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.
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 h
is 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.
Lazlo Horvath Thriller - 01 - Chernobyl Murders Page 2