Chernobyl Murders

2

August 1985

Far Western Frontier, Ukraine Republic, USSR

Detective Lazlo Horvath, known as the Gypsy by his Kiev militia comrades, sat on a wooden bench in a hole in the ground. Above his head, at the top of the shaft, a wooden trapdoor held up with a stick partially blocked daylight. It was cool in the hole, so much cooler than in the relentless sun aboveground.

Lazlo took a deep breath, nostrils tingling from dampness and the smell of wine-soaked wood. The absence of his shoulder holster and his Makarov 9mm pistol was noticeable. He felt unconstrained and at peace, a bear gone into hibernation in summer instead of winter. The sweet, cool air made breathing easier, and he wondered if inhaling it could recapture his youth. Unlike Kiev’s polluted air, this was country air, the air of the plateau adjoining the northern Carpathian range where he was born and raised. Compared to the congestion in Kiev five hundred kilometers to the east, the plateau was paradise. Breathing cool underground air by day and sleeping beneath the stars by night made life as a detective in Kiev a bizarre fantasy, an old silent film in which everyone runs about bumping into one another.

Lazlo closed his eyes, imagined the plateau’s altitude super-imposed upon Kiev’s valley, imagined himself floating a hundred meters above the city. Detective Lazlo Horvath on a flying carpet, which suddenly shifts sideways, veering dangerously close to the statue of Saint Vladimir. Lazlo performs a gymkhana move to avoid being poked in the ass by Saint Vladimir’s bronze crucifix.

Saint Vladimir, who performed baptisms in the Dnieper River, is getting even with the Gypsy for his years away from church.

When Lazlo opened his eyes and laughed aloud, earthen walls reinforced with decaying timber absorbed the sound, making the laugh resemble a series of belches from too much Russian beer.

But he was not light-headed from beer. Red wine had been today’s drink. And this was no ordinary hole in the ground. This hole was the wine cellar in the yard of the family farm. It had been dug into the plateau decades earlier. He was far away from Kiev on the Ulyanov collective near the village of Kisbor twenty-five kilometers from the Czech border. He and his brother and his brother’s family were spending their August holiday with Cousin Bela, who now ran the farm in this Hungarian-speaking district that, before the war, had been part of Czechoslovakia. Yesterday had been a family reunion of sorts when U.S. Cousin Andrew Zukor and his wife visited. A brief visit because of the Soviet security proviso insisting all foreigners return before nightfall to the Intourest hotel in Uzhgorod.

After awakening from the momentary dream and realizing where he was, Lazlo recalled his bloodcurdling fear of the wine cellar when he was a boy. He had been five or six when his father first sent him into the cellar for dinner wine. At the time he was certain the dead from the nearby cemetery would tunnel in and get him. So long ago when his mother and father were alive. Now they rested in the cemetery, and he wondered if they were aware of him, their detective son unearthing childhood terrors. And in another cemetery on the other side of the mountains, someone else might be aware of him down here. The deserter who gave up the name Gypsy when Lazlo’s trembling finger pressed the trigger of his rifle many years before he ever thought of joining the militia.

To drive the adversity of his youthful army years from his mind, Lazlo envisioned his small corner cubicle at Kiev Militia Headquarters. He wears his old, worn shoulder holster and his scratched Makarov. Down the narrow walkway between cubicles, Chief Investigator Chkalov sits in his office. Chkalov’s fat face smiles as he piles on yet another case because of the Gypsy’s bachelor status.

Which was worse? Rehashing a terrible past episode from the army, or anticipating his future return to duties in Kiev? The wooden ladder at the entrance to the wine cellar answered his question by giving off a loud creak. It was better to live in the present. He looked up to see bare legs and feet encased in red canvas sneakers descending the ladder. The legs coming down were those of his younger brother, Mihaly, who had, a few minutes earlier, left the hole to relieve himself.

Mihaly stood in the shaft of light from the entrance, fastening a button on his shorts. He spoke in Hungarian. “I can’t see a damn thing after being out there. The heat is unbearable. I don’t see how Nina and the girls can stand it in the house. I thought they’d be in the yard.” Mihaly shaded his eyes with his hand. “Laz? Are you here?”

“I dozed off for a moment.”

“It’s the wine,” said Mihaly. “All these beautiful barrels of wine.”

Mihaly did what looked like a quick czardas step, which raised dust on the dirt floor. “This holiday should go on forever.”

“If we keep drinking like this, we’ll be minus our livers,” said Lazlo.

“We hardly drank yesterday when Cousin Andrew was here. He and his wife and their bottled water.” Mihaly ran in place, raising more dust. “We’ll burn off the alcohol. How about a run, Laz? We’ll become health-conscious like our American cousin. And when we come back, we’ll down a keg before dinner.”

“You run if you like. You’re younger.”

Mihaly stooped down, began retying the laces on his red sneakers. “What do a few years mean, Laz? You’re only forty-one.”

“Forty-three. I’m older than my gun.”

“What does your gun have to do with it?”

“It’s a scratched and worn antique from the fifties only a gun collector could love.”

“Okay, so you’re forty-three. Lots of rock stars swooned over by teenaged girls are in their forties. What’s important is how you project yourself to others.”

Lazlo stared at Mihaly’s sneakers. “Do red shoes make you feel younger?”

“Of course,” said Mihaly. “If I wore them to work, my boss would bleed from his eyes. He’s the one who made the engineers get their Party cards. The bastard is always lecturing, using worn-out phrases like saying our mother’s milk hasn’t dried on our lips.”

Mihaly finished tying his laces and stood up. “I used Uncle Sandor’s Hungarian phrase on him once. ‘Your feet are still in your mother.’ Only I said it in Hungarian, telling him it was simply a translation of the mother’s milk phrase. He believed it. Chief engineer because he’s a Party boss. Doesn’t know the unit the way he should. But he is strict.”

“I suppose a chief engineer at a nuclear plant has to be strict.”

Mihaly walked slowly out of the shaft of light, bent his head because of the low ceiling, and sat down on the bench beside Lazlo.

“Strict, but not in the right areas or at the right times.”

“What do you mean?”

Mihaly slapped Lazlo on the knee. “Hey, we’re on holiday.

We’re not supposed to talk about work. Cousin Andrew did enough yesterday. I ask him if he thinks anything positive will come of the Gorbachev-Reagan summit, and all he wants to do is talk about my work at Chernobyl. In any case, we were discussing my shoes. How do you like them?”

“The color is patriotic, Mihaly. Did you pick them out yourself?”

“Yes. Czech shoes. Better made. But there was no choice of color. Someone at the Purchasing Ministry likes red, so we get red.

It’s as bad as those idiotic two-for-one sales. A few weeks ago Nina had to buy a useless pink vinyl belt in order to get a purse she wanted. Capitalist businessmen should take lessons from us. Red shoes, take them or leave them. Just give us your twenty rubles.”

“Perhaps,” said Lazlo, “they shipped reds to Kiev, whites to Moscow, blacks to Minsk, and so forth. This way they can keep track of who’s who in our so-called union by simply looking at our feet.”

Mihaly laughed. “And if I try to cross the western frontier, they’ll know by the color of my shoes where to shoot me.”

“Where would that be?”

“In the head, of course. If I wore white shoes, I’d be a Muscovite, and they’d shoot me in the ass, thinking my brain was there.”

Lazlo laughed with Mihaly, but in his mind was an image of a young man shot in the head, a boy, the deserter.

Suddenly there was a shadow at the entrance. “You two still down there?” It was Mihaly’s wife, Nina.

“Yes, my sweet,” said Mihaly.

“You can come out any time,” said Nina.

“But we like it here,” said Mihaly. “If there were a nuclear war, we’d be in the best possible place.”

“Not a nuclear war,” said Nina. “An explosion in your stomachs. You two in the wine cellar is like putting wolves in the chicken coop. We’re eating in the yard tonight. After you move the table into the shade, you can build a fire in the pit to roast the chickens your hard-working cousin so graciously provided.”

“Healthy Andrew and his wife have returned with healthy American chickens?”

“Not Andrew and his wife. Their visa allowed only one visit.

Now come out of there.”

“Ah,” said Mihaly, after Nina had gone from the entrance. “The sound of my sweet, innocent bride.”

“Do I detect sarcasm?” asked Lazlo.

“Well, Nina isn’t exactly an innocent bride anymore. We have two daughters to prove it.”

As if prompted by Mihaly’s mention of his two daughters, Lazlo could hear Anna and Ilonka calling to their mother, their high-pitched screams to “Mommychka!” coming into the dark wine cellar like the chirping of crickets.

Lazlo thought about Nina, how she looked before she became

“Mommychka” to Anna and Ilonka, how she looked when he stood up at the wedding. Nina, the girl become woman, the white flow-ing dress cinched in at her slender waist, her hips and bosom giving the wedding dress a shape he could not forget. Her voice, pure and feminine, repeating the vows. And he, Lazlo, the older brother, the bachelor brother, standing to the side and, though he never told Mihaly, becoming infatuated, falling in love with Mihaly’s bride.

Lazlo closed his eyes to form an image of Nina in the yard in a thin cotton dress, a hot breeze rippling the dress about her thighs.

Nina reaching up to brush her dark brown hair from her eyes. And what was it Mihaly had said? Not innocent anymore?

“Mihaly?”

“What is it?”

“Shall we have another glass before we go out into the sun?”

“Yes, another glass.”

While Mihaly took their glasses and began filling them at today’s newly tapped keg, Lazlo vowed he would ask Mihaly if everything was well between him and Nina. Tonight, when they were alone again, he would, like a proper big brother, provide an ear for his younger brother. And perhaps he would finally tell Mihaly his secret from the army. Being put in the situation of having to kill another boy his age simply because he could speak Hungarian. He and Viktor assigned in 1963 to arrest deserters near the Hungarian and Romanian borders. Boys assigned to hunt down boys who deserted their ground-forces draft obligation. Boys killing boys because their officers were still angry with Khrushchev and his Cuban missile fiasco.

Mihaly handed him a full glass of wine and stood near the entrance to the cellar, holding his glass high in the shaft of light from above. “To our holiday, may it last forever.”

They drank.

Mihaly continued standing, held his glass up again. “To this hole in the ground. It hid our parents from the Germans so we could be here today.”

After drinking again, Lazlo stood and gave his own toast. “To you and your beautiful girls. Nina, Anna, and little Ilonka.”

By standing, Lazlo had positioned himself with Mihaly between him and the entrance to the cellar. He could see Mihaly’s face profiled against the shaft of light, and it reminded him of a wedding photograph of their father-sharp nose, small chin, sloping forehead. A stern face pausing, waiting before drinking the toast, not knowing his profile was so revealing.

“Ah,” said Mihaly, finally taking a drink. “The nectar of our homeland. The best wine in the world. Shall we go up into the heat of the world?”

Lazlo had not finished his entire glass, so he took it with him.

While climbing the ladder into the white heat of day, his thoughts returned to Nina and how she would move about the table in the yard, serving dinner beneath the shade trees. If he could watch her movements without concern for what she or others might think, if he could be alone with her beneath the stars through the night, then this would be Eden.

Unfortunately it was not true. He was a forty-three-year-old detective in the Kiev militia who, having been unsuccessful in his relationships with women, lusted after his brother’s young wife each year while on holiday. Perhaps it would have been better if he had married years ago. Perhaps he should marry now. But who would have him? Tamara Petrov, perhaps? He tried to imagine Tamara as a bride, her long black hair showing through the veil, bracelets and earrings jingling as she walks up a church aisle. If anything, Tamara would demand a church ceremony, not because she is religious, but because it would go against the mandated state ceremony.

But enough-neither he nor Tamara were interested in marriage.

He was at home in his cubicle at Kiev Militia Headquarters, while Tamara was at home in her cluttered literary review office or at Club Ukrainka, somewhat of a wine cellar in its own way. A wine cellar in central Kiev where artists and composers and writers went to drink and talk, but mostly to drink. A cellar he often visited after a late shift in order to share part of his evening with Tamara.

Here, on holiday, there were no women for a lonely militia detective. Here there was only Nina. At the top of the ladder, the heat of the sun on his head was like hellfire. Even if Nina was in the yard, he could not see her because the sunlight, like a nuclear bomb, had momentarily blinded him.

That evening after dinner, everyone else watched television while Lazlo and Mihaly listened to music on Cousin Bela’s record player.

Some of the records were very old, from when Lazlo was a boy and Mihaly hadn’t yet been born. The scratchy sounds of the Lakatos Gypsy Orchestra filled the house, Lazlo and Mihaly sang, and the children promptly fell asleep. After they were chased from the house, Lazlo and Mihaly spread a blanket in the yard and reclined beneath the stars. It was a clear, moonless night, the trees in the yard forming grotesque shadows upon the blanket of stars. The lights had just gone off in the house, and now the only artificial light came from the village two kilometers away. Because the farmhouse sat atop a hill, only the tallest streetlights and a few lights in the upper windows of village houses were visible. A pair of dogs barked in the village. Otherwise it was silent and deathly still, like the graveyard up the road.

“Lights are all off,” said Mihaly. “But Bela hasn’t started yet.

Snores like his father. Remember Sunday dinners when we were kids? After we finished eating, Uncle Sandor would fall asleep beneath the chestnut tree.”

“We thought he’d shake the chestnuts down on himself,” said Lazlo.

“And when he awoke, he refused to believe he’d been so loud.

He thought everyone was playing a joke on him. Not funny, though, since asthma eventually killed him. I suppose Bela inherited his father’s snoring. I wonder why he hasn’t started yet.”

“Give him time,” said Lazlo.

“Did you think we’d ever come back here, Laz? I remember at Mother’s funeral thinking it would be the last time I ever saw the place. And now here we are, sleeping out back like boys. We sold Bela the house for a good price when Mother died.”

“If we hadn’t sold it to him, he’d still be living with his in-laws, and the collective would have taken it over.”

“What do you think of Mariska, Laz? One baby and she already looks old, especially in those dark dresses and farmer shoes. What a contrast to Cousin Andrew’s wife.”

“Shoes and dresses don’t make a woman, Mihaly. Perhaps in bed things are different.”

“It’s the reason Bela’s not snoring.” Mihaly began laughing. “He can’t because his mouth is full of breast.”

Lazlo tried to control himself, but Mihaly’s laughter was contagious.

“And later,” said Mihaly. “Later, when he is snoring… listen, stop laughing.” Mihaly whispered, “Later, she has Bela’s kielbasa in her mouth, and he really gets going.”

Lazlo and Mihaly both laughed, both began coughing while they tried to contain their laughter. Finally they climbed down into the wine cellar and laughed like a pair of crazy old women in their hole in the ground. When they finished laughing, they groped about in the dark until they found one-liter glass jars on a shelf. They wiped dust from the jars with their shirts.

“Enough to last the night,” said Mihaly as the wine gurgled into the first jar.

After filling both jars, they climbed out of the cellar and went back to their blanket. They spoke of Bela’s hard work keeping up the farm. They spoke of Mariska’s fortune-telling games with the children. They reminisced about the old days on the farm. Lazlo spoke of bedtime stories in which their father said he’d lived with Gypsies when he was a boy. Mihaly, who had not been born until Lazlo was eleven, said he couldn’t recall the stories, but he did recall their mother not wanting their father to ever mention Gypsies.

While Lazlo and Mihaly nostalgically recalled their reflections in their mother’s chicken soup, the sound of Bela’s snoring came from the house. As Bela snored louder, Lazlo and Mihaly laughed harder, Mihaly keeping the joke alive by describing moves on the part of Mariska to keep Bela snorting. Finally, a light went on and off in the house, Bela stopped snoring, and Lazlo and Mihaly quieted down, clearing their throats and sipping wine.

“How are things in Kiev?” asked Mihaly.

“The usual summer heat and traffic. The greenery helps. It must have been beautiful before humans arrived, a jungle river valley. What about you, Mihaly? How are things in Pripyat?”

“Flat and boring,” said Mihaly.

“When you got your job, you described the landscape as gently rolling grassland.”

Mihaly laughed. “Gently rolling. Another term for flat.”

“A good place for soccer,” said Lazlo.

“If one has time.”

“You said your team was as good as Kiev’s Dynamo.”

“No more soccer. Our work schedule is erratic, the hours too long. Sometimes, even in summer, I never see the light of day. On my way home on the bus at night, all I see out the window is darkness. Did I ever tell you how the Chernobyl area got its name?”

“Tell me again.”

“It’s named after a wild grass called wormwood. This wormwood, or Chernobyl grass, was originally named after a star mentioned in the Bible. In the Apocalypse, the Chernobyl star fell to earth and made the land foul. So there you have it, Laz. I live in a gently rolling landscape overrun by foul grass named after a fallen star. Luckily the grass hasn’t yet made it into our nine-square-meter-per-person apartment in scenic downtown Pripyat. A few rolling hills away from Chernobyl on one side, the Pripyat marshes on the other, the Belorussian border up the road, and illiterate farmers everywhere else. What I’d really like is a car to get away on trips.

I’ve been saving and I could probably get a Zaporozhets or Moskvich, but I’d prefer a Volga.”

“My turd-green militia Zhiguli isn’t bad,” said Lazlo.

“Italian design,” said Mihaly. “An old Fiat. Volgas are the only well-built Soviet cars. Everything else is junk, even Chaikas and Zils. We save our money to buy junk, and the KGB drives Volgas.

In my office at the plant, I have a photograph of a Chevrolet Impala

… gorgeous.”

The wine was beginning to have its effect. Lazlo could feel within him an intense desire to take his turn complaining about his fate. It was in their blood to be melancholy. Brother complaining to brother. Yesterday their American cousin had been here; now they were alone.

“Once you get your Volga, all will be complete, Mihaly. You have everything else… successful career, beautiful wife, children.

Not like me.”

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Mihaly. “You make it sound like you’re a failure.”

Lazlo took a gulp of wine. “Still a detective after twenty years.

Living in an apartment alone. It’s always needed a woman’s touch.

But there will be no woman by my side as I enter middle age, then old age. No children or grandchildren to visit me in the pensioner home or to decorate my grave.”

Mihaly rubbed Lazlo’s shoulder. “Goddamn, Laz. You’re only forty-three. You’ve got half your life ahead of you. And you’ve got us. We’re your family. I only wish we lived closer to Kiev so we could see you more often. Nina and the girls love you.”

Lazlo imagined Nina in bed, the nightgown caressing her hips and breasts, her hair spread on the pillow. Then he imagined his nieces, Anna and Ilonka, their faces content with the innocent dreams of youth.

“And I love them,” said Lazlo.

He and Mihaly toasted the stars, the old house, the lights of the village, their futures.

But something bothered Lazlo. Something about the way Mihaly did not seem as close to Nina on this trip. The more Lazlo drank, the more this disturbed him. Then, in the midst of a nostalgic conversation about the university in Kiev they each attended in their own time, Mihaly confessed he sometimes wished he had never married.

“Why?” asked Lazlo. “Why should you want anything different after all I’ve said about the goddamned life of a bachelor?”

“Being tied down, I suppose. My job, my family, the pressures from both sides.”

“Your job I can understand,” said Lazlo. “But what pressure could Nina and the girls cause?”

“I don’t know, Laz. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Is it Nina? Is something wrong between you and Nina?” When Lazlo said this, he had a split-second thought, a flash in which Nina and he were bride and groom. And this made him feel foolish.

He had expected an immediate negative reply from Mihaly, but there was a long pause before Mihaly finally said, “No, nothing between me and Nina.”

As Lazlo and Mihaly finished their jars of wine, the conversation became disjointed. Before falling asleep, Lazlo remembered part of it, Mihaly muttering something about Chernobyl. In order to remember to ask Mihaly about it the next day, he repeated over and over to himself. What’s wrong at Chernobyl? What’s wrong at Chernobyl? Then the stars blinked out.

The following day, Lazlo and Mihaly ate a late breakfast, went for a walk into the village, came back for lunch, and napped in the yard.

Nina and Mariska went to the market while Cousin Bela fulfilled his duties on the collective.

When Lazlo awoke from his nap he watched his nieces, Anna and Ilonka, playing with Bela and Mariska’s baby girl. His nieces took the baby’s chair and stools for themselves to the closed wine-cellar entrance and placed sticks and stones on it in patterns, making the elevated trapdoor into an imaginary dining-room table.

With its lid closed, the entry to the wine cellar looked simply like a box placed in the yard. Or like one of the mock coffins used as markers in the nearby cemetery. Perhaps this was what the German troops thought when they marched through. Lazlo recalled the story. How his mother feared the Germans would discover her husband’s Gypsy heritage and take him away. How his parents had gone into the wine cellar just as the helmets of the troops became visible, advancing up the hill.

But there was no war now, no need to concern himself with the outside world. The children were at play, and all was peaceful. Here, on the farm, there were no cars or trucks or scooters, no Aeroflot jets climbing overhead, no questioning of paranoid citizens who would deny the existence of their parents, so great was their fear of the militia. No Chief Investigator Chkalov or Deputy Chief Investigator Lysenko. The only place he missed being in Kiev was Club Ukrainka, where he would go to see Tamara, the woman who helped him forget age and unfulfilled desire.

The make-believe table being set by his nieces reminded Lazlo of his plan to ask Tamara to his apartment, where he would prepare a Hungarian dish for her, one like his mother cooked here on the farm when he was a boy full of anticipation for the future.

Lazlo and Mihaly did not go into the wine cellar again until late afternoon. After Nina and Mariska returned from the market and the girls were napping, they decided their systems were properly recovered and they could enjoy a glass or two before dinner. Because they had slept, and afterward others were about, Lazlo saved the question concerning Chernobyl for the seclusion of the wine cellar.

“What’s wrong at Chernobyl, Mihaly?”

When Mihaly did not answer, Lazlo pressed him. “Something’s wrong, Mihaly. Something’s been on your mind this entire holiday.

I’m your brother, and we’re in the wine cellar. No one will hear.

Yesterday I told you about my bastard chief. Today you’ll tell me what’s wrong at Chernobyl.”

Mihaly took a gulp of wine. “The situation is out of control.

Fucked because of an insane policy.”

“What kind of policy?”

“It’s hard to discuss without getting technical, or emotional.”

“So, don’t get technical or emotional. But tell me about it before I bust one of these kegs over your head.”

Mihaly laughed, sipped his wine, bent forward with his elbows on his knees. “Okay, Laz. I’ll cut through the technical shit. During the past year, I’ve gotten bits of information, not from a single source, but from many sources. From engineers and safety inspectors at other plants. Many believe the power plants at Chernobyl are being put through unnecessary experiments. Tests to find out how far the system can be pushed.”

“Who’s doing these experiments?”

“The chief engineers and the plant manager. They’re playing with fire. It’s like prodding a sleeping demon. You never know when she might turn on you.”

“How dangerous is it? Could people be killed?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mihaly. “If there were an accident like the one they had at Three Mile Island in America, there would definitely be casualties. Our reactors are naked. We don’t have the containment vessels they had at Three Mile Island.”

“But if this is true, why haven’t higher authorities stopped it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the distance from Moscow. Or maybe, somewhere in Moscow, there’s an official perfectly willing to let the experiments go on.”

“Why would an official in Moscow want to endanger lives?”

“By pushing for testing at Chernobyl, Moscow officials might learn the limits of their designs without putting their own lives at risk. Citizens of the Ukraine are more expendable than the citizens to the north and east. The power from our plant stays mostly in the Ukraine, with some going to Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. None of the power from our RBMK-1000s goes to the Russian Republic.”

“But to risk lives…”

“Consider the perspective of a Moscow official,” said Mihaly.

“Or even the Party secretary at our plant. He’s a transplanted Russian. He hasn’t ordered something wrong to be done. He’s simply turned his back on the enthusiasm of managers and chief engineers to meet higher quotas. In the bureaucratic mind, there could be benefits from an accident.”

“What benefits?”

“You send in observers from other plants and from industry so they’ll learn, without speculation, what actually happens in the event of a nuclear accident. The loss of millions in war did a lot to make the union strong. With this kind of thinking carried to its extreme, who knows what advantages can be dreamed up? We’d learn about radioactive fallout and its effects on humans. We’d be able to see the effects on people and local government and medical facilities. We’d be able to extrapolate these data to create models of nuclear accidents and nuclear war.”

“Mihaly, this is insane!”

“You told me to get it out of my system, Laz. I’m simply telling you about my speculation. The safety at the plant is failing, and everyone aware of it is trying to come up with a reason. Can you think of a sane reason to reduce safety standards?” Mihaly took a gulp of wine. “Maybe I’m too close to the situation. Maybe it’s the pressure making me come up with crazy theories.”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of it, Mihaly. If you really think there’s a problem, if safety has taken a back seat, quit your job, get transferred.”

“I’m going to apply for a transfer,” said Mihaly. “That’s why I’ve told you… to convince myself to go through with it. They’ve got too many working at the plant as it is. Too many cooks in the she-demon’s kitchen. When I complained about an upcoming test, my chief said to tell my men if things aren’t done right, they’ll have to turn in their Party cards. When I reminded him the men under me don’t have Party cards, he jokes they should get them so if something goes wrong, they’ll have cards to turn in. He’s more concerned about minor things, like workers smoking hashish in the locker room. When I complained about the printout for reactor conditions being too far from the control room to do us any good in an emergency, he said to use one of my men as a runner to bring the printout to the control room. He’s gotten things upside down.”

“Mihaly, if you’re thinking of revealing this to anyone else, forget it. Do whatever seems reasonable to point out obvious safety flaws.

But don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t get labeled a counterrevolutionary by questioning the system. Whatever you do, don’t mention conspiracy. Without mountains of documentation, no one will believe you. You’ll be fired, and then there will be documentation, all of it against you, against your character. The KGB will be up your ass. You’ll be fucked! Don’t even think of telling anyone else. If you can’t get a transfer, quit. I’ll see about getting you a job in Kiev. You and Nina and the girls can move in with me. You can have my apartment. Tell me you’ll get out of there, Mihaly!”

“I’ll get out,” said Mihaly, gulping down more wine. “I would have told you about this yesterday if Cousin Andrew hadn’t been here. Hiding Bela’s shortwave radio before Andrew and his wife arrived brought back the old fears from my university days. I’m glad we’re alone and it’s off my chest. As brothers, we should be honest with one another.”

After drinking to secrecy, Lazlo and Mihaly hugged in the darkness of the wine cellar as if they were the last two souls on earth.

While they hugged, Lazlo promised himself he would someday be honest with Mihaly and tell about the killing of the deserter. Someday soon.