by Alex Archer
“All right, Annja,” Charles said, “I’ll trust your judgment. That’s why I hired you, to make decisions and run the expedition the way you see fit. But if things get difficult, I want you to pull back and rethink this.”
Does infiltrating a hidden Soviet bunker to ride on a subway train that may or may not actually exist count as difficult? she wanted to ask. And to think some people didn’t see restraint as one of her finer qualities.
“I will,” she said, and then made arrangements to check in with him again inside of the next forty-eight hours.
Annja handed the phone back to Gianni, who slipped it into his pocket.
Not long after the conversation with Sir Charles Davies, Vlad left the main road behind for a little-used forest road about eight kilometers outside of Ramenskoye. They climbed steadily as they drove deeper into the forest, advancing for another couple of miles before Vlad pulled the car into the lie of a large pine and parked.
“Walk from here,” Vlad told them.
They gathered their gear from the back of the van, double-checked that their lights worked and that they all had extra light sticks and water bottles in their pockets and then set off once more. This time moving northward through the trees.
Ten minutes later they found themselves standing before a heavy chain-link fence. A sign hanging on it no doubt warned of all the terrible things that would happen to them if they were caught trespassing in the compound on the other side, but since she couldn’t read it, Annja didn’t feel as if she was breaking any rules by ignoring it. While some of the lettering was faded from long exposure to the elements, the red hammer and sickle emblem still stood out starkly against the white background.
While Annja and Gianni watched, Vlad used bolt cutters to cut a rectangular opening into the fence, which when viewed sideways looked like a U with the opening to the left. He then peeled back the loose section, holding it open for them to slip through before following. Once he was on the other side, he let the loose section of the fence fall back into place and then secured it with a couple of plastic zip ties.
It wouldn’t pass close inspection, Annja knew, but from a distance it would help make the fence look as if it was still intact and hadn’t been tampered with. The fact that Vlad went to such trouble to hide their presence out here in the middle of nowhere either spoke to the care he took with every task or the fact that this area might still be in use by active military personnel, despite the Red Army’s sigil on that sign.
Annja really hoped it was the former.
Without a word Vlad set off again, cutting through the trees on a slightly eastern heading this time. The woods around them were quiet, the only sounds the tramp of their feet through the undergrowth and the occasional snap as a branch broke beneath their weight. After another ten minutes, they reached their destination.
In the valley below them was the Soviet-era facility Vlad had told them about. It might have looked like the campus of a small, private college in Anywhere, U.S.A., if the college had chosen to construct its buildings from thick gray stone and undecorated steel. The buildings gave off a distinct sense of menace, as if the nature of the work that had gone on there imparted a certain personality that lingered like a ghost.
Annja didn’t like the look of the place.
She wasn’t alone in her reservations, either. Gianni hung back, not wanting to go too deep into the compound, it seemed; he kept glancing behind them as if expecting someone to be there.
Vlad, however, barely noticed their anxiety, or if he did notice he pretended not to. He led them across the campus until they reached a small, unassuming building off the beaten path from the rest of the compound. He produced a key and unlocked the door. Taking them down several hallways, only their booted feet broke the silence, a silence that felt as if it had fallen over the place centuries ago. Annja was starting to second-guess the whole idea of coming here in the first place when Vlad stopped so abruptly she almost walked into him.
“We are here,” the big Russian said, and Annja looked around at the empty hallway and the door at the far end. What on earth was Vlad talking about? There wasn’t anything here.
Gianni voiced what she was thinking.
“We’re here?” he asked, the sarcasm in his voice loud and clear. “Where, exactly, is ‘here’ and what are we supposed to do from this point?”
By way of reply, Vlad walked over to the door, opened it and shone his light down the stairwell on the other side, leading deeper into the earth. He turned toward them and smiled that trademark smile of his.
“The underground awaits, my friends.”
Chapter 24
Sergeant Danislov watched on the closed-circuit camera as Miss Creed and her two companions descended the stairs and began the long walk down the hall toward the exit at the other end. Occasionally Annja would peer in through a window or try a door, but they were always locked. This wasn’t surprising to Danislov, for he’d gone down that same hallway not twenty minutes before and locked them all himself. He didn’t want Miss Creed and her companions straying from the carefully chosen script he’d decided they should follow.
Two hours ago Colonel Goshenko had called him into his office and handed him the plans for this Soviet-Army-base-turned-KGB-training-facility.
“Creed survived,” Goshenko had said bluntly.
The surprise must have shown on Danislov’s face, because Goshenko had added, “Yeah, I felt the same way. Should have known Chernov was an idiot the minute he started talking about that sword. My only regret is that I didn’t shoot him early enough.”
“Where is she now?” Danislov had asked.
“Making another attempt to reach the library through the mothballed facility for which I just handed you the blueprints. I want you to be sure she succeeds.”
It was perhaps the last thing Danislov had expected to hear and for a moment he’d been at a loss for words.
The colonel had grinned. “Ask yourself this—why should we go through all the tedium of looking for Ivan’s vault ourselves when we can just let Creed do all the work and then take what’s ours once the work is done?”
Now Danislov watched them move deeper into the facility. “Keep going,” he murmured, “keep going.”
The plan was a simple one. He was going to drive Creed forward, little by little, step by step, until she brought them to the vault’s doorstep.
And after that, well, Miss Creed wouldn’t be important anymore, would she?
The first order of business, it seemed, was getting them into the next section of the base.
* * *
THEY DESCENDED THIRTEEN stories—Annja kept track of each pair of landings they passed, counting them off in her head, noting the number—until they reached the bottom floor. The lights on their helmets stretched out along the corridor that opened up before them, revealing the stark design and lack of aesthetics that had been de rigueur in the height of the Soviet era.
Vlad reached over and flipped a switch on the wall.
Lights came on along the ceiling.
“How’d you do that?” Annja asked. If the base hadn’t been used in years, the electricity shouldn’t still be running, should it?
“Reactor built first in early 1980s. Big enough to power entire city. Ramenskoye built after that, directly on reactor. Base probably still have working light long after rest of us are dead.”
A Soviet reactor running quietly without supervision somewhere beneath their feet. Running for the past thirty years. The hair on her arms stood up. What if the wall of that reactor had been decaying all this time, letting the poison that powered it seep out into the earth around them? How would anyone know what was going on if the facility wasn’t monitored regularly?
They wouldn’t, she realized, and that was not a comforting thought.
They followed those lights down the corridor for what felt like forever. Only occasionally would the monotony of the bare walls be broken by the sudden appearance of a door, but each time Vlad pas
sed it, intent on some other destination. Annja couldn’t resist trying a few of the doors they passed along the way. They were always locked, though, so she stopped bothering.
Eventually the corridor ended at a door exactly like all the other doors they had passed.
“What’s behind this one? More stairs?” Annja teased, but Vlad shook his head.
“No stairs,” he said. “Something much more amazing.”
He opened the door and gestured for them to go ahead.
Stepping through, Annja processed how enormous the space was. She couldn’t see far with her light, but she could feel the emptiness, the way you could when you stood on the end zone in an indoor football stadium and stared down the length of the field toward the other end.
Vlad moved to the wall, opened up a control panel that reminded her of an old-fashioned fuse box and began to throw switches.
Out in the darkness, lights began to come on. They were so artfully arranged that because of the use of angles and mirrors you didn’t see any single lamp. The effect was that of all the lights combined into one large lamp, like a sunrise.
The first thing she noticed after that was the Golden Arches. They were so incongruous that she actually rubbed her eyes. But they were there all right, on a street that looked as if it had been taken directly out of small-town America.
From where she stood she could see a Mercantile Bank, an Ace Hardware store, a 7-Eleven, a Sunoco gas station, a Stop & Shop grocery store…a public park and an elementary school. What looked to be a couple of blocks of residential dwellings spread out in both directions from the town center, as if in replica of the way small communities all across America had sprung up around a central common and expanded outward from that point.
“What on earth?” Gianni began, and then lapsed into muttered Italian as he struggled to figure out just what it was he was looking at.
Annja knew exactly how he felt. What was small-town America doing deep beneath a Soviet military base in the middle of nowhere?
Then it hit her.
She was looking at a “charm school,” a KGB training facility designed to teach Soviet sleeper agents how to act like Americans before sending them to become part of American society.
She turned and looked at Vlad in astonishment.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.
“Da,” Vlad said. “Soviet spies trained here to be Americans. Order Mickey D’s hamburgers, save money in bank account, shop at grocery store. Just like you.”
Actually, Annja couldn’t remember the last time she’d done any of those things—she ordered out far more often than she cooked anything for herself, never mind shopped at a grocery store—but she knew what he meant.
Vlad pointed to the far end of the stadium-like space, where it looked like the miniaturized forms of skyscrapers were rising up over a faux city.
“Metro station that way,” he said. “Tunnel will take us direct to Kremlin.”
Annja made note of its location. It would be a good rendezvous point if they got separated.
They set off down the main road and Annja marveled at the details, from the fire hydrants and white picket fences along the street to the old-fashioned cars parked at the curbs. She couldn’t help but go into the bank for a few moments. It was like something out of an old eighties cop show, with open teller windows instead of massive sheets of bulletproof glass. A sign inside talked about mortgage rates just above nine percent and Annja blinked at that. She didn’t remember times being that bad, but then again, she’d only been a child in the eighties.
Seeing Happy Meals listed for two dollars and apple pies for fifty cents was like going back to a time she barely remembered, where a family of four could eat for less than ten bucks and the sign out front under the Golden Arches read 80 Billion Served.
They’d gotten so much right—the width of the sidewalks, the height of the picket fences, the size and shape of the fire hydrants. It was incredible and she could imagine what it had been like when it was operational, full of people pretending to be Americans every minute of every day.
They were halfway across the training ground when the lights went out.
The sudden darkness brought Annja up short and she let out a whispered, “You’ve got to be kidding!” It was blacker than black all about her, a darkness so complete that it felt as if it had substance and weight all its own.
Annja didn’t like it.
Which was why she was quite happy to see some small lights come on throughout the “town” a moment later. Streetlamps, lights behind the windows of the residences, small pinpoints of light in the “sky” above simulating stars. It was like standing outside in those moments right after the sun had set and night had fallen.
Vlad happened to be standing near a streetlamp and as its light fell on his face she could see that he was worried.
“What is it?” she asked.
Vlad frowned, then pointed a finger skyward. “Lights on timer. Sun sets six hours after system starts.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Gianni asked, his eyes narrowing as he pondered the implications of Vlad’s statement. “Is it a malfunction of some kind?”
Vlad shrugged. “Maybe.”
That seemed to satisfy Gianni, but not Annja. She’d heard the doubt in Vlad’s voice and wasn’t yet ready to let the matter go.
“If it’s not a malfunction, what else could it be?” she asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear him say it, anyway.
He looked right at her, letting her see the concern in his own eyes as he said, “Someone resetting system manually.”
Annja liked that idea even less. They were deep underground in a long-abandoned military facility that your average Russian probably didn’t even know existed, never mind knew how to find. No way was someone just going to stumble on the place at the exact same moment they were passing through it.
That could mean somebody else was here specifically because the three of them were, which made her think of the squad in the tunnels the night before. But why would they reset the system to this facility? What would it accomplish? And how had they found their trail so quickly? They must’ve arrived only moments apart. What did they want?
They wanted the map, of course. That was easy enough to figure out.
And she was the one holding it.
“Perhaps we’d better move a little quicker, just in case,” she said, and Vlad agreed.
Annja happened to be looking over Vlad’s shoulder when she said it and caught the gun flash. A moment later she felt the wind part her hair to the left of her face.
Then and only then did the rifle report reach them across the intervening space.
There was no time for subtleties.
“Run!” Annja yelled.
Chapter 25
Annja broke left, instinctively heading down a side street that had its fair share of parked cars and overhanging trees. She stuck to the dense shadows, not wanting to offer an easy target. Halfway down the street she cut left again, slipped between two houses and began working her way back in the direction they had come from, determined to catch a glimpse of whoever it was that kept interrupting their plans.
It didn’t take long.
On the next street over she caught motion out of the corner of her eye and turned to see someone dash across the street and hunker down behind a nearby car.
She thought it might be Gianni. But she kept her mouth shut until she could get closer. If it was him, she didn’t want to risk giving away their position.
She followed him, waiting to see what he would do.
It soon became clear that it wasn’t Gianni at all. For one thing the individual she was following seemed taller than the Italian. For another, his head looked oddly disfigured, pointed in the front and bulbous in the back, like it was swollen in all the wrong places.
So it wasn’t Gianni and it wasn’t Vlad, which meant he was a fair target.
She watched as the man hustled over to a new vantage
point, hunkered down and then scanned the area. When she looked in the same direction he was looking, she couldn’t see anything. The darkness swallowed up everything past the first five feet or so. That led her to the idea that her target could see better in the dark than she could.
That tidbit of information raised all sorts of interesting possibilities.
It was time she and the unknown individual she was following had a nice little chat.
She waited for him to move again, this time from behind a parked car to the edge of a house two yards over. As he got ready to check out the area directly in front of his hiding place, Annja rushed him on silent feet. As she got closer, she called her sword to her, reassured by its familiar weight when it appeared from the otherwhere.
Her target must have realized he was no longer alone and began to turn just as she swung the pommel of her sword into the side of his head.
She fully expected him to topple over unconscious, so she was caught by surprise when he reared up and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off the ground as he got to his feet.
That’s when she realized that part of the reason he’d looked so funny was his immense size; he had to be at least six and three-quarters, maybe even seven feet tall.
With her feet dangling in the air and her waist gripped tightly in her opponent’s hands, Annja began to question the wisdom of her decision to chase him in the first place.
This close she could see that the bulbous thing she’d seen attached to the front of his head was a pair of military-issue night-vision goggles.
Her appreciation of the goggles he was wearing over his face came to an abrupt halt when he growled something at her in Russian and began to squeeze.
That’s when she discovered that in addition to being freakishly tall, he also had hands like a vise. He had no intention of letting go and he let her know it by squeezing harder, laughing all the while.