Chernobyl Murders

11

Although it was Saturday and Nikolai knew he and Pavel were not due back in their stuffy PK room at the Pripyat post office until Monday, here was Pavel at his door. Pavel wore jeans, his hair was messed up, he needed a shave, and he kept glancing up and down the hallway.

“What do you want?” asked Nikolai.

“Let me in. I don’t want to speak out here.”

Once the door was closed, Nikolai pulled his robe more tightly about his waist and went to the bedroom adjoining the small living area. “I have a business matter to discuss with an associate,” he said into the bedroom before closing the door.

Nikolai and Pavel sat at the small table in the kitchenette.

Nikolai nodded to the bedroom. “Without company, it would be a lonely weekend.”

“I keep forgetting you are not blessed with a wife.”

“Sarcasm?” asked Nikolai.

“Perhaps,” said Pavel. “But more importantly, Captain Putna called early this morning. We’re getting a new assignment.”

“Not at the post office?”

“There’s been an explosion at the Chernobyl plant, and Captain Putna has put the PK on special duty.”

“What kind of duty? What happened at the plant? Is it sabotage?”

Pavel glanced to the bedroom door, which remained closed. He leaned forward over the table and spoke softly. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear it. One of the reactors exploded. Early this morning there was a crimson glow in the sky. Now there’s smoke spreading north. Captain Putna says it’s not an ordinary fire. Radiation may have been released, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. Some technicians working at the plant have been seen fleeing the area.

On the way here, I saw people out on their balconies. Even though they’ve been told to remain indoors, they get a great view from the upper floors.”

“Who told them to remain indoors?” asked Nikolai. “No one told me.”

“You and your friend have remained indoors, haven’t you?”

“What’s an accident at the plant got to do with us? What about those ministries? Medium Machine Building or Energy and Elec-trification. Aren’t they in charge?”

Pavel took a notebook from his inside jacket pocket, opened it to a page, and put it on the table. He spoke softly, glancing occasionally to the closed bedroom door. “Captain Putna says he’s not sure if it involves sabotage, but we need to investigate the possibility.”

“Is it the Gypsy Moth theory we heard about?” asked Nikolai.

“What Gypsy Moth theory?”

“Don’t you remember? We were watching for mention of the code name in correspondence. We put it in our report to Captain Putna.”

“Pure speculation,” said Pavel. He pointed to the open page of his notebook. “Here are the facts. We’ve been given a list of Chernobyl employees and their addresses. Some have been ordered to the plant to assist emergency personnel but have refused to go.

Some were under observation before this happened.”

Nikolai took Pavel’s notebook, studied the list. “A familiar name or two. Especially Juli Popovics and Mihaly Horvath, the lovebirds.

I thought Juli Popovics was pregnant and went to visit her aunt in Visenka.”

“If you remember our last report, she’s to go there next month,” said Pavel.

“Does Captain Putna think a pregnant woman is involved in sabotage?”

“I don’t know what Captain Putna thinks,” said Pavel. “I know only of this list of people we’ve been ordered to report on. Captain Putna said Major Komarov is angrier than shit and wants to know the cause of the explosion. Komarov is heading up the investigation himself.”

“This radiation,” said Nikolai, “do you think it’s dangerous?”

“They’re hosing down streets on the south side of town.” Pavel stood and pulled the chain on the overhead light, but the light did not come on. “The electricity is out at my place, too.”

“I hadn’t noticed. We didn’t need lights.” Nikolai smiled, then became serious. “What about your wife?”

Pavel walked to the window, looked up at the mix of smoke and clouds in the overcast sky. “I put her on the early bus to Kiev.”

“Were there others on the bus?” asked Nikolai.

“The bus was full,” said Pavel.

From inside a helicopter flying at a thousand meters, the fire looked like a kerosene smudge pot used to mark road construction. But as the helicopter flew closer, vibrating violently because of the heavy load of sand swinging below, the fire grew in size.

The helicopter pilot steered south, staying out of the cloud of bluish smoke. He dropped to five hundred meters and saw the spray from several fire hoses below. At one hundred meters, individual firemen were visible. Masks with cylindrical snouts covered the firemen’s faces. In their masks and coats and hats, the firemen looked like multicolored beetles.

“It’s a graphite fire!” shouted the pilot.

“Graphite’s supposed to stop the neutrons!” screamed the co-pilot. “Drop the load and go!”

Inside the low-level counting laboratory, two technicians in off-white caps who had just climbed the stairs from the basement watched the helicopter drop its load of sand and disappear beyond the trees to the west. The man and woman stayed inside the double doors of the building. On the road out front, an ambulance headed for the fire.

From where they stood, the man and woman could not see the fire, but they saw the thick smoke rising to the north.

“The graphite is burning,” said the woman. “What should we do?”

“The explosion must have cracked the concrete shell,” said the man. “We have no choice but to stay inside.”

“We’ve been here for hours with no word,” said the woman, heading for a rack on the wall near the door. She took several dosimeters from the rack and began looking into them, aiming one after another at the dull light coming through the glass doors. “They’re all at two hundred already. I thought the building was sealed.”

The man behind her walked slowly backward away from the doors.

“If we’ve already picked up two hundred millirems up here…”

The woman turned. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the basement. If there’s still water, I’m going to shower.

Then I’m staying down there until this is over. Are you coming?”

The woman dropped the dosimeters to the tile floor and followed the man, removing her off-white cap and throwing it aside as she ran.

Outside the building, farther along the road to Pripyat, a crowd had gathered at the crossroads beyond the main gate. Several vehicles were parked about, some militia and fire vehicles and a few private cars. The crowd consisted mostly of uniformed firemen, militiamen, and plant guards. But there was also a group of civilians who had been stopped at the crossroads, several men and women and even a few children. Many stared at the column of smoke in the distance.

An argument began between civilians and militiamen. A few men among the civilians began pushing and shoving, causing some women to scream. One young woman, slender, wearing a jacket over a cotton dress, held a little girl in one arm while holding the hand of another girl some years older. When a fireman wearing a filter mask approached and swept the slender probe of a Geiger counter in front of the woman and the two little girls, the woman backed away, and the little girls stared wide-eyed.

An ambulance sped to the gate from the plant. Instead of driving through, it skidded to a stop, the rear doors flew open, and at least a dozen firemen with blackened coats piled out. All of the firemen wore filter masks.

The fireman with the Geiger counter waved the probe frantically over the returned firemen and shouted obscenities through his filter mask. A bus drove up, and militiamen, firemen, and guards herded the civilians onto the bus like cattle. One fireman asked the woman with the two little girls the name of the youngest.

“Ilonka!” cried the woman. “Ilonka Horvath! She wants to know what’s become of her father, Mihaly Horvath!”

“I don’t know,” said the fireman, taking the little girl into his arms. “No one is allowed inside the facility except emergency workers. Come, Ilonka! Come, Mother! Hurry! The bus will take us to safety!” The fireman ran onto the bus ahead of the mother and the other little girl.

“Everyone get on the bus!” shouted a militiaman.

“But my car…” said one of the men.

“To hell with your car!” screamed the militiaman.

After the bus sped off, two militiamen wearing handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths stood together, looking at a man who had just driven up.

“KGB guard from the Belarussian border.”

“How can you tell?”

“He’s driving a Zhiguli instead of a Volga, and when he opened the window, I saw his green uniform.”

“He didn’t leave the window open long.”

“Not with this smell in the air. It’s like eating coins.”

Militiamen and plant guards moved aside as several buses rolled through the crossroads and headed down the road to Pripyat.

“I wonder how many buses are coming,” said one militiaman after the buses drove off. “Those came all the way from Kiev.”

“Yes, I saw the markings.”

“I wish I was in Kiev.”

The militiamen went silent, glancing at the KGB border guard in his green uniform who had gotten out of the Zhiguli and begun questioning plant guards.

The dashboard of the car was covered with a wet towel, and wet rags were stuffed into the side vents. From the back seat, Juli could see the road between Marina and her boyfriend, Vasily. Vasily’s hair was dark, like Mihaly’s. Despite black smoke obscuring the horizon, everything looked normal outside. A couple walking a dog, and a man on a bicycle, a school in session, brightly-lit inside with students raising their hands to a teacher at the front of the classroom.

“It’s an upside-down world,” said Vasily. “In some places, people are in a panic. Like at the hydrofoil dock on the river when they found out the run to Kiev was cancelled. But in other places, people go about their daily business.”

Vasily had come to the apartment to get Marina. He was aware of an explosion at Chernobyl, but because of the news blackout, did not know any details. Vasily was driving them the few blocks to Mihaly’s apartment to find out if Mihaly was home, to find out if Nina was there, to find out anything they could. To convince Vasily to take them, Juli had voiced her concern for Mihaly’s little girls, children who would be most susceptible to radiation.

So long as they sealed the car and stayed inside, they would be as safe as in the apartment. Juli held the dosimeter up to the light.

Forty millirems, another ten while they ran to the car, or inside the car because of Vasily’s drive from the village on the other side of the Chernobyl plant. Juli would check the dosimeter every few minutes. If there were increases, she would tell Vasily to hurry back to the apartment.

A militia car rushed past in the opposite direction, ignoring Vasily’s high speed.

“I saw plenty of them while driving here,” said Vasily. “The militia speeding around like maniacs. City workers washing streets.

No wonder some people assume everything is normal.”

“What was it like nearer the plant?” asked Juli.

“Never mind how it is near the plant,” said Vasily, briefly turning to Juli in the back seat. “You can’t go there!”

“I know,” said Juli. “I simply wondered.”

“Some private cars, all heading for Kiev. I saw people walking south. They carried suitcases. One farmer leading his livestock looked like Noah going to the ark. There were buses lined up on the side of the road outside Pripyat, but there didn’t seem to be a plan.

When I saw firemen with masks, I kept everything shut up and even tied on the handkerchief. Momma and my sister are doing what you did. All sealed up inside the house.”

“But you live closer to the plant,” said Juli.

“I know,” said Vasily.

At Mihaly’s apartment building, all three ran in as fast as they could, went up the stairs, and down the hall. Juli knocked on the door. Knocked again more loudly. A woman with a cane came out of the apartment next door.

“They went somewhere,” said the woman.

“All of them?” asked Juli.

“The mother and her little girls. I told her I’d watch them, but she insisted. She drove with a neighbor to the plant. They both have husbands there. She left the door open, so I closed it.” The woman glanced at Vasily. “I’m watching the apartment.”

“Did Mihaly Horvath come home this morning?” asked Juli.

“No, I told you. He’s at the plant with Yuri Skabichevsky. Their wives went to see about them. I can see flames from my window.

You want to come in and look?”

“We’re in a hurry,” said Vasily, leading Juli and Marina back to the stairs.

The woman followed. “Only eight days until Easter, and something like this. Thank God my husband works at the radio factory.

Some children went to school, so everything is fine. The firemen are in control. Irina Kiseleva’s husband is a fireman. She is very proud. She told me many technicians are from Russia or Hungary.

She criticizes their aloofness at times, but I always disagree with her… because of my neighbors, the Horvaths. Are you sure you don’t want to look at the fire from my window?”

On their way back to the apartment, Vasily drove through a downtown marketplace to see if there was any news posted. But the board at the entrance to the market street contained nothing about the explosion or the danger of radiation.

“I wonder how the radiation will affect the food,” said Marina.

“Because of the wind, Belarussia will get it worse,” said Juli, looking up at the sky.

“What can be done for the children?” asked Marina.

“They’ll give them potassium iodide.”

“Will it prevent illness?”

“It will help,” said Juli.

Vasily turned the corner at Selskom Market, the largest food store in Pripyat. Instead of an orderly line on the sidewalk, today’s line was thick and spilled into the street. The line undulated and wagged its tail as those farther back moved side to side, looking to the front.

Vasily stopped the car across the street from Selskom Market.

“This is insanity. No children on the streets and not even many women means trouble.”

“Mostly men in line,” said Marina. “Angry men.”

As she said this, a man squeezing out the doorway with a package under his arm was shoved to the ground. The man got up and hurried away, turning to curse at the others. When Vasily put the car in gear, a plump young woman squeezed through the crowd and walked quickly, ignoring the angry stares and calls of those in line.

The woman carried two fishnet bags so full they dragged on the ground. A plump woman…

“I know her,” said Juli. “Her name is Natalya. She works in my building. She might be able to tell us something.”

“Should we give her a ride?” asked Vasily.

“Look!” said Marina. “One of the men from the line is chasing her.”

Vasily drove to the other side of the street and pulled to the curb.

Juli opened the back door. “Get in, Natalya!”

Natalya hesitated a moment, looked behind at the approaching man, then squeezed into the back of the car with her load of groceries. The man shouted, “Jewess!” as they drove away.

“What’s going on?” asked Juli.

“Everyone wants… food,” said Natalya, catching her breath.

“It’s best to get food… now before it becomes contaminated.

Canned foods…”

Juli interrupted. “I meant, what’s going on at the plant?”

“Oh,” said Natalya, gathering her bags about her. “There’s a fire in one of the reactors. I talked to a man who was there. He said it exploded, and it’s still burning. He said to stay indoors, seal yourself up. But I needed food. My apartment’s to the left up here.”

“Did this man say anything about injuries?”

“He thinks several may have been injured. The explosion blew the roof off.”

“Did he tell you names of victims?”

“No names. But he said there were many ambulances. People walking around in some streets like nothing’s happened, and at the market there were all these rumors. One man said they were evacuating Kopachi. Another said since Kopachi is the closest village to the plant, there might not be anyone to evacuate. Someone said they saw the Pripyat Party boss driving out of town in his white Volga.

Another said a man who was fishing at the river returned home with his face turned beet red. Slavs… we are of the same mind.

We believe in death.”

Natalya looked out the window and shouted. “Stop here!”

Before she got out of the car, Natalya placed two cans of beans on the back seat. “Thanks for the ride.”

Juli looked out the back window at Natalya scurrying up the walk to her building. Then she looked into the dosimeter.

“What does it say now?” asked Marina.

“Almost sixty,” said Juli.

No matter what Juli or Marina said, there was no way to stop Vasily from leaving the apartment and driving closer to the burning reactor in order to retrieve his mother and sister.

“Won’t they be safer in the house?” asked Marina.

“The house leaks like a sieve,” said Vasily. “I should have brought them with me earlier.”

Vasily tied a scarf about his head, another over his mouth and nose. “Do I look like an old babushka?”

“Be careful,” said Marina.

“I will,” said Vasily. “When I get back, I’ll rip out the seat covers before I come inside. Find some clothes for my sister and Mama.

Have a full tub of water in case there’s no pressure. Gather up food for the trip. We’ll head for Kiev as soon as I get back.”

Vasily paused before opening the door. “Don’t worry, we’ll all go to Kiev for Thursday’s May Day parade and be back here the following week after things have cooled down.”

Marina sat next to Juli on her bed. “It’s the only thing we can do, Juli.

You said yourself we must leave. Especially your little passenger.”

“But I wish I knew what’s become of Mihaly,” said Juli. “And his wife going there, taking her little girls and going there…”

“The old woman said they left when it was dark. Nobody knew about the radiation yet. Maybe Mihaly called and they went to meet him. They could be in Kiev by now.”

Juli and Marina hugged, and Juli stared at the curtains over the balcony door through which she had first heard the explosion, then voices, early in the morning. Not even a full day had gone by, yet it seemed like weeks. When Vasily returned and they left for Kiev, more time would have gone by, and Juli wondered if, somehow, she might be able to forget Mihaly. But even as she thought this, she knew it would be impossible, especially because of the baby. Her baby.