The Valhalla Prophecy Read online

  The Valhalla Prophecy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Dell Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2014 by Andy McDermott

  Excerpt from Kingdom of Darkness © 2015 by Andy McDermott

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  DELL and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom by Headline Publishing Group, a Hachette UK Company.

  This book contains an excerpt from Kingdom of Darkness. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  ISBN 978-0-345-53704-1

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53705-8

  Art Direction: Carlos Beltrán

  Cover design: Marc Cohen

  Cover illustration: Chris Titze

  www.bantamdell.com

  Dell mass market edition: October 2014

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: Novaya Zemlya, Northern Russia

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue: New York City

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Kingdom of Darkness

  PROLOGUE

  Novaya Zemlya, Northern Russia

  October 30, 1961

  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 unauthorized 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 gray over the barren, snow-covered plain. A few hundred meters 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 kilometers to the northwest; the wily old man was the scientist’s best hope for 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 forever … 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 realized that his research had the potential to produce something more fearsome than death itself. 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.

  You great warriors, who have traveled far from Valhalla

  Across the rainbow bridge and through the lake of lightning …

  A crooked smile. The Vikings who’d visited this land more than 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 Volkov had 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 Volkov’s covert work. So he 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. An entire town wiped from the map as if it had never existed. After that, Eisenhov had poisoned Khrushchev against the whole project, emotion and spurious morality being placed above scientific discovery and reason. 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 upon him—but America was more than keen to continue his research. 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 trusted 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 onto 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 southwest.

  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 southwest.

  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 sixteen thousand 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 more than 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 minimize fallout. But a detonation of a “mere” fifty megatons would still be more than ten times as much as the combined power of all the explosives used in World War II—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 eleven twenty-five. 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. 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 southwest—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 well in advance; if one was planned, he would have known.

  Volkov leaned to look over Surnin’s shoulder. The clouds ahead continued far out to sea, an impenetrable gray 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 c
ontrols, 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 toward its target; to survive, he had to turn the lumbering bomber to the southwest as quickly and sharply as possible. “Drop in five seconds! Four! Three! Two! One—drop!”

  The release mechanisms opened—and the Tupolev shot upward 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 thirteen thousand feet above sea level. But even with the huge ’chute slowing it, the Tsar Bomba was still plunging earthward 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 southwest. Its pilot immediately switched 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 to its escape heading; he leveled 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 traveling at just over 510 knots, its four mighty engines straining. “Begin blast procedure!” he ordered. Across the cockpit, his copilot 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.