Page 9 of The Half Life of Valery K

Valery leaned forward to read the notes in each zone on the big map. The numbers there were a patchwork of different units; they were handwritten, and it looked like five or six people had all gone out, measured with different things, done different maths, and stuck on whatever seemed right with no standardisation.

That was odd.

Usually he didn’t care if someone mixed up their units. Everyone looking at a chart like that was a grown-up, capable of noticing whether it said metres or centimetres, and doing the very basic necessary maths to get the right idea. But radiation was different.

Radiation measurements were like English spelling; there were half a dozen different systems, nobody normal understood any of it, and the only presiding rule was that if it seemed to make sense, you’d got it wrong.

There were eight standardly used measures of radiation.

Curies measured amounts of actual radioactive material; but one curie was a stupendous amount of radiation, so you almost never had to use it unless you were talking about atomic bombs. Instead it was usually millicuries or, in lab conditions, microcuries, and helpfully, the abbreviations were mc and mmc, which meant there were lots of hilarious typos in every research paper ever written.

People who got cross about the curies rubbish used becquerels instead, which measured the same thing but in smaller units, for common sense.

Then there was radiation as a dosimeter picked it up, roentgen; that was the unit people had heard of. But then some people objected to calling it after a German, so those people measured in coulombs per kilogram instead.

Either way, those things measured only radiation in air, which was useless for measuring radiation that would actually be absorbed by a person; that was a rem, the roentgen-equivalent-man or, because it would be letting the side down by now to have only one unit, the sievert.

Once the radiation was actually inside you, the medical units were different again; it was a rad – radiation absorbed dose – or if there was loads, the higher unit, the one you had to use of people who were dying: the gray.

And of course, the calculations involved in actually working out how many roentgen were in one millicurie of radioactive stuff and how many rems or rads that translated into in different people or organisms were hugely variable and not the kind of thing many people wanted to try without a pencil, a piece of paper, and some headache pills.

Everything was on the map. Roentgen, rem, millicuries, becquerels, even rads, where someone must have got confused and written it instead of rem. Dr Resovskaya must have kept it up as a joke.

Valery glanced at Ilenko, starting to smile, and felt unsettled to find that Ilenko was staring hard at the map, then writing, then staring.

‘So, I imagine all of you are keen to know what happened here, and what caused the contamination,’ Dr Resovskaya continued.

The next slide was a picture of the black lake.

‘In 1957, it came to the attention of the Kremlin that although the world was having a nuclear frenzy, nobody really knew very much about it. The Japanese are a little ahead; they can study Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they don’t like sharing. So, it was decided that, in an area as broad but as unpopulated as possible, with a decently complex ecosystem, a large district would be exposed to radioactive contamination. This was quite a daring thing to do, but they did it. Liquid waste was used to contaminate the water table under a system of these eight lakes here –’ she outlined the area on the big map on the wall ‘– which then contaminated swathes of the local plant life and the general ecosystem of the whole Kyshtym district. This entire region is now a nature reserve.’ She smiled. ‘All of your research, whether you’re looking at plant life, fish or mammals, will help determine whether or not there is resistance to radioactivity in any of the affected species. If there is – that will be quite a discovery, and certainly one that we would publish. Perhaps even beyond the Soviet Union.’

Valery didn’t often feel the urge to congratulate the government, but he did have a spark of national pride now.

‘As the adorable Comrade Shenkov will have explained to all of you,’ Resovskaya was saying, ‘there are of course restrictions on what we can publish.’

There was a ripple of laughter.

‘Basically, you’ll submit all your findings to a special commission of academics in Moscow. That commission will guide you as to which details are all right to publish. As a general rule, we can’t publish anything that will give away our location; so, coordinates, and in some cases, specific genera and species of some of our specimens, which are unique to this area. Our research alone is classified; but as you’ll have noticed, just along from us are five plutonium reactors and a uranium mine. That is the most secret facility on this side of Moscow. It’s where the plutonium for all our bombs comes from, and if the Americans ever discover its location, we could expect an atomic bomb to fall on us within hours.’

Awed nods all round.

Valery inclined his head. It would have been much easier to do all this, to contaminate a large territory, not directly over the site of a secret nuclear facility. But then, maybe it was just the logistics of the thing. It would be both difficult and hazardous to transport hundreds of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste any significant distance.

‘Kyshtym is the nuclear shield of the Soviet Union, and its effectiveness relies on the secrecy of its whereabouts,’ Dr Resovskaya said. ‘You all saw the signs on the way in. We don’t talk about our work to a living soul outside this facility, and we don’t leave this city unless we are sent. In your rooms you will find a folder, full of suggested cover stories for if anyone does ask too much. I suggest you consult it. Be aware, too, that throughout City 40 there are trained KGB informants. All of them are listening. They’re there not to get you in trouble, but to make sure you maintain proper secrecy procedure. If they find that you don’t, the consequences could be severe. Comrade Shenkov is not here just to show people around.’

There was a deep quiet in the room now. Dr Resovskaya shook her head and smiled.

‘One last thing.’ She switched off the projector.

‘The city has no real name; people call it the Lake, or Chelyabinsk 40, PO Box 40, or City 40. This practice is called geographic distortion. By suggesting we are in Chelyabinsk, we throw off anyone who’s asking too many questions about us. Likewise, you must not call this facility the Lighthouse when you’re outside it. Call it the chocolate factory. Even to your families.’ She grinned. ‘We’re all in the business of espionage tradecraft now, which I think is terribly glamorous, and why I feel justified in wearing these ridiculous shoes.’ She was perched on the edge of the table, and she waved her legs delicately to show her red kitten heels.

Everyone laughed.

‘I imagine you have lots of questions?’

‘When will we have assignments?’ someone asked.

‘Monday. Thought we’d ease you in.’