Owen Matthews - Black Sun

“Nothing to say for yourself? You disappoint me.”

The General leaned forward and glanced frankly down at Vasin’s crotch.

“The last one pissed himself. Right here. Lost control of his bladder. Imagine! What mere words can do to a man. But then, you knew that. At least at second hand. You’ve read some of the files. You know what we are. What we do.”

Vasin felt the office swim before his eyes. He clutched the arms of his chair for support, felt the polished wood digging into his palms. He felt the vertigo of a man standing up against an execution wall. Counting bricks. Counting breaths.

“Sir. She… I…”

“Did you like it, Vasin?” Orlov’s voice had dropped to a soft, hissing whisper that was almost sexual. “Did she moan like a whore? Go on. Say it. Did you think of me when you fucked her?”

Vasin’s eyes were pleading. Could he attempt to apologize? Tell Orlov that he had been seduced? Or was it time, finally, to let his anger and humiliation explode? To scream and rage at the evil and injustice of this accursed place? Of this man?

Orlov’s breathing had become shallow. A flush of color had come into the General’s smooth, priestly face. The intensity of his stare had become almost carnal as he watched Vasin twist and wilt under his power.

“Tell me what you think of me, Vasin. Say it.”

Vasin fought back words as though choking back vomit. You cynical monster. You sadist.

“You are a strong man. A wise man.”

“Good. Very good. And my wife, Katya? Who is she?”

“She is a shameless whore, sir.”

“Yes. And us. You and me. Who are you to me, now, if I choose to forgive you?”

“Your loyal servant, sir.”

“My loyal servant?”

“Your very obedient fly.”

“Again.”

“Your very obedient fly. Sir.”

“Excellent.”

Orlov sighed deeply and subsided back into his chair.

“Oh, Vasin. Oh, my boy. I was so hoping that you would see wisdom.”

“Wisdom?”

“That spirit in you. Intelligence. Independence. Katya saw it too. She said, That Vasin, he’s a smart one. Make him one of yours. She has a good eye.”

Vasin felt his mouth go slack.

“Yes. You are surprised? You think that any wife of mine would dare to defy me? Could get away with deceiving me? How sordid that would be. How pathetic. No, Vasin. She is one of mine. She tests. She tastes. She whispers in your ear, What do you really think of my husband? Isn’t he a pig? A fool?”

Katya’s bedroom words, exactly. Vasin winced at the memory.

“You know Katya was once a rebel, too, just like you. Back when she was wild and pretty. But you see, I need rebels, Vasin. Men who can think for themselves. Minds who can see beyond the system. But not rebels who rebel against me . You see that, don’t you?”

The pain in Vasin’s neck returned as a pulse of agony. It was almost as though someone was sliding a great hook into his flesh.

“Yes, sir.”

“I think we are ready, don’t you?”

“Ready?”

“For the next level, Vasin. Your next assignment. But you must be very secret.”

Orlov paused to savor the moment. He pulled a thin file marked TOP SECRET from a drawer of his desk and passed it to Vasin.

“Yes. I have some even more surprising news for you, Comrade. Or as I will soon be calling you, Lieutenant Colonel Vasin. A great task awaits you. You see, your revelations about Colonel Korin could complete a puzzle on which we have been working for some time.”

“Sir?”

“A lead we have been working on for months. It seems we have a traitor in our midst. A spy in the very heart of State Security. Yes, Vasin. He is one of us. But this man has a powerful protector. There is no direct evidence against him. But your spy Korin may be exactly what I need to collect that evidence. Especially since Korin is conveniently dead.”

“Conveniently?”

Vasin’s voice had become a whisper.

“Dead men tell whatever tale the living place in their lifeless mouths, Vasin. As I suspect you know already. Are you ready to find me some more tales for Korin to tell from beyond the grave? Specifically—the identity of the traitor Korin’s controller?”

Live not by lies. Vasin’s own words sounded in his mind like a mocking echo.

“I am ready, sir.”

“Good. Very good. Now go. Your family is waiting for you. Vera will have missed you.”

Vasin struggled to his feet. He found his head bowing down with the weight of its burden of deception. Orlov stood also and surveyed his new creature with satisfaction.

“Welcome home, Colonel Vasin.”

Black Sun is based on a true story.

At 10:50 Moscow time on the morning of 30 October 1961, a specially adapted Tupolev-95 bomber took off from Olenya air base carrying the most powerful weapon ever created by mankind.

The twenty-seven-ton, twenty-six-foot-long device’s code name was RDS-220. American journalists later nicknamed it the Tsar Bomb. But RDS-220’s actual creators took it far too seriously to call the bomb by anything but its real name. In truth, they feared it. In the weeks leading up to the test-firing of RDS-220, the bomb’s real-life designer, academician Andrei Sakharov, of whom my fictional Yury Adamov is a dark twin, became concerned that his new device was so powerful that it might cause a runaway chain reaction in atmospheric hydrogen, or possibly nitrogen. Sakharov ordered a team of his engineers at Arzamas-16 to calculate the chances that the detonation might actually set the earth’s atmosphere on fire.

Earlier in his career, Sakharov had speculated about the theoretical possibility of even larger bombs, of two hundred and five hundred megatons. But he was so shocked by the results of his colleagues’ theoretical conclusions about the unpredictable effects of RDS-220 that he made a radical decision. Ten days before the test, he ordered the device’s revolutionary new uranium tamper to be replaced with a lead one. The bomb makers of Arzamas-16 had finally touched the outer limit of science. They had created a bomb too powerful for the earth to withstand. And they stepped back.

Even with a specially extended runway, the Tupolev took off with difficulty. The bomb’s weight was twice that of the aircraft’s usual payload. Both the release plane and a Tu-16 observer aircraft that was to take air samples and film the test had been painted with special reflective white paint to minimize heat damage. But despite this precaution, the chances that the crew would survive the test were put at 50 percent. The Tupolev’s pilot, Major Andrei Durnovtsev, had been informed of the risk. The rest of his airmen had not.

Shortly after 11:30, Durnovtsev had reached Mityushikha Bay, a nuclear testing range in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The film of the test shows a desolate landscape of snow and rock. At 11:32 Moscow time, at an altitude of 10,500 meters above Zone C of the Sukhoy Nos section of the test site, he released the bomb. Its fall was slowed by specially made parachutes designed to allow the plane time to get a safe distance from the detonation.

The altimeter-activated firing mechanism of RDS-220 detonated perfectly at four thousand meters. The fireball nearly reached the altitude of the release plane and caused both aircraft to tumble more than a kilometer. In the official film, the cameraman in the Tu-16 observer plane struggles to maintain focus on the detonation during the free fall. But both aircrews survived.

The explosion destroyed every building, both wooden and brick, in the evacuated village of Severny, some 55 kilometers from ground zero. The heat from the blast, according to unmanned sensors, was still strong enough to have caused third-degree burns 100 kilometers away. The thermal pulse was felt by human observers 270 kilometers distant. The shock wave broke windows in Norway and Finland, some 900 kilometers from the test site.