Lazlo Horvath Thriller - 01 - Chernobyl Murders

by Michael Beres

  And what about Mihaly? One second she imagined Mihaly and his co-workers safe inside the bunker beneath the administration building. The next second she imagined him at home with his wife, both of them looking out their balcony window facing the plant.

  Yes, Mihaly either at home or in the bunker. In the bunker briefing the power plant Party secretary on the explosion and what could be done. Both of them tying up the phone lines calling in more helicopters. Mihaly and the Party secretary filling in KGB operatives on duty. Mihaly in charge to make sure no one was killed or injured, especially the young, especially the unborn, especially his child growing this very moment inside her.

  While Juli watched Marina use the last of the cellophane tape on the side of the sliding door, reality returned. The world she had known was ended. Perhaps the world everyone had known was ended. The great environmental disaster had come, not slowly as Aleksandra had been predicted, but with great speed.

  Juli and Marina stuffed rolled-up wet towels at the bottoms of the doors, taped the windows, even taped a plastic bag over the exhaust vent above the stove. There was nothing to do but seal themselves inside and wait. Sealed inside like babes in a womb.

  With a shaking hand, Juli held the dosimeter up to the light again.

  “What does it say now?” asked Marina.

  “Still at thirty.”

  “And it doesn’t mean it’s thirty now?”

  “No. It’s a cumulative measure. Since it was recharged at the lab, it’s accumulated thirty millirems. As long as it doesn’t keep going up, we’re fine. Even if it goes up a little, we’ll be okay. At least in here.”

  “How long will the radioactive dust or smoke or whatever it is stay in the air?”

  “Until it blows away. But if the reactor keeps sending out more …”

  Marina crossed the room, turned on the radio again, switched between the three stations they could receive. Beethoven on one, Prokofiev on another, some jazz on the third. Next she tried the television. Still too early, only snow.

  “Why don’t they say anything?” asked Marina. “And Vasily lives so close to the plant. I hope he was out somewhere. At one of those men’s clubs in Pripyat, drinking himself silly. He’s such a joker. He’s …”

  Juli and Marina looked to the ceiling as more helicopters flew over. They hugged until the helicopters passed.

  “Why can’t Vasily go somewhere where there’s a phone and call me? Why is his mother so cheap she can’t have a phone?”

  Juli looked to the balcony, where Mihaly had held her and kissed her last winter. Everything seemed so long ago. She picked up the phone, dialed the number at the plant, and, again, received a busy signal after a wait of several minutes.

  A little past six in the morning, the electricity went out, and Marina brought out her portable radio. At six thirty, the curtains over the balcony door looked the way they did any other morning before work. The glow of day bringing life to the world. But there was not the yellow glow of sunrise on the edges of the curtains. The morning was overcast.

  At seven o’clock, Juli tried the plant again, received a busy signal. Without knowing what she would say, she dialed Mihaly’s home number.

  As the phone rang, Juli imagined Mihaly answering, pretending he was talking with someone else, telling her everything was fine. A small explosion, some release of radiation, and he was fine. But the phone kept ringing.

  On the far side of the room, Marina picked up a glass egg she had transferred from a shelf to her bed when the helicopters began flying over. She held the egg in both hands. “No one answers,”

  she whispered. “In the legend, Easter eggs must be decorated every year, or the world will end. No one will answer because they are decorating eggs.”

  When Juli hung up the phone, Marina came to her, and they hugged.

  Meanwhile, several residents with apartments facing the street held curtains apart and watched as a tanker truck came from the center of town, rinsing the street. The water draining into the sewers was dark with a metallic luster.

  11

  Although it was Saturday and Nikolai knew he and Pavel were not due back in their stuffy PK room at the Pripyat post office until Monday, here was Pavel at his door. Pavel wore jeans, his hair was messed up, he needed a shave, and he kept glancing up and down the hallway.

  “What do you want?” asked Nikolai.

  “Let me in. I don’t want to speak out here.”

  Once the door was closed, Nikolai pulled his robe more tightly about his waist and went to the bedroom adjoining the small living area. “I have a business matter to discuss with an associate,” he said into the bedroom before closing the door.

  Nikolai and Pavel sat at the small table in the kitchenette.

  Nikolai nodded to the bedroom. “Without company, it would be a lonely weekend.”

  “I keep forgetting you are not blessed with a wife.”

  “Sarcasm?” asked Nikolai.

  “Perhaps,” said Pavel. “But more importantly, Captain Putna called early this morning. We’re getting a new assignment.”

  “Not at the post office?”

  “There’s been an explosion at the Chernobyl plant, and Captain Putna has put the PK on special duty.”

  “What kind of duty? What happened at the plant? Is it sabotage?”

  Pavel glanced to the bedroom door, which remained closed. He leaned forward over the table and spoke softly. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear it. One of the reactors exploded. Early this morning there was a crimson glow in the sky. Now there’s smoke spreading north. Captain Putna says it’s not an ordinary fire. Radiation may have been released, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. Some technicians working at the plant have been seen fleeing the area.

  On the way here, I saw people out on their balconies. Even though they’ve been told to remain indoors, they get a great view from the upper floors.”

  “Who told them to remain indoors?” asked Nikolai. “No one told me.”

  “You and your friend have remained indoors, haven’t you?”

  “What’s an accident at the plant got to do with us? What about those ministries? Medium Machine Building or Energy and Elec-trification. Aren’t they in charge?”

  Pavel took a notebook from his inside jacket pocket, opened it to a page, and put it on the table. He spoke softly, glancing occasionally to the closed bedroom door. “Captain Putna says he’s not sure if it involves sabotage, but we need to investigate the possibility.”

  “Is it the Gypsy Moth theory we heard about?” asked Nikolai.

  “What Gypsy Moth theory?”

  “Don’t you remember? We were watching for mention of the code name in correspondence. We put it in our report to Captain Putna.”

  “Pure speculation,” said Pavel. He pointed to the open page of his notebook. “Here are the facts. We’ve been given a list of Chernobyl employees and their addresses. Some have been ordered to the plant to assist emergency personnel but have refused to go.

  Some were under observation before this happened.”

  Nikolai took Pavel’s notebook, studied the list. “A familiar name or two. Especially Juli Popovics and Mihaly Horvath, the lovebirds.

  I thought Juli Popovics was pregnant and went to visit her aunt in Visenka.”

  “If you remember our last report, she’s to go there next month,”

  said Pavel.

  “Does Captain Putna think a pregnant woman is involved in sabotage?”

  “I don’t know what Captain Putna thinks,” said Pavel. “I know only of this list of people we’ve been ordered to report on. Captain Putna said Major Komarov is angrier than shit and wants to know the cause of the explosion. Komarov is heading up the investigation himself.”

  “This radiation,” said Nikolai, “do you think it’s dangerous?”

  “They’re hosing down streets on the south side of town.” Pavel stood and pulled the chain on the overhead light, but the light did not come on. “The electricity is out
at my place, too.”

  “I hadn’t noticed. We didn’t need lights.” Nikolai smiled, then became serious. “What about your wife?”

  Pavel walked to the window, looked up at the mix of smoke and clouds in the overcast sky. “I put her on the early bus to Kiev.”

  “Were there others on the bus?” asked Nikolai.

  “The bus was full,” said Pavel.

  From inside a helicopter flying at a thousand meters, the fire looked like a kerosene smudge pot used to mark road construction. But as the helicopter flew closer, vibrating violently because of the heavy load of sand swinging below, the fire grew in size.

  The helicopter pilot steered south, staying out of the cloud of bluish smoke. He dropped to five hundred meters and saw the spray from several fire hoses below. At one hundred meters, individual firemen were visible. Masks with cylindrical snouts covered the firemen’s faces. In their masks and coats and hats, the firemen looked like multicolored beetles.

  “It’s a graphite fire!” shouted the pilot.

  “Graphite’s supposed to stop the neutrons!” screamed the co-pilot. “Drop the load and go!”

  Inside the low-level counting laboratory, two technicians in off-white caps who had just climbed the stairs from the basement watched the helicopter drop its load of sand and disappear beyond the trees to the west. The man and woman stayed inside the double doors of the building. On the road out front, an ambulance headed for the fire.

  From where they stood, the man and woman could not see the fire, but they saw the thick smoke rising to the north.

  “The graphite is burning,” said the woman. “What should we do?”

  “The explosion must have cracked the concrete shell,” said the man. “We have no choice but to stay inside.”

  “We’ve been here for hours with no word,” said the woman, heading for a rack on the wall near the door. She took several dosimeters from the rack and began looking into them, aiming one after another at the dull light coming through the glass doors. “They’re all at two hundred already. I thought the building was sealed.”

  The man behind her walked slowly backward away from the doors.

  “If we’ve already picked up two hundred millirems up here …”

  The woman turned. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the basement. If there’s still water, I’m going to shower.

  Then I’m staying down there until this is over. Are you coming?”

  The woman dropped the dosimeters to the tile floor and followed the man, removing her off-white cap and throwing it aside as she ran.

  Outside the building, farther along the road to Pripyat, a crowd had gathered at the crossroads beyond the main gate. Several vehicles were parked about, some militia and fire vehicles and a few private cars. The crowd consisted mostly of uniformed firemen, militiamen, and plant guards. But there was also a group of civilians who had been stopped at the crossroads, several men and women and even a few children. Many stared at the column of smoke in the distance.

  An argument began between civilians and militiamen. A few men among the civilians began pushing and shoving, causing some women to scream. One young woman, slender, wearing a jacket over a cotton dress, held a little girl in one arm while holding the hand of another girl some years older. When a fireman wearing a filter mask approached and swept the slender probe of a Geiger counter in front of the woman and the two little girls, the woman backed away, and the little girls stared wide-eyed.

  An ambulance sped to the gate from the plant. Instead of driving through, it skidded to a stop, the rear doors flew open, and at least a dozen firemen with blackened coats piled out. All of the firemen wore filter masks.

  The fireman with the Geiger counter waved the probe frantically over the returned firemen and shouted obscenities through his filter mask. A bus drove up, and militiamen, firemen, and guards herded the civilians onto the bus like cattle. One fireman asked the woman with the two little girls the name of the youngest.

  “Ilonka!” cried the woman. “Ilonka Horvath! She wants to know what’s become of her father, Mihaly Horvath!”

  “I don’t know,” said the fireman, taking the little girl into his arms. “No one is allowed inside the facility except emergency workers. Come, Ilonka! Come, Mother! Hurry! The bus will take us to safety!” The fireman ran onto the bus ahead of the mother and the other little girl.

  “Everyone get on the bus!” shouted a militiaman.

  “But my car …” said one of the men.

  “To hell with your car!” screamed the militiaman.

  After the bus sped off, two militiamen wearing handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths stood together, looking at a man who had just driven up.

  “KGB guard from the Belarussian border.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “He’s driving a Zhiguli instead of a Volga, and when he opened the window, I saw his green uniform.”

  “He didn’t leave the window open long.”

  “Not with this smell in the air. It’s like eating coins.”

  Militiamen and plant guards moved aside as several buses rolled through the crossroads and headed down the road to Pripyat.

  “I wonder how many buses are coming,” said one militiaman after the buses drove off. “Those came all the way from Kiev.”

  “Yes, I saw the markings.”

  “I wish I was in Kiev.”

  The militiamen went silent, glancing at the KGB border guard in his green uniform who had gotten out of the Zhiguli and begun questioning plant guards.

  The dashboard of the car was covered with a wet towel, and wet rags were stuffed into the side vents. From the back seat, Juli could see the road between Marina and her boyfriend, Vasily. Vasily’s hair was dark, like Mihaly’s. Despite black smoke obscuring the horizon, everything looked normal outside. A couple walking a dog, and a man on a bicycle, a school in session, brightly-lit inside with students raising their hands to a teacher at the front of the classroom.

  “It’s an upside-down world,” said Vasily. “In some places, people are in a panic. Like at the hydrofoil dock on the river when they found out the run to Kiev was cancelled. But in other places, people go about their daily business.”

  Vasily had come to the apartment to get Marina. He was aware of an explosion at Chernobyl, but because of the news blackout, did not know any details. Vasily was driving them the few blocks to Mihaly’s apartment to find out if Mihaly was home, to find out if Nina was there, to find out anything they could. To convince Vasily to take them, Juli had voiced her concern for Mihaly’s little girls, children who would be most susceptible to radiation.

  So long as they sealed the car and stayed inside, they would be as safe as in the apartment. Juli held the dosimeter up to the light.

  Forty millirems, another ten while they ran to the car, or inside the car because of Vasily’s drive from the village on the other side of the Chernobyl plant. Juli would check the dosimeter every few minutes. If there were increases, she would tell Vasily to hurry back to the apartment.

  A militia car rushed past in the opposite direction, ignoring Vasily’s high speed.

  “I saw plenty of them while driving here,” said Vasily. “The militia speeding around like maniacs. City workers washing streets.

  No wonder some people assume everything is normal.”

  “What was it like nearer the plant?” asked Juli.

  “Never mind how it is near the plant,” said Vasily, briefly turning to Juli in the back seat. “You can’t go there!”

  “I know,” said Juli. “I simply wondered.”

  “Some private cars, all heading for Kiev. I saw people walking south. They carried suitcases. One farmer leading his livestock looked like Noah going to the ark. There were buses lined up on the side of the road outside Pripyat, but there didn’t seem to be a plan.

  When I saw firemen with masks, I kept everything shut up and even tied on the handkerchief. Momma and my sister are doing what you did. A
ll sealed up inside the house.”

  “But you live closer to the plant,” said Juli.

  “I know,” said Vasily.

  At Mihaly’s apartment building, all three ran in as fast as they could, went up the stairs, and down the hall. Juli knocked on the door. Knocked again more loudly. A woman with a cane came out of the apartment next door.

  “They went somewhere,” said the woman.

  “All of them?” asked Juli.

  “The mother and her little girls. I told her I’d watch them, but she insisted. She drove with a neighbor to the plant. They both have husbands there. She left the door open, so I closed it.” The woman glanced at Vasily. “I’m watching the apartment.”

  “Did Mihaly Horvath come home this morning?” asked Juli.

  “No, I told you. He’s at the plant with Yuri Skabichevsky. Their wives went to see about them. I can see flames from my window.

  You want to come in and look?”

  “We’re in a hurry,” said Vasily, leading Juli and Marina back to the stairs.

  The woman followed. “Only eight days until Easter, and something like this. Thank God my husband works at the radio factory.

  Some children went to school, so everything is fine. The firemen are in control. Irina Kiseleva’s husband is a fireman. She is very proud. She told me many technicians are from Russia or Hungary.

  She criticizes their aloofness at times, but I always disagree with her … because of my neighbors, the Horvaths. Are you sure you don’t want to look at the fire from my window?”

  On their way back to the apartment, Vasily drove through a downtown marketplace to see if there was any news posted. But the board at the entrance to the market street contained nothing about the explosion or the danger of radiation.

  “I wonder how the radiation will affect the food,” said Marina.

  “Because of the wind, Belarussia will get it worse,” said Juli, looking up at the sky.