Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  “What do you hope to accomplish, Captain? You will have to kill men to do it, that much is certain. How many more will have to die to satisfy your desire for power?”

  “You may think I do this only for myself, Doctor, but that is not the case. I do this for Russia. You know the history. The revolution is festering even now as we speak. Men like Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin are all in the mix. Even the man this ship is named for is alive here, a young man somewhere. They will take some time with their revolution, but it is coming like a bad storm.”

  “So what can you do about that? I think the Tsar is doomed. The First World War is coming as well. Nicholas will not survive that. It will bleed the country and make an end of his reign. How can you prevent it? And even if you could, would you prefer the house of Romanov to Stalin?”

  “Yes, you are correct, Doctor. I cannot control all these events. But what I can do is establish Russia as a Pacific power again, and fend off all comers. There was an uprising in Vladivostok just after that disastrous defeat at the hands of the Japanese. They wanted to break away and look to their own fate, independent of European Russia. That is something we could do here.”

  “What? Set up your own little empire? And you expect me to believe you do all this for the homeland? You have just said you would wash your hands of it all and leave the Tsar to his fate when the revolution comes. Well let me remind you that the revolution came here as well. The Bolsheviks defeated Denikin, and finally Admiral Kolchak, the last of the Whites.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t until 1920. There is much we could do before then. The Bolsheviks had very few enclaves in Siberia until late in the Russian Civil War.”

  “So what do you propose to do, Captain? I have heard you announced yourself as Viceroy of the East. Kolchak tried that line as well. Didn’t he announce himself as ‘Supreme Leader of Russia?’ All that got him was an appointment with a firing squad.”

  “Kolchak was not prepared to master the situation on land. He was a Navy Admiral, with little training in ground maneuvers.”

  “And you are a Navy Captain with even less! I will warrant that you can take control of the seas here, Karpov, but Siberia is a very big place. No one will see Kirov sailing boldly over the taiga to enforce your will. Men like Denikin and all the others will soon realize that you are relatively powerless to affect events inland. Oh, I suppose you could control Vladivostok, and probably keep the Western powers from trying to intervene in the civil war. But you must realize your own limitations. You want to set history right for Russia? Well Russia may have other ideas about what it wants, and what will you do if Denikin, Kornilov and the other Whites tell you to go to hell? Your dream of a Far East Republic will vanish just as it did for Kolchak. And when they lose to the Reds, as they will you know, then what will you do?”

  “A good speech, Doctor. Denikin was in the Caucasus worried about the Jews, and I need have no dealings with him. But if I choose to do so I can smash the Red Army and ensure a victory by the Whites.”

  “How? Your cruise missiles will need a very long range to do that. The final big battles were fought well inland at Orel and Samara.”

  The Doctor made a good point. The range of his Moskit-IIs was only 120 miles, and the MOS IIIs could reach only 90 miles. Karpov shrugged. He had not mentioned the use of nuclear weapons, but that was obviously what was on the Doctor’s mind.

  “Power can be achieved by other means,” said Karpov.

  “Are you going to start blowing things up again?”

  “I know that is your great fear, Doctor, but that may not even be necessary. The mere demonstration of power can achieve dramatic ends.”

  “Did that work with the Americans? All they did was come at you harder.”

  “These are not the Americans of 1945. The men of this era have far less real power in their hands. Their ships are obsolete old rust buckets compared to Kirov.”

  “Face it, Karpov. To achieve anything like the scenario I think you are creating in your head, you will need the close cooperation of these men. You will need someone like Kolchak, for example, and a White Army that can hold its own against the Bolsheviks. Otherwise they will prevail and Stalin will eventually rise out of the fires of the civil war. What then? You want to face off with Stalin?”

  “Don’t you understand, Zolkin? Knowledge is power too. I can know all the history as it is about to unfold. Stalin? I did some reading the other day. You want to know where Stalin is at this very moment? He’s in prison at Baku! Why, if I chose to do so I could sail to the Black Sea and send helicopters there and make an end of Stalin before he ever becomes a factor in Russian history.”

  “My God! Listen to yourself. Sometimes I really wonder if you are serious about all this. Well… I’ll give you one thing, Captain. You have power here, that much is obvious. You want to go kill Stalin? I suppose no one can stop you. Do that, however, and another man may rise from the dark corners of history to take his place. Your knowledge of future events will come unraveling the moment he dies. Fedorov will tell you this. Anything you do here will have dramatic repercussions. So this knowledge you think you can use will soon be useless when everything starts to change. Yes, someone will rise in Stalin’s place, and you will not know who that man is, or how to reach him. History may be far more resilient than you realize.”

  Karpov shrugged. “This is all academic,” he said. “The question is what do we do about Fedorov?”

  “Fedorov? Yes, he wants to try and rescue us. He’s a good man, Captain. You know that as much as I do. He will want to do everything possible to let sleeping dogs lie here. The world is going into the cauldron of the First Great War soon, and back home it’s about to go into the last Great War. Those dogs will soon be on the hunt without any help from us, in both eras.”

  “Do you think this plan of his will work? I mean… well how did it come to pass that he appeared here, in 1908? What if those control rods just end up sending us even farther back in time? Fedorov devises all these plans and schemes, but he really has no way to control what happens, any more than you say I do.”

  “Yes, Karpov. In the end we are all at the mercy of time and events. Call it fate, call it the will of God, but there is something bigger than you or me or Mister Fedorov at work here. We are like blind men in a dark closet looking for the right coat here. Whatever you decide, consider the men on this ship. They may not share your dream of conquest. Have you even bothered to consider asking what they might want to do? Well, here’s a thought you can put into your own scheming head. Suppose you do something here; something that changes everything. Suppose the grandparents of men aboard this ship don’t survive in the new world you create? What happens to the men then? Do they end up dead, never born, just like the men on that list Volkov was all worked up over, with no record they ever existed? Suppose your own grandfather dies. Then what?”

  Part X

  Lindisfarne

  “For with the flow and ebb, its style

  Varies from continent to isle;

  Dry shod o’er sands, twice every day,

  The pilgrims to the shrine find way;

  Twice every day the waves efface

  Of staves and sandalled feet the trace.”

  ― Sir Walter Scott

  Chapter 28

  The sky was low that day when he arrived, the long causeway leading the way across the South Low where it meandered into the sea. At low tide there was a mile or more of mud flats here, until the causeway rose on the far banks of Holy Isle. At high tide the low was entirely submerged by the sea, cutting the island off from the greater shore of England to the west. To this day the tides dictated access to the isle, and now they had gracefully withdrawn for his Lordship, Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington, who passed quickly over the narrow way in his town car.

  The bare windswept stone of the island greeted him, called whinstone by the locals. It was a hard and durable rock, and it had hidden secrets here from the world for many centuries. He passed beneath
the Snook along the narrow neck of Holy Isle, following the narrow road as it hugged the coast through the village, past Riding Stone and Cockle Stone to the castle at Lindisfarne on Beblowe Crag. Cobblestone as it ended, it would take him all the way the boat houses, three herring boats cut in half and set upside down on the green earth. The gap was walled in and a door installed. How quaint, he thought.

  There he would thank the driver, and have his effects moved up the long flat stairs to the lower battery of the castle itself, where he had so arranged it that he would have the entire facility to himself. If Mister Thomas was prompt, he should be waiting for him to move the luggage. The driver would be dismissed before high tide, and it would be just he and Thomas left alone at the castle, on the eve of their great adventure.

  They would take their meal, all arranged and set out at that very moment on the long oval table of the dining hall. It sat at the edge of a great hearth stretching in a wide arch, with stolid brickwork rising to the vaulted ceiling. It was once an old bread oven, but it would hold a nice fire and warm their meal. He had a mind to tour the ‘ship room,’ where a rustic model of an old tri-mast frigate was hung from the arched stone ceiling, as if it were sailing there in formation with 17th century Dutch candelabra chandeliers. After that they would spend a few quiet hours of quiet in the upper gallery. There were some old books to pass the time, and a lovely cello he might play, listening to the sound echoing in the empty halls of the castle.

  Ian Thomas got quite a kick out of the ship room. “My, look at that, it’s as if a ghost ship were sailing through the room, sir.”

  “Indeed, Mister Thomas. Wouldn’t you be thrilled to ride on a ship like that?”

  “I certainly would, sir.”

  “Well, that may soon be arranged.” The Duke let that hang, a subtle clue to the business ahead, which had Thomas very curious to learn more. Yet he knew enough not to probe. He would be told anything the Duke decided he needed to know in good time. So instead he kept to the particulars of their immediate schedule. After a sumptuous dinner they shared a glass a brandy in the upper gallery until the Duke stood up, looking at his pocket watch.

  “Will we be leaving the castle tonight, your grace? Shall I arrange for a car?”

  “In a manner of speaking…but no, a car will not be necessary. I should like to walk the shore for a time and see if I might happen upon old Saint Cuthbert stringing his beads. Would you be so kind as to see the luggage gets up to the small bedroom off the long gallery? You’ll find it right on the landing at the top of a narrow stairway there, just outside the gallery on the upper battery.”

  “Right away, sir.” Apparently they were staying the night there at the castle.

  As evening fell the Duke walked in the walled garden, once a vegetable garden for the castle garrison, enjoying the cool sea air on this last night. He would end with a final walk on the stony shore as the darkness settled in, listening to the sound of the surf on stone and the cooing of the fulmars roosting there. At one point he thought he heard the distant barking of a dog and looked to see what he thought was a white shepherd roaming near the edge of the castle, but it seemed to vanish in the mist.

  There had been an old priory on the island dating to the 600s, long before the castle was built many centuries later in the 1500s. Venerable saints like Adian and Cuthbert both preached the Gospel from the isolated island base, finding it a special place to withdraw from the world to commune with the sea, and their God. Adian died there and his remains were buried beneath the ruins of the old Abbey, and it was said that Cuthbert had a vision that night of the saint being taken to heaven by Angels.

  Yes, the place has always been a portal between this world and others, the Duke thought as he walked. The Angels come and go, and the saints take their repose here while the monks painstakingly copy their glorious Gospels. He had always been fond of the Lindisfarne Gospel, and had even tried to acquire it at one point in his career. I may accomplish that yet, he thought to himself, but not here…not now.

  The Monks fled when the Vikings came, and were said to have wandered for generations, carrying with them the body of Saint Cuthbert. The Vikings almost made an end of the place when they ravaged the shore, and Lindisfarne was uninhabited for all of two centuries until the intrepid Benedictine Monks returned.

  The sun set very late that day, at well near eight ‘o clock, and the new moon was not yet up, so the night was thick after darkness came. The Duke walked alone on the quiet shore thinking of all he had done in the years past, the slow but steady rise to wealth and fame, his acceptance as a Peer of the Realm, which was most unusual for anyone outside the Royal Family in modern times. Yes, he thought, I will be hard pressed to do any better in the years left to me, but at least I shall have the thrill of the hunt back again. I was getting a bit jaded at the top of the tree. Time to live again.

  He breathed in the cool sea air and quietly said goodbye to the life he had brought to this place, and to the whole of the world beyond the shores of that isolated, holy isle. Then it was up the long wide stairs to the castle again, the approach leading to the pantry on the lower battery and through the kitchen to find the stairway up to the second level. The castle as it stood that day had been lovingly restored by the noted architect Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1902, who fashioned an Edwardian home on the upper floors They would catch a few hours rest in the bed chambers there and then rise in the dark well before dawn, with the crescent moon low over the submerged tidal zone on the muddy shores leading up to Fulwark Burn and Buckton. It was the last moon, he thought, the moon of the Ninth Day.

  Mister Thomas had placed their luggage in the small bedroom as directed. They warmed themselves with a cup of hot tea in the kitchen before they left. Then the Duke led the way to the back of the narrow room by the gallery where there was a small closet.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” he said quietly, stooping to enter alone, his hand tucked into the pocket of his outer coat. He soon emerged, a wry smile on his face and a gleam in his eye.

  “Well, Mister Thomas, are you ready?”

  “Certainly, sir. I’ll take the bags downstairs right away. Will there be a car coming for us this morning?”

  “No, my good man. You may bring the luggage this way.”

  To Ian’s surprise the Duke was gesturing to the open doorway of the closet. His first thought was that his lordship intended to leave the bags there for safekeeping, and that they might then pass the day here sightseeing on the island. Yet as he entered the narrow door he felt a sudden chill, a distinct draft of cold air rising. The Duke was right behind him.

  “I’ll take that bag,” he said, holding up a small flashlight that now illuminated a dark portal at the very back of the closet. “Two is a bit much to manage on this stairway. There’s a small landing just inside the entrance. Pause there, please, while I secure this door. And do mind your step, Mister Thomas. The stairway is somewhat treacherous, and it’s a long way down.”

  Thomas had heard of secret passages in old castles—every boy had dreamed of them at one time or another. Well, here was a fairly good one right at his feet! He assumed it was a hidden back stairway that would take them to the north end of the castle. Why the Duke wanted to take this dark, narrow stairway he did not know. As they stepped through the entrance to the landing the jittery light revealed the topmost flight of stone cut steps, very steep and narrow. Cobwebs draped across the narrow way, and the place could have done justice to any haunted house. The Duke handed him a folded umbrella.

  “There you are, my man. Swipe aside those cobwebs with this. If you would be so kind as to lead, I’ll light the way as best I can.”

  “Very good, sir.” Ian lifted the bag he was to carry, still thinking this was an odd way to make their exit, with the Duke carrying the last of their luggage. The sound of the upper closet door closing behind them had a certain finality about it, though he didn’t know why he felt that way.

  Down they went, thirty steps to another stone landing and a s
econd door. The Duke set down his bag and stepped up, quickly inserting a small metal skeleton key into the lock there with a strange click and what sounded like a quiet electronic tone. “And yet another flight,” he said as the doorway creaked open on dry metal hinges.

  The sound echoed up the dark stone stairway behind them, and Ian could now see that this second flight angled off to the left in a new direction. Well that will at least point us towards the cobblestone road when we get down, he thought. The door closed behind them again with a metallic click this time, and it was thirty more steps down, and very steep, growing colder as they went.

  “Ground level,” said the Duke with a smile where there was yet another door, opening on yet another flight of stairs, darker and more foreboding than any they had traversed. How very odd, he thought.

  “Now we get to the heart of the matter,” said the Duke, setting down his bag. “Mister Thomas…Are you certain you wish to accompany me on the journey that now lies before you? It begins here, and may not end for a very long time.”

  “Sir, you have my full commitment.”

  “The circumstances may be hard on us both at times.”

  “I understand, sir. You may rely on me entirely.”

  The Duke took a long breath, then spoke a quiet verse of poetry, as if to christen their adventure: “If there be spirits in the air that hold their sway between the earth and sky, descend out of the golden vapors there and sweep me into iridescent life. Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands to carry me to distant lands, I should not trade it for the choicest gown, nor for the cloak and garments of the crown…”

  Thomas gave him a bemused look.

  “Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Mister Thomas. From Faust. We’re about to sell our souls to the devil, my good man. Good then. Let’s get on with it.” He gestured to the stairs, lighting the way again with his small LED flashlight.