Chernobyl Murders lh-1

by Michael Beres

Mihaly rattled his newspaper section and made an evil smile.

  “And what did the naughty grass do to you in the bushes?”

  “I can’t tell you. There’s a crackdown on gossipmongering.”

  “If you don’t tell, I’ll brood like my bachelor brother.”

  After making sure her newspaper section shielded them, Juli turned and softly bit Mihaly’s ear. They kissed, and her arms grew tired holding up the newspaper.

  Before the bus entered Pripyat, the guard finally made his way to the back. After checking their identity cards, the guard returned to the front of the bus, and Juli and Mihaly left the newspapers in their laps. Beneath the newspapers they touched one another gently. Because Juli had changed into shorts, Mihaly was able to caress her intimately.

  “Will you get off at my stop tonight, Mihaly?”

  “I can’t, not on my first day back. Is your roommate still working at the department store Wednesday evenings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I missed you, Juli. I’m not joking.”

  “It’s hard to tell when you are and when you aren’t.”

  “It’s my protection. I can make up the world as I go along.”

  “Am I in this made-up world?”

  “You and me and the wild grass.”

  “Where is everyone else?”

  “A parallel world. I’ve left a duplicate of myself there.”

  Juli tickled Mihaly on his inner thigh, and he coughed to cover his laughter.

  “Not tonight, then?” she asked. “Not even a walk?”

  “Wednesday. I’ll arrange a late night Wednesday.”

  Before the bus reached her stop, Juli told Mihaly the joke Natalya had screamed in her face at lunch. Mihaly nodded. “I heard it this afternoon, but I didn’t want to ruin it for you. It’s all over the facility.

  The engineers added a new ending. After Chernobyl’s engineers leave for the United States, Pravda’s diplomacy page features the story. The headline reads, ‘Chernobyl Engineers Permitted Inside Three Mile Island Containment Building for Firsthand Look.’”

  The bus was at Juli’s stop. When she got off and looked back, Mihaly grinned at her with his eyes crossed and his nose pressed to the bus window.

  4

  Major Grigor Komarov of Branch Office 215 of the Special Department of the Soviet Committee of State Security-the KGB-stood at his office window. He admired Kiev’s greenery, dark and thick beneath the morning sky. Because his window faced west, the window was relatively clear. This afternoon, with the sun in the west, streaks left by inept window washers and the previous evening’s rain would glare like graffiti. He stared at the horizon in the direction of the GDR and East Berlin a thousand kilometers away, where he was stationed before being sent to Kiev. Major Komarov had fond memories of his years in East Berlin, years replete with hard work and hard play. And the women… ah, those fine German women.

  A blonde walking below on the boulevard triggered Komarov’s memory of an especially fine woman, a blonde named Gretchen he had used several times to compromise Western diplomats. Beautiful Gretchen, the most productive KGB operative in Berlin. But this was long ago when he was younger. Long ago when using Romeo agents for sexual blackmail was still effective. In the modern liber-ated world of Western decadence, the blackmailed chap simply asks for extra copies of the photographs for his friends.

  In the old days, male Romeo agents seduced secretaries of em-bassy officials, while female Romeo agents seduced the officials themselves. Agents like Gretchen who could turn a penis into a Siberian fencepost. Of course some Romeo agents, Komarov wished he could forget. Not only the men. He hated men who became Romeos. But there was a woman named Barbara, half-Russian half-Hungarian. If only he could forget the humiliation suffered because of the dark-haired witch during his first week of field training. If only the new recruit had been intelligent enough to realize Barbara’s seduction was a traditional “safe” house hazing in which veteran agents bust through the door when the newcomer’s trousers are down around his ankles.

  To help him forget the hazing incident, Komarov took out his wallet, carefully opened the “secret” compartment behind the bills, and removed a tattered photograph. This was Gretchen. Nothing else remained of Gretchen because, back in the GDR, after he’d gotten beyond being a fresh recruit, he’d used Gretchen as a stepping-stone. He had not wanted to do it. He had agonized over it.

  But it was necessary. Whereas he wished he could have killed Barbara the Hungarian, he had instead killed Gretchen.

  All plans consist of logical steps. In order to create a trail of evidence leading to Captain Sherbitsky, who had been in a high position in the GDR for a decade, two comrades needed to be eliminated. First, a fellow agent named Pudkov; next, Gretchen. Finally, by hunting down and killing Sherbitsky, Komarov gained admira-tion from his superiors. The fabrication of a double homicide fueled by jealousy, and the successful capital punishment of the pseudo murderer, created the atmosphere leading to Komarov’s captaincy a year later.

  Komarov kissed Gretchen’s photograph, feeling the warmth of it and smelling the leather from his wallet. After returning the photograph to his wallet and the wallet to his pocket, he looked out the window again. He leaned forward, facing north instead of west. Here, a hundred kilometers away, beyond the widening of the Dnieper River, lay the Chernobyl Nuclear Facility operated by the Ministry of Energy. Since his transfer to Kiev ten years earlier, counterintelligence at Chernobyl had been his assignment. Instead of recruiting Westerners, instead of the hard work and hard play of his Berlin years, his work now consisted of monitoring hundreds of workers and thousands of relatives and friends of workers at Chernobyl. Each month he reported his findings to Deputy Chairman Dumenko, head of KGB operations in the Ukraine. Dumenko was Komarov’s link to Moscow. Dumenko’s position was one Komarov felt he deserved after his years of loyal service-a position of authority instead of playing nursemaid to a bunch of technical types at the Chernobyl facility.

  Although his position in Kiev was a reward for years of GDR service, although even he at first valued the position, at age forty-five he felt stagnant. Was it time for the ruthless Komarov, who had created and solved the Sherbitsky crime so efficiently, to come out of hiding?

  The phone rang and Komarov left the window to answer it.

  Captain Azef from two floors below said his weekly report from Chernobyl was ready. He told Azef to bring the report to his office in five minutes.

  Back at the window, Komarov lit a cigarette. When Captain Azef arrived, he would, as usual, comment on the view. Komarov’s window faced the length of Boulevard Shevchenko as it exited the city and continued northwest over the hills. Up and down went Boulevard Shevchenko, up and down like life. In Berlin, after becoming captain, Komarov had played hard, meeting many women without his wife’s knowledge. Now he only drank hard, the vodka bottle dominating yet giving him solace. It helped him forget his son, recently ejected from university, was a lover of men disguised as a would-be artist. It helped him forget his wife, who catered to their son, was interested only in social position and fashions of the West.

  His climb into the bottle had unearthed past dreams of success. The Sherbitsky affair had served him well. But how could he create a modern plan with national implications? A plan to garner the prestige needed to take over Dumenko’s chairmanship? He was forty-five years old, his wife and son were foreign to him, he drank too much, and time was running out.

  He coughed several times, turned from the window, and coughed repeatedly into his handkerchief. He put his cigarette out angrily amid dozens of others in the ashtray. There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!” he shouted and coughed again after he sat at his desk.

  The stack of folders Captain Azef placed on Komarov’s desk was formidable, and Azef was short, only his smiling face and bald head visible above the documents after he sat down.

  “How are you this fine morning, Major?”

  “As well as
can be expected, Captain.”

  “I heard your cough.” Azef glanced at the ashtray. “The cigarettes do not help?”

  “A difficult habit to overcome,” said Komarov, glaring at Azef.

  “Sorry, Major. You said to remind you from time to time about the need to reduce the number of cigarettes.”

  “I don’t smoke when we’re in the car anymore.”

  “But you seem to make up for it here. I’m simply trying to be helpful.”

  “Helpful,” said Komarov. “Get on with the report.”

  Because the summer holiday season was ending, there was an extensive summary of where personnel had traveled. Many visited Black Sea resorts to turn their skin to leather. Some returned to villages where they had grown up. A handful crossed the frontier, but these were officials of the Ministry of Energy whose whereabouts were monitored by the committee office.

  Another summary listed unusual absences from work. In the fall this list would lengthen with illnesses, but now, in warm weather, there were few unplanned absences. The list included two pregnancies, an appendectomy, a gall-bladder operation, a death due to an automobile accident, and a hospitalization for lung cancer. The mention of lung cancer made Komarov think of the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket. He fought the urge to light up and concentrated on Azef’s report.

  The last unplanned absence was for an engineer who suddenly went mad, telling everyone reactor unit one, to which he was assigned, was going to blow up. The engineer referred to a 1982 accident during his outburst, a minor accident that was supposed to be secret. The engineer stayed home and refused to return to work.

  Eventually, the Institute for Mental Health took him away. Komarov knew this meant confinement for several years. There was nothing for the KGB to do in the matter except to continue monitoring the man’s co-workers.

  The report from agents at post offices and telephone exchanges was routine. No questionable letters or telephone calls. Of course, during the holiday season, with staff being shorthanded, less than five percent of calls and letters had been examined.

  “We should increase our monitoring here,” said Komarov.

  Azef nodded. “I contacted Captain Putna at the PK.”

  “I want the next report back up to ten percent.”

  “Yes, Major. I told Putna ten percent.”

  “Good,” said Komarov, somewhat angrily.

  The summary of rumor and gossip was more interesting. An electrician at the facility told co-workers, ever since he began working near the reactors, his hair had begun to quickly turn gray. Because the man’s hair was indeed turning gray, news spread quickly. But finally, the man’s superior determined the man had been coloring his hair for years and suddenly stopped.

  The engineer going mad and claiming unit one was going to explode caused several spin-off rumors. One claimed the Ministry of Energy in Moscow had, for some reason, decided to experiment with safety limits at Chernobyl. Chief engineers met this rumor with denial and disciplinary action. Next was a rumor claiming chief engineers were technically unqualified. This rumor died out on its own after a time because it was viewed as reactionary.

  Each week the report contained new jokes circulating. Last week’s big joke had been about eating the food in the cafeteria. It was okay to eat there, the joke went, as long as you shit in a lead box. This week’s joke dealt with nuclear engineers being sent on a fact-finding tour of U.S. reactors. Engineers were going to Three Mile Island in order to model safety at their own facility after the safety procedures at a reactor with a stellar record. Only one accident!

  “Our internal agents overheard several persons exchanging the joke firsthand,” said Azef, handing Komarov a list of names.

  The last summary in the report on Chernobyl personnel was Captain Azef’s favorite. Azef took delight in detailing sexual relationships among facility personnel. Because of his own son’s sexual orientation, Komarov was glad to hear there were no new reports of homosexual encounters in the locker rooms.

  Azef handed over a list of couples allegedly having affairs. The list contained details of four relationships.

  “You will notice,” said Azef, “one of the women appears on this list, as well as on the one concerning the new joke.”

  “I can read,” said Komarov.

  “And you will also notice the man she is servicing is married.”

  “Perhaps he is servicing her.”

  Azef laughed. “Very good, Major. In any case, because he is a senior engineer and she has appeared on two lists this week, I’ve taken the initiative to retrieve their files.”

  Komarov opened the files and scanned the personal summary sheet for each. Juli Popovics, lab technician at the low-level laboratory. Mihaly Horvath, senior reactor control engineer. Both residents of Pripyat. But unless they wished to live in one of the backward villages and suck salt pork, workers at Chernobyl had only two choices of where to live, either in the town of Chernobyl or the larger, more modern town of Pripyat. And then the file reminded Komarov of two other interesting facts. Both had Hungarian lineage, and Mihaly Horvath’s brother was Detective Lazlo Horvath of the Kiev militia. Komarov closed the folders.

  “What do you suggest?” asked Azef.

  “Put both under operational observation.”

  Azef took a notebook from his pocket. “Anything else?”

  “Arrange for Engineer Horvath’s wife to discreetly find out about the affair. You knew it’s what I would order, didn’t you, Captain?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  But Captain Azef did not know everything, did not know a directive had come from Deputy Chairman Dumenko’s office at KGB headquarters in Moscow to be read only by Komarov. The directive had instructed him to watch for rumors of inadequate safety at Chernobyl and to act accordingly to squelch the rumors. The directive also said to watch for the possibility of U.S. intelligence involvement. No reason was needed for an order from Moscow.

  Perhaps sabotage or foreign intelligence played a part. Despite Gorbachev’s new policies of openness, Komarov felt the real powers in Moscow were intact. Unknown to Azef, Komarov had passed along the name of an American, one Andrew Zukor, who had visited Mihaly Horvath and his brother, Detective Lazlo Horvath, during the summer. He gave the name to Major Dmitry Struyev here in Kiev.

  Struyev was a member of Directorate T and was interested in any Americans visiting the Soviet Union. Not only to keep track of them, but to use their presence for counterespionage if possible.

  After Azef was gone, Komarov returned to the window. He stared out at the horizon to the west and thought again about the days in East Berlin. He recalled his knowledge of deep-cover operations. Projects to provoke American firearms organizations and turn them against their government. Projects to discredit U.S. presidents, including Ford and Carter. He had taken part in trying to compromise a U.S. diplomat in order to discredit Carter’s hawk ad-visor, Brzezinski. He knew about past projects involving U-2 spy planes and attempts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., and even a more recent project with the Bulgarians to do something about the pope, who was causing trouble in Poland. But once he was transferred to Kiev, he felt cut off. Although he’d been aware of newer projects concerning Ronald Reagan and electrical sabotage on the U.S. East Coast and negative AIDS propaganda, he remained cut off from active measures once he moved to the Ukraine. Perhaps this is why he relished his time in East Berlin. Some time ago he had tried to share these feelings with Major Struyev, who maintained an office one floor down. But because he was an operative of Directorate T, Struyev would share nothing. Struyev was an old hard-liner, older than Komarov, with more secrets than Komarov. Struyev would go to his grave with his secrets.

  Komarov reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He imagined Azef wagging a finger at him. When he thought of how Azef seemed to have all the answers and all the right files, he wondered if he was becoming paranoid, if he was becoming fearful of his assistant vying for his position. But what was para
noia except the drive for power, the need to be on top? Long ago Komarov concluded all truly powerful men had advanced because of paranoia, not in spite of it. Even Lenin.

  Komarov sat at his desk and placed his lighted cigarette in the ashtray. He took out his keys, unlocked a side drawer, and opened it. Inside the drawer was his Walther 9mm West German automatic in its shoulder holster. The pistol was atop a notebook listing secret sources and informants throughout the years. He hadn’t used the pistol in years, and the notebook was long out of date, many of the persons having moved, or died.

  He pulled the drawer out farther, reached into the cave of the drawer, and felt the fluted handle of the knife he knew would be there. He retrieved the knife, placed it on the desk, then closed and locked the drawer.

  It was an antique German knife, not a war souvenir, a knife made before the war, before swastikas. It was nearly as long as his hand, and with the single blade unfolded from the handle, it was two hands long. The handle was inlaid with alabaster gone pale over the years. The knife was a souvenir given him by the deputy chairman of the East Berlin branch office as a memento of his success in the Sherbitsky affair. The knife had belonged to Captain Sherbitsky and was determined by the investigation to be the knife used by Sherbitsky to kill beautiful Gretchen and Agent Pudkov.

  Every time Komarov touched the knife, he again felt the thrill of the case. How ironic the knife was presented as a reward to the creator of the Sherbitsky affair. Komarov rubbed his thumb back and forth on the alabaster handle, recalling the praise, the medal, and his elevation to captain, then major. But the knife, like him, had become a relic in the back of a drawer.

  Komarov held the knife in both hands and slowly unfolded the blade. He wiped skin oil from his forehead-his receding hairline apparent-and applied the oil evenly to the blade with his fingers. He shined the blade on his trouser leg, carefully, because the blade was as sharp as it was when he pushed it deep into Gretchen’s abdomen while, at the same time, caressing her and staring into her eyes.