Once done, he stood up and shouldered his weapon.
Having lost his radio, Borsakov was on his own, the only survivor from the airboat crash. The pilot’s arm had been severed by the fan. Another soldier’s head had been caved in, struck by the edge of the flipping boat. The last had been found floating facedown, drowned.
Only Borsakov remained, though he bore a long jagged cut down his calf, sliced to the bone. He had used one of his dead men’s shirts to wrap and bind the injury. He would need medical attention to prevent losing his leg to infection from the muddy water.
But first he had a job to do.
Failure was not an option.
Limping on his bad leg, Borsakov set off after his prey.
16
September 7, 8:11 A.M.
Pripyat, Ukraine
“Wake up!”
Gray heard the words, but his brain took another moment to decipher them. A stinging slap cut through his grogginess. Light filled his head then dissolved into watery images.
Luca leaned over him and shook Gray’s shoulders.
Coughing, Gray pushed the man back and rose to an elbow. He stared around the room. He was in a bare cement cell with peeling, blistered paint and a rusted red door. Light came from a single barred window high up on the wall. Beneath the window, Kowalski sat on a moldy thin mattress, his head hanging between his knees, groaning with nausea.
Gray took a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and recalled what had happened. He remembered a hard climb out of the canyon at gunpoint, a short helicopter ride, then a cargo plane on a rain-swept airstrip. He fingered a bruise on his neck. Once aboard the plane, they’d been drugged.
Gray had no idea where they’d been taken.
“Elizabeth…Rosauro…?” he asked hoarsely.
Luca shook his head. He slumped against the wall and sank to his bottom. “I don’t know where they are. Maybe another cell.”
“Any idea where we are?”
Luca shrugged. Kowalski groaned.
Gray gained his feet, waited for the world to stop spinning, then stepped toward the window. It was too high to reach on his own.
Kowalski lifted his head, noted where Gray was staring. “Pierce, you’ve got to be kidding.”
“Get up,” he ordered. “Help me.”
Kowalski held his stomach but rose to his feet. He clenched his fingers together into a stirrup. “What do you think I am? Your personal ladder?”
“Ladders complain a lot less.”
Gray mounted the man’s grip, reached to the lower lip of the window, and with Kowalski’s help, he chinned up to the bars. He gazed across a strange landscape. A town, half consumed by forest, spread outward. The place looked dilapidated and shell-shocked. Roofs were covered in moss or collapsed, windows shattered into broken fangs, fire escapes dripped with icicles of rust, and weeds and bushes sprouted out of cracked asphalt. Across the street, a faded billboard advertised some sort of fair, depicting a Ferris wheel and carnival rides. In the foreground, a stylized version of a strappingly robust family headed toward the amusements.
Across the city, Gray spotted the same Ferris wheel from the billboard outlined against the barren sky. A lonely relic of former glory. Gray’s limbs grew leaden at the sight. He knew where he was. The abandoned amusement ride had become emblematic for the city.
“Chernobyl,” he mumbled and dropped back down to the floor.
But why had they been brought here?
Gray recalled the pathologist’s report on Dr. Polk’s body. The radiation signature suggested the professor had been poisoned here. Though further testing by Malcolm Jennings had clouded this assessment.
What was going on?
Over the next ten minutes, Gray searched the entire cell and tested the door. Though rusted, it remained secure. Gray heard sounds of someone out there: a shuffle of foot, a soft cough. Most likely a guard. He must have heard them talking and radioed his superiors because shortly thereafter a tromping of boots approached the door.
Too many to ambush.
Gray stepped back as the door pulled open. With pistols pointed, soldiers in black-and-gray uniforms stormed into the room. They opened the way for a tall man to step forward, framed in the doorway. His features were not unlike those of the father from the faded billboard outside. His face was all angles and hard corners; a trimmed beard defined a strong chin. He wore a navy blue suit with a red silk tie, tailored handsomely to his physique. Even down to his—
“Nice shoes,” Kowalski commented.
The man glanced to his polished black oxfords and frowned at the unexpected assessment of his wardrobe.
“Well, they are,” Kowalski said with a note of defensiveness.
The newcomer’s eyes shifted to Gray. “Dobraye utro, Commander Pierce. If you’ll come with me, we have some business to discuss and not much time.”
Gray remained where he was. “Not until you tell me where the two women—”
A hand waved dismissively. “Elizabeth Polk and Dr. Shay Rosauro. Both fine, I assure you. In fact, their accommodations are a bit more refined. But we had very little time to prepare. If you’ll come this way, please.”
The six soldiers with pistols diminished the politeness of the invitation. Led out into a hallway, Gray studied his surroundings. Cells lined both sides, plainly an abandoned jail. Through some of the open doors, he spotted standing water, rusted overturned beds, and refuse piled high into corners. It made their cell’s accommodations seem generous in comparison.
The hallway ended at a guard station. It had a view across an overgrown, weedy jail yard. In the distance, off by the horizon, Gray noted the tall ventilation tower that marked the Chernobyl reactor.
Closer at hand, a chair squeaked with an almost nervous sound.
Gray turned. A table stood in the middle of the room. Masterson sat behind it, straightening in his seat, again dressed all in white, looking well rested and smug. Gray had to refrain himself from leaping over and snapping the bastard’s neck. But he needed some answers, and cooperation seemed the best way of obtaining it.
Forced to a chair on the opposite side of the table, Gray sat down. A gun remained pointed at the back of his head.
Another stranger waited in the room. She stood behind the table. Her black hair framed a smoky face, stoic and unmoving. She was also dressed in a black suit, a close match in style to that of the man who had led Gray here. The stranger crossed to the table and sat down, barely acknowledging Masterson.
The man folded his hands atop the table. “My name is Senator Nicolas Solokov. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
Gray said nothing, which caused the man’s mouth to quirk with disappointment.
“No? Well, that will be changing,” he responded. He waved to the slim woman. She crossed to Gray, moving with a stiff grace. She sank to a knee beside his chair, tilted her head, and reached toward his hand. Before she touched him, she cocked an eyebrow, inquiring permission.
Gray shrugged. She gently lifted his hand and rested her palm beneath his. Her fingertips tickled the underside of his wrist. Her eyes stared deeply into his.
“We’ve already had a conversation with Elizabeth Polk,” Nicolas said.
“Dr. Polk’s daughter informed us of your discovery in India. Truly amazing. That information alone was worth transporting you all here. It’s fascinating to contemplate that our heritage extends all the way to ancient Greece, to the famous Oracle of Delphi.”
Gray cleared his throat. “Your heritage?”
He waved to the woman. “And Elena’s. We’re all from the same genetic bloodline.”
Gray remembered Luca’s story. “From the lost Gypsies.”
“Yes. Dr. Masterson has informed me that you were told about the unfortunate, but necessary acquisition of those children. In fact, my father was one of those Gypsy children. And I believe you’ve met another of our extended family. Little Sasha. A girl with a special talent.”
Gray knew to whom he must be refer
ring, but he kept his features bland, feigning ignorance.
Elena turned to Nicolas and spoke softly in Russian.
The senator nodded. “So you have met Sasha. Please do not trouble yourself to lie.” He motioned to the woman at his feet. “Elena is quite—well, perceptive, shall we say. Her touch is very sensitive, measuring the heat of your skin, your pulse. She is also keyed into your pupils and breath. Nothing escapes her. She is my personal lie detector.”
Nicolas pointed to his ear. Elena turned, and with her other hand, she parted her hair behind her ear. Gray spotted a familiar curve of surgical steel. The same implant as the girl’s. The woman was the adult equivalent of Sasha, only with a different savant talent.
“She is quite remarkable,” Nicolas growled, his words warmly proud, but with a hint of something darker beneath.
Gray studied the man, noticing something missing. “So then where is your implant?”
Nicolas’s eyes narrowed back upon him. Gray enjoyed the flicker of irritation on his face, plainly a sore point. The man’s fingers combed over his right ear in a self-conscious gesture. “Such a course was not my path, I’m afraid.”
Gray’s mind tracked the implication. If Nicolas wasn’t augmented, then he must have been born without any savant talent. Yet someone had placed him in a position of power in Russia. Why? What was the endgame here?
Nicolas continued, “Back to Sasha. From all the turmoil going on in Washington, we’ve been having trouble gaining clear intelligence on her whereabouts. That was the main reason you were brought here from India.”
Versus being shot on the spot like Abhi Bhanjee.
“We are concerned about Sasha’s welfare and want her returned. So first of all, we’d like to know where she is and who has her.”
Gray stared straight at Nicolas. “I don’t know.”
At his side, Elena shook her head.
“Would you like to try again? I’m attempting to keep this civil. But we do have four of your friends here.”
“I can’t say for sure,” Gray answered. “The last I saw her, she was in the care of our organization.”
Nicolas glanced to Elena, who nodded. It was the truth.
“And I assume you do not work for John Mapplethorpe, since the traitor attempted to assassinate you and Dr. Masterson at the hotel in Agra.”
“No, in fact, we’re fighting to keep the child away from him.”
“Wise. That man is far from trustworthy. So then perhaps we truly can negotiate. Especially since we now have something worth trading.”
“First, what do you want with the girl?” Gray asked.
“She belongs here. With the rest of her family. We can care for her much better than anyone in your country.”
“Perhaps so. But why do you want her? To what end?”
Nicolas stared at Gray, studying him with shrewd eyes. Gray sensed a depth of cunning, along with a hard conceit, someone seeking recognition, compensating perhaps for a lack of talent elsewhere.
Gray pressed that weakness. “Do you have a plan that goes beyond the exploitation of children like Sasha?”
His eyes sparked. “Do not underestimate the scope of our initiative. Nor paint us with such malicious intent. We have nothing but the most humanitarian goals in mind, to better the world for all. The sacrifice required of a few children is infinitesimally small when compared to the atrocities that go ignored every day in the world.”
Gray read the need for validation behind the growing heat in his words. “What goals?”
“Nothing short of changing the course of human history.”
Here the man’s vanity shone brightly. He even sat up straighter and leaned toward Gray.
“Every few centuries, a great figure rises who abruptly changes history—someone who alters the fundamental path of mankind. I’m talking along the lines of the great prophets. Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus Christ. Someone who thinks so differently, who sees the world through such unique eyes, that his very viewpoint bends humanity in a new direction. From where do such figures arise? Where does this uniqueness of mind come from?”
Masterson stirred, stretching a kink in his back.
Gray recalled the professor’s discussion about autism and its role in human history. And the quote he had used. If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.
“Why wait for the right toss of the genetic dice?” Nicolas asked. “If such uniqueness could be recognized, singled out, and harnessed for the good of all, imagine the new age of enlightenment that could be fostered. Especially if such uniqueness could be heightened to astounding levels.”
Nicolas’s eyes settled on Elena.
Gray began to understand the scope of the project’s vision. It was no mere spy program. Nicolas’s organization planned to take control of the reins to human history by using the augmented individuals like draft horses. And Gray began to suspect why Nicolas had been put in such a place of power. Someone was grooming him as a figurehead, propped and supported behind the scenes by the augmented children. Gray tried to imagine all that talent at the bid of one individual.
Gray could not hide his horror and shock. “How do you plan to—?”
“That’s enough!” Nicolas barked. “Now that you better understand our intent, you can understand why we want Sasha returned. She is important to the program…and especially significant to me.”
Gray read something in his eyes. “Why you?”
“Why?” He stared hard at Gray. “Because she’s more than a test subject, she’s my daughter.”
Elena’s fingernails scraped the underside of Gray’s wrist. The woman turned sharply toward Nicolas. Apparently this was as equally surprising to her. No wonder Gray and the others had been dragged all the way to Chernobyl.
“Before this day is over, you will know what I am capable of.” Nicolas leaned toward Gray, his eyes fiery with determination. “And I will get my daughter back.”
8:20 A.M.
Southern Ural Mountains
General-Major Savina Martov stood in the heart of Operation Saturn. Behind her, the mine train waited on the tracks, snapping and crackling, smelling of smoke and oil. It rested a hundred yards from where the tracks ended at Mine Complex 337, an abandoned uranium mine that honeycombed the neighboring Ural Mountains. M.C. 337 was where the prisoners housed at Chelyabinsk 88 had spent eighteen hours a day laboring in the dark, slowly being poisoned.
Now it served as a dumping ground for broken mining equipment and piles of rock from Operation Saturn. Over the course of five years, a small team of miners and demolition experts had filled several old shafts to the brim with the debris dug out of this site.
Operation Saturn occupied a small man-made cavern off the train tracks. The blasted room—the size of a hotel lobby—was framed by oil-soaked scaffolding and crowded with mining equipment: conveyor belts, hydraulic winches, rock dusters, water pumps, hoses, all surrounding a compact drill rig with a drummed tungsten-carbide bit. Most of it would be left where it stood or hauled out with the next train.
Savina watched a backhoe dump a load of rock and rubble into one of the ore cars behind her. The train would make one last shipment to M.C. 337.
All was on schedule.
Still, she stood with her fists on her hips, legs apart, surveying the operation site. Her conversation with Nicolas still had her agitated. She had known he was bullheaded and prone to rash and dramatic decisions. She regretted informing him about Sasha. She had not thought he would react so foolishly. Where was his dispassion in such matters? They still had ten Omega subjects, more than enough to seed the new site in Moscow. The ten alone were powerful enough to hand him the world, to guide humanity to its new Renaissance, led by a resurrected Russian Empire. And the future czar would not have one Rasputin to counsel him, but ten. Ten prodigious savants, who together and augmented, could bend time and distance to serve him.
Did he not see that?
What was one child against such a vision?
Two if you counted Nicolas’s son, Pyotr. But the boy’s talent, while strong, was of little value. What use was empathy when it came to forging a new world? If anything, it was a hindrance. All that would be lost with the boy was his genetic potential. A significant loss, but not insurmountable. And there was still hope of recovering the boy. The last she’d heard from Lieutenant Borsakov was that he was about to head into the Asanov swamps. It would be hard to find anything in the dark, but with the sun now up, she expected results at any moment. Or so she had assured Nicolas.
And ultimately it did not matter. Nicolas would grow to see this.
A technician in a white smock, hard hat, and respirator mask approached her. He was an engineer from the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute. “Ready to test the board and iris.”
She nodded. After this final shakedown, the operation site would be evacuated. She’d had to push her crew these last two days in order to meet the shortened timetable. Nicolas’s operation had been scheduled to proceed today, followed by Savina’s in two weeks. But with the recent betrayal by Mapplethorpe, the decision had been made to initiate both operations on the same day. Once she heard of Nicolas’s success, she would proceed.
“Are there any problems?” she asked the engineer.
His voice was muffled in the respirator as they walked. “We’ve run all the diagnostics, rechecked the ammonium nitrate fuel oil concentrations, performed one final GPR scan of the overburden, and troubleshot all electrical systems. We’re ready on your order to clear the site and open the iris. We’re going to test fire it now.”
“Very good.”
Savina followed the man under the arch of scaffolding. The vehicle-mounted drill rig was already being driven out of the way. Men worked around the tight space: in the rigging, on the floor, and amid the equipment. She looked to the upper wall of the cavern. A two-meter-wide shaft sloped upward at a steep angle, lined by an idle conveyor belt, dripping with water from the hoses. Lights glowed at the far end of the shaft, almost half a kilometer away. Tiny shadows moved within the glow, motes in the brightness. The demolition team was doing one final inspection.
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