arm in search of the power source that had to be within the length of the cable, and hit a solid, heavy box. He felt the top and what seemed to be battery terminals, attached the crocodile clips to the nodules, and light from several bulbs in the ceiling and on the walls instantly glowed, illuminating the chamber.
Zhilev crawled out from under the bed, covered in dust, and as he stood he had to hold his head for a moment and support it as his neck began aching fiercely. He massaged the vertebrae, bringing his head back and then dropping it forward down on to his chest hoping for the click that usually brought some relief, but it did not come this time. He moaned loudly as he forced his head down, increasing the pain, and then it suddenly cracked. He released it slowly, enjoying the comparative relief, dropped his shoulders and exhaled to relax, then took a look around at the long, narrow, sombre, metal chamber. In shape and size it was similiar to the inside of a road-haulage fuel tanker. It was just high enough for Zhilev to stand up in although he had to lean forward to prevent his head scraping on the ceiling. The memories came flooding back and the cache grew more familiar to him by the second.
A military communication system sat on its own metal shelf welded to the wall beside the bunk bed. Zhilev turned the radio on and as soon as a series of LED lights glowed, he turned it off.
The length of one side of the cylinder was crammed tightly with shelving packed with durable moulded, black plastic boxes of various shapes and sizes. Two pairs of bunk beds took up most of the other side with a narrow walkway separating them from the shelves. At one end of the bunks was a toilet with no privacy panel or curtain, and a sump in the ground beneath it large enough to take care of four men’s evacuations. Beside the toilet was the ladder welded to the wall directly below the entrance hatch. At the other end of the cylinder, beyond the beds, was a small table with an electric kettle on it as well as neatly stacked plates, mugs and cutlery. Beneath the table were several oxygen bottles. Everything was covered in a thin film of white dust which came from the air-scrubbers, a carbon-dioxide-absorbent powder which increased the life of the air inside the chamber in case it was unsafe to open the hatch for a long period. Like the submarines of old, if the percentage of oxygen dropped below a partial pressure of point two bars absolute, which affected most people’s brains, causing an initial drunken-like state before unconsciousness, the oxygen bottles could be activated and a trickle flow of the live-saving gas would maintain the correct percentage.
On the floor beside the toilet was a camouflage disk the size of a car tyre, designed to fit snugly inside the entrance hole; it was secured in place from beneath prior to closing the hatch and intended to hide the hole from the outside. It would not sustain a close inspection or an adult standing on it, but then it would only ever be used in the event of a real operation and the odds on someone walking through that precise part of the forest during the short period it would be in use were calculated as acceptable.There were also contingency plans in the event the cache was discovered. If the alarm was not immediately raised by the discoverers and they could be captured before they escaped, they were to be killed and their bodies buried. If it was the British military that made the find, and the inhabitants of the cache had no chance of escaping to continue their task, then the final option, which involved explosives and the total destruction of the cache, was none too pleasant for anyone in the immediate vicinity. This was the only kind of operation Zhilev had ever been involved in that called for suicide in the event of the threat of capture, and he remembered his team accepting the order wholeheartedly, understanding the logic and necessity of it.
The placing of the chamber in the ground sometime in the early sixties had been an impressive operation, taking several years to plan and many months to execute. The bare cylinder, or habitat, was purchased from a company in Hull which made it to spec believing