Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

Nadia looked at Karel. “You?”

“No, no. I’m just a zoologist.”

“Then who?”

“A biologist by the name of Arkady Shatan. He conducted the original experiments with wheat in the Caves Monastery to discover why the bodies of the saints did not decompose. It was he who discovered that they produced a protective field of radiation. After the explosion at Unit Four, he was sent to Clinic Number Six in Moscow, where the most serious work was done on radiation effects on humans.”

“Is he here? Is his laboratory in Chernobyl?”

“He retired in 1997. He came back here to do his own research, though. Which is how we met in the café one day. Just as you and I met today—”

Fists pounded on the front door.

“Station Security,” a man said. “I am armed. Open the door. Now.”

“Quick, you must hide,” Karel said. “You have no papers. They cannot find you here.”

Nadia looked around. “Hide where?” Then a new idea came to her. “Open the door. I’ll handle this.”

Karel blanched. “What?”

“Trust me. Let him in.”

Fists pounded on the door again.

In a panic, Karel gathered himself and opened the door.

A wiry young man in a camouflage uniform pointed his rifle at Karel and sneered. “Oh. It’s you. What are you doing here so late?”

“Working. Why are you bothering me?”

The guard looked over Karel’s shoulder toward Nadia and squinted in the darkness. “Who’s that over there? Is someone else here?”

Nadia had yanked her shirt out of her pants. Unbuttoned it quickly and unzipped her pants. Swept the papers off Karel’s desk with the outside of her arm and straddled the corner of the table.

“Who else is here?” the guard said. He pushed Karel aside with his rifle and marched into the light.

Nadia grasped the desk with both hands and thrust her shoulders back. She thought of Anton and channeled his memory into her facial expression.

The guard froze when he saw Nadia. His eyes drew a line from her head to her waist and back up again. His mouth fell open. He glanced at Karel, face twisted with jealousy and disbelief.

Karel managed a grin and shrugged.

The guard looked at Nadia again and shook his head. “Fucking scientists,” he muttered as he headed back to the door. “No guests in the facilities after six o’clock. You know the rules. Make sure she’s out of here within ten minutes. Ten minutes. That should be plenty for you, eh, old man?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Karel said. “We scientists know the benefits of being deliberate and patient with our research.”

After he left, Nadia dressed quickly. Karel looked interested, but her face told him it was for show only. They left via the rear path along the cooling ponds, circled back to the main road, and took off back toward the village. When he got to Oksana’s house, Karel continued along a dirt road for another mile. He stopped beside a tree with a purple ribbon tied around it near a thick patch of evergreens.

Nadia crouched behind a large boulder. Her dosimeter chattered lightly. Karel put on a pair of long rubber gloves and walked thirty yards away from Nadia toward a stream. He tossed some brush to the side and revealed a circular container buried underground. Its top protruded four inches and had the circumference of a manhole cover. He pulled a chain of keys out of his pocket, found the right one, and unlocked the cover. Lifted it off the container and placed it to the side.

When he joined Nadia behind the boulder, he was out of breath. “Now we wait,” he said.

“For what?”

“You’ll see.”

A minute passed. Nothing happened. Four more minutes passed. Nothing happened.

Nadia’s knees ached. She stood up to stretch them.

A rustle among the evergreens. Karel grabbed her hand and yanked her back down.

A wolf emerged from the brush. Muscles flowed beneath its gray-and-black coat as it stalked around the container. It stuck its mouth inside the bin for a moment. Walked around the periphery of the container again and stopped. Turned toward Nadia and Karel. Its eyes glowed yellow-green in the dark.

The wolf’s eyes met Nadia’s. It pulled its pointed ears back in an aggressive posture but relaxed them just as quickly. It howled.

Five more wolves appeared. They looked inside the container also. When they found nothing, they followed the leader of the pack upstream.

“The wolf saw us,” Nadia said. “But it didn’t run.”

“Only in the Zone,” Karel said. “Let’s go back to the house.”

When they arrived at Oksana’s home, she let them in and went to bed. Nadia and Karel sat in the small dining area.

Karel said, “The common explanation for the wolf not running is that humans are no longer present in the Zone. If you remove the hunter, you remove the fear. That is certainly true, but it’s not the only reason.”

“What was in that container?”

“It once contained a sample of modified five-AED. Notice there was a stream nearby. I wanted to see if animals would gravitate to the medicated water on sheer instinct. They did. Within two weeks of when I put it out, every local species was drinking out of that container.”

“It looked empty.”

“It is. But the wolves were waiting for more. They want to protect themselves from the next nuclear catastrophe.”

“Animals sense things.”

“Ever see a cat an hour before a storm? Maybe Reactor Four will blow again. Maybe it will be one of the other reactors. Or a terrorist. Or nuclear war. But it will happen. The wolves are telling us it will happen. But now there is a countermeasure.”

“Are you telling me that modified five-AED cures existing radiation damage in a living organism?”

“The longer you wait after exposure, the more blood cells break down and the less effective it becomes. It’s most effective when administered immediately after exposure. It has all the necessary attributes. Arkady said it is cheap and easy to make, has a long shelf life, and is easy to administer.”

“Chemotherapy and radiation treatment will be changed forever. This formula will save lives.”

“Or cost them,” Karel said. “In 2004, the United States commissioned a test to determine what would happen to a city like Washington, DC, if a ten-kiloton nuclear device were detonated. The conclusion was that sixty thousand people would die from the explosion, but two hundred and fifty-five thousand would die from radiation poisoning. More than eighty percent of the deaths would be caused by radiation. In the hands of a single country, possession of this formula would be a tactical advantage.”

“It could turn their enemies’ nuclear weapons into conventional bombs.”

“We cannot let the wrong man get his hands on this.”

“Still,” Nadia said. “You have to get this formula out there. There are people dying every day from treatments their bodies could handle if they had this drug. Why haven’t you and Arkady published this yet?”

“We were waiting for you.”

Nadia pulled back in surprise. “Me? Why me? Surely a scientist and a zoologist—”

“No,” Karel said. “We cannot trust our government. We cannot trust our colleagues because they work for the government. But we can trust you. That is why your uncle sent your mother letters asking for your help. Your uncle told us you are a person of integrity.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“You broke up a criminal enterprise in America.”

“I had a lot of help.”

“You are a mathematician skilled at problem solving. You are resourceful. You know people in America.”

Nadia’s vision went green. “Millions of dollars” was a gross understatement. “You have the formula? On you right now?”