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And he feared the children would suffer even worse.

They had to keep going but to where?

6

September 6, 5:22 A. M.

Kiev, Ukraine

Nicolas Solokov waited for the cameras to be set up. He had already been prepped and still wore a collar of tissue paper tucked into his white starched shirt to keep the makeup's cake from staining his shirt and midnight blue suit. He had retreated for a private moment of introspection into one of the back hospital wards. The international news crews were still preparing for the morning broadcast out on the steps of the orphanage.

In the back ward of the Kiev Children's Home, sunlight streamed through high windows. A single nurse moved quietly among the beds. Here the worst cases were hidden away: a two-year-old girl with an inoperable thyroid tumor in her throat, a ten-year-old boy with a swollen head from hydrocephalus, another younger boy whose eyes were dulled by severe mental retardation. This last boy was strapped down, all four limbs.

The nurse, a squarish Ukrainian matron in a blue smock, noted his attention.

So he doesn't hurt himself, Senator, she explained, her eyes exhausted from seeing too much suffering.

But there had been worse cases. In 1993, a baby had been born in Moldova with two heads, two hearts, two spinal cords, but only one set of limbs. There was another child whose brain was born outside his skull.

All the legacy of Chernobyl.

In spring of 1986, reactor number four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had exploded during the middle of the night. Over the course of ten days, it spewed radiation that was the equivalent of four hundred Hiroshima bombs in a plume that circled the globe. To date, according to the Russian Academy of Medical

Sciences, over one hundred thousand people had died from radiation exposure and another seven million were exposed, most of them children, leaving an ongoing legacy of cancers and genetic abnormalities.

And now the second wave of the tragedy was begi

For that reason, the volatile and charismatic leader of the lower house of the

Russian parliament had come here. Nicolas's own district of Chelyabinsk lay a thousand miles away, but it had similar concerns. In the Ural Mountains of his district, most of the fuel for Chernobyl had been mined, along with the plutonium for the Soviet weapons program. It remained one of the most radioactive places on the planet.

They're ready for you, Senator, his aide said behind him.

He turned to face her.

Elena Ozerov, a trim raven-haired woman in her early twenties with a smoky complexion, wore a black business suit that hid her small breasts and turned her into something androgynously asexual. She was stern, taciturn, and always at his side. The press referred to her as Nicolas's Rasputin, which he did not discourage.

It all went along with his political plan to be seen as the bold reformer, while simultaneously harkening back to the former czarist glory of the old Russian

Empire. Even his namesake, Nicolas II, the last czar of the Romanov dynasty, had been imprisoned and killed in Yekaterinburg, where Nicolas was born. While the czar had been a failed leader during his life, after his death he had been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. The bishops built the gold-domed

Cathedral of the Blood over the home where the family had been murdered. The construction marked a symbolic rebirth of the Romanovs.

Some claimed the forty-one-year-old Senator Nicolas Solokov, with his lankish black hair and curled short beard, was the czar himself reborn.

He encouraged such comparisons.

As Russia sought to rise again on shaky legs burdened by debt and poverty, rife with graft and corruption it needed a new leader for this new mille

Nicolas intended to be that leader.





And much more.

He allowed Elena to pinch away the ring of tissue paper from around his neck.

She looked him up and down, then nodded her approval.

Nicolas stepped toward the lights waiting for him outside.

He pushed through the doors, followed circumspectly by Elena. The podium sat up at the top of the stairs, framed with the name of the orphanage behind him.

He marched to the bristle of microphones at the podium and held an arm high against the barrage of questions. He heard one reporter shout a question about his former ties to the KGB, another about his family's financial co

Ignoring the questions, he set his own agenda.

Leaning toward the microphones, he let his voice boom out over the nattering questions. It is time to shut these doors! he shouted, pointing back toward the entrance to the orphanage behind him. The children of the Ukraine, of

Belarus, of all of Mother Russia, have suffered from the sins of our past. Never again!

Nicolas let his anger ring out. He knew how it looked on camera. The hard face of reform and outrage. He continued his impassioned plea for a new vision of

Russia, a call for action, a call to look forward while not forgetting the past.

Two days from now, the number four reactor at Chernobyl will be sealed under a new steel dome. The new Sarcophagus will mark the end of a tragedy and be forever a memorial to all the men and women who gave their lives to protect not only our Motherland, but also the world. Firemen who stood firm with their hoses while radiation burned away their futures. Pilots who risked the toxic plume to haul in concrete and supplies. Miners who came from across the country to help build the first shield to entomb the reactor. These glorious men and women, fierce with nationalistic pride, are the true heart of Russia! Let us never forget them, nor their sacrifice!

The crowd behind the reporters had grown as Nicolas spoke. He was heartened by the cheers and claps as he paused.

This was the first of many speeches he would be giving, leading up to the ceremony at Chernobyl itself, where the new Sarcophagus would be rolled over the toxic core of the dead reactor. The original concrete shield was already crumbling, meant only as a short-term fix, and that was twenty years ago. The new Sarcophagus weighed eighteen thousand tons and stood half as tall as the

Eiffel Tower. It was the largest movable structure on the planet.

Other politicians were already capitalizing on the event with similar events and speeches. But Nicolas had been the loudest and most vocal, a champion for nuclear reform, for cleaning up the radiological hotbeds around the country.

Many sought to stifle his rhetoric due to the extreme cost. Members of his own parliament ridiculed and lambasted him in the press.

But Nicolas knew he was right.

As they all would see one day.

And mark my words! he continued. While we put an end to one chapter of our history, I fear we've only put our finger in a hole in the dike. Our nuclear past is not done with us yet nor the world. When such a time comes, I hope we all prove to have the same stout hearts as those brave men and women who gave up their futures on that tragic day. So let us not squander the gift they've given us. Let us bring about a new Renaissance! From fire, a new world can be born.

He knew his eyes glinted as he spoke these last words. It was the slogan of his reform.

A new Renaissance.

A Russian Renaissance.

All it needed was a little push in the right direction.

Elena leaned toward him, touched his elbow, wanting a word. He tilted toward her as the crack of a rifle blasted from the park across the street. From the corner of his eye, he caught the flash of muzzle fire a fraction of a second before something ripped past his ear.