audible from below. It takes us about ten minutes to reach the bottom of the stairs and a makeshift atrium where an armed guard waits for us, the winged shield on his uniform identifying him as an officer of GUSP, the former 15th Directorate of the KGB. The espionage nerd in me can’t help being a tiny bit thrilled at this. In London, we knew GUSP as the most secretive of the Russian security services. We had no idea what they actually did.
Richard shows identification and the officer nods us past. An automatic door opens in front of us, the sulfurous smell is suddenly stronger, and we follow a corridor into a scene so unreal that Charlie and I both stop dead. We are on the deserted platform of an underground railway station. Both to the left and the right the track vanishes into unlit tunnels. Opposite us, on a wall faced with glazed tiles, is a bronze hammer and sickle a meter high and an enamel sign reading D6-EFREMOVA.
“What is this?” I ask Richard.
“Efremova station,” he answers. “Part of the D-6 underground network. Officially, D-6 doesn’t exist. Unofficially, it was built by Stalin to link the Kremlin to underground KGB command posts, and to evacuate the Politburo and the generals from Moscow in the event of nuclear war. Work on it has continued in secret ever since.”
“I’ve heard the rumors,” Charlie says, looking around them. “Everyone has. But I thought it was just dezinformatsiya.”
Richard smiles. “You know what they say. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. That’s the KGB all over.”
“So what happens now?” I ask Tolya, who has yet to utter a single word.
In answer he nods toward Richard.
“It’s very simple,” Richard says. “We wait for our train.”
So we stand there, Richard dressed like a commuter bound for a day’s work at a London investment bank, Charlie and I zipped into our black cold-weather gear like skiers at an Alpine resort, and Tolya looking like a Mafia enforcer.
“So if the D-6 network is a secret Russian government asset, how do you and the Twelve have access to it?”
Richard frowns thoughtfully. “Eve, there are things I’m not at liberty to explain. Let’s just say… It’s complicated.”
He’s saved from further explanation by the arrival of the train. It’s a single carriage, clearly many decades old, with an electric locomotive at each end. We climb aboard. The interior is functional but worn, with a single flickering light, threadbare upholstery and discolored windows part-covered by curtains. We sit down, the doors close with a faint hydraulic hiss, and the train draws away from the platform into the darkness.
“Remember this journey,” Richard tells Charlie and me, as Tolya looks on silently. “No one would believe you if you told them you’d ridden the deep rail. They’d think you were crazy, or a fantasist.”
Soon we pass through another station—I glimpse a sign reading D6-VOLKHONKA through the grimy glass—but the train doesn’t stop until we reach D6-CENTRAL. The whole journey has taken less than ten minutes. Stepping from the train, regretfully in my case, we exit into an atrium very like the one at Efremova, except that this time there are half a dozen GUSP officers guarding the deserted station. In the place of Efremova’s stairways, a succession of escalators rises within the steel-walled shaft. It takes several minutes to reach the top level, where we alight into a dusty, littered hallway with several exit corridors radiating from it.
Richard leads us to the furthermost of these, which is signposted NIKOLSKAYA. There’s a light switch on the concrete wall though he ignores it, preferring to follow the pale beam of his torch. I can feel a cold breeze and the beating of my heart.
The corridor goes in a dead straight line. There’s smashed glass on the ground and puddles of dark water. At one point the torch beam catches a pair of shining eyes, and a cat bolts out of the shadows. Finally, we reach a dead end. There’s an aluminum stepladder leaning against the wall, which Tolya stands up and climbs before pushing open a steel hatch over his head.
“This is where I say goodbye, good luck, and good hunting,” Richard tells us. “Tolya, you know what to do.”
Tolya nods, and effortlessly pulls himself up into the darkness. Charlie follows. I climb the ladder, jam my elbows through the gap, and with Tolya’s help manage to haul myself onto a cold stone floor, where I collapse for