“Who does this place belong to?”

“Me, now. Back then, a local party boss from Kiev. When the plant was first build, Moscow ordered bigwigs to take dachas here, to prove the reactor was safe. Officially, all the PRIA scientists are supposed to live in a block of renovated apartments south of Pripyat.”

“I saw them.” Fisher grabbed his rucksack from the backseat. “Not very cozy.”

“Yes, lovely, aren’t they? This place is better. The outside isn’t much, but the roof doesn’t leak and the insulation is good. Plus, it wasn’t in the plume.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The plume of radioactive dust. Most of it was blown west and then north, toward Belorus. We’re on the east side of the plant. Come on in.” She started walking. She realized Fisher wasn’t following, and turned back and smiled. “Relax. You see that?” She pointed to what looked like a weather vane jutting from the roof. “It’s a dosimeter; I check it twice a day. Trust me, this is one of the cleanest places in Chernobyl.”

“Guess it pays to be a biologist,” Fisher said, and started walking toward the porch.

“I’m very careful. I would like to have children some day.”

SHEdirected Fisher to the spare bedroom, where he dropped his rucksack, and then he joined her in the kitchen. She was crouched before the open door of a woodstove, shoving sticks into a growing flame. She shut the door and stood up. “Sit. Tea will be ready in a few minutes.”

She got a loaf of black bread and a tin of blackberry jam from the cupboard and laid them on the table. She chose an apple from the windowsill, washed it, then sliced it into a bowl.

“The water comes from a new artesian well,” she said before he had a chance to ask. “I test that every day, too.”

Fisher said, “Sorry. This takes some getting used to.”

“Don’t apologize. I was the same way when I first came here. I didn’t want to touch anything. I even found myself holding my breath without realizing it. It’s a natural reaction.”

They ate breakfast and then Fisher helped her clean up. “I’ve got to go into work for a few hours,” she said, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m running an experiment on a three-headed cattail.”

Fisher squinted at her, wondering if she were pulling his leg.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Almost all the cattails around the reactor’s cooling pond are mutated. Believe me, those are some of the tamer changes we’ve seen. You should see some of the carp they pull out of the pond.” She sucked her lips and crossed her eyes. “Ugly, like that.”

Fisher laughed.

“I’ll be home around noon. On the way I’ve got to check on something in the village—a rumor I heard once. It might interest you.”

“What’s that?”

“Let me check first. Go to sleep. If anyone knocks, don’t answer.”

FISHERtried to sleep, but his body wouldn’t fully cooperate, so he dozed on and off for a few hours, then got up and wandered around the house. Elena had a good book collection she kept inside an old china cabinet in the living room. The titles ranged from Tolstoy and Balzac to Stephen Hawking and Danielle Steel. He also found a milk crate full of old records, mostly from the Big Band era. He put a Mancini tribute on the turntable and sat down with an English language version of War and Peaceand read until Elena came home.

She was carrying a sack of groceries.

“Borshch?”Fisher asked.

“Of course. I promised you.”

After the groceries were put away, they sat down and shared a lunch of cold cuts, cheese, and wine. “So,” Fisher said, “this rumor?”

“Yes, I checked. I wasn’t sure I’d remembered it right, but the rumor is about four months ago a pair of soldiers went missing in the middle of the night. They were never found. Everyone, including the local commander, assumed they’d deserted. The were last seen heading toward the bunkers you were asking about. I’ve got the name of the man who saw them last: Alexi. He’s ninety-five years old, but still sharp. An old warhorse.”

“He’ll talk to us?”

Elena smiled. “Alexi loves to talk. He was a tank commander during the Great Patriotic War. He claims to have killed eighteen Panzers at Kursk before he got captured. He spent the rest of the war in a labor camp in Poland. We’ll go tonight, after borshch. I see you found my book collection.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Elena waved her hand. “No, no, I meant to show it to you. Here, I’ll clean up. You go back and read. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

“I thought War and Peacewas required reading for all Russians.”

“Very funny. I’ve tried to read it four times. It bores me to tears. Besides, I’m Ukrainian.”

33

SHORTLYafter nightfall, with his belly full of borshchso good he felt cheated for having lived so long without it, Fisher and Elena left her bungalow.

Throughout the afternoon, a low-pressure front had moved in, bringing with it dark clouds and icy drizzle. The Kadett’s headlights cut twin swaths through the dark, illuminating ruts and potholes rimmed with ice. The heater, which worked only on the highest setting, made a sound that Elena described as a “carrot being shoved into a fan blade.”

The change in weather was a mixed blessing for Fisher. The clouds and lack of starlight would provide better cover, but the sleet and dropping temperatures would leave the fields and marshes coated in ice, which would crackle with every footfall.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the story of the missing soldiers. Desertion was common in the Ukrainian Army—especially, he imagined, among troops pulling Chernobyl duty. Many of the conscripts were young and poorly educated, and all they knew about Chernobyl was that it had happened long before their births or when they were too young to remember, and that it was a place of ghosts and poison and sickness. Still, the rumor was also a place to start.

They drove for twenty minutes, following the road south along the Pripyat River. Three miles from the power plant, she turned off the main road and crossed a rickety bridge to the east side of the river. Set back in a stand of birch trees was a cabin. In the headlights Fisher could see the structure’s walls were made of rough birch planks sealed with what looked like a mixture of mud and straw. The roof was piled high with sod.

The Kadett coasted to a stop and Elena doused the headlights.

“He lives here year-round?” Fisher asked.

She nodded. “For the last eighteen years. It’s actually very warm in the winter; warmer than my place, even. I visit him once a week, bring him some borshch.”

“Lucky man.”

“What, you thought you were the only man I made borshchfor? Men.”

Fisher started to open the door, but Elena stopped him. “Let Alexi come out and see that it’s me first. He’s ornery with strangers and handy with a shotgun.”

“And a tank,” Fisher said.

“And that.”

The cabin’s door opened and a lantern appeared on the porch. In its glow Fisher could see a gaunt face and bushy salt-and-pepper beard. Elena rolled down her window and called something in Ukrainian. Alexi grumbled something back and waved for them to come in.

“He promised not to shoot you,” Elena said. “I told him you brought borshch.”

FISHERhadn’t brought borsch,but Elena had, and they sat in silence while Alexi ate all of it, then licked the bowl clean. The interior of the cabin wasn’t what Fisher expected. Except for the mud-filled gaps between the planks, the walls were painted a butter yellow. Off the kitchen there were two bedrooms and a living room with a large open-hearth fireplace.