Petrov thought of the dark office in which he always met his boss. The white skin. The rumors. “You use the past tense — so he isn’t?”
“No. He’s something different.” “What?”
“An Undead.”
Petrov leaned forward. “And what is that exactly?”
“We don’t know,” Pashenka admitted. “All we know is he has been alive for a very long time thanks to access to some aspect of the alien technology or biological or chemical material of the aliens. Some say he actually is part Airlia. His file dates from the very beginning of Stalin’s secret police — and there were notes in there that predate that, from the time of the tsars. There is even one report that speculates that he was a tsar — Ivan the Terrible, no less. The fact is that no one knows how old he is or who he has been over the years.”
Petrov abruptly switched the subject. “The tunnels under Moscow. I was told you know much about them.”
Pashenka blinked. “The archives are my responsibility and they lie under the city.”
“Is there a place in the archives where blood is stored? Blood taken from the Germans at the end of the Great War.”
Pashenka hesitated. Petrov pulled back the hammer on his pistol, the sound echoing across the hangar. “Yes,” Pashenka said. “There is a room where blood is stored.”
“You will take me there this evening.”
“I have never seen anything like this.” The words were barely audible, ripped from Namche’s mouth by the brutal wind and dashed apart over the deep gorge to their right. As soon as he finished speaking, Namche slipped the full face mask back on, leaving not a single speck of his skin exposed to the elements. He could tell Tai was laboring in the thin air. The Chinese was half-doubled over, staring down at the climbing garments frozen into the ridgeline. The fact that there was no sign of the body inside the garments had been the cause of Namche’s comment.
Namche had seen many bodies on the mountain. It was virtually impossible to bring one back down, so the over two hundred who had died in the past century trying to reach the summit all lay where they had fallen, or, at best, covered with a cairn of rocks piled on by their climbing companions. The freezing temperatures preserved the dead, but here there was no sign of whoever had worn the clothes.
Namche looked up to the southwest, toward Everest. A plume of snow blew off the peak, but it wasn’t bad, perhaps winds of twenty to thirty miles an hour. Strong anywhere but there. They’d choppered up to 17,000 feet at first light. The helicopter had labored in the thin air, but it had gotten them a good way toward this spot.
Tai stood and followed Namche’s gaze upward. “We must go to the other two.” “And if they are the same as this?”
“Then we have failed.”
Namche frowned. “I do not think you will be able to go any higher.”
Tai reached inside his jacket and pulled out the carved flask. He unscrewed the lid, pulled aside his mark, and drank deeply, draining it. Namche was shocked to see the blood around his lips as Tai pulled the flask away. Tai blinked several times and his chest heaved for a few moments, then he nodded. “I can make it to the bodies.”
Besides his conditioning, the other thing that concerned Namche was the bulky pack on Tai’s back. He didn’t know what was in it, but it was large with a six-foot-long piece of eight-inch-thick PVC pipe secure on either side, not making for easy climbing. The pipe had already become entangled in the safety line several times.
It was not his problem. Namche turned into the wind and tugged on the rope connecting the two of them. “Follow me.”
Nosferatu was the only occupant in the cabin of the Gulfstream jet. He had all the shades pulled and the lights. off. Despite the darkness, he could easily read the latest report from the team he had hired in the United States. They were ready to move as soon as he landed.
The Americans had excavated a large part of the Dulce underground complex, but then work had ceased during the Third World War and had yet to be resumed. According to the report there were guards, a platoon of infantry, working in shifts at the site; but other than that, nothing to stand in his way.
He also had reports from Tian Dao Lin and Adrik. The two were still in the process of accomplishing their tasks, but all seemed to be going according to plan.
Despite his well-honed capacity for patience, Nosferatu could not stop a small surge of adrenaline from coursing through his veins. After so many millennia of waiting, what he had dreamed about could become a reality in just a few short days. Nekhbet would be back at his side. And they would be immortal.
Nosferatu realized that the hand that was holding the reports was shaking. He blinked, feeling a stinging in his eyes, and when he brought his hand up to wipe his face, it came away with a faint red smear. He realized he was crying tears of blood.
Petrov had his assault and recovery teams loaded into three vans marked with proper insignia indicating they were part of the SVD fleet. That would ensure that the police would ignore them no matter what they did and also precluded interference from the SVD as most agents would assume the vans belonged to another section and were on legitimate operations. Petrov loved turning bureaucracy against itself. They drove along the Moscow River until they reached the base of the hill on which the Kremlin crouched.
“Here,” Pashenka said.
With a flick of a finger, Petrov indicated for the driver to stop the van. He looked about. The streets surrounding the Kremlin were practically deserted this late at night. Petrov put a small earpiece in and wrapped a mike around his throat. He did a comm check and was immediately rewarded by the sound of all twelve members of his teams succinctly checking their mikes in order as he had trained them.
He wore unmarked black fatigues, over which he had strapped black Kevlar body armor and on top of that was a combat vest. He had an AK-74, the upgrade of the venerable AK-47, but chambered with a higher velocity, smaller 5 .45 mm round, for his primary weapon. He would have preferred something else, perhaps a German HK-95, but he knew they had to keep the appearance of being SVD as long as possible and the AK-74 was the armament of that organization.
“Let’s go.”
Shoving Pashenka ahead of him, he went out the side door of the van. Four of his men moved up the slope toward the wall of the Kremlin, spreading out, weapons at the ready. Two more covered each flank and the last four covered the rear. The drivers stayed with the vans, armed with proper papers to deflect anyone stupid enough to inquire why they were parked right outside the Kremlin so late at night.
They arrived at a portal in the redbrick wall, blocked by a steel gate. Petrov assigned two of his men, both armed with sniper rifles with night-vision scopes to take up flanking positions, covering both the portal and the vans.
Pashenka fumbled with his wallet, finally producing a plastic card that he pushed into the electronic lock. He then entered a sequence of numbers. The light went from red to green, and the gate slid open.
Petrov entered a small alcove with him, to be faced by another door. Pashenka used a different card and a different code on its lock, and the door rumbled open, revealing a descending stairway. Petrov put out a hand as Pashenka started to enter. He tapped the side of his head, then slid down a set of night-vision goggles. The rest of his team did the same. Then he signaled with two fingers and gestured down. Two of his men slid past, descending into the darkness. “Clear to another door,” his lead scout reported. “It’s sealed with a retinal scanner to one side.”
Petrov grabbed Pashenka and guided him down the stairs, the rest of the team following. Overhead Petrov could see lines of fluorescent lighting, but the power was off. They reached a solid steel door. Pashenka leaned over the retinal scanner and the laser projected a beam across his eyes, reading the pattern. Petrov thought the presence of such a sophisticated device was indicative that he was on the right track. Even at Lubyanka they still relied on name badges with photos for access, each checked by some old, about-to-be-retired agent who could barely read the names.