Operation Siberia Read online

  Banks was struggling with a sudden idea that he had been dropped into a Bond movie by accident, for that self-same speech could just as easily come from any of the incarnations of Ernst Blofeld. He was still smiling inwardly at the thought when Volkov clapped his hands again.

  “And look, the elements have heard me, and even they bend to my will.”

  *

  Everybody in the room turned at the same time to look out of the large picture window. Nobody spoke, all struck dumb by the scene as the fog slowly rolled away, revealing new vistas, new wonders, as it cleared.

  The mammoth they had seen earlier was still standing in the same spot just past the runway and the parked Lear jet, but now they could see where the answering chorus of bellows had arisen. The beast was only one of a large flock, a score and more of sizes ranging from full adult male to three that looked to have only recently been born. The beasts, ranging in color from almost ginger to a dark, muddy brown, were spread out in a fenced-off, wide, marshy area stretching away from them to where the fog rolled off over a distant shoreline.

  That was the view to their right. To their left, there were two other large penned enclosures, also in marshland, although this time stretching and rising up in a slope to a tall, almost sheer, set of slate-gray cliffs towering several miles away, and half that again high. The nearer of the two enclosures, which butted up close to the edge of the end of the runway in front of the buildings, contained an even larger herd of animals, and although these weren’t as large, their sheer number made them impressive. They were deer, shaggy like the red stags on Scottish hillsides, but twice as tall, with a span of antlers wider than a man. Banks had seen their like before, but only in recreations in museums; giant elk, such as had walked the marshes of Britain, herding again here, several hundred of them, in the marshy tundra. Once again, they ranged in color, darker than the mammoths, more red but less ginger, and they came in a variety of sizes and ages. Banks was so rapt in his attention that he almost didn’t take note of the occupants of the third pen.

  At first, he took them for hairy black cattle, for these were smaller than the mammoth, smaller than the elk, but he saw that they still must be almost six-feet tall, and almost barrel-like. It was only when he saw the single, curved, horns on their snouts that he realized he was looking at another beast rescued from the past. These were wooly rhinoceros, only a handful of them in comparison to the larger herd of elk, and spread out over a much bigger area of marsh. He counted a dozen, although he knew there could be more in dips and hollows of the undulating ground.

  Wiggins broke the silence.

  “Aye, very nice I’m sure. But they’re a bit bloody boring, just standing about there, bollocks-deep in mucky water. And the fucking stink alone is going to keep the punters away. What’s the big selling point? Do they do tricks?”

  If Volkov took umbrage, he didn’t show it.

  “This vista represents a pinnacle of human scientific achievement,” he said. “I do not expect the common man to recognize the beauty of it. But do not fret. There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Come, let me show them to you.”

  *

  Volkov led the party—three scientists, Banks’ team, and three of the Russian workers bringing up the rear. They went down the staircase to the main foyer, then headed left, and through a wide double door that led straight into an open, concrete-floored area under the high glass domes they’d seen outside.

  It was warmer here, but not stiflingly so. The vegetation in the domes wasn’t lush and tropical as Banks had been expecting, but was mainly spindly conifers, rough gorse and shrubs, and more of the thick matted grass that made up the moorland outside. Each separate dome contained a cage, delineated by inches-thick glass that lay in a curve between the concrete walkway and whatever was kept within. Volkov led them to the first such area on the left.

  They stood with their noses to the glass, looking down into a sunken area of grassland. At the back of the cage, the ground rose up in a slope where it was piled against the outer wall of the dome. The slope was more like dry, bare earth than grass, and was punctuated with a series of holes—burrows by the look of them.

  “Badgers?” Hynd said at Banks’ right. “Looks like a sett we had out the back of the school when I was a lad.”

  “No, not badgers,” Volkov replied, and at the same time, a gray-faced beast looked out of one of the burrows, then hopped out fully onto the slope. At first, Banks thought it to be one of the large South American rodents—Coypu or Capybara maybe. Then he saw the hind legs, and the shaggy, almost white, fur. It was a mountain hare, and he’d seen their like before on remote Scottish hillsides. But he’d never seen one this size; it was as large as a good-sized dog. He was still marveling at it when two, three, half a dozen more of them emerged from different burrows, hopped down the slope and began to feed on the thin grasses and mosses of the boggy ground directly under the watchers’ gaze.

  “We’ve found partial pelts of these all through the melting permafrost of the delta,” Volkov said. “And working with them has enabled us to perfect the techniques we are then able to apply to the larger fauna. It does mean that we have managed to breed rather a large number of these hares, for they are as fecund as your British rabbits. As such, we have had to find a use for them.”

  He nodded, and one of the large Russian workers moved away to the next dome in the line away from them. Whatever they kept in that one preferred more foliage, more cover, for the conifers were tightly backed in a thick copse, and the dome was dominated by a profusion of huge boulders, some as big as a small bus, scattered willy-nilly all over the boggy ground. The Russian went to a touch-screen panel embedded in the glass, and keyed in a four number passcode that sent a singsong tone ringing in the empty space. Then there came a screech, and they saw a sliding barrier open up to a foot high between the hares’ cage and the one beyond.

  At first, the hares took no notice, but as the extent of their feeding spread, they moved, slowly but surely, toward where the open barrier gave them access to more luscious ground beyond. One of the smaller, probably younger, hares hopped under the barrier and began feeding on the grasses on the other side.

  “Aye, very nice,” Wiggins said, his sarcasm coming through loud and clear, but if he was about to add anything to his statement, it died in his throat. Something huge came out of the conifer copse, so fast that Banks hardly had time to register its presence before it leapt, an impossible bound, ten yards or more across open ground, to land almost on top of the hare. The crunch of the hare’s bones breaking was loud even through the glass, and a mist of blood spray hung in the air for a second while the watchers gaped at the predator as it started to eat.

  “Tell me that’s not a fucking saber-toothed tiger,” Wiggins whispered.

  Volkov laughed.

  “That’s not a Smilodon,” he said. “Although I would dearly love one, the source materials we need to have a specimen of our own to study have not yet turned up.”

  The huge beast was making short work of the hare. The rest of the hares had already disappeared back into their burrows, and when Volkov gave another nod, the Russian worker entered a code in the keypad and the barrier between the cages slid down to block off access.

  Banks couldn’t take his eyes off this new beast. It must have been nearly nine feet in length from nose to its hind legs, and a long, swishing, bushy tail added more length again to that. The head was enormous, and when it lifted its snout and looked Banks in the eye, he knew what he was looking at, despite the fact that the shaggy fur along the flanks was almost silver, and barred with darker gray stripes. The almost black mane was the giveaway.

  “It’s a fucking huge lion.”

  - 4 -

  The squat Russian clapped his hands and laughed.

  “Right first time, Captain Banks. It is a cave lion, to be exact,” Volkov said. “In 2008, a well-preserved specimen was unearthed near the Maly Anyuy River which still retaine
d some clumps of hair. I was able to obtain some samples, and using the methods which will become clear to you when you see my labs, was able to manufacture this fine specimen that you see here.”

  Banks still couldn’t take his gaze from the beast. It was larger by far than any lion he’d seen, any big cat he could imagine. It was a thing of grace and power, a pure animal built only to hunt. He felt a shiver of cold dread in his spine at the sight of it, like an atavistic memory of an ancestor’s encounter with just such a thing, back in the auld country, when all was still ice and snow and wind. He would not like to meet it under such circumstances—under any circumstances. He was brought out of the reverie by another sarcastic remark.

  “Manufacture?” Wiggins said. “Is that what we’re calling it these days? Do you have more of these big fuckers?”

  “Just this one, so far,” Volkov said. “But he is mature now, and producing sperm so we have plenty of genetic material at our disposal.”

  “I don’t want to know how you collect it,” Hynd muttered.

  The three British scientists had moved off to a clear space away from the cages, and stood in a huddle, speaking in voices too low to be overheard, but the discussion looked animated, and Waterston’s face was stern, as if he’d seen something he did not like. Banks was not the only one to notice, for Volkov went quickly over to the lead scientist and took him by the arm.

  “Come, come,” he said. “The tour has only just begun. There is much to see before lunch.”

  *

  They went past more domed cages, but Volkov didn’t stop, and when Banks glanced inside in passing, there appeared to be nothing to see but boggy ground and grass.

  All of this area of the zoo appeared to be empty. There were four more domes to match the ones at the front, but no animals inside. The largest of the four looked like it might have contained something at one time, for the ground was scuffed, the turf torn up in clumps, and the glass on the viewing side of the cage had been scratched with deep, scouring scars on the inside surface. More alarmingly, a large area of the outside of the dome was cracked in a spider-web almost ten feet across at its widest point, as if something had launched a violent, head-on attack in an attempt to escape.

  “What was in this one?” Waterston asked.

  “A failure,” Volkov replied curtly and kept walking on. Banks saw that the Russians behind them had stiffened and grown wary as they passed this damaged dome.

  Something happened here—something bad. And I think it’s a good idea I find out what.

  It would have to wait, for Volkov had already led the scientists away and only stopped when they reached what appeared to be the central point of the whole zoo. A huge dome, looming twice as high again as the others, was completely caged in, not just with glass but with a lattice of iron and mesh. They entered this dome via a glass-covered walkway that ran around the inside perimeter of the structure. The interior of the dome stretched some fifty yards in diameter, and was dominated in its center by three huge conifers that looked to Banks’ admittedly amateur eyes to be young redwoods. Six black dots sat high on the topmost branches, but Banks couldn’t get his brain to make the required adjustments of scale. They were birds, that was certain, but that was all he could tell.

  That changed quickly. The same Russian worker stepped forward to another embedded keypad, and typed in four numbers, again accompanied by the high, ringing tones.

  “I don’t need to see another animal being slaughtered, thank you very much,” Waterston said indignantly.

  Volkov laughed.

  “Then we shall not offend your delicate sensibilities any farther, Professor. Watch.”

  A section of the floor opened up, and a long trestle table rose up out of the ground from below. The carcasses of half a dozen large hares lay in a line along the tabletop. As if a whistle had been blown, the black birds dropped from their height, not flying, but gliding, great wings outstretched, acting almost like black parachutes as they circled, once, around the trees then flopped and hopped comically onto the tabletop where they proceeded to feed hungrily. They looked like vultures—Banks guessed they were a kind of Condor—but they stood well over three feet high in body, and their wingspan was enormous, somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet for the largest of the six specimens.

  “Fucking thunderbirds,” Wiggins said. “That’s all we’re needing.”

  “You may be closer than you know in that nomenclature,” Volkov said, “for these birds almost certainly coexisted with the Native Americans in the northern part of that continent after the retreat of the ice. These, our Teratornis merriami, were the most abundant of the giant bird species. Over a hundred specimens have been found, mostly from La Brea Tar Pits in North America, but we had several of our own here on the delta, drawn, no doubt, by plentiful carcasses on which to feast.”

  The birds made short work of their lunch, stripping the carcasses clean with beaks and talons as efficient as any blades. The show appeared to be over. The birds hopped off the table and, rather laboriously, took to the air again, achieving height with some frantic, again almost comical, flapping of the huge wings. They finally soared almost gracefully for a few seconds as they circled up the dome, then looked clumsy again as they attempted to land on springy branches at the high tops. But within seconds, all was settled and calm again, and the six black dots looked down from their high perches. The Russian stepped forward and keyed a code into the touch screen; the table whirred and sank. The opening in the floor closed as if it had never been, leaving a green sweep of grass with not even a stray bone or scrap of flesh left to show for the feeding.

  *

  The three scientists had gone into a huddle again, and this time when Volkov noticed, he got visibly more agitated, and made straight for Waterston.

  “Come, sir, tell me,” he demanded. “What have you seen that makes you so conspiratorial? I have bared the secrets of this place to you. At least do me the same courtesy.”

  “Bared your secrets?” Waterston said. “I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the depths to which you have sunk in your rush to get your ‘zoo’ open.” The emphasis he used on the word showed all too clearly his opinion of both the little Russian and his work.

  Banks started to pay attention; the tension had just risen several notches. Volkov bristled, and the three Russian workers moved, almost imperceptibly, closer to their boss. Banks had changed his earlier opinion; now he was pretty sure they were all armed; the bulge of a shoulder holster showed when one of them moved closer to their boss. Banks saw Hynd and McCally take note and go still and watchful.

  They were one false move away from a knockdown fight, possibly even a shooting match.

  And we’ve only been here an hour.

  - 5 -

  It was obvious to Banks that the stocky Russian needed the scientists’ approval; it had been obvious as soon as he’d seen the Lear Jet in Lossiemouth, and took note of the spread of food and drink on offer.

  Sugar works better than vinegar.

  Waterston was, however, so far at least, proving immune to the bribery, and Banks’ estimation of the English scientist had gone up several notches. But something had to give before the tension spilled over into action, and Volkov himself broke the strained silence. He waved his men away and went to stand beside Waterston, leaning in close to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yes, there are indeed things yet to see, things that will explain everything. Will you come? Your curiosity can be assuaged within minutes. I have nothing to hide.”

  “That is yet to be seen,” Waterston muttered in reply, but the scientists allowed themselves to once again be led away. Banks’ squad followed, with the Russian workers at the rear, but the tension had not dissipated completely, and he had a much more watchful team around him as they circled the great aviary. Finally, they arrived at a spot where a double doorway led to another concrete and glass building at the back of the facility.

  This time, Volkov used the keypad, six
numbers with no associated tones, but the doors slid open with a hiss in response, revealing a gleaming, white-tiled corridor beyond.

  “I told you I have nothing to hide,” he said as he motioned the group forward into the corridor. “Come and see where the magic happens. Welcome to my labs.”

  *

  As they walked along the sterile white corridor, a double door twenty yards inside opened at their approach, triggered by a motion detector switch. Beyond that was yet another dome, a single high structure containing what appeared to Banks’ untutored eye to be a state-of-the-art modern laboratory. Several large cages ran around the outside walls, while the center of the area was a mixture of computers, monitors, printers, refrigeration units, and high, banked systems of glassware and chrome containing a variety of liquids that he could only guess at. For as much as he knew of the working of this place, it might as well be magic.

  Volkov, Waterston, and the other two Englishmen were already deep in the esoterica of a scientific discussion that Banks lost the thread of within seconds. Wiggins was at his side, also listening.

  “I don’t know what the fuck Reverse Transcriptase is, but it sounds painful,” the Glaswegian said after a while.

  Hynd answered.

  “It’s an enzyme used to generate DNA from an RNA template,” he said laconically, and smiled. “What, you didnae pay attention in O’ Level Biology?”

  “The only thing I was paying attention to in class was the teacher’s tits,” Wiggins replied, and leered, then his eyes went wide as he looked over Hynd’s shoulder to one of the cages against the outside wall of the dome.

  “Holy fuck, would you look at the size of that.”

  Banks turned to look.

  At first, he thought it was some kind of German Shepherd, then his sense of scale kicked in again. It was indeed canine, but this was a wolf, sitting inside a large cage on its haunches, its steely blue gaze fixed directly on Banks and Wiggins. It was as gray along the flanks as the lion they’d seen early, but shaggier, and almost white in places. It was difficult to gauge its size while it was sitting, but given the size of the head—and its teeth—it would stand around four feet high when upright. The power and strength of the lion had impressed him—but this was different again. What he felt now was the same kind of weak-kneed terror that came just before a firefight. He faced it the same way he would in combat—he looked it in the eye and went to meet it.