Chernobyl

The man's shoes were radioactive.

Sweden does not take the discovery of unexplained radioactivity lightly. There is a powerful antinuclear movement among the Swedish people. Everything that happens at an atomic power plant is scrutinized at every step with great care. So this information was reported on the nationwide alert network at once. It caused immediate concern, multiplied when other stations reported that their air, too, was unexpectedly as radioactive as after a nearby bomb test. Or even after a real bomb.

The first thought (after they decided that the Swedish plants themselves were innocent) was a terrifying one. Most of Scandinavia's air comes from the west and south. (It is for that reason that the smoke from England's factories kills Swedish lakes; the British got rid of their pea-soup fogs with huge stacks that export the pollution to Scandinavia.) So their first thought was that the source of the radiation was in the United Kingdom. Was it possible that England had suffered a nuclear attack? But the English radio stations were still prattling away. Alternatively, could the English, the Germans, or the Dutch have — totally unexpectedly — set off a nuclear bomb test? Then meteorologists traced the recent movements of the air masses over Sweden, and informed the nuclear authorities that the patterns were a bit unusual. It was not from the west that the radioactive cloud came; untypically, the most recent incoming air had originated to the south and east.

It had come from the Soviet Union.

The Swedes are as conscious of their Soviet neighbor as the Finns, but less careful about Soviet sensibilities. They saw no reason to keep the matter secret. The news services were informed. The report made instant headlines. In an hour most of the world knew that something big and nuclear had happened in the USSR.. almost all of the world, in fact, except for the USSR itself.

Chapter 18

Monday, April 28

The Embassy of the United States of America in Moscow is on the ring boulevard, in the section of the boulevard named after the composer Tchaikovsky. The Embassy isn't a single building. It is a collection of several structures, linked together in a ramshackle red-brick compound. At every entrance to the compound a couple of uniformed KGB guards loiter, smoking cigarettes and chatting to each other, until someone approaches: then they interpose themselves in front of the door and request U.S. passports or hotel cards. When the documents are found to be in order, the KGB guards then say, or the more polite ones say, 'puzhalsta,' which means 'please,' and perhaps they even touch the visors of their caps as they step out of the way. (There have been times when they have been less polite and a very great deal more energetic, especially when, as has now and then happened, some desperate Soviet citizen has tried to hurl himself past them to sanctuary.)

Really, the American Embassy in Moscow is a slum. It should have been abandoned at least a dozen years ago, but the chilly state of U.S.-Soviet relations has caused endless bickering and delays over every detail, and so plans for the splendid, modern new embassy building have remained incomplete. Its best feature is its cafeteria. There the American staff can get the only authentic hamburgers, French fries, and milk shakes to be found anywhere in Moscow. Its worst feature may well be that of its scores of drivers, telephone operators, translators, kitchen workers, and cleaners, almost all are locally employed Soviet nationals and nearly every one of those is known to have a second career — or, really, a first one — as an officer in the KGB.

Warner Borden, the assistant Science Attache at the Embassy, was yelling at Emmaline Branford, the Press and Cultural Affairs officer, about the fact that the astonishing news was coming in over the open teletypes. 'Keep the nationals out,' he said angrily, meaning the translator and the cleaning man.

Emmaline Branford looked at him in astonishment. 'But all we've got here is the open news services, Warner. There isn't anything secret about it.'

Lowering his voice, Borden hissed, 'Sometimes we talk in here, don't we? Keep 'em out till I come back!'

'Are you going to check the code room?' Emmaline asked, and Borden gave her a mock frown.

'See what I mean?' he asked, and then, 'I'm gone.' Emmaline sighed as he dashed off toward the secure teletypes in another part of the Embassy, with their Marine guard always at the door. At least, she reflected, he hadn't patted her bottom this time.

Across the narrow hall her translator, Rima, was bent over her morning Pravda, meticulously putting a story about fisheries production goals in the Baltic Sea into her careful English. Rima had a last name — it was Solovjova — but for most of the American Embassy staff most of the Russians had only one name, like plantation hands in old Dixie. For Emmaline, a black woman, some of whose ancestors had been named Cuffee, Napoleon, or Jezebel, the practice was unpleasing. But the Russians themselves seemed to prefer it that way. Perhaps that was because they didn't enjoy American attempts to pronounce names like 'Solovjova.' Emmaline stopped beside her and said, 'Look, Rima, we'd better do what he says.'

Rima said, looking down at her desk, 'It is no problem, Emmaline.'

If the Russian woman had any interest in this nuclear radiation flap that was burning up the teletypes, she was keeping it to herself. Emmaline tarried for a moment, thinking. She wanted to ask Rima Solovjova if there were anything at all in Pravda about unexplained radioactive emissions, but she already knew there was not. Emmaline herself had already scanned the paper. Although her command of Russian was still a long way from easy, she would not have missed a story like that— not even in, or actually especially not in, the short paragraphs on an inside page where any kind of bad news was usually to be found.

Of course, Rima could not have missed hearing something about what was going on. There had been plenty of talk in the teletype room, just as Borden had said. The simplest thing would be to come out and ask her what she'd heard and what she thought, but nothing was that simple in the relations with Soviet nationals. The relations between Emmaline and her translator were friendly enough. Certainly they did friendly things. Emmaline saw no harm in an occasional gift to Rima of a box of American tampons or a shopping bag advertising Macy's or Marshall Field's. And Rima was helpful beyond the call of duty in locating off-the-books painters, plumbers, and carpenters, and supplying Emmaline with homemakable recipes to replace the things that even the hard-currency stores always seemed to be out of — roach spray, for instance. Still, Emmaline had not been stationed in Moscow long enough for them to become anything like close enough to bring up politically embarrassing subjects. While she was debating whether or not to try it anyway, Rima Solovjova looked up, her face drawn.

'Is it possible that I could be excused for an hour?' she asked. 'I do not feel well.'

'Oh? Is there anything I can do?'

'Simply that I could lie down for a bit,' the translator said apologetically. 'One hour at the most, then I will be all right.'

'Of course,' said Emmaline, and watched the woman put a paperweight on her translation, pick up her imitation-leather pocketbook, and depart. Rima didn't look back. Emmaline listened to her modish heels clatter down the narrow staircase until the bang of the outside door informed her that Rima hadn't gone to the little ladies' room on the ground floor, but outside the building.

It had been Emmaline's assumption that the Russian woman was having the onset of her period. Now she revised it. More likely she was going somewhere outside to make a telephone call, perhaps to ask for instructions on what to do in the light of the unexpected news. Emmaline sighed, and remembered the cleaning man. Practicing her Russian, she said, 'Andrei, can you finish this later on, please? After lunch would be good.' And went back to the teletype room to see what else was coming in.

What else was coming in was scores on yesterday's National League baseball games, the Cubs at Montreal, the Mets at St. Louis. Emmaline waited a moment to see what the Atlanta Braves had done, but it seemed they'd been rained out.

She went back to her own desk and opened the folder on the American jazz pianist who was being brought in to tour Moscow, Leningrad, and Volgograd, and the novelist who had a special invitation from the Union of Soviet Writers to follow. Her heart wasn't in it. Clouds of radioactive material coming from the USSR was big news.

Emmaline's first thought, of course, had been the same as everybody else's, namely that the Russians were sneaking in a nuclear test in spite of their self-imposed moratorium. But that made so little sense! The United States was going on with testing whenever it chose. There was nothing to prevent the Soviets from doing the same