Philip Hemplow: Sarcophagus

Wolfgang Osterberg had treated her like a favoured daughter: patiently correcting her mathematics, teaching her how to spot structural dangers, and teaching her how to cheat at cribbage. She smiled wistfully as she remembered the moments of panic. Hurried retreats as Geiger counters suddenly spiked. Blindly groping in pitch blackness for dropped flashlights. Rushing to pour neutron-dampening salts on fuel deposits that threatened sudden criticality. The Sarcophagus was a dangerous place.

It was a long time ago now. Octra had recalled her to the U.K. to supervise the recomissioning of an old Magnox site, one of numerous contracts the Anglo-French consortium had won as the cost of oil soared. She had advised on the construction of new reactors, led the way on project safety, and learned how to survive in the world of business. She no longer had to worry about inhaling radionuclides, or ceilings collapsing on her head. Danger came in e-mail form now, in budget meetings and performance metrics. She was surprised by how much she was looking forward to being back in the Zone.

Malcolm had protested, for form’s sake as much as anything. She was going away on business and wouldn’t be be back until Christmas. That was a grievance he could bank. Truth be told, she was looking forward to being away from him for a few weeks. Their relationship had probably exceeded its half life. While he had been poor and overworked he had made an effort to be pleasant, enjoying the nice house, the big TV, and the holidays that her exorbitant salary made possible. Now that he was earning decent money himself, he had become self-centred and churlish. She wondered how sad she would be if he left her. Not very. Maybe she would do it—break up with him. When she got back. Or after Christmas. After all, no-one wanted to be alone at Christmas.

She fell asleep without meaning to, and was woken by her ears popping as the plane made its final descent towards Borispol. The flight had left her feeling cramped and grimy, but the sudden blast of wintry air when the exit door swung open brought her round in an instant.

Octra’s chartered Mi-8 was waiting for them, rotors idling. One of the pilots was there to take them through an expedited Customs check and then straight to the helicopter. Victoria and Swan were the only passengers in its enormous, cigar-shaped hold, and as soon as they were aboard the groan of the gas turbines became a deep-throated, harmonic roar. With a staccato thunder of beating blades the Hip pounced into the air and lurched around to face North. A brief moment of vertigo and it slid forwards, cutting easily through the night.

It took twenty minutes to reach the border of the Zone of Alienation, 30km from Chernobyl. Swan squirmed visibly when the pilot announced that they had crossed it. Victoria smirked. It was his first time in the Zone. Radiation paranoia would be a constant distraction for him. In his imagination gamma rays would be lancing through his organs, hypervelocity electrons splintering his DNA. Every twinge, every headache would be the sensation of tumours blooming in his guts and brain, every moment of jetlag the first sign of radiation sickness. He would be fine once he was back on the ground with a reassuring dosimeter clipped to his lapel.

Victoria scanned the darkness beyond the Hip’s large, porthole windows. She was looking for the lights that marked the reactor site, the capital of this little nuclear enclave. The strumming of the rotors modulated as the chopper began to slow and descend, and the pilot turned onto his final approach.

There it was.

The reactor was only visible as a constellation of red aircraft-warning beacons, but the floodlit Carapace next to it was unmissable. Thirty thousand tonnes of steel and polycarbonate, bristling with scaffolding and cranes, and surrounded by construction vehicles. It described a brilliant, semicircular arc through the darkness, one that glowed with hot, halogen light. One end of it was walled off, the other black and open, ready to swallow the poisonous powerplant whole.

A foundation of solid concrete ran 200 metres from the base of the arch to the reactor building. The arch itself straddled twin train tracks, down which it would eventually inch to its only destination, to engulf the buckled and collapsing shell of the original Sarcophagus. Giant, corrugated doors would roll across the entrance, sealing the nuclear nightmare away forever.

The last time Victoria had been here, they were still working on the foundations. Back then they had called it the ‘New Safe Confinement’, but over time Octra’s name for the project—Carapace—had proven catchier. Now it looked complete, ready to become the world’s largest moving structure. She had seen hundreds of photographs of the work in progress since then, but somehow they had failed to prepare her for the sheer, intimidating mass of the thing.

The Hip flew on, heading for the centre of Prypiat, a few miles to the north. When Victoria had first stayed in the Zone, Osterberg’s stalkers had been based in Chernobyl itself, further away and to the south. The sheer scale of the Carapace project had prompted their relocation to Prypiat. In the shadow of the famous ferris wheel, a veritable travelling funfair of Octra workers lived in pressurised tents, working four weeks on, one week off. Generator trucks, satellite dishes, and radio masts competed for space with decontamination showers and mobile laboratories. The scientists from the technical centre now queued for food alongside construction workers, forklift drivers, electricians, and engineers. There were contractors and subcontractors from all over the world, a dozen languages spoken between them.

The helicopter sank to the ground around the corner from the Octra camp in another large plaza. After taxiing forward a few yards it settled into place, like a giant, paleozoic dragonfly ready to deposit its eggs. The airframe seemed to sag as the pilot decoupled the rotor blades and cut the turbines. Instantly, the uncanny silence of Prypiat began to reassert itself.

As Victoria and Swan clambered out into the icy, Baltic night, figures detached themselves from the shadows and ran towards them, guns and ammunition rattling with each step. They waited beyond the sweep of the gradually decelerating rotor disk, cigarette tips glowing in the darkness.

Behind them, Victoria could make out the jutting, rhinocerine prows of armoured personnel carriers. Relics, like the helicopter, and the hotel behind them, of the long, cold decades of Soviet rule. So, she thought, it was true. The VV were occupying Prypiat.

They were hailed in brisk Ukrainian that sounded more like a challenge than a greeting. Victoria racked her brain for the correct introduction, trying to remember the smattering of Ukrainian and Russian she had picked up during her stay in the Zone.

She needn’t have bothered. Now that he was back on terra firma, Swan had rediscovered his managerial arrogance. He strode forward, brandishing his Octra personnel card like an FBI agent taking charge of a crime scene.

“Swan: Executive Manager, New Jersey office. We’re here to see Osterberg: Dr Osterberg. Do you know where he is?”

A soldier with lieutenant insignia snatched the ID from his hand, scrutinised it with suspicion, and walked away with it, muttering into a walkie-talkie. The other guards casually eyeballed them, hands straying towards batons and pistol holsters with disturbing regularity.

Swan bridled, but before he could create a scene, the lieutenant sauntered back and thrust his ID at him with a guttural “go on.”

The American replied with the exaggerated enunciation of an interpreter for the deaf. “Well, thank you. Os-ter-berg. Where? You know where Os-ter-berg?”