Traffyck (6 page)

Svetlana turns toward him, her curls black and skin bronze in the moonlight. “Gypsy music is so sad when it’s played slowly.”

Halfway through the sad section, Svetlana stands and begins dancing about the campfire, arms extended, making her blanket into wings. Then, when the sad passage is ended and he launches into the exuberant
czardas
, Svetlana dances faster and faster, spinning about the campfire, throwing the blanket aside and revealing the fact she has removed her blouse and wears only tight, white slacks.

Svetlana in the moonlight, bronze on top and pure white from her waist down, a pair of disjointed legs dancing in the night until, during the heat of the
czardas
, she climbs atop the picnic table and removes her slacks. She is all bronze then, his sweaty fingers clinging to the violin as she dances for him in the light from the fire. All bronze like some of the icons in Kiev’s cathedrals. Later, when he says this to her, she laughs and says he is the one made of bronze.

After passing through a small village and putting on the high beams, Janos saw a figure walking on the shoulder of the road. As he approached he saw a man in an American-style cowboy hat carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder. The man walked briskly swaying from side to side, bow-legged like a Cossack.

Janos shut off the CD player and slowed the camper van, expecting the man to stick out a thumb. But the man kept walking. Janos reached into the door pocket beside him to be certain his Makarov 9mm pistol was butt up. He glanced toward the back where the sofa was jack-knifed out into a bed and pillows were stuffed beneath blankets to resemble someone asleep. When Janos braked to a stop, the man stood at the front corner of the camper van for a moment, smiling, then walked back to the door and opened it.

“Would you like a ride?”

“Yes,” said the man, removing his cowboy hat as he climbed in.

The man put his bag between the seats, glanced back, and when Janos held one finger to his lips, nodded, and spoke softly in order not to awaken the pillows stuffed beneath the blankets.

His name was Anatoly. When Janos asked if he was a Cossack, Anatoly laughed, saying he wished he had been born in the distant past. Instead, he was born shortly before the Chernobyl explosion in one of the villages closest to the site. Because he was a boy during the evacuation, he had been unaware of the danger. Like most children from the Zone, he had gotten plenty of iodine. But he wondered if he would live past his forties. The reason for this was his recent work salvaging parts from the condemned graveyard of vehicles near Chernobyl.

“Why did you return to the Zone?” asked Janos.

“Because there was no work in the village to which we were sent. Everyone simply sits in their Chernobyl boxes, drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes, and speaking of death. You were correct when you mentioned Cossack because my jobs in villages involve riding horses. My trip to the Zone was a short one, but not on a horse. I wanted to see the Zone once more before I traveled south. I move from village to village. Many fields are still plowed using horses. However, I might go to Nikolaev. They say there are jobs building ships.”

“Are the ship builders looking for Cossacks?”

Anatoly held his hat up. “This was a gift from the job at the vehicle graveyard. With this the sun will not add to my percentages of contracting cancer. It is useful in the fields, but shipbuilding will pay more. At least this is what I am told.”

Anatoly motioned with his head toward the back. “Your wife?”

Janos shook his head. “Her name is Natasha.”

Anatoly smiled. “I need only a short ride,” he whispered. “The next village will do. I work my way toward Nikolaev, and if I am lucky I will still be alive when I arrive. Also, Nikolaev is rumored to house smart Natashas who do not allow themselves to be trafficked abroad.”

Janos and Anatoly laughed quietly, and soon a village sign came into view—Lakas—and Anatoly bade farewell and went on his way. The time on the dashboard said four in the morning. Soon farmers would awaken, and perhaps one would offer a day job and breakfast to a Cossack.

Janos calculated the time difference between western Ukraine and central United States. Four in the morning here meant it was still early evening in Chicago. A perfect time to call Lazlo and tell him about the Cossack. A perfect time to discuss wanderlust, a tradition among Gypsy comrades.

Janos took his cell phone from the console, pushed a button, saw by the indicator that the village of Lakas had cellular service, prepared himself to speak in generalities, as he always did on his cell phone, and entered Lazlo’s stored number.

At dusk, when his cell phone rang, Lazlo knew it was Janos before he saw the display of the international number. He sat in near darkness, a reddish glow from the Humboldt Ukrainian Restaurant sign across the street visible on the far wall. He knew Janos would call tonight.

“Is all well, Janos?”

“Except for pinpricks in my ass.”

“You are on the road?”

“Yes.”

Lazlo switched to Hungarian. “I hear it in your voice. The road is smooth, not like Podil with its troubles. Web sites give the clergyman in question a long title: deputy chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations with Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies.”

“What your police call a
snitch
insists the man with the long title contacted an associate of an ex-family exterminator, as well as a Moscow explosives expert. I am accused by one journal of having a vendetta against orthodoxy. The article mentioned a Vatican Army. I would go to the nearest church to light candles, but they are locked this early in the morning.”

“You were wise to go on holiday.”

“Yes,” said Janos. “Yesterday at this time, a car followed me for some distance. When it finally turned off, you know what was playing on the CD player?”

“What?”

“‘A Cold Wind Is Blowing, Mother.’“

Lazlo laughed. “One of my favorites.”

“How does the wind blow in Chicago?”

“My niece left today. Perhaps when you return to Kiev, you can visit her.”

“There is something else in the wind. I hear it in your voice.”

Although he had tried to hide his misery, Lazlo gave in and told Janos about Jermaine, who wanted to be named Gypsy in his street gang. He told of the incident in a mix of English and Hungarian. When he finished all the details, including the funeral the next day, they were both silent, the cell transmitters and receivers waiting anxiously, a data-mining program on a super computer measuring the length of the silence, analyzing the use of two languages, and giving the conversation more meaning than it deserved.

“I am sorry, fellow Gypsy. This boy, Jermaine, is now part of God. I wish I knew more about death. I wish we could hug … Outside I see a canyon shaped like your nose.”

Lazlo laughed. “The last time we spoke, I assumed your nose would be mountain-sized because of what you poke it into.”

After a pause, Janos switched from English to Ukrainian. “Do not worry. My holiday trip will cleanse my soul.”

Lazlo also spoke in Ukrainian. “I remember before Chernobyl at headquarters. When Chief Investigator Chkalov assigned you to me, comrades immediately called us Gypsy Number One and Gypsy Number Two. We became father and son. Families have multiplied in Ukraine, Janos. Be careful. Contact Svetlana to test Kiev’s waters before returning.”

“Please give greetings to all aunts, uncles, and cousins.”

“You do the same,” said Lazlo. “Best wishes and blessings to all family … uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, every one of them.”

This is how Lazlo and Janos always ended their telephone conversations, as if they had dozens of family members, as if this were one of thousands of phone calls across the globe wishing the best to loved ones. However, earlier in the conversation, both Lazlo and Janos knew that when they referred to “family,” what they really meant was Mafia.

At dawn, Janos pulled into a campground just outside another village with cellular service. There was no one at the small camp office and only a few other campers scattered about. He parked at the east edge of the camp near a small canyon to watch the sunrise. Morning sunlight spreading across gentle green hills made the canyon ominous, a crack across the face of the Earth separating him from everything and everyone he’d known. Inside the small camper van, he poured a Stolichnaya and, after drinking it down, felt better and went to bed.

He awoke before noon, made an omelet for lunch, took a folding chair and a Kiev newspaper outside, and ate in the sun. The campground was empty. Everyone else had gone while he was asleep. He stared at the horizon beyond the canyon where the blue of the sky met the green of the hills. The only living creatures he could see were birds swooping up out of the canyon and down again. There was no wind, and he could hear the river at the canyon’s bottom.

The Gypsy stirred in his seat, adjusted his position, and picked up the two-day-old newspaper he had brought with him from the camper van. The news was as usual. A minor mishap at Borispol Airport in which the wing of a plane clipped the tail of another; questions concerning whether the new sports stadium could be justified considering Ukraine’s terrible economy; a fire at a video store near Zhulyany Airport in which arson was suspected—the owner’s body and an unidentified body found inside. There was no news about the Podil female clinic bombing, or the killing of the female doctor, or the bombing of the Nagy Investigative Agency, or the alleged connection with Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza. Nothing.

Janos took his cell phone from his pocket. Svetlana answered on the sixth ring, her voice throaty as if she were still in bed, even though he had called her at Kiev headquarters.

“Janos. Is your foot still in your mother?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I was leaving for lunch, and you almost missed me. You are calling from Wild West?”

“There are mountains.”

“Are you alone?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“I received no invitation.”

“I tried to convince myself I asked.”

“Still the melancholy Gypsy. Yet you are the fortune-teller who knows when to call. There is a woman who wants to see you.”

“I am sorry, Svetlana, I—”

“Another woman. Inspector Listov from Darnytsya put her in contact with me. Are you aware of a fire at a video store near the airport?”

“I read about it in the newspaper.”

“The woman’s husband died in the fire. Perhaps you should steel plate your ass before returning home to office number two, which is already subject to watchful eyes.”

“Do you know whose eyes?”

“Simply the same vehicle three nights in a row.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Yes. The woman in question has blond hair, and her name is Mariya Nemeth.”

“Will you see her again?”

“This Friday. No phone calls.”

“It is a healthy attitude. They say these phones can cause brain cancer.”

“Rumor,” said Svetlana. “Forget all I have said. These make fine magazine stories.”

“Tell a story about a meeting at Borispol Airport.”

“Why not Zhulyany?”