Yellow Blue Tibia (25 page)

There was nobody at the entrance; although there were two porter’s lodges immediately inside the door, one on either hand. We stepped into a capacious hallway, battleship-grey walls and linoleum underfoot. Despite the cold of the morning it was, inside, warm as a Crimean summer. There was a curious, not unpleasant odour. I couldn’t place it.

‘So where now?’

‘We need to find the main reactor pile. If somebody has planted a bomb, that’s where they will have done it.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, displaying again my characteristic belatedness, ‘we should have armed ourselves? What if we surprise the bomber in the act of planting the bomb? Wouldn’t a gun be useful?’

‘I do not possess a gun,’ said Saltykov. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’

‘You accuse me of insanity, and then rebuke me for not bringing something neither of us possesses.’

It took us fifteen minutes of trying doors (some locked, some not), of ascending and descending stairways, of pausing for me to catch my breath, of making our way along corridors and through rooms before we found ourselves back where we had started.

‘I thought you
knew
about these reactors,’ I snapped, crossly.

‘I know the science,’ he retorted, crosser than I. ‘Not the individual architectural layouts. I know how the machinery works, that is all.’

We tried again. This time we spent out energies climbing an endless series of flights of stairs. I began this process resting at the top of each flight, to regain my breath; but after half a dozen flights I was driven to sitting on the stairs halfway up as well as at the top of each flight, puffing. Finally we reached a lengthy corridor, and along this, slowly, Saltykov increasingly furious at the delay represented by my exhaustion, we went. There was a door about halfway along with MAIN REACTOR posted above it.

‘At last,’ I growled.

And through we went.

There was no doubt that we were indeed inside the main reactor hall. It was huge: a four-storey-tall open space, longer and wider than a football pitch. Despite the chill outside, and the prodigious size of this interior space, the air here was warm. It smelt, oddly, if faintly, and in a metallic way, of honey.

Saltykov took it all in. ‘We’re looking down upon the top of the reactor,’ he said, pointing to the left at an inset grid that stretched from wall to wall. And over there,’ he said, pointing to two Olympic-sized swimming pools away to the right, ‘are the spent fuel pools.’

‘And where is the bomb?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Imagine you’re a terrorist. Where would you want the brunt of the explosion to be?’

‘Comrade, a bomb, even a small bomb, set
anywhere
in here would cause catastrophic damage. The core is filled with uranium wands’ - I remember distinctly that he used that term,
wands
, as if he were talking about a wizard’s props - ‘that have to be kept at
precise
distances from one another and cooled to a
precise
temperature, or they will go bababoom.’

‘They will go what?’

‘Baba,’ he said, widening his eyes for effect, ‘
boom
.’ And with the last syllable he threw his arms wide, to imitate the action of an explosion.

‘That’s a rather peculiar word to use, comrade,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘
Boom
is enough to communicate what you wish to say,’ I said. ‘The baba is superfluous.’

‘Nonsense,’ he insisted, stubbornly. ‘Bababoom is perfectly expressive.’

‘It’s decadent.’

‘It’s expressive.’

‘Expressively
decadent
.’

‘Why are you
chaffing
me?’ he asked. ‘Do not chaff me. It serves no purpose. We have a bomb to find. Concentrate upon that, instead of upon twitting me.’

‘But to find it - how? You are saying it could be anywhere hereabouts.’

‘Say rather: we are standing
inside
a bomb. The core? It is cooled by water injected through it. This water is steam, at a temperature of three hundred degrees. You can imagine the pressure such a thing puts on the pipes. Severing any of these pipes would result in—’

‘Yes yes,’ I said. ‘Boombaba!’

‘
Boombaba
,’ he scowled, ‘is just stupid. You say it only to chaff me. Why do you waste our time
chaffing
me?’

Directly in front of us, thirty feet away or so, was a gigantic concrete column that supported the distant roof. It was wrapped around with a spiral stairway like the snake on Asclepius’s staff, and this staircase lead up to various massy and inconceivable gantries and platforms overhead. And down this stairway a man was descending: a sack-bellied comrade, unshaven and unhappy looking. His cream-coloured, lumpy bald cranium was fringed from left to right round the back with a strip of lank black hair that rather resembled a spread of galloons, or pompons, or tassels. There was a starmap of grease spots across the front of his overalls.

‘I’m
going
, comrades,’ he announced.

‘Going?’ I repeated. I had the notion that he was leaving in disgust at our bickering. But that was not it.

‘I got the message,’ he said. ‘Same as everybody else.’ He stepped from the stairs and started towards us across the floor. ‘Was just finishing something up.’

‘Message?’ asked Saltykov.

‘Don’t worry, comrades,’ he said, holding up his hands as he trotted forwards to display two palms like a gigantic baby’s. ‘
I
work in a nuclear power station. I understand the importance of looking after your health. I
mean
to look after my health.’

‘Of course you do,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about
me
,’ he said again, approaching. ‘KGB is KGB. Prying into the business of KGB is certainly worse for your health than radiation.’

‘It’s a view,’ I said.

He passed us. ‘Reactor One,’ he said. ‘Straight there. Did they send you to fetch me? That’s like them. Go fetch Sergei, is that what they said? He’s probably napping - was that it? Comrade, I was wide
awake
. There’s work to do. I’m a skilled technician, I do more work than three of
that
lot together - yes, yes,’ this last in response to what he fancied was a disapproving expression on my face, although in fact I was merely bewildered, ‘yes comrade, I’m going right now. Off to join the jolly party. Reactor One, yes yes.’

He burlied out of the room. We two were now entirely alone in that cavernous space.

Saltykov and I looked at one another. ‘Unmistakably KGB,’ I said. ‘Apparently.’

‘You look more KGB than I do,’ he observed, sharply.

‘By no means.’

‘Let us continue this demeaning, childish fight no longer,’ he said, briskly. ‘Please understand the urgency of our situation. To answer your earlier question: there are
half a dozen
places in this reactor where even a small bomb would result in disaster. Do you understand? High pressure superheated steam; a large quantity of active uranium, and a larger quantity of spent fuel, which though spent is still prodigiously dangerous. If this building goes up,’ and he threw his right arm in the air, adding actorly emphasis to his declamation, ‘then it will destroy the land for miles around. It will spread a plume of lethal radiation across the whole of Europe - Russia too, depending on the prevailing winds. It could, for an example, poison the Mediterranean for half a dozen generations. It might turn Germany and Belarus and Poland into wastelands. It might sweep back and swallow Russia and Georgia. It would depend upon the wind. Did you happen to notice the prevailing winds, as we were coming in?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t matter. If I say millions of lives depend upon this, then I’m not exaggerating. Do you understand?’

‘Comrade Saltykov,’ I snapped, ‘please stop asking whether I understand. May we agree to assume, from now on, that I
do
understand? Can we take that as read?’

He looked at me. ‘We have known one another for a very short space of time,’ he said, in an exasperated voice, ‘yet we bicker and snipe at one another like an old married couple.’

‘We are the only two individuals in the entire USSR,’ I said, ‘who do not drink vodka. Ours is therefore a unique bond.’

‘I’m going downstairs. If I were going to place a bomb, I would put it in one of the chambers downstairs abutting the reactor itself. For maximum damage. You - you just search about up here.’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘You were in the army, weren’t you? A bomb! A bomb! Look for a bomb!’ He stomped towards the door.

‘I’ll wait for you here then, shall I?’ I said. ‘I mean, we’ll rendezvous here, shall we? In?

‘In!’ he echoes. ‘In? In!’

‘I meant
in half an hour
, for instance,’ I shouted, growing angry myself. ‘That’s what I meant. I meant, in half an hour, let us rendezvous again
here
.’

‘Either here,’ he growled, without looking round, ‘or, if the bomb detonates, then in heaven. And
I don’t believe
in heaven!’

And then I was alone.

CHAPTER 16

There was something uncanny about being the sole human being in so enormous an enclosed space. ‘It’s like a film set,’ I said to myself. There was a continuous noise that was more hiss than hum, and a pervasive if hard to identify sense of pulse, or sentience, as if the entire reactor were alive. This was not so comforting a thought. I tried to put such thoughts out of my head.

I walked over to the nearer of the two spent fuel pools, and looked over the edge. It was a surprisingly unsettling perspective: four-storeys deep and sheer all the way down. The waters were of an unnatural turquoise blue, and possessed a hyperlucid clarity, like the water that might fill the lakes of a distant planet in a science fiction magazine’s cover illustration. The view right to the bottom gave me a twinge of vertigo. Now, it is true that I have never liked heights; and this, I believe, is a common phobia. But I do not know many people who also experience vertigo at the deep end of a swimming pool, as I do. I suppose it is a deep-seated refusal to accept that an almost invisible medium is able to support my weight. Some part of my mind believed that, were I to tumble into that enormous circular pool, I would not float but would rather sink leadfooted all the way to that distant, uncanny, deathly bottom. ‘Idiot,’ I told myself. ‘You’ve more to fear from the radioactivity. You can’t
fall
. The water would hold you up. Falling isn’t what’s fearful here.’

The bottom of the pool was a ridged grid with a high-tech look to it; but the walls on all four sides were tiled exactly like a public swimming pool.

My eye ran down the vertical perspective and there it was: a black case, no larger than a suitcase. The bomb, of course. There was almost a sense of anticlimax about it; to stumble upon it straight away without even having to undertake a proper search.

It was three quarters of the way down the wall, suspended on a single cable. I squatted down, and gave the line a tentative tug. It did not feel too heavy. The thought crossed my mind that this might not be the bomb after all, but rather an ordinary piece of power-station machinery. I pulled again with the notion of retrieving whatever-it-was and finding out. In retrospect this was foolish of me, for of course the line could have been booby-trapped, but that chance did not occur to me. Given all that I know now, from my privileged perspective, looking down upon a completely different mode of existence, and with all the benefits of hindsight - of what we know about Chernobyl, and the precariousness of the cage that contained its nuclear dragon - it is hard to justify such a cavalier attitude. I could have hurried away to notify the authorities, of course; and they could have dealt with the threat in a comprehensive and knowledgeable manner. But all I can say, as far as that is concerned, is that it literally did not occur to me. I was singleminded. My only thought was to prevent disaster; and not wholly for altruistic reasons either, remembering of course that any disaster would mean my own death.

Up I tugged, like a fisherman hauling in his line. As the box drew closer to me it became apparent that it was a plain black suitcase; nothing more extraordinary than that. With a small splash it broke the surface. I laid it on the poolside. The wire was hooked around its handle. Water dribbled off it, and also squeezed, for several seconds, through the side of it in four curving wafers. It was, evidently, not a
watertight
suitcase.

Almost on a reflex I reached forward and pressed the dual latches that held the case shut. They both sprung free with a piercing double click, and my heart stopped - for only at that moment did it occur to me that such an action might have detonated it.

But it did not. Wheezing with the shock I lifted the lid.

Inside there was a cluster of fruit-sized black metal balls, like haemorrhoids; and a small black wallet-sized device. There was also a certain quantity of water. I took out one of the globes. There was no mistaking it. It was an RGD-5 grenade - standard Soviet-army issue. It looked like a small metal aubergine, with a metal ridge around its middle. The fuse looked as though somebody had buried a fountain pen halfway into its top. Its pin was a bald keyring of metal. The device was wet in my hand, and the water was warm. There was something repellent, almost organic, in this warmth.