Chernobyl Murders

1

Present Day

Kiev, Ukraine

Kiev is unusually warm for May as a noon crowd thickens with workers on their lunch break. Some carry lunches wrapped in newspaper as they weave in and out of tourists studying brochures and shoppers carrying parcels. The workers move quickly downhill on Khreshchatik Boulevard like rivulets of water eager to reach the cool river bottom of the ancient valley. They flood onto European Square like conquering Mongol hordes, taking tourists and shoppers with them into the park, where food vendors wait in the shade of chestnut trees. Ignoring pedestrian underpasses, the crowd tightens a tourniquet on the flow of traffic. A person monitoring a spy satellite might conclude something in the city has resulted in panic, but it is simply hunger.

Queues at food vendors extend into the hot sun on the square.

Slavs with frowning broad faces lean sideways to study the length of queues. These workers from downtown hotels, museums, and shops wear faded cotton coveralls and dresses of nonprofessionals.

Although tulips bloom in European Square, locals scowl as they curse the current Eurasian heat wave.

On the other hand, thin-faced non-Slav tourists in casual dress wear grins. It is as if the Carpathians ruled out smiling for anyone born east of its slopes. Perhaps it has to do with the Great War, the reign of Stalin, and other more recent terrors. Sordid headlines of war and global climate change all around them, yet Americans, British, and Hungarians with money to spend put on contemporary

“happy faces,” while Ukrainians, Russians, Belarussians, Czechs, and Serbs insist on misery. The climate going to hell. Unchecked fundamentalism stretching its talons across the Black Sea to convert cathedrals into mosques. Who knows how many causes can be blamed for traditional Eastern European melancholy?

But here is a contrast. At the wide entrance to the park, an older man sits alone on a bench. Even though his face is thin and he wears a baseball cap typical of a tourist, he does not smile. Most park benches face south into the sun, or west to provide a view of the tree-lined boulevard. The bench on which the older man sits seems the only one facing away from cheerfulness and into a four-foot wall put up to block side-street construction. The construction continues, machinery buzzing and clanking despite the noon hour.

It is difficult to tell the age of the man facing the construction wall. He wears slacks and, despite the heat, a sports coat and a red, white, and green tie. The white emblem above the beak of his black baseball cap reads, “Sox.” The man’s sharp nose is prominent, his narrow face deeply lined. A pair of frowning native Kievians, white-uniformed young women carrying lunch sacks, comment on his age as they pass. One saying from behind he looked younger in his cap; the other commenting on his face. “A man who has lived a hard life,” she says. “You can always tell.”

The older man turns to watch the young women depart, nods, then looks back to the construction wall. A younger man, who has been leaning against the wall observing construction on the other side, turns and stares at the older man. The younger man is in his thirties, tall, shaved bald, and wearing dark sunglasses.

After a moment the younger man approaches the bench, smiling as the older man slides over to make room. The younger man wears khaki slacks, carries his jacket, and does not wear a tie. He raises his sunglasses for a moment and glances down at a tour guidebook he carries. He speaks, his voice loud enough to be heard over traffic and the construction.

“It says before the fall of the Soviet Union this was called Lenkomsomol Square. I beg your pardon, but do you happen to know the meaning of Lenkomsomol?”

The question is in Ukrainian, and the older man answers in Ukrainian. “It’s a shortened version of Lenin Komsomol, or Lenin Youth League. They changed the name some time ago.” The older man motions with his hand beyond the construction wall. “Over there the Ukrainian House used to be the Lenin Museum.”

“My first trip to Kiev,” says the younger man. “I hope I didn’t interrupt your lunch break.”

“Not at all,” says the older man. “As you can see, I’m not eating.

I can’t make out your accent. Is it Russian?”

“I’d call it goulash,” says the younger man, smiling. “A mixture of several languages. Hungarian, English, Russian… even some German.”

The older man studies the younger man several seconds before responding. “You speak Ukrainian well. Coincidentally, besides Ukrainian, I also know Hungarian, Russian, and, more recently, English.”

The two men consider one another several seconds before the younger man continues. “Are you from Kiev?”

“I currently live in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States.”

“I can see from your cap. Are the Sox white in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure if they were white or red. But regarding Kiev, is this a return visit?”

After a pause the older man says, “I lived here many years ago.

The mood was completely different then.”

“How so?”

“A state of panic. And I don’t mean the rush to queue up for lunch.”

The younger man raises a hand to shade his eyes and looks more closely at the older man. “Surely you’re not speaking of the war. You’re not old enough to have served in the war.”

“No, another time when people faced uncertainty and shorter lives for their children.”

“Of course,” says the younger man. “You’re speaking of Chernobyl. You say you lived here then? Have you visited Chernobyl?”

“I could have gone today if I’d wanted,” says the older man, turning to look north, staring up at the sky beyond the buildings.

“The last time I saw the plant was before the accident. Those who came with me to Kiev on this trip insisted I join them, but I turned them down. I need to keep alive my memories of happier times.

Visiting the sarcophagus would be like visiting the graves of loved ones. Did you know lunch is brought in with the tour rather than being cooked in the exclusion zone?”

“I’d heard,” says the younger man. “My tour book suggests a visit to the Chernobyl Museum a few blocks from here. It says many who wish to tour the plant and the exclusion zone decide not to go after a visit to the museum. It must have been chaos after the explosion. Everyone running about in a state of panic, the drunken peasants from the north causing most of the trouble, I suppose…”

“I blame officials for the panic,” says the older man. “In their search for scapegoats, they became murderers.”

The younger man rubs his chin with one hand. “Tell me, do you think Chernobyl really was an accident as they say?”

“You’re not the first, nor will you be the last to pose the question.

History loves conspiracy. Facts hide in the mists of time. If you’re going to ask if I think there was a conspiracy to cause the Chernobyl explosion, which I know is your purpose, you’d better hurry.”

The younger man glances about. “Why?”

“Because one of these days it will be time for me to put my violin back in its case. When I do, my strings will be silent.”

The younger man smiles. “You’re a smart one.”

“Not as smart as I could have been, especially back then.”

“When do your friends return from Chernobyl?”

“The bus arrives at the Chernobyl Museum at seven.”

“I assume you’ll dine somewhere in the city when they return. I also assume you are staying at one of the nearby hotels. Perhaps the Dnipro across the square…”

The older man interrupts. “It used to be called the Hotel Dnieper, same as the river. The locals use the Ukrainian spelling.

Many things have changed names since I was last in Kiev.”

“Everything changes,” says the younger man. “Especially the weather. I don’t recall it ever being this hot in Kiev in May.”

“You said this was your first trip to Kiev.”

The younger man smiles, takes out a handkerchief, and dabs his bare head. “Many believe the Earth Mother is in the process of kicking our asses off her planet. First we have ice-age winters, now we have a tropical spring. Some locals say Chernobyl, as well as climate change, are ongoing signs from God. He’s weary of our fiddling in his business.”

The older man turns and simply stares at the younger man without comment.

“This weather,” explains the younger man, putting his handkerchief away. “God sending the Earth Mother to retaliate for our having messed with the planet. It’s a record temperature for early May. This morning the war veterans sweated their balls off during their patriotic march.”

The older man turns back to the construction wall, above which a cloud of dust has risen. “I believe you were going to suggest a restaurant.”

“I suppose, since you skipped lunch, you will be quite hungry by dinnertime. It’s the restaurant in Casino Budapest. I dined there last night. Excellent cuisine as well as entertainment. Not far from here at Leontovicha Number Three. Don’t worry about mixed company. The strip club isn’t connected to the restaurant. The entertainment in the restaurant is strictly musical.”

“How do you know I haven’t already eaten lunch?” asks the older man. “And how do you know I won’t want to enjoy a striptease show while I eat?” When the younger man does not answer, the older man continues. “Will I see you or another representative from your agency at dinner tonight?”

The younger man shakes his head sadly as he stands. “Casino Budapest has an excellent restaurant. I may dine there myself again tonight.” He points to the older man’s chest. “Perhaps your tie prompted my suggestion. The colors of the Hungarian flag.”

“The Italian and Bulgarian flags also use these colors, only in different order.”

The younger man smiles and begins walking away. “You know your flags. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed for the Ukrainian House exhibition center. It used to be called Lenin’s Museum, you know.”

After the younger man is gone, the older man takes off his Sox cap, raises one arm to wipe his forehead with his jacket sleeve, and puts his cap back on. He stares above the construction wall at its north end. Beyond the layered clouds of dust between buildings, he can see storm clouds gathered on the horizon. For a moment, the look on the older man’s face freezes in an expression of terror and panic, and he stands. But soon his expression calms, he straightens his tie, and begins walking, crossing the square with a cabal of pedestrians who have managed to stall the flow of traffic.

The older man heads west up Khreshchatik. As he walks, he glances at his watch. Because of the plethora of Western gear sold in shops along the boulevard, his Chicago White Sox baseball cap does not give him away. He could be a Kievian businessman heading back to work after a lunch break across the square in the park.

The older man blends into the crowd on the shaded side of the boulevard. Some distance behind him, also blending into the crowd walking beneath chestnut trees in full bloom, is the younger man with shaved head and sunglasses, who now wears his jacket despite earlier complaints about the heat. The younger man pauses at a kiosk to purchase a newspaper, quickly scans headlines chronicling unusual weather patterns throughout the world, tucks the newspaper beneath his arm, and continues following the man in the White Sox cap and the red, white, and green tie.

In the ghost town of Pripyat, near the decommissioned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, a storm threatens. Because of the dark sky and windblown dust in deserted streets, the tour directress, Lyudmilla Nashivankin, has the driver of the van stop beside an apartment building where they will be shielded from the wind and not encounter so much dust. It is rare, especially in the spring, to have a storm during a tour. Tours are cancelled when storms are predicted, and most likely this one is an anomaly of the early heat wave and will soon blow over.

So as not to alarm the tourists, Lyudmilla checks the radiation monitor in the front pocket of her coveralls discreetly and observes Anton, the van driver, already closing the van’s outside vents and adjusting the air-conditioning without being asked. She and Anton are well aware of hot spots between buildings. The threat posed by wind-whipped dust was part of their training.

“Soon it will rain a little,” says Anton in Ukrainian. “The dust will settle.”

Although everyone on the tour wears off-white coveralls and there are face masks for each stored in the van, Lyudmilla knows these are mostly for show.

“I hope it rains soon,” announces Lyudmilla in English, the primary language of members on this tour. “We should want to exit the van and listen to the silence of Pripyat.” She shrugs her shoulders. “But if not, we will view Pripyat from inside and imagine the silence.”

Ahead of the van, dust blows between buildings and across the road. The row of apartment buildings, up to sixteen stories tall, stretches several blocks. If one observed only the upper floors, one would think this was part of a city alive with people. However, on closer inspection, one can see most window glass is gone, and here and there the shredded remnant of a drapery flaps in the wind. At ground level, abandonment is more obvious. Trees, bushes, and weeds have overgrown sidewalks and walkways. The outside lane of the once-wide street is overgrown. Larger trees, having gone wild without being trimmed for decades, hide first-and second-story windows, the trees sending branches into the apartments as if to reside there.

Lyudmilla points ahead of the van to a clearing on the opposite side of the street across from the apartment complex. “See the Ferris wheel in the distance? It was part of the May Day celebration coming five days after April 26 in 1986. Local people called it a devil’s wheel prior to the accident. Now the name has more serious meaning.”

Several tourists nod. A young woman and man in their twenties sitting behind the driver hold hands and look to one another.

They do not smile. Rather, they briefly tighten their lips as if to silently acknowledge something poignant. The young woman has dark brown hair brushed out straight cascading down onto her coveralls. Her eyes are large and, upon close examination, which the young man is obviously doing, are greenish-gray in color.

Lyudmilla continues speaking. “This is why Anton and I came to Pripyat first instead of the sarcophagus. We wished to be here before the storm so we could hear the silence, then we could have stayed in the van at the sarcophagus. But now, who knows?”

Lyudmilla sits down in the front seat on the right side of the van to watch the storm. She turns and smiles reassuringly across the narrow aisle to the young couple sitting behind Anton. The woman is in the aisle seat, the man in the window seat. They are American, as are several others on the tour. Lyudmilla admires the fine pale skin of the young woman. She studies the woman’s eyes, noting the shade of eye shadow, wondering how it would look on her. The lower-level cosmetic shop at Independence Square must certainly carry the shade.

“This storm will blow over, I think,” says Anton in English over his shoulder.

Lyudmilla nods agreement. The young man smiles at Lyudmilla. It is a pleasant smile. She has seen other African Americans on the tour, but not many, and especially not this young. The shade of the young man’s skin is comfortable, like honey or bread toasted to perfection. The man is tall, his shoulders wide, his dark slacks showing at his ankles because the coveralls are too short for him.

Lyudmilla became fond of the couple early in the tour. While observing photographs of Chernobyl victims, the young woman began weeping. Lyudmilla can still picture the way the tall young man with his strong arms and hands held onto the young woman. Lyudmilla assumes they are not married because they signed up for the tour separately, whereas a married couple could have used a single sign-up form. Although she cannot recall their names at the moment, Lyudmilla recalls the young woman touching a particular photograph in the museum before she began weeping. Not one of the many firemen, but rather a reactor worker who died a few days after the accident in Moscow. She recalls wondering whether the young woman was related to the victim in the photograph and was going to ask about this, but the German tourists, whom she has seated at the rear of the van, had interrupted at that point and carried on with questions for what seemed hours.

Outside the wind is dying down, but it is not raining. “The weather front,” announces Anton over his shoulder. “It will blow over in a few minutes.”

Across the aisle from Lyudmilla, the young man puts his arm around the young woman’s shoulder. The young woman’s pale skin goes well with her greenish-gray eyes. Her skin also contrasts nicely with the hand of the young man. The two lean close and speak quietly.

“Reminds me of a black-and-white movie about nuclear war,” says the young man.

The young woman pulls his hand from her shoulder to her mouth, kisses it. “Like On the Beach where the submarine parks in San Francisco Bay, and they look through the periscope at empty streets. Except for being overgrown, it’s like people simply disappeared one day.”

“I was thinking of Fail-Safe,” says the young man. “But in that movie the people are in the city when it gets nuked.”

The young woman points out the van’s windshield. “I can’t help wondering what apartment they lived in.”

Lyudmilla, who has been listening in, stands in the aisle, pushes her hands into the deep pockets of her coveralls, and speaks to all the passengers. “In some apartments letters were found. Children, prompted by teachers, wrote letters to their homes, saying good-bye. School was in session in Pripyat that Saturday, and teachers must have been aware of the explosion occurring a little after one in the morning. Even though evacuation had not yet begun, teachers may have guessed the seriousness of the situation. This was the exception. In most cases residents assumed they would be gone only a few days. So much was left behind. Over the years, and even though they are not supposed to be in the exclusion zone, looters have done their damage. You will notice most window glass and doors have been removed. This allows outside air to flow freely in the buildings so radiation hot spots will not accumulate.”

Lyudmilla holds one pocket out wide to check her radiation monitor again, then pulls her hand from her pocket and points up the street. “The shorter building near the Ferris wheel was an indoor swimming pool. There were many schools and kindergartens. Inside these, lesson plans and children’s drawings still hang on walls.”

A man speaks loudly with a German accent from the back of the van. “You said how many lived here?”

“Approximately forty thousand men, women, and children lived in Pripyat. Although we call it a town, many considered it a city.

Most worked at the Chernobyl plant, as I said, but some worked at the radio factory.”

“Is the radio factory still in operation?” asks the German man.

“The factory was here in Pripyat,” says Lyudmilla. “Nothing is in operation in Pripyat.”

“The wind is less,” announces Anton. “I shall drive to the May Day carnival site, and there we can open windows and listen to silence. Next we go to the sarcophagus, where we will be able to get out and listen to silence there.”

Lyudmilla sits down, Anton puts the van in gear, and they drive slowly down the street.

The front has passed, the air has freshened and cooled, and the sun is out as the tourists in their off-white coveralls exit the van at the sarcophagus observation platform. Because construction is in progress on the new sarcophagus, it is not as quiet here as it was when they opened the windows of the van at the carnival site. A crane is running, lifting a shiny rectangular section to be fitted onto the structure going up around the perimeter of the old sarcophagus.

The old sarcophagus is gray, like a tombstone, making the new sections surrounding the base into a necklace in the sun.

Lyudmilla stands at the railing at the front of the observation platform. She has taken a radiation measurement, which she announces to be a safe three hundred micro-roentgens per hour. In the distance, where the core of Chernobyl number four is buried beneath tons of concrete and steel, the crane suddenly stops running, and it is deathly silent.

“Don’t worry,” says Lyudmilla. “The workers have simply reached the end of their shift at the site.”

She points to the base of the sarcophagus in the distance. “See the movement at the cab of the crane? The shift is changing. Workers can only be in certain locations for short periods.”

“How short and how many roentgens?” asks the German man, his voice booming in the silence.

“I am not a technician,” answers Lyudmilla. “You will be able to ask technical questions at the lecture after our lunch back at the Slavutych Visitor Center outside the inner zone. Please save your questions for then. For now we should board the van because our lunch will be waiting. Our last stops will be the red forest and the vehicle graveyard, where is located equipment used during the initial work at the site. These include helicopters, fire trucks, and countless other vehicles.”

As they walk to the van, Lyudmilla stays close behind the young American couple and listens in to their conversation.

“I can understand why your father didn’t want to come with us,” says the young man.

“He’s not really my father, Michael.”

The young man turns with a puzzled look. “But you call him Dad.”

“I know,” says the young woman, turning to smile up at the young man. “And he is.”

Lyudmilla almost runs into them when they suddenly stop walking. She steps to one side but continues listening in.

“This must be part of the puzzle,” says Michael. He looks back at the necklaced sarcophagus. “This entire place is a puzzle.”

The young woman smiles and pokes him in the ribs.

He laughs and pokes her back.

Their laughter breaks the stagnant silence. Lyudmilla has turned to watch the others climbing into the van. An older woman whose coveralls are much too large for her frowns and shakes her head at the young couple. But Lyudmilla pays the older woman no mind. Suddenly her thoughts are elsewhere. She is with Vitaly.

They are basking in the sun at a Black Sea resort. It is 1991. The union has fallen, and although most resort visitors don’t seem to know whether to celebrate or despair, she and Vitaly chose to celebrate because they are young and in love. If only Vitaly were here with her today. If only they were young and in love again. Perhaps they could at least be in love again. She recalls their bitter argument before this shift of duty. Vitaly most likely at home brooding all week… if he is home.

Before getting into the van, the inquisitive German man questions Lyudmilla. “The Belarus border is how far from here?”

“Fifteen kilometers,” answers Lyudmilla.

The German climbs into the van but keeps talking. “It was the Bel-o-russian Republic back then. They received the worst of the radiation because of the winds. Perhaps it is part of the reason they changed the name to Belarus. There is confusion regarding the spelling. Some say they are Bel-a-russians with a letter A, while others retain the old spelling with an O. And sometimes, like in your brochure for the tour, they can’t make up their minds how many S’s are in the word. It makes one wonder whether the radiation is still having an effect, knocking letters about in the name of the people to the north.”

The German chuckles at his cleverness, but no one else seems amused.

After everyone is back in the van and it drives down the road where weeds emerge from cracks in the pavement, the crane at the sarcophagus starts up again. A new shift of workers has returned to their duty, attempting to permanently entomb the Chernobyl mistakes of the past.

Back in Pripyat all is silent. The sun is out, the dust has settled, and the ghosts of the past assemble. Inside a kindergarten, a tattered poster shows children doing exercises. Inside the lobby of an abandoned movie theater, banners prepared for the 1986 May Day celebration lie scattered on the floor. One of the banners is stretched across the floor. Its faded red has Russian lettering saying, “The Party of Lenin Will Lead Us to the Triumph of Communism.”

Out on the overgrown boulevard, streetlights, which will never light again, resemble skinny guards with crooked necks. A hotel of several stories has a sign with raised letters on its roof. Several letters are teetering, but it can still be read. “Hotel Polissia.” An overturned child’s tricycle in an overgrown school playground has a small tree growing up through its spokes.

In front of one apartment building, a pair of wolves walks along the street. One wolf turns up an overgrown walkway and heads for the open doorway to the building. The wolf stares inside, then, as if knowing the danger, turns quickly to catch up to its companion, and the two trot off into the late-afternoon sun and head for the pine forest in the distance.

Inside the building, the doors to the elevator in the lobby have been pried off and lie on the floor. A bird flies in the front door and up the elevator shaft. In a hallway on an upper floor of the building, someone has chiseled, “Good-bye forever,” in Ukrainian, in Russian, and in English on the plaster wall. Inside an apartment, tattered family photographs barely hang onto a wall from which plaster has peeled away. Other photographs lie on the floor, half-covered with debris.

Outside the window of the apartment is a view of Pripyat with its many buildings and streets and ghosts. In the distance, along a main boulevard, the two wolves have captured a small animal in the weeds and take turns tearing it apart. Farther away beyond the pine forest, but not far enough, the weathered towers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (once known as the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station) are clearly visible.

Because of the setting sun, the old sarcophagus with its new construction blends into the earth, making the mound that was once reactor number four small and meaningless, like the raised soil of a grave. But suddenly, as the sun settles into the horizon, nature performs one of her tricks, turning the necklace of new construction into a crimson choke chain. Two decades earlier, when the chains of Marxist-Leninist social order hung by a thread, little was known of the terror and violence generated by vindictive men behind the veil of disaster.