“You hunted scavengers?” she said. Simply looking at the man filled her with loathing. “You hunted children?”
“Children? We never hunted children. We hunted criminals. Men evading the police. Scavengers stealing radioactive automobile parts and selling them to cab drivers in Kyiv. Poachers killing boar raised on radioactive water and selling it to restaurants in Kyiv.”
Nadia imagined Bobby with a friend of his from school. “And if two of the scavengers happened to be boys?”
“They weren’t. They were a boy and a girl, but they were both teens. They were old enough to know right from wrong. And besides, they were children from the Zone. We were doing them a favor by trying to kill them. No one wants to be around their deformities. Normal men and women don’t want to marry them. You say I’m a beast for saying so but I’m just admitting what everyone else is thinking. And we don’t need a society of deformed people, do we?”
Nadia could sense Marko tightening beside her, exercising restraint so as not to say something that would get them shot.
“What was the connection between Adam Tesla and Ivan Valentin?” Nadia said.
“The boy killed his ex-wife.”
“Impossible.”
“He pushed her into the cooling pond.” The General explained how three members of the Zaroff Seven stumbled upon Adam and his friend scavenging and the pursuit that followed. “She inadvertently drank some of the water and died five months later. She was an agent provocateur with the KGB before he married her. ‘My honey trap,’ he used to call her.”
“How did Valentin’s son fit into all of this?” Nadia said.
“Valentin’s son had come home from America and had come along for the hunt. He saw the boy and the girl through his scope. He was the one who fired the initial shots. In that way, he was culpable in his mother’s death. If he were a better marksman, his mother would still be alive. But he wasn’t. So he took a vow of vengeance. His father tried to find out who the two children were but wasn’t successful. Then the boy’s picture turned up in a newspaper in New York. Something about him beating a professional hockey player in a race on skates.”
“Not a professional hockey player,” Marko said. “The fastest professional hockey player on skates in the world.”
“Congratulations,” the General said. “Maybe there’s a pond outside the prison where he’ll be spending the rest of his life. Young Valentin promised his father to avenge his mother on his deathbed.”
Nadia noticed the babushka’s right hand curling around a broomstick. Nadia tapped Marko’s foot.
“And why bring us here?” Nadia said. “Why go through all this trouble when your men had ample opportunity to kill us in Kyiv or Lviv?”
“You are the boy’s cousin. You are his guardian. You have to pay for his sin. It is a matter of honor that his death be avenged. As for the method, the vehicle graveyards are empty. There’s nothing left to steal. Chornobyl is changing. Nature is gradually healing itself. Thus there are fewer and fewer criminals to hunt. So I brought you here, tedious as the arrangements were, for the sport of it. To recreate the scene and make amends for the one that got away.”
“There are still poachers,” Nadia said.
“But they have rifles,” Marko said. “What fun would that be? A fair game.”
The General glared at Marko and started to reach for his rifle.
“What about the rest of the Zaroff Seven?” Nadia said.
The word “Zaroff” distracted him. He forgot the rifle, nodded at the rawboned man from Lviv instead. That made two of them, Nadia thought. “The Valentines are gone. The remaining five of us decided this could not go unpunished. The two of us happily volunteered for the mission.”
“Is Simeon Simeonovich one of them?” The question rolled off her tongue. Nadia had no reason to suspect him. But she didn’t trust him completely, either. Maybe she was constantly looking for validation he was a good man.
“That arrogant child? I don’t even like being in the same room with him. He’s a disgrace. He doesn’t know the real Russia. He doesn’t appreciate that it’s Russia’s destiny to recreate the Soviet Union. To take back the so-called independent states and make them her own again.”
Nadia could hear Marko cringing beside her. A moment of silence passed.
“I have a question,” the babushka said.
Everyone in the kitchen glanced in her direction with shocked expressions. No one was expecting her to speak.
“You said you were in charge of clean-up and security here,” she said. “Were you the one who brought the pet hunters?”
The General laughed. “Pet hunters? What are you talking about, old woman?”
“Someone sent pet hunters from Kyiv to kill the pets. Was that you? Are you responsible for my dog’s death? Did you send the butchers? The ones who drove around in trucks guzzling vodka and giving each other points for running over turtles?”
The General appeared incredulous. “We had to evacuate the entire village. What did you want us to do? Let radioactive animals act as agents to spread the poison?” He laughed. “Old woman, you’re a proper little Ukrainian peasant, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the babushka said, showing no signs of having been insulted. “And you’re a proper Soviet bastard.”
She whipped the broom handle around and smashed both lanterns. Glass cracked. The lanterns crashed against the stone oven. Kerosene spilled. A flame erupted.
“Fire,” said the rawboned man from Lviv.
Marko leaped at him. He grasped the rifle with outstretched hands. The rawboned man pulled the trigger. Marko’s momentum pushed the barrel of the gun toward the floor. A shot rang out. The bullet went into the wooden floor.
The General stood. He straightened his rifle. Nadia charged. She reared her right leg back and snapped her foot into his groin. He screamed. Doubled-over. Nadia grabbed his rifle. Tried to rip it out of his hands. He struggled to breathe but maintained his grip.
A flame flickered in the corner of her eye. Nadia pulled. He wouldn’t let go. She pulled harder. His grip strengthened. She pulled her right hand away and punched his nose. A groan escaped his lips. He fell back. Fury crossed his face. He used his backward momentum to rip the rifle out of Nadia’s hands. He fell to the floor, gun in his hands—
A deafening blast.
Nadia turned. The rawboned man from Lviv lay on the floor with a hole in his chest. Marko was sprawled beside him. The fire spread toward them.
A second blast.
Nadia turned back. The General collapsed. Blood spurted from his neck. A third shot. A hole appeared in his stomach. His eyes were open. He held his neck, gasping.
The babushka stood by a portable cabinet pointing a handgun, flames flying around her, still aiming at the General.
“This gun belonged to one of your pet hunters,” she said. “Now you will die by the bullets you gave them.”
She walked up to him and fired a fourth shot into his forehead.
Marko coughed. Smoke filled the kitchen. Nadia helped him up.
The babushka opened the front door. Nadia and Marko grabbed the rifles and hurried outside. The babushka told them to follow her to the back of the house. The white Lexus was parked around the corner from the garden.
“You must take their car and go,” the babushka said.
Nadia checked the ignition. “No keys,” she said.
Marko ran back into the house. He came back ten seconds later coughing, keys in hand.
Smoke oozed from the chimney and the window sills. There was no brush surrounding the perimeter of the house. No trees overhanging. The house would burn down but the fire wouldn’t spread.