‘To find a way to neutralise it?’ asked Nina.
‘That is one of our purposes, yes,’ Kagan told her. ‘Our scientists have created chemicals that may work.’
‘May?’ Eddie repeated. ‘That doesn’t sound too hopeful.’
‘There is a problem,’ said Eisenhov. ‘We have no way to test our theories — because we have no eitr to test them upon! All the samples were incinerated, and the pit was sealed by the Tsar Bomba. Khrushchev was right to stop the experiments, yes, but he went further — he ordered everything destroyed. And we were too quick to obey.’ He shook his head. ‘If we had kept some of the research, we would have precious information that could have helped us. Instead, we had to recreate everything from memory alone. And even after fifty years, and now with computers and genetic sequencing to help us, we do not know if that is enough.’
Kagan eyed Eddie. ‘But if we had found someone who had been contaminated by eitr, a person whose DNA we could test and compare to an uninfected sample…’
Eddie jabbed a finger at him. ‘Don’t you even fucking start.’
Nina looked between the two men. ‘What?’
‘He means Natalia — and he’s going to blame me for them not getting what they were after!’
‘If you had not interfered eight years ago,’ said Kagan, ‘we would have let her go, and returned here with everything we needed.’
Eddie jumped to his feet. ‘Maybe if you’d just fucking asked her, instead of acting like spooks and coming up with some fake kidnapping bullshit, she would have let you take a blood sample!’
Eisenhov raised a hand, speaking sharply to Kagan before addressing the others. ‘Enough, please. What is done is done. We cannot change it — we can only try to correct our mistakes. And to stop others from making the same ones.’
‘Which is Unit 201’s other purpose, right?’ said Nina. ‘You knew from the runestone at the test site that there’s another source of eitr out there, somewhere. So you’ve been trying to find it — before anyone else does.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Eisenhov replied. ‘But we have not been successful. The runes said that the Vikings reached the pit on Novaya Zemlya from Valhalla — but they did not say where Valhalla was.’
‘But the two runestones that Hoyt’s nicked do,’ Eddie pointed out. ‘And Berkeley’s translating them. He took longer than Tova to work out that the second stone was under the lake — but he got there eventually.’
‘We must find Valhalla,’ Kagan insisted. ‘We must destroy the eitr before the Americans reach it.’
‘And what if your anti-eitr doesn’t work?’ asked Nina.
A change in Eisenhov’s attitude caught the attention of all three visitors, the old man stiffening in his chair. He took in a deep, slow breath, considering his next words very carefully. ‘If it does not,’ he said, ‘then Unit 201 has failed. If that happens, the military takes over.’ He looked up, his gaze aimed not at the ceiling but the sprawling airbase thirty metres above.
‘Meaning what?’ said Eddie. The sudden tension in his voice suggested to Nina that he already had a horrible idea of the answer.
‘The Tsar Protocol was never rescinded,’ Eisenhov told the group. ‘It remains active to this day. The Soviet Union had several secret… doomsday programmes. After it fell, Russia maintained them. The Tsar Protocol was one.’
Despite the heat, Nina felt an icy cold run through her body. ‘Wait — if you find the other pit, and you can’t neutralise the eitr… you’ll nuke it?’
Eisenhov nodded solemnly. ‘Wherever it may be. Even if it is in the United States — even if it is in Washington itself. That is the Tsar Protocol. Nobody can be allowed to control the eitr. It must be destroyed. No matter what.’
Tova stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘That is insane,’ she whispered.
Nina saw that Slavin, standing quietly by the door, had a similarly shocked expression. Knowledge of the Tsar Protocol had clearly been limited only to the highest-ranking members of Unit 201. He spoke urgently, gesturing towards the exit to indicate that he should leave, but Eisenhov shook his head. He replied to the younger man, then addressed the Westerners. ‘Kolzak Iakovich thinks that what I have just told you is, how do you say, above his security clearance,’ he said. ‘But I need every possible idea for how to deal with this situation. I do not want the Tsar Protocol to be activated again. But if we fail…’ He let his grim words hang in the air.
‘You’re willing to risk war — an all-out nuclear war — over this?’ Nina said, appalled.
Eisenhov held up the folder. ‘You have seen what eitr can do, and this was only a small amount. Can you imagine it unleashed over an entire civilian population? Those who do not die will be left as monsters, their children cursed for generation upon generation. Nobody must ever be allowed to possess such a terrible thing. Nobody.’
‘But if we find the second pit and destroy the eitr, that does not need to happen,’ said Kagan.
‘So long as your gunk does what it’s supposed to,’ Eddie pointed out.
Eisenhov spoke in Russian, and Kagan helped him stand. The old man shuffled to one of the bookcases. He reached under a shelf, groping for a moment, then there was a soft click followed by the hum of an electric motor. The entire bookcase retreated backwards and slid sideways out of sight behind the wooden panels to reveal a gleaming metal safe door set into the steel wall.
Eddie nodded in approval. ‘We need one of those at home,’ he told Nina. ‘Good place to keep all our porn.’
‘All your porn, I think you mean,’ she replied.
‘Yeah. Yours wouldn’t fit in something that small.’
‘I don’t have any porn,’ she insisted. But the exchange had eased her tension, slightly. She watched as Eisenhov placed one palm flat against a black glass paneclass="underline" a handprint scanner. A soft chime sounded. The elderly Russian then squinted at a keypad in a recess, moving in front of it to block the view of the room’s other occupants as he tapped in a code. Another chime — then a deep metallic thunk came from within the door as thick locking bars retracted, and it slowly swung open.
Inside were numerous files and metal containers marked with Cyrillic text. Eisenhov reached for one of them, a steel cylinder roughly a foot high and eight inches in diameter. The metal was clearly thick; it was a strain for him to lift. He held it by its curved carrying handle and turned to face his audience. ‘This is our best hope,’ he said. ‘Its official name is Article 3472, but we call it “Thor’s Hammer”. In Viking legend, Thor killed the great serpent. If we are right, this will do the same to the eitr.’
Tova looked uncomfortable. ‘I do not want to sound negative, but Thor also died. Jörmungandr’s poison — the eitr — killed him.’
‘Then I hope we do better,’ said Kagan.
Nina regarded the cylinder. ‘So what does Thor’s Hammer actually do?’
‘It is a chemical compound,’ Eisenhov explained, ‘that should neutralise the eitr completely. Once introduced into the source, it will break down the mutagenic agents and make them harmless. It is,’ he searched for the right English word, ‘an autocatalytic reaction. Once it begins, it will spread through the eitr until it is all destroyed. If, as we believed at Novaya Zemlya, there are underground channels through which the eitr flows, then if they are all connected it may wipe out all the eitr in the world. We do not know — but we can hope.’