Traffyck: The Thrilling Sequel to Chernobyl Murders

by Michael Beres

  Today, instead of watching Tamara looking out the window, Lazlo sat in the window seat. The puffs of clouds to the north were like tombstones for his brother, Mihaly; his wife, Juli; his niece and stepdaughter, Tamara; and his sister-in-law, Nina. Beneath these clouds resembling tombstones was the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

  When Lazlo realized the young man in the seat beside him was leaning forward to look out, he leaned back. The man’s name was Michael. He was a University of Illinois student going to Ukraine as part of a work-study program. Michael’s great-grandfather had come from Ukraine in the early 1900s, leaving his wife and two boys behind while he worked in a Pittsburgh steel mill. After two years’ work, Michael’s great-grandfather had returned to Ukraine to purchase farmland, only to have the land lost to Stalin’s collective system.

  Michael was slender, with a pointed chin and nose, reminding Lazlo of Janos Nagy when he was a young militia recruit in 1985. During the flight, Lazlo told Michael about his brother, Mihaly, the junior engineer in charge at Chernobyl, who died shortly after the explosion. Michael knew Mihaly was Hungarian for his own name, and this had begun the conversation during the flight in which Lazlo recounted the events of 1986. He told of the insane KGB major, intent on creating a conspiracy of sabotage among Hungarian-Ukrainians where none existed; he told of his brother’s affair with Juli, who was then a technician at Chernobyl; he told of Mihaly’s wife, Nina, and her daughters, Anna and Ilonka, all treated for cancer over the intervening years, and of Nina’s death; and finally, he told Michael that he and Juli, who carried Mihaly’s child in her womb during their escape from Ukraine, become man and wife and that not only had Juli died in 2000, but Tamara, the Chernobyl child, had also recently died in Chicago.

  Two men in tears and Michael hugging Lazlo caused the steward to come down the aisle to see if they needed anything. During the remainder of the flight, they told stories alternating from Lazlo’s boyhood in Ukraine to Michael’s boyhood in a south suburb of Chicago. They spoke of games and tricks played on other boys. They spoke of first girlfriends. They became companions. And in the end, Lazlo told of his lifelong guilt for having killed another boy soldier while serving in the Soviet Army, and he told of Jermaine’s recent death on the busiest of Chicago’s Humboldt Park streets. In return, Michael told Lazlo he was gay and that, because he’d not had courage to tell his parents, he felt a different kind of guilt, as if he had betrayed them. Michael said when he hugged Lazlo, he imagined he was hugging his father.

  Michael and Lazlo agreed to remain in touch, and after Michael said, “in touch,” they both laughed. When the plane touched down at Borispol Airport, Lazlo wondered if he would survive his trip to Ukraine and be there to receive e-mails and reunite with Michael or anyone else. Lazlo considered survival intangible. Yet he required survival to help his comrade Janos. He required survival to meet again with his new friend, Michael, when and if they returned to Chicago.

  If sacrifice was required, Lazlo would provide it. If he needed a weapon, past experience as a Kiev militiaman would be useful. Perhaps he would come across his battered old Makarov 9mm pistol at a street market, or at least one like it. If anyone tried to kill Janos, Lazlo prayed he would be there to stop it.

  As the plane taxied to the terminal, Lazlo stared at his new friend. The young face, which now reminded him of his brother Mihaly’s, was determined. Michael would survive. He no longer needed Lazlo Horvath, because Lazlo had already given him what was needed. Like a priest, he had provided absolution. Lazlo knew by the look on Michael’s face, their hug had been the practice session for a conversation with father and mother and the rest of his family when he returned from Ukraine, a headstrong land of truth and beauty, no matter its tempestuous past.

  When the plane braked at the terminal and the seatbelt lights went off, Lazlo Horvath, former Kiev militia investigator, braced himself for whatever struggles awaited him.

  Summer had been hot, and this late in the season, the heat was stifling. At lunchtime, pedestrians walked slowly and mopped their brows. The wind was strong off the steppes to the southwest, the temperature 33 degrees. Today, on Kiev Radio, several superstitious workers went so far as to say they would remain in the conditioned air of their offices whenever the centigrade temperature equaled or exceeded 33, the age at which Christ was put to death.

  Yuri Smirnov was among the few who ventured into the heat. He had just walked through a cooling plume of windblown spray from the fountain on Independence Square, and this, along with perspiration, made his skin wet and slick like the skin of a river carp.

  Smirnov headed toward the river past the Monument of Kiev’s Founders. He glanced at the three brothers on the monument—Kyj, Shchek, and Khoryv—and their sister, Lybid, who stood at the bow of their boat. What would they think of Kiev today?

  As Smirnov stared at the monument, he imagined modern technology away. Around him, horse-drawn buggies and wagons replaced traffic. No cellular phones or databases. A precursor of the SBU just formed. In its Kiev office, Inspector Yuri Smirnov behind a wooden desk. His jacket off, his sleeves rolled up. Wearing suspenders and sporting a handlebar moustache. Deep in thought because in this day and age the brain is the investigative tool … Even though Ukraine was never really at peace, the world without engines must have been quieter, a simpler world, with databases far in the future as the founders stood in their boat holding their spears. It would have been a time in which an investigator acted independently and would not have been required to react to insane bulletins sent from above.

  When Smirnov arrived at the park on a shaded path leading down to the river, he felt much better. He walked at least a kilometer along the path before turning back. He became acclimated to the heat. The walk back to his office, even across the square in bright sunlight, did not overheat him. Walking and thinking on the path in the park had cleared his head. As soon as he was inside his office, he closed the door, sat at his desk, and called Chief Investigator Boris Chudin at Kiev militia headquarters.

  “Hello, Yuri. I missed your earlier call this week.”

  “It was the Day of the Entrepreneur, and I had no business to conduct.”

  “Here at militia headquarters, we are always busy.”

  “I’m glad you and your staff are protecting us,” said Smirnov.

  “I’m glad you are glad,” said Chudin. “Obviously, you are calling for information.”

  “Yes, I wondered if you had news about Janos Nagy.”

  “Of course you would wonder about him,” said Chudin. “I saw the bulletin your office released. He is not a kidnapper. What the fuck is your SBU up to?”

  “I had nothing to do with the bulletin,” said Smirnov. “It came from upstairs.”

  “Do you not communicate with your superiors?”

  “I wanted to find out what you could tell me first.”

  “Everything I know comes from my men,” said Chudin.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Janos Nagy and Mariya Nemeth went into hiding. There is no law against it, so we wait.”

  “What do you wait for?” asked Smirnov.

  “I wait like a magician for them to appear,” said Chudin sarcastically. “Janos Nagy was one of my best investigators. If he found it necessary to go underground, he would be justified.”

  “I understand,” said Smirnov. “But I would like to know the reasons.”

  “So would I,” said Chudin. “My personal opinion, Yuri, is that Nagy has ruffled the feathers of extremely large birds. The pressure must be from outside Kiev.”

  “Do you think Nagy was involved in the two deaths in Kharkiv?”

  “I can only guess,” said Chudin.

  “And your guess would be?”

  “Nagy is Nagy,” said Chudin. “If he had reason to be in Kharkiv, it is justified.”

  After he rang off with Chudin, Smirnov used the inside line to call upstairs to Deputy Anatoly Lyashko’s office. When the message said Lyashko was not in, Smirnov used the
scrambled outside line to call Lyashko’s Kiev apartment.

  “What about the Janos Nagy case?” said Lyashko, obviously angry.

  “I was concerned about the basis for the bulletin released today, and—”

  “Do not be concerned,” interrupted Lyashko. “Bulletins have legitimate reasons. Nagy was seen near Kilija west of Odessa. Our men there spoke with eyewitnesses who saw a man matching his description. The man forced a woman matching Mariya Nemeth’s description into a car. We have an ID on a rented car, and we are looking for them.”

  “What are they doing in Kilija?” asked Smirnov. “How good are the witnesses?”

  “The witnesses saw photographs. Three unrelated people. Your concerns have become annoying, Yuri! You are not the only SBU agent in Ukraine!”

  “I apologize, Comrade Deputy. But my men lost them, and I wondered if their disappearance might have something to do with the recent bombings and fires.”

  “Perhaps it does,” said Lyashko. “The bulletin you question may help us find out why a private investigator would kidnap his own client! Are we finished, Yuri?”

  “Yes, we are finished.”

  When Smirnov hung up, he was glad he had not thanked Lyashko for the information.

  Anatoly Lyashko sat on the edge of the bed. The bed was made up, his bag packed. He had cleaned the apartment thoroughly. When he left, there would be no clue the boy had ever been here. He had returned to the apartment after delivering the boy to the Hydropark Metro Station. The same young man who had delivered the boy waited in a Zhiguli station wagon. No words were exchanged. The boy simply left Lyashko’s car and went to the station wagon. With the boy on his way back to the peninsula, Lyashko felt relieved and stared at his reflection in the dresser mirror as he removed the full beard he had so carefully applied that morning. After he packed the false beard in the bag with the rest of his personal things, the phone rang.

  “Yes.”

  “This is three plus eighty,” said a man in Russian. “Is this Porfiry Petrovitch?”

  “No,” said Lyashko. “I am Raskolnikov.”

  “The first report was mistaken,” said the man.

  “Mistaken?” said Lyashko, standing up.

  “Someone called the militia,” said the man. “Except for a mangled bicycle and personal belongings, the car was empty.”

  “Find them,” said Lyashko.

  “We will try, but it has been two hours, and the militia—”

  “Find them!” shouted Lyashko, hanging up the phone.

  Lyashko stared at himself in the mirror, wondering if he would be able to tell by the look on his face if he was going mad. He picked up the phone, accessed the scrambled line.

  “Two calls in one morning cannot be good,” said Pyotr from the other end of the line.

  “They were not in the car,” said Lyashko.

  “You and I should write for popular film,” said Pyotr. “A Gypsy and a whore flee Kiev, and no one can stop them, not even the all-powerful SBU.”

  “Do not speak to me in your pompous tone!”

  Pyotr remained silent, waiting.

  “I still have men I can trust,” said Lyashko. “Each one hand-picked.”

  “You trusted the men you sent to Kilija.”

  Lyashko spoke calmly but decisively. “I simply wanted you to be aware of the situation. We will get them. If we have to finish it on the left bank, so be it. They will be alone, and my men are ready. If they drive, it will take many hours because the militia is watching for them. If they fly or take a train or bus, I have men watching the airports and depots.”

  “You are using men unaware of the compound?”

  “Perhaps you forget I am still head of the Main Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime! Men do what I say!”

  Pyotr’s irritating voice continued, “I’ve trusted you from the beginning when you and Rogoza and I discovered what training can do for lost souls. With help from the Moscow Patriarchate and from your budget, we turned Ukraine’s trafficking on its head. As it should be.”

  “I will handle the problem,” said Lyashko, wanting to shout, yet surprised at how calm his voice became. “We will get them.”

  After he hung up, Lyashko stared at his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Beads of perspiration on his upper lip made him wonder, as he stared at his wretched image, if this was how he would look at a committee investigation when bombarded with questions about the source of funds for a so-called Chernobyl refugee compound.

  No! If Pyotr’s compound was destroyed, he would not be destroyed with it! He picked up the phone and, without using a scrambled line, called the SBU office in Slavutich.

  That afternoon, Yuri Smirnov received a call from the black bear, Sergei Izrael, in the Slavutich office. “Yuri, what the fuck is going on with Lyashko?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He called about Janos Nagy and Mariya Nemeth. He claims to have information they are coming up here to the left bank. We are friends, Yuri. Please tell me what this is about.”

  Smirnov told Izrael what he knew about Janos Nagy and Mariya Nemeth and the video store burning and Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved working for the parents of missing young people. He told him about Lyashko’s order to pacify Father Rogoza, and Rogoza’s angry reaction when Smirnov called to ask questions. Smirnov told him about Opus Dei and its symbol smeared in blood at the death scene of the female clinic owner.

  “Lyashko knows all this?” asked Izrael.

  “Yes. What did he tell you to do when you catch Janos Nagy and Mariya Nemeth?”

  “He said to take them to our field office and call him. He said it was a sensitive security matter he would handle personally.”

  “This reminds me of the Ivan Babii incident in Romania,” said Smirnov. “One minute, loose ends are being tied up; the next minute, the investigation is closed by orders from above.”

  “I will add to your confusion,” said Izrael. “Although Kiev and Odessa militia are aware of the pair’s escape, Lyashko wants no involvement from Slavutich or Chernigov militia.”

  “Keep me informed. I have a feeling Nagy might try to contact the SBU at some point.”

  “I will keep you informed,” said Izrael. “Call my cell phone because none of us will be in the office. We will be at airports, bus depots, train stations, and on highways. Lyashko ordered me to assign all of my agents.”

  Smirnov thought for a moment. “I’ll put agents on standby and have a plane ready to fly us there if you need help.”

  After hanging up, Smirnov retrieved the Janos Nagy phone report. Because of all the calls to parents, Smirnov decided to call La Strada’s Eva Polenkaya.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  After the van drove away from the wrecked Fiat, Janos and Mariya walked nearly an hour, well off the highway on the far side of a swampy area, before reaching an impassible river tributary. On the highway bridge over the tributary, a local farmer offered them a ride in an ancient truck that smoked and backfired.

  Janos sat in the middle next to the farmer, who smelled like manure. The weatherworn farmer spoke a mix of Ukrainian and Romanian. The farmer’s straw hat had a hole on top through which wisps of gray hair waved in the wind from the open window. Although he eyed them suspiciously at first, Janos realized the farmer’s loyalties through his mumblings about government incompetence in maintaining the river delta.

  The farmer continued with his complaints, except when the truck occasionally emitted an especially loud backfire. At this point, the farmer would lift himself from the seat, say, “Pardon,” and roar with laughter. After several kilometers, the farmer turned off onto a dirt road about a kilometer ahead of the campground and stopped. As they got out, Janos mentioned SBU, KGB, and a few other acronyms. Before he drove off, the farmer used his forefinger, gnarled and minus its fingernail, to zip his lips, and waved goodbye.

  Within minutes of reaching the campground, Janos disconnected the camper van’s electric
cable and they were on the road. Janos drove north on back roads near the Ukraine-Moldavian border, retracing the route from the secluded campground northwest of Odessa where they’d stayed on their way from Kiev. Mariya was in the passenger seat studying a Ukraine road map and working with Janos’ GPS, which he had managed to save along with the page from the Bible with Shved’s message. The rest of the Bible, their small travel bags, and Mariya’s bicycle were at the bottom of the ditch inside the Fiat submerged in mud.

  Mariya reread the carefully lettered Cyrillic words on the bottom of the Bible page: “Go by way of the river to the Zone. Chernigov, Slavutich, and between Vasyleva and Tuzar, at the camp, cross to the peninsula.”

  “It must be Shved’s note,” said Janos.

  Mariya held the page closer to her face. “I notice something else. A letter O in the text has a cross inside, making it look like a Cyrillic letter, but there is no such letter. Shved left the symbol for Opus Dei!”

  As he drove, Janos recalled the afternoon Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved saved his life. For several months after the incident at the old apartment complex in Podil, the dream replayed nightly. But dreams are supposed to be unreal. This one was accurate, right down to Shved’s huge frame in the driver’s seat of the Zhiguli and the smile on Shved’s face despite his being shot. Janos assumed he would die, and in the dream Janos would always say, “I’ve done what I could in this fucking life!” Then suddenly, Shved would be there in the car, the door flying open and busting its hinges, Shved smiling his huge smile while he takes a bullet in the shoulder. Shved smiling because he has gotten to Janos, because he has taken a momentary lead in the game we play with death.

  For two hours Janos drove on back roads, avoiding Odessa. Mariya watched the road and the GPS, alternately, telling him where to turn. Once on E-95, she unfolded the map, planning the long journey ahead.