He blinked away the glare. The flash came from a tiny penlight. The shine revealed three small figures slinking into his room. They were all children. A boy—twelve or thirteen—held the light and shielded a girl maybe a year or two younger. They were followed by a smaller boy who could be no more than eight years old. They approached his bed as if nearing a lion’s den.
The taller boy, plainly the leader, swung to the younger one. He whispered in Russian, unintelligible but plainly a concerned inquiry. He called the younger boy a name. It sounded like Peter. The child nodded, pointed to the bed, and mumbled in Russian with a ring of certainty to his words.
Stirring in the bed, he finally rasped out, “Who are you? What do you want?”
The taller boy shushed him with a glare and glanced toward the open doorway. The children then split up and crossed around the bed. The leader and the girl began freeing the straps that bound his limbs. The smaller boy held back, eyes wide. Like his companions, the child was dressed in loose pants and a dark gray turtleneck sweater with a vest over it, along with a matching cable-knit hat. The boy stared straight at him, unnervingly so, as if reading something on his forehead.
With his arms freed, he sat up. The room swam again, but not as much as before. He ran his hand over his head, trying to steady himself. Under his palm, he found his scalp smooth and a prickly line of sutures behind his left ear, confirming this supposition. Had he been shaved for surgery? Still, as his palm ran across the smooth top of his head, the sensation felt somehow familiar, natural.
Before he could ponder this contradiction, he pulled his other hand into view. Or rather tried to. His other arm ended in a stump at the wrist. His heart thudded harder in shock. He must’ve been in a horrible accident. His remaining hand trailed across the tender sutures behind his ear, as if trying to read Braille. Obviously a recent surgery. But his wrist was calloused and long healed. Still, he could almost sense his missing fingers. Felt them curl into a phantom fist of frustration.
The taller boy stepped back from the bed. “Come,” he said in English.
From the clandestine nature of his release and furtive actions of his liberators, he sensed some amount of danger. Dressed in a thin hospital gown, he rolled his feet to the cold tiled floor. The room tilted with the motion.
Whoa…
A small groan of nausea escaped him.
“Hurry,” the taller boy urged.
“Wait,” he said, gulping air to settle his stomach. “Tell me what is going on.”
“No time.” The tall boy stepped away. He was gangly, all limbs. He attempted to sound authoritative, but the cracking in his voice betrayed both his youth and his terror. He touched his chest, introducing himself. “Menia zavut Konstantin. You must come. Before it is too late.”
“But I…I don’t…”
“Da. You are confused. For now, know your zavut is Monk Kokkalis.”
Making a half-scoffing noise, he shook his head. Monk Kokkalis. The name meant nothing to him. As he attempted to voice his disagreement, to correct the mistake, he realized he had no ammunition, only a blank where his name normally resided. His heart clutched into a strained knot. Panic narrowed his vision. How could that be? He fingered the sutures again. Had he taken a blow to the head? A concussion? He sought for any memory beyond waking up here in this room, but there was nothing, a wasteland.
What had happened?
He stared again at the EKG monitor still connected to his chest by taped lead wires. And over in the corner stood a blood pressure monitor and an I.V. pole. So if he could name what lay around him, why couldn’t he remember his own name? He searched for a past, something to anchor him. But beyond waking up here in this dark room, he had no memory.
The smaller of the two boys seemed to sense his growing distress. The child stepped forward, his blue eyes catching the flash of the penlight. Monk—if that was really his name—sensed the boy knew more about him than he did himself. Proving this, the child seemed to read his heart and spoke the only words that would stir him from the bed.
The boy held up a small hand toward him, his fingers splayed, punctuating his need. “Save us.”
5
September 5, 9:30 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
“Chernobyl?” Elizabeth asked. “What was my father doing in Russia?”
She stared across the coffee table at the two other men. She was seated in an armchair with her back to a picture window that overlooked the woods of Rock Creek Park. They had been driven to this location after escaping the museum. Gray had used the words safe house, which had done little to make her feel safe. It was like something out of a spy novel. But the charm of the house—a two-story craftsman built of clinker brick and paneled in burnished tiger oak—helped calm her.
Somewhat.
She had washed up upon arriving, taking several minutes to scrub her hands and splash water on her face. But her hair still smelled of smoke, and her fingernails were still stained with paint. Afterward, she had sat for five minutes on the commode with her face in her palms, trying to make sense of the last few hours. She hadn’t known she was crying until discovering her hands were damp. It was all too much. She still hadn’t had a chance to process the death of her father. Though she didn’t doubt the truth of it, she had not come to accept the reality.
Not until she had some answers.
It was those questions that finally drew her out of the bathroom.
She eyed the newcomer across a table set with coffee. The man was introduced as Gray’s boss, Director Painter Crowe. She studied him. His features were angular, his complexion tanned. As an anthropologist, she read the Native American heritage in the set of his eyes—despite their glacial blue hue. His dark hair ran with a small streak of white over one ear, like a heron feather tucked there.
Gray shared the sofa with him, crouched and sifting through a stack of papers on the table.
Before anyone could answer her question, Kowalski returned from the kitchen in his stocking feet. His freshly polished shoes rested on the cold hearth. “Found some Ritz crackers and something that looked like cheese. Not sure. But they had salami.”
He leaned to place the platter in front of Elizabeth.
“Thank you, Joe,” she said, grateful for the simple and real gesture amid all the mystery.
The big man blushed a bit around the ears. “No problem,” he grumbled as he straightened. He pointed to the platter, seemed to forget what he was going to say—then with a shake of his head, retired to inspect his shoes again.