Chernobyl Murders (2 page)

“I blame officials for the panic,” says the older man. “In their search for scapegoats, they became murderers.”

The younger man rubs his chin with one hand. “Tell me, do you think Chernobyl really was an accident as they say?”

“You’re not the first, nor will you be the last to pose the question.

History loves conspiracy. Facts hide in the mists of time. If you’re going to ask if I think there was a conspiracy to cause the Chernobyl explosion, which I know is your purpose, you’d better hurry.”

The younger man glances about. “Why?”

“Because one of these days it will be time for me to put my violin back in its case. When I do, my strings will be silent.”

The younger man smiles. “You’re a smart one.”

“Not as smart as I could have been, especially back then.”

“When do your friends return from Chernobyl?”

“The bus arrives at the Chernobyl Museum at seven.”

“I assume you’ll dine somewhere in the city when they return. I also assume you are staying at one of the nearby hotels. Perhaps the Dnipro across the square …”

The older man interrupts. “It used to be called the Hotel Dnieper, same as the river. The locals use the Ukrainian spelling.

Many things have changed names since I was last in Kiev.”

“Everything changes,” says the younger man. “Especially the weather. I don’t recall it ever being this hot in Kiev in May.”

“You said this was your first trip to Kiev.”

The younger man smiles, takes out a handkerchief, and dabs his bare head. “Many believe the Earth Mother is in the process of kicking our asses off her planet. First we have ice-age winters, now we have a tropical spring. Some locals say Chernobyl, as well as climate change, are ongoing signs from God. He’s weary of our fiddling in his business.”

The older man turns and simply stares at the younger man without comment.

“This weather,” explains the younger man, putting his handkerchief away. “God sending the Earth Mother to retaliate for our having messed with the planet. It’s a record temperature for early May. This morning the war veterans sweated their balls off during their patriotic march.”

The older man turns back to the construction wall, above which a cloud of dust has risen. “I believe you were going to suggest a restaurant.”

“I suppose, since you skipped lunch, you will be quite hungry by dinnertime. It’s the restaurant in Casino Budapest. I dined there last night. Excellent cuisine as well as entertainment. Not far from here at Leontovicha Number Three. Don’t worry about mixed company. The strip club isn’t connected to the restaurant. The entertainment in the restaurant is strictly musical.”

“How do you know I haven’t already eaten lunch?” asks the older man. “And how do you know I won’t want to enjoy a striptease show while I eat?” When the younger man does not answer, the older man continues. “Will I see you or another representative from your agency at dinner tonight?”

The younger man shakes his head sadly as he stands. “Casino Budapest has an excellent restaurant. I may dine there myself again tonight.” He points to the older man’s chest. “Perhaps your tie prompted my suggestion. The colors of the Hungarian flag.”

“The Italian and Bulgarian flags also use these colors, only in different order.”

The younger man smiles and begins walking away. “You know your flags. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed for the Ukrainian House exhibition center. It used to be called Lenin’s Museum, you know.”

After the younger man is gone, the older man takes off his Sox cap, raises one arm to wipe his forehead with his jacket sleeve, and puts his cap back on. He stares above the construction wall at its north end. Beyond the layered clouds of dust between buildings, he can see storm clouds gathered on the horizon. For a moment, the look on the older man’s face freezes in an expression of terror and panic, and he stands. But soon his expression calms, he straightens his tie, and begins walking, crossing the square with a cabal of pedestrians who have managed to stall the flow of traffic.

The older man heads west up Khreshchatik. As he walks, he glances at his watch. Because of the plethora of Western gear sold in shops along the boulevard, his Chicago White Sox baseball cap does not give him away. He could be a Kievian businessman heading back to work after a lunch break across the square in the park.

The older man blends into the crowd on the shaded side of the boulevard. Some distance behind him, also blending into the crowd walking beneath chestnut trees in full bloom, is the younger man with shaved head and sunglasses, who now wears his jacket despite earlier complaints about the heat. The younger man pauses at a kiosk to purchase a newspaper, quickly scans headlines chronicling unusual weather patterns throughout the world, tucks the newspaper beneath his arm, and continues following the man in the White Sox cap and the red, white, and green tie.

In the ghost town of Pripyat, near the decommissioned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, a storm threatens. Because of the dark sky and windblown dust in deserted streets, the tour directress, Lyudmilla Nashivankin, has the driver of the van stop beside an apartment building where they will be shielded from the wind and not encounter so much dust. It is rare, especially in the spring, to have a storm during a tour. Tours are cancelled when storms are predicted, and most likely this one is an anomaly of the early heat wave and will soon blow over.

So as not to alarm the tourists, Lyudmilla checks the radiation monitor in the front pocket of her coveralls discreetly and observes Anton, the van driver, already closing the van’s outside vents and adjusting the air-conditioning without being asked. She and Anton are well aware of hot spots between buildings. The threat posed by wind-whipped dust was part of their training.

“Soon it will rain a little,” says Anton in Ukrainian. “The dust will settle.”

Although everyone on the tour wears off-white coveralls and there are face masks for each stored in the van, Lyudmilla knows these are mostly for show.

“I hope it rains soon,” announces Lyudmilla in English, the primary language of members on this tour. “We should want to exit the van and listen to the silence of Pripyat.” She shrugs her shoulders. “But if not, we will view Pripyat from inside and imagine the silence.”

Ahead of the van, dust blows between buildings and across the road. The row of apartment buildings, up to sixteen stories tall, stretches several blocks. If one observed only the upper floors, one would think this was part of a city alive with people. However, on closer inspection, one can see most window glass is gone, and here and there the shredded remnant of a drapery flaps in the wind. At ground level, abandonment is more obvious. Trees, bushes, and weeds have overgrown sidewalks and walkways. The outside lane of the once-wide street is overgrown. Larger trees, having gone wild without being trimmed for decades, hide first-and second-story windows, the trees sending branches into the apartments as if to reside there.

Lyudmilla points ahead of the van to a clearing on the opposite side of the street across from the apartment complex. “See the Ferris wheel in the distance? It was part of the May Day celebration coming five days after April 26 in 1986. Local people called it a devil’s wheel prior to the accident. Now the name has more serious meaning.”

Several tourists nod. A young woman and man in their twenties sitting behind the driver hold hands and look to one another.

They do not smile. Rather, they briefly tighten their lips as if to silently acknowledge something poignant. The young woman has dark brown hair brushed out straight cascading down onto her coveralls. Her eyes are large and, upon close examination, which the young man is obviously doing, are greenish-gray in color.

Lyudmilla continues speaking. “This is why Anton and I came to Pripyat first instead of the sarcophagus. We wished to be here before the storm so we could hear the silence, then we could have stayed in the van at the sarcophagus. But now, who knows?”

Lyudmilla sits down in the front seat on the right side of the van to watch the storm. She turns and smiles reassuringly across the narrow aisle to the young couple sitting behind Anton. The woman is in the aisle seat, the man in the window seat. They are American, as are several others on the tour. Lyudmilla admires the fine pale skin of the young woman. She studies the woman’s eyes, noting the shade of eye shadow, wondering how it would look on her. The lower-level cosmetic shop at Independence Square must certainly carry the shade.

“This storm will blow over, I think,” says Anton in English over his shoulder.

Lyudmilla nods agreement. The young man smiles at Lyudmilla. It is a pleasant smile. She has seen other African Americans on the tour, but not many, and especially not this young. The shade of the young man’s skin is comfortable, like honey or bread toasted to perfection. The man is tall, his shoulders wide, his dark slacks showing at his ankles because the coveralls are too short for him.

Lyudmilla became fond of the couple early in the tour. While observing photographs of Chernobyl victims, the young woman began weeping. Lyudmilla can still picture the way the tall young man with his strong arms and hands held onto the young woman. Lyudmilla assumes they are not married because they signed up for the tour separately, whereas a married couple could have used a single sign-up form. Although she cannot recall their names at the moment, Lyudmilla recalls the young woman touching a particular photograph in the museum before she began weeping. Not one of the many firemen, but rather a reactor worker who died a few days after the accident in Moscow. She recalls wondering whether the young woman was related to the victim in the photograph and was going to ask about this, but the German tourists, whom she has seated at the rear of the van, had interrupted at that point and carried on with questions for what seemed hours.

Outside the wind is dying down, but it is not raining. “The weather front,” announces Anton over his shoulder. “It will blow over in a few minutes.”

Across the aisle from Lyudmilla, the young man puts his arm around the young woman’s shoulder. The young woman’s pale skin goes well with her greenish-gray eyes. Her skin also contrasts nicely with the hand of the young man. The two lean close and speak quietly.

“Reminds me of a black-and-white movie about nuclear war,”

says the young man.

The young woman pulls his hand from her shoulder to her mouth, kisses it. “Like On the Beach where the submarine parks in San Francisco Bay, and they look through the periscope at empty streets. Except for being overgrown, it’s like people simply disappeared one day.”

“I was thinking of Fail-Safe,” says the young man. “But in that movie the people are in the city when it gets nuked.”

The young woman points out the van’s windshield. “I can’t help wondering what apartment they lived in.”

Lyudmilla, who has been listening in, stands in the aisle, pushes her hands into the deep pockets of her coveralls, and speaks to all the passengers. “In some apartments letters were found. Children, prompted by teachers, wrote letters to their homes, saying good-bye. School was in session in Pripyat that Saturday, and teachers must have been aware of the explosion occurring a little after one in the morning. Even though evacuation had not yet begun, teachers may have guessed the seriousness of the situation. This was the exception. In most cases residents assumed they would be gone only a few days. So much was left behind. Over the years, and even though they are not supposed to be in the exclusion zone, looters have done their damage. You will notice most window glass and doors have been removed. This allows outside air to flow freely in the buildings so radiation hot spots will not accumulate.”

Lyudmilla holds one pocket out wide to check her radiation monitor again, then pulls her hand from her pocket and points up the street. “The shorter building near the Ferris wheel was an indoor swimming pool. There were many schools and kindergartens. Inside these, lesson plans and children’s drawings still hang on walls.”

A man speaks loudly with a German accent from the back of the van. “You said how many lived here?”

“Approximately forty thousand men, women, and children lived in Pripyat. Although we call it a town, many considered it a city.

Most worked at the Chernobyl plant, as I said, but some worked at the radio factory.”

“Is the radio factory still in operation?” asks the German man.

“The factory was here in Pripyat,” says Lyudmilla. “Nothing is in operation in Pripyat.”

“The wind is less,” announces Anton. “I shall drive to the May Day carnival site, and there we can open windows and listen to silence. Next we go to the sarcophagus, where we will be able to get out and listen to silence there.”

Lyudmilla sits down, Anton puts the van in gear, and they drive slowly down the street.

The front has passed, the air has freshened and cooled, and the sun is out as the tourists in their off-white coveralls exit the van at the sarcophagus observation platform. Because construction is in progress on the new sarcophagus, it is not as quiet here as it was when they opened the windows of the van at the carnival site. A crane is running, lifting a shiny rectangular section to be fitted onto the structure going up around the perimeter of the old sarcophagus.

The old sarcophagus is gray, like a tombstone, making the new sections surrounding the base into a necklace in the sun.

Lyudmilla stands at the railing at the front of the observation platform. She has taken a radiation measurement, which she announces to be a safe three hundred micro-roentgens per hour. In the distance, where the core of Chernobyl number four is buried beneath tons of concrete and steel, the crane suddenly stops running, and it is deathly silent.

“Don’t worry,” says Lyudmilla. “The workers have simply reached the end of their shift at the site.”

She points to the base of the sarcophagus in the distance. “See the movement at the cab of the crane? The shift is changing. Workers can only be in certain locations for short periods.”