Traffyck (54 page)

Not long after SBU Agent Yuri Smirnov landed at the airport in Chernigov, he met with his old friend and fellow SBU agent, Sergei Izrael, from the Slavutich office. Izrael had a cap over his black bear hair. Izrael had flown in from Slavutich in a Russian Mi-8 helicopter with pilot, copilot, navigator, five of his junior agents, and another passenger Smirnov never expected to see. As soon as Izrael pulled Smirnov inside the idling helicopter, Opus Dei representative Mikhail Juliano tipped his black fedora and reached out his hand.

The pilot shouted back for them to belt up, and instead of Smirnov being alone with Izrael as he had wished, Juliano sat between them, as if they were a trio. Because of the noise during and after takeoff, they had to shout to one another to be heard and Juliano looked back and forth, taking it all in.

“I have sad news from Kiev!” shouted Izrael. “The call came to me while you were on your flight from Kiev! Deputy Anatoly Lyashko was killed in an automobile accident!”

Smirnov was stunned. “Lyashko killed?”

“Yes, he was apparently driving to his home near the Russian border to see his wife! He was driving at high speed and hit a gasoline truck coming from the other direction! The driver of the truck also died because of the explosion and fire! Lyashko was alone, without his driver! He has that Bentley and it is very large and very fast!”

Smirnov glanced at Juliano and back to Izrael. “Yes, the Bentley! It is very popular among Ukraine’s deputies!”

“I know they sold for close to 300,000 euros some time ago!” shouted Izrael.

Juliano looked back to Smirnov, expecting more, but Smirnov remained silent.

Izrael sat at the window looking out as the helicopter banked and headed east toward the Dnepr River. “Ukraine from the air is beautiful!” he shouted. “Even Slavutich appears to be a town built for tourists instead of Chernobyl refugees and cleanup workers! And the river deltas! Wait until we are over these! It is as if we are flying above a rain forest in Brazil!”

Juliano finally spoke. “Have you been to Brazil?”

“No!” shouted Izrael. “Look here! There is the Dnepr ahead of us! On the other side is the finger of Belarus stuck into Ukraine’s asshole!”

“Ukraine’s asshole?” asked Juliano with a puzzled look.

“The Exclusion Zone!” shouted Izrael. “Chernobyl!”

Izrael leaned forward to address Smirnov. “According to your information, the peninsula between the two outlets—Pripyat and Teteriv—is our destination?”

Smirnov nodded agreement before moving to look out the window on his side of the helicopter. The colors below showed the approach of fall, deep green leaves fading, awaiting nature’s signals to begin their transition and eventual fall from their trees. Lyashko was dead, obviously from suicide. His connection to the compound revealed to Smirnov by Janos Nagy was now chiseled in stone. Therefore, Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza must also have been contemplating his fate.

Below, Smirnov saw a road, a village, and even a farmer looking up because the pilot flew the helicopter very low. The speed of treetops passing below increased.

“Are we landing?” shouted Izrael to the pilot.

“We need to refuel in Slavutich!” shouted the pilot. “We had enough for a round trip! But to go south to the peninsula and whatever awaits—”

Izrael interrupted, taking out his cell phone. “Perhaps more men have arrived at the airport! Who knows how many we will need?”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

Inside the boarded-up, darkened cabin, Mariya watched as Lazlo took off his jacket and tore cloth from his jacket lining. He used the lining to make clean bandages for Vasily’s leg and Janos’ arm. Lazlo then took off his outer shirt and tore it in half, giving the halves to Mariya and whispering to her that it was for her and Lena. After Lazlo put his jacket back on, he turned to Vasily and Janos. The men faced the other way while Mariya and Lena removed their jeans and rid themselves as best they could of the filth from the men who had raped them. While they did this, Mariya told Lena, and also Vasily, neither of whom understood Hungarian, the meaning of the words Lazlo had shouted to the guards.

“It is a traditional Hungarian demand to let the music begin. Literally it means, ‘Bring on the Gypsies,’ but there is more. It is a rallying call to come together. By shouting it, he is telling us we must join together because it is our strength. If any of the men outside understood, it will be a warning to them we are not finished, we will never give in.”

After Mariya and Lena had cleaned themselves and put their jeans back on, after the makeshift bandages on Vasily’s leg and Janos’ arm were tightened and Lazlo had put his jacket back on, all five of them tried possible weak points in the cabin’s structure.

They pushed at the door in unison, using shoulders and arms and legs, counting to three to make the outward push as powerful as possible. They did the same at the two windows. They even tried what appeared to be weak points in the walls. But the cabin was built of thick lumber, and the door and windows were boarded up heavily. The most they could manage was a slight outward bending of the door.

They searched the cabin using the flashlight Lazlo had earlier given Mariya, but only came up with pieces of wood broken from bed frames and table legs. They tried using the tabletop for a battering ram, but it was a small table and it fell into pieces after two blows. Mariya suggested using the flashlight for a hammer, but Lazlo said it was not heavy enough. They jumped up and down on the floor, but the floorboards were thicker than the walls.

Their attempts to break out of the cabin seemed to have taken hours, yet only minutes had passed. Both Lazlo and Janos left their cell phones back in the inflatable boat on the south shore because, being out of range of a tower, they were useless. Vasily had a wristwatch. It was already nine in the morning. Mariya thought,
Nine in the morning on the last day of our lives
, and went to Janos to hold him tightly.

They sat on the floor, trying to come up with ideas, but Lazlo could not sit still. Instead, he paced back and forth with the flashlight in his hand. “Does anyone have matches?”

The answer was no.

“I thought if we started the fire first, on one end of the cabin, before they come back and use the gasoline …”

Lazlo continued pacing. “A pocket knife, a pin, anything?”

No.

Lazlo stumbled and fell, and Mariya and Lena went to him. “It’s all right,” he said. “I was hit in the head, and I think they knocked my brain to one side. The same idiot who hit me ripped off my good luck garlic necklace.”

Lazlo tried to stand, but Mariya held him down, hugging him to her. “Stay sitting!” shouted Mariya. “We need you to think, not injure yourself! We need to all think!”

“What about praying?” asked Lena.

“Yes,” said Mariya. “Definitely pray. But do not give in and pray. Pray for strength! Pray for an answer! Pray for … Lazlo, give me the flashlight. There must be something in here! Come! We didn’t search the floor! Perhaps the floorboards—”

Suddenly, in the brief silences between Mariya’s words, sounds of scratching emerged. “Listen!”

“Animals,” whispered Vasily. “They often get into the crawl spaces.

“How do they get in?” whispered Mariya.

“There are small access panels outside, and they sometimes fall away. They are not secured very well.”

Mariya turned on the flashlight and looked at the thick floorboards. There were spaces of almost a centimeter between some boards. As Mariya aimed the flashlight down one of the larger spaces, she saw movement and jumped back.

“What is it?” asked Lena.

“Did you see fur?” asked Vasily.

“Perhaps it is the Gypsies,” said Lazlo, still sitting wearily.

Suddenly, there it was. Life! Life in the form of a pointed saw blade poking through the space between boards!

“Who are you?” asked Mariya, loudly enough to be heard below.

“Nadia and Guri,” came the faint reply of a girl’s voice.

Lena put her hands to her face. “My God! You are here!”

And then, with joy came terror as the shouts of men came closer and they heard liquid sloshing against the side of the cabin and an empty gas can hitting the ground.

“We need to saw fast,” said Mariya.

The fire was quick, with smoke oozing in through cracks. Nadia and Guri on the other end of the saw tried desperately to get the narrow tip of the blade started at an angle.

Mariya grabbed the blade and pulled up, but the handle kept it from coming through the opening. Then Vasily crawled beside her. “My leg is shot, not my arms.” He had his sweatshirt off and wrapped it around the end of the blade as Mariya held it up.

Both Mariya and Vasily sawed. They lay facing one another, using both hands. After a few seconds, they had sawed off a half moon-shaped section of board long enough to pull the entire saw up through the opening.

Vasily grabbed the saw and moved like a madman, cross-cutting the boards and applying force from above. While Vasily sawed, Mariya and Lena kept up an unearthly screaming to cover the sounds of the sawing and to make the men outside think they were on fire.

The floorboards were as wide as an outstretched palm. Vasily would need to cut through two of them at both ends. Lazlo, Janos, Mariya, and Lena moved close to Vasily, but did not interfere, because he moved the saw like a madman. The smoke thickened and moved down from the ceiling, and they all began to cough and scream. The screams meant to sound like those of people being burned, but they were really because Vasily had cut one board near the joists on both ends and it had fallen to the ground.

The second board took longer, but not because Vasily slowed. It was simply a wider and heavier board. Vasily coughed and gasped for breath with all of them, but kept sawing.

Mariya held onto Janos and imagined being on her bicycle, in a race that must be won. Rather than becoming sporadic, she must find the maximum possible pace and maintain it.

Pace, pace, pace
.

When the second board fell through, Vasily gave off a howling cheer that died away as if he had succumbed to the flames. He quickly pushed Lena down through the hole, then Janos. Mariya wanted to push Lazlo through next, but before she could protest, Vasily pushed her through the hole and she fell down to the cool earth below, where the rush of oxygen feeding the flames inside the cabin blew across her.

Nadia and Guri were there! The trapdoor into the crawl space was at the back of the cabin, and when she looked out she saw no one. The men who had started the fire were at the front, watching the door and two windows. Nadia grabbed Lena’s hand, and Guri grabbed Mariya’s hand as they emerged from the opening and ran to the woods behind the cabin. Mariya looked back as they ran and saw Janos waving them away with his good arm.

Flames leapt from the roof of the cabin, and smoke emerged from the opening, through which Janos disappeared to retrieve Vasily and Lazlo.

The old Gypsy from Chicago, but originally from Kiev—the old man whose brother died in the Chernobyl explosion and who, like everyone else, wondered how the end would come—felt himself being pulled through the hole into hell. Fire snapped and popped at his face. Breathing became impossible. Heat enveloped him. Demons from the past, such as KGB Major Grigor Komarov, came to meet him face to burning face. Yet, suddenly, there was coolness. Why the hell was hell so cool? Why was its air fresh? He coughed and spit and helped someone drag another through the hole headfirst, a man who grunted in pain as he landed atop him.

Alive! Lazlo himself, Janos, and Vasily alive! They had not died and gone to hell. Janos had used his uninjured arm, reached up, and dragged them out like sacks of grain. Now all three coughed and spit and spit again as they pulled themselves toward the opening of fresh, cool air.

“I hear men,” gasped Janos directly into Lazlo’s ear. “But I see no one, so out we go.”

The fresh air reinvigorated Lazlo, making him feel human again. He helped pull Vasily out of the opening from the crawl space. The cabin burned loudly, pine boards popping like gunfire, roofing crackling like bacon frying.

Lazlo looked down and saw a shovel near the opening on the ground. He picked up the shovel and stood, holding it in both hands. He suddenly felt indestructible as he crept along the side of the crackling and popping cabin. When a man carrying an AK-47 appeared, looking toward the front of the cabin with his yellow teeth showing, Lazlo ran out and swung the shovel with all his strength. He felt the blow come back down the handle like a charge of electricity.

For an old man, Lazlo reacted faster than he expected. He grabbed the AK-47 by its barrel from the falling man’s hand. He turned the rifle around, checked the safety, moved forward, and on full automatic, killed three men standing at the front of the cabin. All three had beards. All three went wide-eyed and showed their yellow teeth. Then Lazlo turned—this same old man—and when he saw the man on the ground next to the shovel begin moving, gave him two bullets in the head in order to save ammunition for more killing.

Janos and Lazlo ran from man to man retrieving AK-47s, the familiar thirty-round curved magazines, and a satchel with extra boxes of shells. Vasily dragged himself on the ground, pulling his bloody leg behind him. All three headed toward the woods and were met halfway by Mariya and Lena, who helped Vasily up, slung his arms over their shoulders, and carried him.

They sat in the woods for a moment, catching their breath. Lazlo looked from one to the other. The boy Guri and the girl Nadia—the ones who had saved them—were like little children to Lazlo. Mariya and Lena were both beautiful and healthy young women, but Lazlo could see in their eyes humiliation and helplessness, fresh wounds from the gang rape. Vasily, the rebel of the compound, was shot in the leg above his knee, the bone obviously broken; therefore, he was unable to walk on his own. Janos—the young investigator he considered his son—suffered a wound to his left arm, but his right arm was good and the left had stopped bleeding.

“So here we are,” said Lazlo. “And yet there is more to do. First, we will need to decide—”