Chernobyl Murders

31

It was a typical evening in the Ukrainian village of Kisbor south of Uzhgorod near the Czechoslovakian frontier. Ulyanov and Kalinin collective farm workers had returned from the fields. Market workers and workers at the local bell factory had closed shop for the night. By nine o’clock, dinner dishes were put away, and Kisbor’s citizens settled in favorite chairs or reclined in bed to watch a weekly variety show. Every television viewer in Kisbor awaited the same show on the same channel, not because they all preferred this particular show, but because there was only one television station available in Kisbor.

The male announcer’s voice coming from houses and apartments could be heard from one end of the main street to the other. The announcer said that before the variety show began, there would be an important news program about the Chernobyl accident. Many viewers increased the volumes on their television sets. The announcer’s voice echoed in the street, the time delay caused by the distancing of sets making the main street sound like an auditorium.

The announcer began with the obvious. Almost a month earlier, the unit four reactor at the Chernobyl generating facility exploded.

The official death toll now stood at seventeen, and ninety thousand people had been evacuated from a thirty-kilometer radius.

The announcer spoke of the bravery of firefighters, volunteers, and bus drivers. He said, although hundreds of thousands were being given iodine pills, this was merely a precaution. The vast majority of Soviet citizens, including those in the Ukraine, were in no danger whatsoever. The news program lasted only a few minutes. When it was over, a light orchestral arrangement signifying the beginning of the variety show began playing very loudly until one volume control after another was returned to a normal level.

The village of Kisbor settled in for the night. At the eight-room Kisbor Hotel, black Volgas recently parked out front were gone.

Neighbors of the hotel were relieved because men in overcoats driving black Volgas meant KGB, and the KGB this far from a main city could mean trouble for almost anyone.

Farther away from the village, the sound of the variety show faded. The village resembled a lighted miniature, especially from the side of a hill to the west. It was a clear, moonless night, stars visible to the horizon. Daytime heat radiated, and the temperature dropped.

It was quiet on the side of the hill until the music began. The music came from the lone farmhouse beyond the ridge of the hill. Since most citizens of Kisbor were of Hungarian descent, they would have immediately recognized the melody. But the house on the hill was too far away from the village for anyone there to hear it.

From the front of the house, it sounded as though a Gypsy orchestra was playing in the backyard. Although curious, Nikolai remained at his post at the front door. The music was instrumental, a solo violin piercing the night with the rest of the orchestra backing it up.

The violin sounded as if it were crying one minute and dancing the next. Several agents from the Volgas and the van parked out front got out and stood staring at the house.

When the front door of the house opened, the music boomed out until Captain Brovko closed the door behind him. Brovko stood shadowed in dim light from the front window. After a few seconds, he spoke, loud enough to be heard.

“What do you think of our major now?” asked Brovko.

“I don’t know what to think,” said Nikolai. “Is it the phonograph?”

“Yes. Major Komarov says if Detective Horvath is in the vicinity, the music will lure him. When I told him the noise would make it difficult for our men to hear anything, he opened the windows.

I’m puzzled how your routine examination of correspondence in the PK could have led to this. Why haven’t other investigative agencies been notified?”

After being reprimanded last night for asking what they should do about Major Komarov, Nikolai felt it would be best to remain silent.

Brovko looked back to the house. “I pity the family. Last night the questioning was relentless. Tonight he blows out their ear-drums. The women and children are in the bedroom with the door closed, but the walls are thin. I’ll tell the other men the music is not meant to drive them mad. They’ll need to be watchful in case Horvath does come, but I don’t want them shooting a villager who might wander up the hill. After I speak with the men, I’m going back to the hotel for a container of tea. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

While Brovko conferred with the other men, he shrugged his shoulders as if to say he had no idea what Komarov was doing. But Nikolai knew. It was similar to the afternoon in Visenka. There, amateurs were assigned so something other than a routine arrest would occur. Here, their sense of hearing was being obliterated. Perhaps Komarov wanted Horvath to kill another KGB officer. Or perhaps Komarov was simply insane. After Brovko conferred with the men standing at the vehicles, they fanned out, and he sped off in his Volga, heading down the hill to the village. Inside the house, the light went out, and only the flickering light of the television remained.

A new record dropped onto the turntable, the needle finding the initial groove and sending out explosive hisses before the music began.

This piece featured a chorus as well as an orchestra. Although a passage here and there resembled traditional classical music, it was soon ruined by a melodramatic violin solo followed by the screaming catcalls of women in a chorus.

The stack of recordings had been in an upper cabinet. When Komarov retrieved them, he noticed a shortwave radio hidden behind them and made a mental note to include this in his report. The phonograph was on the kitchen table, its speakers facing the open windows to the backyard. Komarov had moved the phonograph with Captain Brovko’s reluctant assistance. While moving the phonograph, the power cord snagged an icon hanging on the wall and it fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. He’d said something about religion being the ruination of the world, and Brovko had looked at him curiously. He was glad Brovko was gone. Brovko did not understand the need to outshine the tricks at the Hotel Dnieper.

The Gypsy Moth would come, lured by the glow of his music.

He would sneak up to the house under cover of darkness and noise.

An orderly and efficient capture would be impossible. There were several possibilities. One of the men would put a stream of bullets from his AKM into Horvath; Horvath would shoot another KGB agent, thus confirming his guilt; or Horvath would make it into the house. If Horvath did make it into the house, Komarov was ready.

Komarov’s pistol was on the table beside the phonograph and the lights were out. The only light came from the television, which Bela Sandor sat watching with the sound off. Komarov sat behind the glowing television on the dark side of the room.

Bela Sandor had helped Komarov determine Horvath would come tonight. He had done so by acting more nervous tonight than last night, and by hurrying the women and children to the bedroom after dinner. Horvath had contacted his cousin. Perhaps the plan was to have Horvath come in through the bedroom window. No matter, because Komarov was in the shadows against a windowless wall. He had a clear view of both the front and back doors, of the windows, and of the bedroom door. He had ordered Bela to leave the room-divider curtain open and the television on.

Bela’s face in the mad flicker of the television made him into a clown. Every few minutes, when he looked nervously at the clock on the wall, his movement was strobed by the television, creating multiple images. After smoking several cigarettes in a row, Komarov watched as Bela coughed violently and went to the bedroom door.

Bela knocked, stuck his head inside, seemed to take a deep breath, then closed the door and scowled. Bela began coughing continu-ously, bending over as if he would vomit. He went to the kitchen sink and spit. He poured a glass of wine and took a sip, but this made him cough even more. Before Komarov could stop him or even pick up his pistol, Bela was out the back door.

“Stop!” Komarov ran to the open door. “Stop him!”

This was it. Horvath was out there! Bela was creating a diversion! Komarov went back to the table where it was darkest and watched the open back door and the closed bedroom door. Outside, above the sound of the music, he heard the sound of running feet.

Then Bela was shoved into the house by two of the men.

Bela kicked and screamed, and it took both men to pin him to the floor. The men struggled with Bela, looking as if they were dancing to the music. Komarov remained seated, aimed his pistol at the doorway, and waited. But the open doorway remained dark and empty.

When Bela finally calmed down, Komarov motioned that he be put back in his chair in front of the television. Above the din of music, Komarov shouted to one of the men to go back in the yard to resume his post and to the other to check the bedroom.

When the first man was gone, the second man took his Stechkin machine pistol from inside his coat. A small flashlight was taped to the pistol barrel. The man switched on the flashlight and went to the bedroom door. He opened it and quickly scanned the bedroom.

When the man backed slowly out of the bedroom, Komarov knew this could be it. Horvath could be there. But the man turned and motioned for Komarov to come.

The bedroom was empty. The window was open. Komarov had the man shout search orders out the window and close the bedroom door. While the man stood guard, Komarov slapped Bela’s face. But Bela simply smiled.

A few minutes later, a man with an AKM came in and announced that the women and children were nowhere to be found. Komarov told the man to keep watch for them but, more importantly, to watch for Detective Horvath and to shoot him on sight. When the man with the AKM went back outside, Komarov noticed the man with the machine pistol staring at the phonograph. He shouted at the man, ordering him to tie Bela to his chair with rope from the room-divider curtain.

Soon everything was back as it had been, the music playing, Komarov sitting in the dark watching the doors and smoking, Bela staring at the television. Except now the women and children were gone, and this could mean only one thing. Horvath would soon arrive.

The rope holding Bela to the chair was wrapped tightly, and his wrists were tied behind him. His nose bled, and he no longer smiled as he had when Komarov slapped him.

The violin of Lakatos cried its song of despair into the night, and for a moment Lazlo imagined he was back in his apartment in Kiev, lying in bed listening to Lakatos on his phonograph. None of what had brought him to Kisbor on a cool night in May had happened.

In a few seconds it all flashed before him again. Mihaly in the wine cellar; months later the confession of his affair on a snow-covered playground outside the apartment. Tamara with him when he heard about the explosion. The roadblocks and confusion. The news of Mihaly’s death from bureaucrats at the Ministry of Energy.

Juli arriving in his office at militia headquarters. Had the visit by Andrew Zukor and his wife at the farm had another purpose? Was it possible Zukor had somehow convinced Mihaly to…

No! Komarov had created a pretense of guilt out of Mihaly’s and Juli’s personal lives. Komarov had arranged the circumstances, causing Lazlo to do something he thought he would never do again. He’d killed an innocent man. He’d shot an innocent man and watched him die, resurrecting the image of the Gypsy on the Romanian border. Komarov was obviously trying to create counterrevolutionary scapegoats for what had happened at Chernobyl.

But to what end?

With the music playing, with the memories of what he’d seen in the dead agent’s eyes and the dead Gypsy’s eyes and in Komarov’s eyes, Lazlo knew there was more. Komarov needed to destroy him, destroy his family, destroy Juli.

The violin of Lakatos crying out over the plateau gave way to the faster czardas, the rest of the orchestra joining in. In the distance, looking like overbright fireflies in Lazlo’s night vision, flashlights danced about the house. Lazlo used the opportunity to circle the house. He stayed at the ridge of the hill and was able to count ten men wielding flashlights. While he ran, he thought of the story his father had told, the German troops coming up the hill, only their helmets visible as his father and mother climbed down into the wine cellar.

The faint light of the village was behind Lazlo as he pushed through the weeds approaching the gravel road going up the hill.

He held his watch up and saw it was almost ten o’clock. He was about a hundred meters from the house. A flashlight swept across the side of the house, pausing at the open bedroom window.

The open window, Bela’s signal telling him Nina and Mariska and the children had escaped into the wine cellar. The men with flashlights were searching for the women and children, searching in an ever-widening circle. It was time. Bela was expecting him at ten, and Lazlo knew Komarov must be in the house waiting for him.

Lazlo considered posing as a drunk walking along the road.

He’d stagger up the hill whistling to the music. The men would come, and he’d pretend to speak only Hungarian. But there were too many men. He’d never break free and be able to get to the house without being sprayed by AKM fire. Then he remembered what Bela had told him earlier in the day. A man was stationed on the south edge of the road at the ridge of the hill.

Lazlo crouched low and ran. If the man was at his post, he’d have to disarm him, get the AKM, and make a run on the house.

But more likely, the man had left his post and was part of the search.

He could hear the men speaking to one another above the scream of Lakatos’ violin.

The road was close. Lazlo went down on his hands and knees and crawled ahead, feeling stones digging into his knees, the same stones he and Mihaly had, years ago, hurled from the yard as they helped their father clear a place to plant the private plot.

The men came closer, their legs dragging through dry weeds as they approached the ridge of the hill. Lazlo stayed low, crawled with his face to the ground. Suddenly, near the road, he came upon a clearing about a meter wide. His hand brushed something, a coat on the ground, its inside lining still warm. The man guarding the road had used the coat to stay warm or to sit on. The man was one of those with flashlights. Lazlo crouched low and lay down at the edge of the circular clearing on the side nearest the road. He listened and waited because he knew the KGB agent who had made the nest would soon return.

The stage was set. Everything he had done for the last two decades had led to this. Even times of weakness when the bottle had him in its grasp played a role. He had devoted his life in preparation for this confrontation.

East of the Carpathians, others could easily be arrested to confirm the conspiracy originating in the United States and funneled through here. Anger over Chernobyl would intensify, making prosecution less complicated. Chernobyl traitors would be part of the Soviet Union’s future. Whether Gorbachev remained in power or not, Komarov’s plan would succeed.

Komarov felt stronger than he had in years. When it was over, he would go to Moscow without the media fanfare used in capitalist countries. It was not the Russian way. By going quietly, he would add to his power. He would accept his medals with dignity and stand with the best of them high above others at the May Day parade. In the crowd, he would see a young blond woman look up to him. Later, at a Kremlin reception, he would meet the young woman, a Pravda reporter doing a story on the revival of Russia’s superiority over the other Soviet republics. Gorbachev would be no more, and the new president would have befriended Deputy KGB

Chairman Grigor Komarov.

After the Kremlin reception, the Pravda reporter would return with him to his room at the Hotel Metropole. They would order cham-pagne and speak of their new Mother Russia long into the night.

She is sweet. He can smell her. She puts her head on his shoulder and fingers the buttons of his uniform. She unbuttons his jacket and reaches beneath it. She finds the knife in the inside pocket and asks about it. He tells her the story of Sherbitsky, the murderer.

They make love. She becomes his mistress. They meet monthly at his dacha. He does not kill her. Instead, she stays with him as he grows older, wiser.

In the midst of Komarov’s reverie, Bela glared at him and spit off to the side. It seemed a provocation demanding action. He imagined rising from the chair and pistol-whipping the brute. But he did not move. Instead, he aimed the pistol at Bela, and this calmed him.

After a few more minutes of thrashing about in the weeds, it sounded as if the men were retreating to the house. Above the din of the music, Lazlo heard footsteps coming closer to the clearing. But instead of one man returning to the nest, it sounded like two. He kept his hand on his pistol as the men approached. The men stopped near his feet. He looked up and could see them facing the house. If one of the men stepped back, Lazlo would be kicked or stepped on, but he dared not move. The two men began speaking, young men.

“Komarov will have a poker up his ass now. When Brovko returns, you’ll really hear it.”

“This is all quite strange. We’re told Horvath is armed and dangerous, we’re issued Stechkins and AKMs, and Komarov turns up the music so we can’t hear an attacking elephant herd.”

“You know what they say about fish.”

“Rotting from the head first?”

Both men chuckled, their feet shuffling in the weeds. They continued their conversation.

“Captain Azef is in his glory back in Kiev.”

“A lot of the men have been saying Azef will take over. An old-timer in the office said Komarov’s been a paperweight the last few years. A serious drinking problem. That’s why he’s still a major.”

“I wouldn’t mind a drink now.”

“Brovko went for tea. I hope he doesn’t spill it when he hears what’s happened.”

“What do you think of Brovko’s closeness with Nikolskaia?”

“He wonders why Nikolskaia was assigned here. His partner was the one Horvath shot.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. A couple of PK amateurs from Pripyat.”

“Ha. I knew Nikolskaia came from Pripyat, but I didn’t know he was PK.”

“Don’t say anything to him. He has enough trouble. He’ll get cancer in a year or two from the radiation. My brother and his family had to move, and their place was even farther away. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing here. I thought we’d be sent up north or at least to the roadblocks watching for looters.”

“I hope we’re out of here soon. I met this girl in Kiev.”

“I’d rather go back to Moscow. The hell with these Ukes.”

The two men were silent for a while, then one of them said he should get back to his post. Because of the music and the similar-ity of the youthful voices, Lazlo could not tell which man had gone.

Lazlo pulled his legs up to a fetal position. The remaining man moved into the clearing, stood for a moment, and finally settled down on the coat spread on the ground. The man’s back was to Lazlo. He could smell the leather of the man’s jacket. If he reached out, he could touch the man’s back.

Lazlo studied the man, determined the AKM was in the man’s right hand, its skinny folding stock against the ground, its barrel upward. He would have to kill the man or disable him without creating a disturbance. Choking him would kill him, and somewhere a brother or even a sister would wonder why. Lazlo recalled the look in the eyes of the Gypsy’s sister, the look on the face of the Gypsy when the bullet pierced his head, and finally the look on the face of the dead PK agent he now knew was the partner of a man named Nikolskaia. The music of Lakatos was being played by Komarov to make the confrontation a deadly one. He did not want to kill again.

But he would kill Komarov.

The agent stirred, and Lazlo knew he could wait no longer and still take advantage of the turmoil caused by the search for the women and children. When the violin prima again changed into a louder and faster czardas, he slowly pulled his pistol from his belt.

He sat up and, measuring in his mind a blow appropriate to knock a man out without crushing his skull, hit the man over the head with the butt of his old battered Makarov.

After determining the man was still breathing, Lazlo exchanged trousers, coat, and cap to transform himself into a KBG agent. He used his discarded belt to tie the man’s hands behind his back, gagged the man with his own scarf, knotted his bootlaces together, and covered him with discarded clothing. He inspected the AKM and found the safety off. He retrieved his pistol from the ground and tucked it into his waist at his back beneath the agent’s leather coat. The music continued. Komarov was waiting.