My heart urged me to rush forward, but my survival skills prevailed. I counted three more suits on the floor. Instead of moving forward toward the man whose ring I was wearing, I retreated. My feet felt like cinderblocks, the floor like quicksand. But what I was learning now was that sometimes your only salvation is to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, place one foot backward, drag the other one to it, and repeat.
In the background, a man continued delivering an impassioned speech on the television.
He was the man who’d expressed his gratitude in person for saving his daughter’s life by giving me a business card that granted me one special favor.
If only I had used it. It had never occurred to me that by granting me one favor, Putler had given me a chance to save Simmy’s life.
I escaped the bar, stepped outside the hotel, and dialed the number Putler had given me. No one picked up for obvious reasons. So I walked around the hotel and kept dialing continuously. Sirens sounded and brakes screeched in the background. I don’t know how many loops I made or how much time passed, but eventually someone finally picked up my call. I froze in place on the sidewalk, but there was no sound on the other end of the line. An awkward pause followed, and I feared I was so distraught that I’d been misdialing the entire time.
And then I heard his voice on the other end of the line.
“If you’re calling me to ask for the resurrection of your fiancé,” Putler said, “I haven’t acquired that skill yet. But my scientists are working on it. They tell me they’re getting close.”
“What a fool believes,” I said.
He paused and sighed with great delight. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
I took a breath to compose myself. “You do still owe me a favor, though, don’t you?”
“I’m a man of my word. Just understand that drinking from the cooling pond in Chernobyl and that sort of thing doesn’t qualify. It has to be a reasonable request.”
I couldn’t believe he’d mentioned Chornobyl. It simply couldn’t be a coincidence. Somehow, Valery Putler—the President of Russia—knew that I’d snuck in there illegally two years ago.
“It’s agreed then,” I said. “We’ll speak again.”
“I look forward to it, my snow leopard.”
He ended the call.
I thought of the matryoshka.
It contained seven dolls. Simmy had told me that I needed to know all seven dolls to understand a Russian man.
Now I understood the one who’d outsmarted me.
He was a powerful statesman, an avid sportsman, and a devoted father. He was also an insecure boy, a thug, a liar, and a murderer.
He was whichever of these men he needed to be to meet his objective.
He was all the other men, too.
ALSO BY OREST STELMACH
The Boy from Reactor 4
The Boy Who Stole from the Dead
The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark
The Altar Girl
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright 2017 © Orest Stelmach
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
ISBN-13: 978-0997253-0-6
Cover design by David Drummond