It was mid-September, but already winter in Magadan, and Evgeny Gorokhov didn’t mind in the least. Winter was the heart and soul of his beloved country. The cold and snow had defeated Napoleon and Hitler, but to Russians, always contrarians, the cold was a nurturing fire: one that forged strength through adversity.
With that thought in mind, VEKTOR’s chief administrator leapt from the stone dock and plunged into the frigid water of the small quarry lake. The shock of his sudden immersion set off every nerve receptor in his skin with such intensity, the cold became a sensory experience without comparison. It wasn’t a temperature. It wasn’t anything physical. It was the taste of captured lightning. The sound of the full moon sparkling on ice. It was Mother Russia, and she gave him life.
He floated to the surface, exhaled a cloud of vapor, and laughed at the two bulky soldiers bundled up in their cold-weather gear, watching him warily.
Gorokhov waved a massive pale arm at them, shouted, “Come in, come in! Like a summer’s day in Sochi!”
They both gave him wry grins and remained where they were. While he was on station at VEKTOR’s main facility, they were part of his security contingent, and they knew him and his habits well enough. Why he needed security protection in what was essentially the middle of nowhere remained obscure to Gorokhov, representing nothing more than a bureaucrat’s paranoia. The city of Magadan was a desolate port at the top of the Sea of Okhotsk, a lone industrial outpost in Russia’s far eastern northlands, on almost the same latitude as the tip of Greenland, halfway around the world.
As a port in the Old Times, Magadan had been the destination for uncounted boatloads of prisoners bound for the gulags. Their labor had built the town, the roads and railroads, and most importantly, worked the region’s mines, including the officially closed complex that now served as VEKTOR’s home.
Certainly the Americans could attempt to send their perceivers here, and had, though the well-shielded underground facility had never been breached in that manner. But how any security planner could think that there was a real risk of American spies turning up here in person was beyond Gorokhov’s understanding.
So as chief administrator, he ignored the rules set down for him, and swam in the small quarry lake whenever he needed to clear his mind—as long as he did so during daylight, when CROSSWIND perceivers would be challenged to see past the electromagnetic interference caused by the sun.
Gorokhov splashed back to the dock, striking past chunks of floating ice. As he climbed the badly rusted metal ladder to the stone dock, his soldiers hurried to him with a thick bathrobe, towels, and heavy, fur-collared coat. His vehicle, a Land Rover Challenger, was parked, engine running and heater on, thirty meters up the path leading to the abandoned quarry’s main gravel road.
He toweled his bare scalp and fringe of stark white hair, grunting with pleasure, invigorated by his swim and by the soldiers’ ongoing bafflement. As he slipped on his coat, one of the soldiers opened a vacuum flask of tea, poured the steaming liquid into a glass.
Gorokhov expected the man to bring it to him, was puzzled when, instead, the soldier put the flask and the glass back on a large rock, then turned to the road, one hand shifting his slung rifle forward.
The soldiers exchanged a look, and the second man stepped in front of Gorokhov.
The chief administrator frowned, annoyed. “You think I have enemies here?”
Then he realized what had put the soldiers on alert: a car engine, diesel, approaching quickly. He pushed past the soldier supposedly protecting him and went to get his own damn tea.
A car door slammed somewhere up the path. Running feet on gravel. “Put down your rifles,” Gorokhov said. “When they come, it will be by helicopter, or drones.” He sipped the tea, felt completely vindicated when a labored voice cried out, “Chief Administrator!”
“It’s only Popovich,” Gorokhov said.
The soldiers relaxed.
Gherman Popovich was VEKTOR’s deputy administrator. He was a slight man, prone to quick movement, nervous tics. Gorokhov thought of him as a bird. But for all his peculiarities, he was a brilliant logistician and ensured the facility ran with the precision Gorokhov demanded, and rewarded.
Right now, the deputy administrator was also winded, merely from running the thirty meters from his vehicle to the quarry dock. His face was pale, his cheeks bright red like an Englishman’s.
“Have you come to join me for a swim?” Gorokhov asked.
Popovich looked horrified at the thought, and Gorokhov laughed. He motioned to the soldiers to step away so he could talk in private.
“Obviously, something is wrong.” For the moment, Gorokhov wasn’t overly concerned. Popovich saw the world and his work in terms of problems. Gorokhov saw only solutions.
“It is.” The deputy administrator coughed in the cold air.
“Catch your breath.” The chief administrator ran through a mental checklist of what could possibly have prompted his deputy to rush to the quarry rather than wait another thirty minutes for his return. One reason made more sense than any other. “The major has reported?”
Popovich shook his head. “That’s what’s wrong. She missed the communication window.”
“Nothing from the others?”
“No, sir.”
Gorokhov poured the tea from his glass, watched it steam, then freeze to slush on the stone dock. This was a serious issue, after all.
Popovich was recovering his breath, but his aura of panic remained. “If we’ve lost a third team of operatives…”
Gorokhov tried to calm him. “A single missed window doesn’t signify loss of mission.”
The deputy stepped closer. “In her last contact, she had located the general. She was going to confront him.”
“In Colorado Springs.”
Popovich nodded, a man stricken.
Gorokhov looked out across the quarry lake, at the rough stone walls shaped by the picks and shovels of thousands of nameless workers paying their debt to the Motherland. The fact that General Borodin had gone rogue on American soil with operational shadow warriors was not only a massive failure of VEKTOR’s internal security apparatus, it threatened to become a destabilizing incident. It could destroy Russia’s international standing, just as Operation Scythe was designed to obliterate America’s. Gorokhov knew what the equivalent of the old gulags was in today’s Russia, and was determined they would not be his fate, no matter what steps he had to take.
“There are two backup windows, correct?”
The deputy administrator gave a short, swift nod. “Over the next twelve hours.”
Gorokhov knew there were no VEKTOR perceivers who had been specifically trained to target Major Kalnikova. The army was very strict about protecting their officers from that level of possible surveillance. But if she had failed, then she was likely already dead. General Borodin was a different matter. He had been one of VEKTOR’s own. He could be tracked more easily.
“Prepare the prime team to locate the general at every opportunity.”
Popovich widened his eyes. “So often, sir? Borodin’s a sensitive. He’ll become aware.”
Gorokhov dismissed that concern. “He already knows that’s what we’ll do. It’s the only way we have to discover what he thinks he’s trying to accomplish in America. The presence of our perceivers won’t be a surprise. And it might reveal the major’s fate. With certainty.”
Popovich accepted his superior’s logic. “And … if she has failed?”
“Then we must hope that whatever the general is planning, he fails as well.”
Worry returned to Popovich’s eyes. “If he does, and CROSSWIND recovers even a shard of einstone from one of our prototypes…”
Gorokhov help up a hand to silence his deputy, signaled to his soldiers it was time to go. “One problem at a time. First, we stop the general. If we cannot, then the only way to be certain the prototypes don’t fall into enemy hands is to destroy the enemy.”
“But how…?”
To Gorokhov the solution was obvious. But he had no need to share it until necessary.
Unexpectedly, he shivered, pulled his fur coat tight, surprised to realize his feet were numb with cold. The water soaking his wading shoes had frozen. He put an arm around Popovich’s shoulders, started up the path with the soldiers. “We’ll get back where it’s warm, have some proper tea.”
Popovich said nothing, merely trudged on beside him.
Gorokhov trained his gaze on the rough stone blocks he passed, thinking of the prisoners who had died for their country. And he thought of the thousands more, so recently arrived, waiting for their turn to make the same glorious sacrifice.
It would be a difficult decision to take VEKTOR into the next phase of operations so soon. But if that was what was required, then so be it. From such terrible adversity would come unconquerable strength, and the Russia of old, the world’s one true hope and superpower, would at last be restored.