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Chapters (86)
  1. Foreword
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. 14
  16. 15
  17. 16
  18. 17
  19. 18
  20. 19
  21. 20
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  29. 28
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  35. 34
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  40. 39
  41. 40
  42. 41
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  44. 43
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  46. 45
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  55. 54
  56. 55
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  86. Afterword

The head of the lab, a man named McKinsey, arrived at work before dawn. He liked the winter and walked to work across a forested portion of the base in snowshoes that had been sent by his mother, shipped all the way to Germany from her home in Baudette, Minnesota. He was surprised when he arrived at the security perimeter to find that the shutdown routines from the night before hadn’t been run correctly. He called the lead technician, Thomson, but there was no answer on his cell. He tried his house and Thomson’s wife said he’d never come home the night before.

The technicians at the lab, as employees of the CIA with top-level clearances, were subject to a rigorous security regime. If any of them left the base, the head of the lab was immediately informed. McKinsey checked the email on his phone but there was nothing from the base notification service.

It wasn’t like Thomson not to be available, he was a steady man, reliable, but everyone had their moments.

It wasn’t until he called Prout, Rutherford, and Aston, the other three technicians, and none of them picked up, that McKinsey began to worry.

This was a serious protocol breach, and he was required to pass it up the line to base command.

But before he did, he went down to the lab to make sure he wasn’t over-reacting. The lab had an airlock procedure that would have required him to suit up before entering, but it also had video cameras connected to screens in a control room that gave him a clear view of what was going on inside without requiring a full suit up.

He went to the control room and scanned the cameras.

The lab was empty.

Then his eye stopped on something unusual. It was a shoe.

Someone was lying on the ground.

20

Novouralsk was a closed city about fifty miles from Yekaterinburg. When it was founded during the Second World War, it was known simply as Sverdlovsk-44. Mail was sent to Sverdlovsk where the 44 postcode designated it as military.

No one who lived in the city was allowed to divulge its existence to outsiders. Residents were severely restricted and were prohibited from traveling abroad or communicating with the outside world. The city appeared on no road signs or railway timetables. In order to travel there, special papers from the KGB were required.

Its existence was not admitted by the Russian government until 1994, when satellite imagery made a mockery of attempts to keep a city of a hundred thousand secret any longer. Although its existence was no longer denied, the city remained enclosed in a security perimeter, watched by armed guards in towers.

Sofia Ivanovna sat motionless in the back of a military helicopter as it landed. Wind whipped down from the Urals so ferociously the entire chopper swayed over the helipad.