Chernobyl Murders (53 page)

“The major is in the yard. He’s found something. A tunnel, I think.”

When Nikolai followed Brovko out the back door, Detective Horvath shouted after them. “Your major is going insane! You’d better watch him!”

In the yard, Major Komarov was bent over a box Nikolai had seen. But the box was open, its top, with a tablecloth hanging on it, tilted upward. Komarov stood as Brovko approached.

“Get the two Gypsy traitors,” said Komarov to the men nearest him. “Carry them out here, chairs and all. Here, give me your gun.”

Komarov took the AKM from the nearest man and turned to Brovko. “Captain, a dozen men search through the night, find nothing, yet the women and children are here under their noses. I should have known. The soil on this plateau is high and dry.”

Komarov watched the men gathering, trudging through the weeds. He smiled and waved his arm. “Come, don’t be frightened!

Women and children cowering in a wine cellar won’t bite!” Komarov held up the AKM he had confiscated. “I’ll protect you!”

The men sent for the prisoners carried Horvath and Bela outside, the two who were carrying Bela’s chair struggling. Bela’s wriggling threw the men off balance, and they dropped Bela on his side.

“New recruits,” said Komarov to Brovko, shaking his head.

“Whichever KGB school they graduated from should be investigated!”

Komarov pointed to the ground near the open box with the AKM. “Put them here.”

Because Komarov was smiling, some of the men smiled back.

But to Nikolai it was not a contagious smile. It was the grin of a madman.

Detective Horvath and Bela Sandor sat side by side, tied to their chairs, facing the open box. Komarov went to the far side of the box and faced them. Nikolai stood beside Captain Brovko and the rest of the men gathered in a semicircle behind them. They all looked at the box concealing the hole in the ground.

“It’s a wine cellar,” announced Komarov. “Gypsies drink plenty, the cheapest they can get, homemade rotgut. I should have known there wasn’t enough in the house. When I was a boy outside Moscow, legend had it they drank blood when they ran out of wine.”

Komarov looked down into the hole. “The Gypsies from my boyhood had a pact with one another. They were clannish, which meant the lives of those outside the clan meant nothing. Neither did the country in which they lived. Some Gypsies ended up leaving the motherland. They’ll go to any country foolish enough to let them in. They have a rebellious nature. We’ve had a taste of this rebellion in Afghanistan.”

Nikolai noticed two men who were standing to one side of the box glance at one another and shrug their shoulders.

Komarov stooped down and spoke into the hole. “You may come out now, Gypsies.” Komarov paused for a moment, then shouted, “I said, come out!”

Komarov stood up, aimed the AKM down the hole, and fired.

It all happened very quickly. The AKM was on full automatic.

At least a dozen rounds blasted into the hole. When the firing stopped, screams echoed from the hole, screams of women and children, making Nikolai want to do something. Off to the side he saw one of the men raise his AKM in Komarov’s direction. Behind him he heard a man say, “Don’t shoot them!”

The prisoners wriggled in their chairs, breathing loudly through their teeth.

After firing, Komarov stepped back from the hole and shouted,

“Will you come out now?”

“Yes!” was the reply, a woman weeping. Nikolai could feel the anguish in his chest.

Captain Brovko broke from the group and approached the entrance to the cellar. When the first woman appeared, he helped her up. It was Nina Horvath, who turned to take the baby from Mariska Sandor, who came out next, causing Bela to call her name. Finally, the two little girls came out.

“Take them into the house,” said Komarov. Then he summoned one of the men and gave back the AKM.

After a tearful reunion between Mariska, Bela, Detective Horvath, and his sister-in-law, Nina, Captain Brovko and two other men led the women and children to the house. Mariska was pulled backward, and she looked to Bela, making the sign of the cross.

“Pray to your God!” shouted Komarov. “Instead of joining with our motherland, pray to your icons, your ancestors, your Allah!

Idiot zealots! Destroyers of the world!”

The men who had carried Bela and Detective Horvath out began lifting Bela’s chair to follow the women and children into the house.

“No!” shouted Komarov, then, more calmly, he said, “Leave them here.”

Komarov walked around the cellar entrance and stood before Horvath and Bela. But then he turned suddenly and stared wide-eyed at Nikolai. “Now we will learn something, Nikolai Nikolskaia.

When conspirators go into hiding, they confirm their conspiracy.

The connection between Zukor and his cousins is established. We need only find Juli Popovics, whose role was to help Mihaly Horvath escape had the reactor not overreacted to his treachery!”

Several men standing to the side looked to one another, wondering whether Komarov’s theory rang true.

Komarov turned back to Horvath. “I wonder if the American CIA technical experts knew how the reactor would react when they sent in their Gypsy Moth. Not simply a steam explosion, but a more disastrous explosion endangering many lives! What would they care if the lives of a few Ukrainians and Russians and Hungarians were put at risk? Their goal was to disable the reactor, and they succeeded. Those in the Lubyanka in Moscow knew of the plot. Unfortunately the information they had was not enough to stop it!”

Nikolai listened with confusion as Komarov confronted Detective Horvath. “It’s a foregone conclusion, Detective Horvath. I cannot risk the possibility of another CIA plot in the works. You know where Juli Popovics is. She has information critical to us, and I have the women and children.”

“They won’t let you hurt them.”

“What did you say?”

“The men. They have families. You can’t expect them to let you …”

Komarov took out his pistol and smashed Horvath across the face. This time, after being relatively silent in the house all night, Horvath screamed. It was an overwhelming scream echoing across the plateau, a baleful scream of release and anger. When Horvath’s scream trailed off, yet another ungodly sound began, higher pitched, the shriek of an animal somewhere below ground. Words buried in the scream emerged from the hole in the ground. A woman. How could these words come from a woman?

“Komarov! You have fucked your mother and your father! Is there no one left?”

Komarov smiled an insane smile, turned, and started for the cellar entrance.

“No!” shouted Horvath. “I’ll say anything you want!”

When Komarov aimed his pistol down the hole, Horvath shouted something in Hungarian.

Komarov fired all eight rounds. He glared at the men moving toward him. Nikolai felt someone at his back shoving him forward.

Brovko came running from the house. Komarov threw the pistol aside, took a large folding knife from his pocket, opened it, and climbed quickly down the ladder. The last thing Nikolai saw was Komarov’s insane smile as Brovko ran up to the hole, then turned about with a puzzled look on his face as Horvath shouted in Hungarian. Among the shouts the word kes was repeated over and over, and Nikolai knew it must mean knife.

Juli’s ears rang from the deafening booms of the gunshots into the cellar. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder. Light from the opening slanted through dust and smoke. No sooner had she stared at the slant of light, and the entrance was blocked by a shadow.

The rungs of the ladder creaked from the weight of someone coming down. Komarov or another man sent after her.

She heard Lazlo shouting from above. Something about a knife.

Komarov had a knife! When she could see legs on the ladder, she heard another voice, the voice of a man shouting directly into the hole.

“Major Komarov! Wait!”

In the distance, beyond the man shouting down the hole, Lazlo continued. “If you’re not going after him, at least keep silent!”

Suddenly, the world above was cut off. The only sounds remaining were the creaking of the last rungs of the ladder and the sound of her heartbeat.

Juli’s life, since the day she met Mihaly on the bus from the power station to Pripyat, flashed through her mind as it had flashed through her mind so many times. Small details of what had happened stood out. Other possibilities materialized—Mihaly’s parallel world; an island in the South Pacific to which the China Syndrome of Chernobyl has eaten a tunnel; Mihaly and Lazlo together in this other world, united—a seemingly small decision in the past could have prevented Mihaly’s death, perhaps even prevented the accident at Chernobyl.

If only she had married long ago, been a married woman with children like Nina when she and Mihaly met casually on the bus. If only she had listened to Mihaly’s concerns about the plant and done something, anything. If only she hadn’t met Lazlo and fallen in love with him. If only …

No! They were depending on her! Everyone up there in the world was depending on her! If Lazlo was willing to die for her and Nina and Mariska and the children, she should be willing to do something. Do something!

When the last rung of the ladder creaked, she crawled as quietly as she could to the side of the cellar where she knew the wine kegs rested on a wooden stand, which had felt like a squat table in the dark. She squeezed beneath the stand, spiderwebs settling across her face. It was a tight fit, one of the kegs in its cradle on the stand pressed against her back, another kept the side of her face on the dirt floor. She looked back at the shaft of light from the entrance and saw Komarov standing bent over. Then he disappeared, joining her in the darkness of the cellar.

It was so quiet in the yard Lazlo could hear birds singing down the hill. Juli! Why didn’t you fly away?

The seconds ticked by, Brovko and several other men standing around the hole, looking to one another. One man took out a flashlight, aimed it at the hole, but Brovko put his hand on the man’s arm and the man put the flashlight away.

The birds kept singing, and Lazlo looked down, trying to see through the earth and into the wine cellar. Then he prayed, first to his mother, then to his father, then to Mihaly. He even prayed to the Gypsy deserter on the Romanian border. He prayed that their spirits, knowing the difference between virtue and evil, would tunnel from their tombs. He prayed for them to go into the cellar and take Komarov with them.

Komarov followed the wall for a short distance before sitting on the floor against the wall. Because he held the knife in his right hand, he reached into his pocket with his left hand for the flashlight he had been given by one of the men. He listened for a moment, and when he could hear nothing, he aimed the flashlight straight ahead and switched it on.

She was wedged beneath a low platform holding a row of wine kegs off the floor. She covered her eyes with one hand and tried to squeeze farther beneath the platform.

“I didn’t think you had a gun,” he said quietly. “Otherwise you would have shot at me as I came down the ladder. This investigation has been a long, hard struggle for me. Even though you may think you are innocent, I know better. Just as I climbed down here on the ladder, I will climb to the top on your back and on the back of your lover. If others try to stop me or take credit for uncovering your conspiracy, I’ll climb atop the heap of their remains. I could capture you and say you confessed to me, but I’m afraid there are some who might believe your lies simply because you are a woman.”

Komarov switched the flashlight off and put it into his pocket.

Soon he would use it once more to look into her eyes the way he had looked into the eyes of Gretchen and Tamara. In his other hand, held down at his side, was the knife he would need to defend himself from an attack from behind.

When the glow of light filtering through her closed lids went out, she opened her eyes and, at the same time, struggled out from beneath the kegs. When she crawled free of her hiding place, she thought her ankles would be grasped at any moment. If she stood and ran to the ladder, he would see her and pull her down before she could climb halfway up.

She crawled slowly to the middle of the floor, pushing her fingers ahead through the surface dirt. She listened for him but could hear only her inhales and exhales. She opened her mouth wide in an attempt to quiet her breathing and crawled against the far wall, away from the entrance where her outline would be visible against the light from above. She crawled a circular path to the place he had been because she was certain he would have moved.

She paused and listened. She heard his breathing to one side.

Then she heard nothing and moved forward. Suddenly, her hand touched his shoe.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, his voice seemingly calm, as if he did not really mean to hurt her.

In an instant his hand was at her head, clutching her hair and pulling. She swung out, hit his face. He stood, pulled her up with him, and threw her to the floor. She tried to roll away, but he had her by the arm, twisting her arm until she thought it would break.

Her other hand was on the dirt floor. She clutched a handful of dirt and flung it at his face. He coughed and spit, and she was able to pull free.

She ran to the back of the cellar, smashed her shin against a bench. Despite the pain, she picked up the bench, swung it around, and pushed it out in front of her. She hit him with it, but he was quickly back at her, ripping the bench from her grasp and pushing her against the wooden timbers on the wall.

A sharp pain at the back of her head was followed by dizziness.

She grasped at the wall, but it moved upward and away from her.