Chernobyl Murders (48 page)

Lazlo stayed well away from several farmhouses he passed as he worked his way to the family farm. At one point a mongrel dog from one of the farms chased him, making a sound like the Skoda when it had barely outrun the train. Rather than be seen by the woman who came out of the farmhouse to see what the dog was after, Lazlo lay down in the weeds and prepared to defend himself.

He found a broken fence board partially buried in the ground and poked at the dog, keeping it at a safe distance. But the dog would not give up and kept howling at him. Finally, after the dog bit into his shoe, he whacked the dog on the head and sent it whining back to the farmhouse, where the woman in the yard scolded it for chasing the neighbor’s vicious cats.

It would have been good to be a cat or to be able to change into whatever animal suited the situation. Lazlo the vampire. He was not being foolish. He was doing what he had always done when trying to solve a difficult case in Kiev. In his mind he would consider all possibilities, no matter how impossible they might seem.

Burrowing through the dry weeds on all fours, in much the same manner as a cat, he kept his mind open, letting the ideas flow freely without interference from negative thoughts. Now, more than ever, he dare not brood. Now he had to think and plan as if he were a predator on the verge of starvation.

At approximately three hundred meters from the house, Lazlo found a spot from which he could observe the back and sides of the house without being seen. He was in a clump of weeds bordering the back of the neatly plowed private plot. He had followed the border of weeds to this spot and knew he could go no farther without being seen.

Without the aid of binoculars, he had to squint to see the area surrounding the house clearly. For a while he saw only one man standing near the back door. But as he waited and stared and studied the area for movement, he saw another man off to the village side on the downslope of the hill. Then he saw a third man at the other end of the house, near the chicken coop, and a fourth man in back at the far end of the private plot. This man was only about two hundred meters away, and he could see his AKM with its skinny folding stock. The guard looked young. He was smoking, blowing the smoke at the ground to dissipate it. Lazlo recalled Mihaly speaking of the workers at the Chernobyl plant. “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” and “Overmanning.” Was the same true here?

Lazlo looked at his watch, almost four o’clock. In a few minutes, he had seen four men spaced about the house. In three or four hours, it would be dark and perhaps he could get closer. In less than six hours, Bela would try to get the women into the wine cellar. He could see the cover of the wine cellar, the red and white tablecloth on it, probably the same tattered oilcloth the girls had used last summer.

Lazlo looked at his watch again, exactly four o’clock. In eleven hours, Juli would leave for the west. He tried to imagine succeed-ing and going with her, but negative thoughts piled up against the dream like water against a dam. Beyond the house, where he could not see, he knew his mother and father were buried in the cemetery.

The most negative of thoughts was that soon he, and others, might be there.

Because of the sun’s heat and the long wait ahead, Lazlo worked his way back a hundred meters or so to a well he had passed. The well was near where the dog had attacked him, but the dog was apparently being kept inside. After drinking his fill from a battered tin pail dipped into the well using a long rope, he worked his way back to his original position. This time a striped cat crossed his path, raising its back and hissing. Lazlo responded by raising his own back and hissing. The cat reacted by slinking off into the weeds. Yes, now he was an animal.

Back at his position, where he had a clear view of the farmhouse, he lay on his back to wait. A jetliner passed overhead, its vapor trail dividing the sky. The jet headed southwest, to Budapest or Vienna, anywhere but here. He watched the jet until it disappeared beyond the horizon. Then he sat up to watch the house again and saw yet another man with an AKM walk around from front to back. In a little while, he would close his eyes until sunset, not to rest, but to prepare his night vision.

When Juli heard what sounded like a truck up on the road, she left the Skoda, locking it and taking her bag with her. She hid in a crevice at the far end of the ravine. She had been watching a jet pass overhead when the truck approached. Now, as she lay flat in the crevice, she could hear the voices of two men.

At first the men argued about the age of the car, one saying it only looked old because of the terrible paint job. After a few minutes of inspecting the car and arguing about its worth, the men lowered their voices, and Juli could hear only occasional words.

One said something about reporting it to the militia. The other apparently wanted to wait. As the two men walked away, they seemed to be discussing whether or not the car might belong to them if no one claimed it. One said he thought he might go back and take the windshield-wiper blades. The other said no, they might as well wait a few days when they could strip anything they wanted off the car because it was obviously abandoned. The first man mumbled something about it being strange that an abandoned car be locked, and wondered what might be hidden beneath the blanket they’d seen on the back seat. While the men were climbing out of the ravine, the last discussion Juli could hear was about the value of the car’s parts.

Then the truck started up and drove away.

When Juli went back to the car, the sun had made it quite warm inside. She sipped from a water bottle that had stayed cool beneath the blanket in the back seat. The wine Lazlo bought at the train station was also there, but she left it unopened. She lowered the windows and sat, as she had earlier, listening for sounds on the road and thinking about the future, but also about the past. She thought of her friend Aleksandra. Recalled the farm wife waiting at the hospital. Aleksandra and the farm wife possessed sincerity. It was in their eyes. Honest women trying to do the right thing in an insane world. Really, they were a lot like Lazlo.

Inside the hot car down in the ravine, Juli kept watch to be certain no one approached. As she waited, she drank water and ate the remaining food Lazlo had purchased in order to keep up her strength for whatever awaited her. There were still many hours to go, and she had not decided what she would do if three o’clock came and Lazlo had not returned.

31
It was a typical evening in the Ukrainian village of Kisbor south of Uzhgorod near the Czechoslovakian frontier. Ulyanov and Kalinin collective farm workers had returned from the fields. Market workers and workers at the local bell factory had closed shop for the night. By nine o’clock, dinner dishes were put away, and Kisbor’s citizens settled in favorite chairs or reclined in bed to watch a weekly variety show. Every television viewer in Kisbor awaited the same show on the same channel, not because they all preferred this particular show, but because there was only one television station available in Kisbor.

The male announcer’s voice coming from houses and apartments could be heard from one end of the main street to the other. The announcer said that before the variety show began, there would be an important news program about the Chernobyl accident. Many viewers increased the volumes on their television sets. The announcer’s voice echoed in the street, the time delay caused by the distancing of sets making the main street sound like an auditorium.

The announcer began with the obvious. Almost a month earlier, the unit four reactor at the Chernobyl generating facility exploded.

The official death toll now stood at seventeen, and ninety thousand people had been evacuated from a thirty-kilometer radius.

The announcer spoke of the bravery of firefighters, volunteers, and bus drivers. He said, although hundreds of thousands were being given iodine pills, this was merely a precaution. The vast majority of Soviet citizens, including those in the Ukraine, were in no danger whatsoever. The news program lasted only a few minutes. When it was over, a light orchestral arrangement signifying the beginning of the variety show began playing very loudly until one volume control after another was returned to a normal level.

The village of Kisbor settled in for the night. At the eight-room Kisbor Hotel, black Volgas recently parked out front were gone.

Neighbors of the hotel were relieved because men in overcoats driving black Volgas meant KGB, and the KGB this far from a main city could mean trouble for almost anyone.

Farther away from the village, the sound of the variety show faded. The village resembled a lighted miniature, especially from the side of a hill to the west. It was a clear, moonless night, stars visible to the horizon. Daytime heat radiated, and the temperature dropped.

It was quiet on the side of the hill until the music began. The music came from the lone farmhouse beyond the ridge of the hill. Since most citizens of Kisbor were of Hungarian descent, they would have immediately recognized the melody. But the house on the hill was too far away from the village for anyone there to hear it.

From the front of the house, it sounded as though a Gypsy orchestra was playing in the backyard. Although curious, Nikolai remained at his post at the front door. The music was instrumental, a solo violin piercing the night with the rest of the orchestra backing it up.

The violin sounded as if it were crying one minute and dancing the next. Several agents from the Volgas and the van parked out front got out and stood staring at the house.

When the front door of the house opened, the music boomed out until Captain Brovko closed the door behind him. Brovko stood shadowed in dim light from the front window. After a few seconds, he spoke, loud enough to be heard.

“What do you think of our major now?” asked Brovko.

“I don’t know what to think,” said Nikolai. “Is it the phonograph?”

“Yes. Major Komarov says if Detective Horvath is in the vicinity, the music will lure him. When I told him the noise would make it difficult for our men to hear anything, he opened the windows.

I’m puzzled how your routine examination of correspondence in the PK could have led to this. Why haven’t other investigative agencies been notified?”

After being reprimanded last night for asking what they should do about Major Komarov, Nikolai felt it would be best to remain silent.

Brovko looked back to the house. “I pity the family. Last night the questioning was relentless. Tonight he blows out their ear-drums. The women and children are in the bedroom with the door closed, but the walls are thin. I’ll tell the other men the music is not meant to drive them mad. They’ll need to be watchful in case Horvath does come, but I don’t want them shooting a villager who might wander up the hill. After I speak with the men, I’m going back to the hotel for a container of tea. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

While Brovko conferred with the other men, he shrugged his shoulders as if to say he had no idea what Komarov was doing. But Nikolai knew. It was similar to the afternoon in Visenka. There, amateurs were assigned so something other than a routine arrest would occur. Here, their sense of hearing was being obliterated. Perhaps Komarov wanted Horvath to kill another KGB officer. Or perhaps Komarov was simply insane. After Brovko conferred with the men standing at the vehicles, they fanned out, and he sped off in his Volga, heading down the hill to the village. Inside the house, the light went out, and only the flickering light of the television remained.

A new record dropped onto the turntable, the needle finding the initial groove and sending out explosive hisses before the music began.

This piece featured a chorus as well as an orchestra. Although a passage here and there resembled traditional classical music, it was soon ruined by a melodramatic violin solo followed by the screaming catcalls of women in a chorus.

The stack of recordings had been in an upper cabinet. When Komarov retrieved them, he noticed a shortwave radio hidden behind them and made a mental note to include this in his report. The phonograph was on the kitchen table, its speakers facing the open windows to the backyard. Komarov had moved the phonograph with Captain Brovko’s reluctant assistance. While moving the phonograph, the power cord snagged an icon hanging on the wall and it fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. He’d said something about religion being the ruination of the world, and Brovko had looked at him curiously. He was glad Brovko was gone. Brovko did not understand the need to outshine the tricks at the Hotel Dnieper.

The Gypsy Moth would come, lured by the glow of his music.

He would sneak up to the house under cover of darkness and noise.

An orderly and efficient capture would be impossible. There were several possibilities. One of the men would put a stream of bullets from his AKM into Horvath; Horvath would shoot another KGB

agent, thus confirming his guilt; or Horvath would make it into the house. If Horvath did make it into the house, Komarov was ready.

Komarov’s pistol was on the table beside the phonograph and the lights were out. The only light came from the television, which Bela Sandor sat watching with the sound off. Komarov sat behind the glowing television on the dark side of the room.

Bela Sandor had helped Komarov determine Horvath would come tonight. He had done so by acting more nervous tonight than last night, and by hurrying the women and children to the bedroom after dinner. Horvath had contacted his cousin. Perhaps the plan was to have Horvath come in through the bedroom window. No matter, because Komarov was in the shadows against a windowless wall. He had a clear view of both the front and back doors, of the windows, and of the bedroom door. He had ordered Bela to leave the room-divider curtain open and the television on.

Bela’s face in the mad flicker of the television made him into a clown. Every few minutes, when he looked nervously at the clock on the wall, his movement was strobed by the television, creating multiple images. After smoking several cigarettes in a row, Komarov watched as Bela coughed violently and went to the bedroom door.