Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  The man stared at Gromyko, waiting, but before the Captain could say anything more, another man walked slowly through a door behind the dais where the three mice sat in judgment. He was wearing a black wool coat and Gabardine hat.

  “That will be all, gentlemen,” he said matter of factly. “I will conclude this interview personally.”

  The three men turned, seeing the man, and then immediately deferred, each one slowly standing, the wooden legs of their chairs skidding loudly on the plain tiled floor. They tramped slowly off stage, exiting through the same door that the fourth man had come through, and Gromyko watched, with just the hint of recollection, as the newcomer produced a pipe from his trench coat pocket, and slowly lit it with a silver lighter. He suddenly knew who this was!

  “Captain,” the man said quietly. “Welcome home. I have only just arrived here myself, though I must say the ride was quite strange.”

  “Director Kamenski?”

  “One and the same, at least I hope as much.”

  “You say you have only just arrived? Then Kirov has returned as well? The ship is safely home?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Gromyko looked at him, not understanding. “But sir, you were quartered there, were you not?”

  “I was…. How to describe this. Let’s just say that report you were filing with the Naval Review Board had something to do with it. A nice little 20 kiloton warhead has a way of shaking the cups in the cupboard. Well I was one of the cups. I don’t suppose I could explain it to you, other than to say you are here, along with your submarine, and I am here as well. You moved—I moved, and here we are.”

  “But sir, you were in the Atlantic? I sailed here with Kazan. How did you get here?”

  “I would be very interested to know that,” said Kamenski. “I suppose, I landed here because this is where I was—in this time, on this day, in 2021. Yes, I was aboard Kirov, in my quarters as you say, and I could feel that things were starting to slip again. I left Mister Fedorov a little present on the nightstand, and the next thing I know I was sitting behind my desk in Moscow, but with a head full of new memories. I think if I had given that little gift away earlier, I might not remember anything of your remarkable mission with Admiral Volsky and Fedorov, but as it stands, you need not worry about explaining any of that to me. It’s all crystal clear.” The Director tapped a finger on the rim of his hat, then removed it, and sat down at the desk.

  “Severomorsk called me concerning this hearing, so I thought I had better see to the matter of your sudden reappearance. Let’s not be formal. Please join me here at the desk.”

  Gromyko was quite confused, but he came forward and took a seat with Kamenski at the table. How this man could be here, while Kirov remained elsewhere, still escaped him, but seeing was believing.

  “So,” Kamenski began. “That was quite an engagement—Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out after the Rodney, the Graf Zeppelin burning on the sea, torpedoes flying everywhere, I suppose. Very dramatic. Whatever possessed you into thinking a 20 kiloton warhead was the weapon of choice?”

  “Reflex. That’s how we would fight today. You either get the other fellow, or he gets you. I wasn’t going to take any chances, the fate of the Ambush aside.”

  “Ah yes, that was the British submarine. Well, you may be surprised to know that it arrived here safe and sound as well. Those naval inquisitors may not have known about it, but Directors of intelligence tend to know a good deal more.” He smiled.

  “I thought you were retired, sir.”

  “So did I… at least I seem to remember I was. But not here—not now. I’m not even Deputy Director here—they’ve kicked me right on up to the top.”

  “But you say you remember the mission, everything we set out to do—1908, the action off Oki Island, all that bouncing about in time, the rendezvous with Kirov, and all the fighting in the Mediterranean and Atlantic.”

  “Chapter and verse. And yet, I have been here all along, while some other version of me was out riding about on your submarine and kibitzing with Mister Fedorov aboard Kirov. Yes, I’ve just been minding my affairs in Moscow. But this old head of mind suddenly filled up like a good glass of wine, and… I was understandably interested to learn that your submarine had returned. It’s happened to me before, though it may not happen again now that I’ve passed on my little gift to Mister Fedorov.”

  “This is very confusing.” Gromyko scratched his head.

  “It certainly is. Let me put it to you this way. That nice fat torpedo of yours didn’t kill the Ambush, but it poked a nice fat hole in the spacetime continuum. We’ve discussed all this before. Yes? Well, I suspect that British submarine found its way back to 1941 the same way you showed it the door. Infinity doesn’t like it when you disturb its long sleep. That’s what a nuke is—a brash knock on infinity’s door, and I’m afraid all too many will be thrown about in this next fight. Things are getting very tense here. I have it on good authority that we will be at war in a week… perhaps nine days at best. We’ve been here before, and it will happen again. In fact this will be the third time I’ll live through it all—assuming I do live it through.”

  “The war?” said Gromyko. “It was just about to start the day we left for our mission.”

  “Yes, and what a mission it was. Karpov took the ship out as the flagship of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. He thumbed his nose at the American 7th Fleet, and then that Demon volcano ended their argument. You and I know what happened after that. Well, don’t be surprised, Mister Gromyko, to find all that mucking about in the 20th century has had some effect on things here in the 21st! That was the idea, you see, to try and stop this war here from taking place. But a lot of breadcrumbs have already fallen through the cracks in the table—Karpov, Kirov, Kinlan, Kazan. Not to mention Ivan Volkov, and some we may not even know about yet. Well, it has to stop, because if we don’t do something about it, and quickly, time is going to start making some very hard choices.”

  Gromyko shrugged.

  “Well now,” said Kamenski. “Let me explain…”

  Chapter 35

  “You may not have known much about it, but some very strange things were happening aboard Kirov before you took that shot at a British submarine. Yes, very strange things. That ship and crew were all facing a real judgment, not just a few uncomfortable questions from nosy navy inquisitors. They were facing annihilation, because the day and time of their first arrival in the past was drawing ever nearer, and it was casting a very deep shadow. Men began to go missing on that ship, and I’m afraid I was probably one of them. My disappearance must have given Mister Fedorov quite a headache, but as you can see, time is rather fastidious.”

  “Fastidious?”

  “She doesn’t like wasting things, and is very fussy about that. I was almost certain that my lease on life had run its course. Heaven knows, I’ve been given more than enough time in this world. But it seems there are more worlds than we think, and this is just another one. Fedorov wanted to know where the missing men were going. Where was Orlov and all the rest? Then he became one of those missing men himself. Yet time takes away, and time gives back as well. She found a place for him, as she just found a place for me when I vanished aboard Kirov. You can feel it coming, you know. You tend to feel a bit… insubstantial. For the longest time I thought it was that little treasure I had in my pocket, the key. You know nothing of that, but let’s just say it was a kind of lucky charm. I thought it kept me safe and sound, but now I think it’s just something that helps time go about her business.”

  “Director… I’m just not sure I’m following you here.”

  “Ah, forgive me if I tend to ramble on. The older you get, the more things you have tucked away up here, and time keeps pouring more tea in my cup. One day it will run over, but for now, I still hold it well enough. Let me put it to you this way. Suppose you were writing a story. You think you have it just the way you want, then you get an idea that simply must be given form and shape in the narrative
. So you do a little editing here and there, and write a new chapter. At the end of the day, you save it, overwriting the old file with the new. That’s what time is doing. Well now, you would think your characters would have the good manners to forget the old file—the way things were before you made all those changes and additions to the story—but it seems they don’t, at least in my case. I’m a file that has been saved and replaced a good many times, but I remember each version of the story I lived in before. Yes, each and every one.”

  “I don’t understand…. You are suggesting this is not the year and time we first left Vladivostok?”

  “Not at all. Let me see… Kazan… yes… You are carrying the P-800 Onyx missile now, am I correct? You have those along with the Kalibr Cruise Missile.”

  “I gave all those to Kirov, but yes, I still have the Onyx.”

  “Well they will be scratching their heads over that one if I let technicians and missile crews anywhere near your boat. Has it been boarded yet?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Good, good. We’ll keep things that way. I will have to arrange the replenishment cycle myself. You see, the Kazan of this day and time would be carrying all new missiles. It went missing three weeks ago—in the Atlantic—and we finally get word today that you are back. But if I am not mistaken, you are not the man that took that boat out from Severomorsk when it sailed three weeks ago. You were in the Pacific, yes?”

  “Correct. But what do you mean here? You are saying that another man took Kazan out from Severomorsk? Impossible. I’ve had this boat since it was commissioned, and I was in the Pacific. You must be mistaken.”

  “No, not another man—another Gromyko—another you, Captain, and I am not mistaken. I was at Severomorsk myself to see your boat off, quietly. That may sound impossible, but I was not the man you hob knobbed with aboard Kazan on your recent mission. No. I never left Vladivostok with Volsky and Fedorov, even though I now have a clear recollection of all those events. That’s what makes this all so difficult. You remember things, but you haven’t really lived them through—at least not on the meridian of time you presently occupy. Yes… You remember things you did in another meridian, another world, because after you met your fate there, Time saw fit to make a little deposit. Let me see, she says. What do I do with Kamenski? Ah! I’ll put him over here with the other one.”

  “You’re saying there are two of you?”

  “In this world? No, just one at a time please. But are there other worlds where I lived and breathed? Of course there are—two, three, a hundred, a thousand, even a million or more. Thankfully, only these few threads have become entangled in this business, or I would be a true basket case. In fact, I am coming to think that is what clinical madness may be after all, and any number of other mental ailments like schizophrenia—time confusion. I seem to recall about five different versions of myself—all in this one little head. No wonder I am losing my hair, eh? There’s just too much going on up here.” Again he pointed to his forehead.

  “Well now. If the missile men get aboard your boat, they’ll start noticing things are different. I’ll see to the matter. We’ve a few new toys in this world. Probably because Putin wasn’t assassinated here. He’s the one who started pushing the reformation and upgrades in the navy. So we phased out the S-300s, for example, and went to the S-400 and then the S-500. And for the ship killers, there’s a new VLS system now, the 3S-14 in eight missile modules. The Zirkon replaced the Onyx, and so that is what you will get.”

  “Zirkon? I thought that was to be restricted to surface ships.”

  “Oh? So they were working on it in your meridian as well. Interesting. Technically it was for the surface ships, the 3M22, a hypersonic missile, much faster than the Onyx/Yakhont—twice as fast at Mach 5, but they have a variant for submarines now. If Kirov were here, it would get that missile too, 80 of them! Only they’ve renamed the ship the Admiral Ushakov in this go around, and it has brothers. Here we have Admiral Lazarev, Admiral Nakhimov, and Pyotr Velikiy, all in that same class. They were going to build another and call it Kuznetsov, but it was cancelled in 1990. Funny thing… I remember a world where we took the best of each one of those four hounds, and rolled them into a shiny new ship we called Kirov. Yes, we gave it back its old name, just as it was in the 1980s. That’s the ship we have to worry about, the one that went missing—in another world.”

  Gromyko put a hand to his head, as if rubbing away a headache.

  “I know, I know,” said Kamenski. “It’s a lot to take in all at once like this. Then again, you’ve sailed the waters of the 1940s, so this should be a good deal easier to swallow. Speaking of that… You’re going back. I have another mission for you.”

  “Another mission?”

  “I’m afraid so. You see, that ship that did go missing, Kirov, did so in a most interesting way. I never knew how in the beginning, but I do now. It was that nice little control rod, number 25, I believe.”

  “Yes,” said Gromyko. “It’s still aboard Kazan, but we can’t use it. The Chief Engineer says it’s been damaged.”

  “Worn out,” said Kamenski. “Well, don’t worry about that. Now that I know where it was made, and how, it will be easy enough to replace. In fact, it has brothers too, other rods that came from the same manufacturing lot. I’ll get one for you, and then we can get started.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of this,” said Gromyko.

  “Neither do I,” said Kamenski. “It will be very dangerous.”

  “You mean to say you want me to go back to the 1940s?”

  “If we can get there. I’m banking a lot on getting an assist from Mother Time. That’s where her problem is just now, and our problem as well. We created this mess, and now we have to clean it up.”

  “But sir… What about the men? They were looking forward to seeing their families, going home. They thought that would never happen again, and then we finally break through and make it home, or at least that’s what they think now.”

  “Yes I know. It will be very hard on them, but given the state of affairs here, ‘home’ may not be here for them very much longer. You don’t think we can just muddle about in the history without consequences, do you? Not at all! In this case, the muddling about has become quite a bit more. Do you realize that they’re all back there, fighting for one side or another in that damn war?”

  “They couldn’t get home,” said Gromyko. “Fedorov said the control rod they were using wasn’t reliable. It moved them in both space and time the first time they used it, and he wasn’t going to take a risk that the ship might disappear and then end up in the Alps.”

  “I see… so the second son wasn’t reliable, but the risk Fedorov points out pales before the consequences we now face at this end of things. That’s the first thing you must communicate to them when you get back there.”

  “What? Back to that damn war again? What for?”

  “To get them out of there, of course. What else? We certainly can’t leave them there, not the men, nor their ship.”

  “You want to try and bring Kirov home again? “

  “Anywhere but there. World War Two is a vast pane of broken glass. The cracks are everywhere. Push on one and things change—rather dramatically. They change there in the beginning, with the history starting to do things that never happened before. Those events have consequences. Do you realize the Germans have taken Moscow back there? Burned half the city, and little wonder why. Stalin is long dead and Russia is fragmented into three warring states, one of them led by a renegade ex-naval intelligence officer! You can bet I’m keeping a close eye on him here now, very discretely.”

  “You mean Ivan Volkov? So I heard, but I was just a little busy in the Atlantic with the Germans, getting some payback.”

  “Gneisenau? For Moscow? Mister Gromyko, we will have to do a damn sight better than that. Let me tell you what’s going on now—things I’ve been carrying up in this stogy old head of mine for some time. In the time line where
Kirov now resides, the Germans took Moscow, and we just barely stopped them in the winter of 1941. Well, I know how the rest goes soon. We stopped them, but they aren’t done with us yet. They’re going to strike south now, in the summer offensive of 1942. They want Stalingrad, Volgograd back there, and they want to push right over the Don and Volga to shake hands with Ivan Volkov. He’s another problem, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do about him just yet beyond keeping him under close surveillance here. For now, however, we’ll start with the things we have control over—the men, the ship. We start with Kirov.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  “Go back and get them out,” said Kamenski with a smile.

  “Director, haven’t we tried that once already? Look what happened!”

  “Yes, that’s a point well taken. Well, we still have to try, because if we don’t…” Kamenski stopped, set his pipe down, and rubbed his eyes. “If we don’t, Mister Gromyko, than this is all going to unravel, this entire present moment I’ve called home for so long. It all depends on things that happened in the 1940s. Don’t you see? Well, they aren’t happening—at least not as they were supposed to. Things are changing, and we’re responsible. Never mind about trying to stop the war that is still on our doorstep here. Now it’s about something much more. If we don’t get back there and put a stop to all this, then everything, and I mean everything, is going to come flying apart. How did that poet put it? Yes… things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming!”

  He looked at Gromyko now, and in his eyes there was a profound sadness, and a vast silence of finality. “That’s what caused it, the second coming of that ship to 1941. It created a loop, and if that doesn’t resolve properly there, if anything should happen to displace that ship to a moment prior to the time of its first arrival, then we face down Paradox yet again. Do this once, and you court a good deal of trouble, just as we experienced it.. Do it twice… Desolation, Mister Gromyko, that is what we are facing now, complete and utter annihilation. The cold frost of infinity is out there, and it’s a savage end, a futile end to the whole damn world. And do you know why? The second coming, that’s why. Kirov went back, and now it’s gone back a second time. Understand? If that happens again, and again, and again… See what I mean? The changes are already starting to ripple forward in time. We don’t notice them yet, but I can tell. They may seem insignificant—different missiles for your submarine and all. That doesn’t seem all that earth shaking, but I assure you, it is only the beginning.”