I have you, don’t I?”

Johnny remained silent for a moment. “I’m not sure I’m a match for Victor Bodnar, but yes. Yes, you do.”

At 10:00 on Tuesday morning, they said their good-byes at the Kotzebue Airport. The bush pilot, a childhood friend of Robert’s, flew them to Seattle, stopping in Anchorage to refuel along the way. In Seattle, Nadia bought two one-way tickets for the Delta red-eye, Flight 1642, to JFK Airport.

There were no unoccupied adjacent seats in the economy cabin when Nadia booked the flights. When they got on board, she put Adam in the front so she could keep an eye on him from the other seat fifteen rows back during the flight.

Their cumulative flight time was fourteen hours. With the time change, they arrived at JFK on schedule at 7:13 a.m. on Wednesday. Nadia watched with pride as Adam helped an elderly lady wheel her carry-on off the plane, with his own bags slung over his shoulders. Five minutes later, it was her turn to leave.

She hustled up the ramp to the gate to catch up to Adam. Her quads and hamstrings ached. When she burst into the terminal, six armed Port Authority policemen and four burly men in suits surrounded an unremarkable businessman in a suit and tie. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and one of the officers was searching his briefcase. Nadia looked around for Adam but couldn’t find him. She walked around the perimeter of the gate, checked the food court, and asked a restroom attendant washing the floor to check the men’s room for him. Adam wasn’t there.

Nadia finished where she’d started, at the gate where she’d arrived. As the cops escorted the businessman in cuffs out of the area, she realized that Adam must have emerged from the ramp to find cops converging. The men in plainclothes looked like Homeland Security agents—government men, to borrow Adam’s phrase. His paranoia was such that he had probably assumed they were there to arrest him and send him back to Ukraine. In a panic, he ran.

Adam didn’t speak English. He didn’t know anyone in America and didn’t understand the city. As Nadia wondered what she would do if she were in his shoes, she realized that she wasn’t as concerned about the locket as she was about Adam himself. Nadia remembered when her mother had paced the kitchen, wondering where her brother was and what harm might have come to him, when he disappeared for days as a teen.

Nadia bolted in search of a customer service desk. Halfway down the main aisle, her cell phone rang.

It was Johnny, calling with details of the meeting he’d arranged.

CHAPTER 78

ADAM DIDN’T HAVE time to stop and try to find someone who spoke Russian. He had to get out of the airport fast. He’d seen the government people as soon as he climbed up the ramp from the airplane. Fortunately, they didn’t recognize him because he was dressed differently and helping the old lady.

He found a perky woman in front of a computer with a first-aid symbol embedded in the sign above her desk. Adam had studied English in school and knew some basic words.

“New York City. Train. For downtown,” he said.

She answered so quickly he couldn’t understand a word. She also pointed down the corridor—didn’t Americans know it was rude to point?—and Adam took off in that direction. He followed others down a long stairwell, past a shiny silver carousel rotating with no luggage on it, and emerged in a giant lobby. Men in suits and ties held big white cards with words written on them. Other men, some of them not so well dressed, bombarded him with questions.

Adam had never seen so much dark skin in his life. He’d seen pictures of black men and Indian men, but he’d never seen them in person. It was incredible. This must be why the United Nations was in New York. Every type of person on the planet had to live in New York.

A beady-eyed woman behind a wall full of pictures of gleaming hotels helped him find the train. She drew a picture of an airplane beside a railroad track and slowly repeated a single word:

AirTrain.

After climbing stairs and finding the AirTrain, Adam gave the ticket man a twenty-dollar bill. The ticket man barked the word “peak” at him and gave him twelve dollars back. Adam didn’t understand what “peak” meant and guessed he was charged more for having two bags. It was just like Ukraine. People were looking to make money any way they could.