Chernobyl Murders (5 page)

Nina and Mariska went to the market while Cousin Bela fulfilled his duties on the collective.

When Lazlo awoke from his nap he watched his nieces, Anna and Ilonka, playing with Bela and Mariska’s baby girl. His nieces took the baby’s chair and stools for themselves to the closed wine-cellar entrance and placed sticks and stones on it in patterns, making the elevated trapdoor into an imaginary dining-room table.

With its lid closed, the entry to the wine cellar looked simply like a box placed in the yard. Or like one of the mock coffins used as markers in the nearby cemetery. Perhaps this was what the German troops thought when they marched through. Lazlo recalled the story. How his mother feared the Germans would discover her husband’s Gypsy heritage and take him away. How his parents had gone into the wine cellar just as the helmets of the troops became visible, advancing up the hill.

But there was no war now, no need to concern himself with the outside world. The children were at play, and all was peaceful. Here, on the farm, there were no cars or trucks or scooters, no Aeroflot jets climbing overhead, no questioning of paranoid citizens who would deny the existence of their parents, so great was their fear of the militia. No Chief Investigator Chkalov or Deputy Chief Investigator Lysenko. The only place he missed being in Kiev was Club Ukrainka, where he would go to see Tamara, the woman who helped him forget age and unfulfilled desire.

The make-believe table being set by his nieces reminded Lazlo of his plan to ask Tamara to his apartment, where he would prepare a Hungarian dish for her, one like his mother cooked here on the farm when he was a boy full of anticipation for the future.

Lazlo and Mihaly did not go into the wine cellar again until late afternoon. After Nina and Mariska returned from the market and the girls were napping, they decided their systems were properly recovered and they could enjoy a glass or two before dinner. Because they had slept, and afterward others were about, Lazlo saved the question concerning Chernobyl for the seclusion of the wine cellar.

“What’s wrong at Chernobyl, Mihaly?”

When Mihaly did not answer, Lazlo pressed him. “Something’s wrong, Mihaly. Something’s been on your mind this entire holiday.

I’m your brother, and we’re in the wine cellar. No one will hear.

Yesterday I told you about my bastard chief. Today you’ll tell me what’s wrong at Chernobyl.”

Mihaly took a gulp of wine. “The situation is out of control.

Fucked because of an insane policy.”

“What kind of policy?”

“It’s hard to discuss without getting technical, or emotional.”

“So, don’t get technical or emotional. But tell me about it before I bust one of these kegs over your head.”

Mihaly laughed, sipped his wine, bent forward with his elbows on his knees. “Okay, Laz. I’ll cut through the technical shit. During the past year, I’ve gotten bits of information, not from a single source, but from many sources. From engineers and safety inspectors at other plants. Many believe the power plants at Chernobyl are being put through unnecessary experiments. Tests to find out how far the system can be pushed.”

“Who’s doing these experiments?”

“The chief engineers and the plant manager. They’re playing with fire. It’s like prodding a sleeping demon. You never know when she might turn on you.”

“How dangerous is it? Could people be killed?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mihaly. “If there were an accident like the one they had at Three Mile Island in America, there would definitely be casualties. Our reactors are naked. We don’t have the containment vessels they had at Three Mile Island.”

“But if this is true, why haven’t higher authorities stopped it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the distance from Moscow. Or maybe, somewhere in Moscow, there’s an official perfectly willing to let the experiments go on.”

“Why would an official in Moscow want to endanger lives?”

“By pushing for testing at Chernobyl, Moscow officials might learn the limits of their designs without putting their own lives at risk. Citizens of the Ukraine are more expendable than the citizens to the north and east. The power from our plant stays mostly in the Ukraine, with some going to Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. None of the power from our RBMK-1000s goes to the Russian Republic.”

“But to risk lives …”

“Consider the perspective of a Moscow official,” said Mihaly.

“Or even the Party secretary at our plant. He’s a transplanted Russian. He hasn’t ordered something wrong to be done. He’s simply turned his back on the enthusiasm of managers and chief engineers to meet higher quotas. In the bureaucratic mind, there could be benefits from an accident.”

“What benefits?”

“You send in observers from other plants and from industry so they’ll learn, without speculation, what actually happens in the event of a nuclear accident. The loss of millions in war did a lot to make the union strong. With this kind of thinking carried to its extreme, who knows what advantages can be dreamed up? We’d learn about radioactive fallout and its effects on humans. We’d be able to see the effects on people and local government and medical facilities. We’d be able to extrapolate these data to create models of nuclear accidents and nuclear war.”

“Mihaly, this is insane!”

“You told me to get it out of my system, Laz. I’m simply telling you about my speculation. The safety at the plant is failing, and everyone aware of it is trying to come up with a reason. Can you think of a sane reason to reduce safety standards?” Mihaly took a gulp of wine. “Maybe I’m too close to the situation. Maybe it’s the pressure making me come up with crazy theories.”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of it, Mihaly. If you really think there’s a problem, if safety has taken a back seat, quit your job, get transferred.”

“I’m going to apply for a transfer,” said Mihaly. “That’s why I’ve told you … to convince myself to go through with it. They’ve got too many working at the plant as it is. Too many cooks in the she-demon’s kitchen. When I complained about an upcoming test, my chief said to tell my men if things aren’t done right, they’ll have to turn in their Party cards. When I reminded him the men under me don’t have Party cards, he jokes they should get them so if something goes wrong, they’ll have cards to turn in. He’s more concerned about minor things, like workers smoking hashish in the locker room. When I complained about the printout for reactor conditions being too far from the control room to do us any good in an emergency, he said to use one of my men as a runner to bring the printout to the control room. He’s gotten things upside down.”

“Mihaly, if you’re thinking of revealing this to anyone else, forget it. Do whatever seems reasonable to point out obvious safety flaws.

But don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t get labeled a counterrevolutionary by questioning the system. Whatever you do, don’t mention conspiracy. Without mountains of documentation, no one will believe you. You’ll be fired, and then there will be documentation, all of it against you, against your character. The KGB will be up your ass. You’ll be fucked! Don’t even think of telling anyone else. If you can’t get a transfer, quit. I’ll see about getting you a job in Kiev. You and Nina and the girls can move in with me. You can have my apartment. Tell me you’ll get out of there, Mihaly!”

“I’ll get out,” said Mihaly, gulping down more wine. “I would have told you about this yesterday if Cousin Andrew hadn’t been here. Hiding Bela’s shortwave radio before Andrew and his wife arrived brought back the old fears from my university days. I’m glad we’re alone and it’s off my chest. As brothers, we should be honest with one another.”

After drinking to secrecy, Lazlo and Mihaly hugged in the darkness of the wine cellar as if they were the last two souls on earth.

While they hugged, Lazlo promised himself he would someday be honest with Mihaly and tell about the killing of the deserter. Someday soon.

The few employees who commuted by car had to stop at the main gate for identification and sometimes a look into the luggage compartment. Buses passed more quickly because a guard assigned to each bus checked identification and inspected briefcases and lunch containers while the bus was in transit.

When entering the main gate, the first buildings one saw were laboratory buildings, including the low-level counting laboratory operated by the Department of Industrial Safety. Incoming buses stopped here first. The building, set back from the road, was inside another fence and inspection gate. This inner fence was not capped with barbed wire like the main fence. Its purpose was to keep out stray animals or ignorant maintenance workers who might bring unwanted radiation into the building. If there were a “spill”

of nuclear material at Chernobyl, however small, and if some of it were to contaminate the low-level laboratory, it would put them out of business. Recently, the head of safety at the plant had ordered low-level laboratory personnel to take their pocket dosimeters home with them in the unlikely event they picked up radiation on the bus or elsewhere. Along with the written order was a strongly worded message saying the measure was experimental and anyone generating unfounded rumors would be dealt with severely.

The low-level laboratory housed a monitoring system to analyze samples from numerous locations surrounding Chernobyl, as well as samples from all over the Ukraine. The equipment here could detect radiation levels so small, background radiation caused by cosmic rays from outer space had to be shielded out using steel vaults. Within the vaults, samples were analyzed by counting ionizing particles of radiation through the use of ionization chambers commonly called Geiger counters.

The building had two upper floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. The upper floors contained offices for engineers and scientists, laboratories for converting samples into gases to be put into Geiger tubes, and computer equipment to analyze data. The electronic counting equipment and the vaults, referred to as “tombs”

by technicians, were below ground in the windowless basement and sub-basement. The technicians called themselves “moles.”

Juli Popovics was a mole. Like many technicians who worked in the sub-basement, she was well acquainted with radioactivity and its terminology. Strontium, half-lives, and the characteristics of radionuclides such as krypton-85 and cesium-137 were second nature to her. Although the advertised reason for the low-level counting lab was safety, she knew it had another purpose. Scrubbers were installed on site to camouflage the extent to which reactor fuel was reprocessed before dangerous fission products had a chance to decay.

Few technicians at Chernobyl were aware the Americans and British had developed a way to measure radionuclide off-gassing and use the measurements to estimate weapons-grade fuel reprocessing.

The only reason Juli knew of these techniques was because of another technician named Aleksandra Yasinsky.

Juli and Aleksandra graduated university together and came to work at Chernobyl and live in Pripyat the same year. Aleksandra was a dear friend, but she was also an activist. Aleksandra kept charts in her desk showing ongoing increases of radioactive noble gases based on air samples taken outside the plant. Aleksandra said scientists throughout the world would someday have to answer for increases caused by nuclear production. Aleksandra thought she was helping by keeping the charts. The plant manager, notified by plant security, felt differently. One day Aleksandra was at work; the next day she was gone. According to the fabricated story, Aleksandra had transferred to the Balakovsky power plant. But Juli knew Aleksandra no longer worked for the Ministry of Energy because on a visit to Moscow, she had met with Aleksandra’s mother, who broke down in tears when asked about her daughter.

Each morning, before going downstairs where she once worked side by side with her friend Aleksandra, Juli paused at the windows inside the building entrance near the dosimeter rack. After dropping off her dosimeter and picking up a recharged one, she looked back outside to memorize weather conditions before descending into her hole. At lunchtime, when she came out of her hole, she immediately looked out the window again to see how the weather might have changed. After lunch she repeated the process, looking forward to the end of the shift. In winter, however, after being in the fluorescent-lit basement all day, the darkness outside became an even deeper hole, a hole into which she, like Aleksandra, would someday disappear.

Last winter had been terrible. Sergey broke off their year-long engagement. Then, a week later, her father died, and she took the train to Moscow on funeral leave. Her mother, to whom she had never been close except when she was a very small Muscovite, was especially cold. It was during this trip she discovered Aleksandra was missing. It was during this trip she felt closer to Aleksandra’s mother than to her own mother. After the trip to Moscow last winter, Juli returned to the loneliest time in her life. Each night, as she left the building, the demon darkness drained her, emptied her of purpose the way the gurgling vacuum pumps in the main-floor labs sucked air from the Geiger tubes.

But spring came as it always does, and darkness no longer awaited her after work. In spring she moved in with Marina. Having Marina for a roommate was like having the sister she’d always wanted. On days off they shopped together, waiting in lines, giggling like schoolgirls. Evenings they’d lie awake late into the night, talking about the future, which of course always included wealthy men who would give them the lives they deserved. The lonely nights were when Marina was out with her boyfriend, Vasily. This was how spring went. Then in summer, Juli met Mihaly.

Mihaly was slender with dark hair and eyes. He reminded Juli of her father when she was a little girl. Small chin, thin nose, forehead sloping back to his hairline. Like her father, Mihaly was Hungarian. Although they simply rode the bus home from work together during June, Juli knew she had fallen in love the very first day when they sat together and spoke in Hungarian, keeping their voices low so others would not overhear them. Russian was the official language at the facility. Ukrainian was looked down upon.