Johnny glanced alternately at Nadia and Bobby. “It’s a special phrase in the Japanese language,” he said. “It means stay strong, stand tall. Keep fighting.”
“Kyoto operates on a different electric grid than Tokyo,” Nakamura said. “The people in Kyoto were much less affected than in other parts of Japan. Still, they conserved electricity to donate to relief efforts. There was wind, snow, and rain in Kyoto after the earthquake, but there were no cherry blossoms that year. People smiled less. But they woke up from complacency. Adversity reminded us how to be strong as a nation. The aftershocks only strengthened our resolve.”
“Aftershocks?” Bobby said.
“More earthquakes,” Nakamura said. “Two measuring 7.7 and 7.9 within a month. Eighteen hundred more measuring 4.0 or higher within a year.”
“Almost two thousand earthquakes?” Bobby said.
“Yes,” Nakamura said. They drove quietly for half an hour until Nakamura spoke again.
“There are three gray satchels beside linen,” he said. “You will find personal protective equipment inside. Please put them on.”
They opened the bags. Each one contained white overalls, shoes, rubber gloves, plastic goggles, and a respirator.
A bolt of anxiety wracked Nadia. “Hazmat suits?”
“Yes. Radiation suits.”
“Why do we need radiation suits?” Johnny said.
“My son can explain. We will be meeting him soon. Please to prepare. You do not need to put breathing equipment on yet. My son will show you how.”
They put their suits on.
Ten minutes later Nakamura turned into an empty gas stand, drove past the pumps, and accelerated around to the back. A small parking lot backed up to a wooded lot. Two jalopies sat rusting in the lot beside a garbage Dumpster. A crisp white van sat idling beside the old cars. Japanese lettering covered the side of the van. Beneath it was the English translation. Global Medical Corps.
A younger man resembling Nakamura sat behind the driver’s seat.
“That’s him,” Johnny said.
The younger Nakamura opened the door and emerged before his father could back into the space beside his van. The elder Nakamura directed them toward the rear door, which would keep them hidden from the front of the gas stand. The younger Nakamura opened the rear door and introduced himself to Nadia and Bobby.
“Into the back of my van,” he said. “Quickly, please.”
“Where are you taking us?” Nadia said. She held her purse in one hand, a respirator in the other. She knew the answer to the question. Given the equipment they’d been asked to wear, there was little doubt about where they were going. Still, the question had to be asked.
“To meet with Genesis II,” Nakamura said.
“Where is the meeting?” Johnny said.
“In a place that guarantees us total privacy and safety. In the No-Go Zone.”
Nadia remembered the blown reactor, radioactive red forest, and ghost town of Pripyat.
“In the Zone of Exclusion.”
CHAPTER 15
THE THOUGHT OF entering another Zone of Exclusion—another radioactive ghost town—might have made someone with Bobby’s experiences anxious. To Bobby’s own surprise, it didn’t. From the moment the old man had told them where they were going, a strange fascination gripped him. How would the two radioactive ghost towns compare? Would he see signs that reminded him of Chornobyl, or would it be completely different? The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t wait to get there.
The old man left in his truck. Nadia, Johnny, and Bobby followed Dr. Nakamura into the back of the van. He closed the door and handed out shortwave radios with earpieces. They were very cool, something the KGB would have used in the old days when they were tailing suspected spies. Then the doctor showed them how to wear their respirators. Technology had improved. They made the old rubber gas masks Bobby had found piled high in an abandoned Chornobyl classroom look like alien body parts. Vented cups and mouthpieces fit snugly over his nose and mouth. At first they felt a little claustrophobic, but adrenaline washed away the sensation.
Once they were comfortable with the respirators, Dr. Nakamura told them to take them off for the next leg of the trip. Nadia sat in the front in the passenger seat. Johnny and Bobby sat in the second row of seats. Dr. Nakamura guided the van back onto the main road and headed further east toward the coast of Japan.
“We have a half-hour drive to the checkpoint at the Exclusion Zone. I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up myself but I had to get this van. And I couldn’t have you show up at the Global Medical building. That’s why I had to ask my father for a favor. I had to have him drive you out here. We had you go out the back door at the inn straight into the truck just in case someone was following you. Per Genesis II’s request.”
“I presume the checkpoint is guarded,” Nadia said.
“Yes.”
“Will the guards ask us for ID?” Johnny said.
“They know me, and I usually have someone with me. There’s a slight risk because there are three of you this time, but I don’t think it will be a problem.”
“I could pose as a journalist if that would help,” Nadia said. “I’ve done it twice before with good success.”
“No,” Dr. Nakamura said. “That would not help. That would not help at all.”
“You make it sound like it might actually put us at risk.”
“It would accomplish the opposite of what you are hoping. It would make you extremely unpopular and draw immediate attention to you.”
Nadia appeared shocked. “Why?”
“Because the earthquake and tsunami changed perceptions of foreign media forever. The only reliable sources of information were social media. Facebook. Twitter. Elder generations who didn’t know what the words meant grew to rely on them for timely, accurate, and objective updates. The foreign press was all about headlines. It made the disaster sound worse than it actually was. It painted a hopeless situation. Made it sound as though the apocalypse was arriving. Japan was already communing and rebuilding while the rest of the world was still watching a train wreck.”
“Good to know,” Nadia said. “My primary alter ego is worthless in Japan.”
“If they ask, I’ll tell them you’re volunteers. If they see your faces they might ask questions because the volunteers are mostly college students. So when we are two minutes away, I will ask you to put your breathing equipment back on. It will hide your faces. The guards won’t ask you to take it off. They don’t know who’s been exposed to radiation. They don’t want any contact with you. So we should be okay.”
“I don’t understand something,” Bobby said.
Nakamura raised his eyebrows and tilted his ear toward the back seat.
“If there are no people in the Zone of Exclusion, why would anyone need a doctor? How could anyone need treatment or medical supplies, when there’s no one to treat?”
“Officially,” Dr. Nakamura said, “there are no people living in the Zone of Exclusion. But unofficially . . .”
Just like Chornobyl, Bobby thought. “There are squatters.”
Dr. Nakamura frowned. “Squatters?”
“People who’ve come back to live in their homes even though they’re not supposed to,” Bobby said.
“Yes. The woman we are visiting today does not have long to live. She insisted she wants to spend her final days in her own home. The government allowed her to go back, but kept it quiet so they did not set a bad example for other people who are not seriously ill and simply want to return. I help take care of the woman.”
“You and who else?” Nadia said.
“Another doctor alternates days with me. And there are a few volunteers who take turns staying with her overnight. Last night, it was a certain volunteer you want to meet.”
Soon they would know if there was a complete
formula. Soon Bobby’s curiosity would be satisfied regarding the second boy’s identity. Was he Japanese, Ukrainian, or something entirely different?
They stopped at a gas stand along the way to use the restrooms. Two minutes before arriving at the checkpoint, they put on their respirators. A series of red and white cones appeared on the road ahead. Six men dressed in black coats and pants milled around a mobile home. One of them marched into the middle of the street and lowered a red flag. It contained three Japanese characters. The word “Stop” was written in English below them.
The guard walked around toward the driver’s side. He scanned the car’s interior. The other guards stopped chatting. They stood by the mobile home and watched. Bobby was surprised they weren’t carrying rifles. In Ukraine, the guards at the Zone carried rifles. But these guards wore black coats that fell between their hips and knees. Bobby guessed they had weapons concealed beneath them. Maybe that was the Japanese way. In Ukraine, everything was in your face. Success, failure, honor, corruption. Even guns. From what he’d read in his guidebook on the plane, the Japanese liked to keep a civil face, and keep their emotions hidden beneath the surface. Apparently they liked to keep their guns hidden as well.
A truck rolled up to the checkpoint from the opposite side. It was headed out of the Zone. The driver and his passenger wore blue hazmat suits. The guard took one look at it and waved it through.
Dr. Nakamura rolled down his window. He exchanged some rapid-fire dialogue with the guard. There was some nodding, smiling, and pleasant-sounding conversation. It was clear by their exchange the guard and Dr. Nakamura knew each other.
The guard glanced in the back of the van. He gave Johnny, Nadia, and Bobby a quick once-over and let them through. They drove past the other guards along the main road. A cityscape awaited them ahead.
“Welcome to the city of Okuda,” Dr. Nakamura said. “Welcome to the Zone of Exclusion.”
The words fascinated Bobby. He’d never imagined they’d be spoken anywhere but in Pripyat. But now here he was, in another Zone. Another nuclear ghost town. It was as remarkable to him that human beings had allowed such an accident to happen. Didn’t anyone pay attention to what happened in Chornobyl? Didn’t people understand that what could go wrong with nuclear power would eventually go wrong, no matter how small the odds?
No, he thought. And they still didn’t. Not even after Fukushima. No one wanted to understand. People were lazy. They didn’t like to change. It cost too much money and effort.
They approached the town. The road resembled a hastily constructed jigsaw puzzle. Appliances lay scattered along a patch of land. Bobby couldn’t count all the rice cookers. They must have been washed away by the wave. Refrigerators, televisions, and microwave ovens. He had once scavenged the junkyards of Chornobyl for anything that could be sold on the black market. The refrigerators would have motors. Some of the microwaves might still work. Plenty to scavenge here. Plenty of money for the making.
They drove into town. Empty shops, homes, and restaurants packed block after block. Some had been reduced to rubble. Many were partially damaged, with blown-out windows and caved-in roofs. Others stood untouched and abandoned. Electric wires ran along the side of the street, still in place high along poles. Traffic lights blinked yellow at intersections.
The scene mesmerized Bobby. The town dwarfed Pripyat, made it look like a college campus that had been overtaken by the wilderness. This was a twenty-first-century city turned ghost town. Pripyat was so overgrown one didn’t expect to see humans. Here one held his breath expecting someone to step out of a door any minute. But no one did. To Bobby, Okuda cast an eerier spell than Pripyat. It was a modern town in a wealthy country, which made its emptiness all the more stark and remarkable.
They came across eight folding chairs lined up in the middle of the street. One of the chairs had been kicked over. The rest looked as though they were waiting for their owners to come out of the nearby coffee shop with cups of green tea. Dr. Nakamura drove onto the sidewalk to pass them. The chairs had been left by people who’d waited until the last second, Bobby thought. People who didn’t want to leave their properties regardless of the risks, and were forced to evacuate by the government. There had been plenty of those in Chornobyl, too.
And then there were the animals. Cats sat in windows by themselves, or prowled the alleys in groups. A dog dug through a garbage can. A pair of cows stood at an intersection beneath a red traffic light. They looked lost and hopeless. They refused to move until Dr. Nakamura sounded his horn. Two blocks further up the road, a horse ran around the corner and disappeared.
They turned right. A sign said they were headed toward the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
“The power plant was built too close to the sea,” Dr. Nakamura said. “The tsunami flooded the generators that provide the power to the pumps. The pumps that sent cooling waters to the reactors. When the pumps failed, the only thing that would have prevented the reactors from melting down was seawater. But the government hesitated because the seawater would ruin the reactors, which were very expensive to build. By the time they changed their minds and flooded the reactors with seawater, three reactors had full meltdown.”
“Government men,” Bobby said. “Never trust government men.”
“I wouldn’t have said this before the nuclear disaster,” Dr. Nakamura said. “But you may be right. The situation in Fukushima today is far worse than the outside world knows. In a few minutes, I will show you. Once you have seen with your eyes, all will be clear. Then we will meet with Genesis II.”
CHAPTER 16
NADIA CRANED HER neck as Nakamura stopped along an elevated road above the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. It looked like an industrial city unto itself. It was divided into two sections. The part furthest inland stood on higher ground. It consisted of several office buildings. A football-field-sized parking lot contained twenty to thirty cars.
The area beyond the office buildings stretched for half a mile to the sea. Cranes, communication towers, and water tanks stood on the horizon. A web of dirt roads surrounded them. Six rectangular buildings stood amidst the cranes. Four of the buildings looked like they’d been stripped to their metal studs.
“Are those the reactors?” Nadia said.
“Yes.” Nakamura pulled out binoculars and handed them to her. “Reactors one, two, and three were the ones that experienced full meltdown. The Fukushima reactors released eighty-five times the amount of cesium as the reactor in Chornobyl. But it is our reactor four that is the main concern today.”
Nakamura told her to count four rectangular buildings from the left.
Nadia looked through the binoculars. “I see a half-melted pile of iron in the shape of what used to be a building.” She shifted her focus to the sides of the reactor. “With some sort of support beams on the sides.”
“The support columns were added later to keep the building intact,” Nakamura said. “It’s the iron you see in the middle of the building that’s the problem.”
“Why?” Nadia said.
“That iron consists of one thousand, five hundred and thirty-two spent nuclear fuel rods. They are surrounded by cooling waters thirty meters above the ground. You just can’t see the water from here.”
Nadia stared at the exposed, radioactive rods. “How can that be? They’re uncovered. Open to the air.”
“Yes,” Nakamura said. “They’re just sitting there. Waiting for disaster to strike again.”
Nadia couldn’t believe her eyes. Even the Soviet Union knew better. They’d dumped a gazillion tons of sand over the reactor and then built a metal tomb around it. Granted, the tomb was less than robust and it was falling apart now and in the process of being replaced, but at least they’d followed a path of common sense.
Bobby asked her for the binoculars and took a look himself. “No sarcophagus,” he said. He, too, sounded incredulous. “Why
is there no sarcophagus?”
“The response of the people of Japan to the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster has been strength and solidarity. The response of the government to the cleanup and nuclear risk has been weakness and cronyism. Cleanup efforts have been given to large Japanese corporations that have no experience with nuclear matters. Small companies and foreign companies were encouraged to make proposals. None were accepted.
“On July 22, 2013, more than two years after the disaster, the government finally confirmed what local fisherman had been saying all along. The plant was leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean since the tsunami. It took all that time for the government to admit that TEPCO—Tokyo Electric Power—was still lying about plant conditions. The Prime Minister ordered the government to step in. A month later, seven hundred metric tons leaked out of a storage tank and they stepped in to secure that, too.
“If the building crumbles for any reason, if it is weaker than the government says, if there is another earthquake of a magnitude seven or higher, the water would pour out, the fuel rods would burn, and you would have an oxygen-eating fire that could not be put out with water. That would lead to the kind of contamination science has never contemplated. It could make Japan uninhabitable, and with the oceans and wind, lead to global disaster.”
“The kind the Western press predicted,” Nadia said.
“This time,” Nakamura said, “they would be right. Emergency workers would not be able to get close to the fire. Robots would melt. There would be no immediate solution to putting out the fire. Radiation would leak into the air and sea and could not be stopped.”
“Why don’t they move the rods to someplace safe?” Bobby said.
“They cannot dislodge the individual rods. It is too dangerous. The only way to move them is to move the entire fuel rod canister.”
Bobby’s voice picked up urgency. “Then why don’t they do it?”
“It would take a crane that can lift one hundred tons. The only crane that could do that was destroyed in the disaster. This is the truth. These are the stakes. This is what Genesis II wanted you to understand. This is how important the formula may soon be to Japan. To the entire world. We must not let personal agendas get in the way of the greater good.”
The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (The Nadia Tesla Series Book 3) Page 8
