The steel door slid open, revealing a descending corridor. The floor was gray and the walls were painted the same flat color. Petrov pulled up the night-vision goggles as the corridor was dimly lit by recessed lighting. As soon as the last member of the team was in the corridor, Pashenka turned to the control to shut the door behind them.
“No,” Petrov said. “Never close an escape route.” He detailed a pair of his men to stand guard, then looked ahead. The corridor went straight as far as he could see. From the papers he had perused and Kokol’s briefing, he’d learned that the first tunnel built under the Kremlin had been finished during the time of the tsars as an escape route in times of extreme trouble. Obviously it had not been used when they really needed it, Petrov thought as he gestured for his two point men to move ahead. He followed right behind, with Pashenka at his side.
Kokol had described how during World War II, Stalin had begun by building a large bomb shelter directly under the Kremlin as the Nazis approached Moscow. He’d also had bunkers dug under other government buildings and connecting tunnels bored out.
However, the rudimentary bunkers, designed to provide survival against Stuka dive-bombers, were obviously inadequate against nuclear weapons. So the government dug deeper and deeper, burrowing into the earth below Moscow in the foolish hope that perhaps the government could survive a direct nuclear attack. That there would be nothing on the surface to govern had not seemed to occur to anyone.
Pashenka paused before a side door. “We are under the palace.”
“How deep?” Petrov asked, as it appeared to him they had been moving relatively level.
“Eighty feet or so.” Pashenka opened the door. The tunnel beyond was older and smaller. Beads of moisture glistened, illuminated by naked lightbulbs attached to an electric cord bolted to the ceiling.
They moved about one hundred meters before reaching another door. Unlike the previous ones, though, this door was wooden, with metal bands across it. Petrov noted an electronic eye to the left and above the door.
“Who is watching?” he demanded of Pashenka.
“One of my people,” Pashenka said.
“You did not tell me this.” Petrov signaled to his men that they should be at the ready.
“He can be trusted. I just hope the repairs have been completed.”
Petrov wanted to laugh, but held it in. No one could be trusted in Russia these days. “Repairs?”
“The bottom of the elevator shaft and the tunnel at the bottom were destroyed recently by traitorous activity.”
Pashenka waved at the camera and the door opened with a click, followed by the hiss of the hydraulic jack.
Petrov’s first two men dashed through, moving to covering positions inside on either side. Petrov shoved Pashenka through, staying behind him, AK-74 at the ready. They faced a sheet of bulletproof glass that bisected the room. A door, also made of bulletproof glass, was to the right. A man sat behind a desk on the other side, a video monitor in front of him. He had an AK-74 in his hands.
“Sir, who are these people?” the man demanded of Pashenka. “Section IV,” Pashenka said. “They have authorization.”
“May I see the papers, sir?”
Pashenka stepped closer. “You know better than that. This comes directly from the Chairman. I take full responsibility.”
The man shrugged. “I had not heard they reconstituted Section IV. I am surprised, that is all.” He pressed a buzzer. The glass door swung open. Pashenka walked through, followed by Petrov.
“Is the elevator fixed?” “Yes, sir.”
“The tunnel at the bottom?”
“Most of the debris has been removed. It is passable.”
“Good,” Pashenka said, pulling a key on a chain from inside his shirt. The man did the same. They walked to opposite sides of the room to two boxes, where they inserted the keys. Pashenka counted to three and they both turned.
Steel doors in the back of the room opened, revealing a freight elevator. Pashenka walked onto it. Petrov signaled for two of his men to stay behind, then entered the elevator with the rest.
With a jerk, the elevator began descending. Petrov felt his ears pop. “How deep?”
“A half mile.”
“Are the archives there?”
Pashenka shook his head. “No. They are very, very deep. This is just the first step.”
The elevator halted with a slight jar. The doors rumbled open. A dank corridor, lit with hastily rigged work lights beckoned. There were piles of rubble dotting the pitted floor here and there.
“Who tried to gain access?” Petrov asked as they got off the elevator. “The Ones Who Wait.”
Petrov had read of the various alien groups. “Why were they trying to infiltrate the archives?”
“I do not know,” Pashenka said. “My boss, Lyoncheka, went with them and was killed. A Section IV operative named Yakov and an American escaped with something.”
Petrov knew the name Yakov. It had been all over the news. “The Yakov who went to Mars and helped defeat the aliens?”
“Yes.” They reached an intersection and Pashenka halted, then consulted his handheld. “This way.” They turned right.
Petrov considered putting a bullet in Pashenka’s brain, taking the handheld, and leading the men there himself, but he knew that might be precipitous. If Pashenka retained any of his tradecraft he would have a cutout built in, where he would be needed for an important leg of the journey that wasn’t programmed into the handheld.
They made three more turns at the same level, then suddenly they were at the head of a wide tunnel that slowly curved clockwise and descended. It was large enough to drive a truck down and off to the left a long ramp ascended, just as large. He left one man at the intersection, then they began to go down.
Petrov noted what appeared to be air shafts spaced along the inner wall. He assumed there was a central vertical shaft that supplied air to these lower levels. Pashenka was counting to himself, then suddenly halted before the first door they had encountered on the right. By his pace count, Petrov estimated they’d walked over a mile in a descending circle.
“This is it,” Pashenka said. Then he cursed.
Petrov looked over his shoulder and saw the reason: The outer edges of the door had been welded shut.
Petrov snapped an order and one of his men ran up. He tossed off his backpack and pulled out a welding torch and fired it up.
The silent alarm brought a squad of soldiers running into the courtyard of the Kremlin, under the command of a senior captain, where they were met by a senior FSB colonel on the premier’s protection detail. The colonel was standing there in full battle gear as if he had anticipated the alarm. Colonel Kokol was an old man, but still in good shape. The cane he had used when he visited Petrov was no longer visible and the limp was gone.
“What is it, sir?” the FSB captain demanded, still struggling to put on his combat vest.
“Infiltrators in the tunnels, sir.” “Where?”
“They tripped an alarm on Level Six, Section Eight.” “What’s there?”
“Old KGB archives,” Kokol said.
“Strange,” the captain said. “They didn’t trip any alarms getting into the tunnels. How can that be?”
“Because someone let them in,” Kokol said. “One of our men, Pashenka, was kidnapped yesterday afternoon right out of Lubyanka Square. He has access to the tunnels.”