Thor's Anvil (Kirov Series Book 26)

by John Schettler

  Bradley took a deep breath. “George, you might as well know this. Scuttlebutt has it that Kesselring moved heaven and earth to try and get permission from Hitler to make this withdrawal. They didn’t want Algiers, and they didn’t want M’Sila either. They were just locking horns with you there until they could convince the Führer to let them pull out.”

  “Scuttlebutt,” said Patton, clearly unhappy. “Look, Brad, my men have fought hard out there. I won’t stand for somebody spreading a rumor that the Germans didn’t have their heart in this fight.”

  “I feel the same way, but this fellow Kesselring is pretty cagey. Ike showed me the latest aerial photos. They pulled out alright, but now they’re setting up shop here, just west of Bougie on the coast, and the line will stretch all the way down to Batna. Now, you haven’t even made contact with them yet, but by the time you do, they’ll be dug in like Alabama ticks. This next push is going to need some muscle, because they’ve shortened their lines considerably with this move. All I’m saying is that when we do move again, we need to be ready. I saw trucks, jeeps, artillery strung out for miles east of here. We need to consolidate, and Ike sent me here to see that it gets done.”

  “I see,” said Patton. “Brad, how about this. I could use a good Deputy Commander. Suppose you and I become allies? We’d make a great team out here. I’ll come up with the crazy ideas, and you see that I get the supply to do the job.”

  “Thank you, George, but that will have to be up to Ike. Now why don’t we start by having a good look around. I want to see what your divisions look like. After that, you can make your pitch to Eisenhower, and I’d be honored to ride shotgun with you out here any time.”

  That was what would happen, the beginning of a partnership that would see many battle lines ahead in this war. It was fire an ice, with Patton’s dash and headstrong nature tempered by Bradley’s caution and common sense. Little by little, the men, and the machines that would prosecute the war to a successful end in the old history, were now gathering in the parched terrain of Africa, which was becoming a testbed for the fledgling US Army.

  But the real test was yet to come.

  Chapter 18

  “Come.”

  Karpov knew who would come through that door. The Abakan had been seen approaching on radar long ago, and Tyrenkov had already contacted him to explain the situation. He had been on the bridge when the basked was lowered over the helo deck, swaying a bit with the wind, for Kirov was still in the cold northern waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, up north of Sakhalin Island. The cold was increasing, the ice already beginning to form, and he had been seeing to the last of the major supply convoys to the small port of Okha, delivering food, fuel, munitions, and trucks he had obtained from the Americans. Now he was in his stateroom, having given orders that Fedorov should report to him immediately.

  And he was not happy.

  The door opened, and in walked Fedorov, removing his hat as he entered, and tucking it under his arm. Karpov took a deep breath, looking up with a sour expression on his face.

  “So,” he said, “the prodigal son comes home at last. Sit down, Fedorov. You and I have a great deal to discuss, and you can be thankful that I allowed you the dignity of coming here on your own two legs, instead of being escorted by a squad of my men.”

  “I see your pet gorilla is posted outside,” said Fedorov, taking a seat. “Plan on turning me over to him after this?”

  “If that is what it takes to get you to understand an order when you hear one.”

  “That would have been a lot easier if I wasn’t desperately trying to save that KA-40, and everyone aboard. You put a goddamned missile on me, Karpov.”

  “Just like you put five on Orlov when he jumped ship. That was, after all, what you were planning. Correct? But you didn’t really think you could get through my security to Ilanskiy, did you? So where in god’s name did you think you were going? Let me guess. You were so dead set on getting to Sergei Kirov, and if you couldn’t go kill him in 1908, you thought you’d go cozy up to him in 1942.”

  “Initially, my only thought was to save my skin and see to the safety of my mission team,” said Fedorov. “What was I supposed to do? Comply with your order so you could take another shot at us? What would you have done in my place?”

  Karpov smiled, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose I would have done the same, but you have become quite a nuisance. It was you who put Volsky on to me when I first tried to take the ship, and it was you who came after me in that goddamn submarine. Then you pull this little hide and seek routine this time around, until I saw through your little ruse. Now this.”

  “You want to look at things from my perspective?” said Fedorov. “It was you who tried to unlawfully seize control of the ship, subverting Orlov to back you up and then locking Volsky in the sickbay so you could drop a nuke on the Allied fleets. And it was you who refused the Admiral’s direct order to cease operations in 1908 and return with us, and look around. Take a good look at the world that resulted. Your little operation out there on Sakhalin would not be happening now if not for your obstinate disobedience.”

  “If I had finished what I started there, without your damn interference.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Captain. That’s your real rank, isn’t it? And it’s my rank as well. You forget that I accepted you as my Starpom, receiving your pledge to serve, just as I gave you mine when you offered me the job here. I did so in the hope that I could have some influence over these events, and also in the hope that you had sobered up a bit after that nightmare when you went after Admiral Togo. I thought we had reached an understanding. After all, I was acting on your orders to undertake that mission. Then you throw a missile my way, and all bets are off. Now… you can trot in your security men and stand up Grilikov to cast his big shadow on the bridge whenever you’re there, but you’ve forgotten one thing, Karpov—the crew of this ship. They were the ones that stopped you off Oki Island, not me and Gromyko aboard Kazan. I thought you had learned at least one thing in all of this, but it seems you haven’t. The crew—without their cooperation and support, this ship cannot operate. You arranged that clever little meeting at Murmansk, again undermining the Admiral’s authority, and commandeering this ship under false pretenses. Thought you could pull one over on a witless crew, except for me. I saw right through your scam, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it just then.”

  “Is that what you were doing, biding your time here with this agreement to serve as Starpom? You thinking to bend a few ears and work up the crew against me now. You know damn well I won’t let that happen this time. Besides, the crew is witless. They don’t know what’s happened—only you know. Well, I can manage you easily enough, and after this latest insubordination, you don’t give me much choice.”

  “I’m not the only one who remembers.” Fedorov threw that out like a cold stone in hot water, and Karpov’s face registered real surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. Now I don’t know how it was that I had my head filled with everything we went through before. Volsky was oblivious, as was most everyone else, even your other self. But I remembered. I went round and round with that, trying to figure out if all those memories were simply dumped into my head through some strange effect caused by the paradox—or if I was actually the same man who got slapped around by Orlov and sent down to sick bay on that very first sortie we made. I still can’t say which is true, but I can tell you one thing—I’m not alone.”

  “Explain.”

  “I mean other people on this ship are waking up, one by one. Something very strange is happening here.”

  “Who? Who else knows? Don’t try to hide them, Fedorov. You know damn well I’ll see through them as easily as I saw through you.”

  “Orlov, for one. Yes, your first co-conspirator woke up one day below decks, and you can be damn thankful that I was there when it happened.”

  “What?”

  “He started remembering, having bad drea
ms as he explained it to me. Then the dreams became recollections, and then he woke up. He knows, Captain. He remembers everything, and he was none too happy with you when it all came back. It seems that the two of you had a little falling out back then. And why do you think he jumped ship? Because he got busted and sent down to serve with the Marines while you wormed your way back onto the bridge with your false oath to the Admiral, and then again to me.”

  This came as a real shock to Karpov, for it was something that he had never really considered. In fact, he had been counting on the crew operating here with a clean slate. If they started to remember… If they suddenly knew everything like Fedorov…. He shifted in his chair, his anger abating, and now looked at Fedorov a little differently.

  “Are there others?”

  “I believe so.”

  “How, Fedorov? What is happening here?”

  “I wish I knew. I told you that just before Paradox Hour, things got very strange on the ship. You remember what I said about Lenkov? Well, it got worse. Men started to go missing, and no one seemed to remember them ever being there. They were disappearing, one by one, and by God, those same men are right here now, and now I’m starting to think they’re going to wake up, just as Orlov did, one by one.” He was only now just coming to this realization as he said this to Karpov, who had a very harried look on his face now.

  “You mean to say they might all remember in time?”

  “That’s what I think is happening. We handed Time a real dilemma, two ships, two crews, and what was she to do with them both laying claim to the same moments? You weren’t here when it happened. You were off on your airship—elsewhere. The men on the ship didn’t have that protection. Time had to choose, or so I believed. But it seems she’s come up with another solution. I think Time is doing what amounts to a save with replace.”

  “What?”

  “Yes… You save a file you’ve been working on, but forget to rename it. So it overwrites the old file with the new. You’re writing a story, or a report, and you don’t want to lose it so you hit that save button, and the old file is updated with all your work that day. Only in this instance, the story has already been written. That’s what got dumped into my head if it happened that way, and I’m willing to bet that somewhere—out there, somewhere, I was one of those men who went missing on the original ship. And if my theory is correct, it will happen to everyone else—even Lenkov, god rest his soul. I’d hate to be there when he remembers what happened to him….”

  Silence.

  The two men just sat there, forgetting their own petty quarrel and rivalry now. There was something else going on, something deeper, almost sinister from Karpov’s perspective. If they all remembered…. If they all suddenly knew all the things he had done, then Fedorov was correct in what he said a moment ago. He needed this crew, for in a very real sense, they were Kirov, they were the heart and soul of the ship. Without their Aye Aye to his order, the ship would go nowhere, nor would any man here stand to battle stations, and the missiles under that forward deck were absolutely useless. He had told himself that when he took command here, but power had a way of making his head just a little too big for his hat.

  “Where is Orlov?” he said at last, his first instinct being to cover that square.

  “Well Captain, Admiral, I’ll call you what you please. We have another problem now.” He told Karpov what had happened on the mission; how the ship reached 1908 as they overflew Tunguska, and how he could not find that timely cruelty within him after all. He told him what was said to Sergei Kirov, and what had happened to Orlov as they ascended the stairs.

  “He did what? He sneezed?”

  “And he must have reflexively moved his hand to his nose,” said Fedorov. “That broke the chain of contact that I was counting on pulling us all to the very same timeframe here. Why I came through, and not Orlov, is just another little snicker from Mother Time as she laughs at us. But we’ve got a real problem here now. Orlov went missing, and Orlov knows everything that happened—everything.”

  “God almighty,” said Karpov, a look of shock and distress on his face. “Where could he be, Fedorov? Where could he have possibly gone?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess, but it would most likely have to be some time in which he did not already exist.”

  “But yet my brother and I share this same time.”

  “That I haven’t figured out yet. Yes, you were elsewhere when he shifted here, and that’s the only reason I can put to it.”

  Now Karpov remembered his own tortuous reasoning on this very issue, and the reason he had called off Fedorov’s mission in the first place….

  Time makes mistakes.

  That was all he could think of. Time isn’t perfect, and the chaos they had caused was so great, that she slipped a few stitches. That satisfied where things like the magazine they found were concerned, but not for his own personal fate.

  I’m not just anybody, he thought. I’m Vladimir Karpov. I built this entire world! I was the one who pissed off Orlov. Absent that, he never jumps ship. So all of this is my doing, because I am first cause for this world to exist. That is why I persist here—why I will continue to persist. Time might dearly love to get rid of me, but she can’t, I’m just too damn important. Without me, none of this ever happens.

  But what about my brother?

  Who is the pretender to the throne here, me or my brother? How could time allow him to enter my world while I was here? Ah… but I wasn’t here. That’s what all that travail was aboard Tunguska. I was somewhere else when my brother self appeared here aboard Kirov. My brother was supposed to replace me! Time was planning to crown my brother king here. That bitch was trying to eliminate me completely, but something happened. I eluded her grasp and survived.

  So time is quite content to let this time line persist—in fact, that is exactly what she is planning! There is only one errant thread in her loom as she weaves all this together again—me!”

  Now a real fear struck him, and one he had tiptoed around in his own thinking for some time. “Fedorov,” he said, his voice lowered ominously. “If what you say is true—Orlov remembering, other crewmen waking up—then what happens if my younger brother remembers? Have you thought about that?”

  “Interesting proposition? In one sense, I was thinking that as the two of you are not identical, two different men in so many ways, that Time made allowances. Yet if the other version of yourself does start remembering, that could get very thorny.”

  “Well I’ve told him things that happened; things we did. It doesn’t seem to have shaken anything loose. Maybe he can’t remember if I’ve got those memories locked away in my head. How about that possibility?”

  “I wish I could say I knew,” said Fedorov. “Perhaps Kamenski might weigh in on this, if he were still with us. But what will happen concerning your brother isn’t something we can control. Orlov, however, is another matter. He’s going to turn up somewhere, and my first thought was to start scouring the history to see if I could find any clues.”

  “You mean in the event he appears in the past?”

  “Yes. Remember that you fell out of a shift and appeared here long before we did—in 1938. That’s what gave you the time to work your way into Kolchak’s web. Orlov might do that. Technically, he could appear in any time after that moment in 1908, and before the 30th of June in 1940, which was when we arrived here again after attempting to shift forward with Kazan. He could also appear some time in our future. But speaking of that, we have another problem—Kazan.”

  “What about it?”

  “The submarine has reappeared. Gromyko is here again. We picked up a message beacon on our secure radio set. I actually spoke with him.”

  “What? He sent a message? We never heard it.”

  “Perhaps atmospheric conditions were not good, but remember, I was much closer to his position when we picked it up.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Up near Murmansk, and he wanted to talk. In fac
t, if you want to know the truth, I was trying to arrange a rendezvous with him.”

  “So you could lock arms and come after me with that damn sub?” There was a flash of anger in Karpov’s eyes now.”

  “Nothing had gone that far in my thinking,” said Fedorov. “Don’t get yourself all in a fit. But he’s here, and Kazan is here, and now we have that to consider. I never made my rendezvous with him, as we made that incredible detour to 1908. I almost could not believe my luck in that, but when it came right down to it, sitting there with a pistol in my hand under the table, I just could not kill that young man. I couldn’t do it.”

  Karpov’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded his head. “I didn’t think you could either, and as you can see, everything is still here as it was. Your theory about our reaching an event here that would knock out some key pillar in the line of causality is all bullshit. That was what I figured out after you departed, and why I cancelled the mission. I don’t know what might have happened if you did kill Sergei Kirov, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of finding out. So I…. over reacted—the missile. Understand?”

  Fedorov knew that was as close to an apology as he might get from Karpov, and he nodded his head. “And I over reacted as well,” he said. “See how easy it is to fall back on reflex, open old wounds, become enemies when that’s the last damn thing this world needs of us now. We’re in some deep shit here, Karpov. We’re responsible for this whole mess, and it’s up to us to do what we can to clean it up.”

  “Still thinking we can reset all the pieces on the board? We can’t, Fedorov. This is the game in front of us now, and all we can do is make the best moves possible in this situation, win, lose, or draw. Time is settling in to the reality we’ve created here. You and I remember things that never happened here—all that bullshit we threw at each other when you first came in. I think Time has abandoned that game, called it a draw, and moved on. This is where things count now—this game decides it for the world championship, and were’ two pawns down, with one knight missing—Orlov, and another out there somewhere that we need to move to a good square—Gromyko.”