Lyoncheka led them into the corridor. The walls were painted a dull green, the floor gray. It went straight as far as they could see in the dim lighting. The steel door shut with a thud.
“During the Great Patriotic War,” Lyoncheka said as they walked, “Stalin had a very large bomb shelter built under the Kremlin. Then, during the Cold War, the various premiers continued building deeper and deeper shelters. The desire was to have a command-and-control center and living quarters that could survive a nuclear attack on the Kremlin itself. This was eventually expanded to have underground connections to various other government agencies.
“Billions and billions of rubles were spent. This network we’re in connects to many places under Moscow. There is even a secret underground rail line that goes over eighty kilometers outside of the city to the alternate national command post.”
Lyoncheka opened a heavy door. “This way. We are under the Great Kremlin Palace right now. About eighty feet below the surface.”
The tunnel was smaller and older. Cut right out of the rock, the walls were not finished and a thin sheen of moisture glistened in the faint glow of naked lightbulbs strung every twenty feet. Several of the lights were burned out.
They went about a hundred meters, then another door blocked their way. This one was wooden and very old, with iron bands across it. Turcotte noted a small electronic eye to the left and above the door, a strange thing given the apparent age of the tunnel and door.
Lyoncheka waved at the eye. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door swung open and they entered.
A sheet of thick, bullet- and blast-proof glass bisected the room and the top of a desk. A door made of the same thick glass was to the right.
A middle-aged woman, her hair gray, her body stout, looked up from a video screen on the desk. “Look what the wind has blown in,” she said. Her words carried to their side via a small speaker. Her hands were not visible.
“Pasha!” Lyoncheka greeted her.
The woman was all business. “Step forward, through the metal detectors.” Behind her, two large steel doors were closed.
Turcotte noticed the detectors on either side of the door. He stepped through, the alarm beeping and a red light going off. Each of the others did the same, with the same results.
“Your friends carry weapons. Tell them to slowly remove them and place them in the bin or they will be dead in five seconds.”
A panel on the front of the desk slid up, revealing two antipersonnel mines, pointed at them, and a metal bin.
“Nine.” Pasha’s voice was cold.
“Do as she says,” Lyoncheka advised.
Turcotte glanced at Yakov.
“Eight.”
The large Russian pulled his submachine gun from under his coat and placed it on the desk. Turcotte and Katyenka did the same. All weapons had been deposited by the time she got down to four.
“Back through the detector,” Pasha ordered.
Each stepped onto the elevator and back off. This time there was no alarm. “You vouch for these people?” Pasha asked Lyoncheka.
“I would not be here if I did not.” Lyoncheka pulled a Western cigarette out of a pack and placed it in the bin. The door slid shut. Pasha reached down, and her hands appeared for the first time, the cigarette in one, an AKSU folding-stock submachine gun in the other. She slipped the sling for the AKSU over her shoulder and picked up a lighter from the desktop, firing up the cigarette.
Turcotte recognized the weapon… top-of-the-line commando issue in Russia. A shortened version of the AK-74, an updated model of the venerable AK-47, but firing a smaller 5 .45 mm round, more in line with modern thinking that a smaller, faster bullet was more devastating in causing wounds than a slower, larger bullet. She picked up a large satchel, which she looped over her shoulder.
“You have not been here for months,” Pasha said. She took a deep drag, then eyed him through the smoke and thick glass.
Lyoncheka spread his arms. “Ah, Pasha, you know the life of the spy. We are always being ordered to go here and there and… ”
Turcotte was surprised at the change in the FSB man. He almost seemed human. “I checked on you,” Pasha said. “You have been in Moscow for the past three months.”
The glass door clicked open.
“Ah.” Lyoncheka walked through the door and around the desk, almost bumping his head on a low beam that cut across the ceiling. He placed his large hands on her equally large shoulders. “Pasha, Pasha, Pasha. I’ve thought of you. On those cold nights when… ”
“Oh, stop it.” She nodded at Yakov. “I know of him. He is Section Four. There are whispers of trouble at Stantsiya Chyort.”
“It was destroyed,” Lyoncheka confirmed. “Everyone killed.”
Pasha’s eyes immediately flickered toward the tunnel door and back. “They are getting closer.”
“‘They’?” Yakov asked.
Pasha ignored him. “Things are still very strict here, Lyoncheka. There are still screams coming through the pipes.” She nodded toward a small heating vent on the wall.
“There are larger dangers now,” Lyoncheka said. “We need to access the Archives.”
Lyoncheka reached inside of his shirt and pulled out a key. Pasha did the same. They walked to opposite ends of the room where two control boxes were bolted to the wall. Each inserted their key, then Lyoncheka counted to three. They turned at the same time.
“If we do not do this correctly,” Lyoncheka said, “the Archives will be buried.”
The steel doors slid open, revealing a large elevator. The five of them entered, Pasha pushing the button to close the doors.
Turcotte felt a slight lessening of his weight as they descended. “How deep are we going?”
“A half mile,” Pasha replied.
“Who runs this place?” Yakov asked.
“I do,” Lyoncheka said. “The Alien Archives were established by the KGB right after the Great Patriotic War. Section Four was the official response, but of course the KGB trusted no one. As did the GRU, the military’s intelligence service,” he added with a sideways glance at Katyenka. “So we had three organizations trying to keep things secret from each other as much as anyone else.
“As we became aware of the alien organizations and their infiltrations into human society, we in the KGB realized we had to reduce the number of people aware of the Archives to a minimum.” A smile without humor crossed Lyoncheka’s dour face. “After many years and purges, Pasha and I have become the minimum. Even the current director does not know of the existence of these Archives.”
Turcotte thought about that. What good had it done the Russians to bury their knowledge like this? In a way, he knew that Lyoncheka had played into the aliens’ hands while trying to protect what he had access to from them. The cult of paranoia had a very high price.
The elevator halted with a slight jar. The doors rumbled open. A dank corridor, lit with an occasional light, beckoned.
“We do not have much money for maintenance,” Lyoncheka said. “And what little we have, we spend on security devices.” He stepped off the elevator. “This way.”
He led the way down the corridor fifty meters from the door.
“How much farther?” Katyenka asked.
“The Archives are much deeper,” Lyoncheka said. “The elevator was the easiest descent. It gets harder from here.”
“Any more gates or security devices?” Katyenka asked.
“No,” Lyoncheka said. “We are… ” He didn’t finish the sentence, as Katyenka slashed the sharpened point of a plastic ice-scraper across Pasha’s neck, severing the carotid artery in a spray of blood. Even as Pasha’s body fell, Katyenka’s other hand grabbed the AKSU and brought it to bear on the three men.