Chernobyl
Chernobylska Exclusion Zone
“Damy i gospoda takzhe, ladies and also dear gentlemen, on night of twenty-six April of 1986, at one hour and twenty-three in morning,” the InterInform guide, a bulky man with a reddish-brown goatee, Denys—Call me Dennis—said, “under supervise of Alexandr Akimov, chief engineer night shift, is starting safety test of shutting down of reactor chetyre number four.”
Scorpion was sitting in a classroomlike conference room in the Tourist Office in Chernobyl, a village at the second or inner checkpoint, some ten kilometers out from the nuclear reactor site. With him were three couples—a pair of male backpackers from Munich; two British women, Sarah and Millicent from East Putney; and an American couple, the Dowds, retirees from Maryland—who were set to take the tour.
In the early hours of the morning, while it was still dark, he had left the clinic. Dr. Yakovenko had managed to stop Alyona’s abdominal bleeding. Iryna stayed with her, registering Alyona under a false name. As soon as she knew Alyona was stable, Iryna would be meeting with Viktor Kozhanovskiy. They would try to buy some time for Scorpion to find Shelayev. No more than forty-eight hours, Iryna had insisted. Even trying to negotiate that much time with Gorobets and the Russians was going to be nearly impossible.
Overnight, Russia’s president, Evgeni Brabov, had reacted to what he called the “NATO ultimatum and Ukrainian provocations,” by declaring Russia would protect Russian “nationals” and Russian borders, even if it meant war. “Russia is not intimidated and will not be intimidated. Russia will defend her people,” he had declared in a televised speech to the Duma in a rare night session, a clip of which was being replayed around the world.
The UN Security Council was meeting in emergency session, where Russia had threatened to veto any action that did not support the legitimate right of Russia to defend itself and her people, including ethnic Russians in the former Soviet Union. In reaction to what was happening in Europe, China had raised the readiness level of the People’s Army. Other nations were beginning to react as well. Iran sent warships into the Persian Gulf.
Before he left Kyiv, Scorpion decided to try the dead drop in Pechersk Landscape Park one last time. The Company had written him off, but all hell was breaking loose and there was a chance they were trying to reach him.
The park was deserted in the icy darkness. When he got to the top of the steps down to the amphitheatre, he saw it: a ribbon tied on the lamppost. He released the ribbon, tossed it away, and dug through the frozen earth under the bench to retrieve a cell phone left in the spike.
Sheltering in the trees from the bone-chilling wind, he called the cell phone’s only preset number. Someone picked up on the second ring.
“Are you still GTG?” someone said, meaning good to go, operational. It was Shaefer, and despite the early hour, he didn’t sound sleepy. Something was up. The CIA needed him again.
“Didn’t know you still cared,” Scorpion said, pulling his collar closer around him against the wind. The Company had cut him loose, and he wasn’t about to let them forget it.
“Who says I care?” Shaefer said. Then with a different tone: “Mucho has changed, bro. You still dealing with our Asian amigos?”
Akhnetzov must’ve forwarded his earlier suspicions about Li Qiang and the Guoanbu to Rabinowich, Scorpion realized. The CIA was a couple of critical steps behind.
“It was a surkh fish. You five by five?” he said, using the Urdu word for red that he knew Shaefer would know from their time in Pakistan, meaning the Chinese were a false trail, a “red herring,” and asking if Shaefer copied.
“Romeo that,” Shaefer said, meaning he got it. “So who killed JR? Do you know?” asking who was really behind the assassination of Cherkesov.
“Yes.”
“I’m all ears,” Shaefer said. Scorpion pictured him sitting up ramrod straight in bed, fingers hitting his keyboard to connect to Langley.
“It was an inside job.”
“Inside as in inside Freedom?” The name in English of the Svoboda party.
“You’re getting warmer.”
“Can you prove it? Maybe get us off the hook?” Shaefer asked, and Scorpion could hear the tension in his voice. Washington must be going ballistic over the crisis.
“I need forty-eight hours.”
“Man, don’t you watch TV? We don’t have forty-eight hours,” Shaefer said.
“Find it,” Scorpion said, and hung up. They’d hung him out to dry, and now he was telling them he knew who the real assassin was and there was a chance he could stop the war if they could delay forty-eight hours. They could try, he thought grimly. If there was one thing Washington knew how to do, it was delay.
Leaving the park, he drove north on the P2 highway from Kyiv. Along the way, he got rid of the cell phone and SIM he had used to call Shaefer, tossing them separately in empty fields miles apart. Shaefer had sounded desperate. That could mean only one thing. Washington had decided to call Russia’s bluff.
The day broke cold and gray. By the time he reached the small town of Sukachi, some eighty kilometers north of Kyiv, the road was a beat-up two-lane and traffic had disappeared. The landscape was like the Arctic, an endless expanse of white, the road bordered by rusty fences and dead grasses sticking out of the snow.
He stopped for breakfast at a roadside trailer that doubled as the town’s only restaurant. Breakfast was hrechany, a chicken soup thick with buckwheat, plus tea and black bread. The woman behind the counter told him she had been born in Pripyat, but her family had moved down to Sukachi when she was a teenager because of the radiation. On an impulse, Scorpion bought a bottle of Nemiroff horilka to take with him.
He reached the Exclusion Zone border at Dytyatky. Ukrainian militsiyu soldiers manned a checkpoint that stretched across the main street of the town. He stepped inside the checkpoint building and showed them his passport and InterInform Chernobyl tour receipt and brochure. They had him sign a release in Ukrainian and English stating that he knew that by entering the Chernobylska Exclusion Zone he might be endangering his health. The soldier behind the counter told him it was another thirty kilometers from Dytyatky to the nuclear power plant. There would be a second checkpoint at the town of Chernobyl, ten kilometers out from the reactor. He would have to leave his vehicle there and join the tour. When he returned to Dytyatky, he would be tested for radiation.
Scorpion drove beyond Dytyatky toward Chernobyl. The landscape was empty; only an occasional abandoned farmhouse and snow. He wondered if the snow was radioactive and decided it was. He had the car radio tuned to news in Russian but could only understand a fraction of what he heard.
He was supposed to get a dosimeter to wear when he got to Chernobyl and wished he had it now. A leaflet from InterInform had stated that normal background radiation around the world averaged twelve to fourteen microroentgens. Inside the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl, the background radiation had decayed over the years to an average of twenty, exposure equivalent to a transatlantic flight. But this was only an average; actual radiation varied greatly from one place to another. The real danger was in hot spots in various locations.
He turned on his cell phone’s iPlayer app to get the news from the BBC. The tinny voice of a British announcer came on.
“The crisis in the Ukraine has grown more serious following Russia’s veto in the Security Council of a U.S.-led resolution for a withdrawal of all military units to a distance of twenty kilometers from both sides of the Russian-Ukraine frontier. The Pentagon announced today that the American military has been ordered to a DEFCON-1 level, the highest level indicating war is imminent.
“In London, the prime minister told Parliament that Britain stands with the United States and NATO in this dangerous hour. Within the NATO alliance, member nations are still debating their response. Both France and Germany continue to express reservations about a military response to Russia’s actions, citing their concern that Ukraine is not an official member of NATO, but only a participant in the NATO Membership Action Plan, and that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the status of ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking minorities in former satellite nations such as Ukraine have been issues of contention. The Italian representative, Mr. Vincenzo Cassiani, told the BBC that we may be seeing the end of the NATO alliance.
“In the meantime in the Ukraine, it has been reported that one of the leading candidates for president in the election that sparked the crisis, Mr. Viktor Kozhanovskiy, has approached his opponent, Mr. Lavro Davydenko, with a suggestion that they meet to try to hammer out a joint statement regarding the steps Ukraine is prepared to take to deal with the crisis. Mr. Davydenko was selected as a replacement candidate by the Svoboda party leadership following the assassination of that party’s candidate, Yuriy Cherkesov. So far, there has been no response from Mr. Davydenko’s representatives.”
Iryna, Scorpion thought, unable to keep an image of her naked in bed, her breast barely touching his arm, out of his mind. She was trying to buy him time.
A shape darted in front of the Volkswagen and he slammed on his brakes, just missing it. The car fishtailed and swerved, coming to a stop in a snow pile on the side of the road. He saw a wild boar crash into the underbrush. The boar disappeared in the woods. Radioactive boars, he thought. What’s next?
The four-wheel drive got him out of the snow and moving again to the second military checkpoint at the town of Chernobyl. Many of the streets were overgrown with trees and foliage. It was a small town, easy to find your way around. The Tourist Office was a two-story building just beyond a strange-looking steel monument.
“The test begin normal,” Denys—Call me Dennis—said, sitting on a table next to a slide projector showing images from the 1986 disaster. “Steam to turbines is shut down and turbines is begin to slow down. At 1:23:40 Operations Engineer Leonid Toptunov is starting ‘SCRAM’; test emergency shutdown of reactor number 4. Power level is stable at two hundred megawatts. Too low. Also, main computer, SKALA, is shut off. Why they go forward with low power and no computer is not clear. What happens now is big controversy, big mystery. We cannot ask either Akimov or Toptunov, because soon both men and everyone in room is being dead from radiation. Toptunov push EPS-5 button; cause insertion of all control rods into core, even manual control rods. Why he do this? Is only for ultimate emergency. We will never know for sure.
“In one second comes giant power surge, more than 530 megawatts. What cause surge? Some say is design of control rods; displace coolant. Less coolant is allowing more fission, thus more power. Another big question: Does power surge come after Toptunov press button or does Toptunov panic at spike in power? Who can say?” Dennis shrugged.
“Now everything happening very fast, maybe one or two seconds. Spike in power make big increase in temperature inside reactor. Make big big steam. Steam pressure is going crazy. Pressure is breaking fuel channels, causing control rods still going in to getting stuck,” punching his palm with his fist to show the control rods getting stopped. “Control rods is breaking. Jammed. Now control rods not moving, stuck partway into core, partway out. No control rods in bottom of core is meaning zero control down there. This make thermal energy in bottom of core go very very high. Steam explode!” splaying his fingers open to convey an explosion. “Explosion so big it ripping two thousand ton steel plate riveted to top of reactor fly like champagne cork. Bang!” slapping his hand loudly on the table, startling them.
“Two seconds later comes second explosion. Nuclear excursion in core. Is baby nuclear bomb. Boom!” Slapping his hand again on the table and holding up a fist. “Explosion is blowing radioactive dust from core, from pieces of walls and ceilings in building into sky. Is very bad. But,” holding up a finger, “now is getting worse.
“Explosion exposes graphite control rods in air; they are catching fire. Now burning pieces of building is flying up in sky. Fire is burning in Reactor 4 building; also burning pieces make fire on roof of Reactor number 3. Both buildings is burning. Fire is sending big smoke of radioactivity fallout in sky. Cloud of smoke and dust equivalent for radioactivity to four hundred Hiroshima bombs. Wind blow on radioactivity in cloud. Is going over all Europe. This is Chernobyl.”
Dennis jumped down from the table.
“Come,” he said. “We go see reactor.”
He handed each of them a dosimeter with an LED screen and helped them pin it on. Another tour guide, Gennadi, came in to join them. He would be taking the others. Scorpion had booked Dennis exclusively for the entire day. Dennis cautioned them about radioactive hot spots. They were not to wander off or go anywhere without his or Gennadi’s okay.
“How much radiation was there when it happened?” Mrs. Dowd, the American, asked as they started to leave the room.
“Was 5.6 roentgens per second. Is equivalent twenty thousand roentgens exposure in one hour. These workers stay. Very brave. They trying put water in for cooling core, but is no good.”
“How bad is that? That level of radiation,” Mr. Dowd asked.
“Fatal is five hundred roentgens in five hours. You get five hundred you die. First five hours they get 100,000. Is plenty bad,” Dennis said.
The others got into a minivan with Gennadi by the gray metal monument to the firefighters who had fought the blaze at the reactor buildings and paid for it with their lives. Scorpion got into the passenger seat in Dennis’s old Lada. Dennis climbed in and they drove off.
“Why you pay separate tour? Is all same,” Dennis said.
“I like privacy,” Scorpion replied.
Dennis shrugged. “Here was village,” he said, pointing at empty fields and bare trees as he drove. “Was bulldozed after accident. Put under soil brought in. You want take picture?”
Scorpion shook his head. He wasn’t sure when to broach what he really wanted or how to get Dennis to go along. His instinct cautioned him to wait. They drove down the empty road till they saw the smokestacks, construction cranes, and buildings of the reactors looming over the line of trees. Dennis’s handheld Geiger counter, which had been beeping regularly, started beeping faster. When they got closer, Scorpion saw the reactor buildings surrounded by electrical towers and power lines. They pulled up in a parking area next to the minivan.
The others were standing by a sculpture of a pair of giant hands holding something in front of the concrete sarcophagus that had been built over the destroyed Reactor 4 building. They were posing for pictures. Dennis’s Geiger counter was beeping rapidly. He showed Scorpion. The LED read .883.
“Is okay for picture, but then we going inside the Zhytla,” the Shelter, pointing to a nearby building. “You want picture?”
“Let’s just go on to Pripyat,” Scorpion said.
“The others going,” Dennis said, pointing to the people filing into the building. “You get nice picture of reactor building from window inside.”
“Let’s go,” Scorpion said, walking back to the Lada.
“You not care Chernobyl. What you wanting, mister?” Dennis said, getting back behind the wheel.
“I want to see Pripyat,” Scorpion said.
“Sure. Is interesting,” Dennis said, backing out and driving down the road. He stopped the car in the middle of the road. “Rush hour in Pripyat,” he joked, the road empty for as far as could be seen. He pointed to an empty snow-covered field bordered by stunted trees. “Here is Rudyi Lis, famous Red Forest. Is called because after accident, trees is turning red from radiation. No more green.”
“Where are the trees?”
“Bulldozers is burying trees. Is gone. These new trees replanted,” indicating the stunted trees. “Don’t grow so good.”
They started driving again. Soon they were at the entrance to the city of Pripyat. A concrete sign read: ПРИПЯТЬ 1970. Pripyat 1970. Dennis drove onto a bridge over a frozen river, decaying half-sunken boats and rotting piers trapped in the river ice, then stopped.
“On night of accident, stream of colored light is shooting up in sky from reactor. Beautiful colors, millions blue and red sparks spraying up like fountain in sky. Is so beautiful, people in Pripyat is coming out of house to see. Some is coming on this bridge. But beautiful colors is ionized air. Everyone on bridge who is seeing colors is becoming dead,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
He drove off the bridge, past an abandoned train station and into the center of the city. The streets were empty except for the occasional rusting car or tree growing up through the asphalt, most of it covered by snow. There were abandoned buildings with their broken windows everywhere. One of the high buildings was topped by the concrete hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Union. Dennis stopped the car in the middle of the street near the central town square and they got out.
It was very cold, the sky leaden. They were in the middle of a city without a single person. Trees and shrubs had grown out of the pavement, their branches growing through broken windows and cracks in building walls. Scraps of old newspapers were blown by the wind through the snow-covered streets. It felt like the end of the world.
A wolf walked out of an apartment building. It showed no alarm at the sight of them. It looked at them for a moment, then walked away. From somewhere came the sound of a shutter banging in the wind. Not far from where they stood, they could see a Ferris wheel above the tree line.
“Children’s amusement park,” Dennis said. “You want see?”
They walked to the amusement park. Near the entrance, Dennis brushed away snow over a patch of moss on the ground and laid the Geiger counter on it. It nearly went ballistic, beeping furiously. The LED screen showed 2.651.
“Vegetation worse than asphalt. Don’t touch,” Dennis said. “You sit on ground, you fry balls. No babies. Maybe babies with three heads,” he joked.
“What about the animals? How are they doing?”
“Who can say?” Dennis said. “We see many animals, but no one knows nothing. They send robot with camera into reactor. Find walls covered with strange black fungus. Like no fungus on earth. This fungus mutate to exist on radiation only. Imagine.”
They walked through the park, filled with broken, rusting rides. The metal chairs from the Ferris wheel swayed and creaked in the wind. “Children park never used. Park is schedule to open two, three days after accident. People had to run, leave city forever. Come,” he said.
They walked to the hotel.
“Best hotel in town, but for you is room. Make good price,” Dennis joked. “We go top. Best view.”
They went inside the lobby. There was broken glass everywhere. Walls were torn open with holes where scavengers had removed pipes. Snow had blown in and branches from vines and trees had threaded their way into the hotel through broken windows. Scorpion followed Dennis up the stairs to the top floor. They went to the penthouse suite. The rooms were bare except for an old armchair, its upholstery torn and rotting, and a cracked and tilted picture of Lenin on the wall. All the windows were broken. Icicles dangled from the windowsills and a drift of snow had blown in onto the floor. They looked out over the city through a broken panoramic window. From where they stood they could see the reactor and smokestack and cranes sticking above the tops of the apartment houses in the distance.
Scorpion started to sit in the armchair.
“Don’t!” Dennis said, and put the Geiger counter on the chair. It read 1.397. “We go.”
“Wait,” Scorpion told him. “Let’s stay a while.”
“This is not good place to stay. What you want, mister? Is not tour.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Someone here? In Pripyat? Cannot be. Only crazy peoples live in Exclusion Zone.”
“Maybe he’s crazy.”
“Maybe you crazy, mister. We go now,” Dennis said, starting for the open doorway.
“How much do you make?” Scorpion called after him.
Dennis stopped and looked at him.
“What you think, mister? I like radioactive? I think zona nice place? You think I not know I get cancer someday? I was English teacher. I make fifteen hundred hryvnia in one month. Now I am tour guide; with tips I am making more than double; three, four thousand.”
“I’ll give you five thousand just for today,” Scorpion said, taking out a wad of money. Dennis looked suspiciously at the money. “What is this?”
“Five thousand,” Scorpion said, holding it out.
After a long moment Dennis came over, took the money and stuck it in his pocket.
“Okay, what you for sure want?” he asked.
“I’m looking for a man. His first name is Dimitri. I won’t tell you the rest. He would have come sometime within the last four or five days. I have reason to believe he’s somewhere in the Exclusion Zone. Have you heard of anyone coming here recently?”
“No,” Dennis said. “But I am guide. I come, go. Best to asking Pani Mazhalska.”
“Who’s she?”
“Old woman. She is knowing all samosely, is what they call squatters in zona. Lives alone in village, Krasnoe, in little hut in forest.”
“Like Baba Yaga,” Scorpion said, trying a joke, mentioning the old witch in Russian fairy tales.
“Is no joke. People say she has ‘the bad eye,’ ” Dennis said, shifting uncomfortably.
“What about Pripyat? Is it possible he’s hiding in an abandoned apartment here?”
Dennis took off his fur cap and scratched his head.
“Is possible. But radioactive in Pripyat not good. Too high.”
“We’re here.”
“Not for days and nights. Also, Pripyat was city of fifty thousand. Many buildings here. How you find someone?”
“I figured we’d wait till dark. See if we could spot any lights. He’d need heat and light,” Scorpion said.
“Wait in hotel?” Dennis said.
Scorpion shook his head. “Other tourists might come. This was the first place you took me. Besides, we need to move the car. It’s best if he doesn’t know we’re looking for him.”
“He don’t want to be found, this guy?”
“He’s hiding in the zona. What do you think?”
They walked down the stairs. Outside, they saw the other tourists, the Dowds and the Germans following Gennadi into a school. The Dowds and the Germans waved and they waved back. Scorpion and Dennis got into the Lada and started to drive through the empty streets.
“I know place behind Palace of Culture. We put car. No one see.”
“What about Gennadi and the others?”
“They think we go back Chernobyl.”
They parked next to a shed behind the Palace of Culture, a large building covered with bare trees and shrubs that had sprouted through the concrete. They walked from the car toward an apartment building near the center of the city.
“You don’t want this guy see car. Is dangerous?”
“It could be.” If Shelayev was Spetsnaz-trained, as Scorpion suspected, he was plenty dangerous. Not to mention the skull-crushing.
Dennis stopped walking.
“Maybe five thousand not enough,” he said.
“Maybe it isn’t, but it’s all you’re getting,” Scorpion said, and kept walking. He spotted Gennadi’s minivan moving through the trees and motioned Dennis to take cover with him behind an abandoned kiosk. They watched the minivan drive away. It was like watching the last vestige of civilization leave, he thought.
They resumed walking toward the tall apartment house. The wind had come up. They could hear the same shutter banging. In another hour or so it would be getting dark. They went into the lobby of the apartment house, the floors as usual covered with snow and broken glass and vegetation growing inside, and climbed the stairs to the top floor.
The door to an apartment overlooking much of the city was missing. It had a balcony with a tree growing in the center of it, its branches extending into the living room. They walked through, stepping carefully on the broken glass. This was no place to get a cut.
There was a broken child’s highchair on its side in the kitchen. In another room they found a discarded Misha bear, stuffing coming out of it, lying on the floor. Whoever once lived here had children, Scorpion thought. Dennis put the Geiger counter to the bear. It registered 3.816. No wonder it had been left behind by scavengers. A yellowing magazine on the floor showed a smiling Gorbachev on the cover. Dennis checked the apartment with the Geiger counter. It averaged 1.05 overall; about as good as they were going to get.
After checking an area of the floor with the Geiger counter, they squatted down. Dennis lit a cigarette. Scorpion retrieved the bottle of Nemiroff from his backpack and they each took a swig.
“This guy,” Dennis said. “What he do to you?”
“Nothing. It’s business.”
“Business you risking life for? Is not business,” Dennis said. “He take your woman?” he asked.
Scorpion shook his head. No, but he took Pyatov’s woman, he thought. That might have been the whole problem right there. He took out the button camcorder—a video camcorder disguised as a coat button—and clipped it to his outer jacket. He set it up to record to a flash drive that he put in an inside pocket. Dennis watched.
“What is this?”
“Video camcorder. I’m a lawyer. I need to take this man’s testimony in a case.”
Dennis’s eyes showed he didn’t believe him. Outside, it was getting dark. In winter in this part of the world, night came early. A hawk landed on the tree on the balcony and stared at them. Scorpion stood and it flew away. He walked over to the balcony and looked out at the city. The buildings were becoming dark shapes. He felt Dennis come beside him.
“We need a 360 degree view,” Scorpion said. “Let’s go up on the roof.” They gathered their things and went up. It was colder in the wind. Scorpion stood on the roof slowly rotating to see in every direction. There was nothing. It was a ghost city. Then Dennis nudged him.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward the apartment building with the hammer and sickle symbol on the roof, its outline only dimly visible in the darkness. There was a light glimmering. Scorpion took out his binoculars. The light appeared to be coming from a lantern or a candle in an apartment on the top floor. He put the binoculars back in his pack and got out the Glock. Dennis stared at the gun.
“Time to go,” Scorpion said.