II
(Forty-three hours before launch)
The location stood out from its surroundings in no way at all.
Thickets and shrubbery hid the well-kept asphalt road that wound along the slopes of Sljeme.
The barrier at the entrance to the complex had stood raised for years, and the fence, which hadn't seen maintenance in decades, was left to slow corrosion.
The road ended at a large concrete yard ringed by warehouse buildings of dubious construction and workmanship.
Everything gave off an air of neglect and a hazard to one's health.
But video cameras placed at strategic points betrayed the site's other purpose.
If you followed the sequence of cameras, you'd see they covered a single concrete passage between the warehouses that led toward the hill behind the complex.
Along that passage a massive forklift was now moving toward one of the three trucks parked in the yard.
The forklift was towing three empty cargo carts toward the truck that still had some of its load in the trailer.
Hurried workers, cursing, were unloading boxes from the trailer, rushing because it was the end of the workday and they wanted a beer with the crew afterward.
Nick rolled up in his Clio and cheerfully honked at the departing truck drivers.
Slowing behind the now-loaded forklift, he trailed the not-too-fast vehicle toward his destination.
On the slope, behind the ramshackle buildings, was the enormous entrance to a tunnel.
The entrance, the size of a small house, marred the picturesque slope of Sljeme with its century-old trees whose roots vainly tried to break through the thick concrete of the structure.
Driving past, Nick always wondered how much metal had been cast into that three-meter thickness, and he even openly speculated about the tonnage with colleagues from other shifts.
Nick had never seen the doors close. The rust on the closing mechanism confirmed his conclusion that, ever since the old atomic shelter had been built, the doors had never been shut.
Except perhaps during the occasional inspection by the communist authorities, who demanded that every larger city have shelters so the chosen Party elite could take cover during a possible war or attack.
Nick parked his vehicle in the spot nearest the enormous shaft of the freight elevator, which, creaking like a limb along thick, greased rails, was now sinking into the darkness of the lower floors.
Knowing the warehousemen would switch off everything dangerous on the lower levels as they left, he set off up the stairs to the floor where, carved into the rock some ten meters up behind another set of massive doors, was the former office of the military police, now used for the security guards.
Nick stepped into a spacious room studded with electronics and screens.
He didn't feel the weight of the mountain above him, because the ceiling stood some two and a half meters overhead and the room was roomy.
He set his snack in the little fridge on the desk in front of a long row of unused lockers and, still humming the same song, returned to the modern bank of electronics where he was to spend the next few hours of his shift.
He sank into the comfortable wheeled chair and cast a glance toward level -3, where, uninterested, he watched over the monitors as the warehousemen shuffled heavy boxes with a forklift on the vast shelves crammed with goods.
It didn't take them long to finish, so the workers left the forklifts and headed up the stairs toward the changing rooms on the entrance level.
Nick didn't bother with the lower levels; he was interested only in the operating range of the big elevator at the entrance, which descended all the way to level -4, awaiting conversion into a warehouse or whatever else came into the heads of the people who held the deed.
He went outside and greeted the cheerful workers who, their shift over, chattered merrily as they left the complex.
He shut the wire gate at the entrance and, flipping the circuit switch, electrified the metal and wire of the gate.
The massive main doors wouldn't close, so something was needed to keep out various animals and would-be burglars.
Someone had hit on the electric gate, which did indeed do an excellent job of blocking pests.
Nick would occasionally find dead rats and the odd fox, and once he even scooped up the carcass of an owl that had died, probably chasing some rodent.
Soon he was alone, and the silence of the complex was deafening.
He fitted his wireless earphones and picked a song by his favorite band, AC/DC, on his phone.
"Thunderstruck!!!" he shrieked, imitating the guitar riffs as he descended toward level -1.
The staircase ended at a round space, some fifty meters across, with seven wide entrances into the filled warehouses.
In the center of the room sat the fenced-off section of the freight elevator, its oiled hydraulic metal gleaming under the bright lamps.
Nick peeked through each door; he couldn't be bothered to walk the whole route through the warehouses, even though the job description stated it was his duty.
Not much changed in the warehouses apart from the quantity of goods, so there was no need to walk long routes through each one.
With his ID card he unlocked the door of a small side room where the security locks were and, pressing the buttons, closed the entrances to the warehouses.
Somewhere came the deep hum of powerful motors that, groaning, hauled the heavy metal gates, until then tucked away in niches on the side.
He checked on the screen that the gates had seated properly and went out.
With a goofy grin he waved at the nearest camera and headed for the staircase.
Someone hadn't skimped on security cameras.
They were everywhere, even on the staircase.
That posed a huge problem for Nick when it came to organizing parties — until a friend showed him how to make a visual duplicate of the security footage.
He would switch off the security system on the level where he was throwing the party and feed the system previously recorded material on which nothing in particular happened.
Usually he held the parties in one of the empty warehouses, but now he had a different idea.
Level -4 was still in its original state.
The last of the levels the big freight elevator could reach, it had gaped unused for decades.
Even the cameras were few; only a handful of them covered the enormous rooms.
Level -4 wasn't like the previous three; those had been deliberately designed as the warehouse part of the complex.
Level -4, by contrast, was a mix of warehouse and office space.
Murals with Party iconography and faded wallpaper depicting male and female workers adorned the office walls.
Naturally, posters glorifying Tito and the Party were scattered everywhere.
The propaganda of a collapsed system in its finest edition.
Here and there a blueprint with clearly marked exit points.
Nick laughed — an exit in case of what? If people take shelter from an attack, why would they need an exit?
But he didn't dwell on it. He had enough to do.
Filming with his phone, he walked the entire complex, every room, trying to picture the flow of the whole party.
He would decorate each of the five rooms differently so the theme wouldn't be the same.
And, of course, each room would have different music to suit every taste.
And to keep it all as simple as possible, he decided the partygoers would ride the elevator down to level 4 so they wouldn't make a mess on the warehouse levels.
Then he'd block the exits on the staircases, because the lower floors held an enormous amount of sensitive equipment — from modern gear to intriguing historical relics.
For the lower levels he had neither a pass nor a digital card.
The staircase was sealed by the familiar metal doors that opened with a magnetic card and a certain code on the keypad beside the entrance.
Nick had seen a few people enter that staircase only once, and that was it.
His colleagues had told him that down there was some laboratory, not often used, but which from time to time a delegation of people — probably scientists — headed into. He went back to his work.
This is going to take us the whole day to set up. He said it aloud and got only a faint echo in reply, but he didn't mind — he knew he was utterly alone in this temple built of rock and concrete.
Luckily, he had a well-drilled crew that already knew the complex well enough for the whole process to run as short and as painless as possible.
The long weekend, courtesy of some national holiday, suited him perfectly, because with the extra day — and the quiet, with no workers in the warehouse — he could get it all done with half the effort.
Climbing the stairs toward the entrance level, he marveled at how this Cold War relic always fascinated whatever crew found itself inside it.
Something about the sheer scale, the engineering, the construction within the mountain.
Like the dwarven city out of some fantasy film.
People would stop, faces enchanted, at the mere sight of the massive elevator, or lean on the safety railing to stare into the depths it descended into.
Not to mention how the living, dimly lit rock overhead sat high enough not to trigger claustrophobia.
Nick was used to the space by now; he took out his phone and made a few calls as he climbed toward the security room.
He forwarded the footage to his friends with instructions on what to do and how, then dropped into the chair, propping his feet on the desk.
This is going to be a party to remember. He stated to the empty room and the mute screens.