Belly of the Beast (27 page)

When Niki disappeared, I thought she was dead. I said another prayer, then I heard her call.

“Victor Malenkov.”

Malenkov raised his gun awkwardly; he was missing fingers and his skin looked like minced beef. He fired two more shots into the fog.

My ears ranging, I strained for any sign of Niki. Strangely, the shock of cold disappeared and the water felt warm.

It seemed like a long time before Niki answered from a different direction.

“I’ll trade myself for the girl.”

Malenkov fired again. “You’ll not trick me this time.”

“No. Run,” I yelled again.

I looked back and forth, terrified that Niki had been killed, but then her voice came from yet another direction.

“Stop shooting and you can have me: rape me, cut out my heart, do what you want. You can save the child and have your revenge as well.”

I couldn’t believe it, but Niki came out of the fog, the satchel over her shoulder as if she had intended to ski away, but she didn’t. She faced Malenkov.

“How touching,” said Malenkov, “the American trying to save the Russian.”

I dreaded what he was going to do to both of us. I almost let go of the ice.

“First I get the girl out,” said Niki. She put down the satchel, then sidestepped toward me. I felt the ice flex with her weight.

“How did you find us?” she asked Malenkov.

“Your stupid friend Dimitri Andryevich made some calls to the hospital. I’ve already taken care of him.”  

“You could have had other agents kill me at Leningrad,” said Niki, “or at the spa.” She edged closer. Water crept toward her skis.

“The thrill is in the chase. I wasn’t about to give that away. I figure you had a fair head start in the time it took me to get to Sovetskiy. Now I intend to savor the moment you beg for your life.”

“You called the ambulance when I fell from the tree, didn’t you? You could have left me to die.”

“As long as your mother was loose, I needed you alive. Dead bait would do me no good.”

At first, I didn’t understand why Niki was wasting time talking to him, then I heard Malenkov grunt. Niki had been distracting him.

“What the fuck?” Malenkov said.

The weight of the Buran was sinking the ice on his side of the crack.

Niki thrust one of her ski poles just within my reach. I grabbed it.

I looked back as Niki pulled me onto the ice. On the other side, the ice was totally submerged, and the water bottle floated at Malenkov’s feet. He tried to step back, slipped. The gun flew. He landed in front of the Buran.

Niki pulled me back further.

“Stop right there,” said Malenkov. He was sitting in water, his gun gone. He reached back and grabbed the front of the Buran to pull himself up, but the heavy machine started to slide. It pushed Malenkov deeper, then followed him into the water with hardly a splash. Niki had been right about not taking the snow machine; it was too heavy for the thin ice. The Buran’s headlight glowed beneath the surface a moment, then was gone. A wave washed up on our side.

I flipped off the binding on the ski I had left and started to get up when Niki yelled, “No!”

Malenkov’s head popped up on our side of the lead. “You’ll never get away from me,” he said.

Niki grabbed my ski and went after him, adrenalin in full control of her body.

“No,” I yelled. “He can’t get out.”

But Niki didn’t stop until the tips of her skis were in Malenkov’s face. He grabbed one and pulled. I thought Niki was going in, but she started swinging my ski. One blow opened the side of his head, then she started jabbing the ski point at his bandaged face. I think she got his good eye, but Malenkov held on.

Niki turned my ski around and jammed the square end on the fingers of his good hand. Malenkov may have had nine lives, but he lost most of his fingers.

Even after he floated free, Niki kept swinging, crying, and swearing terribly. I had to wade ankle-deep to pull her back.

Malenkov just floated in the middle of the widening lead, one bloody eye still open.

Even after we were well clear of the water, we were still in deep trouble. I had been in the water for four or five minutes. Niki had been in bad shape to begin with, and now her feet were soaked too. Our skis were iced, useless.

“Take my clothes and go on with the canister,” said Niki.

“We’re a team,” I said. “I won’t leave you.” And at that point, I didn’t intend to.

I unpacked the lavender ski jacket, and thanked God for the silly fur-lined boots Galen had gotten for us. I hoped Malenkov hadn’t killed Galen too. I dressed quickly using my new red sweater for makeshift leggings. I think Niki would have given me her pants, but she couldn't get off her boots. I think her feet were frozen to them.

I left my new jeans with my wet snowsuit. The thin gloves had gotten soaked when Niki was swinging my ski. We left them along with the half the food and water, but Niki still wouldn’t leave the canister.

The black gloves were damp, but better than nothing. We each took one glove and one ski pole to help us walk and used Niki’s fur boots to cover our other hands. Niki still wore the red scarf around her head.

We started walking as soon as we could, hobbling really. I carried the sack and the satchel.

I looked back several times and thought I saw Malenkov following us, but they were just walking nightmares.

Niki and I shivered violently at first. Then she did an odd thing. She looked up and said, “Dear God, I have never prayed before, but I’m asking you now. Spare Katrina and my son and you can take me.” Suddenly, she stopped shaking.

I knew about hypothermia; I probably had it myself. I knew Niki needed help fast. I also knew there was land to the north, Russian land, but as much as Niki needed help, I turned west, knowing I would have to live with that decision the rest of my life.

We went on for hours, Niki moving more like a robot than a human being. It was still dark when she fell. I hated myself then. I shouldn’t have tried to make it to Finland.

I knew when I left Niki on the ice that it would be all but impossible to find my way back to her. She looked at me but said nothing. Tears froze on my face. Both my parents were dead, and now I was leaving Niki to die cold and alone. I put on both gloves and took both ski poles, but left the food sack. I went due north to get to land as quickly as possible. I intended to come back with help, any help, but I took Father’s medical reports and the canister of bone marrow with me just in case.

After a ways, I left a ski pole on the ice pointing back towards Niki. Further on, I left the other. By then, there was a hint of daylight, but I could hardly stand. I scolded myself for leaving the poles.

I was about to sit down when I saw them, two fishermen sitting on a sled by holes in the ice.

I didn’t speak a word of Finnish, but it didn’t matter. When they called out in Russian, I knew I had failed at everything.

Nevertheless, they fed me seal oil and hot tea. A few minutes later we went after Niki, the two men pulling me on the sled. It wasn’t as far as I thought and she was still alive. The men said they never would have found her without the trail of ski poles. Niki said nothing. Perhaps she heard the men speak Russian and resigned herself to dying.

I needed to know how close I had come. I asked how far away it was to Finland.

“Finland?” said one. He looked at his comrade, then said sheepishly, “We are fishing in Finnish water. Hay grows taller in a neighbor’s field. You want to go to Finland?”

I nodded. “Very much.”

“Land is not far. My sister married a Finn. He has a Buran. He’ll help get your mother to a hospital.”

The fishermen bundled both of us and headed for shore. In all, we traveled by sled, snowmobile, and car to a hospital in Helsinki. Some diplomat put the bone marrow on a plane to San Francisco.

That afternoon a doctor who spoke English came to my hospital room.

“Where’s Niki?” I demanded.

“Resting. Nothing for you to worry about. When you’re better, I’ll take you to her.”

Later, he brought in the canister, dented on one side. “Looks like a bullet hit it,” he said. “It saved the bone marrow and your mother.”

“And me. She pulled me out of the water after the shots.” I never told him that Niki wasn’t my mother.  

The next morning, the doctor brought a specialist and undid my bandages. They were most interested in my right hand. They talked back and forth in Finnish as if I wasn’t there until I interrupted. “What’s the matter with my hand?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

“That’s what you said about my mother. Take me to her or I’ll scream.”

Niki was unconscious when they wheeled me in. I cried. She had been so beautiful; now her ears and nose were black. Tubes and wires stuck her everywhere. Lights blinked. “You can’t die,” I whispered in her ear. A few minutes later, she opened her eyes.

A day later, Niki spoke. She made me swear to send her notebooks back to the United States so her son could read them some day. Then she asked me to write down what happened on the ice. I couldn’t, my right hand was useless, but a nurse gave me a tape recorder. During the next two days, she recorded everything she remembered. Eventually I transcribed it, filled in some blanks, and sent it with the notebooks.

 I also wrote this journal because I remembered things differently. But by either account, Niki Michaels was the bravest person I ever knew, next to my father of course. I wished he hadn’t died; I wished my real mother hadn’t died; and I wished Niki wasn’t dying. It was horrific.

As Niki got better, she got worse. They amputated both feet and seven fingers, then her right leg. She hallucinated with fevers, screaming at times. I found myself wishing I hadn’t found her, wishing she hadn’t recovered from the cold, but I didn’t want her to die. She was all I had. I thought I would die myself. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and sometimes I would just break down crying.

The doctors and nurses didn’t know what was wrong. They probably thought I was crazy. Perhaps I was, but I had good reason to be.

Skin sloughed off the back of my hand leaving a bloody mince, a mystery until they discovered one of the black gloves was caked with radioactive sludge from when Niki had worn it on her foot. I began to understand Niki’s condition. My whole body had been irradiated just from that glove. I also knew about the research my mother and father were doing about the third generation. My children would have worse problems, but I figured I was already sterile. I swore then that I’d carry on my parents’ work. For starters, I gave the medical records to the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland.

Meanwhile, Niki got worse. Delirious when she wasn’t comatose, raving sometimes. I held her and told her everything would be okay. I lied.

A day later, Grandfather Kolchak arrived. Some thought him evil, the
Vampire of Mayak
Niki had said in the recording, but it didn’t matter. I collapsed in his arms. I needed someone to be the grownup, someone to take over. He held me for an hour or more. I wanted to be a child again, but that couldn’t happen. My childhood had ended when I woke up in the back of my father’s car.

Grandfather Kolchak went to Niki after he took care of me. She looked at him as he entered the room. He gently held what was left of her hand. Tears filled his eyes.

“You did it,” he said to Niki. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Alex got the bone marrow?”

Grandfather hesitated. He knew the marrow hadn’t been kept cold enough. “The hospital received it, but—”

“Alex is okay?” Niki asked again.

“Yes. Alex is cured.”

The pain left Niki’s face then. She almost smiled. I think she pictured spruce trees dressed in fresh snow, Alex skiing by her side. Her eyes stayed open, but she stopped breathing.

Tears streamed down Grandfather’s face. He kissed Niki’s frost burned cheek, then closed her eyes.

“She was only a child,” he said to me.

I think he always believed she was his daughter. He clutched a little lapel pin with a blue columbine and wept. It was my turn to hold him.

I closed Katrina’s notebook, but the image of my mother desperately trying to save me didn’t go away. I pressed her medal to my chest and wept. When my eyes dried enough to focus once more, I looked around the room. Sunlight cast a rainbow on the window casing, but there was no joy in it. My mother had died for nothing. I should have guessed; I didn’t get my transplant until mid-January.

When I finally went downstairs, Katie motioned me to a chair. “I’m afraid the tea is a little cold,” she said as she poured a cup and slid it toward me. “It’s been a long time.”

I stared at the flower in the middle of the table rising from a dented stainless canister.

“It’s a calla lily,” she said. “Did you know it represents resurrection?”

“It’s a sad story, isn’t it? About my mother, I mean.”

Katie smiled. “She loved you more than anything. You know, that canister saved her life.” She extended her hand to it.

“But she died anyway,” I said, “and the awful thing is that she died for nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Katie’s index finger dipped into the dent. “If the canister hadn’t stopped Malenkov’s bullet, you wouldn’t have gotten the bone marrow that saved your life.”

I shook my head. “But I just read that it was ruined, and I didn’t get a transplant until—”

“Until Yuri Kolchak got Katrina to San Francisco. It seems the two of you are from the same gene pool.”

It took a minute for the last bit of the combination to unlock my past—and my future. Katrina Kolchak.

I slipped the medallion cord over my head and fingered the Cyrillic lettering. “I was wrong about you,” I said. “I think you do understand about losing parents. I admire that you got your life together. Is that room still for rent? You’d make a good role model for an unshaved bum trying to find his way.”

“You haven’t been here an hour,” said Katie. “You don’t know me.”

I slid the medallion toward her and held her eyes with mine.

“I think I do. It’s time you got your medal back.”