by Tom Clancy
They approached Pripyat from the west, so Fisher’s first glimpse of the city’s skyline was backlit by the first hints of sunlight on the horizon. Great rectangular blocks of buildings, tall and narrow, short and squat, rose from the terrain. In twilight they were dark and dimensionless, as though painted on the skyline by a movie set designer.
As they entered the city limits and the horizon brightened, details began to stand out.
Pripyat was in many ways a typical Soviet-era city. The structures, from apartment high-rises to four-story schools and office buildings, were built in gray cinder block. Everything had an almost Lego-like atmosphere, as though geometric blocks were simply dropped into the empty spaces between the streets and then given designations: Apartment Block 17; People’s Bank Number 84; General Office Complex 21. The only bits of color Fisher saw were faded murals painted on the sides of buildings, traditional Revolution-era scenes of Lenin or of iron-jawed, blond-haired men standing knee deep in golden fields of wheat, one hand clutching a sickle, the other shielding eyes that stared at some distant horizon.
What struck Fisher the most was the utter stillness of the place. If the outlying farms seemed trapped in the 1800s, Pripyat seemed frozen on that fateful day in April of 1986. Cars sat parked in the middle of intersections, their doors still open as though the occupants had simply gotten out and run away. Suitcases and footlockers and wheelbarrows piled high with clothes, pots and pans, and framed pictures lay strewn on the sidewalks.
Just like in Slipstone, Fisher reminded himself.
They passed an elementary school. The playground, once a clearing surrounded by trees, had been reclaimed by weeds and bushes. A jungle gym rose from the undergrowth, its steel frame choked with vines; a raised play-house in the shape of an elephant with a slide for a trunk was a nothing more than a rusted hulk. The school’s doors stood yawning — shoved open, Fisher imagined, by fleeing children and teachers. As the school disappeared in the car’s side window, Fisher glimpsed a child’s doll sitting perfectly upright on the rim of a sandbox.
This, he decided, is what nuclear Armageddon would look like.
“Is it all like this?” he asked.
“Yes. And it will be for the next three hundred years. It’ll take that long for the contamination levels to fade. I come here sometimes, just to remind myself it’s real. But never at night. I never come at night.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Next they passed a six-story apartment building, another gray cube lined with balconies that ran the length of the structure. With only a few exceptions, each balcony door on the sixth floor stood open. It took Fisher a moment to understand why. These apartments faced southeast — toward the power plant. The upper floor would have offered an unobstructed view of the reactor’s explosion and subsequent fire. He imagined women in housecoats and children in pajamas standing at the railing watching the spectacle, not yet realizing what had happened. Not knowing an invisible cloud of cesium was already falling on them. Below, many of the balconies a faded number had been painted in red or orange.
“What are those?” Fisher asked.
“It wasn’t until the next morning, after many of the children had left for school, that the evacuation order was given. People were told to mark their balconies with the number of their evacuation bus so if loved ones returned home, they would know.”
“My God,” Fisher murmured.
“Have you seen enough?”
Fisher nodded, still staring out the window.
32
They drove south for ten minutes before Fisher saw the first sign they were approaching Chernobyl itself. In the distance an obelisk rose from the marshlands. It was the plant’s smokestack, Elena explained. As they drew closer, Fisher could see the stack was painted in faded red and white horizontal bands. Beside it stood a crane that he guessed was being used for nearly constant rebuilding of the Sarcophagus, which had over the years begun to crack and crumble.
Twelve kilometers from the plant, Elena veered off the paved road and onto a gravel track that wound through a copse of stunted pine trees. After a few hundred yards, she turned into a driveway. She pulled to a stop before a ranch-style bungalow painted a washed-out yellow. Like the farmhouses Fisher had seen in the outlying villages, the bungalow was encased in a labyrinth of vines that snaked up the walls, along the eaves, and around the front porch’s post, like snakes frozen in mid-slither.
“PRIA’s headquarters is just inside the inner zone,” Elena said, getting out. “Moscow built it about a year after the disaster. Of course, we all spend as little time there as possible.”
“Who does this place belong to?”
“Me, now. Back then, a local party boss from Kiev. When the plant was first build, Moscow ordered bigwigs to take dachas here, to prove the reactor was safe. Officially, all the PRIA scientists are supposed to live in a block of renovated apartments south of Pripyat.”
“I saw them.” Fisher grabbed his rucksack from the backseat. “Not very cozy.”
“Yes, lovely, aren’t they? This place is better. The outside isn’t much, but the roof doesn’t leak and the insulation is good. Plus, it wasn’t in the plume.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The plume of radioactive dust. Most of it was blown west and then north, toward Belorus. We’re on the east side of the plant. Come on in.” She started walking. She realized Fisher wasn’t following, and turned back and smiled. “Relax. You see that?” She pointed to what looked like a weather vane jutting from the roof. “It’s a dosimeter; I check it twice a day. Trust me, this is one of the cleanest places in Chernobyl.”
“Guess it pays to be a biologist,” Fisher said, and started walking toward the porch.
“I’m very careful. I would like to have children some day.”
* * *
She directed Fisher to the spare bedroom, where he dropped his rucksack, and then he joined her in the kitchen. She was crouched before the open door of a woodstove, shoving sticks into a growing flame. She shut the door and stood up. “Sit. Tea will be ready in a few minutes.”
She got a loaf of black bread and a tin of blackberry jam from the cupboard and laid them on the table. She chose an apple from the windowsill, washed it, then sliced it into a bowl.
“The water comes from a new artesian well,” she said before he had a chance to ask. “I test that every day, too.”
Fisher said, “Sorry. This takes some getting used to.”
“Don’t apologize. I was the same way when I first came here. I didn’t want to touch anything. I even found myself holding my breath without realizing it. It’s a natural reaction.”
They ate breakfast and then Fisher helped her clean up. “I’ve got to go into work for a few hours,” she said, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m running an experiment on a three-headed cattail.”
Fisher squinted at her, wondering if she were pulling his leg.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Almost all the cattails around the reactor’s cooling pond are mutated. Believe me, those are some of the tamer changes we’ve seen. You should see some of the carp they pull out of the pond.” She sucked her lips and crossed her eyes. “Ugly, like that.”
Fisher laughed.
“I’ll be home around noon. On the way I’ve got to check on something in the village — a rumor I heard once. It might interest you.”
“What’s that?”
“Let me check first. Go to sleep. If anyone knocks, don’t answer.”
* * *
Fisher tried to sleep, but his body wouldn’t fully cooperate, so he dozed on and off for a few hours, then got up and wandered around the house. Elena had a good book collection she kept inside an old china cabinet in the living room. The titles ranged from Tolstoy and Balzac to Stephen Hawking and Danielle Steel. He also found a milk crate full of old records, mostly from the Big Band era. He put a Mancini tribute on the turntable and sat down with an English language version of War and Peace and read unti
l Elena came home.
She was carrying a sack of groceries.
“Borshch?” Fisher asked.
“Of course. I promised you.”
After the groceries were put away, they sat down and shared a lunch of cold cuts, cheese, and wine. “So,” Fisher said, “this rumor?”
“Yes, I checked. I wasn’t sure I’d remembered it right, but the rumor is about four months ago a pair of soldiers went missing in the middle of the night. They were never found. Everyone, including the local commander, assumed they’d deserted. The were last seen heading toward the bunkers you were asking about. I’ve got the name of the man who saw them last: Alexi. He’s ninety-five years old, but still sharp. An old warhorse.”
“He’ll talk to us?”
Elena smiled. “Alexi loves to talk. He was a tank commander during the Great Patriotic War. He claims to have killed eighteen Panzers at Kursk before he got captured. He spent the rest of the war in a labor camp in Poland. We’ll go tonight, after borshch. I see you found my book collection.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Elena waved her hand. “No, no, I meant to show it to you. Here, I’ll clean up. You go back and read. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”
“I thought War and Peace was required reading for all Russians.”
“Very funny. I’ve tried to read it four times. It bores me to tears. Besides, I’m Ukrainian.”
33
Shortly after nightfall, with his belly full of borshch so good he felt cheated for having lived so long without it, Fisher and Elena left her bungalow.
Throughout the afternoon, a low-pressure front had moved in, bringing with it dark clouds and icy drizzle. The Kadett’s headlights cut twin swaths through the dark, illuminating ruts and potholes rimmed with ice. The heater, which worked only on the highest setting, made a sound that Elena described as a “carrot being shoved into a fan blade.”
The change in weather was a mixed blessing for Fisher. The clouds and lack of starlight would provide better cover, but the sleet and dropping temperatures would leave the fields and marshes coated in ice, which would crackle with every footfall.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the story of the missing soldiers. Desertion was common in the Ukrainian Army — especially, he imagined, among troops pulling Chernobyl duty. Many of the conscripts were young and poorly educated, and all they knew about Chernobyl was that it had happened long before their births or when they were too young to remember, and that it was a place of ghosts and poison and sickness. Still, the rumor was also a place to start.
They drove for twenty minutes, following the road south along the Pripyat River. Three miles from the power plant, she turned off the main road and crossed a rickety bridge to the east side of the river. Set back in a stand of birch trees was a cabin. In the headlights Fisher could see the structure’s walls were made of rough birch planks sealed with what looked like a mixture of mud and straw. The roof was piled high with sod.
The Kadett coasted to a stop and Elena doused the headlights.
“He lives here year-round?” Fisher asked.
She nodded. “For the last eighteen years. It’s actually very warm in the winter; warmer than my place, even. I visit him once a week, bring him some borshch.”
“Lucky man.”
“What, you thought you were the only man I made borshch for? Men.”
Fisher started to open the door, but Elena stopped him. “Let Alexi come out and see that it’s me first. He’s ornery with strangers and handy with a shotgun.”
“And a tank,” Fisher said.
“And that.”
The cabin’s door opened and a lantern appeared on the porch. In its glow Fisher could see a gaunt face and bushy salt-and-pepper beard. Elena rolled down her window and called something in Ukrainian. Alexi grumbled something back and waved for them to come in.
“He promised not to shoot you,” Elena said. “I told him you brought borshch.”
* * *
Fisher hadn’t brought borsch, but Elena had, and they sat in silence while Alexi ate all of it, then licked the bowl clean. The interior of the cabin wasn’t what Fisher expected. Except for the mud-filled gaps between the planks, the walls were painted a butter yellow. Off the kitchen there were two bedrooms and a living room with a large open-hearth fireplace.
As were most WWII Soviet tankers, Alexi was short and sinewy — the kind of muscle that comes from hard labor. His hands were so calloused they looked like leather.
Alexi set the bowl aside and grabbed a bottle of vodka from the shelf and poured three shots. They all drank. Alexi and Elena talked for a few minutes before she turned to Fisher.
“He’ll talk to you. I told him you weren’t with the government — he doesn’t like the government — and that you’re writing a book about Chernobyl since the accident.”
“Have him tell us the story of that night — the night the soldiers disappeared.”
Elena translated Fisher’s words, then listened as Alexi began talking. She translated.
“He says it was past midnight and he was fishing in the cooling pond beside the plant. He saw an Army truck appear on the road on the other side of the pond and then circle around to the ‘mounds’—the bunker area — but before it got there, the headlights went out and the engine went quiet. A few minutes later another truck appeared, this one from the opposite direction, and parked facing the Army truck.
“The men who got out of the second truck weren’t in uniform, so he got curious. He snuck through the reeds until he could see better. There were the two soldiers from the Army truck and four civilian men from the second truck. They talked for a few minutes; then the four civilians disappeared behind the truck and then reappeared wearing ‘cosmonaut gear.’”
“A biohazard suit,” Fisher said.
“Yes, I think so.”
Alexi kept talking.
“Two of the men were each carrying a big shiny footlocker. They all walked behind one of the mounds. The soldiers stayed behind, leaning against their truck, smoking.
“About twenty minutes passed, and then the four men reappeared from behind the mound carrying the boxes, two of them to each box. They loaded the boxes into the back of the second truck, then stripped off their suits and joined the soldiers at their truck.
“They talked for a few minutes, and then one of the civilians opened the door to the truck, took out a suitcase, and walked back. He handed the briefcase to one of the soldiers. And that’s when… That’s when it happened.”
“What?” Fisher asked.
She held up her hand to silence him, then leaned closer to Alexi and put her hand on his forearm. They spoke for a while, then she leaned back and frowned. She turned to Fisher.
“He says after the civilian handed over the briefcase, his three partners drew pistols and started shooting. The first soldier went down, but the second was faster. As he fell, he got off two rounds from his rifle, killing one of the civilians. Then the leader — the one with the briefcase — walked over and shot each soldier a final time time in the head, then reloaded and emptied his pistol into the dead civilian’s face. The three of them dragged the bodies behind the mounds, then climbed into the truck and drove away.
“He says he buried the two soldiers and the civilian in the woods beyond the bunkers.”
“Did you know about this?” Fisher asked.
“All I knew was the rumor: that Alexi had seen the men the night they disappeared.”
“Did he tell anyone about this?”
Elena asked him, then said, “He thinks he did, but he’s not sure. He may be confused.”
“Tell me.”
“He says he told the area commander.”
34
It took only fifteen minutes to reach the site Alexi had described. Before they got there, Fisher told her to pull over. He reached up and switched off the dome light, then opened the door. “I’ll meet you on the main road in two hours,” he said.
>
“Let me go with you. I can help you.”
“You can help me by going home and waiting. I just need to check a few things; I’ll move faster alone. Pop the trunk.”
She did so. Fisher walked back and retrieved the bag of gear Elena had put together for him — a pair of hooded biohazard coveralls, a respirator, goggles, boots, and a double set of gloves.
“You remember how to put it all on?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And the duct tape? On the wrists and ankles and neck? Make sure you get a good seal.”
“I will.”
Fisher closed the door and Elena drove away. He waited until the Kadett’s taillights disappeared around the bend, then shouldered his duffel and walked into the woods.
* * *
Fisher didn’t think Alexi was confused. He believed every word of the old tanker’s story. Someone had bought their way into the Exclusion Zone and then bought access to one the bunkers, and you don’t buy that kind of access from a pair of privates in the Ukrainian Army, but from staff officers — like an area commander. Whether the man knew his soldiers were going to be murdered, Fisher didn’t know, but according to Elena the commander in question, a colonel, had retired two months earlier and moved to the resort city of Yalta, on the Black Sea.
Alexi claimed that upon hearing the story of the shooting, the colonel thanked him, promised there would be a full investigation, and then swore him to secrecy. Alexi didn’t quite believe him, so he told the colonel the soldiers and the other man had been taken away in the civilians’ truck.
“The civilian he didn’t care much about,” Elena had translated, “but he didn’t think the colonel would do right by the dead soldiers. They were comrades; they deserved a soldier’s burial.”
Fisher could only speculate as to why the colonel left Alexi alive, but he suspected Alexi’s renown in Chernobyl had something to do with it. If two young privates go missing, it’s desertion. If Alexi goes missing, it’s a mystery that locals want solved.
