The Doomsday Box by Herbie Brennan

Author:Herbie Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 27

Michael, KGB Headquarters Basement, 1962

It was cold. Michael’s breath plumed in time to the rise and fall of his chest. His arms were shackled at the wrists and pulled above his head by a slack chain attached to a pulley on the ceiling. His ankles were also shackled, in this case to an iron bar that left his feet spread about a yard apart. The bar was, in turn, chained to fittings sunk into a concrete block beneath him. There was nothing painful about the shackles themselves—all four felt, if anything, a little loose—but the wrist chain meant he was unable to sit or even squat, while the bar prevented his taking so much as a single step across the room. He could bend, he could turn, but these were the only movements permitted.

His arms hurt from being held up at an unnatural angle. His legs hurt even more.

The cell was somewhere in the basement of the building where the three men had brought Opal and himself. It was windowless and lit only by a single dim bulb hanging from a length of electrical cord in the middle of the ceiling. The walls were whitewashed, with a splattering of curious brown stains. The floor was of worn stone flags. There was only one item of furniture, an old wooden chair.

Michael bent his knees to take some of the strain from his legs. Although he could not bend them much, it helped a little, but only for a moment. The problem was, bending his legs left him hanging from the chain that held his wrists, so that his arms immediately began to spasm and his shoulder sockets felt as if they were on fire. He endured it for as long as he could, then straightened his knees. His legs began to ache again.

Turning round on his own axis helped a little too. He could manage that fairly easily since the ankle bar was fixed in such a way as to allow a full 360-degree rotation. There was just enough chain to permit him to shuffle his feet. With a little concentration he could use the movement to turn slowly so that he faced each blank wall in turn. In one of them there was a steel-clad door with a sliding hatch at head height. Michael knew this had to be an observation hatch, although it had remained closed since he became aware of it. Michael even knew where he was, or thought he did. He was in a subterranean cell of the Lubyanka Prison, which formed part of KGB headquarters.

The classrooms of Eton College seemed very far away.

Despite his pain, he came close to a smile. It was in a history lesson at Eton that he’d learned about the KGB and their Lubyanka Prison. An old Soviet joke had stuck in his mind:

Why has KGB headquarters got the best view in the whole of Moscow?

Because from the basement you can see Siberia.

Siberia was where the Soviets kept their prison camps,

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