‘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.
So there I was, holding a grenade in my hand in the very heart of the active reactor of a nuclear power station.
I had to think what to do next. Clearly I ought to remove this suitcase from the power plant. There were five grenades in all; one in my hand, and four in the case. Perhaps the best thing would be to carry the whole kit outside; take it into the woods, where its explosion would do less harm. Very welclass="underline" I needed to uncouple the case from its metal cable. I put the loose grenade down on the side of the pool. Then I closed the lid of the case, to get a better look at the handle, and the metal cable hooked around it. The cable was steel, heavy; as thick as my little finger. There was no way I could cut it. It was attached to the handle with a closed loop: the main body of the cable had been threaded through the cable’s eye. It could not be undone. I laid the suitcase down next to the loose grenade. Then I looked again into the water. I could see that the cable was attached via a clip to a fastening point set in the side of the pool, no more than a foot below the water. It would be an easy enough business unclipping that.
‘Saltykov!’ I yelled. ‘Saltykov, I’ve found it! I have the bomb!’
I lay down and reached with my right hand into the unsettlingly body-temperature warmth of the turquoise waters. A finger-twist with the clip and it came free. I had it by my fingertips, and then a nerve twitched in my arm, or I fumbled, or something happened, and I dropped it. The end of the cable fell away through the water.
This was clumsy of me.
I got to my knees and looked over the edge. There was something rather soothing in watching the leisurely fall of the cable through its medium; such a long way down. It unfolded in slow motion, and went taut. Then, with a slick inevitability, it continued its downward slide. The suitcase, no effective counterweight to the mass of dozens of metres of steel cable, slid across the tiles. My heart jolted, and I made a grab for the case, but my wet finger slid across its wet surface, and it went with a splash into the water.