“I’m enjoying myself now.”
“And last night?” asked Tamara.
“Metaphorically, last night was like eating a thousand strudels.”
The number of carryout patrons increased, and the baker made more trips to keep the case full. The cheeks of the proprietress reddened despite her doughy complexion. A middle-aged man at the counter placed his order in Ukrainian instead of the usual Russian.
“Will your family be able to eat all this?” asked the proprietress.
“My family has doubled,” said the man. “My brother-in-law and his family came unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Woke me up saying they had to abandon their home.”
“What happened?”
“Some kind of accident at the nuclear plant where he works. He said many have abandoned the area because the air and water may be poisoned.”
“The air and water?” said the proprietress. “Where is this?”
“At Chernobyl, to the north. My brother-in-law lives in Pripyat.
He said there’s no problem here because of the distance. But up there he says people are panicking.”
Lazlo felt cold, as if he had been thrust back into the wine cellar with Mihaly last summer on the farm, Mihaly warning of danger at Chernobyl.
Lazlo left the table, stood behind the man at the counter.
The man continued with the proprietress. “My tiny apartment is like a metro station. My brother-in-law has two teenaged daughters. They have already taken over the bathroom.”
“Has there been anything on the news about this?” asked the proprietress.
“Nothing. We watched the early news and listened to the radio.
I was beginning to think my brother-in-law’s moving in with us was part of some clever scheme. But this morning a neighbor heard of another family on the next block whose relatives also arrived last night.”
The man picked up his packages. “I’ll probably see you again tomorrow. These relatives will eat me out of house and home.”
The man tried to leave, but Lazlo stepped sideways, blocking his path. He spoke in Ukrainian. “Excuse me, comrade. I couldn’t help overhearing you.”
“What do you want?” said the man, eyeing Lazlo suspiciously.
“My brother lives in Pripyat. Please tell me, did your brother-in-law give any details about the accident?”
“Nothing more. You overheard everything I know.”
“What about your brother-in-law? I’d like to speak with him.”
“I… I don’t know. It will surely be on the news. Watch the news.”
The man tried to step past, but Lazlo blocked him. “Please.”
“I must go,” said the man.
Lazlo stood his ground, sighed, took his wallet from his pocket, and showed the man his militia identification.
“I’ve done nothing wrong!” screeched the man.
“Please, my brother and his family live in Pripyat. My brother works at the Chernobyl plant. Perhaps your brother-in-law can tell me something. Perhaps he even knows my brother.”
Lazlo and Tamara and the man left the bakery, walked less than a block to an apartment building. Inside the apartment, two women eyed Tamara.
The brother-in-law and his wife were about the same age as Mihaly and Nina, but the daughters were older than Anna and Ilonka.
A little boy and a baby, apparently the resident children, were also in the room. It was so crowded the children sat on the floor.
The brother-in-law’s name was Yuri Tupolev. Despite Lazlo’s assurances, Tupolev worried he would get in trouble.
“I had days off coming. Maybe they need help, but nobody told me to stay. I wanted to turn back, but my family…”
“I understand,” said Lazlo. “Believe me, I’m also here because of family concern. You say you know Mihaly Horvath?”
“Not personally. I only know he’s an engineer. I’m on a maintenance crew. We travel from building to building. I know his name because he once directed work we were doing.”
“Were you at the plant when this accident occurred?”
“No. I was at home.”
“Tell me what you saw and heard. Start from the time of the accident.”
“It was some time after midnight Saturday… yesterday. One loses track of time after being awake so long. I was up late and couldn’t sleep. When I went outside, I saw smoke and what looked like fire in the sky. A while later, trucks sped past, one pulled up, and my neighbor jumped off the back end. He said one of the reactors exploded. He was there, at the station, and said radiation was released. We tried calling around to see what was up but couldn’t get through to anyone. By dawn there were all kinds of rumors. My neighbor had his dosimeter on. He got a small dose while escaping. Later in the morning, he comes over and says the exposure is going up. Right there in his apartment he’s getting exposed. So we brought our families to Kiev. He has a little shitbox of a car. We all packed into it, it kept running, and here we are.”
“When did you arrive?” asked Lazlo.
“About midnight.”
“When did you leave?”
“It was two or three in the afternoon by the time we got everyone together.”
“It took nine hours to drive the hundred kilometers from Pripyat to Kiev?”
“By the time we got going, the dosimeter was really going up.
We didn’t want to take the main road because it went back east past the plant before turning south. We drove southwest, away from the plant and the direction of the wind. The back roads were terrible, and we had to stop for directions several times. We finally followed the Uzh River all the way to Korosten and then took the highway back to Kiev.”
“Were there many others trying to escape?”
“No. We thought it odd, but there were only a few cars. It’s probably because there was no news.”
“Nothing on the local radio and television stations?”
“Nothing but music,” said Tupolev. “They even skipped the regular news broadcasts.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” asked Lazlo.
Tupolev looked down at his hands. “One more thing. Your brother might have been on duty during the accident. My neighbor said they were doing an experiment and several engineers were there. They were supposed to shut the reactor down. I guess something went wrong.”
“Could my brother have been on one of the trucks you saw?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Tupolev.
“Your neighbor, the one who came to Kiev with you… would he know?”
“I’ll write down his name and the address of his parents.”
Lazlo quickly supplied pen and paper. While Tupolev wrote the information, Lazlo looked at the faces of the others in the apartment. They looked like visitors to a wake who must now face the next of kin. During the conversation, Tamara came to his side and put her arm about him, holding him gently.
Yuri Tupolev’s neighbor said the engineers and technicians at the plant ran from the control room after an initial explosion. He knew nothing more. As for Mihaly, he might have escaped because several cars and trucks were seen speeding from the plant.
After questioning Yuri Tupolev’s neighbor, Lazlo stopped at a phone and tried to call Pripyat. Again, the call could not go through and the operator was unable to give a reason. Lazlo called militia headquarters and spoke to the sergeant on duty. The sergeant knew nothing about an accident at Chernobyl, and neither did anyone else at headquarters. However, Deputy Chief Investigator Lysenko, Chkalov’s right-hand man, was at the city’s boundary on the road leading north and had called for additional uniformed men for some kind of roadblock. Chkalov was not in, and the sergeant could give no further information.
Before driving to the so-called roadblock on the north end of the city, Lazlo dropped Tamara off at her apartment.
“Thank you for being so understanding, Tamara.”
“How could I not be understanding? He’s your brother.”
“I mean about going with me.”
“I only wanted to ride in your speedy Zhiguli and listen to the two-way radio.” Tamara placed her hand on his knee. “Promise me something, Laz. If you decide to drive to Pripyat, take the long way around.”