As soon as he closed his front door behind him he started to strip, like a snake shedding its skin or a chameleon adjusting to its new surroundings. He hung up his coat and suit jacket, folded his trousers and shirt over a chair, and stood in the middle of his living room in his underwear. Then he dropped to the floor and started doing press-ups. He did a hundred every morning and every evening.

His exercise was another form of falsehood. His body was firm and strong and he worked hard, in secret, to create the appearance of effortless fitness. The press-ups were followed by rounds of star jumps, squats, and stomach crunches.

Likewise, the reason all his clothes fitted him so well was because every single item he owned, bought from the GUM state department store, had been impeccably tailored by an old babushka who lived two floors above him.

Deception was also the bedrock of his professional life. After he’d been rewarded for stopping the scientific directorate from falling apart after Medev had been killed, he’d toiled tirelessly to make Line Z into what it was today. By the force of his will he’d turned the Volk programme into a global apparatus of deceit. And now he was on the verge of doing the same with Project Mykl.

Project Mykl was Rykov’s greatest invention and achievement. It was an extension of the Volk programme. An evolution, really. It wouldn’t rely on the loyalty, or psychotic desires, of its operatives, because they wouldn’t even know they were working for Mykl—for Rykov—and, when they received their orders, they wouldn’t be able to resist them.

More than a sky filled with surveillance satellites or missile silos bursting with ICBMs, Rykov believed Project Mykl was the key to delivering final victory for the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

He’d been working on it for years, recruiting scientists, testing subjects, and quietly building political support for his grand experiment. Now, he was about to prove to Churkin that the faith he’d put in him was justified. However, as he finished his workout and poured himself an ice-cold glass of water his mind suddenly fixed on the warning Churkin had given him moments before Yegerova had appeared.

He wondered if the colonel general had known what had been about to happen. Or if there was something else going on that might pose an even more serious threat to the future of Project Mykl, and him.

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Bennett wasn’t sure what she could taste. It was metallic, but it wasn’t blood. It felt older, grittier, like decay and dirt. She knew the only way to work out for certain what it was—and where she was—would be to open her eyes and sit up. But she also knew that would make the throbbing ache in the side of her head worse.