vehicles whose drivers had been given passes headed north.
The crowd of people who had left cars and buses grew to an alarming size. Eventually, because there were no fences or other boundaries on the sides of the road, the crowds from both sides merged, making it impossible for the militia to stop those on foot from crossing in either direction. Lazlo tried in vain to help his men maintain order. During this confusion, he was unaware of his brother’s lover crossing into Kiev followed by a KGB agent a few meters behind her beyond the lights of the roadblock.
Other KGB agents at the scene were also unaware of the crossing.
Two of them, recruited to Kiev from their Romanian border-guard posts, sat in the dark in a black Chaika with yellow fog lights a half kilometer from the roadblock watching Chernobyl refugees pass by on their way into Kiev. Both agents wore their green border-guard uniforms.
One of the agents lit a cigarette. “I don’t understand about Komarov.”
“What about him?” asked the other.
“There’s an accident at Chernobyl, and instead of going to the scene, he stays in Kiev and searches for suspects.”
“Bigger fish have already volunteered for the medals they’ll get at Chernobyl. Komarov is from the old KGB. He’s already got interrogators working on the poor souls they flew to Moscow, and he’s got us watching his suspects here.”
“So you think Detective Horvath is a suspect?”
“He must be. Otherwise why would we be assigned to watch him?”
Pavel followed Juli Popovics through the mass of angry people.
Voices were raised in protest and dismay at what had happened at Chernobyl. As in any crowd where one achieves momentary anonymity, many spoke out against the authorities and against their insistence the population be left in the dark. At one point, a shoving match broke out, and Pavel was actually pushed into Juli Popovics, knocking her down. He helped her up, excused himself, dropped back into the crowd, and continued following her.
Farther away from the roadblock, Pavel kept his distance. Because she was carrying an overnight bag, it was easy to follow her.
The only time he had difficulty was when she descended the stairs to the Kiev metro. He had to run in order to catch the train.
She exited the metro in central Kiev at Khreshchatik Station.
From there he followed her to the Hotel Dnieper. It was one in the morning. Pavel watched from a corner in the lobby. Juli Popovics apparently tried to register for a room, but was refused. The lobby was crowded with people unable to get a room. So, along with dozens of others, Juli Popovics and Pavel of the PK waited for someone to vacate a comfortable chair or sofa so they could settle in for the night.
Juli Popovics was first to find a chair. Pavel lingered near an open stairway to the second floor. He went halfway up to the landing and sat on a stair at a spot where he could keep an eye on Juli Popovics through an opening in the ornate railing. Glancing behind him, he saw a statue of Vladimir Ilich Lenin in the corner of the landing. Lenin held his hand up as if pointing the way up the next flight of stairs. Pavel wondered if following Juli Popovics here had been the right thing to do. Was there any chance he and Nikolai would even meet Major Komarov? Pavel whispered to himself,
“What now, Uncle? Climb the stairs to promotion?” Pavel chuckled, then turned back to watch Juli Popovics, who had closed her eyes.
From conversations overheard during the night, it was obvious even here, in Kiev, with all its newspapers and radio and television stations, no one knew exactly what had happened at Chernobyl.
With a news blackout of such magnitude, it was not difficult to sur-mise a disaster had occurred. For, as any Soviet citizen knows, the less the news, the greater the story.
15
On Monday, April 28, over forty-eight hours after the explosion of Chernobyl’s unit four, news of the disaster finally made it to the outside world. Workers at a Swedish nuclear plant began setting off radiation alarms as they entered the facility. This resulted in quan-titative measurements of the atmosphere. Radiation levels fifteen times the normal level were present in the air being blown from the Soviet Union.
Lacking seismic data to indicate a nuclear test, Western scientists concluded an accidental release of radiation, perhaps from a nuclear reactor, had occurred somewhere in the western Soviet Union. When news services got hold of the radioactive-cloud story, ripples of news flowed back across the frontier by way of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.
After obtaining the Zhiguli as his personal militia vehicle three years earlier, Lazlo installed inside the glove box a used Blaupunkt radio, which received shortwave frequencies along with local frequencies.
The radio provided welcome distraction during many nights on stakeout. Without his secret radio, he would have been forced to listen only to militia two-way broadcasts instead of the strings of Lakatos and other Hungarian Gypsy music broadcast each evening from Radio Budapest.
On his way to the Ministry of Energy Monday morning, Lazlo heard about the radiation cloud over Sweden on Radio Free Europe.
The station was easy enough to find, but it was difficult to offset the frequency enough to eliminate the whirring buzz saw of the Soviet jammer. After hearing the report of radioactivity originating in the western Soviet Union, Lazlo switched to Radio Moscow’s local frequency. No mention of the radioactive cloud or of the disaster at the Chernobyl plant, no mention of the hordes of people who had come from the north throughout the night.
While the man and woman commentators on Radio Moscow droned on about the agricultural and economic outlook, Lazlo wondered if he’d been assigned overnight at the roadblock to keep him out of the way. Hundreds had entered Kiev, giving names of relatives who would be expecting them. Thousands had been sent to the Selskaya collective farm, which was equipped to handle two hundred.
Lazlo arrived at the Ministry of Energy at seven thirty. He’d spent most of Sunday afternoon and the entire night at the roadblock. He was hoarse from shouting at his men and at Chernobyl refugees. A cleaning woman in the building lobby waited until Lazlo cleared his throat before telling him no one arrived until nine.
Lazlo drove to his apartment. He tried calling Pripyat again without luck. He washed his face, changed clothes, and made himself two boiled eggs and coffee. Tamara’s black nightgown still lay across his bed from the night before. He sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the gown. The gown retained Tamara’s fragrance, and Lazlo closed his eyes, caressing the gown to his face as if it were the silk edge of a child’s blanket.
Twenty-four hours earlier he had been in bed with Tamara, but now their night together and breakfast at the bakery seemed weeks ago. As he sat on the bed fondling Tamara’s nightgown, thoughts of Tamara were swept aside by intervening events: the interviews with two Chernobyl workers unable to give specifics about Mihaly, the inept deputy minister at the Ministry of Energy who said everything was under control, and, finally, the long night trying to communicate with terrified refugees. Twenty-four hours since he learned an accident had occurred at Chernobyl and still he knew nothing of Mihaly and Nina and the girls. Was it planned? Chkalov and Lysenko teaming up to keep him in the dark? Sending him to one particular roadblock so he would be unaware of the numerous firemen and militia sent north? Perhaps they’d been worried the Gypsy might have pulled out his old Makarov 9mm and…
Suddenly something tore at his face. He opened his eyes with a start, realizing he had begun to doze off. His bristly beard was snagged in Tamara’s gown. He placed the gown gently on the bed, got a cup of strong coffee from the stove, and went into the bathroom to shave.
The office of the minister of electric power looked like any other Party official office with the union flag and the requisite portrait of Lenin commanding the center of attention. There was also a portrait of Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Soviet prime minister, but none of Gorbachev, and Lazlo wondered about this.
Viktor Asimov’s head was thinner on top than on the bottom because of massive cheeks and jowls. He had an aloof look, reminding Lazlo of Brezhnev. If the smile was as false as it looked, perhaps he would soon wish Asimov was also dead and buried in the Kremlin.
