in his luggage.
Nina Horvath wore a white cotton dress like one of the nurses he’d seen walking between the hospital complex and the surrounding apartments. Her face was thin, and she wore no makeup. Komarov assumed she would appear vulnerable, but there was something in her eyes as she stared at him. Despite the situation, she seemed confident, as if she were in control, as if she had an agenda. Her hair was brown and disheveled.
“What does the KGB want from me?” said Nina Horvath, standing to face him.
“Information to set the record straight. I need details of events surrounding the disaster. I realize your husband is dead, Mrs.
Horvath. However, duty does not permit a delay of my report. Information has a way of slipping through one’s fingers unless it is gathered promptly.”
“My husband… what’s left of my husband…” She paused for a moment. “He’s being buried this afternoon in a lead-lined coffin.”
“I know,” said Komarov.
He could see hatred and mistrust in her eyes. She was the victim, and he was in control. He returned her stare, waiting a moment to see if she might make a counterrevolutionary statement he could use later. Finally, he began his questioning.
“You have two children. What are their names?”
“Ilonka and Anna.”
“Are they here with you?”
“They’re with the woman in the next apartment.”
“How did you get here from Pripyat?”
“By plane.”
“Why didn’t you leave with the others?”
“What others?”
“Those evacuated by bus.”
“I went with my neighbor to the plant after we heard about the explosion. We were put on a bus, taken to the local hospital, then to the airport. It all happened very quickly.”
The questioning was also going too quickly. In order to find out more about Mrs. Horvath and her husband, and especially to find out if there was anything he could develop concerning the dead husband’s activities, Komarov decided to proceed more slowly.
“Did your daughters receive their pills?”
“What?”
“Iodine pills. It is especially important for children.”
“Yes, they gave us iodine in Pripyat and again here.”
“You also had iodine?”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to be sure before we continued. I’ll try to keep my questions to a minimum.”
Komarov asked Nina Horvath about her marriage to Mihaly Horvath, about their move to Pripyat, and the exact ages of her two girls. When Nina Horvath rushed ahead to cut off the interview, Komarov traced backward with detailed questions about family and everyday life. The purpose was to look for keys to the way he would ask his ultimate question. The purpose was to uncover a negative in her relationship with her husband and connect it with suspicions about her husband’s possible role in sabotage.
Unfortunately, Komarov could not get Nina Horvath to say anything negative about her husband. He even dwelled upon the recent past, the time during which he knew Mihaly Horvath had been seeing Juli Popovics. But still there was nothing, not even a visual reaction as Nina Horvath stared at him with obvious hatred.
Komarov backtracked in time, getting Nina Horvath to talk of pleasant topics. The girls and how well they were doing in school.
The home and the neighborhood. Friends. A future filled with possibilities. When Nina Horvath’s eyes began to water, Komarov dropped his bomb.
“Mrs. Horvath, are you aware of your husband’s role in sabotage at the Chernobyl plant?”
Nina Horvath’s expression remained unchanged, as it had during the entire interview. “I know of no such thing.”
Komarov asked the question from several angles with the same result. When he left Nina Horvath, he’d made only one entry of importance in his notebook. “Mrs. Horvath did not seem surprised I had asked such a question about her husband.”
But even as he walked out of the apartment house and crossed the street, joining the nurses and doctors and ambulance drivers scurrying outside Hospital Number Six, Komarov knew Nina Horvath had expected the question as soon as she saw his KGB identification. Therefore, not acting surprised meant nothing, unless he made something of it in his report. And, of course, he would.
The only other time Komarov visited KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in central Moscow was years earlier, after his promotion to captaincy following the Sherbitsky affair. At the time, the Fifth Directorate considered him for an assignment tracking down dissidents. Unfortunately, Vladimir Kryuchkov gave him a short interview, dismissing him quickly. Later he discovered Sherbitsky and Kryuchkov had trained together as KGB recruits.
The building was yellow brick, several stories tall, and shaped like a coffin. As Komarov walked across the square to the entrance, he recalled stories about the building being the tallest in Moscow even though it definitely was not. The joke went: Even from its basement-the location of the prison cells-one can easily see Siberia.
Inside the main entrance, Komarov’s heels clicked on familiar parquet floors. From his visit years earlier, he vividly recalled the sound and smell of the place. The main hall echoed, cavern-like, and smelled like boot polish and cigarette smoke even though, as he looked about, he saw no uniforms or boots or lit cigarettes. KGB officers visiting the Lubyanka for business dressed as businessmen.
Komarov was aware of his knife tucked inside his jacket with the letter he would deliver. While he waited for the elevator he saw a single half-smoked cigarette smoldering in an ornate Neo-Renais-sance ashtray mounted to the wall. The smoke from the ashtray smelled like burning hair. During the elevator ride, Komarov transferred the letter from his inside pocket to an outside pocket.
Deputy Chairman Dumenko’s office on the third floor was the largest Komarov had ever seen. Although the ceiling was low, recessed lighting and an expanse of pale green walls and maroon carpeting gave the office and its adjoining conference room a spacious feeling. Wood and leather furniture was dwarfed by the space.
Ironically, a small portrait of Vladimir Kryuchkov shared the wall behind the desk with one of KGB Chairman Chebrikov and, of course, a larger portrait of Lenin. Komarov felt he should speak softly lest his voice escape into the hall. But echoes from the hall subsided when the assistant who brought him to the office closed the door. As a courtesy to his superior, Komarov did not smoke.
Dumenko wore half glasses as he opened and read the letter from Kiev’s minister of electric power. Dumenko’s bald head reflected the overhead light while he finished the letter, took off his half glasses, placed them on his desk, and stared at Komarov.
“Have you read this letter, Major?”
“It was addressed to you,” said Komarov.
“But you know the nature of it.”
“I know it has to do with inquiries made by Detective Lazlo Horvath to Minister Asimov.”
“It’s a request for an investigation of Detective Horvath regarding a possible connection to the Chernobyl incident. Have you been pursuing the KGB’s investigation as we discussed?”
“I am, sir. This morning I spoke with Mihaly Horvath’s widow.
Although she denies corrupt activities on the part of her husband, she may simply want to bury all of this when she buries her husband today. I tried to have her husband questioned after the Chernobyl event, but it was too late.”
“I understand he died quickly,” said Dumenko. “Two deaths. I spoke with the television and radio chairman today. He hopes there will be no more bodies. I spoke with the health minister. He says there will definitely be more bodies. The agriculture minister is concerned about hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of our richest farmland. Did you know, Major, they have started herding livestock away from the area?”
“I didn’t know, sir.”
