Page 66 of Mastermind

“Well, I’m gone a lot. That helps. We do our best when I’m not around.”

“Sorry,” she replies. “I didn’t mean that. Your thinking is of course sound. And I understand why you went about it in the way you did. I’d tell you not to do it again, but that would be pointless. So now what? Where are we headed, Kiev?”

“Yep,” I reply. “We start with those zombie sightings.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE PATIENT

Dr. Mayya Kosakivsky agreed to meet us at the Pesto Café in a small shopping plaza in Kiev. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Olena, is sitting next to her, translating for her mother. Mayya watches the exchange and appears to understand our English but is too self-conscious to speak it herself. Fortunately, her daughter’s English is excellent, and she even occasionally throws in an Americanism that I assume comes from television.

“She was the doctor on the afternoon shift at the clinic. It was just herself and two nurses when they brought the man in,” Olena explains.

“Who brought him in?” asks Jessica.

We’d started off by asking Mayya about the news story involving a “zombielike” man found wandering outside the Chernobyl zone. He had no idea who he was and could barely answer questions. His dialect was unfamiliar to anyone who talked to him. Because of his hollow cheeks and the condition of his clothing, he was nicknamed the Kyyiv Zombi, which, phonetically, is almost the same as the Kiev Zombie.

The mystery deepened when, after the man’s story hit social media that night and a ghoulish photo was posted to Facebook, a group of men identifying themselves as government health workers pulled up to the clinic and took him away.

The Ukrainian government denied any knowledge. When attention turned to the Russians, they insisted they had no knowledge of the man. Eventually it was dismissed as a hoax, but other regional news outlets ran stories about other zombis being spotted on roads or in forests.

We decided to talk to Mayya first, because her account was the most credible. She’d actually avoided talking to the news out of concern for patient privacy and seemed more worried about the man’s well-being than the sensational aspects of the story.

“He was brought in by a policeman who patrols the roads,” Olena translates for us. “He was a friend of a doctor there and brought the man into the clinic because it was closer than the hospital.” Olena confers with her mother. “Dymytro is his name.”

Jessica lays a map on the table. “Do you think he or your mother would know where the man was found?”

Without waiting for the translation, Mayya puts her finger on the map, then speaks to her daughter.

“Dymytro said the man was found wandering near the road close to the equipment cemetery,” Olena explains.

“Equipment cemetery?” asks Jessica.

“It’s where they buried all the trucks and machines used to handle the Chernobyl accident,” I reply.

Mayya nods in agreement. Jessica puts an X where the doctor indicated the man was found and adds the time and date it happened.

“What was the health of the man?” I ask.

Olena relays her mother’s comments. “She says he looked malnourished, but from some kind of digestive disorder.” She points to her left arm. “There were needle marks there. The police thought they were heroin injections, but my mother said the needle was too big and looked like a . . . what’s the word . . . intravenous drip.”

Jessica nods, glancing at me for my reaction.

“My mother says he also had marks on his wrist,” adds Olena.

“Like handcuff marks?” I ask.

Mayya nods again and seems agitated as she speaks rapidly.

“It looked like he’d been a prisoner somewhere. That’s what she thought. Perhaps he escaped a prison infirmary. The problem is that Dymytro never would have brought him in if that was the case. He called the state police and the organization that would handle such a thing. They said check the mental hospitals.”

“And they didn’t know anything, either?” asks Jessica.

Mayya shakes her head, looks around the café, then whispers something in a low voice for her daughter to translate.

“She says that she spoke to a friend at another facility, and they had a similar patient two days before. But he’d only been there for an hour before the men in the trucks pulled up and took him away. Same condition. Same injuries.”

“Where was that facility?” asks Jessica.