Traffyck (43 page)

Mariya looked up at the road ahead. The journey was picturesque with colorful farm buildings and maple trees already preparing for brilliant fall colors. Here and there, workers in the fields were close enough to the highway to wave and smile. When they passed a rest area, Mariya saw children running and skipping as they exited a tour bus. She turned to Janos. “It is all because to some, human beings are commodities.”

“Shved was a passionate man,” said Janos. “The wild horse that runs until it expires.”

“Do you feel passion?” asked Mariya, touching Janos’ shoulder.

“It hasn’t even been a month since the fire,” said Janos. “But, yes, I do.”

“There is something about almost being killed with someone.”

Janos turned and looked at her. “Do you need an escape route?”

Mariya stared at him. “No. Do you?”

Janos looked back to the road. “What we need now is to find the vampires who killed Shved and your husband. After this, we can make plans like normal people.”

A green and white militia car appeared suddenly in Janos’ peripheral vision on an entrance ramp, and he braked, allowing a large truck to pass. When the militia car accelerated onto the highway, passing the truck and disappearing ahead, Janos adjusted the cruise control until the camper van was again cruising at one hundred twenty kilometers per hour.

“They already know we escaped the Fiat,” said Janos. “Because of the bug at the lodge, they know where we are going.”

“Do you really think it’s possible this so-called compound is the place Viktor spent time?”

“Anything is possible,” said Janos. “Traffickers have become desperate. If they kidnap young people, they need a place to keep them. Recruited young people go with traffickers because they imagine a dream job at the end of the journey. From what you told me, Viktor had a brainwashing experience. What better place than in the Exclusion Zone?”

“We are insane,” said Mariya.

“I know,” said Janos.

Beneath the console, the engine clattered as if joining the conversation, and the camper van rocked and swayed and pressed ahead in the hot afternoon sun.

Janos stopped at a busy rest area halfway to Kiev. Mariya went to a lounge where a television was tuned to a Kiev news channel. Janos went into a gift shop and restaurant. After Mariya was satisfied there were no news bulletins concerning them, she went back out to the camper van and, as Janos had instructed, sat in the driver’s seat in case anyone came along.

The militiaman appearing at the driver’s door startled her. He motioned for her to lower the window and told her the camper van was parked illegally in the automobile area and she should have parked farther out in the lot. But the militiaman, who was young and obviously in a good mood, allowed her to stay after she told a story about her mother who had just had surgery and a brother who was inside using the phone trying to contact hospital staff. The speed with which she concocted the story surprised Mariya. She wanted to be sure to tell Janos about her cleverness. In this insane world, inside this camper van, she wanted to share the story of the fictitious mother near death. She wanted them both to laugh because, though it would be only a momentary relief, it would feel wonderful.

When Janos returned, he climbed into the passenger seat, dropped a large paper bag onto the floor, picked up the road map, and directed Mariya out of the parking lot and back onto the highway.

“What’s in the bag?” asked Mariya.

Janos opened the bag and peered inside. “Two sausage sandwiches, a few bottles of mineral water, stationery, envelopes, and a mail code directory. We are going to eat, and then we will write to government officials and newspapers in Kiev.”

“We’ll write, just in case?”

Janos stared across at her. “The expression is
covering our asses
. Shved left subtle messages. Ours will not be subtle. The vampires who killed Shved and your husband will suffer, and we will help young people who have been trapped.”

“At least there will not be a full moon,” said Mariya.

“What?”

“A full moon. If there were a full moon, it would be more difficult to sneak about. This morning in the cabin I saw the quarter moon come up at five. I remember looking at my watch in the bathroom, getting back in bed with you, and seeing the quarter moon.”

“Is that when you woke me?” asked Janos.

“Yes … and someone was listening.”

Janos smiled and began unpacking his bag full of stationery and envelopes.

“Have you thought about what we’ll do when we get there?” asked Mariya.

“Perhaps I’ll play my violin the way the Pied Piper played his pipe.”

As Mariya drove, Janos wrote letters, saying basically the same in each. They were going to the peninsula at the mouth of the Pripyat River in the Kiev Reservoir. They expected to be there after midnight on Friday. They would try to find a boat and go out to the peninsula, which was inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. What they expected to find was some kind of compound in which missing young people, and perhaps some older, were being held by unknown persons for the purposes of trafficking, and possibly attacks on rival traffickers and organized crime businesses in Kiev. Evidence pointed to a connection to Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza, an official in Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The evidence leading them to the peninsula was provided by Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in the fire in Viktor Patolichev’s video store in Kiev.

Using the mail code directory and general addresses, as well as their memories, Janos addressed letters to oblast and national officials, to Kiev and Chernigov officials, to the editors of newspapers, to television stations, to the director of the SBU in Kiev, to Yuri Smirnov at the SBU office, to Investigators Svetlana Kovaleva and Nikolai Kozlov and Chief Investigator Boris Chudin at Kiev militia headquarters, to Investigator Arkady Listov at the Darnytsya militia Office, to Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza, to Eva Polenkaya of La Strada, to Mikhail Juliano, care of the Vatican, and finally to Pavel Uszta at his produce company in Kiev’s market district.

After exiting the highway at the city of Bila Cerkva, Mariya waited in the camper van while Janos ran into a post office to mail the letters. They were parked on a street with many Soviet-style apartment buildings. People walking past looked inside, especially elderly babushkas in tattered dresses and sweaters. The looks on the faces seemed to express one common question: Who could afford such a vehicle? Perhaps celebrities, or perhaps SBU.

Suddenly, the cell phone Janos had purchased but never used, the cell phone sitting on the center console plugged into the charger, began ringing in its musical tone, sounding like a carnival machine. It rang again and again, stopped, and then began ringing once more.

Mariya picked up the phone, opened it, saw only a number displayed, and pushed the green button. “Hello?”

A hesitation, then a man’s voice. “I am calling for Janos.”

“Who are you?”

“I will call back.”

“Can I take a message?”

“Tell him aunts, uncles, and cousins are all well. And tell me when I can call back to ask about other relatives.”

“He will be back in minutes.”

“Goodbye for minutes,” said the man, hanging up.

No more than a minute later, Janos returned.

“The letters will be posted today,” said Janos, getting back in. “They’ll go out Friday morning after we are at our destination. The earliest delivery will be Saturday, most of them not until Monday.” Janos noticed the phone. “Why are you holding the phone?”

“A man called,” said Mariya. “He said aunts, uncles, and cousins are well.”

A smile slowly grew on Janos’ face. “Lazlo.”

“How did he get the number?”

“I gave it to Svetlana, and somehow she gave it to Lazlo’s niece.”

“But if the SBU monitors phones of all your associates—”

“Lazlo would find a way.” Janos took the phone and pushed buttons to look at incoming phone numbers. “Here it is. Did he say I should call or he would call back?”

“He will call back, in minutes.”

“Good,” said Janos. “Let’s drive.”

As soon as they were back on the highway, the cell phone rang its carnival ring.

Mariya could hear only one side of the conversation as she drove in the right lane with an occasional car or truck passing the camper van. Janos spoke in Ukrainian, but with an accent and incomplete diction.

“Yes, how good to hear from you, my magnificent cousin. All other farmers are jealous of my new phone—”

“Yes, yes. The cows come in from the fields at that time—”

“You are on Kiev holiday? I am jealous. Will you find yourself—how shall I say it—will you discover a Natasha or a Svetlana or a Madonna?”

Janos laughed. “Okay. They are your business. Unlike me, with my babushka out pulling milk teats, you are in free zone. As you say, my age added to your age makes me older, at least in appearance. If I were younger, I, myself, or perhaps with a Natasha, would go to left, if that were only possible, and in the middle of the night with my new Natasha—”

“I see. I understand, cousin. Drink first; feast later. Rest, because of my decrepit conditions, and then—” He laughed again.

“Even though I have my new phone, I still send letters of complaint.”

“You know how it is. The offices in Kiev. They need to know, and they will.”

“Yes, afterwards, letters … now you have it—”

“So, you will visit and I, we old ones, will be there when the rooster awakens—”

“The cows await me. I’ll call to them and see if babushka is finished. Do you recall joke from last time? You told it. The punch at end was I think in English … Nostalgic Geometric Oxymorons—”

“So, from left-handed cousin to right-handed cousin, we will meet soon. It hangs in the reservoir like the cock that has finished—” More laughter.

“Yes, you see it. You are fortune-teller. Little villages and babushkas. You know it best. So a visit to your woman and … You know best. You are my blood.”

There was a long pause before Janos spoke again.

“Perfect. You have it. I have it. We are brothers. We are one.”

Janos closed his phone, placed it in the center console, and stared straight ahead. “Lazlo is in Kiev. He wants us to delay our arrival. Instead of driving straight there, we will arrive later, before dawn instead of shortly after midnight, as I wrote in the letters. Lazlo will visit old friends at militia headquarters. He’ll visit and at the same time uncover what he can. After that, he’ll take a private tour of the Chernobyl Zone. He has already applied for his pass online.”

Janos turned and stared at Mariya. “Lazlo is our backup. Because we think as one, he was able to explain all of this without saying it. Svetlana delivered the cell phone number to Lazlo’s niece, Ilonka, and she delivered it to Lazlo in a puzzle only they can solve. He called from a phone he purchased at the airport. We can call one another, but we will limit the calls because as we near the Zone, agents with cell scanners will be listening.”

Mariya waited a moment to see if Janos was finished before speaking. “Will we take the direct route to Chernigov, or should I slow down?”

“Turn off at the next exit, and find a farm town well off the highway. I want to call someone from a pay phone, and we need to purchase clothing.”

Lazlo rented a newer Skoda in green because he observed green and white Skoda militia patrol cars during his bus ride from the outlying metro station. The purpose of the bus ride was to familiarize himself with changes to Kiev since his visit in 2008, and also to be certain he was not followed from the airport. After picking up the car, he stopped at a rental agency for an inexpensive apartment near the railway station south of central Kiev. As he did so, he wondered if he would ever make it back to the apartment.

Because of the deaths of loved ones, Lazlo assumed he would never return to the Chernobyl Zone. However, tonight he would take a private tour because Janos and his client needed him. They would go by way of the left bank, while he went by way of the right bank. But first he would visit old friends.