The Boy From Reactor 4 (21 page)

L
IGHT SPILLED FROM
Nadia’s bicycle onto the narrow road to Pripyat.

A pothole.

She pulled on the handlebars to the right to avoid it. Her dosimeter screeched. Nadia yanked the handlebars farther to the right. The bicycle swerved. She teetered and tottered. Pedaled to stay upright. The dosimeter hushed.

The bicycle turned in a circle. Nadia regained her balance. Ended up right back where she had started. The dosimeter screeched again. She cursed and pedaled through it. The dosimeter quieted down.

Her headlight was aimed ten feet in front of her, a compromise that let her see the road and some of what lay ahead. She weaved around the ubiquitous potholes, sticking to the right side of the road, avoiding the column of grass and weeds growing down the middle.

Hayder told her to avoid all vegetation, especially the moss. Water infuses moss, and cesium hides in water. She’d probably driven over a small patch and sent the dosimeter into a frenzy. So what? Her tires were already hot. Bicycles that entered the Zone stayed in the Zone. It was the rider you had to worry about. Hopefully, this rider was destined to leave the Zone.

Chernobyl’s red forest pressed in on the narrow road from both sides. A quarter moon illuminated their dense canopies and irradiated coral trunks. Power lines crisscrossed above her head. In a clearing along the forest’s edge, cars, trucks, and ambulances protruded from the ground where they’d been buried.

Nadia passed the first block of apartment buildings. The thought occurred to her that her uncle might live there. Logic dictated she keep her eyes on the road, but she couldn’t resist. She aimed her headlight at the apartment complex and stole a glance. Dark windows against a white-and-orange facade, terraces with wooden banisters. It might have been a glimpse of urban slumber, as opposed to a nuclear apocalypse, until she looked again.

The windows were black holes: all the glass had been removed. The banisters dripped with mildew. Trees sprouted around the perimeter of the building and rendered the first two floors invisible. A branch from a taller specimen disappeared into a window on the fifth floor. Her uncle didn’t live there. Only ghosts were sleeping inside.

Nadia fixed the light back on the street and exhaled. There was no trace of life in Pripyat. What did she expect? The population was zero. The atmosphere reminded her of a black-and-white movie from her childhood where the last man on the planet searched for another survivor.

She arrived at the city center at 8:54. Three sets of buildings framed the main square. Trees, shrubs, and grass protruded randomly from cracks in the asphalt. A sign above the building on the left said
RESTAURANT
. Beside it was the
CINEMA
. The building in the middle was the
CULTURAL CENTER
. Beyond the building stood a Ferris wheel. It was frozen in time, its yellow chairs reaching hopelessly for the moon. Nadia headed toward the building on the right, as Hayder had instructed.

Halfway there, a light flashed on the hotel’s first floor. It flamed like a cigarette lighter and went off just as quickly.

It was Damian. It had to be. He was signaling that he was waiting for her.

When she arrived at the hotel, Nadia laid her bicycle on a clean stretch of asphalt. The front doors were chained shut. The glass, however, had been removed from all the windows. There was no light inside. Why didn’t he keep the light on inside?

Nadia climbed through a window. Her feet found a perch on top of a radiator. As she jumped to the floor, a cloud of dust gagged her. She suppressed a wave of panic. Took three steps into the lobby and turned on her flashlight.

Strips of wood and Sheetrock on the floor. Debris everywhere. An elevator shaft, door removed. Two light switches turned up in the on position. A high-powered rifle was aimed at her head.

“Don’t make a sound,” the man with the rifle said quietly in coarse Ukrainian. He was hiding behind a desk. “Turn off your flashlight and get down on your knees, real, real slow. Do it now.”

Nadia clicked off her flashlight. She looked down. An infrared beam blazed a path from the rifle to her chest. She fell to her knees. Was this her Uncle Damian? Why would he be pointing a rifle at her?

The room was silent. The man with the rifle didn’t say anything. He didn’t lower his rifle’s aim. The infrared beam streamed over Nadia’s head.

An animal growled. It sounded like the raspy exhalation of a wild cat. The growl came from behind her. The animal sounded poised to pounce.

Footsteps. Two high-pitched roars in rapid succession.

A muted shot rang out. The animal whimpered. Hit the floor with a thud.

A powerful lantern battery shone at Nadia from the hunter’s perch. She shielded her eyes with her forearm and turned away.

A giant lynx lay behind her, gorgeous silver-and-gold fur with spectacular black ears. It looked like a sleeping baby. Its
lungs filled and contracted. A dart protruded from its skin. There was no sign of blood.

“You haven’t seen my face,” the hunter said. “Go. Now.”

Not Uncle Damian. Nadia climbed back out the window and ran to her bicycle. She pedaled furiously, paying no heed to the dosimeter. Halfway to Chernobyl village, she stopped and called Hayder. She got his voice mail. She left him a message that her meeting was over and she would be at the Chernobyl village café at 9:30. She was supposed to meet him across the street from the café at 10:30. She would be an hour early.

Afterward, she pedaled through the darkness toward the bright lights of Reactor 4.

CHAPTER 38

N
ADIA STRADDLED THE
bicycle at the junction to the village center. A sign warned all unauthorized personnel to leave.

A barbed-wire fence surrounded the Chernobyl Power Station. Floodlights burst with light. The sarcophagus and chimneys loomed in the background. A guard smoked beside his booth at the entrance.

Nadia checked her watch: 9:25.

A monument beside the power station displayed six firefighters lugging a hose to put out the reactor fire. They were not wearing respirators or hazard suits. In the monument, a globe was fixed to the side of the reactor smokestack. It looked like a miniature replica of the New York City Unisphere from the World’s Fair.

A door crashed open. Raucous laughter. A hip-hop beat.

Nadia followed the sound. A hundred yards away was a small square building that resembled an emergency military barracks.

The café. Built for workers who still labored in the village and the power plants in the center of the Zone.

She waited until the guard turned to walk back to his booth and pedaled to the side of the café. Leaned her bicycle against the wall, set her cell phone to vibrate, and stepped inside.

She gagged. Cigarette smoke hung in the air as though fire were leaking from beyond its walls. Rap music pounded from small suspended speakers. The beat was American, but the words were Ukrainian. Laughter and conversation spilled from one clique to another and filled the room. She looked around for an older man, but there were a half dozen possible candidates.

Slicing her way into the far corner, she counted thirty to forty people, split evenly between the sexes. Most wore camouflage uniforms or warm-ups. One couple danced dirty in the center of the room, lips and hips mashed together.

Nadia ordered a beer from an agreeable bartender. As she sipped it, a series of men stood up at a long table and raised toasts to a pair of newlyweds. Champagne flowed from multiple bottles.

One of the men saw her and did a double take. Nadia cringed. She looked away and stepped to her left to try to hide behind a burly Cossack downing shots of
horilka
.

“Hey, you can’t drink alone,” he said, rushing up to her. He had Einstein hair, a spindly body, and a lovable nerd’s face fully equipped with black-rimmed Superman glasses. “Haven’t seen you here before,
kotiku
.” The literal translation of the popular Ukrainian endearment was “kitty.” “What’s your name? Where are you from? Where have you been all my life?”

Nadia smiled and nodded toward the table. “I think the party’s over there, not here.”

He grinned. “You won’t get rid of me that easy,
kotiku
. My name is Karel. What is yours?”

“My name is Nadia.”

“Nadia, Panya. My beauty. First time in the Zone?”

“How can you tell?”

He laughed and tapped his nose. “The Zone knows its own. Where are you from? Who are you with?”

Nadia followed the script she’d written with Hayder and Anton. “I’m a newspaper reporter from New York City.” The
media had helped the Green Revolution succeed. They would respect and admire an American newspaper reporter.

His eyes lit up even more. “A reporter? From New York City? Your Ukrainian is excellent.” He grabbed Nadia by the crook of her elbow and dragged her to the table.

“Look, everyone,” he said, as though she were a major celebrity, “a friend from New York City.”

The table exploded with cheers. She searched the faces, looking for a welcoming smile on the face of an older man. An amiable fellow raised a toast to America, the bastion of freedom and free enterprise. Someone shoved a glass of champagne into Nadia’s hands. She sipped some, knowing it would be an insult to do otherwise.

Everyone drank to the bottom, set their glasses down, and looked expectantly at her.

Nadia felt herself blush. Glanced at Karel. “Should I raise a toast?” she whispered.

“Better you tell us a joke,” he said loudly, so that everyone could hear.

The table roared with approval. “A joke. A joke. Give us an American joke,” they said.

Nadia scoured her mind for something funny to say. Only one idea came to mind. “How many actors does it take to change a lightbulb?”

She waited a beat.

“Three,” she said. “One to change the bulb, and two to say, ‘That could be me up there.’”

For reasons beyond her comprehension, the translation from English didn’t work. She got a few chuckles, but no guffaws.

“That joke doesn’t work in the Zone,” Karel said with mock seriousness. “Because there is no electricity. So the lightbulb
never
goes on.”

The table exploded. Karel buckled with laughter.

Nadia waved good luck to the newlyweds as Karel pulled her back to a spot in the corner. He nestled her beer glass back in her hands and ordered a brandy from the bar.

“So what did you learn about the Zone today?” he said.

Nadia considered her answer. “I’m not sure. I saw a lynx in a condemned hotel today. A big, beautiful wild cat. You tell me what that means.”

Karel stuck out his chest. “It’s one of the world’s best-kept secrets. The Zone is the greatest wildlife preserve in Europe, and the second best in the entire former Soviet Union.”

“You’re kidding me. How is that possible?” Nadia said.

“The common theory is that the absence of man has triumphed over the presence of radioactivity. We have formerly extinct species of wild boar and lynx. Wild horses roam the steppe. Storks nest low, unafraid of human predators. Insects, birds, wolves, rodents. We have species we never had before. Like the lynx. We have species the world hasn’t seen for a century.”

“That is amazing,” Nadia said. “Has word gotten out about this? Do you have poachers hunting for these animals?”

Karel’s right eye twitched. “Poachers? Here? No,” he said, swatting the idea away. “Sometimes a drunken idiot may go after a wild boar for sport, but that is all. There is no crime in the Zone.”

His brandy arrived. He knocked back a third right away and ended up pressed against the side of Nadia’s hip. She tried to retreat, but her back was already up against the wall.

“So what do you do, Karel? And who are all these people?”

“I am a zoologist,” he said. He gestured toward the newlyweds with drunken inaccuracy. “The others at our table are botanists and scientists who conduct ecological experiments for the government.” He motioned toward the men and women in camos. “Then there are the scientists who work in the Shelter.”

“The Shelter?”

“The sarcophagus that covers Unit Four. Here, we call it the Shelter.”

“Ah.”

“No one knows what those people really do in the Shelter. All we know about one another is that we are all volunteers. None of us have to be here. But there is no other place that we would rather be.”

Nadia looked around the café. The party was devoid of pretension. People were just plain having fun.

Nadia raised her beer. “To the Zone,” she said, and clinked her glass against Karel’s snifter.

“To the Zone.”

They finished their drinks. Nadia glanced at her watch. It was 10:17. Hayder was due in thirteen minutes.

Karel leaned into her unsteadily, his breath reeking. “I will share a secret with you, if you share one with me.” He pulled back and did a little jig in place with eager anticipation.

Nadia laughed. “Okay.”

He leaned forward. “There may be a little crime in the Zone.” He raised his right hand and left an inch gap between thumb and forefinger. “Just a little,” he whispered.