Chernobyl Murders

30

At dawn, in a field not far from the village of Kisbor, a black Skoda flecked with bits of straw sat in a ravine. From the dirt road bordering the field, the Skoda could not be seen because of the ravine’s depth. One would have needed an aircraft to spot the Skoda, and it would have looked like a derelict because of its dull black finish and the dust and dirt and straw covering it.

So he would not have to go out into the morning chill to change, Juli helped Lazlo put on the ragged peasant clothing they had stolen from a clothesline during the night.

“Remember,” said Lazlo, “if I’m not back by three o’clock tomorrow morning, you leave for the Czech border.”

“I remember. But it wouldn’t hurt to wait a little longer. I can stay here for days with the groceries you bought in Yasinya. So there’s really no reason for me to hurry off.”

Lazlo stopped buttoning his shirt and stared at her. “Three o’clock, Juli.”

“I don’t want you to have to hurry, Laz. I’ll wait a little longer.”

Lazlo picked up the trousers he had removed, took the sock out of the pocket, and handed it to Juli. “The rest of the money is in here. Enough rubles to bribe a guard. The road west of here parallels the frontier. Go to the first guard post to the north. Ask the guard for directions to Uzhgorod. Once he gives you directions, ask if he knows where Laborets Castle is. If he launches into a lecture about how Prince Laborets was murdered in the year 903, bring out half the money.”

“How do you know all this, Laz?”

“Yesterday in Yasinya I bribed the woman in the market.”

“How did you know she was a contact and not an informer?”

“Tamara.”

“We owe Tamara a lot. If Nina and the girls are with you when you return tonight, will there be enough bribe money for all of us?”

“I don’t know,” said Lazlo.

“Why don’t you take back some of the money in case you need to use it later?”

“I’m hoping I won’t have to bring Nina and the girls with me. If there is no Komarov, there will no longer be danger for Nina.”

“You’ll kill him.”

“If I can.”

“What if he’s not there?”

“He’ll be there. He’s put his reputation on the line, even sacrificing his own men to make us into suspects. Now he must protect his interests. And he must do it personally so no one will uncover what he’s done.”

“You don’t think higher officials are involved?”

“If others were involved, news coming out about Chernobyl would be different. They’d be talking sabotage, piling up evidence.”

Juli held out the sock containing the money. “Don’t make me take all the money, Laz. Take half. We’ll meet somewhere on the other side.”

Lazlo squeezed her hand around the money. “I can’t. I don’t know if it’s enough for two. If I don’t come back by three in the morning, you’ve got to go. I’ll still meet you on the other side.”

Juli felt tears in her eyes. “Why didn’t you simply tell me you kept half the money?”

Lazlo held her shoulders and shook her. “Because I can’t lie to you. And you can’t lie to me, Juli! I’ve got to leave for the farm knowing at least your freedom is guaranteed! The woman in Yasinya said you can’t go to the guard post once it’s light out. You must leave here at three!”

When Lazlo left the Skoda, Juli lowered the dew-soaked window and watched him climb the ravine and walk along the rim. In the brimmed hat, loose-fitting trousers, and tattered coat, he looked like one of the farmers at the Kopelovo collective where she wished they could have stayed and lived together in the tent forever.

Before disappearing beyond the edge of the ravine, Lazlo turned once and waved. The sun was beginning to rise in the east. A new day was born. Juli held her abdomen and wept.

Finding the workers of the Ulyanov collective farm was a matter of elimination, a matter of finding unplanted fields and locating the mechanical planters. Because the collective was several kilometers across, it took Lazlo most of the morning to locate the planters.

Cousin Bela was a mechanic and was always in the vicinity of equipment that had to be kept running.

From a ditch at the edge of the field, Lazlo watched three planters traverse the field, sometimes abreast, sometimes one or the other pulling ahead. After watching the planters for an hour, they finally passed close enough for him to recognize Bela aboard one of the tractors.

It was eleven o’clock. A truck carrying seed for the planters was at one end of the field. Lazlo had seen workers stop at the truck for water and knew they would eventually go there for lunches they brought with them. On his way to the end of the field, he saw a woman standing on the platform of a planter. She was thin and wore a brightly colored skirt over trousers. She reminded him of the previous week at the Kopelovo collective, how Juli had looked when she dressed this way, her long brown hair coming out from her kerchief and blowing in the wind as she bent to join him in the tent after an afternoon at the washtub with other women. The simplic-ity of the image made his eyes water as he crawled along the ditch.

Shortly before noon, the tractors turned the three planters around, the engines shut off, and farmers converged on the truck. As Lazlo wondered how he would be able to speak with Bela in private, Bela walked out to one of the tractors and peered into the engine compartment. Lazlo knew he might not have another chance. He stood and walked quickly out to the tractor.

Lazlo lifted his brimmed hat as he approached. “Bela. It’s me, Lazlo.”

“Lazlo! I didn’t recognize you. How did you get here? Have you been to the house?”

“No.”

“Don’t go there. They’re waiting for you.”

“Hey!” shouted one of the men near the truck. “Who’s the idler out there?”

Bela stood in front of Lazlo and shouted back, “It’s Lajos from the Kalinin collective! He needs mechanical advice!”

“Hello, Lajos!” shouted the man.

Lazlo waved but kept his head down.

“Come behind the tractor,” said Bela.

They stooped behind the tractor, Bela peering through the open engine compartment until he was satisfied no one was coming.

“They hate Lajos,” said Bela. “No one wants to hear his constant complaining. If you shake your fist like this occasionally, you will look the part.”

Bela shook his fist. Lazlo repeated the gesture.

“Good,” said Bela. “I ask again, how did you get here?”

“By car, back roads to the south, then over the mountains at Yasinya. What’s important is that I’m here. Tell me what’s going on at the house.”

Bela shook his head sadly. “It’s the KGB, Lazlo. At least a dozen men spread about the place. During the last few days, there were only a few, but last night a major arrived with all these men armed with automatic rifles.”

“Komarov?”

“Yes, Major Komarov, back there at the farm with Mariska and Nina and the girls.”

“Has Komarov questioned any of you?”

“All of us. He’s a demon from hell, Lazlo. I’m trying to make Mariska and Nina think everything will be fine, but I’m frightened of what he’ll do. I wanted to stay home, but he insisted I go to the fields as usual.”

“He didn’t send a man to watch you?”

Bela peered through the tractor’s engine compartment. “Shake your fist at me.”

“What?”

“Shake your fist so the others will be satisfied you are Lajos.”

Lazlo shook his fist. A slight breeze blew the scent of hot oil from the tractor’s engine compartment across his face as he looked to make certain no one was coming.

“Lunch is almost over,” said Bela. “What are you going to do?”

“Quickly, Bela, tell me about the other men, the ones who arrived earlier and the ones there now. Komarov is a madman, and I need to know how loyal the men are to him.”

Bela watched to be sure no one was coming while he spoke.

“The first group arrived a week ago. They didn’t question us at all, simply said they’d been assigned to guard duty. We knew they were looking for you because of what Nina told us. Poor Mihaly.” Bela grasped Lazlo’s arm. “I nearly forgot.”

“There’s nothing we can do for Mihaly now, Bela. The men.

Tell me about them.”

“At first there were only three, then three more and a captain.

During the week they took turns guarding the house three at a time.

One in front, one in back, and one inside. There’s still one man inside with us day and night. Except last night it was Komarov with his cigarettes stinking the place up. The men Komarov brought with him are stationed outside, at least a dozen, all of them young and fired up.

“It’s hard to say how loyal the men are to Komarov. The first men seemed amateur, friendly enough fellows except they carry these enormous automatic pistols beneath their coats. They wouldn’t tell us anything. Then a captain named Brovko arrived. He spoke a lot more. He wanted to know about you and Mihaly. He asked about the farm and your mother and father and even Cousin Zukor’s visit last summer. But it was all in a friendly way, not the way Komarov asks questions. In fact, one evening before Komarov arrived, two of the men played cards with me. And while we played… you know how you can tell about a fellow when he’s playing cards.”

“What did you find out?”

“These men don’t understand why they were put on guard in and around the house instead of simply watching the road. And something else, something they didn’t say but I could tell by their reaction whenever his name came up. They despise Komarov. At least the men who arrived earlier. And Captain Brovko… the second in command since Komarov arrived… he wonders why Komarov is after you with such vengeance. I watched his eyes. I watched him while Komarov interrogated us. You can tell a lot by watching eyes.

Mariska’s mother often told us about the old days when she was a fortune-teller. I know this is important, Laz.”

Bela peered through the engine compartment and continued.

“The men who arrived last night with Komarov haven’t been in the house, so I’m not sure about them. But on my way to the bus this morning, I passed one who was stooped down in the weeds along the road. When he saw me he frowned, motioning his back ached.

When they arrived with Komarov, they were full of spunk. But this morning, the one I met didn’t look happy with the situation. I have a feeling all the men feel this way. They arrive ready to fight, but there is no fight. The only men with enthusiasm are Komarov and Brovko. But their enthusiasm goes in opposite directions. While Komarov is intent on… I have to say it, Laz, he wants to kill you, and he wants to discredit you. He hates us for being related to you.

While Komarov is this way, Brovko seems intent on finding out about Komarov’s motives. I don’t think Komarov will simply go away if you don’t come. He was hard on Nina last night. When Brovko went outside, Komarov struck her. And when I went at him, he pulled a knife from his pocket and held it to Nina’s throat.”

Through the engine compartment, Lazlo saw a worker walking out to one of the other tractors. While Bela spoke, Lazlo tried to imagine going to the house after dark, tried to remember a way he and Mihaly might have snuck up on the house when they were boys.

But, except for the cover of darkness, he could remember no safe approach to the house because of the way it was situated on the hill.

“We have to hurry, Bela. How many men are out at night, and where?”

“Usually one out front, either by the door or sitting in a car.

Always one in back. From what I saw this morning, the men who arrived last night circle the house at a one-hundred- to two-hundred-meter radius. So it’s one man in the house, probably Komarov if he stays the night again, two men immediately outside, and at least seven or eight out in the weeds. The man I saw this morning was on the south edge of the road where the hill starts down to the village.”

Bela grabbed Lazlo’s arm. “They’re coming! What are you going to do?”

The workers began walking out into the field. A man and woman sang a Hungarian folk song. “Geraniums in my window, come to my window.”

“Bela, if I kill Komarov, will the other men leave you and Mariska and Nina in peace?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, Laz. But we must do something.”

“I’ll come to the house tonight,” said Lazlo, shaking his fist and meaning it. “I’ll come at ten o’clock. You’ll be in bed if he lets you.

Wait! The wine cellar! Do they know about the wine cellar?”

“The wine cellar. No. The children were playing on the cover.

It’s got a tablecloth on it.”

“Listen, Bela. Before ten o’clock, see if you can get the women and children down there.”

“How? There’s a guard in the back.”

“What if they go out the side bedroom window?”

“Yes,” said Bela. “They’ll go out the side window, and I’ll run out the back door to keep the guard busy. Somehow, I’ll get to the back door! It’s up to us, Laz!” Bela motioned across the field. “Go now. Hurry before someone recognizes you. If I’m unable to get the women out, I’ll leave the bedroom window closed. If they get out, I’ll leave the window open. You enter the house through the window. Do you have a gun?”

Lazlo opened his coat to reveal his Makarov in the coat pocket.

“I’ll shoot Komarov. If I’m successful, guards will converge. Don’t try to help me. Tell them you didn’t want anyone hurt so you sent the women and children to the cellar. If I’m not successful… if Komarov survives, don’t say anything about the cellar, no matter what.”

“I understand, Laz. Go now.”

As Lazlo walked across the field, he shook his fist in the air without turning back. One of the workers yelled out, “Good-bye, Lajos, my friend! It was pleasant speaking with you!”

Lazlo shook his fist once more, then walked south on the dirt road in the direction of the Kalinin collective where Lajos lived.

While he walked, Lazlo felt the weight of his pistol bouncing against his chest. Because he had left the shoulder holster behind at the Hotel Dnieper, the pistol hung loosely in the pocket of the musty old coat. Behind him tractor engines started, and the task of spring planting resumed.

To avoid being seen, he bypassed the village, taking a long circular route to the hill on which his boyhood home waited. It was at least a ten-kilometer walk on plowed fields. He stopped frequently to scan the horizon for men or vehicles on the dirt roads bordering the fields. The sky was clear, the sun baking the turned earth creating a fragrance he recalled from boyhood. He took off the coat as he walked and put his pistol into his belt.

If it was clear tonight, it would be cool again, the sky blanketed with stars. He thought of the moon, thought back quickly to the previous night with Juli in the Skoda, remembered trying to see her as they embraced in the dark. There was no moon last night, and there would be no moon tonight. The men out in the weeds would huddle down, trying to keep warm. Unless a storm came, it would be quiet. The weeds, brittle from winter, would sound like dry twigs underfoot.

Lazlo stayed well away from several farmhouses he passed as he worked his way to the family farm. At one point a mongrel dog from one of the farms chased him, making a sound like the Skoda when it had barely outrun the train. Rather than be seen by the woman who came out of the farmhouse to see what the dog was after, Lazlo lay down in the weeds and prepared to defend himself.

He found a broken fence board partially buried in the ground and poked at the dog, keeping it at a safe distance. But the dog would not give up and kept howling at him. Finally, after the dog bit into his shoe, he whacked the dog on the head and sent it whining back to the farmhouse, where the woman in the yard scolded it for chasing the neighbor’s vicious cats.

It would have been good to be a cat or to be able to change into whatever animal suited the situation. Lazlo the vampire. He was not being foolish. He was doing what he had always done when trying to solve a difficult case in Kiev. In his mind he would consider all possibilities, no matter how impossible they might seem.

Burrowing through the dry weeds on all fours, in much the same manner as a cat, he kept his mind open, letting the ideas flow freely without interference from negative thoughts. Now, more than ever, he dare not brood. Now he had to think and plan as if he were a predator on the verge of starvation.

At approximately three hundred meters from the house, Lazlo found a spot from which he could observe the back and sides of the house without being seen. He was in a clump of weeds bordering the back of the neatly plowed private plot. He had followed the border of weeds to this spot and knew he could go no farther without being seen.

Without the aid of binoculars, he had to squint to see the area surrounding the house clearly. For a while he saw only one man standing near the back door. But as he waited and stared and studied the area for movement, he saw another man off to the village side on the downslope of the hill. Then he saw a third man at the other end of the house, near the chicken coop, and a fourth man in back at the far end of the private plot. This man was only about two hundred meters away, and he could see his AKM with its skinny folding stock. The guard looked young. He was smoking, blowing the smoke at the ground to dissipate it. Lazlo recalled Mihaly speaking of the workers at the Chernobyl plant. “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” and “Overmanning.” Was the same true here?

Lazlo looked at his watch, almost four o’clock. In a few minutes, he had seen four men spaced about the house. In three or four hours, it would be dark and perhaps he could get closer. In less than six hours, Bela would try to get the women into the wine cellar. He could see the cover of the wine cellar, the red and white tablecloth on it, probably the same tattered oilcloth the girls had used last summer.

Lazlo looked at his watch again, exactly four o’clock. In eleven hours, Juli would leave for the west. He tried to imagine succeed-ing and going with her, but negative thoughts piled up against the dream like water against a dam. Beyond the house, where he could not see, he knew his mother and father were buried in the cemetery.

The most negative of thoughts was that soon he, and others, might be there.

Because of the sun’s heat and the long wait ahead, Lazlo worked his way back a hundred meters or so to a well he had passed. The well was near where the dog had attacked him, but the dog was apparently being kept inside. After drinking his fill from a battered tin pail dipped into the well using a long rope, he worked his way back to his original position. This time a striped cat crossed his path, raising its back and hissing. Lazlo responded by raising his own back and hissing. The cat reacted by slinking off into the weeds. Yes, now he was an animal.

Back at his position, where he had a clear view of the farmhouse, he lay on his back to wait. A jetliner passed overhead, its vapor trail dividing the sky. The jet headed southwest, to Budapest or Vienna, anywhere but here. He watched the jet until it disappeared beyond the horizon. Then he sat up to watch the house again and saw yet another man with an AKM walk around from front to back. In a little while, he would close his eyes until sunset, not to rest, but to prepare his night vision.

When Juli heard what sounded like a truck up on the road, she left the Skoda, locking it and taking her bag with her. She hid in a crevice at the far end of the ravine. She had been watching a jet pass overhead when the truck approached. Now, as she lay flat in the crevice, she could hear the voices of two men.

At first the men argued about the age of the car, one saying it only looked old because of the terrible paint job. After a few minutes of inspecting the car and arguing about its worth, the men lowered their voices, and Juli could hear only occasional words.

One said something about reporting it to the militia. The other apparently wanted to wait. As the two men walked away, they seemed to be discussing whether or not the car might belong to them if no one claimed it. One said he thought he might go back and take the windshield-wiper blades. The other said no, they might as well wait a few days when they could strip anything they wanted off the car because it was obviously abandoned. The first man mumbled something about it being strange that an abandoned car be locked, and wondered what might be hidden beneath the blanket they’d seen on the back seat. While the men were climbing out of the ravine, the last discussion Juli could hear was about the value of the car’s parts.

Then the truck started up and drove away.

When Juli went back to the car, the sun had made it quite warm inside. She sipped from a water bottle that had stayed cool beneath the blanket in the back seat. The wine Lazlo bought at the train station was also there, but she left it unopened. She lowered the windows and sat, as she had earlier, listening for sounds on the road and thinking about the future, but also about the past. She thought of her friend Aleksandra. Recalled the farm wife waiting at the hospital. Aleksandra and the farm wife possessed sincerity. It was in their eyes. Honest women trying to do the right thing in an insane world. Really, they were a lot like Lazlo.

Inside the hot car down in the ravine, Juli kept watch to be certain no one approached. As she waited, she drank water and ate the remaining food Lazlo had purchased in order to keep up her strength for whatever awaited her. There were still many hours to go, and she had not decided what she would do if three o’clock came and Lazlo had not returned.