‘So when you find the other pit, you just pour that stuff in, and foosh! All done?’ said Eddie. ‘Sounds easy enough.’
‘Not quite,’ Kagan told him.
‘Yeah, it never bloody is.’
‘Thor’s Hammer is as deadly as eitr,’ said Eisenhov. ‘We are using a poison to destroy a poison. It must be handled with great care. If it touches you, it will kill you.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ said Nina in a scathing tone. ‘But none of this matters if you can’t find the second pit, does it?’
‘Which is why I asked Grigory Alekseyevich,’ the old man nodded at Kagan, ‘to bring you here. We need your help. Now that our enemies — your enemies too — have both runestones, they will sooner or later find Valhalla — and when they do, they will find the second Ragnarök pit. You are our only hope of stopping them. If we do not, then… the Tsar Protocol will be activated. And the world will be thrown into war.’
‘Will you help us?’ Kagan asked.
Nina looked at her companions. ‘Do we have a choice?’
‘We should help ’em,’ said Eddie firmly. ‘I don’t want Hoyt or anyone like him getting hold of that shit. Because they’re the kind of people who’d actually use it.’ His expression became sorrowful. ‘I saw what Agent Orange did in Vietnam, and that was nothing compared to this stuff. And I saw what that did to Natalia. I made her a promise — that I’d do everything I could to stop anyone from carrying on with her grandfather’s work. And,’ he went on, managing a faint smile, ‘you know how I like to keep my promises.’
Kagan was not impressed. ‘If you had not made that promise, we would not be in this situation. Unit 201 would have done what it went to Vietnam to do — and Natalia would still be alive.’
‘I don’t need any fucking lectures from you,’ Eddie snapped back at him — then his expression suddenly changed from anger to dawning realisation. ‘Wait a minute…’
‘What?’ Nina asked.
Her husband was silent for a moment, thinking. Then: ‘You went to Vietnam,’ he said to Kagan. ‘Unit 201 went to Vietnam specifically to get hold of Natalia in a way that meant nobody’d suspect you were involved, right?’
‘That is right,’ Kagan replied, uncertain where the shift of direction was leading.
‘So how did you know she was there?’
‘Through intelligence reports,’ said Eisenhov. ‘The Americans had become interested in finding Volkov’s granddaughter. We realised there was only one possible reason why they would do that, so we resolved to act first. The Vietnamese secret police helped us locate her — though we did not tell them why we wanted to do so, of course.’
‘But if the Americans knew about Natalia already, they could have picked her up any time — she lived in Germany, it’s a US ally. It would have been a lot easier for them to operate there than in Vietnam… but it was the other way round for you. So they waited until she was in a country that was one of your allies — somewhere you could get away with kidnapping her.’
Kagan’s next words were wary. ‘You are leading somewhere, Chase. What are you saying?’
‘Hoyt told me that his people deliberately fed you information to get you out of Russia — out of here.’ Eddie gestured at the bunker’s walls. ‘But if Unit 201 is so secret, how did they know who to feed it to? Who gave the information to you?’
‘The intelligence officer—’ Kagan began, before abruptly breaking off and whirling to face Slavin. ‘The information came through you! What was its source?’
Slavin blinked, wide-eyed and perspiring. ‘The source…’ he began, before reverting to Russian and delivering a halting explanation. Neither Kagan nor Eisenhov appeared convinced.
‘Hoyt let you live,’ Eddie continued, also rounding on Slavin. ‘He shot the scientist in Natalia’s cabin, but when you came in, he let you go. He already knew you, didn’t he? You’re a fucking mole!’
‘Sookin syn!’ snarled Kagan. His hand darted into his jacket to draw a gun.
Slavin was faster, snatching the pistol from his uniform’s holster. He pointed it at Kagan—
‘Nyet!’ cried Eisenhov, stepping forward — as Slavin fired.
The bullet hit the old man in the chest. He convulsed, face filled with shock, then sagged to his knees before crumpling on to his front. The steel cylinder dropped from his hand and rolled across the floor before coming to rest near the shocked Nina’s feet.
‘Yes, I was working for the Americans,’ said Slavin, almost panting with barely contained panic. He glanced at the fallen container. ‘I still am — and now I will give them Thor’s Hammer!’
18
Chase stared at Lock. The American’s gun was unwavering. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ the Yorkshireman demanded.
‘Where’s Natalia?’ said Lock.
‘On a bus to fucking Saigon.’ Chase narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not really Natalia’s dad, are you?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Lock glanced at Hoyt, who was painfully levering himself upright. ‘Hoyt! She can’t be far away. Go find—’
‘Natalia, run!’ Chase yelled. ‘It’s a trap, get out of—’
Hoyt snatched up Sullivan’s fallen Kalashnikov and clubbed Chase with the wooden stock. The Englishman fell. Hoyt flipped the rifle around and took aim — but Lock’s shout froze his finger on the trigger. ‘No! Not yet, we need him to tell us where she is.’ He gestured with the Glock for Castille to kneel beside his friend. ‘I’ll cover them. You call in the others.’
‘What others?’ Castille asked as Hoyt, after giving Chase a poisonous look, headed for the Land Cruiser.
‘You’re not the only people I have working for me in this godforsaken country.’
‘Then why did you need us at all?’
‘’Cause we’re deniable,’ Chase said with a groan as he sat up. ‘If things went wrong, he didn’t want the Russians knowing he was on to them.’
Lock nodded. ‘If you hadn’t caused trouble, Natalia would have been taken away with the rest of the hostages. But instead, you had to be the hero.’
Chase managed a sarcastic grin. ‘That’s kind of my job.’
‘Your job was to do what you were hired to do, nothing more.’
‘And your job is, what? Use Natalia as a guinea pig so you can restart her grandad’s experiments?’
‘More or less. With the added bonus of having stolen the Russians’ research,’ he glanced towards Hoyt’s pack in the back of the Toyota, ‘while setting them back by years. The eitr has the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful weapon in the right hands… or a horrible threat in the wrong ones.’
‘And yours are the right hands, of course,’ said Castille scathingly.
‘Obviously.’
‘So who are you exactly?’ Chase demanded. ‘Another fucking spook, aren’t you? God, I hate spooks.’
‘And I’m sure the feeling is mutual. But yes, I’m the deputy director of the Biochemical Safety Agency.’
‘Never heard of it.’
Lock smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have.’
‘But this must be a major intelligence operation if a big-shot like you is out here in the sweaty arse-crack of nowhere to run it personally. You Yanks are taking a massive risk doing something like this in Vietnam, of all fucking places.’
The smile became sly. ‘It’s not exactly sanctioned. But I have a high degree of operational autonomy — and sins are always forgiven when a mission is successful. And this is an important mission, make no mistake. You want the Russians to get their hands on the eitr, Chase? Or the Chinese or — God forbid — the Iranians or North Koreans?’