Chapter 3

3

May 10, 11:30 P . M . MSK

Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast

Captain First Class Sergei Turov waited for the summons. As the commander of the White Sea Naval Base, he had an expansive view from his office of the three shipyards, which glowed through the ice fog of the cold night.

As he stood vigil, frustration warred within him. It was written across the reflection of his face. His ice-gray eyes remained pinched. Deep lines furrowed his brow, under hair that had gone an ashy white. He was dressed in a starched uniform of navy blue. A matching cap sat on the desk behind him.

For the past seven years, the base had been under his charge. He had started his career as a submariner with the Northern Fleet, as a navigational engineer. Forgoing family and a home life, he had risen steadily in rank over the past decades—even as the Soviet Union fell and the Russian Federation formed.

And look where I stand today.

Since taking command, he had seen the base at the edge of the White Sea expand under his leadership. When he had first arrived, the station had housed dozens of submarines and scores of surface ships, all spread across two shipyards. During his tenure, he had built a third yard. He also oversaw the testing of ice-hardened watercraft, amphibious vehicles, and radar systems. Yet, it wasn't just hardware. A large section of the base was now devoted to training the Arctic Brigade—seamen, marines, and infantry who had to be just as battle-hardened to the ice and cold.

I did all of this.

While he should be satisfied, he rankled at the lack of recognition. The prior leader of the White Sea Naval Base had advanced to vice admiral after only four years and now commanded the entire Northern Fleet.

Yet, here I languish.

And he knew why.

Four summers ago, he had participated in a massive war exercise called Ocean Shield. It had involved bases across the northern coast, encompassing hundreds of ships and three hundred thousand troops. But during the exercise, an engineering mishap aboard an Akula-class submarine had sunk the boat. All aboard had been lost. While the incident had been covered up, the blame fell on his shoulders—undeservedly so. Two months prior, the same sub had undergone repairs in his new shipyard. He had urged for the boat to be held back from the exercise, but Vice Admiral Glazkov had demanded it be included. Afterward, like the sinking of the sub, his reluctance to dispatch the sub vanished from all records.

The incident became a black mark on his record. All because of that bastard Glazkov.

Exasperated, he struck the window with a fist. A ring on his finger banged sharply against the glass. He lowered his arm and rubbed the band of white gold.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he stared down at the heraldic image stamped on the ring, of a sword raised across a pair of wings. He also pictured the inscription engraved on the band's inner surface.

Aрхангел Общество

Those two words— Arkangel Society —held the promise of a brighter future.

Both for him and for all of Russia.

And maybe a way to right an injustice .

A knock on his door drew his attention. His deputy chief of staff, Oleg Ulyanin, entered and gave a slight bow of his head.

"I heard from Archpriest Sychkin," Oleg stated. "He says he has finished with the interrogation."

Turov grimaced. "Then let us be finished with this matter, too."

Oleg, ten years his junior, was a dour-faced mountain man from the Urals. His blond hair was shorn tight under a black beret, a hat that represented his past with the naval infantry brigade. While serving in Syria, the man had lost a leg, just below his left knee. Afterward, while recuperating, he had studied at the Arctic Marine Institute, gaining a degree in geology.

Oleg also shared more than just a professional role. The two had forged a deeper bond. It gleamed in white gold on the man's left hand. It was Oleg who had introduced him to the Arkangel Society, a group that had already opened powerful doors and held the promise of far more.

Turov clapped his friend on the arm, squeezing firmly, then collected an overcoat from a rack, along with a furred ushanka hat. Oleg already had donned a heavy woolen jacket over his uniform.

The two headed out of his office and into an elevator.

"Did Sychkin say if he was successful?" Turov asked as the doors closed.

"No. Only that there was something important he wanted to share with you."

Turov frowned.

What could that be?

11:55 P . M .

As Turov exited the administration building, the breeze off the sea cut through his fur-lined coat. Ice and salt filled his lungs. Though it was well into spring, the temperature remained frigid, dropping precipitously after sunset.

He and Oleg hurried through the dark streets, hunched against the cold. They strode quickly toward a building lit by flickers of gas lamps. Unlike the base's utilitarian cement block and corrugated steel architecture, this structure was mortared stone, with leaded glass windows and sills of hewn pine. Above it, a wooden steeple rose high, topped by an orthodox cross.

It was the Church of the Holy Sacrament. It had stood on this spot for more than a century. During the Soviet era, the structure had been transformed into a jail. Now it had been returned to a place of worship, though steel bars still covered its windows.

They headed up the stone steps and pushed through the heavy wooden doors and into the church's dark narthex. Ahead of them, on the far side of the nave, a few fat candles glowed warmly, reflecting off the rich gold iconography of its altar screen. Closer at hand, the plaster walls bore new frescoes, which still looked wet in the candlelight.

Turov frowned, resenting the expense it took to renovate the church. Then again, the current regime in Moscow considered the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church to be a top priority, a means to a spiritual renewal for the country, a way of instilling national pride—or as cynics would believe, returning Russia to the theocratic values of the tsarist era.

"The archpriest should still be below," Oleg said as he led Turov to a set of stairs on the left.

They headed down steps into the church's basement. While everything aboveground had been returned to its former glory, this level still clung stubbornly to its Soviet roots. The stone walls remained un-plastered. Stark sodium lights lit the passageway. Cells lined either side, closed by thick steel doors. Likewise, the purpose down here remained the same.

This was still a prison, one that the Church had found little reason to change. To Turov, it was the dark truth of the newly restored orthodoxy, what it hid from the world. The Church's word had become absolute. Dissent was not tolerated. Only the Church was allowed to do the questioning.

Like today.

When Turov had been down here earlier, screams had echoed in a painful chorus. The place was now as silent as a grave.

Oleg led the way to a door halfway down the passageway. It had been left ajar, allowing firelight to flicker into the hall. Oleg pushed the way open and motioned for Turov to enter first.

With a hard swallow, Turov stiffened his back and stepped into the room.

Like the rest of the subterranean jail, this interrogation chamber had not changed from its role during the Soviet era. The room's walls were hung with all manner of torture devices, some sharp, others serrated. They gleamed with threat under the harsh lighting. A steel-doored firepit lay open along the back wall, heating the room to a blistering temperature.

The reek of scorched flesh struck his nose. Blood pooled and ran in tepid flows down a floor drain. The source of all of it came from two figures strapped to chairs. They had the shapes of the young man and woman who had been hauled into the church, but there was little recognition beyond that. Skin had been stripped, joints broken, fingers severed. Their heads hung to their chests.

Turov had believed them to be dead, but a low moan rose from the man. The woman's naked chest still moved.

The pair were students, part of a team of urban explorers who had discovered a vault deep beneath Moscow. The Kremlin kept close watch on such trespassers and had heard what they claimed to have found: an ancient trove of books, possibly part of the lost Golden Library.

Archpriest Leonid Sychkin turned at Turov's arrival and lifted an arm. The clergyman was only thirty-three, young for such a rank. He wore humble dark pants and a matching black shirt. His only adornment was the heavy silver crucifix that hung to mid-chest, just below the end of his thick, black beard.

"We were about to leave," Sychkin said, motioning to his assistant, a hulking monk who had taken a vow of silence.

Turov frowned. "Did these two have any further information about their discovery?"

"Nothing that we hadn't already discerned. It was unfortunate they had to be treated so harshly, but we had to be certain."

The word unfortunate seemed far too meager a description for what had transpired in this room. Still, Turov knew better than to object. Sychkin had the ear of the patriarch, the leader of the Orthodox Church. Likewise, the archpriest carried the same white-gold ring as Turov and Oleg, only it did not decorate a finger, but hung from a chain under his clothes.

The Arkangel Society had members across a spectrum of high-profile professions: politicians, military leaders, scientists, and religious figures. Their ambition was to seek paths to return Russia to its former glory, with a focus on its northernmost lands, an area that the society believed held the true origins of the Russian people.

In fact, the group's name came from the mythic history of the neighboring port city of Arkhangelsk, where it was said the Archangel Michael fought the devil and that the angel still guarded over the northern coast of Russia. The society's heraldic symbol of a sword-over-wings was a nod to that battle and represented their group's commitment to help Michael's cause.

But more than just guarding the northern coasts, the society's primary goal was to seek the true roots of the Russian people, to prove they had descended from a nearly divine race, one that Archangel Michael had wanted to protect and cherish. The society adhered to the philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, a man who was held in high esteem by both the military and the current regime in Moscow. Dugin believed the roots of the Russian race came from a lost continent, what the Greeks called Hyperborea, the land beyond the North Wind.

The Arkangel Society's primary goal was to find proof of this truth. To that end, Dugin gave them his personal blessing, which helped the group quickly gain powerful allies.

Still, in his heart, Turov remained skeptical of all of it, but that had not stopped him from joining up, especially as the group's cause served his own ends.

For decades, Russia had been seeking ways to expand its territorial reach, to claim more, if not all, of the Arctic. Back in 2007, two Russian Navy submersibles traveled beneath the ice cap and planted a titanium flag under the North Pole, symbolically staking a claim.

Since then, Turov's mission was to turn symbolism into reality. Turov and Oleg—working in tandem with the Arctic Marine Institute—had used submarines to collect rock samples along the Lomonosov Ridge, a subsea mountain range that crossed the North Pole. Their effort was to prove geologically that the ridge was an extension of Russia's continental shelf, which would allow the federation to have territorial claim over most of the Arctic.

Unfortunately, ownership of the Lomonosov Ridge continued to remain in dispute. Canada claimed the mountain range was an extension of their Ellesmere Island. Denmark said it was a submerged section of Greenland.

In the end, Turov's efforts failed.

Still, he held out hope that he could find another similar site, one with both a geological connection to the Russian mainland and a cultural tie to its people. If he could find that, especially a location far to the north, then Russia could claim the Arctic for itself.

And I would get the honor.

Holding to that hope, Turov tolerated many of the wilder and arcane assertions of the society's members. He tempered what he heard and tried to cast it all in practical terms, but even he had his limits.

He stared at the ruins of the two young people.

This zealotry and cruelty strained his forbearance.

He scowled at Sychkin. "You truly believe that what these two found, a cache of old books, could lead to the Golden Library of the Tsars?"

"I do. It's why I wished to talk to you before I returned to Moscow and reported to the patriarch."

"About what?"

"From those trunks of books, a single Greek text was recovered. We've come to believe it holds the key to the location of the Golden Library."

Turov shook his head. "Even so, why is this library so important to the Arkangel Society?"

Sychkin took a deep breath, clearly weighing if this was a question that he should answer. He finally drew Turov off to the side, away from Oleg.

The archpriest's voice dropped to a whisper. "Because of the centuries-old accounts from two sons of Russia."

The stench of the room stoked Turov's impatience. "What accounts? What sons?"

"The first came from Pavel Chichagov. He was the son of the Russian admiral and Arctic explorer Vasily Chichagov."

Turov's interest sharpened. All who served in the Far North knew the name of the eighteenth-century admiral, a man who had once been the commander of Arkhangelsk.

Sychkin continued, "Pavel wrote a memoir about his father after his death. In that book, he stated something intriguing. It was already well known that his father repeatedly sought out the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia, but Pavel makes mention of one particular excursion in 1764. Vasily left Arkhangelsk with three ships, but once he was underway, Pavel claims his father received a letter. A secret decree from Empress Catherine the Great. She ordered Vasily to travel north, toward the pole, to search for a lost continent."

"You think she was referring to Hyperborea?"

Sychkin lifted his bushy brows. "What else could it be?"

Turov waved for the archpriest to continue. "What happened during that voyage?"

"Pavel never says. All we know is that Chichagov returned with only one ship. Afterward, he quickly advanced to the rank of admiral." Sychkin shrugged. "Maybe as a reward?"

Turov scowled. "Even if this is true, it sounds like Pavel's father came back empty-handed."

"Maybe not. Especially when you consider the second account that I had mentioned." Sychkin stared hard at Turov. "That story came from Catherine the Great's own son—Paul. The young man was also friends with Pavel. In a set of Tsarist papers returned to us from the Vatican, we uncovered a single letter from Paul to Pavel, where the emperor hints that Chichagov had found something during that voyage. Paul's words are cryptic. He hints at the discovery of ‘ wonders and horrors ' far to the north. And ‘ a threat that could end all life. '"

Turov scoffed. "That could mean anything."

"Except for one additional oddity in that letter. Paul tells Pavel that his mother, Catherine, hadn't sent Chichagov north without any guidance. He claims she had come across ‘ ancient texts thought lost forever ' and it was those books that guided her hand."

Turov understood where this was leading. "You're thinking she found the Golden Library and something in that archive revealed a path to Hyperborea?"

"I see the doubt in your eyes. Sometimes you must give yourself over to faith."

Turov heard the growing irritation in the other's voice, but he ignored it. "And if I don't have such faith? What if I want proof?"

The shadow of a smile shone through the archpriest's thick beard. "Within that recovered Greek text, we found an illuminated sketch of a gold book, an image we believe is meant to represent the Golden Library. More importantly, the illustration was signed in Catherine's name."

"Truly?" Turov could not help but be intrigued.

Sychkin nodded. "I believe—I have faith —that Catherine is guiding our hand to that library."

"A library that could lead us to a lost continent?"

"And maybe to a weapon hidden there. Catherine's son, Paul, warns of a great danger, one that could end all life . Still, either way, her explorers must have found something important. Why else keep her discovery of the Golden Library secret? Such a revelation would've brought great acclaim to her reign and to Russia. So why hide it?"

Turov could guess. He remembered what Paul had described was found to the Far North.

Wonders and horrors.

A stab of trepidation struck him. He pictured the collapse of the vault under Moscow. If the archpriest was right, Catherine must have been determined to preserve her secret, while also keeping it well guarded.

"We are close to the truth," Sychkin insisted with a note of exaltation. "As such, there will come a time when we will need your help, Captain Turov—along with your Arctic Brigade. I ask you to gather a force, those you most trust, and wait for our word."

Turov gave a slight bow of his head in acknowledgment, recognizing this was the reason Sychkin had been so forthright about these details.

He needs my help .

Turov shared a look with Oleg, whose eyes shone with the same hope that stoked in his own chest. If all of this was even partially true, it could change Russia forever.

Turov turned back to Sychkin. "How long do you believe it will take you to find the Golden Library?"

Sychkin's smile widened. "From the drawing inside that Greek text, we suspect we already know where to look... or at least a general area. The search will begin in earnest tomorrow."

Turov could not hide his surprise, yet he could also not shake his earlier trepidation. He had more questions, but Sychkin turned away, clearly dismissing him.

The archpriest called over to his assistant. "Yerik, we're done here. Let us put these pour souls to rest."

The robed monk, who had been cleaning knives off to the side, nodded. He was a formidable figure. Even crouched over a table, the man towered taller than Turov.

He knew of the monk's past, how he had come to be Sychkin's aide. When Yerik was twelve, his mother had been part of a doomsday cult. She followed the self-declared prophet, Pyoty Kuznetsov, who founded what he called the True Russian Orthodox Church. The cult holed up in a cave with canisters of gasoline. It was only after some of them died during a fire, including Yerik's mother, that the group abandoned the cave. It had been black-cassocked members of the orthodox church who had guided them out. Sychkin had been part of that party and took Yerik under his care, who had been badly burned and still carried a gnarled scar across his neck and the side of his face.

After that experience, the monk would clearly do anything the archpriest asked.

Including picking up an electric drill, one fitted with a long stainless-steel bit.

Yerik carried the tool toward the two figures strapped in the chairs. The woman stirred, as if suspecting her doom.

Turov swung away as the drill's motor ignited with a feverish scream. More than ready to depart, he headed to the door with Oleg. A concern continued to plague him.

Maybe we should take heed of Catherine's caution in such matters.

Archpriest Sychkin had his own worry, announcing it over the grind of metal through skull. "Let us hope, Captain Turov, that no one else discovers what we've found!"