Chapter 1

Reflection is the path to immortality; the absence of reflection, the path to death.

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Kirill climbed into the cabin and looked around. Though from the outside the Beechcraft Bonanza seemed small, inside it was surprisingly spacious, a cabin clearly designed for business-class passengers.

The seats were comfortable enough to stretch your legs and enjoy the view through the portholes beside them on both sides of the little private plane.

In the middle stood a carved rectangular table of mahogany, bolted firmly to the floor so there was no danger of its toppling onto passengers in flight. At the rear was a small bar. Apparently, both the pilot and his mechanic valued comfort; they’d gone to the trouble of refitting the single-engine plane to make it cozier and more convenient for their guests.

Right after him, Zimmerman climbed aboard and immediately expressed his approval.

“All that’s missing is a bartender, a few pretty stewardesses, and a couple of glasses of tequila,” he said in English, glancing around the cabin and taking a seat opposite Kirill, on the far side of the table.

“Well, I don’t have any stewardesses,” the pilot joked, clearly eager to exchange a few words with the friendly passengers who were quickly growing on him. “But as for drinks, there’s a bottle of Canadian whiskey in the little bar at the back. I keep it for business-class travelers like you.”

The sea and endless sandy beaches made them cheerful and pleasant folk, a sharp contrast to the Europeans and Americans who came here for vacations but never lingered long.He smiled, that open, easy smile common among the people of Bermuda, setting them apart from foreigners.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll keep the cockpit door open,” the pilot added. “The only air conditioner’s up front, and it’s already getting hot back here.”

It was indeed the perfect choice, smooth, aged, the label claiming ten years in oak barrels. They had a long flight ahead, and whiskey was just the thing to make it a bit more bearable.“No problem,” said Kirill, remembering to thank him for the whiskey, which they’d already poured into their glasses.

“Any chance you’ve got ice?” asked Zimmerman with a grin, ever the one for comfort and a friendly atmosphere, which was already forming between them and the pilot.

“You can make some yourself,” the pilot called back. “There’s a freezer to the right of the bar. You can get water from the lavatory.” He was already in the cockpit, starting the engine. “There’s also lime and juice in the bar. Hope that makes your trip more pleasant.” He smiled again.

He wouldn’t have minded a glass of whiskey himself, but pilots weren’t allowed, nor should they be.

The engine roared to life, and the plane began to taxi slowly down the wide runway that started just beyond the hangar, where the little private aircraft had been sheltered in the shade earlier.

“You’ll want to hurry up,” the pilot warned. “Once the tower clears us for takeoff, in about ten or fifteen minutes, you won’t be able to move around so freely. You’ll have to buckle up and stay seated.”

“Yes, boss,” Zimmerman replied cheerfully and hurried to the freezer to fill the ice trays before takeoff. He hated drinking warm whiskey, unlike Kirill, who had already finished his first glass of the strong, pleasantly warm liquor.

Sure enough, about twelve minutes later, the order to take off came through, and the pilot told them to fasten their seatbelts immediately. The plane was already rolling down the runway, eager to rise.

After a short run, the Bonanza lifted from the ground and climbed swiftly.

At first, nothing hinted at trouble. The plane gained altitude smoothly, soaring over Bermuda’s long beaches. Through the portholes, the passengers watched the breathtaking scenes of untouched nature and the neat houses along the shore.

Kirill loved such landscapes and regretted not being able to stay longer on those pristine islands. He loved the warm sea, the sun that shone here year-round, unlike Russia, where winter dragged on for more than half the year.

But there was no time to linger. The cargo they were transporting in the sealed case was dangerous, and as team leader, Kirill wanted to hand it over to the specialists waiting for it as soon as possible. All the arrangements had been made. In Havana, the rest of their small group awaited them, ready to help at a moment’s notice.

The trouble began halfway there, just after they crossed into the infamous Bermuda Triangle. On the map, that zone lay roughly between Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, also covering parts of the Bahamas.

Kirill had once read that more than two thousand ships and about two hundred planes had been lost in those waters. And now Didi Sanders’s little aircraft was about to feel the foul breath of that cursed place that had swallowed so many people and their machines.

At about three thousand meters, directly ahead, a small dark cloud appeared. But as the plane drew closer, the cloud didn’t shrink; it grew, swelling until it seemed to fill half the sky, threatening to engulf the tiny aircraft caught in its path.Strange things started happening once they crossed the imaginary line connecting the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

Sanders had never seen clouds like that before, though he had flown this route regularly for the past ten or fifteen years. From other pilots of Bermuda International, he’d heard eerie stories about planes disappearing, and in their final transmissions, they often mentioned such a strange, mysterious cloud.

The pilot had no choice but to fly through the mist and emerge on the other side. But barely fifteen minutes later, another storm cloud loomed, darker and more menacing than the first. It was enormous, and there was no way around it. Sanders drew a deep breath and steered straight toward the heart of the storm, though nothing good could come of it for him or his passengers.

Darkness fell, thick as night. Not a single ray of light pierced the dense shroud of cloud. But as it turned out, it wasn’t a thunderstorm at all. There was no rain.

Didi Sanders began to worry, and his anxiety spread to his passengers.

“What’s going on?” Kirill called out.

“Who knows what surprises this cloud has in store,” he added, pointing at the mist that was closing in around them.“We’re entering a turbulence zone,” the pilot replied. “You’d better strap in.”

Suddenly, flashes of light began to pulse outside the windows, appearing and vanishing, appearing again. There was no thunder, which meant it wasn’t lightning. The flashes were so bright they illuminated everything around them, the only light in that dark, eerie place.

The thick cloud stretched for tens of miles around the plane. Sanders had been flying through it for half an hour, yet it still didn’t end. Worse, radio contact with the tower had been cut off, a very bad sign, even for a veteran pilot like him. Usually, even in a storm, the radio worked; he could call for help or advice. Now he couldn’t. No one could hear him, and he couldn’t send a distress signal.

He began to suspect the two clouds were somehow connected, and that he’d never escape their reach. Perhaps he would join the ranks of those who had vanished in the Atlantic, swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle.

After a while, the cloud began to swirl, forming something like a vortex, a funnel cloud, the kind he had seen off the coast of Florida. The plane was caught right in the center, which might have been the only reason it was still intact.

There was no turbulence yet, but that could change at any moment. Sanders was beginning to lose hope when he suddenly saw a light ahead, a bright opening, sunlight breaking through. A miracle, a gift from above. He turned the plane toward it, clinging to the controls, praying they’d make it through.

He was almost free. Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. Then the impossible happened, the swirling walls began to close in, as if the cloud were alive, refusing to let them go.

The opening ahead narrowed rapidly. One by one, the navigation instruments failed. The compass spun wildly counterclockwise. Something was very wrong. It was as if someone, or something, had taken control of the aircraft. Yet the plane didn’t fall. It continued forward, steady as before, that, at least, was a good sign.

All of Sanders’s attempts to take back manual control were useless. It felt as though the plane was being carried by an invisible current within the strange cloud. He had no idea where they were heading or how.

“I’ll try to get my bird back,” he said, turning back to the controls, ignoring the men behind him.“Gentlemen, we’ve lost control of the aircraft!” Sanders shouted to his passengers. “There are life vests under your seats; now’s the time to put them on. I hope you know how to use them.”

He fiddled with the radio again, desperate to send a mayday.

Then the plane lurched. Zimmerman, who hadn’t yet fastened his seat belt, slammed his head hard against the aluminum partition separating the cabin from the cockpit. A swelling rose on his forehead and a bruise bloomed under his eye, painful but not life-threatening.

“Buckle up, now,” Kirill hissed in Russian. “You realize what happens if the sealed vial in your case breaks? The entire planet would be doomed, an unstoppable plague. I have no wish to become the Lucifer blamed for ending the world.”

Kirill looked around. He needed to calm down, get a grip, but it wasn’t easy.

He closed his eyes and sank into his memories. The events of the past few days flashed before him, all that had led to this ill-fated flight to the Island of Freedom.

Chapter 2

Don’t waste time on empty talk; speak of what matters, or remain silent.

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Six months before the events described.

Stephen Kubrick had a reputation as an efficient manager. He worked as a department head at the Washington branch of Goldman Sachs and did everything in his power to grow the bank’s capital, and, of course, his own. Yet his finances weren’t growing as quickly as those of other managers, and that troubled him.