‘How deep down are we going?’ Nina asked.
‘The facility is thirty metres underground,’ Kagan replied. ‘It is designed so that in an emergency, it can be completely sealed off from the surface. And if necessary, sterilised.’
Eddie regarded him dubiously. ‘What do you mean, sterilised?’
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 hazmat suits. More doors obstructed the corridor itself every few dozen metres, 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 realised 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 panelled in wood, overstacked bookshelves occupying much of the wall space. Soft music came from a portable CD player; she belatedly recognised 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-shrunk frame, giving him an oddly childlike 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 decor 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 towards Kagan, ‘was able to bring you here alive and well.’
‘Not everyone in 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 towards 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 details 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 over 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?’