- Published: 20 August 2024
- ISBN: 9780552178365
- Imprint: Penguin
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 368
- RRP: $30.00
White Fox
The acclaimed, chillingly authentic Cold War thriller
Extract
PROLOGUE
JUNE–SEPTEMBER 1963
1
VorkutLag 51 Strict Regime Penal Colony, Komi Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, June 1963
In the pale twilight of an Arctic summer night, three men ran for their lives through an endless sea of knee-high shrubs and scrub grass. Far behind them a huddle of prison buildings encircled in barbed wire stood like a lighted island in the surrounding gloom. A signal rocket soared into the sky and descended slowly, casting hard black shadows in the half-light.
High in a watchtower the penal colony’s commander focused his binoculars on the fleeing figures, ignoring the mosquitoes which swarmed in clouds around him. By his side, his second-in-command shaded his eyes against the flare light and squinted at the retreating figures.
“Troika. Classic.” Th e burly officer’s voice was hoarse as rusty nails in a bucket. “Two old lags and a young kid. The cow.”
The commandant lowered his field glasses and eyed his deputy with distaste.
“The cow, Major Chemizov?”
“If they don’t find food within a couple of days, they smash the kid’s head in and eat him. The cow.”
“And where would they find food, out there in the tundra?”
Chemizov shrugged.
“Might find some native herders. Cut their throats, steal their food. Happened a couple of years back.”
“Did they make it to freedom?”
“Freedom? The dead herders’ relatives hunted them down, stripped ’em naked, and left them hog-tied in the tundra. Mosquitoes and crows ate them alive.” Chemizov peered once more at the men’s retreating figures as they shimmered and slurred into the twilight.
“Range six . . . seven hundred meters, Comrade Colonel. We’ll lose them in the undergrowth in a minute.”
Wearily, the commander turned to a young soldier who had been keeping his sniper rifle beaded on the fleeing men as his superiors spoke.
“Very well,” said Colonel Alexander Vasin. “Fire at will.”
Dear Mr.
The agent, unlike the soldier, who has many friends, is surrounded by enemies, seen and unseen.
It wasn’t the first time Evan had drunk vodka atop a glacier. But it was the first time he’d traveled to a glacier with the express purpose of drinking vodka.
Jun Chu stood on the deck of a three-masted junk given the auspicious name Silken Dragon.
Some men speak of angels and devils.
The Pratt & Whitney radial engines rasped and hunted as they struggled to inhale the high-altitude air.
A stir moves through the Pride House Group Home, and seconds later adolescent faces pig against the muggy front window.
Heat shimmered in waves across the Valley of the Kings as the merciless sun baked the desert sands into clay.
The industrial sliding doors heaved open to a burst of bitter alpine air, a dizzying flurry of snow, and a barrage of hoarse cries
We typed a hundred words per minute and never missed a syllable.
He was a Scorpion. First Ensign Salvio was never more proud of that fact than now. He checked his watch.
A man melted into the throng of tourists gathered along the E Street walkway.