Lazlo Horvath Thriller - 01 - Chernobyl Murders

by Michael Beres

  Last week he drove Juli to Visenka. Last week he visited to inquire about her hospital tests. Yesterday he spent the afternoon with her. Yesterday he kissed her, and in accepting his kiss, she drew him to her like one of the howling dogs left behind by the Chernobylites.

  He was hers. Even now, forty kilometers away, he was hers. Had he, after the explosion at Chernobyl, purposely sought out Mihaly’s lover? If he could not have Nina, could he at least have Juli?

  Insane brooding fool. Instead of accepting what life offers he plays mind games. Lazlo took his hands from his pockets, rubbed them together, and went to join his men at the roadblock.

  Stories told by refugees, taken one at a time, might or might not be true. But when stories repeated themselves, they became believable.

  Livestock being herded south shot by soldiers. Dogs running after buses. A radius ranging from twenty to fifty kilometers contaminated. Fire still burning at the reactor, and radiation still being released.

  Another Chernobyl accident in 1982 covered up. Speculation about whether Pripyat residents would ever be allowed to return.

  Speculation made people do strange things. In one car, all but the driver were drunk. Even a boy of eight or nine was drunk, having been urged to drink red wine and vodka because of the rumor this would protect him from radiation.

  Lazlo and his men had interviewed refugees for several days. At first, his men shook their heads and even smiled in reaction to the stories. Then they became tired of hearing the same things over and over. Tonight, Lazlo noticed his men looked worried. Would there be a shift in the wind? If the fire was still burning and there was a shift in the wind …

  A little before midnight, Stash summoned Lazlo to a car stopped in the northbound lane. “It’s a time warp,” said Stash. “An old Zil limousine from the Khrushchev days.”

  The huge old Zil rumbled loudly through a bad muffler. When he approached the car, Lazlo noticed the grill and front bumper missing and recalled seeing the car before, recalled parking near it somewhere in Kiev, somewhere at night.

  There were no passengers, only a driver. The man had a black beard and mustache, and his hair was thinning. He looked Middle Eastern and had a familiar face. The man switched off the ignition, and the Zil’s engine coughed and sputtered to a stop.

  “Where are you going?” asked Lazlo.

  “One goes where one must in the dark of night when a friend beckons.”

  “What?”

  The bearded man continued. “Friends, bodies separate but joined at the head, brain juices mingling. Borscht.”

  Then Lazlo recalled where he’d seen the man. Club Ukrainka.

  One of Tamara’s poet friends. He leaned close to the Zil’s window.

  “An admirer of the poet Vasyl Stus sent me,” said the bearded man. “Vasyl Stus from the labor camp I am not, but if I dare …”

  “No poems now. Tell me what you came to say.”

  “It’s Tamara,” whispered the man. “She’s at the club. She wants you there.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know. She appears normal, although Tamara is by no means a normal person. She said to find you and bring you to her.”

  “I have my own car. I’ll drive. You can follow if you like.”

  After he directed Stash to take charge at the roadblock, Lazlo sped off in the Zhiguli. Behind him, the Zil tried to keep up. And behind the Zil, its headlights illuminating the Zil’s smoky exhaust, was the van from the closed gasoline station.

  Club Ukrainka was quiet. Tamara sat at her usual table in the corner, alone, the candle on the table unlit. She wore no makeup and did not stand to cheerfully call Lazlo to her table. A glass of red wine stood before her. He ordered the same and sat across from her, moving the unlit bottled candle aside. She looked tired as she sipped her wine. She pulled the shawl she wore tightly about her.

  “Something is wrong,” said Lazlo.

  When the bartender brought his wine, Lazlo noticed even he sensed Tamara’s anxiety.

  Tamara waited for the bartender to leave before speaking. “The KGB picked me up this morning. They questioned me all day and let me go only two hours ago.”

  “What did they want? Did they hurt you?”

  Tamara took a gulp of wine, put the glass down, brushed her hair from her forehead. “I thought it would be about the writers’

  union Chernobyl articles again, but it wasn’t. They wanted to know about you, Laz. How often you come here, what we talk about. They wanted to know what we talked about last weekend when we were together. I said it was none of their business. They said by the end of the day, I would not only tell them what we talked about, I would tell them what we did.”

  Tamara wiped at her eyes. “And I told them, Laz. I told them what we did. I told them about the dinner you made. I told them we danced. I told them everything, because we did nothing wrong.

  They said if I didn’t cooperate, we’d both be in trouble. The main interrogator was kind at first. A handsome young man simply doing his job. I was wrong to cooperate, Laz. They hinted about my sanity being in question. They had copies of the literary review and pointed out articles they insisted were anti-Soviet. I didn’t want to go to the psychiatric hospital, Laz. I didn’t want to be made into a crazy woman …”

  “Tamara, if you’re trying to apologize, it’s not necessary. You did the right thing. With these fools it’s best, if you have nothing to hide, to simply tell everything.”

  “But they wanted me to say things about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “The young man kept referring to what you did when you weren’t with me. He wanted me to agree you and your brother and his lover …”

  “Juli Popovics?” asked Lazlo.

  Tamara tried to smile. “It was funny in a way. His name was Brovko, Captain Brovko. At the same time he’s implying conspiracy at Chernobyl, he’s trying to make me jealous. I said you told me about Juli Popovics yourself and I didn’t think it at all unusual for a friend of your brother to come to Kiev and …”

  “And they didn’t hurt you during the questioning?”

  “Except for helping me into the car, they didn’t touch me. In the end they simply wanted me to agree your trips to the Chernobyl region were mysterious. I told them because your brother lived there, it was obvious they were trying to create crimes where none existed.

  Brother visits brother, and the KGB breaks wind.”

  “They don’t like being made to look foolish, Tamara.”

  “What should I have done, Laz?”

  “Told them the truth and not volunteered your own opinions.

  Said whatever you had to in order to protect yourself. Describe this Captain Brovko.”

  “Tall, well-built, in his thirties. Spoke a refined Russian and looked almost German. Light hair and blue eyes.”

  Lazlo looked about the room. The same few people were at other tables. The only new arrival was the bearded poet from the Zil, who sat alone at a table reading a book. The KGB men in the van, if they had kept up, were probably parked outside.

  “What should I do now, Laz?”

  “Nothing. And it would be best if we didn’t see one another for a while.”

  Tamara reached across the table and touched his hand. “How long?”

  He squeezed Tamara’s hand. “I don’t know where this will lead, but I have bad feelings about it. If I need your help at some point …”

  “Simply tell me, Laz. What the hell, I can take it.”

  Even though the club was closing up, Lazlo felt it would be best not to drive Tamara home. When he pulled away from the curb, he saw Tamara pause to look his way before getting into the ancient Zil with the bearded poet.

  When Lazlo opened his apartment door, there was an envelope on the floor. Inside, a typed message on Chief Investigator Chkalov’s stationery said he was to meet Chkalov promptly at eight in the morning. Although he was dead tired, he knew it would be a sleep-less night—the men in the Volga w
atching Juli, the van following him from Club Ukrainka to his apartment, the KGB questioning Tamara, and now this message from Chkalov.

  In bed he thought about the KGB outside. He imagined them taking him away to KGB headquarters on Boulevard Shevchenko, first to the room where they interrogated Tamara, then to one of the basement rooms …

  In the nightmare he is on a blanket beneath the chestnut tree in the yard of the old farm. Uncle Sandor sits on the blanket beside him, coughing up asthmatic sputum, spitting it into a scaly palm, and showing it to him. In the yard he sees Mihaly climb down into the wine cellar. A woman screams, the scream muffled as if she is in the house … or down in the cellar. Suddenly, the wine cellar erupts with a red liquid explosion, and he awakens. On the clock at his bedside, only ten minutes have passed.

  He lay awake recalling the wine cellar, the things Mihaly said about Chernobyl the previous summer. Mihaly referring to the Chernobyl reactors as female. Was this the scream he heard in the nightmare? He pieced together what Mihaly and Juli had said about safety problems, experiments, and backup systems being shut off.

  None of the information came from his visit to the Ministry of Energy. It came from Mihaly and Juli. And now Mihaly was dead and Juli was being watched and might at any time be picked up for questioning by the KGB.

  He looked at the clock again. After three. In less than five hours, he was due in Chkalov’s office. He got up, shaved, dressed, and went out into the night. He drove as fast as he could to militia headquarters, all the while glancing in the mirror in hopes the van speeding several blocks behind would crash and kill its occupants.

  For the remainder of the night, Lazlo maintained a vigil at his small desk at militia headquarters. First he called Juli at Aunt Magda’s and told her he would be calling periodically. Juli said she was glad, not only because she was frightened of the men watching the house, but because she wanted to talk to him.

  “If I can’t see you, at least I’ll hear your voice. I’ll sleep on the sofa.

  The phone is under the cushion so it won’t wake Aunt Magda.”

  After his first call to Juli, Lazlo called militia headquarters in Visenka. He pretended to be a neighbor of Aunt Magda’s reporting a prowler. Two hours later, after talking twice to Juli, he called Visenka headquarters again, disguising his voice and again reporting a prowler.

  The hours before dawn alternated with a strange feeling of peace during his brief conversations with Juli, and intense feelings of anger as he waited to see Chkalov. By sunrise he decided he would tell Chkalov the KGB was harassing him. And Chkalov, who had no love for the KGB, would agree with him, at least in principle.

  But at eight o’clock when he walked into Chkalov’s office, he could not complain about the KGB because the KGB’s Kiev chief, Major Grigor Komarov, was there, sitting in Chkalov’s chair behind the desk.

  Komarov smiled, saying nothing as Chkalov closed the door. Komarov’s head was lowered, his eyes partially hidden by his thick eyebrows and high forehead. The skin on Komarov’s cheeks was mottled, the red lines of a drinker. Lazlo smelled stale tobacco smoke. Even though he had never met Komarov, he hated him.

  Chkalov circled the desk while introducing Komarov. Obviously Chkalov expected Komarov to give up the chair behind the desk.

  Finally, when Komarov did not relinquish the larger desk chair, Chkalov sat in the guest chair beside Lazlo.

  “Major Komarov would like to ask a few questions,” said Chkalov.

  Komarov glanced to Chkalov. “Only a few, Comrade Chief Investigator? I didn’t know there was a limit.”

  Chkalov stared back at Komarov with a look of contempt.

  Komarov looked to Lazlo. “Chief Investigator Chkalov tells me you left your post last night, Detective Horvath.”

  “I had important personal business.”

  “Personal business.” Komarov nodded to Chkalov. “Personal business.”

  “I heard,” said Chkalov, gripping the arms of the guest chair.

  “No need to repeat.”

  “I simply want to be certain Detective Horvath’s desertion of his post is a matter of record.” Komarov turned back to Lazlo. “Detective Horvath, where exactly did you go when you left your post at eleven thirty-five last night?”

  “I drove across town to Club Ukrainka in the theater district.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “To see a friend.”

  “What is this friend’s name?”

  “Tamara.”

  “Her full name.”

  “Tamara Petrov.”

  The questioning went on like this. Komarov asking a simple question, Lazlo giving a minimal answer, which prompted the next question. A game, Komarov obviously trying to make Lazlo angry enough to blurt out something. But Lazlo maintained his composure.

  Eventually, through the back-and-forth questioning, he told Komarov he visited Tamara because she was frightened. He told Komarov about Mihaly being killed and how Tamara was with him Sunday morning when he learned about the Chernobyl explosion.

  He told Komarov about Juli Popovics coming to see him and the un-pleasant task of telling Juli about Mihaly’s death. He told all of this because he knew Komarov, being head of Kiev’s KGB office, either knew these things already, or could easily find them out.

  Because he was himself a skilled interrogator, Lazlo knew exactly how much information to give in order not to appear he was holding back. He told Komarov the obvious. The details of events of the past several days amounted to nothing more than his movements about Kiev. He and Tamara at the bakery hearing news about Chernobyl, him at the Ministry of Energy trying to find out about Mihaly, Juli coming to Kiev and finding him, him taking Juli to the hospital, then to Visenka. All obvious to Komarov because of the agents following Lazlo and Juli.

  During the interrogation, Lazlo watched Komarov’s eyes. Despite apparent outward calm, Lazlo recognized the eyes of a man who asks questions as a device with which to examine the suspect’s character. Two interrogators watching one another’s eyes. But there was something else in Komarov’s eyes. Lazlo had seen it in the eyes of hardened criminals. Komarov was full of deceit, saying what he needed to say in order to twist the facts in a certain direction.

  After Lazlo told of Easter dinner with Aunt Magda and Juli, Komarov paused and reached into his jacket pocket. Lazlo’s initial reaction was defensive, an awareness of the position of his own pistol in its shoulder holster. A reaction ingrained during years of investigation in Kiev, where a black market Makarov or Stechkin could turn up anywhere. But of course, Komarov did not produce a weapon. Instead he withdrew an aluminum film can. He placed the small can on Chkalov’s empty desk, unscrewed the cap, placed the cap beside the can, and waited.

  Chkalov coughed and shrugged his shoulders. Lazlo knew Chkalov would like nothing better than to invite Lazlo to draw his pistol so the two of them could blast this idiot to hell. Finally the purpose of the film can was revealed. Komarov took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and began smoking, using the film can as an ashtray.

  “On my last visit, there was no ashtray,” said Komarov.

  Komarov drew deeply and often on the cigarette, filling the room with smoke.

  Komarov cleared his throat before speaking. “Since there is so much speculation these days, why don’t you and I speculate a bit, Detective Horvath? We are both investigators. We know crimes are solved through speculation.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know about what’s happened the last few days,” said Lazlo. “If you want to speculate, fine.”

  Komarov blew smoke in his direction. “Very well. Assume for a moment the Chernobyl explosion was not an accident. Anything is possible, even sabotage. Not out of the realm of possibility, is it?

  So, who would do it? Better yet, who could do it? Someone who works at the reactor. Suppose this someone, in the process of committing sabotage, is killed. Who knows why? An explosive device gone off too soon? No. Too obvious. A Chernobyl worker would be smart eno
ugh to make it seem an accident. A Chernobyl worker could simply compromise safety systems until a so-called accident becomes inevitable.”

  Komarov put his cigarette out in the film can and immediately lit another. “Of course, if this was the case, if the saboteur established an environment in which an accident were inevitable, he probably wouldn’t want to be there. But what if it could not be avoided? If he suddenly excused himself because of illness, how would it look?

  So, he creates an escape plan. He has an accomplice, another person working at the facility ready to help him escape. Better yet, the accomplice works in an area where radiation cannot penetrate. There is such place at Chernobyl. It’s the low-level counting laboratory operated by the Department of Industrial Safety. The deepest basement of the building is buried beneath concrete and steel. In fact, two technicians, a man and a woman, were rescued from the basement of the building. Instead of running away from the area, as most did, they made a rational decision. They gathered what food they could find, showered, found fresh clothing, and went down to the deep sub-basement of the building. When rescued, they were found to have received a lower radiation dose than farmers many kilometers away. So you see, if someone worked at Chernobyl, if someone knew how to protect himself from radiation, he could survive.”

  The interrogation was having its effect. So easy to use Mihaly because he is dead. So easy to use Juli and Mihaly together. But Lazlo knew he must control himself. And, though it went against his nature, he feigned ignorance.

  “This man and woman,” said Lazlo, “the ones found in the counting laboratory. Do you think they were involved in sabotage?”

  Komarov blew out another stinking cloud. “What do you think?”

  “Perhaps if you gave me their names, I could ask Juli Popovics about them. She also worked at the Department of Industrial Safety and might be aware of something pertinent to your investigation.”

  Komarov looked to Chkalov and shook his head. “Your Detective Horvath speculates quite well, doesn’t he?”

  Chkalov coughed and cleared his throat. “If you say so, Major.”

  Komarov turned back to Lazlo. “An investigator should understand that no stone can remain unturned.”