Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

Chernobyl.”
    At first Mercy thought she couldn’t have possibly heard him right. She didn’t know what to say. “Chernobyl? You’re not serious.” But the disaster had happened thirty years ago and was hardly news now.
    “My reaction exactly,” he said. “But Talia felt there was a great story in it and, after some discussion, I agreed. Now I'm not sure I should have let her go.”
    The muscles in her neck throbbed, probably from the force with which she’d clenched her jaw. Mother, what have you gotten yourself into? “What else do you know about her plans?”
    “Not much. I know she reached Kiev and checked in at her hotel. They said she did.”
    “Then you have the hotel’s name.”
    “I’ll have Raymond pull it from the file for you. I’ve forgotten its name.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “There is one other thing.”
    “Yes?”
    “She was researching the original accident and the number of people who died in it. There have been internationally funded studies, as well as rumors and all sorts of wild conjecture. But never anything definitive.”
    “The Soviets originally claimed thirty-one dead. Didn’t they?” She remembered her mother telling her about it. Of course she, herself, had been a baby at the time, but her mother had kept video of the disaster and showed it to her when she was older. Talia had been obsessed with the dangers of nuclear leaks and the possibility of radiation being used as a weapon. She swore there had been a cover-up by the Soviets and thousands had died, if not on the day of the accident then in the following months. She’d wanted to fly straight over there, she told Mercy, but her friends talked her out of it.
    “Ridiculous, right?” Harold said. “Everyone knew the radioactive fallout must have spread over hundreds if not thousands of miles. Ten years after the event, a European conclave of nuclear physicists claimed the number killed from the effects of the radiation, as well as from the blast itself, was in the tens of thousands. Over the years the Ruskies gradually admitted to the deaths of residents of surrounding villages and towns. ‘Volunteers’ they called them, although they were pretty much forced to risk their lives in the cleanup. These were in addition to the actual reactor employees killed. The public never has been made fully aware of what happened over there, the immensity of the catastrophe.”
    “But this is hardly news. It’s now been…what? Decades?”
    “Well,” he added, “Talia thinks there’s more to it than old news. Do you have time to listen?”
    “You bet,” she said.
     
    After getting off the phone with Harold Gilmer, Mercy felt totally drained. If what he’d told her was true, the story her mother was trying to bring to the world was nothing short of mind blowing.
    She’d think about that more, later, but now she had leads to follow. She spent the next three hours on the phone.
    By noon Mercy had spoken with the Ukrainian Embassy in D.C.—whose representative told her that it would take a minimum of nine days to process a visa for her. She then talked to the Ukrainian Tourist Bureau, and after that a consultant at the State Department’s travel-alert system, a consul at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine whom she’d gotten out of bed in the middle of the night, and assorted friends in high places who had known her parents and held considerable power in DC.
    She relayed Talia’s MIA status and dropped Lucius Clay’s name to see if she got any reaction, although she didn’t mention their meeting.
    Everyone voiced concern for her mother’s safety and promised they would keep an ear out for any news that might drift their way on the political grapevine. But she uncovered no additional information. Not an ounce.
    If the name Clay meant anything to anyone, they weren’t saying. Mercy felt in her bones that something wasn’t right. It was almost as if people—people who might not even know each other—were closing ranks.