‘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?’