“He’s better now,” said Brovko. “Komarov is napping.”
“What will he do when he wakes up?”
“I don’t know. I called two men in to relieve me. If Komarov wakes up, he’ll probably chase them out of the house.”
A pause, then Brovko turned to Nikolai. “You have something to tell me about what happened earlier. Something you couldn’t say in front of Komarov.”
“How did you know?”
“I saw the look on your face when you came through the door.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Captain. I wouldn’t if I had any doubt.”
“Go on.”
“When I opened the door, Major Komarov had his pistol pointed at your back.”
When Brovko reached into his belt and pulled out a pistol, Nikolai froze.
“Don’t worry, Nikolai. I simply wanted to show you the pistol.”
He held it out for Nikolai to see. “It’s an old Makarov belonging to Detective Horvath. The same pistol he used to shoot your friend Pavel.
The same pistol Major Komarov emptied into the floor of the house.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“Major Komarov aimed this pistol at my back. Why would he aim Detective Horvath’s pistol instead of his own?”
“I don’t know, Captain.”
“Do you think the major was prepared to shoot me?”
“It’s hard to say. He looked… like he had lost control.”
“The major has become emotional about the case. He can’t be left alone.”
“What should we do, Captain? You’re the officer in charge.”
“Major Komarov is the officer in charge.”
“But if he’s emotionally unbalanced…”
“What do the other psychiatrists think?”
“I don’t understand…”
“The other men. What’s the consensus concerning Major Komarov’s mental health?”
“Not good, Captain. Not good at all.”
On the far side of the room, beyond the Gypsies, Komarov could see the two men who had relieved Captain Brovko. The men leaned close to one another, their faces almost touching as they whispered.
They were young men, the same age as Dmitry. Perhaps, while in KGB school, they roomed together…
Although the men on the far side of the room stared at him, they did not know he was awake. Rather than sleeping, Komarov had opened his eyes only enough to see out. Back here in the shadows on the daybed, no one knew he was awake. If he had been a little closer, he might have heard everything Brovko said to Horvath. But he’d heard enough-Brovko and Horvath discussing his lack of humor while Brovko played nursemaid with drinks of water.
Komarov knew he could trust no one. Not Captain Azef, who was most likely looking out Komarov’s office window this very moment, planning a takeover of Kiev operations. And not Captain Brovko, sent by Deputy Chairman Dumenko to “assist.” Obviously Brovko had stood by, allowing Komarov to perform the old-school, iron-fisted work, waiting for the climax so he could hurry back to Moscow and seize credit for the discovery of a conspiracy to destroy Chernobyl. Komarov’s anger became so intense he could no longer lie still.
When Komarov sat up, one of the men hurried for the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside for a moment, Major.”
“Stay here! I want two guards on the prisoners at all times!”
“But the captain asked…”
“Never mind what the captain asked!” Komarov stood and walked to the man. “I’m in charge, and I told you to stay!”
The man stepped back from the door, looked to his partner.
“Yes, Major.”
Komarov walked in front of the prisoners. Horvath stared at him. Bela Sandor was waking up, his eyes blinking.
“A new day has dawned,” said Komarov, adjusting his shoulder holster and tucking in his shirt. “Perhaps you’ve had time to recall where your bitches have gone. Perhaps they’ve found a stallion or some other barnyard creature with which to satisfy themselves.”
Komarov turned quickly, catching the two guards exchanging glances. “Guard them! Not one another!”
It was a sunny morning. Komarov got a drink of water, took a slice of bread from a bread box on a shelf. He chewed the bread and stared out the window. The downslope of the hill beyond the border of weeds made it impossible to see the land between the house and the village. Perhaps, in the dark, the women had been able to find a hiding place only they knew. He wanted to use the children. No one could stand watching a child suffer, not even a Kiev militia detective.
When he arrived the night before last, it had been dark. And although he had inspected the surrounding area with a flashlight, he had told his men to do a more thorough job during the day yesterday. If there had been a place to hide, his men should have been aware of it. But last night, before Horvath arrived, it seemed as though the earth had swallowed them up.
Where would little children hide? Children who might make noise because they are tired and hungry. Unable to play with their toys, they would become fidgety.
When Komarov looked at the stump in the yard with the ax embedded in it, he wondered if his men had adequately searched the chicken coop. Surely a group of women and children would have made an uproar with the chickens if they’d gone in there. Komarov was about to have one of the men search the coop again when he noticed something about the box out beyond the fire pit in the yard.
Yesterday the utensils and tin plates had been on the box. Now they were scattered along one side of the box.
Discarded tin plates and forks! An old box for a table! Children’s toys! Had one of his men knocked the plates and utensils off the box so he would have a place to rest? Or had someone else cleared the top of the box?
Komarov went to the back door and opened it. When he stood in the doorway looking out at the box in the yard, Bela Sandor whined behind him.
“I’m hungry.”
Komarov resisted the urge to go back inside and slap Bela.
“When can we eat? Feed me!”
There was something about the box. Could the Gypsy read his mind? Or had he simply noticed him looking at it? Perhaps there was something in the box.
Komarov threw his remaining bread aside. Ignoring Bela’s protests, he motioned for the guard near the back door to go with him.
When Komarov walked out into the yard, the guard from outside the back door and one of the men farther out in the yard joined him.
Because the tin plates and discarded utensils were scattered on one side, it appeared as if someone had lifted the box up on end.
There was a worn tablecloth draped over the box, but he noticed it was tacked on with nails. Komarov gripped the top edge of the box and lifted. It was surprisingly lightweight. Instead of the entire box tipping upward, only the top of the box with its tablecloth skirt lifted.
Beneath the top, Komarov saw a hole, a deep hole with a ladder leading down into the darkness. It could have been an old well or the entrance to a tunnel or an underground chamber dug during the war so the Gypsies could hide from invading troops. It could lead anywhere!
Once the cover of the hole was tilted back on its hidden hing-es, Komarov asked for a flashlight from one of the men. Using the flashlight, he could see to the bottom of the ladder. There was a dirt floor about three or four meters down. On the side of the hole opposite the ladder, about a meter down, there seemed to be an opening.
Above the opening there was a wooden timber. A smell drifted out from the hole, a smell like something beginning to go sour mixed with
… yes, mixed with the faint scent of alcohol. A wine cellar!
Komarov held his finger to his lips so the men would remain silent. He leaned close and listened. Back in the house, he heard Bela shouting something in Hungarian. Komarov had patience now. In what seemed only a moment or two, his patience had paid dividends. Coming from deep in the hole, Komarov heard the un-mistakable whimper
of a baby.
Rather than tell his men that the women and children were down in what was apparently a wine cellar, Komarov kept listening.
He could hear the baby’s cries being muffled. He imagined Bela’s wife clutching the baby to her bosom, perhaps suffocating the baby with her own flesh. Would the woman kill her own child? But then he heard the whimper again, followed by a clicking sound, and he realized the baby was feeding.
Komarov put the flashlight he held into his jacket pocket and lowered his head even farther into the hole. The sound of the baby suckling its mother’s breast reminded him of his wife breast-feeding Dmitry, reminded him of how he had sometimes substituted his finger for his wife’s nipple. He recalled the draw on his fingertip as Dmitry suckled it. Then he remembered Dmitry’s lover, Fyodor, and a wave of disgust and nausea enveloped him as though the hole in the ground were trying to suck out his insides.
34
When the front door of the house flew open and two men ran out waving frantically, Nikolai opened the door of the Volga and followed after Captain Brovko. Once inside the house, one of the men who had waved ran alongside Brovko.
“The major is in the yard. He’s found something. A tunnel, I think.”
When Nikolai followed Brovko out the back door, Detective Horvath shouted after them. “Your major is going insane! You’d better watch him!”
In the yard, Major Komarov was bent over a box Nikolai had seen. But the box was open, its top, with a tablecloth hanging on it, tilted upward. Komarov stood as Brovko approached.
“Get the two Gypsy traitors,” said Komarov to the men nearest him. “Carry them out here, chairs and all. Here, give me your gun.”
Komarov took the AKM from the nearest man and turned to Brovko. “Captain, a dozen men search through the night, find nothing, yet the women and children are here under their noses. I should have known. The soil on this plateau is high and dry.”
Komarov watched the men gathering, trudging through the weeds. He smiled and waved his arm. “Come, don’t be frightened!
Women and children cowering in a wine cellar won’t bite!” Komarov held up the AKM he had confiscated. “I’ll protect you!”
The men sent for the prisoners carried Horvath and Bela outside, the two who were carrying Bela’s chair struggling. Bela’s wriggling threw the men off balance, and they dropped Bela on his side.
“New recruits,” said Komarov to Brovko, shaking his head.
“Whichever KGB school they graduated from should be investigated!”
Komarov pointed to the ground near the open box with the AKM. “Put them here.”
Because Komarov was smiling, some of the men smiled back.
But to Nikolai it was not a contagious smile. It was the grin of a madman.
Detective Horvath and Bela Sandor sat side by side, tied to their chairs, facing the open box. Komarov went to the far side of the box and faced them. Nikolai stood beside Captain Brovko and the rest of the men gathered in a semicircle behind them. They all looked at the box concealing the hole in the ground.
“It’s a wine cellar,” announced Komarov. “Gypsies drink plenty, the cheapest they can get, homemade rotgut. I should have known there wasn’t enough in the house. When I was a boy outside Moscow, legend had it they drank blood when they ran out of wine.”
Komarov looked down into the hole. “The Gypsies from my boyhood had a pact with one another. They were clannish, which meant the lives of those outside the clan meant nothing. Neither did the country in which they lived. Some Gypsies ended up leaving the motherland. They’ll go to any country foolish enough to let them in. They have a rebellious nature. We’ve had a taste of this rebellion in Afghanistan.”
Nikolai noticed two men who were standing to one side of the box glance at one another and shrug their shoulders.
Komarov stooped down and spoke into the hole. “You may come out now, Gypsies.” Komarov paused for a moment, then shouted, “I said, come out!”
Komarov stood up, aimed the AKM down the hole, and fired.
It all happened very quickly. The AKM was on full automatic.
At least a dozen rounds blasted into the hole. When the firing stopped, screams echoed from the hole, screams of women and children, making Nikolai want to do something. Off to the side he saw one of the men raise his AKM in Komarov’s direction. Behind him he heard a man say, “Don’t shoot them!”
The prisoners wriggled in their chairs, breathing loudly through their teeth.
After firing, Komarov stepped back from the hole and shouted,
“Will you come out now?”
“Yes!” was the reply, a woman weeping. Nikolai could feel the anguish in his chest.
Captain Brovko broke from the group and approached the entrance to the cellar. When the first woman appeared, he helped her up. It was Nina Horvath, who turned to take the baby from Mariska Sandor, who came out next, causing Bela to call her name. Finally, the two little girls came out.
“Take them into the house,” said Komarov. Then he summoned one of the men and gave back the AKM.
After a tearful reunion between Mariska, Bela, Detective Horvath, and his sister-in-law, Nina, Captain Brovko and two other men led the women and children to the house. Mariska was pulled backward, and she looked to Bela, making the sign of the cross.
“Pray to your God!” shouted Komarov. “Instead of joining with our motherland, pray to your icons, your ancestors, your Allah!
Idiot zealots! Destroyers of the world!”
The men who had carried Bela and Detective Horvath out began lifting Bela’s chair to follow the women and children into the house.
“No!” shouted Komarov, then, more calmly, he said, “Leave them here.”
Komarov walked around the cellar entrance and stood before Horvath and Bela. But then he turned suddenly and stared wide-eyed at Nikolai. “Now we will learn something, Nikolai Nikolskaia.
When conspirators go into hiding, they confirm their conspiracy.
The connection between Zukor and his cousins is established. We need only find Juli Popovics, whose role was to help Mihaly Horvath escape had the reactor not overreacted to his treachery!”
Several men standing to the side looked to one another, wondering whether Komarov’s theory rang true.
Komarov turned back to Horvath. “I wonder if the American CIA technical experts knew how the reactor would react when they sent in their Gypsy Moth. Not simply a steam explosion, but a more disastrous explosion endangering many lives! What would they care if the lives of a few Ukrainians and Russians and Hungarians were put at risk? Their goal was to disable the reactor, and they succeeded. Those in the Lubyanka in Moscow knew of the plot. Unfortunately the information they had was not enough to stop it!”
Nikolai listened with confusion as Komarov confronted Detective Horvath. “It’s a foregone conclusion, Detective Horvath. I cannot risk the possibility of another CIA plot in the works. You know where Juli Popovics is. She has information critical to us, and I have the women and children.”
“They won’t let you hurt them.”
“What did you say?”
“The men. They have families. You can’t expect them to let you…”
Komarov took out his pistol and smashed Horvath across the face. This time, after being relatively silent in the house all night, Horvath screamed. It was an overwhelming scream echoing across the plateau, a baleful scream of release and anger. When Horvath’s scream trailed off, yet another ungodly sound began, higher pitched, the shriek of an animal somewhere below ground. Words buried in the scream emerged from the hole in the ground. A woman. How could these words come from a woman?
“Komarov! You have fucked your mother and your father! Is there no one left?”
Komarov smiled an insane smile, turned, and started for the cellar entrance.
“No!” shouted Horvath. “I’ll say anything you want!”
When Komarov aimed his pistol down the hole, Horvath shouted something in Hungari
an.
Komarov fired all eight rounds. He glared at the men moving toward him. Nikolai felt someone at his back shoving him forward.
Brovko came running from the house. Komarov threw the pistol aside, took a large folding knife from his pocket, opened it, and climbed quickly down the ladder. The last thing Nikolai saw was Komarov’s insane smile as Brovko ran up to the hole, then turned about with a puzzled look on his face as Horvath shouted in Hungarian. Among the shouts the word kes was repeated over and over, and Nikolai knew it must mean knife.
Juli’s ears rang from the deafening booms of the gunshots into the cellar. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder. Light from the opening slanted through dust and smoke. No sooner had she stared at the slant of light, and the entrance was blocked by a shadow.
The rungs of the ladder creaked from the weight of someone coming down. Komarov or another man sent after her.
She heard Lazlo shouting from above. Something about a knife.
Komarov had a knife! When she could see legs on the ladder, she heard another voice, the voice of a man shouting directly into the hole.
“Major Komarov! Wait!”
In the distance, beyond the man shouting down the hole, Lazlo continued. “If you’re not going after him, at least keep silent!”
Suddenly, the world above was cut off. The only sounds remaining were the creaking of the last rungs of the ladder and the sound of her heartbeat.
Juli’s life, since the day she met Mihaly on the bus from the power station to Pripyat, flashed through her mind as it had flashed through her mind so many times. Small details of what had happened stood out. Other possibilities materialized-Mihaly’s parallel world; an island in the South Pacific to which the China Syndrome of Chernobyl has eaten a tunnel; Mihaly and Lazlo together in this other world, united-a seemingly small decision in the past could have prevented Mihaly’s death, perhaps even prevented the accident at Chernobyl.
If only she had married long ago, been a married woman with children like Nina when she and Mihaly met casually on the bus. If only she had listened to Mihaly’s concerns about the plant and done something, anything. If only she hadn’t met Lazlo and fallen in love with him. If only…
Chernobyl Murders lh-1 Page 41
