Elena Androtov was a biologist with PRIA, or the Pripyat Research Industrial Association, which managed the thirty-kiliometer exclusion zone around the now-infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Worried that the Ukrainian and Russian governments weren’t fully sharing what they knew about the ongoing effects of the Chernobyl disaster with the world, Elena had walked into a U.S. consulate while on vacation in Bulgaria and offered to be a window on what she and her colleages were really learning inside the Exclusion Zone.

Ideology,Fisher thought. It was one of the four MICE. The reasons why people offer or agree to spy for a foreign agency usually fall into one of four categories: Money, Ideology, Compromise, or Ego. Elena had never asked for money or recognition, nor was she under duress. While the CIA was grateful for her information, none of it was earth-shattering. Her handler had repeatedly reminded her she could quit at any time, no questions asked.

Fisher understood her apprehension at his sudden apperance. For the last six years her handlers had simply accepted her data with a simple “Thanks, make contact when you have more.” And now, inexplicably, she was being asked to play tour guide to some mysterious secret agent.

“How long have you worked here?” he asked. He knew the answer, but talking helped.

“Six years. I came right after university. I wanted to help.”

“Have you?”

“You tell me. How many people do you think died because of Chernobyl?”

“The official count was thirty-one.”

Elena snorted. “Thirty-one! Twice that number of firefighters died within five minutes of reaching the scene, charred to a crisp by gamma radiation. Poof! Gone!”

“How many, then?”

“Over the last twenty years, just counting Ukraine and Belarus, I’d say two hundred thousand. So I ask you: How can I be helping when the whole world still believes thirty-one?”

“Why don’t you get out?”

“I’ve got another year on my contract,” she replied, then seemed to relax slightly. She took a drag on her cigarette. “Then maybe I’ll leave. Leave Ukraine.” She looked up at him. “Maybe I’ll come to America.”

It was more a question than statement.

Fisher said, “Maybe I can help you with that. But for now, you need to get me inside the Exclusion Zone. Get me in, and I’ll do the rest.”

“Oh, really? The Exclusion Zone. Okay, James Bond, what do you know of the Exclusion Zone?” Not waiting for an answer, Elena pointed up the road. “Just over that hill is the checkpoint. Chernobyl is another thirty kilometers beyond that! Thirty kilometers! That’s . . . that’s . . .”

“Eighteen miles,” Fisher said.

“Eighteen miles. Another fifteen kilometers past that is Ghost Town.”

“You mean Pripyat?” Before the disaster, Pripyat had been an idyllic city of fifty thousand where most of the Chernobyl workers and their families had lived. For the last two decades it had been deserted.

“Yes, Pripyat. That’s what the disaster did. That’s how bad it was—is. I’ll take you there. You can feel the ghosts. They walk the streets.” Elena laughed and muttered to herself, “Thirty-one people. Hah!”

“You’re pretty passionate about this. Were you always?”

“Oh, no. Just like everyone else, I’d believed the official reports. Why would our government lie about something like that? They’re here to protect us. I was naive. I came here and my eyes were opened. Yours will be, too—if you want to see, that is.”

“I do.”

“Good.” She checked her watch. “Get back in. We need to go.”

31

ELENAdrove for another few minutes, then, as Fisher had asked, pulled over again. “The checkpoint is one kilometer,” she said. “You remember where you’re going?”

Fisher grabbed his rucksack from the backseat and got out. “I remember. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

He shut the door, patted the car’s roof, and she drove away. Her headlights disappeared into the mist. He shouldered the rucksack and walked down the embankment into the marsh. He pulled out the OPSAT, double-checked his map, then settled his trident goggles into place, switched to NV, and started jogging.

HEand Elena would face two checkpoints. The first one, placed at the outer edge of the thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone, was manned by guards drawn from the Ukrainian Army; every soldier was required to spend six weeks guarding the zone.

No car was allowed to enter the Zone, lest it be contaminated. Outsiders were required to park their clean vehicles in the checkpoint parking lot, then walk through, where they were logged in and assigned a “dirty” vehicle from the motor pool.

The Inner Ring, eleven kilometers from Reactor Number Four, was guarded by a second checkpoint, where visitors were again required to trade cars—dirty for even dirtier—and change clothes. Civilian clothes, which would be decontaminated, sealed in plastic bags, then returned to the first checkpoint to await the wearer’s return, were exchanged for dark blue coveralls, plastic boots, gloves, and white surgical masks.

According to PRIA, the use of the zone cars was not hazardous to humans, but their introduction to the world outside the zone might have “unforeseen ecological consequences.”

TENminutes after setting out, Fisher came to a line of scrub pines and stopped. A gust of wind whistled through the trees, causing the branches to creak. He pulled his collar up against the chill.

Whether by chance or by choice Fisher didn’t know, but at least at this entrance, the tree line represented the outer ring. Irrational as it was, he wondered if things would look and feel different inside the zone. Was the grass rougher, more brittle? Were the leaves on the trees withered, trapped in in some endless radioactive autumn? Did the water smell different? He knew better, but such was the nature of radiation—an invisible rain of poison that left nothing untouched. Including the imagination.

He forced his mind back on track.

A half mile to his west was the first checkpoint. He slowed his breathing and listened. In the marshes sound traveled well, and after a few seconds he heard the distant chunkof a car door slamming, then voices speaking in Ukrainian. Another visitor coming or going,Fisher thought. Probably the latter. By now, Elena would already be through the checkpoint and waiting at the motor pool.

He stood up and started picking his way through the pines.

After a few hundred yards, the trees began to thin and he could see gray light filtering through the branches. He reached the edge and stopped. Ahead lay a gravel parking lot filled with dozens of cars and trucks. A single sodium-vapor light sitting atop a pole in the middle of the lot was the only illumination. As Elena had predicted, the ever-flirtatious checkpoint guards had assigned her her favorite car: a bright red 1964 Opel Kadett. Fisher could see her silhouetted in the driver’s seat.

From habit, he waited and watched for another ten minutes. He wasn’t necessarily concerned about her trustworthiness, but she’d been spying for the CIA for six years—a lot of time in which suspicions can be raised and investigations started.

Staying within the tree line, he circled the parking lot until satisfied no one else was about. He walked to Elena’s Opel and got in. She put the car in gear, backed out of the lot, and started driving.

“What took you so long?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m just not as fast on my feet as I used to be. Getting old.”

“Old? Rubbish. You look fine to me,” she said, concentrating on the windshield.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She tapped her finger on the steering wheel. “Are you married?”