The Call of the North Star

1923. Part of the former Russian Empire’s territory was ceded to Poland, including the ruined fortress of Osovets, famous for the “Attack of the Dead.” The new owners clear the rubble and discover in the underground a living man who spent several years locked in a stone enclosure!

Vadim Arsenyev is dressed in the uniform of a soldier of the Tsar’s army. He has absolutely no memory of his past, but he has acquired astonishing abilities—he can see in the dark and has lightning-fast reactions… The sensational story ends up in newspapers, and Vadim is transferred to the Soviet side. As an interesting patient whose abilities are useful to study, Arsenyev is first sent to the Brain Institute and then to a special department of the GPU formed from people with unique talents. As part of a small team, Vadim is sent to the Extreme North to investigate one mysterious and suspicious case…

Vadim Arsenyev, the main hero of Alexander Rouzh’s new thriller “Polar Star,” spent eight years in the underground beneath the ruined fortress of Osovets. He claims he was assigned to guard that warehouse, but an explosion happened—resulting in a severe concussion. Determining his identity is impossible because the archives of the unit that defended the fortress were destroyed during the war. Everything looks extremely suspicious, and they plan to simply execute him. But it catches the attention of the head of the special department of the GPU, Alexander Barchenko. With the help of his friend Bekhterev, he identifies a number of unusual abilities in Vadim. Barchenko achieves the cancellation of the “shoot-to-death” order and enrolls Vadim in his department. Not everyone likes that—inside the organs there are opposing groups—and Barchenko rushes to remove Vadim from Moscow. There is also a suitable pretext: an expedition to the Russian North is planned to investigate one mysterious phenomenon…