Lazlo stood to the side of the door opposite Lenin.
“Who is it?”
Silence. He waited, but not so long they would decide to break in the door.
“Who’s there?”
“I’m from housekeeping. Please open the door. Something needs checking in the room.”
“Come back later!”
More silence, followed by a very loud knock.
“Detective Horvath! Unlock the door and step five paces straight back into the room with your hands over your head! If you don’t do this immediately, we’ll begin shooting!”
He heard a door slam, probably someone looking out and seeing the men with guns.
“Detective Horvath!”
“Very well! I’ll unlock the door now and step back as you said!”
After unlocking the door, Lazlo stepped back more than five paces. He stood at the side of the sofa with his hands above his head.
The doorknob twisted slowly, then the door was propelled open, banging into Lenin. For a second all he saw was the opposite wall of the hallway. Eventually two machine pistols appeared, followed by two men peeking around the edge of the door frame. Both men stared at him for a moment, and finally one stepped into the room, aiming his machine pistol two-handed at Lazlo. The second man quickly stepped in, glanced at the gun on the bed, stepped around the door, and was confronted by Lenin. When the machine pistol began unloading, the man watching Lazlo dropped to the floor and also turned his pistol on Lenin.
The move behind the sofa and out the window went as quickly as it had when he’d practiced it. What he hadn’t practiced was the drop to the scaffold. He fell in a crouched position, experiencing the horrible sensation of the fall in his abdomen. When he hit the scaffold, he lurched sideways but held on with his arms. His legs hung over the edge and his ankle burned with pain, but he managed to clamber up onto the scaffold. He stood up quickly, took out his pistol, held it as high as he could beneath the open window, held his breath, and listened.
When the firing in the room finally ceased, gun smoke billowed out the doorway, a few shells rolled into the hallway, and Komarov ran into the room with Brovko.
Their two men were prone on the floor, their machine pistols aimed at a sofa against a window. Bits of what looked like plaster were scattered about the men’s feet. One man on the floor pointed to the sofa, the other pointed back behind the door. The men from the stairwell joined them, crowding into the room. Brovko aimed his pistol behind the door before shaking his head sadly and turning to the sofa.
Behind the door Komarov saw a statue with a pistol fastened to its hand. On the bed was another pistol in a shoulder holster. He aimed his own pistol at the sofa with the others.
“Come out, Horvath!”
When a shot exploded from behind the sofa, Komarov, along with the others, opened fire.
The firing continued at least five seconds. When it stopped, the sofa was smoking, tufts of stuffing floating above it.
Brovko approached the sofa carefully, aiming his pistol. Once behind and to the side of the sofa, he looked back to Komarov.
“There’s nobody here.”
“What?”
“But he jumped back there,” said one of the men on the floor.
Brovko shoved the sofa out into the room.
“The window!” screamed Komarov.
“We’re on the seventh floor,” said one of the men.
Another man was at the bathroom door, pushing it open, aiming.
Komarov already knew there would be no one in the bathroom.
He saw water flecks on the tile floor and trailing across the carpet to the window. Both he and Brovko ran to the window and looked out. Below the window a platform swung gently. On the platform, in the light from a window below, Komarov could see more droplets of water. Along with the sulfurous scent of burnt gunpowder, there was a scent of perfume in the air.
“Hurry!” shouted Komarov, running from the room. “They’ve gone down a floor!”
Brovko screamed into his handheld transceiver, telling the men on the street to circle the building. Komarov did not bother with the elevator. He ran to the stairwell and, when he entered it, heard the echo of a door slamming below.
Lazlo’s ankle was on fire as he ran. When he put on the white waiter’s jacket, blood smeared the sleeve, and he realized he had cut his wrist on the scaffold. His left side ached where he shoved the pistol into his belt beneath the jacket before running through the hotel kitchen.
Several kitchen workers stared at him. One, a fat man in a chef’s hat, stepped to the center of the aisle to block his path. Lazlo pulled up his sleeve, held out his bleeding wrist, and said, “I’ve cut myself,”
and the man stepped aside.
He ran down the outside metal stairway and through the alley as fast as he could. He tried to ignore the pain, but it was more intense with each step, as if an animal were inside chewing his an-klebone. The alley exited at the side of the building on the street bordering Lenkomsomol Square. He ran across the street. There was a shout behind him.
“Stop!”
He ran onto the sidewalk as fast as he could, but the man behind was faster, and was joined by a second man, the two shouting encouragement to one another in Russian, young men running fast, so fast. The pain, how long could he run with the pain?
When he rounded a corner, a crowd making their way down the street from the Philharmonia confronted him. He dodged one person after another, shouting, “Watch out! Move over!” Behind him he heard the two men doing the same as they rounded the corner. The white jacket was like a flag as he ran among people coming from the concert in dark formal wear.
A restaurant ahead, patrons going in, a crowd. He went through the doorway, pushing a man and a woman aside. The man cursed him in Ukrainian and Russian.
Through the dining room, pushing a dessert cart out of the way.
He found the kitchen door at the back just as he heard the commotion at the front entrance. In the kitchen he removed the white jacket, knocked over a man standing on a stool, then ran into a cart full of pots and pans, which spilled over, some of the pans bouncing ahead and underfoot. Near the back door, there was a black overcoat on a hook. He took it and ran out the back door.
The alley was dark and quiet, but through the door he could hear a man shouting, “Hey! Stop! My coat!”
Lazlo tipped a heavy garbage can against the door, put on the overcoat, and took out his pistol. There was a loud racket in the kitchen. He crouched down behind another garbage can and aimed his pistol at the garbage can leaning against the door. When the door pushed outward, he fired two shots. When the door was pushed closed by the garbage can, he ran past the doorway in the opposite direction and found a gangway out to the street, where he joined a crowd of people walking slowly back to the Hotel Dnieper.
The people chatted about the concert, one woman saying Prokofiev was “elevating,” a man saying the music was “overly West-ernized.” Lazlo put up the overcoat collar, which smelled of onions.
He put his hands in the pockets, his right hand still gripping his pistol. He walked as smoothly as he could despite the pain in his ankle.
He was rounding the corner back to the hotel when he heard footsteps run up the gangway. Once around the corner, he ran again.
Across the street from the hotel he slowed to a walk. There were at least five KGB men outside the main entrance, looking about in all directions. He had caught up to a group of four people leaving the concert, but they veered to the right and began crossing the street to the hotel. Lazlo walked straight ahead to the end of the block and onto the lighted pathway leading to Lenkomsomol Square. He wished he had gone the other direction to the metro, but there had been no crowds going that way. He could not turn around now because he could hear the men who had chased him through the restaurant back at the corner.
The men at the hotel entrance began spreading out, one coming toward him, but not running. The man paused before crossing the str
eet to allow a speeding taxi by. There was something familiar about the man, something about the shape of his head, his receding hairline. Suddenly the man stopped short and shouted, “Horvath!”
and Lazlo knew it was Komarov.
Running. The pain again. Running out onto Lenkomsomol Square. Nowhere else to go. All these men chasing him, and nowhere to hide. All these men led by Komarov a hundred meters behind. Would he be shot through the head like the deserter from the Romanian border? Perhaps he deserved it.
A shot fired, causing a young couple ahead on a bench to dive to the ground. If only he could stop running. If only he could become invisible. But what would happen to Juli? What would happen to Juli if he did not return?
As he ran farther out onto the square, he heard a violin playing in the distance, a violin playing a Hungarian prima, the violin crying its song into the night, a song he recognized, a song called,
“If Someone’s Sad.”
Another shot, a piece of stone on the square set free, skittering beneath his feet. The violin stopped playing. Only the pain remained, and Juli waiting for him.
The footsteps behind were like marbles bouncing on the paving stones. The men closer, perhaps seventy-five meters back. Ahead, the few strollers who had been in the distance were gone, crouched down behind planters and statues, waiting for these insane men to disappear.
A sound. He had run past a sound below. A truck shifting gears. The underpass! The road beneath Lenkomsomol Square!
The road branching from the traffic-signaled intersection near the square! One summer he had reprimanded boys for dropping stones from the planters through the drainage grates onto the traffic below.
The grates lined up over the road here.
He could smell diesel fumes. He turned down a path at the edge of the square and saw the grates lined up beneath the lampposts.
He ran past one grate after another and heard a truck starting up, shifting out of first gear, the sound of the truck coming from grates behind him.
Down on his knees, his pistol into the edge of the grate, prying it up. Fingers beneath the grate, the grate pressing into his flesh.
Pushing. Pushing the grate over. The truck’s yellow cab lights below. A trailer so close. A short drop. But how close? How close to the floor of the square? How close to the ceiling of the tunnel?
No choice. He dropped, spread-eagled like a skydiver. He landed on the truck on his chest and, for a moment, could not breathe.
He lay flat, his pistol clenched in his hand. He looked ahead and saw the opening of the tunnel, the road climbing as the truck driver shifted again and the truck lurched forward. And as the truck went faster, the ceiling came closer. Then the ceiling touched him, was at the back of his coat pulling him backward. He would die. He would die.
But suddenly, the echoing sound of the truck’s engine opened up about him, and when he looked up, he knew he was outside the tunnel. The truck, with him onboard like an insect clinging to an automobile windshield, headed west on Khreshchatik and would soon pass the metro station.
“He’s ducked behind a potted plant!” shouted Brovko.
“I saw him turn up there at those benches!” shouted one of the men with a machine pistol.
“Spread out!” screamed Komarov.
A few seconds later, one of the men shouted, “Over here!”
Komarov ran, saw two men standing with their guns lowered.
Could Horvath be dead? Why hadn’t he heard the shot? When he ran closer, all he saw was a hole in the ground, a hole the size and shape of a grave. But this was not ground. There was a street below!
Komarov stopped at the hole, gasping for breath as he looked down with the others at the traffic passing below, the traffic going west.
Despite his gasping, Komarov ran with the others to the west end of Lenkomsomol Square. At the railing, all he could see was the traffic. There was no one running. No one on a car or truck. Did he expect Horvath to stand on whatever car or truck he must have taken for a ride and wave to him? Mock him? Wasn’t it enough he had escaped?
“Back to the hotel!” Komarov gasped for breath. “Find the woman!”
A few meters away, a violinist who had ducked behind a row of benches because of the commotion stood and started playing a Hungarian song. A Gypsy song!
This was too much. Komarov put his pistol away and walked up to the violinist, a somber, skinny wretch of a man in a tattered brimmed hat playing his idiotic tune. Komarov felt the weight of the knife in his pocket as he walked. He stopped before the old man, pulled out the knife, and opened it.
The old man stopped playing. Komarov held the knife underhanded, not certain if he could stop, not certain if he would.
Then he felt a hand grip his wrist. When he turned, he saw it was Captain Brovko. Behind Brovko, Komarov could see insects hovering below the lights lining the square. Beyond the lights was the sparkle of the Dnieper River to the east. How would he be able to blame the Chernobyl explosion on the Gypsy Moth if he could not catch him?
“Come, Major,” said Brovko, staring at the knife. “We might still find the woman.”
Brovko watched as Komarov folded the knife and put it away.
They joined the other men running back to the Hotel Dnieper.
25
On May 14, 1986, eighteen days after the Chernobyl explosion, Gorbachev finally addressed the nation. Seven had died, and 290 were hospitalized. After speaking of the seriousness of the disaster and praising rescue workers, Gorbachev criticized exaggerations by the West. But most importantly, he spoke of the lessons the Chernobyl disaster should teach the world, comparing the disaster to the even greater threats that could be unleashed by nuclear weapons.
A few days after Gorbachev’s speech, the death toll was said to be thirteen, with many thousands exposed to radiation. The fire was out, and construction workers were building a cement tomb around the reactor. Livestock within a twenty-kilometer radius had been destroyed, and other livestock and fields of winter wheat were being monitored. Outside the Soviet Union, Common Market countries banned the import of Ukraine meat and produce.
On Sunday, May 18, a day one would expect to see crowded streets and parks, almost all of Kiev’s children were gone. Perhaps labels appearing on milk containers saying either “For Children” or
“For Adults” had been the final Pied Piper leading children away.
Many parents went south to be with their children, leaving Kiev with its old and middle-aged.
But the world did not stop. There were quotas to be filled and a few extra rubles to be made for those shrewd enough to take advantage. Kiev morning radio quoted a Pravda editorial criticizing Black Sea resort owners who had increased their rates, taking unfair advantage of parents who wanted to be with their children during this difficult time.
Standing at his office window, Komarov watched old men and women wearing dark coats amble out of a church on Boulevard Shevchenko. It reminded him of the night Detective Horvath made fools of his men at the Hotel Dnieper. The Philharmonia had let out, and the crowd gave Horvath the cover he needed. Idiots in the crowd making way instead of stopping him. The same idiots who more than likely applauded Gorbachev’s idiotic Chernobyl speech a few days later in which he warned of the global nuclear threat instead of keeping his mouth shut.
Over a week had gone by, and there was still no clue as to where the two Hungarians had gone. Outgoing airlines, trains, and buses were being watched. Members of the KGB and militia carried photographs of Horvath and Juli Popovics, but still there was nothing.
The militia also wanted Horvath for questioning regarding the poet’s murder because officers had seen the poet talking to Horvath at the roadblock.
Komarov had gone over the scene at the hotel again and again—
the time that passed after the knock on the door; the time needed to lower Juli Popovics, still wet from the shower, onto the scaffold; the statue of Lenin holding a pistol; the sofa in front of the window; the gunshot from
outside the window; the exit through the hotel kitchen disguised as a waiter; and finally, the escape through the floor of Lenkomsomol Square. But where had Juli Popovics gone?
The search of the hotel after Horvath’s escape had done nothing but upset patrons and prompt calls from both Chief Investigator Chkalov and Kiev’s public prosecutor to Deputy Chairman Dumenko in Moscow. Idiots!
In less than an hour, Dumenko’s flight would arrive in Kiev.
Komarov needed to blame the incident on someone else while convincing Dumenko the case was still worth pursuing. He sent Captain Brovko to Kisbor, telling him Horvath had to go there because his sister-in-law, Nina Horvath, was the one remaining woman with power over him. Brovko’s implication that Komarov had lost control by pulling his knife on the violinist in Lenkomsomol Square made it necessary to get Brovko out of Kiev, and the Horvath farmhouse would be a good place for the captain. Brovko would be in charge of several less skillful agents in Kisbor on the western frontier, including Nikolai Nikolskaia.
The thought of Brovko and Nikolskaia sitting atop a dung heap surrounded by peasants was humorous. But the thought of Dumenko’s arrival made laughter impossible.
“I find it difficult to believe your men would be so easily fooled by a statue!” shouted Dumenko. “Perhaps, if their memory is poor, you might place miniature statues of Lenin on the dashboards of their cars!”
“I agree it seems preposterous, Deputy Chairman, but the statue was disguised. He had a jacket about his shoulders and a woman’s stocking stretched over his head.”
Dumenko raised his eyebrows. “A woman’s stocking over Lenin’s face? And a pistol fastened to his hand?”
“Yes, Deputy Chairman.”
Dumenko shook his head, the sun from the window reflected off his hairless skull. “It is all quite clear now. Your men defended themselves against what they thought, at first glance, was a live gunman with a stocking over his head.” Dumenko raised his voice again. “But please tell me why, if the pistol never fired and the statue never moved, your men found it necessary to put so many holes in Lenin? The hotel manager will now have to replace him!”
Lazlo Horvath Thriller - 01 - Chernobyl Murders Page 31
