“Hayder. She’s not government. She’s an American tourist. I picked her up at the airport in my cab. America couldn’t care less about the Zone. They don’t even know what the Zone is. To them, it’s a type of defense played by basketball teams.”
“What?”
Anton made soothing noises as though quieting an infant. He reached out and gently lowered Hayder’s arm. The gun fell to his side.
Anton glanced at Nadia. The bags beneath his eyes looked inflated with air, the stubble on his beard no longer stylish but in desperate need of a shave.
“Anton,” Nadia said, bouncing on her tiptoes.
He stepped past Hayder, smiled, and hugged her. Nadia buried her head in a nook between his chest and his shoulder. He smelled of mango, nicotine, and musk. It was the most pleasant place to spend a moment, a month, a year, or longer.
“You okay?” he said, holding her face in both hands.
“Yeah. Sorry for all this. And for calling on the spur of the moment. It’s been crazy—”
He put his index finger on her lip and shushed her. “Let’s talk about it in the van.” Anton twisted his body so he could see Hayder, too. “I’ll pay the man. You get in the van.”
Hayder shook his head. “I am not sure about her.”
“We have to get out of here. We can talk about it in the van. Agreed?”
Hayder glanced at Nadia, bit his lower lip, and nodded reluctantly. He thrust his gun beneath his forest-green rain jacket and under his belt.
He sat in the back of the van with his crate beside him. Nadia had no choice but to sit directly in front of him. She imagined his gun pressed to her back from the moment her butt kissed the tattered and torn vinyl. Anton paid the woolly mammoth for his troubles. After the truck disappeared, he turned the van around and started toward the thirty-kilometer fence.
“When we get out of the Zone,” Anton said, “I’m going to drop Hayder off first. Then you can tell me what’s next for you.”
“That sounds good,” Nadia said. “Thank you for coming to get me. I think the reality is… I think the reality is, I’ll be going back to America shortly.”
Her words must have been comprehensible in Russian, because Hayder cackled in the backseat. “Yeah, go back to America,” he said. “Go back where you belong. The American dream is dead. You think you are better than the Russians and Chinese. You used to be. But you aren’t anymore. You used to care about others. Now you care only about your oil. The world used to love you. Now the world hates you. Yeah, you go back to America and have the good time. The American dream is over. You hear me? It is over.”
They slipped through the hole in the second fence and drove to Kyiv without talking.
At 3:45, Anton stopped at the first metro station on the outskirts of Kyiv, called Petrivka. He stepped out of the van with Hayder and had a brief conversation with him before climbing back in.
“We go for a quick bite?” Anton said. “You must be hungry. You have time?”
“Hungry and thirsty,” Nadia said, “and yes, I have time.”
Anton drove back on the highway.
“So, what was that all about?” Nadia said.
“What, the talk with Hayder? I was smoothing things over with him.”
“No. Not the talk. The crate and what’s in it. What’s he stealing from the Zone, Anton?”
Anton shook his head. “I have a policy. It’s best not to ask questions about other people’s business.”
“That’s not true. When you picked me up at the airport, you started asking me questions about my business as soon as I sat down. Remember?”
Anton didn’t answer her.
“What’s in the case, Anton?”
He licked his lips and remained mute.
“What’s in the case?”
He sighed. “Spare parts.”
“Spare parts?”
“Spare parts from automobiles, ambulances, and bulldozers. In this case, a starter.”
“A starter?”
“Yes, yes, a starter. From an ambulance. A starter is a motor. A battery supplies electricity to the starter. The starter gives power to the engine.”
Nadia remembered the vehicular burial ground on the way to Pripyat. “You mean from a radioactive ambulance? That starter is hot?”
“Yes, from an ambulance from the Zone. It may or may not be hot. Who knows?”
“Anton…”
“Okay, yes. It’s probably hot. And it will find its way into an ambulance in Kyiv someday. All the vehicles in the Zone have been stripped. Anything of value can be sold.”
“What about the two rods?”
“What rods?” Anton said.
“There were two rods, about six inches long and an inch in diameter—sorry, about fifteen centimeters long by three centimeters in diameter.”
Anton mumbled something under his breath in Russian.
“What’s wrong?” Nadia said. “Your partner holding out on you?”
“Partner? What partner? Who, me?”
“You have a nice apartment. With a beautifully equipped kitchen. Even if you supplement your income by driving a cab… Oh. Wait. What was it you said to me when we first met? Ukrainian salary. It’s hell.”
A moment of silence passed between them.
“Okay,” Anton said. “Hayder is a scavenger. And I am his driver. I help with logistics. A good starter on the open market, it’s worth three hundred US dollars. Three hundred US. You have to live here to understand how much money that is and how hard it is to make it.”
“But you’re helping put radioactive parts in vehicles in Kyiv. Some mechanic is going to touch that with his bare hands.”
“Well, then that’s his bad luck. Water overflows from the cooling ponds, seeps into the streams, and empties into the Dnipro. I drink that water every day. This isn’t America. This is Ukraine. You have no idea how good you have it. Here, life is hard, then you die.”
They drove for a while without saying anything more. The rain subsided. White clouds chased each other across the sky. The sun peeked between them.
“After we eat, I’ll be leaving,” Nadia said. “Tonight.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
He took an exit and merged onto a main thoroughfare. Nadia didn’t recognize the street, but a sign said NOVOKOSTANTINIVSKA STREET.
“I meant to ask you,” Nadia said. “Why did you drive the van through the fence in Chernobyl? I thought all cars that are in the Zone stay in the Zone.”
“They do.”
“But now the van is hot, isn’t it? I mean, at least its tires are.”
“Yup. I have to have them stripped, burned, and replaced tonight before I give it back to Radek.” Anton took a sharp left. “But it was worth it.”
“That’s sweet. Thank you. Thank you for caring.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He smiled, turned right, and mashed the gas pedal. The Volkswagen hesitated before surging forward. Nadia’s head snapped back against her headrest. In front of them rose a dilapidated gray warehouse on an abandoned lot. A pair of doors swung open sideways, as they would on a barn.
The van hurtled into the building. The brakes screeched.
Nadia lurched forward until the seat belt strangled her. She fell back. The belt loosened and slid back down around her chest.
A black Audi and two black SUVs were parked in front of them. One of the SUVs was a Porsche Cayenne. Nadia didn’t recognize the six men lollygagging in front of the SUVs, but she’d seen the other three before. Victor, Misha, and the distinguished-looking man she’d evaded in the Caves Monastery were waiting for her.
“What I meant,” Anton said, “is that you’re worth more alive than you are dead.”
CHAPTER 46
THE HOCKEY COACH might kill him.
He might have to kill the coach first.