“I just can’t figure out why Bobby would do something so reckless,” Nadia said.
“Genesis II is on that truck, right? What did Nakamura say his name was? Yoshi?”
“Yeah. But Bobby’s no fool. He has his father’s instincts. He understands danger. He measures probabilities before he acts. He weighs pros and cons. He calculates a risk-adjusted reward for any action he takes. It’s all subconscious. It’s instinctive. But that’s how his brain works. You saw that in him when you got him off for murder, didn’t you?”
“Not sure his brain is working right.”
“What’s the probability he can hang onto that truck the entire trip?” Nadia said.
“What was the probability he could latch onto it in the first place?”
“And if he does hang on, what’s the probability the driver or one of his buddies at the destination sees him and kills him?”
“Is this Nadia staying positive?”
“Bobby knows that. But he still did what he did. What does that tell you?”
Johnny considered the question. “He must know something we don’t.”
“Impossible. He didn’t tell me what Genesis II meant initially. He just didn’t want to get into it. But his guilty conscience caught up with him before we left for the airport. He told me everything.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t playing you?”
“Positive,” Nadia said.
“You said it yourself. The kid’s a natural con artist.”
“No. Not that morning. He was emotional. He wasn’t acting. I’d stake my life on it. He told me everything that was in his heart.”
“Then if he does know something we don’t know, it can mean only one thing.”
“He learned something between the time we left the apartment and he ran after the truck.”
“Maybe from those Russians at the airport,” Johnny said.
“He didn’t talk to them.”
“Maybe he met someone at the hotel.”
“He wasn’t out of my sight long enough.”
They drove toward the center of town. Nadia kept her head on a swivel but didn’t see any trucks or signs of human life.
“There’s another thing we need to talk about,” Johnny said.
Nadia imagined the driver capturing Bobby. This time there would be no angel there to save him.
“The boomerangs,” Nadia said.
“Who threw them?”
“No idea. An angel.”
“You see anybody?”
“Nope,” Nadia said.
They drove another mile until they came upon the intersection to the main road in town. A bilingual sign instructed them to turn left for the exit from the Exclusion Zone. Johnny stopped at the intersection.
“We can drive around if you want,” he said. “But the odds are high this guy is out of the Zone by now. These guys were organized. They had a plan.”
Despair gripped Nadia. She’d found Bobby in a radioactive wasteland in Ukraine, and now she’d lost him in a similar one in Japan.
“Our best bet is to get back to the hotel and wait for a phone call. He’s got his own cell, right?”
“Yes.”
They put their hazmat suits back on. Their respirators cloaked their faces. Five blocks away from the open stretch of road that led to the exit from the Zone of Exclusion, Johnny pulled into a side street and parked beside a post office. He picked a spot that gave them a distant vantage point of the guardhouse. They waited until a vehicle arrived on the opposite side of the guardhouse, looking to gain entrance to the Zone. In this case, two enormous dump trunks arrived with three pickup trucks in tow.
Johnny wasted no time. He drove to the gate. The guard was engrossed in a conversation with the dump truck driver and waved them through. The hazmat gear prevented him from seeing Nakamura wasn’t at the wheel.
When she’d first arrived, Nadia had noted the similarities and differences between Chornobyl and Fukushima. Nature had reasserted its control over the former, while man was still wrestling with the residual risks of the latter. Both seemed casualties of unlikely events — the mismanagement of a crumbling Soviet empire and a natural disaster of unlikely magnitude. Now that she was leaving, Nadia noted another unfortunate similarity. She was leaving Fukushima as she’d left Chornobyl. In search of a boy who could change the world.
Except now there were two of them.
CHAPTER 22
Johnny drove for three hours. As soon as they entered Tokyo city limits, he got off the highway. He parked the car on the street near a warehouse. The sidewalks were empty except for the stray passerby. Nadia found an all-purpose cleaner and some paper towels in a box in the back. They used it to wipe down the surfaces they might have touched. Then they left the truck, found the subway, and went back to their hotel in Shibuya.
During the trip, Nadia asked Johnny if he thought she should call Bobby’s mobile phone. Nadia was the most logical thinker he knew. When she asked his opinion, it usually meant she didn’t like the conclusion she’d reached. Johnny loved those moments. They were the most intimate ones she shared with him.
“If he was in a position to get a call,” Johnny said, “he would have made one.”
“Meaning?”
“If you make his phone ring at the wrong time, you could put him in danger.”
“But if it were the right time…”
“He would have already called you.”
Nadia shook her head. “I was thinking the same thing. But isn’t there a chance he can answer but can’t dial?”
Johnny thought about it for a moment. “What has greater odds? That he can receive but can’t dial, or that he hasn’t called because he can’t and your ring can only hurt him.”
Nadia stared at her phone. “Am I overanalyzing this thing?”
“Probably, but under the circumstances, who wouldn’t?”
She chose not to make the call and the phone didn’t ring.
They arrived at the hotel at 5:25 p.m. They went to their respective rooms to clean up and rest before dinner.
Johnny took a shower hoping the hot water would rinse him of his frustrations. Bobby and Genesis II were gone. At home he got things done. He did whatever was necessary to protect the ones he loved. He’d framed Victor Bodnar and his twin blond protégés for drug trafficking because they wouldn’t have left Nadia alone until the formula was theirs or they were certain it didn’t exist. In Japan, Johnny was out of his element. It showed in his lack of results.
Nadia needed more help. More help than he could provide. And now another problem loomed. His week’s vacation was coming to an end. He needed to leave on Saturday to be at work on Monday. His boss had generously allowed him to leave on zero notice. Asking for an extension would be the equivalent of quitting. He loved his job and it had taken him years to find a man he could work with. But if he and Nadia didn’t find Bobby and Genesis II by Saturday, Johnny would have no choice but to resign. He certainly wasn’t going to leave Nadia alone.
They met at the bar at 7:00 p.m. As soon as he saw her he knew something was wrong. He could tell by the clouds in her eyes.
“I called him,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. I had to know.”
“And?”
Nadia’s eyes fell.
“What?” Johnny said. “No answer?”
“No. There was an answer.”
“And?”
“The person said hello in English, but the voice didn’t belong to Bobby.”
CHAPTER 23
Bobby clung to the truck’s undercarriage. His head rested below the gas tank. Petroleum fumes filled his lungs. Road noise strained his eardrums. The tires kicked up dust. It stung his eyes, blew up his nose, and covered his lips.