Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) by Allan Leverone (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

on the job. The vast majority of his working hours were spent chatting up potential marks, earning their trust, wheedling his way into their lives, and so he had long ago learned the importance of remembering names and faces.

His recall for such details was unmatched.

“So,” Commander Morozov said as they stood in the parking lot. “This is the device that is causing all the excitement with my engineers?” The sun had broken through the mostly overcast cloud cover and was beating down on them, causing Andrei’s underarms to perspire so severely he could feel his undershirt becoming soaked with his own sweat.

“Da,” Andrei answered, doing his best to hide his impatience and annoyance. He choked back what he really wanted to say, which was that he didn’t give a damn what was inside the goddamned box. It could contain the severed head of Karl Marx and he would still want nothing more than to climb inside his piece of shit Volga and hit the road for Sevastopol and all the pretty young women sunning themselves on the beach.

The more time he wasted in pointless conversation with this naval officer, the longer it would take before he was drunk on vodka.

And he really wanted to be drunk on vodka.

“Excellent,” the base commander said. “Please, come this way.” He indicated the administration building. “I am sure you would love a tour of our facility. It is quite impressive, if I do say so myself. Let us go inside and secure this precious cargo, and then we will have a look around.”

Andrei smiled politely back at Morozov while sighing deeply inside. He welcomed the opportunity to get out of the heat and humidity, but had hoped to hand off the “precious cargo” and then be on his way.

“I am sure much of this impressive facility is classified, and thus off-limits to someone in my position,” he said to Morozov’s back as the man opened his car door and tossed his uniform jacket inside, then moved toward the building’s double glass doors.

“Oh, of course. And do not worry. I would never consider taking you into the secure areas. But there is still plenty to see.”

Andrei rolled his eyes and sighed again, this time out loud.

***

He had to admit the submarine base was damned interesting. The first thing Morozov had done after entering the building was to pass the electronic communication thing off to one of his junior officers.

“Bring this to the lab immediately,” he’d said, and the man had scurried off like his shoes were on fire.

The second thing he’d done was to escort Andrei to his office and offer a glass of vodka. Suddenly the prospect of spending some as-yet unknown amount of time inside this facility seemed a lot less daunting.

They sat in Morozov’s office and shared their vodka and passed the time—Morozov was actually fairly interesting, for a naval officer—and when they’d each drained their second glass, the commander said, “What do you say we show you around, eh?”

By that point it had seemed like an outstanding idea.

The lab, where he’d instructed his lackey to bring the object of that American idiot Carson Limington’s treason, was apparently one of the portions of the base that was off-limits. But the commander hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there were plenty of things Andrei could see that he might enjoy.

The first was the descent into the working portion of the base. After leaving Morozov’s office, the commander led Andrei on a trek through a maze of hallways that felt much more complicated than it should have, given the size of the admin building.

Of course, he thought, the vodka might have something to do with that.

Finally they arrived at an elevator. Sleek and shiny, the thing looked out of place in such an industrial setting, like it would be more at home inside Moscow’s plush Rossiya Hotel. Not that Andrei would know for certain; a grunt undercover intelligence operative like him would never be permitted inside the Rossiya. That notion was laughable.

In any event, Morozov pressed a button and a moment later the elevator car arrived with a crisp Ding! They entered and Morozov pressed another button, and this time the car descended. Andrei had no way of knowing how far underground they traveled, because there was no way of estimating how fast they were descending the elevator shaft. But the ride took longer than he would have expected.

Finally the car jerked to a stop and the door slid open, and Andrei found himself stepping into a wide tunnel featuring a walkway along one side. The walkway curved in a long, gradual turn to the right.

His eyes roamed over the tile walls and ceiling and Morozov chuckled. “It resembles a subway tunnel without the train, does it not?”

Andrei nodded. “That is exactly what it looks like.”

“There is a reason for that. When this base was in the planning stages, much of the architectural work—and later the actual construction—was done by subway engineers that were conscripted into the project. The theory was that tunneling under millions of tons of earth to dock submarines was not markedly different from tunneling under city streets to run underground trains.”

Andrei nodded as he followed Morozov along the gently curving walkway. Before long an iron railing appeared off their right side, and shortly after that the tunnel widened even more. Water filled the space between the iron railing and the tunnel wall on the other side.

Far off in the distance, Andrei could see a Soviet submarine on the surface. It had been lashed to the railing with chains, and a major repair or maintenance job was taking place, with welders wielding torches as a crane lifted something that looked like a long horizontal tube into place on the sub’s deck.

As they approached the submarine, Andrei asked, “How deep inside the mountain does