“Thank you so much, Sam,” Nadia said. “This is very generous of you. When will we go on to the mainland?”
He frowned. “The mainland? You mean the Lower Forty-Eight?”
Nadia figured out his reference. “No, no. I mean Alaska proper.”
“Oh. Right. Day after tomorrow. On Monday.”
Nadia frowned. “You mean tomorrow. Today is Sunday.”
“No. Today is Saturday. When you crossed the international date line, the clock went back twenty-one hours. It’s one p.m. on Saturday. That’s why they call them ‘Tomorrow’s Island’ and ‘Yesterday’s Island.’”
After Sam left, Adam tugged on Nadia’s sleeve and asked her to translate. Nadia repeated what Sam had said.
“You’re on Yesterday’s Island,” she said. “You get to live the day again. As of today, you get to start over.”
Nadia and Adam had developed blisters around their eyes from the wind on the strait. Adam had also earned some hard black blisters on the soles of his feet because his boots were so worn. Sam’s wife treated them with an antibiotic ointment.
They ate, recuperated, and stayed indoors so as not to attract attention for two days. On Monday, a large helicopter delivered the mail. While his wife feigned illness and distracted the officer of the Border Patrol, Sam escorted Nadia and Adam into the back of the helicopter. The pilot, a longtime friend, took off.
They flew south to the Nome Airport, where they met an old bush pilot with a Cessna. He flew Nadia and Adam back north to Kotzebue, a small town with a population of three thousand. It looked more like an industrial park that had been plunked down on a massive gravel pit at the tip of a peninsula on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
A middle-aged man met them in an old Jeep at the Kotzebue Airport. While the Chukchi and Sam had the same bone structure and skin color as Adam, this man looked like an artist’s impression of the boy himself in thirty years. The one exception was the huge smile on his face that was evident from the moment Nadia and Adam stepped off the plane.
He hugged each of them as though he’d known them since birth.
“Hello, Adam,” he said in English. “My name is Robert. Robert Seelick. I am your mother’s brother. I am your uncle.”
CHAPTER 76
KIRILO CHARTERED A plane in Magadan. Victor flew with him to Anchorage. Kirilo kept a select array of temporary business visas up to date in case he needed to travel on the spur of the moment, including the Category B visa for visits to America. Pavel and three of Kirilo’s bodyguards, who were waiting in Magadan, had similar documentation and joined him. Kirilo had been to New York City and Los Angeles three times each and enjoyed none of the visits. The excess of wealth and power reminded him that he was relatively poor and powerless on a global scale. After each of his visits, he couldn’t wait to get back to Kyiv.
Victor was an American citizen, so they parted ways at US Customs and Border Protection. When Kirilo caught up with Victor at the gate to their connecting flight, Victor handed him a cell phone.
“Where did you get this?” Kirilo said.
Victor nodded at a kiosk for a cell phone vendor. “There’s someone on the other end of the line who wants to talk to you.”
Kirilo pressed the phone to his ear.
“Papa?” It was Isabella’s voice.
“Bella?”
“Papa.” Isabella sounded teary, as though she’d been crying.
“Are you all right?”
She sniffed some tears in. “Yes, I’m okay. Oh, but it’s horrible, Papa. It’s horrible.”
“Are you hurt? Have they touched you in any way?”
“Well, no…”
“Are you getting enough to eat? Are they taking care of you?”
“Well, yes…”
“Good. Listen to me, Bella. Be good. Do whatever they tell you to do, and don’t show them any of your sass. Do you hear me, Isabella?”
She didn’t answer. By the time Kirilo realized the line had gone dead, Victor had already stretched his hand out to retrieve the phone. Kirilo gave it to him.
“You didn’t have a phone before,” Kirilo said. “You were worried I’d take it from you, triangulate the number you called, and find her. But you’re not worried anymore.”
“The boys are expecting me to call every hour on the hour from now on,” Victor said. “And you’re in my country now.”
“Yes, we’re in your country now. So why don’t you just let her go?”
“Soon, cousin. Soon.”
An airline employee announced that the flight to New York City would begin boarding in half an hour.
“You have her residence under surveillance right now?” Kirilo said.
“Yes, but she won’t go there. That would be too obvious.”
“Where will she go?”
“The question isn’t where she’s going. We can’t even be sure she’s going to New York. The question is, who does she trust? The question is, who’s going to know where she’s going?”
“Why do I feel as though you’re saving the best for last?”
“He wears his hair in an elastic band like a schoolgirl, is built like a man who worked the docks, and dresses like an Italian fashion designer.”
“What is this abomination’s name?”
“He calls himself Johnny Tanner, and I’m going to make him my willing accomplice.”
CHAPTER 77
AS SOON AS she stepped foot in Robert Seelick’s house, Nadia called Johnny Tanner.
“How are you? Where are you?” Johnny said.
“That’s not important,” Nadia said. “I need you to do something for me and not ask questions.”
“Shoot.”
“I need you to find a biologist in or around New York City. A radiobiologist would be even better. Private sector or academic. But not a government employee. You hear me? He can’t be a government employee.”
“I hear you. What am I supposed to tell this guy?”
“That you have a friend in possession of a scientific formula with epic ramifications. And she’ll only reveal it to an American man of science. Can you sell that, Johnny?”
“I’ll try.”
“You have to do more than try. You have to make it happen. I need to go directly from the airport to a meeting with him as soon as I land.”
“When will that be?”
“Wednesday morning. I’ll call you back with the details when I have them.”
After she hung up, Nadia whispered to Adam, “Locket?”
He nodded confidently and pulled it out from under his shirt to show her.
That evening, Robert’s wife served a dinner of caribou steak, steamed vegetables, bannock bread, and frozen berries. She was a slight woman, with lithe features and a kind face. After dinner, they sat in the living room and had coffee, tea, milk, and fresh chocolate chip–walnut cookies.
“In Inupiat culture,” Robert said, “there is a supreme being called Silap Inua, but there is no afterlife. Instead, Inupiat believe that, after spending some time in limbo, the soul of a deceased is reincarnated in the body of a newborn infant.”
He paused for Nadia to translate for Adam from English to Ukrainian.
“There was a boy in our village some years ago named Aagayuk,” Robert said. “He vanished when he was two. He may have been kidnapped, he may have wandered off and drowned accidentally. No one ever figured it out. He had a lot of energy and showed promise to be a good hunter. He would have been seventeen in September if he were still alive. How old are you, Adam?”
“Sixteen,” Nadia said. She translated for Adam.