Philip Hemplow - Sarcophagus

Shielding his cigarette lighter from the wind, the lieutenant jerked an irritable thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Octra camp, and turned away.

“Right. Come on, Dr Cox,” barked Swan. “We’ll find him quicker on our own, clearly. God damned socialists!” He marched ahead without waiting for her, past the row of troops and across the square.

The dilapidated hotel in front of them was framed by a smouldering halo from the mast-mounted floodlights beyond. Victoria could already see some of the outlying habitations: low, interconnected inflatables that looked like fat, plastic grubs attracted to the glow. The wheels of her suitcase struggled to cope with the cracked and overgrown paving of the plaza, and despite the cold she was soon flushed with the effort of dragging it. Swan, meanwhile, was wrestling with his laptop, briefcase and suitcase, all while trying to insert a Bluetooth earpiece.

They rounded the corner of the ruined hotel and saw the full sprawl of the encampment. It looked deserted. The only things that moved were the moths buffeting the floodlights, and dead leaves that skittered between tents and vehicles, scratching at the concrete as they danced along the ground. Victoria checked her watch. It was eleven o’clock. Late, but not late enough for everyone to be in bed.

Swan muttered huffily about professionalism and ‘leadership behaviours,’ and began picking his way towards the centre of the camp, looking for a path between the clustered structures. Victoria followed at a distance, wishing he wasn’t there.

In front of them towered the iconic ferris wheel, silhouetted against the clouds: one of Prypiat’s many sacred sites. Its rusting gondolas gave ghostly creaks and groans as they were pushed by the stiffening breeze. Behind it, leafless trees clawed ceaselessly at the dark sky. By day a forlorn and poignant sight, at night it seemed menacing and somehow accusatory.

In front of it was a freestanding marquee, open at the sides. Victoria guessed that it was a dining area and general assembly point. Light spilled from it and, above the muttering of generators and the ambient tone of the floodlights, she could hear raised voices. People were talking over one another in English and Ukrainian, interrupting other speakers and jeering contemptuously. It sounded like an argument that was ready to go nova.

Before they could reach the marquee the shouting match seemed to reach its conclusion, and Victoria and Swan suddenly found themselves caught up in a flood of sullen-looking men streaming in the opposite direction. They were forced to stop and wait for the sudden exodus to push past them, the men sharing cigarettes and muttering to one another as they went. Their faces were tired and angry, and they glared at the two new arrivals with open hostility as they pushed past.

When they were finally able to reach the tent, it was almost empty. Victoria had been right: it seemed to be a dining area. Trestle tables stood on the bare concrete of the plaza, illumination provided by daisy chains of L.E.D. bulbs that dangled from the roof. At the far end were heated food trolleys, and wheeled racks for dirty plates and trays. Standing by these, drawing fingertips through his thick, grey hair as he conferred with an anxious-looking, younger man, was Wolfgang Osterberg.

Even while she was trundling towards him with her suitcase, Victoria was shocked by how much older and more tired he looked. The man she remembered had the broad-shoulders of a blacksmith, with powerful arms, a barrel chest, and a big, solid gut. He was still large, but his posture slumped as if the weight of the world was pressing down on him, and, as he turned and noticed them approaching, the look in his eyes before he recognised her was almost hunted.

The change in his expression when he did identify her, though, was gratifying. His face crinkled into a broad smile, and he threw his arms wide in greeting. “Victoria! I hardly dared to hope! Ah well, our troubles are at an end!”

Before she could reply, Swan thrust himself in front of her. “Dr Osterberg, I presume.” The line was clearly prepared. “Adam Swan, New Jersey office. The Board sent me to get this project back on track. I assume you’ve had an e-mail.”

“I assume I have,” replied Osterberg, barely glancing at him as he squeezed both of Victoria’s hands in affectionate greeting. “How are you, Fraülein?” He cast his eyes over her trouser suit and furled his eyebrows quizzically. “No longer wearing the dungarees, I see!”

“I’m going to need a status report, Doctor,” interrupted Swan. “Stat. I have to report back to Johann. That’s Johann Koller, the Board secretary.”

Osterberg gave him an annoyed look. “This is Serhiy,” he said, nodding towards the exhausted-looking, bespectacled scientist he had been talking to when they arrived. “He has a doctorate in nuclear engineering. Serhiy will give you your status report, won’t you, Serhiy?”

Serhiy nodded unhappily. Swan turned on him and began to assault him with questions, while Osterberg took Victoria gently by the arm and led her back towards the door of the tent.

“So, our friends at Octra are growing anxious, are they?” he murmured, once they were out of earshot. “It is not a surprise.”

“What’s going on, Wolfgang?” asked Victoria, as they stepped out into the frigid night. “The Carapace looks ready. What’s the hold-up? And why are the VV all over the place? Is Fedir with them?”

She was referring to his stepson: the young man they had watched march through Kiev with his brothers-in-arms four years before. Osterberg shook his head, pausing to light one of his ludicrously-expensive Ziganov cigarettes. Victoria suddenly found herself enveloped in a haze of comfortably familiar-smelling, cherry-scented smoke. “No” he replied. “No, Fedir is at university in Luhansk now. Studying ‘Business,’ unfortunately. Perhaps he would have gone into science or law if I could have introduced him to your travelling companion.”

“Who, Swan? Oh, he’s just an arrogant kid. I’m sure Fedir isn’t like him.”

“It is to be hoped not. But they sent you, as well, to sugar the pill!” he beamed. “So, are you here to save me?”

“Save you? How do I do that, then? Save you from what?”

The German sighed, expelling a long stream of smoke. “Save me from this bloody place, Victoria. Save me from this bloody place.”

“We have had some setbacks, it is true,” Osterberg allowed, leaning forward and planting his elbows on the table. “We have done our best to work around them, but setbacks happen.”

They were back inside the dining shelter, at a table now festooned with network and power cables as Swan reconnected himself to the virtual world. He had turned up his nose at the reheated varenyky dumplings that had been produced for their supper, contenting himself with gnawing on a piece of bread. Victoria, on the other hand, had fallen on them ravenously, luxuriating in the nostalgia evoked by salo and sour cabbage.

“Setbacks?” sneered Swan. “Doctor, I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s the understatement of the year! Your man here”—he waved in the direction of the hapless Serhiy—“tells me you’ve got strikes going on. People missing—people dead ! And you’re nineteen weeks behind schedule. Nineteen ! That’s more than just setbacks; that’s a total competency shortfall.”

“Just take us through it, Wolfgang,” said Victoria hurriedly. “Just start at the beginning.”

“Yeah, and make it good,” threatened Swan.

Osterberg scowled at him like a lion bedeviled by an irritating cub. When he replied, he addressed himself to Victoria. “The beginning? Well, to begin with, the company didn’t budget enough time or money to allow for problems in the project. I told them this! I told them as soon as they brought me in. They have underspent on materials and equipment. We have had endless technical failures and compatibility issues, and accidents that have put men in the hospital. Two died. Suicide.”