Safe and Sound
At first, Bessonova thought the group of players were bandits who had appeared out of nowhere. But they had not robbed her of any valuables. Although they had indeed secretly pried open the doors of quite a few shops under cover of darkness, they had only taken some small change for emergencies, along with various daily necessities that might come in handy, and not much of any of it.
Besides, they all looked like Ukrainians or Russians. Yet strangely, not a single one of them could speak Ukrainian or Russian. Bessonova thought she could infer their identities from that.
—This group was most likely made up of Americans or Europeans of Russian and Ukrainian descent who had grown up in the Western world, specially selected to infiltrate the Soviet Union for covert espionage. But after thinking it over, Bessonova found that explanation rather nonsensical as well. What kind of spy infiltrated an enemy country without learning the enemy's language at all? What kind of infiltration was that? And what they spoke did not sound like English either. She had no idea what country's language it was.
Yet they were undeniably extraordinarily interested in the nuclear power plant. They had even disguised themselves as experts and spoken with the plant's engineers. But Bessonova soon discovered that they did not seem interested in the plant's technology, but rather in the accident that had occurred last night. In other words, these people posing as experts were indeed doing exactly what Moscow's Expert Group should have been doing.
That left Bessonova utterly confused. She had no idea where the players had really come from. She even began to feel as though they stood with them—with the residents of Pripyat—while the nuclear power plant, on the other hand, seemed to be concealing