Chernobyl Murders (49 page)

Bela knocked, stuck his head inside, seemed to take a deep breath, then closed the door and scowled. Bela began coughing continu-ously, bending over as if he would vomit. He went to the kitchen sink and spit. He poured a glass of wine and took a sip, but this made him cough even more. Before Komarov could stop him or even pick up his pistol, Bela was out the back door.

“Stop!” Komarov ran to the open door. “Stop him!”

This was it. Horvath was out there! Bela was creating a diversion! Komarov went back to the table where it was darkest and watched the open back door and the closed bedroom door. Outside, above the sound of the music, he heard the sound of running feet.

Then Bela was shoved into the house by two of the men.

Bela kicked and screamed, and it took both men to pin him to the floor. The men struggled with Bela, looking as if they were dancing to the music. Komarov remained seated, aimed his pistol at the doorway, and waited. But the open doorway remained dark and empty.

When Bela finally calmed down, Komarov motioned that he be put back in his chair in front of the television. Above the din of music, Komarov shouted to one of the men to go back in the yard to resume his post and to the other to check the bedroom.

When the first man was gone, the second man took his Stechkin machine pistol from inside his coat. A small flashlight was taped to the pistol barrel. The man switched on the flashlight and went to the bedroom door. He opened it and quickly scanned the bedroom.

When the man backed slowly out of the bedroom, Komarov knew this could be it. Horvath could be there. But the man turned and motioned for Komarov to come.

The bedroom was empty. The window was open. Komarov had the man shout search orders out the window and close the bedroom door. While the man stood guard, Komarov slapped Bela’s face. But Bela simply smiled.

A few minutes later, a man with an AKM came in and announced that the women and children were nowhere to be found. Komarov told the man to keep watch for them but, more importantly, to watch for Detective Horvath and to shoot him on sight. When the man with the AKM went back outside, Komarov noticed the man with the machine pistol staring at the phonograph. He shouted at the man, ordering him to tie Bela to his chair with rope from the room-divider curtain.

Soon everything was back as it had been, the music playing, Komarov sitting in the dark watching the doors and smoking, Bela staring at the television. Except now the women and children were gone, and this could mean only one thing. Horvath would soon arrive.

The rope holding Bela to the chair was wrapped tightly, and his wrists were tied behind him. His nose bled, and he no longer smiled as he had when Komarov slapped him.

The violin of Lakatos cried its song of despair into the night, and for a moment Lazlo imagined he was back in his apartment in Kiev, lying in bed listening to Lakatos on his phonograph. None of what had brought him to Kisbor on a cool night in May had happened.

In a few seconds it all flashed before him again. Mihaly in the wine cellar; months later the confession of his affair on a snow-covered playground outside the apartment. Tamara with him when he heard about the explosion. The roadblocks and confusion. The news of Mihaly’s death from bureaucrats at the Ministry of Energy.

Juli arriving in his office at militia headquarters. Had the visit by Andrew Zukor and his wife at the farm had another purpose? Was it possible Zukor had somehow convinced Mihaly to …

No! Komarov had created a pretense of guilt out of Mihaly’s and Juli’s personal lives. Komarov had arranged the circumstances, causing Lazlo to do something he thought he would never do again. He’d killed an innocent man. He’d shot an innocent man and watched him die, resurrecting the image of the Gypsy on the Romanian border. Komarov was obviously trying to create counterrevolutionary scapegoats for what had happened at Chernobyl.

But to what end?

With the music playing, with the memories of what he’d seen in the dead agent’s eyes and the dead Gypsy’s eyes and in Komarov’s eyes, Lazlo knew there was more. Komarov needed to destroy him, destroy his family, destroy Juli.

The violin of Lakatos crying out over the plateau gave way to the faster czardas, the rest of the orchestra joining in. In the distance, looking like overbright fireflies in Lazlo’s night vision, flashlights danced about the house. Lazlo used the opportunity to circle the house. He stayed at the ridge of the hill and was able to count ten men wielding flashlights. While he ran, he thought of the story his father had told, the German troops coming up the hill, only their helmets visible as his father and mother climbed down into the wine cellar.

The faint light of the village was behind Lazlo as he pushed through the weeds approaching the gravel road going up the hill.

He held his watch up and saw it was almost ten o’clock. He was about a hundred meters from the house. A flashlight swept across the side of the house, pausing at the open bedroom window.

The open window, Bela’s signal telling him Nina and Mariska and the children had escaped into the wine cellar. The men with flashlights were searching for the women and children, searching in an ever-widening circle. It was time. Bela was expecting him at ten, and Lazlo knew Komarov must be in the house waiting for him.

Lazlo considered posing as a drunk walking along the road.

He’d stagger up the hill whistling to the music. The men would come, and he’d pretend to speak only Hungarian. But there were too many men. He’d never break free and be able to get to the house without being sprayed by AKM fire. Then he remembered what Bela had told him earlier in the day. A man was stationed on the south edge of the road at the ridge of the hill.

Lazlo crouched low and ran. If the man was at his post, he’d have to disarm him, get the AKM, and make a run on the house.

But more likely, the man had left his post and was part of the search.

He could hear the men speaking to one another above the scream of Lakatos’ violin.

The road was close. Lazlo went down on his hands and knees and crawled ahead, feeling stones digging into his knees, the same stones he and Mihaly had, years ago, hurled from the yard as they helped their father clear a place to plant the private plot.

The men came closer, their legs dragging through dry weeds as they approached the ridge of the hill. Lazlo stayed low, crawled with his face to the ground. Suddenly, near the road, he came upon a clearing about a meter wide. His hand brushed something, a coat on the ground, its inside lining still warm. The man guarding the road had used the coat to stay warm or to sit on. The man was one of those with flashlights. Lazlo crouched low and lay down at the edge of the circular clearing on the side nearest the road. He listened and waited because he knew the KGB agent who had made the nest would soon return.

The stage was set. Everything he had done for the last two decades had led to this. Even times of weakness when the bottle had him in its grasp played a role. He had devoted his life in preparation for this confrontation.

East of the Carpathians, others could easily be arrested to confirm the conspiracy originating in the United States and funneled through here. Anger over Chernobyl would intensify, making prosecution less complicated. Chernobyl traitors would be part of the Soviet Union’s future. Whether Gorbachev remained in power or not, Komarov’s plan would succeed.

Komarov felt stronger than he had in years. When it was over, he would go to Moscow without the media fanfare used in capitalist countries. It was not the Russian way. By going quietly, he would add to his power. He would accept his medals with dignity and stand with the best of them high above others at the May Day parade. In the crowd, he would see a young blond woman look up to him. Later, at a Kremlin reception, he would meet the young woman, a Pravda reporter doing a story on the revival of Russia’s superiority over the other Soviet republics. Gorbachev would be no more, and the new president would have befriended Deputy KGB

Chairman Grigor Komarov.

After the Kremlin reception, the Pravda reporter would return with him to his room at the Hotel Metropole. They would order cham-pagne and speak of their new Mother Russia long into the night.

She is sweet. He can smell her. She puts her head on his shoulder and fingers the buttons of his uniform. She unbuttons his jacket and reaches beneath it. She finds the knife in the inside pocket and asks about it. He tells her the story of Sherbitsky, the murderer.

They make love. She becomes his mistress. They meet monthly at his dacha. He does not kill her. Instead, she stays with him as he grows older, wiser.

In the midst of Komarov’s reverie, Bela glared at him and spit off to the side. It seemed a provocation demanding action. He imagined rising from the chair and pistol-whipping the brute. But he did not move. Instead, he aimed the pistol at Bela, and this calmed him.

After a few more minutes of thrashing about in the weeds, it sounded as if the men were retreating to the house. Above the din of the music, Lazlo heard footsteps coming closer to the clearing. But instead of one man returning to the nest, it sounded like two. He kept his hand on his pistol as the men approached. The men stopped near his feet. He looked up and could see them facing the house. If one of the men stepped back, Lazlo would be kicked or stepped on, but he dared not move. The two men began speaking, young men.

“Komarov will have a poker up his ass now. When Brovko returns, you’ll really hear it.”

“This is all quite strange. We’re told Horvath is armed and dangerous, we’re issued Stechkins and AKMs, and Komarov turns up the music so we can’t hear an attacking elephant herd.”

“You know what they say about fish.”

“Rotting from the head first?”

Both men chuckled, their feet shuffling in the weeds. They continued their conversation.

“Captain Azef is in his glory back in Kiev.”

“A lot of the men have been saying Azef will take over. An old-timer in the office said Komarov’s been a paperweight the last few years. A serious drinking problem. That’s why he’s still a major.”

“I wouldn’t mind a drink now.”

“Brovko went for tea. I hope he doesn’t spill it when he hears what’s happened.”

“What do you think of Brovko’s closeness with Nikolskaia?”

“He wonders why Nikolskaia was assigned here. His partner was the one Horvath shot.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. A couple of PK amateurs from Pripyat.”

“Ha. I knew Nikolskaia came from Pripyat, but I didn’t know he was PK.”

“Don’t say anything to him. He has enough trouble. He’ll get cancer in a year or two from the radiation. My brother and his family had to move, and their place was even farther away. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing here. I thought we’d be sent up north or at least to the roadblocks watching for looters.”

“I hope we’re out of here soon. I met this girl in Kiev.”

“I’d rather go back to Moscow. The hell with these Ukes.”

The two men were silent for a while, then one of them said he should get back to his post. Because of the music and the similar-ity of the youthful voices, Lazlo could not tell which man had gone.

Lazlo pulled his legs up to a fetal position. The remaining man moved into the clearing, stood for a moment, and finally settled down on the coat spread on the ground. The man’s back was to Lazlo. He could smell the leather of the man’s jacket. If he reached out, he could touch the man’s back.

Lazlo studied the man, determined the AKM was in the man’s right hand, its skinny folding stock against the ground, its barrel upward. He would have to kill the man or disable him without creating a disturbance. Choking him would kill him, and somewhere a brother or even a sister would wonder why. Lazlo recalled the look in the eyes of the Gypsy’s sister, the look on the face of the Gypsy when the bullet pierced his head, and finally the look on the face of the dead PK agent he now knew was the partner of a man named Nikolskaia. The music of Lakatos was being played by Komarov to make the confrontation a deadly one. He did not want to kill again.

But he would kill Komarov.

The agent stirred, and Lazlo knew he could wait no longer and still take advantage of the turmoil caused by the search for the women and children. When the violin prima again changed into a louder and faster czardas, he slowly pulled his pistol from his belt.

He sat up and, measuring in his mind a blow appropriate to knock a man out without crushing his skull, hit the man over the head with the butt of his old battered Makarov.

After determining the man was still breathing, Lazlo exchanged trousers, coat, and cap to transform himself into a KBG agent. He used his discarded belt to tie the man’s hands behind his back, gagged the man with his own scarf, knotted his bootlaces together, and covered him with discarded clothing. He inspected the AKM

and found the safety off. He retrieved his pistol from the ground and tucked it into his waist at his back beneath the agent’s leather coat. The music continued. Komarov was waiting.

Although he had enjoyed Hungarian music on occasion, Nikolai now hoped he would never hear it again. The solo violin reminded him of his friend Pavel across from him in the Pripyat post office, Pavel innocently singling out the letters of Detective Horvath and his brother written in Hungarian.

Nikolai sensed something in his peripheral vision. When he turned, he saw the man positioned out by the road, about fifty meters behind the parked Volgas, walking slowly his way. The man was outlined against the light from the village. Instead of going to the cars, the man turned and headed for the house, his AKM held casually at his side. When the headlights of an approaching car cleared the top of the hill, the man walked faster. The car was Captain Brovko’s, bringing tea from the village. Perhaps the man had seen the Volga coming up the hill and wanted his share. But after Brovko parked, the man did not turn to go to the Volga. Instead, he continued to the side of the house, walking still faster, and Nikolai knew something was wrong.