Kurchakov didn’t reply at first. He was staring at Golytsin’s tattoos. Then Kurchakov looked away and shrugged. “It could be anywhere, just a few meters away, beyond the edge of the light, and we’d miss it,” he said. “Don’t worry. We will drop another.”

“No need, sir,” the diving officer reported. “I have it on sonar. Bearing one-one-nine… range thirty-seven meters.”

“Helm. Take us there. Slow ahead.”

“Da, Kepitan.”

In August of 2007, a pair of Russian Mir deep submersibles had reached this, the Arctic seabed at the North Pole. They’d taken readings, collected samples of the sea floor, and planted a large, rustproof titanium flag.

Since then, the Mirs had returned several times, taking further readings for the PP Shirshov Institute of Oceanology and extending Mother Russia’s claim in this freezing wasteland. And today the Mirs were back, shepherding the much larger and more sinister Nomer Chiteereh to the cold, black depths of the Amundsen Plain.

An apparition emerged from the shadows beyond the light, broad rectangular, held above the muck by weights deeply imbedded in the sediment. As Nomer Chiteereh drifted forward, the colors emerged as well… the white, blue, and red horizontal bars of the Russian Federation.

“The Pole,” Golytsin breathed. “The real Pole.”

Not the imaginary point on the ever-drifting, ever-changing pack of ice four kilometers overhead, but the actual pole of the planet, on the seabed 4,261 meters beneath the surface.

A point now claimed by Moscow as a portion of the Eurasian landmass and part of the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation.

A point, Golytsin thought, that would very soon return the Rodina, Mother Russia, to greatness.