The jet trundled along the taxiways, finally powering down outside a squat concrete blockhouse with a rack of large metal tanks along one of its side walls. The travelers disembarked. Nina couldn’t read the Cyrillic text painted on the side of the grim and ugly building, but numbers were the same in Russian and English: 201. “Follow me,” said Kagan, leading the group toward a broad and very solid-looking set of sliding metal doors.
Three uniformed men came out to meet them, the leader—a stocky officer with dark hair and a rather feeble mustache—engaging Kagan in a brief and somewhat agitated conversation in Russian. The commander made a dismissive gesture before turning to his guests. “This is Captain Slavin,” he announced. “He is in charge of security here at the bunker.”
Eddie frowned at the new arrival. “I remember him. He was in Vietnam.” It was the man who had encountered him and Hoyt in the cabin. The look of surprise on Slavin’s face told the Yorkshireman that the recognition was mutual.
“He was,” Kagan confirmed. “But he has found that his place is standing guard rather than intelligence work. Is that not right, Kolzak Iakovich?”
There was a condescending tone to his words, which Slavin did not appreciate. However, he did not rise to the bait. “Sir, Academician Eisenhov waits for you and your guests,” he said instead, his English rendered almost comical by his placing of emphasis on the wrong syllables.
Nina held in her amusement, but Eddie couldn’t resist. “Thank you ve-ry much, we’re looking! forward to meeting! him.”
Slavin scowled and gestured toward the doors. “This way.” He reentered the building, his two subordinates marching behind him.
Tova hesitated; Kagan gave her a reassuring smile. “It is all right. Please?” She reluctantly followed the three men into the bunker, Nina and Eddie behind her. They found themselves in a large steel-walled elevator. Nina shivered at the sight of a biohazard warning symbol, a claw-like trefoil of black on yellow, with a long and stern warning sign beneath it. Kagan came in after them and pushed a button. The doors closed, shutting out the cold daylight with a deep clang. There was a distant rumble of machinery building up to speed, then the elevator jolted and began its descent.
“How deep down are we going?” Nina asked.
“The facility is thirty meters underground,” Kagan replied. “It is designed so that in an emergency, it can be completely sealed off from the surface. And if necessary, sterilized.”
Eddie regarded him dubiously. “What do you mean, sterilized?”
The Russian indicated the warning sign. “If there is a biohazard alert, any contaminated section of the bunker can be locked down and everything in it incinerated by acetylene jets. You saw the gas tanks outside the bunker.”
“Have you ever had to do that?” Nina asked, nervously scanning the elevator’s ceiling for said jets.
“Not here,” replied Kagan. “But there was once an … incident, in another place. It is why Unit 201 was created—to make sure it never happened again.”
The elevator came to a stop. The heavy inner doors rumbled open again, another equally thick set parting beyond them. Unlike the weathered barrier on the surface, these were polished metal. The walls and floor of the area past them were covered by stark white tiles. Slavin’s boot heels clicked on them as he stepped out. “The Academician is in his office,” he announced, ushering everyone out.
“There’s your gas jets,” Eddie said quietly as he and Nina emerged into a wide lobby area. She followed his gaze to see a squat black dome in one corner of the ceiling. Other domes overlooked the rest of the bunker’s interior, covering every square inch.
Slavin led them down a broad central passage. There were rooms on each side, all accessed via thick metal sliding doors. Some had windows; Nina glanced in as they passed to see various laboratories, though only a couple were in active use. The occupants gave the new arrivals curious looks from behind goggles and haz-mat suits. More doors obstructed the corridor itself every few dozen yards, the Russian officer using a keycard to open them. As well as the panel for the card lock, each door also had another control board containing a lever behind a glass shutter, ominously bordered by yellow and black warning stripes and marked with the biohazard symbol. She realized the latter system’s function: Anyone activating it would seal the section behind them and fill it with fire.
Side passages branched off between the laboratories, but the group continued along the main corridor until they reached its end. The last door was, incongruously, made of dark, thickly varnished old wood rather than metal. Slavin knocked respectfully upon it. A muffled reply came from within. He opened it and stood back to let the others through.
Even with the out-of-place door as prior warning, Nina was still taken aback by the room they entered. It was much warmer than the bunker outside, almost stifling. Far from the harsh, sterile tiling of the rest of the facility, this was paneled in wood, overstacked bookshelves occupying much of the wall space. Soft music came from a portable CD player; she belatedly recognized it as Frank Sinatra’s “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Small potted plants were dotted seemingly at random on tables and shelves. There was a musty scent, one that immediately brought back memories of academia, of libraries and lectures.
The room’s occupant perfectly matched his surroundings. The old man was seated in a well-worn wing-back chair, a little round table by its right arm bearing a steaming cup of tea. His suit was slightly too large for his age-shrunken frame, giving him an oddly child-like appearance. She guessed him to be well into his eighties. One of his eyes was milky, but the other was still a piercing blue.
Kagan spoke to him in Russian. The old man nodded, then waved a gnarled hand at the other chairs facing him. “Please, sit,” Kagan told the visitors.
Eddie waited for Nina and Tova to do so before joining them. “Nice place,” he said. “Love how it totally matches the décor outside. Bit hot, mind.”
Their elderly host chuckled throatily. “When you are as old as me, you too will keep your room hot!” His command of English prompted an exchange of surprised looks from his guests. He spoke in Russian; Slavin’s two men departed, though the captain stayed in the room, watching the three Westerners balefully. “Dr. Wilde, Dr. Skilfinger, Mr. Chase: I am Academician Dmitri Prokopiyevich Eisenhov, the director of Unit 201. I have to admit that my feelings are mixed about meeting you, but I am glad that Grigory Alekseyevich”—he waved a finger toward Kagan—“was able to bring you here alive and well.”
“Not everyone on my team was so lucky,” Nina said, anger over events at the lake returning. “Nobody is giving me straight answers about what the hell is going on. I think it’s time that changed.” She looked directly at Eddie as she spoke; he shifted uncomfortably.
Eisenhov nodded. “You are right. It is time, Dr. Wilde.” He switched off the music, then leaned back. “In the Cold War, the Soviet Union chose to use Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic as a test site for nuclear bombs. To prepare, they surveyed the islands. They found something.” His one clear eye turned toward Tova. “A Viking runestone, marking a deep cave. It held a warning of what was found inside.”
“A warning of what?” Tova asked, intrigued.
Eisenhov spoke in Russian to Kagan, who went to a filing cabinet and took out a folder. He handed it to the old man. “Of death,” said Eisenhov, extracting a large and yellowed photograph. “Of the end of the world.”
He held out the photo. Tova took it, the two women examining the image. Bleak, treeless tundra stretched away into the distance behind a rocky hole in the ground, nothing but blackness visible within. In front of the sinister chasm was a runestone, much like the one from the bottom of the Norwegian lake.
“We in Russia know of the Norse legends,” Eisenhov went on. “The Vikings are part of our history too. But we did not believe there was any truth to their stories of gods and monsters—until we explored the pit.”
Tova peered intently at the photo, but it was too grainy for her to make out any d
etails on the runestone. “I cannot read what it says …”
“I can tell you,” said Eisenhov. “They say the pit is the home of Jörmungandr—the Midgard Serpent.” At the group’s surprise, he continued: “And it is, in a way. I once saw it with my own eyes, a long time ago. It is not a real serpent, but I know why the Vikings would think it was. It was an impressive—and frightening—sight. But it is not the serpent of which we should be afraid. It is its venom.”
“The eitr,” said Eddie. As in Stockholm, what now felt like an age ago, Nina was surprised by his knowledge—though now her feelings were also spiked with anger that he had been keeping secrets from her.
“The eitr, yes,” Eisenhov echoed. “A black liquid, just as the legends said. A terrible poison. There was a vast reserve beneath the earth, a river flowing underneath the surface to … we did not know where. It was too dangerous to explore, and we did not have the technology to follow it. But we knew from the runestone that the Vikings found another place where it emerged. They believed that when Ragnarök came, the serpent would emerge from one of these pits. The Viking warriors would divide into two armies, so that wherever Jörmungandr emerged, they would be waiting.”
“So the Vikings found two sources of the eitr,” said Nina, “and you discovered one of them in the Cold War. But why is it so dangerous? You say it’s a poison, but humans have come up with some pretty horrible poisons of their own. How is this any worse?”
“If you had seen what it can do,” the old Russian replied with a sad sigh, “you would not ask that question. I have seen. It has been more than fifty years, but the nightmares have not gone away.”
His sincerity sent a chill through Nina, but she still had to know more. “So what can it do? What is it?”
To her shock, it was Eddie who gave her an answer. “It’s a mutagen. If it doesn’t kill you, it attacks your DNA, changing it. Like a cancer. Natalia, the woman I rescued in Vietnam? Her grandfather was experimenting with it. He deliberately infected her grandmother with it, while she was pregnant. It caused tumors that killed her grandmother, then her mother.” His tone became even more grim. “And it would’ve eventually killed Natalia too.”
“Serafim Zernebogovich Volkov,” said Eisenhov, spitting out the name. “A traitor and a monster. If he had lived, his name would be as cursed as Mengele. He tried to take the eitr and his work to your country.” His gaze snapped almost accusingly back to Nina. “It was only by luck that he was stopped. He chose the wrong day to return to Novaya Zemlya.”
“What happened to him?” Tova asked.
“Ever heard of the Tsar Bomb?” said Eddie. Both women shook their heads. “Biggest H-bomb in history.”
“What’s that got to do with— Oh,” Nina said, realizing. “Nuclear test site. Right.”
Eisenhov made a satisfied sound. “Khrushchev ordered the activation of what became known as the Tsar Protocol. The bomb was dropped on the thirtieth of October 1961, completely obliterating everything on the ground and sealing the pit forever. Nobody will ever be able to open it again.”
Nina was still astounded. “Using a hydrogen bomb, though? That sounds like overkill.”
“You would not say that if you had seen what I have seen,” Eisenhov replied.
“Which was what?”
He did not answer straight away, as if summoning up the resolve to speak. “Two months before the Tsar Protocol was activated,” he said at last, “a sample of eitr was being transported to a missile testing site. There was an accident on the way. The eitr was spilled in a civilian area. It had … terrible effects. On people, but also on animals, plants, even insects—anything living. Most of the people who were exposed died within days, or even hours.” He paused, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. “They were the lucky ones. Those who survived …”
“What happened to them?” Nina demanded, after Eisenhov said nothing for several seconds.
He took a long, slow breath, then opened the folder again. “You may not want to see these pictures. They have been a state secret for half a century, seen only by those at the highest levels of government. All the men who saw them … wished they had not. But they understood at once why Khrushchev ordered the pit to be obliterated. Even at the height of the Cold War, no Russian ever again suggested using eitr as a weapon. Do you still want to see them?”
“No,” whispered Tova. “I do not.”
“I don’t want to either,” said Nina. “But … I think I have to. If this is an IHA matter, a global security threat, I’ve got to know what we’re dealing with.”
Eisenhov nodded. “You are a brave woman, Dr. Wilde. Very well. But remember that I warned you.” He reached forward again to hand several photographs to her.
Eddie leaned closer to look as she turned them over. “Oh Jesus.”
Nina couldn’t even speak as she stared at the first picture, horror and revulsion freezing any words in her throat. The image showed the upper body of a man lying on the ground, contorted in unimaginable agony at the moment of his death.
The cause was obvious. Parts of his face and neck appeared almost to have exploded from the inside, vile cancerous growths within the flesh having swollen to burst through his skin before themselves rupturing into oozing, diseased slurry. Bloodstains soaking through his clothing showed that the terrifying contagion had spread throughout his whole body.
Eisenhov’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Exposure to more than a few milliliters of eitr causes DNA to mutate and grow uncontrollably. The effect begins almost immediately. Death was the result in every case.”
Nina forced herself to talk. “And in smaller doses?”
“There are pictures.”
She reluctantly looked at the next photograph, afraid of what it would show her.
Her fears were justified.
Eddie closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Shit,” he whispered.
The picture showed a woman in a hospital bed, ugly lumps on her skin revealing that she too had been contaminated by the eitr. Her abdomen was covered in blood from a deep longitudinal incision—a Caesarean section, the umbilical cord still connected to the just-birthed child.
A child that was barely recognizable as human.
Nina fought the urge to vomit. The baby’s limbs were hideously malformed, one leg a withered, twisted stump, an arm bloated and covered with tumors and pustules. Ribs pushed through skin, a length of some intestinal organ hanging limply out of a hole beneath the distended stomach. But most appalling of all was the face, a gelatinous mass of twisted features trying to scream without a mouth, the one visible eye bulging in anguish …
The pictures slipped from her shaking hands to the floor as she squeezed her own eyes tightly shut, unable to bear the sight anymore.
“It did not live for long,” said Eisenhov in a quiet, saddened voice. “Fortunately.”
Tova gasped in horror as she glimpsed the fallen photographs, hurriedly looking away. Nina tried to speak again. “Wh—” Her mouth had gone bone-dry. “What … what about the mother?” she finally managed to say.
“She died soon after,” the Russian told her. “The child was born a month after she was exposed to the eitr. Only a few drops, but it was enough to do that to her, and to turn her baby into a monster.”
“It’s not a monster,” Eddie said angrily. “It was still a baby. It didn’t ask to be born like that. You did it, with your fucking experiments!”
“Experiments that we knew had to be stopped and never restarted,” Eisenhov replied, contrition clear even beneath his mask of stoicism. He gestured to Kagan, who collected the photographs. “Every kind of life in the area of the accident was affected. In the smaller forms, plants and insects, mutations spread quickly. Most died, but some survived long enough to breed—and passed down further mutations to the next generation. We saw that there was a danger of the contamination spreading beyond the quarantine zone. So the entire area was … sterilized.” He glanced up at the ceiling. Another of the do
mes lurked beside a light fitting.
“You killed everything?” Nina asked. Eisenhov nodded. “Including people?”
“It had to be done,” he said, sickened. “And may God have mercy on us. But we could not let the mutations spread. When Khrushchev learned what had happened, he immediately ordered all research on the eitr to be destroyed. Even the hydrogen bomb is not so terrible a weapon as the poison from inside the earth itself.”
“The blood of Jörmungandr,” said Tova. “The poison of the Midgard Serpent.”
“So the legend’s true, in a way,” Nina realized. “The eitr brings life, or at least changes it—maybe it was even responsible for kick-starting evolution billions of years ago by causing mutations on a massive scale.” She knew from her discoveries at Atlantis that a meteor had brought life to the primordial earth—but the eitr might have been what caused that life to explode into endless new forms. All birthed from poison, just as the Norse legends said. She looked at Eddie. “That’s what this girl’s grandfather was trying to do, wasn’t it? Take control of evolution, try to force it down the paths he wanted?”
“Volkov!” Again Eisenhov practically spat the name. “The man was insane—experimenting on his own wife and child! And when Khrushchev ended the project, he tried to sell his work to the Americans.”
“But you nuked him first,” said Eddie. “Good.”
“Yes. He burned for his greed, and now he burns in hell, where he belongs.” Kagan returned the photographs to the old man, who put them back in the folder and closed it. “But once we had seen for ourselves the terrible things that eitr could do if unleashed on the world,” Eisenhov continued, “we knew we had to make sure that never happened. So Unit 201 was created.”
“To find a way to neutralize it?” asked Nina.
“That is one of our purposes, yes,” Kagan told her. “Our scientists have created chemicals that may work.”
“May?” Eddie repeated. “That doesn’t sound too hopeful.”