The Valhalla Prophecy

Prologue

The temperature was below freezing, but Dr Serafim Volkov was sweating.

Part of the reason was purely physical. The pit from which he had just emerged was deep, and even though he had not descended all the way to the bottom, leaving the most dangerous part of his mission to his younger conspirator, he had still felt compelled to observe. Any mistakes could have deadly consequences.

But Surnin had secured the sample without incident, and was now making his way back up the series of ladders to the surface. Volkov waited for him, unpleasantly clammy inside his thick clothing even in the chill wind.

Not so much from the climb, but from fear.

Merely by being here, he was violating the orders of the most powerful man in the Soviet Union: Nikita Khrushchev himself. That alone would have led to life in the gulag, but if anyone discovered the reason for his unauthorised visit, it would mean a guaranteed death sentence.

Echoing clanks reached him from below as Surnin ascended the last ladder. Volkov tugged at the top fastener of his coat to let in a little cold air around his neck, then surveyed his surroundings. The sky was a solid dreary grey over the barren, snow-covered plain. A few hundred metres to the west stood the charred remains of several buildings: Volkov’s workplace for the past several years, now nothing but fire-blackened hulks. The thought made him scowl. The facility had been destroyed on Khrushchev’s orders — along with everything inside. All of Volkov’s research, his experiments, his discoveries… reduced to ash.

All that the government knew about, at least. His secret experiment could still bear fruit.

If he escaped the Soviet Union alive.

He was sure that he could. The fact that he had made it back to the pit undetected proved that the exclusion zone around the islands of Novaya Zemlya, high above the Arctic Circle in the Barents Sea, was not impregnable. Volkov’s pilot was a Samoyad, a former native who had been forcibly resettled when the long archipelago was designated a nuclear test site. He was waiting with his small fishing boat in an inlet a few kilometres to the north-west; the wily old man was the scientist’s best hope of returning safely to the mainland with his precious cargo.

After that, he was entirely in the hands of the CIA. But so far, they had done everything they promised. His wife, now seven months pregnant, was already in West Berlin; once he joined her, they were only a jet flight away from a new life in the United States.

And his work could continue. He would have a new paymaster; a far, far more generous one. But the money, while certainly welcome, was not why he was transferring his loyalties. It was the promise of what he would be able to achieve in America, freed of limits. The world would change for ever… and it would be to his design.

He glanced into the pit. Surnin was nearing the top of the ladder, the thick steel cylinder of the sample container slung from his shoulder. Volkov backed away to give him room to climb out. The sled-dogs waited patiently nearby, their leather reins looped around a rock standing out of the ground like a gravestone.

The rock was the reason he was here — the reason anyone had taken an interest in this desolate patch of land. The entire archipelago had been photographed from the air as part of the preparations for nuclear testing so the effects of the detonations on the landscape could be seen. Someone with sharp eyes had spotted both the unusual standing stone and the black hole in the ground nearby, and a survey team was sent to investigate.

What they found was almost beyond imagination.

Seven years of work had followed; seven years of Volkov’s life poured into his research. At first he had been following orders. Stalin might have been dead, but his legacy lived on: the Soviet Union needed weapons, so powerful and terrible that no enemy dared attack for fear of utter obliteration in reprisal. Atomic and hydrogen bombs were the most destructive, but there were others, in their own way even more frightening. Volkov’s task had been to turn what lay at the bottom of the pit into one of these nightmares.

He had succeeded. But in the process, he’d realised that his research had the potential to produce something more than death. Quite the opposite, in fact. Whoever controlled it would have a power previously only in the hands of God.

Or gods, he mused, walking to the stone. He couldn’t read the ancient runes carved into its face, but he didn’t need to; they had been translated from Old Norse years before, and he now knew them by heart.

A crooked smile. The Vikings who’d visited this land over a thousand years earlier were barbarians, unable to comprehend what they found in the pit. So they had fitted it into their primitive mythology — or, more accurately, had shaped their mythology around it. It was almost a shame that no archaeologists would ever be allowed to visit the site; gods and monsters awaited them below.

Monsters. Another scowl. That one word had ended everything.

A curse under his breath at the thought of Eisenhov. He knew the younger scientist had no proof of his secret experiments — if that were the case, Eisenhov would surely have reported it, and arrest and execution would have followed — but had probably suspected after he’d subtly, but still foolishly, tried to sound him out as a potential ally. Eisenhov’s reaction had made it very clear that he was opposed to — appalled by — the mere idea of his covert work. So Volkov had continued alone, making discoveries he dared tell no one about while getting ever closer to his goal…

Then came the accident. The deaths. The monsters. Everything was contained, an entire town wiped from the map as if it had never existed, but it was too late. Eisenhov, with his emotionally loaded weasel words, had poisoned Khrushchev against the whole project. Everyone at the Novaya Zemlya facility was taken back to the mainland. And the buildings and their contents were burned.

All that remained of Volkov’s work was his final, greatest experiment, and the knowledge in his head. The Soviet Union had turned its back on his research — but America was more than keen to continue it. And the contents of the steel cylinder would allow him to do that.

Breathing heavily, Surnin reached the top of the ladder. Volkov strode to him. ‘Turn around,’ the scientist ordered. ‘I need to check the sample container.’

‘I didn’t hit it on anything, Comrade Doctor,’ Surnin objected, but he still meekly turned to present the cylinder. Obedience was one reason why Volkov had chosen to trust the big man to help him, along with his staggering lack of initiative. He would do what he was told by a superior and not even think to question.

The scientist examined the container, paying particular attention to the seal around its lid. There was no sign of any leakage. ‘All right. Load it on to the sled. Carefully.’

‘Yes, Comrade Doctor.’ Surnin tramped through the snow to the runestone, petting one of the dogs before hesitantly lowering the cylinder into a padded metal case.

Volkov watched closely, finally satisfied that it was secure. ‘Let’s get back to the boat.’ He was about to board the sled when he noticed that Surnin was staring at the dogs. ‘What is it?’

‘They hear something.’ The animals had pricked up their ears, looking to the south-west.

Volkov strained to listen. All he could hear at first was the wind, but then he picked up a faint, distant rumble. ‘It’s a plane,’ he said dismissively. ‘One of our bombers.’ The buzzing drone of eight mighty propellers was a familiar sound on the military-controlled islands. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a long way off. It won’t see us through these clouds. Now let’s go.’ He took his seat and gestured impatiently for Surnin to do the same.

The other man unlooped the reins from the runestone and climbed aboard. At a tug on the leather straps, the dogs set off across the snowy ground, towing Volkov and his prize behind them.

The scientist’s assessment of the sound had been correct. Its source was indeed a bomber, a Tupolev Tu-95 flying high above the clouds as it approached Novaya Zemlya from its base on the Kola peninsula six hundred miles to the south-west.

But it was no ordinary aircraft.

Designated Tu-95V, it was a one-of-a-kind variant, modified for a very special purpose. Its unique cargo was so huge that the bomb bay doors had been removed to accommodate it. Even stripped of all unnecessary weight and with its four massive twin-prop engines working at full power, the Tupolev was strained to its limit to carry the terrifying payload.

Its official designation was uninformative: Article AN602. But it had acquired a nickname during its rapid development and construction.

The Tsar Bomba. The Emperor of Bombs.

Twenty-six feet long and more than six feet in diameter, the Tsar Bomba weighed almost twenty-seven tons. This in itself made it the largest bomb ever constructed, almost three times as heavy as the British Grand Slam of the Second World War, but its size alone was no indication of its true destructive power.

It was a hydrogen bomb, the most powerful ever built.

The atomic device that destroyed Hiroshima had an explosive power of sixteen kilotons — the equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki twelve days later had a twenty-one-kiloton yield. The first ever hydrogen bomb, detonated by the United States in 1952, had an explosive force of over ten megatons — ten million tons of TNT.

The Tsar Bomba was ten times more powerful still.

It was so powerful, in fact, that it had been adjusted at the last minute to deliver only around half its maximum predicted yield to minimise fallout. But a detonation of a ‘mere’ fifty megatons would still be over ten times as much as the combined power of all the explosives used in WWII — including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

It was a bomb designed to destroy entire cities. But its current target was much more specific.

The spot marked by an ancient Norse runestone.

Volkov tugged back his sleeve to check his watch. Just after 11.25. If the weather didn’t turn, he would reach the waiting boat around midday. It would be night by the time he got to the mainland, but that didn’t matter. His CIA contact would be waiting for him, and then his own journey to the West to join his wife would begin.

The possibility that he might never make it had of course occurred to him. To that end, he had written a letter to Galina, with the express instructions that it only be opened if the CIA confirmed his death. There were secrets he had kept even from her. He hoped she would understand why he had done what he had… but even if she did not, the die was already cast. Whether he reached her or not, she would learn what he had done. The letter was his explanation, his justification.

His excuse, some part of his conscience sneered, but he forced the thought away. He had done what was necessary for his work.

He noticed that Surnin was again staring to the south-west — no, more to the west now. That meant the bomber was coming in from the ocean.

A bombing run? He dismissed the idea. The nuclear tests had been a recurring interruption of his work at the facility, all personnel evacuated the day before one took place and not permitted to return until at least a week after, once the local radiation levels had been declared safe. The senior staff were informed of upcoming tests in advance; if one were planned, he would have known.

Volkov leaned to look over Surnin’s shoulder. The clouds ahead continued far out to sea, an impenetrable grey shield that would hide the fishing boat from watchers above. The aircraft was nothing to worry about.

A voice crackled in the pilot’s earphones. ‘One minute to drop. Confirm readiness.’

‘I confirm readiness,’ Major Andrei Durnovtsev replied, the calm professionalism of his voice masking his nervousness. All of the Tu-95’s crew, and that of the Tu-16 jet acting as an observation aircraft off to starboard, were volunteers — and it had been made very clear that there was a chance they might not make it home. In theory, at the Tupolev’s maximum speed it would reach the minimum safe distance with a small margin to spare… but theory and practice were two different things.

‘Message received,’ came the reply. ‘Fifty seconds to drop. Wind speed and direction on your escape vector remain constant.’ A pause, then: ‘Good luck.’

Durnovtsev did not reply, instead checking his instruments, preparing himself. The actual release of the bomb was controlled from the ground; his job was to fly the bomber on an exact heading, taking the prevailing winds into account so the Tsar Bomba would parachute down as close to its target as possible. Even though it could destroy an entire city the size of New York, for whatever reason his masters at the Kremlin wanted their superweapon to hit the right spot. A demonstration to the West of precision as well as power, he supposed.

All musings vanished at another radio message. ‘Thirty seconds to drop. Prepare for device release.’

‘Confirm thirty seconds to release,’ Durnovtsev replied, before switching to the aircraft’s internal intercom. ‘Thirty seconds! All crew, secure stations and confirm readiness!’

One by one his men reported ready, all systems green. ‘Fifteen seconds,’ said the ground controller. Durnovtsev’s stomach knotted, but he held his hands firmly on the controls, ready to act. One last check of the instruments. Everything was as it should be.

‘Ten seconds!’ A glance at the compass. The Tu-95 was now heading almost due east, curving in towards its target; to survive, he had to turn the lumbering bomber to the south-west as quickly and sharply as possible. ‘Drop in five seconds! Four! Three! Two! One — drop!’

The release mechanisms opened — and the Tupolev shot upwards as twenty-seven tons of death fell from its gaping bomb bay.

A massive parachute snapped open in the slipstream the moment the bomb was clear of the fuselage. Barometric sensors would trigger the detonators at an altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. But even with the huge ’chute slowing it, the Tsar Bomba was still plunging earthwards at a frightening speed, giving the bomber and its chase plane less than three minutes to reach safety.

If they could.

Durnovtsev had already slammed the flight controls hard over, throwing the Tu-95 into a sharp banking turn. The smaller Tu-16 held its course for a few more seconds, its cameras and observers tracking the bomb to make sure the parachute had deployed, before it too swung south-west. Its pilot immediately went to full power, the jet rapidly outpacing the wallowing turboprop.

‘The payload has been dropped and the parachute successfully deployed,’ said the voice in Durnovtsev’s headphones, relaying the news from the second aircraft. ‘Estimated detonation in two minutes and forty seconds. Go to maximum speed and initiate blast procedure.’ Then, barely audible: ‘God be with you.’

As a loyal communist Durnovtsev was not a believer, but he certainly appreciated the sentiment. The Tupolev came about on to its escape heading; he levelled out, one hand pushing on the throttle levers to the detent. The Tu-16 was already shrinking into the distance.

The airspeed indicator showed that the Tu-95 was now travelling at just over 510 knots, its four mighty engines straining. ‘Begin blast procedure!’ he ordered. Across the cockpit, his co-pilot pulled a pair of thick, almost opaque dark goggles down over his eyes. Durnovtsev waited until the insectile lenses were secure before donning his own. Day turned to night, the instruments barely visible through the tinted glass.

But he knew that the sky would become much brighter very soon.

Volkov stared up at the clouds again. Even over the sound of the dogs, he could now hear the bomber. The rumbling drone was subtly different, though. A Doppler shift; the aircraft was moving away from him.

He shook off a vague sense of unease. Whatever the plane was doing, it could have nothing to do with him — or the reason he was here. He touched the steel cylinder’s case, making sure it was secured in place. It was. Reassured, he looked back as the sled crested a rise. The blackened remains of the facility stood out against the snow, the entrance to the pit an ominous yawning mouth. The runestone was a single broken tooth at its edge.

There was no sentiment as Volkov regarded his former workplace for the last time. What mattered above all else was the work itself; what he had discovered, and where it could lead.

He turned his back on the scene, a small smile rising. With the sample in his possession and a new life awaiting in the United States, that work would continue.

‘Thirty seconds to detonation!’ Durnovtsev barked into the intercom. ‘All crew, brace for blast!’

He pulled his seat-belt straps as tight as they would go before clenching his hands back around the controls. The compass was an indiscernible shadow through the goggles, but holding the Tupolev on course was about to be the least of his concerns.

The ground controller continued the countdown. Twenty seconds. Ten. A last look around at the other crew in the cockpit. Dark shapes regarded him with impenetrable black eyes. One of the men in the seats behind him was holding a small cine camera, its lens pointed over Durnovtsev’s shoulder at the front windows. The pilot gave him a brief nod, trying to dismiss the thought that it might be the last time anyone ever saw his face, then looked ahead once more.

Five seconds. Four. Three—

Even through the heavily tinted goggles, the sky suddenly became as bright as the sun.

Volkov checked his watch again: 11.32. The dogs were making better time on the return trip to the boat, perhaps as eager as he was to get off the bleak island—

The leaden grey clouds turned pure white.

A flash lit the landscape from high above, its reflection from the snow blinding. Steam rose around the sled, the bitter cold dispelled by a searing heat…

Volkov’s last thought was one of horrified realisation — the bomber had been on a mission — before he and everything for miles around vanished in an unimaginable fire.

The Tsar Bomba detonated two and a half miles above the ground. Durnovtsev had done his job with great skill; even with the inherent inaccuracy of a parachute-dropped weapon, it was within half a mile of its target.

But a fifty-megaton hydrogen bomb did not need to be precise.

The nuclear fireball, over two miles across, was as hot as the sun’s core. It never reached the ground, its own rapidly expanding shockwave bouncing back up off the surface to deflect it. But its flash alone, racing outwards at the speed of light, was enough to melt rock and vaporise anything lesser in a fraction of a second. Behind it came the blast, a wall of superheated air compressed so hard that it was practically solid. What little survived the flash was obliterated moments later.

The Tu-95 was almost thirty miles from Ground Zero when the bomb exploded. Even inside the plane, its crew felt a sudden heat as high-energy radiation, X-rays and gamma rays, passed through the aircraft — and their bodies. Sparks flashed around the cabin, the nuclear burst’s electromagnetic pulse surging through the bomber’s wiring. Durnovtsev heard an unearthly squeal in his headphones as their little loudspeaker converted the electrical overload into sound.

The brightness outside faded, but Durnovtsev knew the danger was far from over. The shockwave was on its way. Even with the Tupolev going flat out, it would catch up in seconds. He braced himself, hands on the controls ready to react…

It was as if the bomber had been rammed from behind by a speeding train.

For a moment Durnovtsev was stunned by the force of the impact, his restraints cutting tightly into his chest and crushing the breath from him. He struggled back to full awareness, gasping inside his oxygen mask as he pulled up the goggles. The sky was an angry orange-red, the fireball illuminating it like a miniature star. A colossal booming roar filled his ears: the sound of the atmosphere itself burning.

The artificial horizon was tumbling, the altimeter needle spinning rapidly down. A sickening feeling in his stomach told him he was in free fall. The Tupolev was dropping out of the sky, swatted like a wasp. It had already fallen a kilometre, and was still plunging…

The cloud layer below had been evaporated by the shockwave. The cold sea glinted through the windows — the Tu-95 was nose down. Durnovtsev pulled back hard on the controls to level out. The engines were still at full power; he eased them off to reduce the stress on the wings. The horizon slowly dropped back down through his view.

Nausea faded, the pressure on his chest easing. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he shouted over the crackling rumble. To his relief, all his crew replied in the positive. Next came a systems check. There had been some damage, but the aircraft was still in the sky with all four engines running. As far as Durnovtsev was concerned, that was a successful outcome.

He tried the radio. As he’d expected, nothing came through but a strange static screech. The explosion had ionised the atmosphere, making transmissions all but impossible. He had no idea how long it would take the effect to fade — all he could do was follow his orders and return to base.

The navigator provided him with the correct heading, but as he made the course change, Durnovtsev was stuck by a compulsion to see what he had wrought. He turned the bomber further so he could look back towards Novaya Zemlya through the cockpit’s side windows.

What he saw chilled his blood. The Tu-95 had climbed back to its original altitude, over six miles above sea level… but the mushroom cloud had already risen far higher, demonic fire still burning within as it roiled skywards. A ring of smoke and ash was expanding around its base.

Nothing on the ground could possibly have survived.

Durnovtsev stared at the fearsome sight for one last moment, then turned his plane for home.

The landscape around Ground Zero was now unrecognisable from what it had been just minutes before. Snow had flashed to steam, the frozen soil beneath turned instantly to cinders before being blown away by the immense force of the blast. Even the very rocks had melted into a glaze covering the bowl of the newly formed crater.

Nothing remained of the facility. It had been atomised, along with the two men. Even the runestone, which had withstood the harsh climate for over a thousand years, was gone.

As was the pit.

The blast had sealed it for ever, countless tons of molten and shattered rock filling it in. The dark secrets it contained would now remain hidden for eternity.

Except…

The runestone, and the words inscribed upon it, were no more. But they had been recorded, translated, and analysed. The men who had ordered Durnovtsev’s mission knew what it said.

And knew the danger it still represented. A danger they could not allow to be released.