Page 68 of Mastermind

After three hours of driving around, I have seven points of interest that could be where the wandering men came from. We need to narrow it down to one or two and convince Mickey to take us on an unscheduled side trip.

I figure it’s up to me to choose the spot and Jessica to convince Mickey, which shouldn’t be too hard, since the young man seems clearly smitten by her.

I stare at my map and think, If I were a secret research lab that wanted to operate in a somewhat patrolled yet remote area, how would I go about it?

I’m assuming the facility isn’t any of the ones still listed as operational by the Ukrainian government. I’m also assuming that our suspects didn’t build anything new. They took over an existing facility that was close enough to their needs.

For a small bribe and slightly larger payment to the state, a private individual could set up some kind of research project here, just as the tourism companies got permission to bring buses full of people through the zone.

“How are you doing, Theo?” asks Jessica.

“Great. Fine.”

An internet search doesn’t bring up anything that sounds remotely like what I’m looking for. While that doesn’t surprise me, the facility would have to have some official reason for existing.

Or at least it did at some point . . .

If the Ukrainian databases don’t have any listings, there might be another place I could look. If this facility had been on the radar under different management, then it is also possible that they applied for research grants, possibly in conjunction with a US institution.

I do a search of the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy databases for grants relating to Chernobyl research.

I get thousands of results back.

Okay, that’s obvious. But what about facilities in the zone?

I refine the search using the postal codes for this region. The list gets considerably smaller. I write a script to list the names and addresses and put them on a map.

A moment later I have an overlay to accompany my map of Wi-Fi hot spots. One stands out from all the others: the Yaniv Workers Clinic.

I pull up everything I can on the institution. Apparently, it was a research project to study the impact on the cleanup workers of working in the zone. It operated for more than two decades, looking at the various impacts, and was shut down eight years ago.

Shut down . . . but it still has active Wi-Fi.

I look up the location. Interesting. Prior to being named the Yaniv Workers Clinic, it was the Yaniv Workers Spa, a retreat near the Red Forest for Communist Party members.

I think this might be the place.

“Mickey, could you take us to the Yaniv Workers Clinic?” I ask.

“The what?”

“The Yaniv Workers Clinic.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” he replies.

“It was the spa for the party members. It’s near the Yaniv train station,” I explain.

“There’s nothing there. Unless you mean the train station. That we can see.”

Well, that’s at least a start. “That would be great.”

It takes us forty minutes to get there. We park and get out of the car. As a precaution, Mickey uses a Geiger counter to check the background radiation.

While most areas outside the reactor are fairly safe, there are hot spots where the radiation levels can spike by a thousand percent. In some cases, rain or snow can bring about changes as soil shifts and hidden deposits of radioactive ash or irradiated soil become exposed.

I start walking to the west. Jessica follows. “What’s up?” she asks.

“I think our facility might be a half mile that way. We need to figure out how to ditch our babysitter or bribe him to help us take a look,” I explain.