Michael Beres - Chernobyl Murders

Lazlo recalled his last visit to Pripyat, when Mihaly wondered if Cousin Zukor could be a spy. If any one of the rumors he heard in a single hour was true, anything could be true.

The day continued with more cars at the checkpoint, more people wanting to go north, but also other cars. Green and white militia Zhigulis, two men in a black Volga watching, a Chaika with yellow fog lights parked up the hill, and a newer Zil, the kind used by high officials.

Do not spread rumors, Chkalov had said. Do not panic. The one thing he wanted to do was jump in his Zhiguli and drive north.

But he knew, from years of experience in the militia, it was too late.

As rumors spread, so do people. He was certain Mihaly and Nina and the girls were by now away from Pripyat. He only hoped they would be here in Kiev before the day was out.

“Everyone is leaving,” said Nikolai.

“Not everyone,” said Pavel. “There are still people on the streets.

What about the crowd at the Catholic church?”

“It closed years ago. They use it only for marriage ceremonies and meetings.”

“So, the people are meeting there trying to get information.”

“Or praying because it is their only escape.”

“Why pray when there are buses lined up to take them away?”

“They’re praying they don’t get a drunken bus driver,” said Nikolai. “But seriously, the best thing to do about radioactivity is to get far away. Exactly what we should be doing.”

Pavel and Nikolai sat in the car assigned them by Captain Putna.

Not a Volga like other KGB agents, but a two-year-old Moskvich with an engine clicking like a windup clock as it sat idling off the road across from Juli Popovics’ apartment.

“How long do we stay here?” asked Nikolai. “We know she’s in there because we saw her at the window. We should simply question her, write up a report, and get the hell out of here.”

Anger showed on Pavel’s face as he rocked the steering wheel back and forth with his finger. “If we write up a report on Juli Popovics, we’ll have no further orders to follow. It would mean reporting back to Captain Putna, who might tell us to start questioning every fuckhead citizen in town! Don’t you remember what he said about Major Komarov?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” said Nikolai.

“If Juli Popovics leaves the area, which I’m sure she will, we’ll be obliged to follow. To put it more plainly for your pea-sized brain, we’ll be able to get out of here without deserting our post, and we’ll be fulfilling our duty. The investigation of this so-called accident.”

“But what if she doesn’t run away?” asked Nikolai.

“She will. Every few minutes either Juli Popovics or her roommate leans close to the window and looks up the road. Someone is coming to pick them up.”

“Maybe they’re looking at the helicopters.”

“They’re watching the road,” said Pavel. “It has nothing to do with helicopters.”

Nikolai leaned forward, looked up through the windshield.

“There goes another.”

While Pavel and Nikolai sat at the side of the road across from Juli Popovics’ apartment building, an occasional car or truck sped past, heading west on the road from Chernobyl to Pripyat. The cars and trucks were packed with people and did not slow down.

“We always seem to be cooped up together in cramped quarters,” said Pavel. “I guess it’s best we keep the windows closed.”

“We’d be safer in a Volga,” said Nikolai. “This thing leaks like a sieve. Did you see the last car fly past? Everyone was wearing handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths like bandits.”

“I saw,” said Pavel, looking at his wristwatch.

“Here comes another tanker truck washing down the street,” said Nikolai. “What the hell are they spraying? It doesn’t look like water.”

When the truck came out of a side street and turned the corner away from them, white foam trailed behind. Immediately following the tanker was a dump truck. The dump truck stopped, and a man wearing a face mask and covered from head to toe in a jump-suit got out, carrying a shovel. The man ran to the side of the road, lifted what looked like a black rock with the shovel, heaved the rock into the back of the dump truck, and ran back to the cab. The two trucks continued on their way, away from Nikolai and Pavel, who sat staring ahead.

“What the hell was that?” asked Pavel.

“I think it might have something to do with the shitty smell in the air,” said Nikolai. “I’ve read a little bit about our reactors. They use graphite around the core. The explosion was at night when no one would have seen a piece of graphite flying through the air. This could be worse than we’ve been told.”

“But Captain Putna said…”

“What does Captain Putna know about reactors and radiation?”

Farther up the street, the dump truck stopped again, the man covered from head to toe running as he lobbed another black rock into the back of the truck.

“It’s Vasily!” screamed Marina from the window.

Everything happened quickly. Marina shouting orders, Vasily and his mother and sister undressing and bathing, Juli putting out fresh clothing.

“We wore scarves over our mouths!” shouted Vasily. “You should have seen the crowd at hospital! The airport road was blocked, nobody allowed in except ambulances and buses driven by militiamen.”

“Why didn’t you come back yesterday?” asked Marina.

“No gas,” said Vasily. “But we have a full tank now. I drained it from a truck. Buses are lined up on Lenin Street, but we shouldn’t wait. Army troops on the main road carrying Kalashnikovs are stopping people and delaying the buses. The main roads are clogged with convoys of army trucks, and I saw a bus near the power plant in a ditch. I took a shortcut here, and no one is being stopped on back roads to the west.”

Vasily continued while Marina had him strip and wiped him down with a wet towel. “Yesterday, before I got gas, a man said soldiers went floor to floor in apartment buildings on the other side of the bridge. They told people to leave but didn’t say where to go. Today I saw a farmer herding livestock down the road. Everywhere people are looking out their windows, waiting to be told what to do.”

“We can’t wait,” said Juli.

Vasily, stuffed into a pair of Marina’s stretch slacks and a baggy sweatshirt, was first out the door. He carried a box of canned goods Juli packed as a precaution. He wore one of Marina’s colorful print scarves over his nose and mouth, and over his head and shoulders were sheets and blankets from the bed to cover the car seats.

Vasily’s mother and sister, both shivering from the cold bath, carried extra clothing from the closet in case their clothes became contaminated. Juli and Marina moistened the last of the towels to use for sealing the vents of the car.

Juli wrote a note saying they were leaving, heading southwest and eventually to Kiev. Although the note was not addressed to him, she prayed Mihaly would, on his way out of Pripyat, come to the apartment and read it. Even better, she prayed he and Nina and his little girls had already escaped. She left the note on the floor inside the door and once again looked through the lens of the dosimeter. Eighty millirems. Although there was no exact cutoff, she knew they would soon surpass a year’s worth of normal exposure if they did not get out of Pripyat. When they ran to the car, another helicopter passed overhead, chopping the air into miniature explosions.

Not far from the building, four men wearing winter coats and ski masks blocked the road, wanting Vasily to stop. Vasily revved the engine, threatening to run them down. Marina screamed when one man was nicked by the car and thrown into a ditch. But the man was soon up shaking his fist with the others.