Page 14 of The Half Life of Valery K

Valery decided to hurry him along. ‘There were kids playing in the river. All I did was try to stop them. Surely everyone knows this whole place was contaminated; I mean – it was done on purpose. Half the people in town must work here or at the nuclear plant. Surely people already know the river is dangerous.’

‘No. It’s kept as quiet as possible. Hence … the no-talking rule.’

Valery sipped the coffee. Shenkov, it occurred to him, was too elegant to spray his office with something that would smell for a long time afterwards. ‘It was children,’ he said.

‘You cannot,’ Shenkov said, again no louder than the volume at which he always spoke, ‘interfere. Whatever’s in the river, it isn’t much. Those boys will be fine. The more people know about this place, the more chances there are that the Americans will hear about it. Scientists we have to trust, but if you’d come with a family, I’d be telling you now to tell them you work at a chocolate factory. It only takes one child to make one comment on a train with the wrong person on it. If a report were to reach Washington, do you really think the CIA wouldn’t be able to work out where we are? If they don’t know what we have, then what we also have is the benefit of the doubt. You don’t bomb someone whose capabilities you can’t judge.’

‘Whereas if they knew that all our equipment is made of cardboard and we have at least six times less in the way of bombs than they do, then that would be problematic, yes, I do understand,’ Valery said, irritated to have the whole nature of his own state explained to him as if there weren’t teenagers who’d worked it out.

‘Good, so you see why you won’t be talking to any more strangers in rivers,’ Shenkov said.

Valery sighed. ‘You should at least put barbed wire up. If everyone who goes in the Techa dies of cancer, they’ll clock what’s going on pretty bloody fast. People aren’t stupid.’

‘There isn’t enough in the Techa to give anyone a cough, never mind cancer.’

‘All right, it’s all harmless, marvellous. Have you seen the forest?’ Valery said.

Shenkov sat back a little, just verging on impatient. ‘Nothing is in the Techa, Kolkhanov. Say it.’

‘Nothing is in the Techa,’ Valery repeated, meeting his eyes so that there was at least a vague jab at sincerity.

Shenkov studied him with something like the beginnings of relief. ‘Don’t you like chocolate?’

‘I do, but is there something in it?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Shenkov said, looking shaken. He was an excellent actor. No security officer would really be shocked to hear someone in their custody wonder aloud if they’d done something terrible to whatever they’d just handed over. He scrutinised Valery for a long time, with rage in his eyes, and Valery wanted to curl forward, because the echo-pain of the cattle prod zinged up his ribs. He stayed straight. ‘You can go,’ Shenkov said finally. ‘I’d prefer not to see you in that chair again.’

Valery paused. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘What?’

‘You’re being serious, I can go?’

‘Yes? I told you nothing would happen this time.’

‘Was that not a lie?’

‘It wasn’t,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ Valery said gradually. He snapped the bar in two and left half on the desk, smiled, and did not rush as he left. Out in the corridor, the strength in his knees vanished and he had to lean against the wall. No boiling water, no nothing; but maybe Shenkov only deployed that kind of thing rarely, so people would be surprised in contrast with the chocolate.

5

The Importance of Strontium-90

After pausing at the security office for his prisoner-book stamp, Valery looked for Ilenko at breakfast in the canteen on Monday morning. Again, though, she must have been busy with other things. So he sat by himself, lonely but preferring that to the turmoil which would ensue if he tried to start making conversation with someone new. He felt like he was from another species to all the students. It wasn’t just that he had to gaze at toast and butter as if it were powdered unicorn, or that the feeling of real cotton sleeves was strange. It was that he had nothing to say. People made conversation by asking after your family, or home, or your last job, or if you’d been watching the ice hockey; he couldn’t speak to any of that. He didn’t mind, but it was awkward to have to say, actually I was starving to death last week and I had a rat called Boris.

He hoped someone was looking after Boris.

He found himself tapping his fingertips against the table in knock code.

Rat rat rat rat rat rat

‘Cat,’ said Shenkov in passing, in the tone of someone who was saying shut up.

‘Does he just say random words now?’ said Dr Resovskaya, arriving with a bowl of six boiled eggs.

‘I think …’ Valery couldn’t get a sentence together, too puzzled. Some of the officers at the Lubyanka had known a code existed, but none of them bothered to learn it. It hadn’t mattered by then. You’d already been arrested.