Lazlo Horvath Thriller - 01 - Chernobyl Murders

by Michael Beres

  “Same with the temperature!” said another technician. “It’s the highest I’ve seen! Wait! It’s not going down! There’s something wrong with the cooling system! Core temperature up two hundred!”

  “All right!” shouted Mihaly, stepping back from the console.

  “Bring her under control with the backups! Open the primary cooling backup valve slowly! Sergei, call out the temperature changes!”

  “But this afternoon …” said one of the technicians.

  “What about it?”

  “The chief had us turn off the backups so we could work on those first.”

  “They’re still off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sergei!”

  “Up another fifty! It’s out of control! The fucking rods won’t go in! Do something!”

  During this exchange, the supervisor of the electricians looked to the ceiling and shook his head. Then he went behind the console and could be heard cursing.

  Amid the cursing and confusion at the console, more and more lights came on. Technicians began retreating from the console as a group, resembling children being told to line up in a hallway. Eventually, they gathered beneath the recessed ceiling lights above a conference table in the center of the room. The conference table was often used for meetings and discussions. Their automatic movement to the conference table was an indication that problem solving was needed, and in a hurry. As they gathered beneath the bright overhead lights, many began shouting at one another. No one sat at the chairs around the table. The few who did not shout stood about waiting for orders. Several demanded a solution from Mihaly, and he broke from the group to survey the entire console. When he turned back to the others, the determined look on his face silenced them.

  “Everyone get back to their stations!” shouted Mihaly.

  While the men returned to the console, Mihaly grabbed one of the technicians by the arm, and headed for the door at the side of the room.

  While running, Mihaly shouted, “We’ll have to open the lines manually! I’ll get the intake valve! You take care of the steam valve!

  The rest of you stay at the console!”

  When Mihaly and the other technician were gone, the remaining technicians glanced alternately to one another, then to the lights flashing on the console. The supervisor of electricians came out from behind the console, followed by two electricians.

  “What’s going on?” demanded the supervisor of electricians.

  “Why have the visitors gone away?”

  “We were too busy to notice!” shouted one of the technicians.

  “You tell us why they left! You probably fucked something up back there!”

  The supervisor of electricians ran at the technician with his fist raised. “All we did was remove a couple of panels! We didn’t touch a damn thing!”

  The accusing technician backed away. “How did I know? I thought you might have started working on the circuits!”

  The supervisor of electricians glanced at the lights flashing on the console, then shook his fist in the accuser’s face. “You’d better not try to blame us for this!” He turned to the others. “None of you!”

  The other technicians ignored the supervisor of electricians.

  Instead they stood at the console, staring wide-eyed at the flashing lights at their stations the way children stare wide-eyed when trapped in an impossible situation. The lights from the console surrounding the technicians gave their off-white uniforms a pinkish hue. When an alarm bell began ringing, everyone froze, standing perfectly still and silent.

  A few seconds later, there was an explosion that shook the control room. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the plastic shields from several overhead lights clattered to the floor.

  “The core!” shouted someone.

  “No! Idiot! A steam line!”

  “Get out!”

  “We can’t! We have to go in there!”

  The control console was even brighter now. Hundreds of red lights were glowing in the room like a fire from hell.

  After double-checking his gauges, one of the more knowledge-able technicians backed quickly from the console, slamming into the conference table and falling on his back. He wriggled on the table for a moment like an upturned turtle. A few smiled back at him, but stopped smiling when they saw the look on his face. When the technician got off the table, he shouted. “I’m reading more than a thousand rems in the turbine room! If we don’t get the fuck out of here, we’ll all be dead!”

  Everyone in the control room remained frozen for another moment until first one, then another, then all of the men began running for the exit at the rear of the control room. None of them went to the door at the side of the room that lead to the turbine room and the reactors, the door through which Mihaly and another technician had disappeared shortly before the explosion.

  In the turbine room of unit four, the sound of the turbine slowing down had reached a low pitch, almost a moan. Off to the side, there was another moan, the feeble moan of the technician who had run from the control room with Mihaly. The technician lay trapped beneath a massive section of steam line blown from the side of the turbine by the explosion.

  Nearer the turbine, superheated steam from the reactor gushed upward, blowing out skylights, knocking down sections of catwalk.

  The room became engulfed in a hot fog. Mihaly crawled on the floor to the man trapped beneath the steam line and began pulling on the man’s arms. Nearby electrical fires and sparks lit up the fog in alternate hues of orange and blue.

  Across the cooling pond on the narrow strip of land separating the pond from the Pripyat River, waterfowl settled back down after being startled by the steam explosion. Back at the plant, ghostlike figures ran across the yard of the lighted complex. One of the ghostlike figures jumped onto the rear bumper of a utility truck speeding away. Shouts of panic could be heard across the pond as faint whimpers in the night.

  Soon after the running figures disappeared beyond the bright lights of the main reactor complex, the core of unit four exploded.

  From across the pond it appeared as if the roof of the building had been severed and lifted slowly and quietly by a cauldron of flame.

  Then the sound and the shock wave hit, and all the creatures of the pond were startled from their sleep.

  The roof broke into several pieces, turning end over end. Flames shot into the air, lifting fragments that glowed and arced in the sky like fireworks. Flames emerging from the shell of the building lit up the sky and made the thick, black smoke from unit four into a monster dancing in the gentle spring breeze.

  It was 1:23 a.m. on Saturday, April 26, and something was very wrong at Chernobyl.

  10

  Juli sat up, threw back the blanket, and turned on the lamp, expecting to see Marina’s bed empty beside hers, expecting Marina to be in the bathroom or the kitchenette because it would account for the sound. But Marina was in bed, her hair fanned out on the pillow.

  The clock on the lamp table showed it was after one in the morning.

  “Marina. Are you asleep?”

  Marina stirred, turned her face away from the light. “Hmm?”

  “Marina?”

  “Time to get up already?”

  “No. It’s only 1:30.”

  “Good. I need my beauty sleep.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  Marina turned to Juli, shaded her eyes with her hand. “Was it the neighbors again?”

  “It sounded like an explosion,” said Juli. “I was asleep, and it woke me.”

  “Maybe the baby kicked.”

  Juli held her stomach with both hands. “So soon?”

  “I’m joking,” said Marina. “It’s probably Mihaly tossing stones at the window. Wants to know what was bothering you after work today … I mean yesterday. Go to sleep. It’s the middle of the night and I have to work at the store early. They’re probably already in line to complain to me, as if I can do anything about the idiotic sizes the supplier ships.”r />
  Marina turned away from the light, wrapped the pillow about her head. All was silent except … except what? Juli stopped breathing and listened. The balcony. There was someone on the balcony!

  She could hear voices through the glass door and curtains.

  “Marina. Listen.”

  Marina sat up with her eyes closed, opened her eyes, stared at the closed curtains. “Who could be out there this time of night?”

  Marina got out of bed and walked to the window. “Shut off the light so I can look out.”

  After Juli turned out the light, Marina parted the curtains.

  “People are down in the courtyard.”

  “Who?”

  “From ground-floor apartments, I guess. They’ve got coats on over their bedclothes.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Looking at the sky. Looking at something orange in the sky.”

  Outside, a steady breeze blew out of the south. Neighbors in the courtyard resembled plump birds standing about nodding to one another. Everyone wore coats. Showing below the coats were pa-jamas, nightshirts, nightgowns, and, in some cases, bare legs and bony white ankles. The neighbors stood looking south between Juli’s building and the next building.

  “It’s the atomic plant,” said one man. “My brother works there.

  Thank God he’s not there now.”

  “Maybe it’s a grass fire,” said another.

  “They’re burning palms for Palm Sunday,” slurred a man who was obviously drunk.

  “It’s something for May Day,” said yet another man, this one not drunk. “They’re clearing a field for the parade.”

  “Idiots!” said a woman. “They don’t burn palms until later, for the next Ash Wednesday. Who would purposely start a fire in the middle of the night?”

  “Today is the Saturday of Lazarus,” said a woman in a soft voice.

  “At our church they ran short of palms and they’ll use pussy willows this Sunday. A man who lives on Lesya Ukrainka Street was running home when I came out. He said the fir and pine forests are on fire.”

  “Not a forest fire,” said a heavy woman in furry slippers, an overcoat, and a babushka. “Didn’t you hear the explosion? It knocked me out of bed.”

  Two teenaged boys behind the woman laughed, and she turned about to scowl at them. The boys’ faces were lit orange by the glow from the sky.

  “Look,” said one of the men. “Sparks flying. And smoke.”

  “It’s poisonous,” said the heavy woman. “It probably has atoms in it.”

  Another man who had been standing silently to the side said,

  “Of course it has atoms in it. Everything is made of atoms.”

  Juli stood with Marina, watching the sky.

  “Is it dangerous?” whispered Marina.

  The glow in the sky became more sinister as a column of black smoke leaned to the north and merged with the clouds.

  Marina held Juli’s arm. “You said Mihaly was working tonight.

  Can’t you call him and find out about this? I’m sure he’s all right.”

  “Hey,” said one of the men. “You work at the plant. What do you think this is?”

  “Juli, he’s talking to you. They want to know if you know anything.” Marina turned to the group of people gathering slowly like penguins. “She doesn’t know anything. We heard you out here and came to see what was going on.”

  “But she works there in a laboratory. A technician should know what’s happening.”

  “Juli,” whispered Marina, “say something.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Juli. “Some of you must also work at the plant.”

  “Even so, you are a technician,” said one of the men. “Therefore, you must have special knowledge of what’s going on. You must know if there’s danger for us.”

  “Why us?” said the large woman.

  “Radiation,” said the man. “If a reactor explodes, it releases radioactive fallout like a bomb.”

  Several heads turned to look at the glow in the sky. At the far end of the courtyard, a woman sobbed loudly as she ran outside.

  “The phone!” screamed the woman. “My husband! He’s there tonight, and the phone is dead! Something terrible has happened!”

  The man who had mentioned radioactive fallout turned back to Juli. “I know you work in the radiation measurement laboratory. If one of the reactors exploded and there is radiation leaking out, tell us what we should do.”

  The man walked directly in front of Juli. Marina stepped up to the man. “She doesn’t know anything. Because she works there doesn’t mean she had anything to do with this.”

  “I didn’t mean it was her doing,” said the man. “I simply want to know if there’s anything we can do to protect ourselves.”

  “Yes,” said Juli.

  “Speak up!” shouted the heavy woman. “We can’t hear you!”

  “Yes! If there was an explosion and if the explosion involved one of the reactors, the initial radiation will be airborne.” She looked to the sky, the dark column of smoke crawling upward. “The best thing to do is go to your apartments. Stay inside and close all the windows.

  Keep the outside air from coming in as much as possible.”

  “Then what?” asked the man.

  Juli looked from one shadowed face to another. “If there is radiation, the authorities will tell us what to do. But it could be smoke from any fire. It could be nothing.”

  The sound of a car traveling at high speed came from the main road at the front of the apartment complex. Tires squealed as the car drove through the curve in the road beyond the apartments.

  After the car passed, a truck came, its lights flashing in the trees.

  When the truck appeared for a moment between buildings, Juli saw figures in off-white uniforms hanging onto the back.

  An hour later, Juli sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the curtains closed over the balcony door. Even if the curtains had been open, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything because the balcony faced north. After coming up the stairs, they had run to look out the south-facing window at the far end of the hallway. The fire was definitely at the Chernobyl plant. Flames leapt into the sky at the base of its towers, and Juli knew the glow in the sky meant death.

  Marina sat cross-legged behind Juli on the bed, massaging Juli’s shoulders as she spoke. “There’s nothing you can do,” said Marina.

  “Worrying about it won’t help. Even if it was the number four reactor, Mihaly would have been one of the first out of there because he would have known if something was going wrong. He’s home right now, sealed in his apartment.”

  “Mihaly wouldn’t have left, Marina. There’s no answer at the plant switchboard. They were going to do a shutdown. And now there’s no answer …”

  “How bad could it be?” asked Marina. “My Vasily lives closer to the plant than we do. I wish he had a phone so I could call him.

  What about the dosimeter you put out on the balcony? Will the dosimeter tell us if it’s safe?”

  Juli stood, walked to the balcony door, and opened the curtains.

  She slid the door open a few centimeters, reached quickly outside, pulled the dosimeter inside, and slammed the door.

  “You should have asked me to get it,” said Marina.

  “Why? You said it’s probably nothing.”

  Juli took the dosimeter into the bathroom, turned on the bright overhead light, and held the small lens to her eye. At first she thought she saw the hairline resting at zero. But it was only the zero marker line. Then she thought there was no hairline, and she had trouble keeping the markings in the dosimeter in focus. Her hand shook, so she held the dosimeter with both hands, steadying her knuckles against her forehead.

  The hairline was where she had never seen it during her years at the laboratory. If turned in to the rack on Monday morning, it would bring a crew of safety technicians down into the sub-basement to remove her from the vicinity of the sensitive counting equipme
nt.

  Marina spoke from behind Juli. “What does it say?”

  Juli turned and did her best to remain calm. “Thirty millirems.”

  “Is that a lot?” asked Marina.

  “Some workers are exposed to as much as a thousand millirems a year. Anything above five thousand a year is considered dangerous.”

  “Then it’s okay, Juli. See? It’s fine. Everyone will be fine. Mihaly and Vasily … everyone.”

  “How long did I leave it on the balcony?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marina. “Maybe half an hour.”

  Juli worked out the figures in her head. It was no use remaining calm. “At this rate, in a day outside on the balcony, the exposure would have been over a thousand. In five days it would have been beyond the danger level. We’re three kilometers from the explosion, and the worst of the radioactivity might not even be here yet!”

  Juli turned, placed the dosimeter on the edge of the sink, and began washing her hands and arms vigorously, especially her right because it had reached out into the blackness to retrieve the dosimeter.

  “But if something’s happened, where’s the militia?” asked Marina, looking worried.

  The ceiling began shaking with a pounding vibration, rattling the balcony door. “What’s that?” screamed Marina.

  Juli looked up as the pounding became louder before suddenly fading. “A helicopter heading to the plant.”

  “Should we go out and see?”

  Juli went to Marina and held her shoulders. She spoke in a voice that did not seem her own. “We’ll stay here. Technically I should go to the plant because I’m a dosimetrist, and in the event of a spill, I should be monitoring the area. But this is no spill. This is a disaster.”

  Not everyone in Pripyat was frightened. Many slept as moist air swept through open windows. Others, even though they knew of the explosion, did not believe radiation could be allowed to be let loose. Dawn would bring action. Weren’t there plenty of sirens now? Weren’t firemen being called to extra duty? Obviously the explosion, and the resulting fire, was something entirely controlla-ble? To some, even the metallic taste and smell in the air was a good sign. “Nothing but an ordinary industrial fire,” they said.

  Lectures from Juli’s classes years earlier in Moscow haunted her. Strontium, krypton-85, cesium-137, and the concerns of her co-worker Aleksandra Yasinsky—all of these things from her years of training and working with radiation took on new meaning. Not because of concern for herself, but because of the vulnerability of the baby growing inside her.