Page 93 of The Half Life of Valery K

He had to stop at the top of the ladder before he could pull together the courage to go down. If they had realised what the core was, if they so much as suspected, then the soldiers would be waiting at the bottom to drag him down. There would be no trial. He would be shot, straight away. He took a deep, slow breath, and eased down one-handed, carrying the sandwich on its plate.

No one grabbed him. He stepped onto the floor, and felt so relieved that for an instant, he didn’t care if it had worked or not: they hadn’t exploded and he wasn’t about to be shot. It felt astonishing.

‘Elena, I’ve got your sandwich,’ he said, and then had to look around for her, because the lab was empty.

A bolt of panic slammed into his chest before he saw them all in a miserable row on the floor, backs propped to the wall. Resovskaya gave him a weak smile.

‘Valery, be a darling and ring the KGB office. There’s been some kind of leak. We’re all feeling … a bit under the weather.’

On the table, the beryllium core was still ticking away happily. He took the top hemisphere off and put it aside. That was it. Disarmed. Inside, the lump of plutonium looked like a shard of gravel he’d found in the road.

‘Okay, don’t worry,’ he said, and picked up the phone. He only pretended to dial, and pretended to speak to someone at the other end.

By the wall, Resovskaya and the others were all a terrible, claggy shade of white. One of the soldiers jerked up and just made it to the sink before he was sick.

‘You should get out of here,’ Resovskaya said. ‘It could be airborne contaminants or—’

‘I shouldn’t go anywhere,’ Valery said. ‘If it’s airborne then it’s on me now. I’m going to duck in here and check the patients. Hang in there.’

‘If you’re not sick,’ one of the other researchers croaked, ‘then we were contaminated either before you started work here, or – or, Jesus Christ, just now …’

‘Don’t be silly, it would have to have been hundreds of roentgen to make us sick instantly,’ Resovskaya said, drowsy.

There was blood blooming on her blouse.

‘Oh, fuck,’ one of the other researchers whispered. ‘Jesus Christ, fuck! Lesions, we – what the hell could have …’

‘Calm down,’ Resovskaya said distantly.

‘Calm down? We’re dead!’

‘I’ll check the patients,’ Valery repeated, stepping over them. Resovskaya was staring at him.

‘You did this.’

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me just shuffle you to one side.’

‘We’re dying.’

‘You are,’ he agreed.

He had dreaded what he would find. He had been having nightmare visions of the worst, of barely recognisable bodies stretched out and smashed past all recognition by some terrible dose of neutron-shedding poison, but Shenkov was awake. He came straight to the glass.

‘Valery!’

‘I’m getting you out of here, all of you. How much have they given you, do you know?’

‘A hundred roentgen yesterday,’ Shenkov said softly. ‘They were going to do it again today—’

‘A hundred roentgen of what, do you know? Gamma radiation might be okay, but if it’s alpha then you need to be in hospital now.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t – they just – I don’t know where the syringes are.’ He sounded helpless. Valery realised he was doing no good whatsoever, only frightening him. ‘Get out how? There are soldiers out there—’

‘Not any more,’ Valery said, wrenching open bolts. ‘Come on, all of you. Can you walk?’ he added to one of the other men. ‘We’re leaving, it’s going to be okay, but we’re going to have to get all of you up a ladder. Do you think you can … ?’

‘I don’t know,’ the man said palely. ‘Who are you?’

Valery picked up Pyotr, who was awake but drowsy and sick-looking. He was too light, even for a little boy. ‘I’m a researcher here. Listen, all of you,’ he said, and forced himself to slow down. ‘I’ve just let off a lot of radiation in the next room. The other researchers and the soldiers are very ill now. We’re going to just walk out of here, and up a ladder to the surface. At the top, there’s going to be a truck waiting for us, and a lady who’s going to drive us out past the facility perimeter. If you’re all more or less okay, we’re going to drive to Moscow. It’s going to take two days, but we have to get to an embassy, or the KGB will find us. Okay?’