He forced his mind back on track.
A half mile to his west was the first checkpoint. He slowed his breathing and listened. In the marshes sound traveled well, and after a few seconds he heard the distant chunk of a car door slamming, then voices speaking in Ukrainian. Another visitor coming or going, Fisher thought. Probably the latter. By now, Elena would already be through the checkpoint and waiting at the motor pool.
He stood up and started picking his way through the pines.
After a few hundred yards, the trees began to thin and he could see gray light filtering through the branches. He reached the edge and stopped. Ahead lay a gravel parking lot filled with dozens of cars and trucks. A single sodium-vapor light sitting atop a pole in the middle of the lot was the only illumination. As Elena had predicted, the ever-flirtatious checkpoint guards had assigned her her favorite car: a bright red 1964 Opel Kadett. Fisher could see her silhouetted in the driver's seat.
From habit, he waited and watched for another ten minutes. He wasn't necessarily concerned about her trustworthiness, but she'd been spying for the CIA for six years--a lot of time in which suspicions can be raised and investigations started.
Staying within the tree line, he circled the parking lot until satisfied no one else was about. He walked to Elena's Opel and got in. She put the car in gear, backed out of the lot, and started driving.
"What took you so long?" she asked. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine. I'm just not as fast on my feet as I used to be. Getting old."
"Old? Rubbish. You look fine to me," she said, concentrating on the windshield.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." She tapped her finger on the steering wheel. "Are you married?"
"No. You?"
"No."
They drove in silence for five minutes, then Elena said, "Have you ever had borshch? Real Ukrainian borshch?"
"I don't think I have."
"I make wonderful borshch."
"I'm not even sure what's in it."
"You start with pork stock, add beans, beets, lemons, vegetables, sorrel leaves, vinegar, strained rhubarb juice, garlic. . . . It's delicious. I'll make it for you."
"Where do the vegetables come from?"
She smiled. "You mean do I grow them in the zone? No, they're from from the outside. Kiev."
"Okay."
"It's only a few hours befor sunrise. Do you want to go to the inner zone? I assume you'd rather do your skulking at night."
Fisher had the documentation and cover story to explain his presence if apprehended, but he preferred to avoid all contact with the authorities. He'd allotted himself three days inside the Exclusion Zone. More than simply a safety concern, he needed to do the job and get out. With a U.S. Navy battle group on its way to the Gulf of Oman, events would begin moving quickly. Iran would send elements of its own Navy to meet the battle group. Tensions would mount; shots would be fired.
"How do you know I'm a skulker?" he asked her.
She glanced sideways at him. "You have the eyes of a skulker. Kind, though--kind eyes."
"To answer your question: Yes, night would be best."
"Good. We'll go now. You really should see Pripyat. I can show you things you won't see in pictures."
Sightseeing wasn't part of his mission, but he had the time--and the curiosity. "Drive on."
IT was only fifteen kilometers, or seven miles, but along the way they passed east of the village of Chernobyl on the banks of the Pripyat River, which at the time of the accident fed the plant's cooling pond.
Elena arced around Chernobyl to the east, passing through dozens of villages, all abandoned save for a few hundred die-hard farmers who'd returned despite the government's warnings. Elena translated the Cyrillic signs as they drove: Yampol, Malyy Cherevach, Zapol'ye--one by one they appeared and disappeared in the Opel's headlights, wooden farmhouses and sheds and barns, many of them crumbling, overgrown with foliage and moss, fences so coiled in vines and underbrush they leaned at wild angles to the ground, structures so primitive Fisher had little trouble imagining himself transported back a hundred years.
"This is surreal," Fisher said.
"This is nothing. Just wait."
AS they drew closer to the city, farmhouses and barns gave way to smaller buildings, made mostly of gray concrete and faded brown brick. The signs were all in Cyrillic, but there was something universal about the structures: a gas station, a grocery store; a bank. . . . Soon the scrub pines and marshland gave way to vacant lots and paved intersections.
They approached Pripyat from the west, so Fisher's first glimpse of the city's skyline was backlit by the first hints of sunlight on the horizon. Great rectangular blocks of buildings, tall and narrow, short and squat, rose from the terrain. In twilight they were dark and dimensionless, as though painted on the skyline by a movie set designer.
As they entered the city limits and the horizon brightened, details began to stand out.
Pripyat was in many ways a typical Soviet-era city. The structures, from apartment high-rises to four-story schools and office buildings, were built in gray cinder block. Everything had an almost Lego-like atmosphere, as though geometric blocks were simply dropped into the empty spaces between the streets and then given designations: Apartment Block 17; People's Bank Number 84; General Office Complex 21. The only bits of color Fisher saw were faded murals painted on the sides of buildings, traditional Revolution-era scenes of Lenin or of iron-jawed, blond-haired men standing knee deep in golden fields of wheat, one hand clutching a sickle, the other shielding eyes that stared at some distant horizon.
What struck Fisher the most was the utter stillness of the place. If the outlying farms seemed trapped in the 1800s, Pripyat seemed frozen on that fateful day in April of 1986. Cars sat parked in the middle of intersections, their doors still open as though the occupants had simply gotten out and run away. Suitcases and footlockers and wheelbarrows piled high with clothes, pots and pans, and framed pictures lay strewn on the sidewalks.
Just like in Slipstone, Fisher reminded himself.
They passed an elementary school. The playground, once a clearing surrounded by trees, had been reclaimed by weeds and bushes. A jungle gym rose from the undergrowth, its steel frame choked with vines; a raised play-house in the shape of an elephant with a slide for a trunk was a nothing more than a rusted hulk. The school's doors stood yawning--shoved open, Fisher imagined, by fleeing children and teachers. As the school disappeared in the car's side window, Fisher glimpsed a child's doll sitting perfectly upright on the rim of a sandbox.
This, he decided, is what nuclear Armageddon would look like.
"Is it all like this?" he asked.
"Yes. And it will be for the next three hundred years. It'll take that long for the contamination levels to fade. I come here sometimes, just to remind myself it's real. But never at night. I never come at night."
"I don't blame you."
Next they passed a six-story apartment building, another gray cube lined with balconies that ran the length of the structure. With only a few exceptions, each balcony door on the sixth floor stood open. It took Fisher a moment to understand why. These apartments faced southeast--toward the power plant. The upper floor would have offered an unobstructed view of the reactor's explosion and subsequent fire. He imagined women in housecoats and children in pajamas standing at the railing watching the spectacle, not yet realizing what had happened. Not knowing an invisible cloud of cesium was already falling on them. Below, many of the balconies a faded number had been painted in red or orange.
"What are those?" Fisher asked.
"It wasn't until the next morning, after many of the children had left for school, that the evacuation order was given. People were told to mark their balconies with the number of their evacuation bus so if loved ones returned home, they would know."
"My God," Fisher murmured.
"Have you seen enough?"
Fisher nodded, still staring out the
window.
32
THEY drove south for ten minutes before Fisher saw the first sign they were approaching Chernobyl itself. In the distance an obelisk rose from the marshlands. It was the plant's smokestack, Elena explained. As they drew closer, Fisher could see the stack was painted in faded red and white horizontal bands. Beside it stood a crane that he guessed was being used for nearly constant rebuilding of the Sarcophagus, which had over the years begun to crack and crumble.
Twelve kilometers from the plant, Elena veered off the paved road and onto a gravel track that wound through a copse of stunted pine trees. After a few hundred yards, she turned into a driveway. She pulled to a stop before a ranch-style bungalow painted a washed-out yellow. Like the farmhouses Fisher had seen in the outlying villages, the bungalow was encased in a labyrinth of vines that snaked up the walls, along the eaves, and around the front porch's post, like snakes frozen in mid-slither.
"PRIA's headquarters is just inside the inner zone," Elena said, getting out. "Moscow built it about a year after the disaster. Of course, we all spend as little time there as possible."
"Who does this place belong to?"
"Me, now. Back then, a local party boss from Kiev. When the plant was first build, Moscow ordered bigwigs to take dachas here, to prove the reactor was safe. Officially, all the PRIA scientists are supposed to live in a block of renovated apartments south of Pripyat."
"I saw them." Fisher grabbed his rucksack from the backseat. "Not very cozy."
"Yes, lovely, aren't they? This place is better. The outside isn't much, but the roof doesn't leak and the insulation is good. Plus, it wasn't in the plume."
"I don't understand."
"The plume of radioactive dust. Most of it was blown west and then north, toward Belorus. We're on the east side of the plant. Come on in." She started walking. She realized Fisher wasn't following, and turned back and smiled. "Relax. You see that?" She pointed to what looked like a weather vane jutting from the roof. "It's a dosimeter; I check it twice a day. Trust me, this is one of the cleanest places in Chernobyl."
"Guess it pays to be a biologist," Fisher said, and started walking toward the porch.
"I'm very careful. I would like to have children some day."
SHE directed Fisher to the spare bedroom, where he dropped his rucksack, and then he joined her in the kitchen. She was crouched before the open door of a woodstove, shoving sticks into a growing flame. She shut the door and stood up. "Sit. Tea will be ready in a few minutes."
She got a loaf of black bread and a tin of blackberry jam from the cupboard and laid them on the table. She chose an apple from the windowsill, washed it, then sliced it into a bowl.
"The water comes from a new artesian well," she said before he had a chance to ask. "I test that every day, too."
Fisher said, "Sorry. This takes some getting used to."
"Don't apologize. I was the same way when I first came here. I didn't want to touch anything. I even found myself holding my breath without realizing it. It's a natural reaction."
They ate breakfast and then Fisher helped her clean up. "I've got to go into work for a few hours," she said, wiping her hands on a towel. "I'm running an experiment on a three-headed cattail."
Fisher squinted at her, wondering if she were pulling his leg.
"I'm serious," she said. "Almost all the cattails around the reactor's cooling pond are mutated. Believe me, those are some of the tamer changes we've seen. You should see some of the carp they pull out of the pond." She sucked her lips and crossed her eyes. "Ugly, like that."
Fisher laughed.
"I'll be home around noon. On the way I've got to check on something in the village--a rumor I heard once. It might interest you."
"What's that?"
"Let me check first. Go to sleep. If anyone knocks, don't answer."
FISHER tried to sleep, but his body wouldn't fully cooperate, so he dozed on and off for a few hours, then got up and wandered around the house. Elena had a good book collection she kept inside an old china cabinet in the living room. The titles ranged from Tolstoy and Balzac to Stephen Hawking and Danielle Steel. He also found a milk crate full of old records, mostly from the Big Band era. He put a Mancini tribute on the turntable and sat down with an English language version of War and Peace and read until Elena came home.
She was carrying a sack of groceries.
"Borshch?" Fisher asked.
"Of course. I promised you."
After the groceries were put away, they sat down and shared a lunch of cold cuts, cheese, and wine. "So," Fisher said, "this rumor?"
"Yes, I checked. I wasn't sure I'd remembered it right, but the rumor is about four months ago a pair of soldiers went missing in the middle of the night. They were never found. Everyone, including the local commander, assumed they'd deserted. The were last seen heading toward the bunkers you were asking about. I've got the name of the man who saw them last: Alexi. He's ninety-five years old, but still sharp. An old warhorse."
"He'll talk to us?"
Elena smiled. "Alexi loves to talk. He was a tank commander during the Great Patriotic War. He claims to have killed eighteen Panzers at Kursk before he got captured. He spent the rest of the war in a labor camp in Poland. We'll go tonight, after borshch. I see you found my book collection."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--"
Elena waved her hand. "No, no, I meant to show it to you. Here, I'll clean up. You go back and read. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did."
"I thought War and Peace was required reading for all Russians."
"Very funny. I've tried to read it four times. It bores me to tears. Besides, I'm Ukrainian."
33
SHORTLY after nightfall, with his belly full of borshch so good he felt cheated for having lived so long without it, Fisher and Elena left her bungalow.
Throughout the afternoon, a low-pressure front had moved in, bringing with it dark clouds and icy drizzle. The Kadett's headlights cut twin swaths through the dark, illuminating ruts and potholes rimmed with ice. The heater, which worked only on the highest setting, made a sound that Elena described as a "carrot being shoved into a fan blade."
The change in weather was a mixed blessing for Fisher. The clouds and lack of starlight would provide better cover, but the sleet and dropping temperatures would leave the fields and marshes coated in ice, which would crackle with every footfall.
He wasn't sure what to make of the story of the missing soldiers. Desertion was common in the Ukrainian Army--especially, he imagined, among troops pulling Chernobyl duty. Many of the conscripts were young and poorly educated, and all they knew about Chernobyl was that it had happened long before their births or when they were too young to remember, and that it was a place of ghosts and poison and sickness. Still, the rumor was also a place to start.
They drove for twenty minutes, following the road south along the Pripyat River. Three miles from the power plant, she turned off the main road and crossed a rickety bridge to the east side of the river. Set back in a stand of birch trees was a cabin. In the headlights Fisher could see the structure's walls were made of rough birch planks sealed with what looked like a mixture of mud and straw. The roof was piled high with sod.
The Kadett coasted to a stop and Elena doused the headlights.
"He lives here year-round?" Fisher asked.
She nodded. "For the last eighteen years. It's actually very warm in the winter; warmer than my place, even. I visit him once a week, bring him some borshch."
"Lucky man."
"What, you thought you were the only man I made borshch for? Men."
Fisher started to open the door, but Elena stopped him. "Let Alexi come out and see that it's me first. He's ornery with strangers and handy with a shotgun."
"And a tank," Fisher said.
"And that."
The cabin's door opened and a lantern appeared on the porch. In its glow Fisher could see a gaunt face and bushy salt-and-pepper beard. Elena rolled dow
n her window and called something in Ukrainian. Alexi grumbled something back and waved for them to come in.
"He promised not to shoot you," Elena said. "I told him you brought borshch."
FISHER hadn't brought borsch, but Elena had, and they sat in silence while Alexi ate all of it, then licked the bowl clean. The interior of the cabin wasn't what Fisher expected. Except for the mud-filled gaps between the planks, the walls were painted a butter yellow. Off the kitchen there were two bedrooms and a living room with a large open-hearth fireplace.
As were most WWII Soviet tankers, Alexi was short and sinewy--the kind of muscle that comes from hard labor. His hands were so calloused they looked like leather.
Alexi set the bowl aside and grabbed a bottle of vodka from the shelf and poured three shots. They all drank. Alexi and Elena talked for a few minutes before she turned to Fisher.
"He'll talk to you. I told him you weren't with the government--he doesn't like the government--and that you're writing a book about Chernobyl since the accident."
"Have him tell us the story of that night--the night the soldiers disappeared."
Elena translated Fisher's words, then listened as Alexi began talking. She translated.
"He says it was past midnight and he was fishing in the cooling pond beside the plant. He saw an Army truck appear on the road on the other side of the pond and then circle around to the 'mounds'--the bunker area--but before it got there, the headlights went out and the engine went quiet. A few minutes later another truck appeared, this one from the opposite direction, and parked facing the Army truck.
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