The Valhalla Prophecy

by Andy McDermott

  “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 farther—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 re-create 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 with 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 apparently aimed not at the ceiling but the sprawling air base thirty meters 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 programs. 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 neutralize 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 to the highest-ranking members of Unit 201. He spoke urgently, gesturing toward 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 came a soft click followed by the hum of an electric motor. The entire bookcase retreated backward 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 panel: 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 neutralize 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.”

  “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 activat
ed. 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 with 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 realization. “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 realized 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 anytime—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 onto 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

  Vietnam

  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 can use him to draw her out.” 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 granddad’s experiments?”

  “More or less. With the added bonus of having stolen the Russians’ research”—he glanced toward 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?”

  “I don’t want anyone to have the fucking stuff,” Chase replied. “And Natalia doesn’t either.”

  Lock shook his head. “What she wants doesn’t really matter. This is way too important to leave up to civilians. Or their consciences.”

  Hoyt put down a radio. “They’re on their way, five minutes out.” He gestured toward the track leading north.

  “Good. When they arrive, send them after her—I doubt she’ll have gotten far.”

  “What about these two?” The tall mercenary moved his AK-47 back to Chase and Castille.

  Lock thought for a moment. “Make use of them. Chase, you’re going to call her back here.”

  “The only thing I’m going to call is you, a twat,” Chase replied defiantly. Despite the danger of the situation, Castille couldn’t help but smile.

  Hoyt stalked back to the group, gun raised. “Watch your fuckin’ mouth.”

  “You’ll call for her, Chase,” said Lock. “Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot your friend.” He aimed the Glock at Castille. “Just because I wear a suit rather than a uniform, don’t think I won’t do it.”

  Chase eyed Sullivan’s body. “I don’t,” he growled.

  “Good. You’ve got ten seconds.”

  “Edward, don�
�t do it,” Castille said—though with fear in his voice.

  Chase looked up at Lock and Hoyt, adrenaline driving away the pain. He was certain they intended to kill him and Castille whether or not he did what Lock asked. But from his current position, there was nothing he could do except make a futile attempt to tackle one of them, which would get him shot before he’d covered even half the distance …

  It was either that or watch Castille die, then wait for a bullet of his own. He was not going to surrender Natalia to them, no matter what.

  “Five seconds.”

  He shared a brief glance with Castille, communicating his intentions in an instant: Fight to the end. The Belgian understood, also preparing to move.

  “Four. Three.”

  Chase tensed—

  “Don’t shoot! Please, don’t hurt them!”

  All heads snapped around at the sound of Natalia’s voice. “No, run!” Chase cried as she emerged from the bushes—only to freeze as he saw what she was holding.

  The land mine was balanced precariously on her outstretched left hand. The detonator had been screwed back into position, and the wire removed from the safety pin hole. Her right hand was held palm down just above the trigger’s rusted prongs.

  The three mercenaries all regarded the weapon with alarm. “Is it live?” Castille asked cautiously as the young woman moved toward them.

  “It was when I took the detonator out,” Chase replied, grim-faced.

  “But the detonator is now back in.”

  “Yeah, I noticed!”

  Lock was more interested in Natalia than in what she was holding. “I told you she wouldn’t go far. Natalia, if you want your friends to live, you’ll do exactly what I tell you.”

  “Let them go,” she replied, voice trembling. “Or I use this.”

  He moved his gaze to her hands. “What is that? A land mine?”

  “Hell yeah, it’s a land mine,” Hoyt muttered. “It’s a goddamn Bouncing Betty!”

  Concern finally crossed Lock’s face as he registered the other American’s nervousness. “How dangerous is it?”

  “It’ll kill us all if it goes off.”