“Then again, even if you do find the ship, Karpov could refuse to use the control rods. Why, he could even shoot the Mi-26 down if he wanted to.”
“Zolkin was correct,” said Fedorov dejectedly. “And I was a fool to think I could trust and rely on Karpov without the countervailing authority of the Admiral to keep him in check.”
“Technically Karpov is the acting Fleet Commander now. Volsky is in strategic command, but Karpov was given the Red Banner Fleet on the operational level. In fact, that makes him your superior officer.”
“Yes, and what happened to that fleet?”
“I suppose we will never know…unless we do get home, and then you can read about it as the Captain suggested.”
Fedorov’s eyes suddenly brightened, and he spun around. “Yes…That’s the only thing we can do here. We’ve completed our mission, and for some reason we ended up here. Who knows why? Maybe it was only to learn what Karpov was going to do, but we can’t do anything about that at all here. You are correct, Chief, he would simply refuse to use the control rods until he had his way.”
Dobrynin nodded quietly.
“Then we go home,” said Fedorov flatly. “At least we try to go home. If we do get there, and anything is still left of the world Karpov leaves us, then we can discover exactly what he does. There will be history, times, places, events.”
“What good will that do us?”
“We would still have the control rods, Chief. This may sound strange now, and I have not yet thought it through, but I think Karpov is correct about at least one thing here. There is something decisive about this year—1908. We have all fallen through some hole in time into this nice little circle of hell here, all the Fallen Angels gathered here together, and this is where it must all end. The question is how? What can we do? The helicopter idea is futile. This whole plan with the Anatoly Alexandrov of mine was useless. It wasn’t Orlov we needed to worry about. I was wrong. He wasn’t the demon we set loose in the world. It was Karpov all along!”
“Then what do we do?”
“We have to stop him before his actions here become irreversible, that’s what we do.”
“But how, Fedorov? The hovercraft and all these Marines will do us no good here either.”
“Not here—not now. First we must get back home. Look Chief…You say you can hear the change in the reactor when it happens, yes?”
“It has a very distinctive vibration. Yes, I can hear it like I might hear music, if that makes any sense.”
“Alright then, we’ll try again. Do you suppose you could do something with the reactors, just as Doctor Zolkin suggested once in jest. He said to go have the Chief fiddle with the reactor and send us home. Is there any way to make adjustments in the procedure to change things?”
“Possibly,” said Dobrynin, thinking about it now. “I could vary the rods scheduled for replacement. I usually go odd-even-and so forth. That’s what I was doing on Kirov. Perhaps I could break that sequence and try something different.”
“Odd even? Do you remember which it was when we always shifted forward?”
“Why yes…even, yes, it was an even numbered rod each and every time, though I never considered that before.”
“And this last shift here?”
Dobrynin smiled. “Odd, Mister Fedorov, very odd. Of course! This is why that shift sounded so different to me. I was expecting a rising melody, and the orchestra descended into chaos.”
“Well, that’s a start. We use an even numbered rod now, though why would that matter?”
“They are all placed in different locations in the reactor core, so the neutron flux is different, almost like a different note played on a wind instrument changes the tone, if that makes any sense to you.”
“Then you could listen and remember the sound of a forward shift? Is that possible?”
“Of course. I hear the reaction every time it happens. It descends when we slip backward in time, and it ascends when we move forward. I know the sound well enough if I hear it.”
“And perhaps you could also fiddle with those other two control rods in their containers. Lids on, lids off, who knows what we might do. I know it would be hit and miss, but we have to try, Chief. We’ve got to get home, one way or another, and that before Karpov does something catastrophic here.”
“What does it matter when we go? Won’t everything he does be finished and done when we get home? The man and the whole crew will be in their graves when we get there. It’s a hundred and thirteen years before we get home!”
“I think it does matter….” Fedorov was thinking hard now. “If we leave this time before he does something decisive, perhaps we still have a chance. Suppose we learn what he does and then return here—to this moment—before he even does it!”
“Suppose we could return—to what end? To have this discussion all over again here with Karpov?”
“No, Chief, to stop him.”
“But how, Fedorov? You haven’t answered that yet.”
“I think I may have a plan, but first, somehow, some way, we have to get safely home and then find a way to return to this moment. I only hope your inner ear is a good one. Can you remember what that last shift that brought us here sounded like?”
“Remember it? I recorded it! I’ve been listening to the reactor sing its song to the heavens ever since we got here, trying to figure out what was happening. So lately I’ve been recording the sound from all these shifts so I could sort through it and see if I hear anything that leads me to an engineering process.”
“Excellent Chief! Then there’s a chance you might be able to get us here again—to 1908. I’m counting on that—in fact I think the whole world will be counting on that. Let’s get started! I’m going below for a moment.”
“But Fedorov…suppose I can work my magic and get us back here again. What will you do? We’ll be facing the same problem we have now!”
“No, we won’t be here in the Caspian. Once we get home we can fly to Vladivostok with all the control rods and be right there in the Pacific. Then, if we shift again, Kirov will be very close.”
“What if Karpov refuses to let you board the ship?”
“Don’t worry, Chief. I have a plan. But first, there’s still one other problem I need to resolve here.”
Chapter 35
Fedorov sat with the two men, a signalman named Chenko at his side to interpret, and the looming presence of Sergeant Troyak standing behind the men to keep a good eye on them.
“I am Captain Anton Fedorov,” he began. “Who are you?”
“David Sutherland, Lieutenant in the service of His Majesty’s special forces. This man is Sergeant Jack Terry.”
“What were you doing here?”
Sutherland knew the rule—name, rank and serial number. He had given the first two, but these were Russians, supposed allies, and not enemies, though they had been forced to treat them as foes because of the necessities of this mission. And he was still shaken by what he had seen, doubting his own sanity now and feeling like a fish out of water. So he decided to talk with these men and see what he could find out about them.
“We were sent to find a man—the man we had with us when your Marines made our acquaintance.”
That gave Fedorov a start. These men were sent to find Orlov? How could that be? It would mean that the British knew about the Chief. What could they have learned that would have prompted a mission like this?
“You were sent to find Orlov—that was the man you were with. Sent by who?”
“What does that matter? We were given orders to find him, and that we did, until you blokes came along.”
“Here? In the Caspian Sea? How did you think you might find him here?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that, sir.” Sutherland folded his arms, still feeling very distressed and with this unaccountable feeling that something very odd was going on here. He would once refer to himself as ‘a lucky Scorpio, and an unconventional, adventure-seeking Scot,’ but this was
more than he bargained for.
“Very well…” Fedorov considered the situation. “Was there another man with you—a third man?”
At this Sutherland seemed very distressed. Protocol whispered that he should say nothing of Haselden. After all, the voice said, what if he simply slipped overboard while you weren’t looking? No! said another voice in his head, you know damn well what you saw, and he blurted it out.
“He… he just vanished!” Now he looked at Sergeant Terry, as if still trying to convince the man. “I tell you Haselden was right by my side on the gunwale and then the man simply faded away.” The minute he said that he realized the Russians would probably think he was sporting with them to avoid revealing any further information. So he was surprised when the young officer leaned forward, a very serious look in his eye, and questioned him further about it.
“Vanished? You saw this with your own eyes?”
“That I did,” Sutherland said stubbornly, though Sergeant Terry gave him a frown of disapproval.
“You are telling me the three of you were all in that boat together and then you saw your comrade disappear?”
“That’s about the size of it.” Sutherland felt like a fool now, but in for a penny, in for a pound.
“You’re certain he did not go overboard? We have had men searching for him for hours, but there’s been no sign.”
“Well…I should like to believe that, sir. Yes, that would make all the sense in the world to me, save for the evidence of my own eyes. I…I was looking right at the man and he simply…well he simply faded away!”
Sergeant Terry raised his eyebrows now, thinking the Lieutenant had finally broken under the stress of all they had been through. Yet Sutherland had been with the Black Watch at Dunkirk. He had been through many missions far more arduous than this one. Was the man daft?
“Did you see this happen as well?” Fedorov asked the Sergeant now, giving him an earnest look.
The translator finished and Sergeant Terry, shook his head. “I was in the cabin keeping an eye on this Orlov fellow, and saw nothing.”
“I see…” Fedorov had a very serious look on his face now. Was this British Lieutenant pulling his leg now, or was he serious? The man seemed quite upset, though he was trying bravely to recover his composure. It was clear to him that he had experienced something that rattled him badly. Could he be telling the truth about the third man? Then he suddenly remembered something that broke the log jam of his thinking. Haselden! He named the man Haselden!
When they first returned to Vladivostok Fedorov spent some time trying to find out what may have changed in the history of WWII as a result of their actions. He had run across that name, but struggled now to remember—yes! He was looking at operations that were supposed to have transpired, and comparing them to his books—the books that had remained aboard Kirov when they shifted. Strangely, they bore the history of the world they had come from, even though copies of those same volumes found elsewhere had changed. Then he remembered it! Operation Agreement! Yes, the operation that had been written up in that article he found in Russia Today. He even remembered the title: ‘British Remember Losses In Agreement Gone Bad.’
Markov had that magazine with him in the operations room of the Primorskiy reactor test center! It went back with him and must have been discovered there where he appeared in 1942, and it clearly recounted an operation the British would conduct the following month. It was this that led him to believe the history was still at risk, subtly changing, and that is what led him to look for any evidence of Orlov in the past. He had found something, and took it to Karpov first. The memory of that meeting in the flag bridge of Kirov returned to him now…
“I’ve been trying to find out what happened to him for a good long while, and I think I may have found a trace of the man in my research last night.”
“You mean in the history books?”
“Of course. Nobody goes through this world without leaving some mark on it. Again, thank God we’re living in the information age and I can call up archival records on the computer. Well I found something. You’ll be amazed. I found that man’s footprints in the history, and by God I think I can figure out where he went after he jumped from that helo.”
“Where? What did you find about him?”
“It seems the British got hold of him and had him at Gibraltar. Then he slipped away. The next fragment I picked up was an entry in this very book.” He held up the new volume of the Chronology Of The Naval War At Sea.
“His name came up in a brief engagement between a Soviet Minesweeping trawler and a German U-boat in the Black Sea. So I followed the breadcrumbs. He was listed as a prisoner and suspected murderer of three NKVD guards in Poti. Then comes the kicker—the British went after him. They mounted a commando raid to try and recapture him. Take a look at this…” He opened to a new bookmark and showed Karpov the Passage: 25 Sept. 1942 – Operation Escapade sends a small commando unit into the Caspian region to look for a suspected Russian agent.
“But it doesn’t say anything about Orlov,” Karpov protested.
“No, the book is very vague, but I found two other sources that give more details. They were after Orlov. It was kept very secret, but I dug things up….”
These were those very same men! These were the men sent on Operation Escapade to find Orlov! Now he remembered who Haselden was, the Captain in charge of the whole mission, and it was his fate that first set him searching through this part of the history. Haselden was supposed to have been on another mission—Operation Agreement, the planned British raid on Tobruk. In fact, he was supposed to have been killed on that mission, but it was cancelled.
My God, thought Fedorov. Haselden was a zombie, the walking dead. He was a perfect example of a man who lived that should have died, and he was reassigned to Operation Escapade to look for Orlov! That change in the history had led him to find evidence of Orlov here in those letters from the dead, the journal entry that enabled him to locate Orlov at Kizlyar. He was astounded at how all these facts twisted round one another, and how all these men were all caught up in the net of mystery now.
He looked at Sutherland, understanding why the man was so ill at ease, and believing that he had, indeed, seen the third man simply vanish—but why? Was it because Haselden had been fated to die all along? Was he deemed expendable in the strange, convoluted accounting logs Mother Time was keeping of these events? Then another thought came to him.
“The third member of your party—the man you called Haselden a moment ago—may I ask how old he was?”
Sergeant Terry gave Fedorov a strange look. “Can’t say as I would even know.”
“Well then…” Fedorov took another tack. “You men seem young, and very fit, not much over twenty if I had to venture a guess.” His eye was very good. Sutherland had been born in 1920, and was only 22 years old in 1942. Sergeant Terry survived the war and was to die at the age of 85 in the year 2006, and so he was just a year younger than Sutherland.
“This may seem an odd question, but was this Haselden your same age?”
“What does that matter,” said Sergeant Terry, thinking this Russian officer was fishing. Sutherland should have kept his mouth zipped tight. What was wrong with the Lieutenant? He gave his companion a stern glance, thinking to buck up his morale.
Fedorov discerned a good deal with that response. Haselden must have been the commanding officer. He had asked Orlov about him earlier, getting a description of the man, and the Chief seemed to think this Haselden was in charge. If he was above the Lieutenant then he would have been a major, or even a Captain by rank. Yes, and he would have been older and more experienced than these two here. If they were in their early twenties, then they were born around 1920. But if Haselden was much older he might have been born…before 1908! What would happen to a man if he tried to shift to a period in time where he already existed as a younger man or child? If Haselden had been born before 1908, which would put him in his later thirties in 1942, he might be an in
fant or child in the year we find ourselves in now—1908.
Yes! It would be impossible for the man to manifest here in a time where he already existed. He had often wondered about that. What if they shifted to a near past, a time just before they had been born? What would happen to them at that moment of their own birth? Could two versions of the same person co-exist in the same moment? It was a maddening paradox, but he thought he may have discovered the answer—a flat NO! Time would not permit this to happen. Haselden could not shift here with the others if he had already been born before 1908. Sutherland was telling the truth. The man simply vanished during the transition, vanished into the oblivion of paradox.
Time had balanced her books, yet now he had to decide what to do with these other two men. He could not tell them where they were, and if he left them here they would face the same paradox that may have claimed Haselden, for in just a few years they would reach the time of their birth. Yet how could he get them back to their own time in 1942? They were getting ready to run the procedure with Rod-25 again. If, by any chance, they ended up bouncing back to where they were in that year, then he might set them adrift well outside the radius of the Anatoly Alexandrov. If they shifted somewhere else…He realized that their fate was somehow bound up with his own now; with Orlov, and all the rest of them there.
“Well gentlemen,” he said quietly. “We’ll have to hold on to you for a while yet. In fact we may have to hold on to you for quite some time. I can’t explain everything now, but in time, once we sort this business out, I will try. In the meantime, our Sergeant Troyak here will see to your needs.”
He left the room, heading for the operations center where Dobrynin was preparing to run the procedure again. The Chief had listened to the recording they made of their shift here, and now he was given the daunting task of trying to reverse that outcome and get them home.
Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) Page 29
