Page 103 of Stars

Moscow, Russia

The second timeJack arrived at the Kremlin, he came in through the back, through Sergey’s private entrance under the cover of night.

It was quiet—more than Jack expected, even late. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous hallways, and as he strode down the red carpet in the double-story corridor, crystal shivered in the chandeliers overhead. He heard his guide, Yuri, breathing in front of him as he led the way to Sergey’s presidential office.

“Jack.” Sergey came across his office in three loping strides, wrapping Jack up in a hug that nearly broke Jack’s ribs. He pulled back and looked at Sergey.

He’d never seen his friend so bone-deep exhausted—his face drawn and weary, his skin sallow. Not even in Siberia, when he seemed a shell of a man, had he looked this ravaged. Sergey was a broken marionette, a jack-in-the-box that had been wound too tightly and blown out its sides and springs. His hands shook where he held on to Jack, almost leaning into him, as if he would fall without someone to grasp.

The worst was his haunted gaze. Sergey’s eyes were an event horizon Jack could fall into. Hopelessness ringed a fear so absolute, so total, that it pulled on Jack’s soul like a gravity well. He could feel the color fade out of the world around Sergey, the sound, the light sucking into an abyss within him. Somewhere inside himself, Sergey was bereft, adrift, and terrified.

“Jack, he’s up there,” Sergey said softly. “My Sasha. He’s up there. Did—did you hear what happened?”

“I heard about the American dying onboard the station when I landed in Moscow.”

“Jack—” Sergey’s voice choked off. He shook his head. Tried to focus. “Why are you here? And how long have you been in Russia? Why are you here undercover?” Sergey guided Jack across his office, collapsing on the leather couch. “You said you could help me?”

“We’ve been here a little over a week.” He told Sergey about Dr. Mendoza’s phone call, and the dead Yakuts in the Sakha Republic, and his trip to London to see Siddiqi. How they’d found Uchami, the lost lab and the mass graves of Evenki people, and General Sevastyanov’s forty-year-old uniform. As Jack spoke, Sergey paled, somehow losing what little color remained in his wan and tortured face.

“We crossed paths with Ilya in Tomsk—”

“Ilya.” Sergey grabbed Jack’s hand, squeezing hard. “When? When did you see him?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Blyad,” Sergey breathed. He leaned back, scrubbing his face. “I can’t reach him,” he whispered. “I haven’t spoken to him since Iakov Zeytsev took over Yamantau.” He spat out Zeytsev’s name like it was toxic. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I don’t know where he went after Tomsk.”

“I ordered him to Yamantau to secure the bunker. He wouldn’t fail. He never has, not once. If Zeytsev took Yamantau, then…”

Jack watched a single tear slide down Sergey’s cheek. Sergey pressed his lips together hard, staring at Jack.

“What’s happening with Yamantau? And Zeytsev?”

Sergey threw his hands up. “The whole thing is fucked, Jack. I call the Ministry of Defense and half the time they do not answer. They don’t answer the Kremlin or their president. What is happening at Yamantau? I don’t have afuckingclue! My generals are handling it, they tell me, brushing me off.” His hands trembled as he cupped his face, pitching forward and rocking. “I can barely think about Yamantau. I can’t think of anything except Sasha. He’s stuck up there in that station with a nuclear warhead about to detonate and whatever the fuck is killing them. I am,” he whispered, “an awful president. All I can think of is my lover.”

“I know how you feel,” Jack said. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“You said General Sevastyanov was involved in biological weapons? You found his uniform at Uchami?”

“Yes. And Ilya confirmed it. He’d read Sevastyanov’s secret file. He was in charge of black projects for the Soviets. He had his hands in everything. Biological warfare… weapons platforms… satellite launches…”

Sergey deflated, sagging into the couch like his bones had collapsed, everything that held him together as a man fleeing him in one moment. “I should have realized something more was going to happen.”

Jack stared.

“Two years ago,” Sergey said, his voice nothing but a shaking whisper. “Before Sasha left for NASA, there was an… incident. At Gorodomyla, an island out in Tver Oblast. The island used to be the GRU’s biological weapons factory. It was a level-four biocontainment facility. The worst of everything was there. Moroshkin’s supporters tried to raid it during the coup, and they spread a dozen lethal viruses and plagues around the entire oblast. Almost the whole forest between Moscow and Saint Petersburg was a hot zone.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered. “Why did I never hear about this?”

“No one heard about it. I took care of it. Me and Ilya personally, and a handful of our most trusted people. What would the world say if they knew some of our most lethal biological weapons had been raided, on top of what Madigan and Moroshkin did in the Arctic? It was too much to bring to the public. We took care of it. We tracked down everyone who was exposed. Everyone who was infected. It wasn’t hard.” His gaze flicked up to Jack and then away. “They were all dead. Every one of them. Like how you described the Yakuts dying. Horribly and bloody. But we got rid of it all. We made sure of it.” Sergey stared across his office at nothing.

Jack exhaled slowly, pressing his fingers to his eyelids as a thousand thoughts thundered around his mind, each one slamming into the next. “After Tomsk, we traveled to Tura—”

“Tura?” Sergey wrenched sideways, staring at Jack like he’d lost his head. “The Evenki administrative capital?”

“The dead in Uchami were Evenki. We thought maybe someone there would remember that many people going missing, even forty years ago.” He hesitated. “Sasha’s been there. Is he from Tura?”