by Adam Roberts
‘Either here,’ he growled, without looking round, ‘or, if the bomb detonates, then in heaven. And I don’t believe in heaven!’
And then I was alone.
CHAPTER 16
There was something uncanny about being the sole human being in so enormous an enclosed space. ‘It’s like a film set,’ I said to myself. There was a continuous noise that was more hiss than hum, and a pervasive if hard to identify sense of pulse, or sentience, as if the entire reactor were alive. This was not so comforting a thought. I tried to put such thoughts out of my head.
I walked over to the nearer of the two spent fuel pools, and looked over the edge. It was a surprisingly unsettling perspective: four-storeys deep and sheer all the way down. The waters were of an unnatural turquoise blue, and possessed a hyperlucid clarity, like the water that might fill the lakes of a distant planet in a science fiction magazine’s cover illustration. The view right to the bottom gave me a twinge of vertigo. Now, it is true that I have never liked heights; and this, I believe, is a common phobia. But I do not know many people who also experience vertigo at the deep end of a swimming pool, as I do. I suppose it is a deep-seated refusal to accept that an almost invisible medium is able to support my weight. Some part of my mind believed that, were I to tumble into that enormous circular pool, I would not float but would rather sink leadfooted all the way to that distant, uncanny, deathly bottom. ‘Idiot,’ I told myself. ‘You’ve more to fear from the radioactivity. You can’t fall. The water would hold you up. Falling isn’t what’s fearful here.’
The bottom of the pool was a ridged grid with a high-tech look to it; but the walls on all four sides were tiled exactly like a public swimming pool.
My eye ran down the vertical perspective and there it was: a black case, no larger than a suitcase. The bomb, of course. There was almost a sense of anticlimax about it; to stumble upon it straight away without even having to undertake a proper search.
It was three quarters of the way down the wall, suspended on a single cable. I squatted down, and gave the line a tentative tug. It did not feel too heavy. The thought crossed my mind that this might not be the bomb after all, but rather an ordinary piece of power-station machinery. I pulled again with the notion of retrieving whatever-it-was and finding out. In retrospect this was foolish of me, for of course the line could have been booby-trapped, but that chance did not occur to me. Given all that I know now, from my privileged perspective, looking down upon a completely different mode of existence, and with all the benefits of hindsight - of what we know about Chernobyl, and the precariousness of the cage that contained its nuclear dragon - it is hard to justify such a cavalier attitude. I could have hurried away to notify the authorities, of course; and they could have dealt with the threat in a comprehensive and knowledgeable manner. But all I can say, as far as that is concerned, is that it literally did not occur to me. I was singleminded. My only thought was to prevent disaster; and not wholly for altruistic reasons either, remembering of course that any disaster would mean my own death.
Up I tugged, like a fisherman hauling in his line. As the box drew closer to me it became apparent that it was a plain black suitcase; nothing more extraordinary than that. With a small splash it broke the surface. I laid it on the poolside. The wire was hooked around its handle. Water dribbled off it, and also squeezed, for several seconds, through the side of it in four curving wafers. It was, evidently, not a watertight suitcase.
Almost on a reflex I reached forward and pressed the dual latches that held the case shut. They both sprung free with a piercing double click, and my heart stopped - for only at that moment did it occur to me that such an action might have detonated it.
But it did not. Wheezing with the shock I lifted the lid.
Inside there was a cluster of fruit-sized black metal balls, like haemorrhoids; and a small black wallet-sized device. There was also a certain quantity of water. I took out one of the globes. There was no mistaking it. It was an RGD-5 grenade - standard Soviet-army issue. It looked like a small metal aubergine, with a metal ridge around its middle. The fuse looked as though somebody had buried a fountain pen halfway into its top. Its pin was a bald keyring of metal. The device was wet in my hand, and the water was warm. There was something repellent, almost organic, in this warmth.
So there I was, holding a grenade in my hand in the very heart of the active reactor of a nuclear power station.
I had to think what to do next. Clearly I ought to remove this suitcase from the power plant. There were five grenades in all; one in my hand, and four in the case. Perhaps the best thing would be to carry the whole kit outside; take it into the woods, where its explosion would do less harm. Very well: I needed to uncouple the case from its metal cable. I put the loose grenade down on the side of the pool. Then I closed the lid of the case, to get a better look at the handle, and the metal cable hooked around it. The cable was steel, heavy; as thick as my little finger. There was no way I could cut it. It was attached to the handle with a closed loop: the main body of the cable had been threaded through the cable’s eye. It could not be undone. I laid the suitcase down next to the loose grenade. Then I looked again into the water. I could see that the cable was attached via a clip to a fastening point set in the side of the pool, no more than a foot below the water. It would be an easy enough business unclipping that.
‘Saltykov!’ I yelled. ‘Saltykov, I’ve found it! I have the bomb!’
I lay down and reached with my right hand into the unsettlingly body-temperature warmth of the turquoise waters. A finger-twist with the clip and it came free. I had it by my fingertips, and then a nerve twitched in my arm, or I fumbled, or something happened, and I dropped it. The end of the cable fell away through the water.
This was clumsy of me.
I got to my knees and looked over the edge. There was something rather soothing in watching the leisurely fall of the cable through its medium; such a long way down. It unfolded in slow motion, and went taut. Then, with a slick inevitability, it continued its downward slide. The suitcase, no effective counterweight to the mass of dozens of metres of steel cable, slid across the tiles. My heart jolted, and I made a grab for the case, but my wet finger slid across its wet surface, and it went with a splash into the water.
I watched it sink for what seemed a very very long time. Part of me was convinced, irrationally perhaps, that the jolt of hitting the pool bottom would detonate the bomb. But it touched down, distantly, silently, and lay skewed across the griddle-iron pattern of the pool bottom.
‘Saltykov,’ I called out again. ‘I dropped the bomb!’
There was still one single grenade. It was right there, on the floor beside me. Not knowing what else to do, I picked it up. I was conscious mostly of embarrassment. I suppose I thought, rather incoherently, that I might make small amends by taking away this single RGD-5. I could at least dispose of that in the woods, which - surely - would be better than nothing. The fact that there were still four grenades in a case at the bottom of Chernobyl’s spent fuel pool was . . . Well, there was nothing I could do about that. I got to my feet.
‘You’ve dropped the bomb?’ shouted Saltykov, outraged, from behind me. Of course he was angry. The process of turning round to confront him was also the process of registering that something strange had happened to his voice. It had deepened and broadened in a most peculiar and rather comical manner - in sum, it wasn’t Saltykov’s voice at all. More, I thought that perhaps I recognised the voice. It sounded like Trofim’s voice.
I turned, and there he was: with his oxen manner, and the same half-comprehending expression on his big Slav face as he had ever had. He was aiming his pistol at me.
I held the grenade in front of me. Trofim waggled the gun. ‘Give it to me.’
I looked at the grenade. Since I carried no gun, it was the closest thing I possessed to a weapon. ‘I’d prefer not to,’ I said.
‘Just give it to me,’ he repeated.
‘You don’t want it, Trofi
m,’ I said. ‘It’s sodden. It’s not going to explode.’
‘They’re naval grenades,’ he said, the crease in his brow deepening. ‘They’re water resistant.’
‘Well,’ I said, digesting this fact. ‘Well, it’s probably radioactive. It’s more radioactive, down in that pool, than - Godzilla,’ I said, rather at a loss for a comparison. ‘You don’t want this grenade. It’ll give you cancer. I’m surprised to see you here, comrade.’
‘I’m the one who is surprised,’ said Trofim, possessively.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I concede my surprise to you. You’re welcome to it. I’m not surprised in the least to see you here. You planted this bomb - when, a few days ago? A week? It failed to detonate, and now you’ve come back to change it. Or change the detonator. Or something.’
‘I am not permitted to disclose confidential data pertaining to my mission,’ said Trofim, with the air of an amateur actor reciting his lines. He stepped towards me, the gun level at my chest the whole time. I held up the grenade. ‘One more step,’ I said, ‘and I shall pull the pin.’
‘Pull the pin out,’ he said.
‘Pull the pin, yes, means pull it out.’
‘I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘Not asking.’
‘I’m not sure you understand me, comrade,’ I said. ‘I will pull it out, if you come any closer.’
He took another step towards me. ‘Do it.’
I thought about this for a moment. ‘Perhaps you meant to say don’t do it?’
‘That’s not what I meant to say.’ He took another step, and was now standing no more than two yards in front of me. The pistol in his right hand was still aimed at my chest. His left hand was carrying his little briefcase.
‘You’re calling my bluff,’ I observed.
‘You’re not bluff,’ he said. ‘You’re the least hearty man I’ve met.’
‘I,’ I said, and stopped. ‘What?’
‘Ironist, that’s what Comrade Frenkel said. He knew you, all right.’
‘When I said bluff, I meant—’ But I was distracted. ‘Are you saying you want me to blow you up?’
‘What I want doesn’t come into it.’
‘You surely can’t want to be blown to pieces inside this power station?’
‘I am not permitted,’ he repeated, ‘to disclose confidential data pertaining to my mission.’
‘You do realise that if I pull the pin we will both die?’
He puffed his chest out. ‘I’m a warrior,’ he said. ‘If dying is the only way to achieve my mission, then so be it.’
I coughed. ‘Well, I’m not a warrior. I’m a science fiction writer.’ I disengaged my finger from the ring-pull. ‘I have no desire to immolate myself.’ Catching sight of the expression on his face, I added: ‘To blow myself up, you know.’
‘Give me the grenade,’ he said.
I thought about this. ‘I will if you promise not to use it.’
‘I must use it.’
I didn’t like the sound of this. ‘No promise, no grenade.’
A light went on in his eyes, as if the idea was only just then occurring to him. ‘I’ll shoot you and take it from your dead body.’
‘It’s like playing chess against a grandmaster,’ I said, crossly. ‘You have forced my move, Comrade Spassky.’
He stared at me. ‘Don’t you recognise me? It’s Trofim.’
‘Christ, have the stupid grenade.’ I held it out towards him.
Still aiming the gun straight at my chest, he reached up to take the grenade with his left hand. But he was still holding his suitcase in this hand. For a moment his face bore the traces of a brain strenuously wrestling with a logic problem that was almost but not quite beyond his capacities (if I put the mouse and the dog in the boat, and leave the cat on the nearside bank, then paddle across to leave the dog on the far side of the river . . . ). He lowered his left arm. He put the suitcase on the floor and then reached out with his left hand, now empty. I handed him the grenade, and he took it. Then with as smooth a gesture as I could manage I reached down and picked up the suitcase.
Both of Trofim’s hands were occupied: gun, grenade. ‘Put that down!’ he said.
‘The suitcase?’ I asked, as if requesting clarification. ‘You want me to give it up?’
He straightened his right arm, bringing the muzzle of the gun up to my face. ‘Give it up right now.’
Give it up? Or put it down?’
‘Do it now!’
‘Which, though? Up or down?’
‘Put it up,’ he said, becoming agitated. ‘Give it down. Give it - put it down.’
‘I’m a little confused, comrade, as to which direction you want me to move this suitcase.’
‘Put it down or I will shoot you and,’ he said, a flush starting to spread over his face, ‘shooting you will make you put it down. Then it will be down. You will be down’
‘All right, all right, I’ll put it down,’ I said.
With a single heave I threw the case. It fell with a surprisingly loud splash into the far side of the pool.
It took a moment for him to process what I had done. ‘It’s fallen,’ he said, perhaps because explaining it to himself solidified the concept in his head. ‘It’s fallen in the water.’ His voice was higher pitched than usual. Two steps took him to the edge of the pool and he peered down. ‘I hadn’t primed it! he said. His voice rose another semitone. ‘You threw it in the water! Look! It’s sinking all the way down.’
I took him at his word, and looked into the pool. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘At any rate, it’s not sinking up.’
‘You threw it in!’
‘You said it was waterpoof.’
‘But I hadn’t primed it!’ Trofim’s capacity for petulance, like his musculature, was larger than a normal person’s. ‘I hadn’t primed it! It’s ruined now! How can I prime it now? You’ve ruined everything!’
‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. If you take me back to Moscow you can put the blame on me.’
‘We’ve got to retrieve it! We have to fish it up!’
‘The best thing would be to go down like a pearl diver. Give me the gun and take your jacket off.’ He looked towards me, and there was something almost heartbreaking in the way hope flickered in his eyes, for the second or so before he thought better of himself. His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re trying to trick me.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It must be thirty metres deep, that pool. You probably wouldn’t be able to hold your breath under water for long enough.’
‘You go!’ He brought the gun closer to my face.
‘Well I certainly couldn’t hold my breath. You know how poorly my lungs function.’
A sly look, or what approximated one for Trofim, crept into his features. ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to trick me again, but I’m wise to you! Your lungs don’t work anyway! You could go under the water without ill effects.’
I looked steadily at him. ‘Could you explain your logic?’
‘My what?’
‘Your logic. The logic of that statement.’
‘The logic is,’ he said, ‘that, and there is logic. It is logically the situation that since your lungs don’t work in air, you won’t need them under the—’ He looked at me. ‘Under the, um.’
‘When you describe this as logic . . .’ I said.
His eyes defocused momentarily; but he snapped back. ‘This is my logic!’ he cried, brandishing the gun.
‘And it is a very persuasive argumentative tool,’ I agreed. ‘But it won’t make my lungs work under water.’
Something gave way in his will. His shoulders sagged. His voice, when he spoke, was almost imploring. ‘What am I suppose to do now?’
‘Why don’t the two of us get out of here?’ I said. ‘Go find a bar and discuss that important question over a drink?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave. The mission. You were in the army, after all. You know the importance of orders. Y
ou understand the importance of completing your mission.’
‘Having been in the army,’ I said, ‘I know how often commanding officers send honest soldiers to their deaths for no very good reason.’
But this didn’t hit home. ‘Comrade Frenkel is a great man,’ he told me, stiffly. ‘This mission is of the utmost importance for the continuing success and survival of, survival of, the Soviet Union.’
‘I’d say the Soviet Union needs good men like you alive,’ I said. ‘I’d say you can serve the Soviet Union better alive than you could as a corpse.’
‘I could at least shoot you,’ he said, in a meditative voice.
‘I’ll wager those aren’t your specific orders.’
‘Oh no. I don’t have any specific orders with respect of you. I don’t believe Comrade Frenkel expected you to be here.’
‘Well there you go.’
‘But he’s keen on his men showing initiative,’ Trofim added, aiming the handgun at my head. His brow creased once again, and the redness rose once again in his cheeks. ‘I wish you hadn’t thrown the suitcase into the pool!’
‘What can I say? I’m an impulsive man.’
He remembered then that he was holding the grenade. ‘I could pull the pin,’ he said, holding it up between us. ‘And throw this in the water. It would sink down, wouldn’t it. Plus, I’d have time to get out of this chamber, at any rate.’
‘Come come, comrade,’ I said. ‘This is a nuclear power station. You are trying to blow up a nuclear power station. Or have you forgotten? You think a seven-second grenade fuse gives you enough time to outrun a nuclear explosion?’
Two fat worry lines wormed into the flesh of his brow. ‘You’re right of course,’ he said, in a gloomy tone. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it then.’ He aimed the gun again at the centre of my brow.
‘Comrade,’ I said. ‘Think what you’re planning! To blow up this power station - it would be like dropping an atomic bomb on the heart of the Ukraine! Have you any idea how many would die? Do you really want their deaths on your conscience?’
