Tovey frowned, a grave expression on his face, but Volsky continued, his tone changing now, more human, and with no hint of bravado in his voice. “There,” he said. “We have both thumped our chests like a pair of old fools, and now we must decide what happens next. We can decide as Admirals in a sea of war, or we can decide as men, eye to eye, and face to face, and find another solution. We can use our warships to settle the matter, or our intelligence, and perhaps a little more. There was a great Russian writer who put it this way: ‘It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.’ We must find what that is, you and I, or I’m afraid a great many more men will pay the price of our stupidity.”
Tovey took that in, considering. Yes, it made all the sense in the world now to find a way to settle this amicably, and without more loss of life, or ships for that matter. If he fought here, as he had hastened south with so much might to do, what would be left of his fleet at battle’s end, even if he did prevail? Yet how could he allow a ship with such power to sail out into the Atlantic where the life blood of the Empire now moved in big fat convoys, guarded by ships of war—convoys like the one they had just risked so much to fight through to Malta. If he let this ship pass it could pose the gravest threat to those sea lanes. The outcome of the entire war effort could depend on their security. He had this mysterious ship before him now, and wondered if he would ever have such an opportunity again. He cleared his voice and spoke his mind.
“I am charged with the security of these sea lanes, sir. Surely you must understand that.”
“Well, Admiral, it has come to the eleventh hour, and fearing what might happen if we let the time slip by to midnight without reason having a seat at the table, let me make a proposal. I seek an armistice in our private little war within a war here. You are busy enough with the Germans and Italians. Yes? So I ask you to leave my ship alone now and grant us safe passage through these straits and to give us the open sea you claim to rule. You may wish to know my intentions, and I will tell you that I have no hostile aim, nor do I wish to engage in any further combat, or even contact with your navy or that of any other nation. As to the security of your convoys, I must leave that to you, but I will give you my pledge that my ship will not fire on any merchant vessel we encounter, on any side in this war. We will give them a wide berth and do no harm. This is my word to you.” He paused briefly, allowing Nikolin to catch up, and noting Tovey’s facial expressions to read his response.
“All I wish is to find a nice peaceful island somewhere out of the stream of this war and consider how I can get my men and ship home again. To put this formally, I ask you now for safe passage in exchange for a pledge of armistice and neutrality. It would be my intention to get as far away from your war as my ship can possibly take me. Yes, I know it is a world war, and that may prove difficult, but there must be some island out there where I can get some sleep and find some peace and quiet to think. And if I never see another man die at sea, particularly as a result of my commands, then I will be a happier man for it. So that is my offer. That is all I desire, Admiral.” He nodded his head. “And perhaps a nice bowl of borscht and a bottle of good vodka once in a while.” He smiled, seeing his last remark well taken by Tovey.
Then the British Admiral’s eyes hardened for a moment. Tovey clasped his hands behind his back, thinking as he gazed up at the tawny sundrenched walls of the Moorish fortifications. This Captain Nemo had said a good bit with that business about the castle, he realized. Perhaps he said more than he might have wished.
His eyes seemed to see far now, as if he were suddenly aware of distant events, a future time unseen, when this war was long over…when the British Empire itself was long gone, and when other men might walk the rocky shores of this island with no thought of conflict and war in their minds. Was that ever possible? He knew what the Admiralty would advise him here—what they would in fact order him to do. Somerville had faced it at Mers-el Kebir when he had asked the French fleet to join the Empire, and that failing, to scuttle their ships. They refused, of course, even as he himself would in the same situation. Yes, pride goeth before the fall, but pride could be as much a virtue as a vice, and he had little doubt that this Admiral before him would be found a proud and willful man if put to the test.
The man wanted to find an island, he thought, a mysterious island where he could rest and think. Well, we moved heaven and earth to put Napoleon on one. Here he is looking to make a graceful bow and drop anchor on his own St. Helena. The man’s earnest desire to avoid further conflict was both obvious and admirable. Might he consider another proposal? It was worth the offer, and he spoke his mind.
“Admiral, I am inclined to believe you when you state your wish to avoid further hostilities. You have asked me to consider the question of armistice. May I ask you if you would consider the question of alliance? Might we two become friends instead of the witless enemies we have been up until now?”
Volsky smiled, as he had thought long and hard about this possible meeting, and knew this question would inevitably arise. The matter was coming to a head, and he knew his response now would be critical. He looked Tovey squarely in the eye. “If you had lightning in a bottle, would you pour it in your friend’s glass, or your enemies?” He smiled. “I think to make either choice would end up killing them both. No, Admiral. I cannot join your war. We fought only because we had to—fought Italians ships and German planes, and you British as well. For a long time I think you believed we were a German ship. And the Italians and Germans may now think we are British. But if it is all the same to you, I think we would be most unwise to take any side in this war. We have done enough harm as it stands.”
“I see,” said Tovey, not surprised by the answer. The question was now starkly before him. There would be no alliance, but would there be war or peace with this man and his mysterious and terrible ship of war? With four battleships at hand Tovey still believed he had the means to prevail if it came to further conflict, but he was under no illusion that the task would be easy, or that he would even live to see it to a successful completion. He was going to lose ships and men if he fought now, that much was certain. Then an idea came to him. He knew it might cost his command, and even his rank and position in the Royal Navy itself, but somehow neither of those things seem to weigh in the balance.
“We faced this same dilemma with the French fleet, on more than one occasion,” he began. “Now they are sitting comfortably at Toulon, though we did have word that the Strasbourg had been heading this way.” He gave Volsky a knowing smile. “That said, might you consider sailing to a neutral country, under Royal Navy escort, and accept internment for the duration of the war?”
Again, this was not unexpected, but Volsky shook his head, smiling. “Admiral, do you think this ship would be left in peace under such circumstances? In what port, on any shore, could we drop anchor without fear that there would be men who would be very, very curious about us, men who would want to ask the same questions that remain in your mind? No. Such questions must remain unanswered, and it would be better if they were never asked. We must have freedom of movement to assure ourselves that this would be the case.”
“But surely, you’ll need fuel, water, food and supplies for your crew.”
“We carry all the fuel we will ever need, and then some.” He realized that Tovey would not comprehend that, so he manufactured a little white lie, a little vranyo to smooth the matter over. “We have a way to convert seawater to steam, so fuel is never a concern. As for food and water, these things we will find on our own, and with as little interference with others as possible.”
“Then you don’t see any further room for compromise?”
“I have compromised, Admiral. I did not have to ask for this conference, but yet I found it a wiser course than the one I was sailing at the time. I know the issue foremost in your mind now is trust. I suppose your Mister Churchill is thinking the same thing at this very moment as he sits down to dinner with Joseph Stalin in his dacha at Mosc
ow.” He saw Tovey raise an eyebrow at that, and pressed his point home. “Perhaps that is the one thing a man really needs to act intelligently—a little trust, a little faith, and a good heart. I know that you are driven to find answers to the questions in your mind about all of this, but I must caution that you stand to lose very much more than you gain should you do so.”
Tovey breathed deeply, struck by that last remark. There was something more in the what the Admiral said just now. Something very much more. The conference in Moscow was held as a state secret and a matter of high security. Only very few knew it was taking place, even within the highest circles of the British government. For this man to know of it, and speak of it so casually…He regarded this Admiral with a knowing eye.
“Very well, Admiral. I will consider what you have said and asked here, but I think it best that I return to my ship for the moment, and you to yours. I will contact you at Midnight with an answer to this dilemma.”
Volsky reached and again shook the man’s hand. “Consider well, John Tovey. I will await your message.”
Tovey spent those last hours considering the careful logic of his war plan, and wondering about all the subtle clues he had taken from this extraordinary encounter. Russian, he thought. They were clearly Russians, but yet they denied any affiliation with Stalin or the Soviet state. But how could they know of Churchill’s meeting with Stalin in Moscow? Were they lying? The man’s candor was clearly apparent, but more than that it was the logic of his argument that weighed more heavily on the issue. When I mentioned that Russia was our ally, the man’s remark was rather telling … ‘At the moment…’
He said it as though he knew something to the contrary. Could this ship be a new Russian model, one they managed to build in the Black Sea, perhaps? Is that how it came to be in the Med—sneaking out through the Bosporus? Was it trying to get out into the Atlantic to strike at our convoys? Was Russia about to switch sides in this war? Then what about that business a year ago. The man clearly led me to believe that this ship was the same we encountered earlier. Was it? Could it have come out of Murmansk a year ago, and was it sunk by the Americans? This could be a sister ship, perhaps launched from Odessa or Sevastopol…But could the Russians build something like this, and without our knowing about it?
One question after another ranged through his mind, and he ticked them off, discarding each as utterly impossible. The Russians could not have built this ship any more than the Germans could have built it. Even if they did, how would it have escaped our notice? How could it have passed our coast watchers along the Dardanelles unseen, sailed through the Aegean like a phantom and then right past Vian’s cruisers in the Eastern Med, let alone the Italians at Taranto? Impossible! No nation on this earth could have built it, unless there was some mysterious island out there where a consortium of renegade mad scientists had built this ship. The mystery was profound.
And what did this man mean when he pointed to those old fortifications like that, saying I would have a good deal of trouble explaining the presence of my fleet here to the Moors. There was clearly something there that kept tugging at the edge of his thinking, all wrapped up with his muse about Jules Verne and his strange story of Captain Nemo, and again, with the odd look in Professor Turing’s eye in that hallway back at the Admiralty.
Why was this man being so blasted evasive? He refused to account for his presence, either here or in the North Atlantic a year ago, and it was as if the disclosure would cause some irreparable harm. He chided himself for not being more insistent, more forceful. By God, he had all the muscle and sinew of Home Fleet with him here. Syfret and Fraser had a couple of old, slow inter war battleships, their keels laid down in the early 1920s. He had four of Britain’s newest dreadnoughts, fast, well protected, well gunned. He could force the issue and have an answer to these nagging questions once and for all, but the Admiral’s remark still haunted him: “I know that you are driven to find answers to the questions in your mind about all of this, but I must caution that you stand to lose very much more than you gain should you do so.” Was that simply another veiled threat should it come to battle here, or was there some darker implication in the Admiral’s warning?
The damage reports from Fraser on Rodney finally reached him. There were over 200 casualties, yet the fires had finally been put out. Neither ship could make more than twelve knots, and Nelson’s C turret was out of commission. But beyond that they were both still sea worthy, and their remaining guns were in good order. It would take them some time to come up behind this enemy ship again, but eventually they could throw in with his own fleet and he could squeeze this Geronimo between his fingertips like a bug.
Or could he… Memories of that awful mushroom of seawater and the capsized hull of the American battleship Mississippi glistening in the angry sea like a dead whale still haunted him, and told him that this bug might not be so easily squashed, and might as yet have some considerable bite.
Damn it then, Jack, he anguished. What’s it to be? Did you sail here with the whole of Home Fleet to bandy about like this? The man wanted an island, he said. He just wanted to be left in peace and find his way home. And where was that?
He thought of Nemo coming at last to that Mysterious Island to die an old man, his vengeful sorties against navies of the world now ended. He would not accept internment at a neutral port…Then he thought of Napoleon again and had his answer. Yes! St. Helena! Suppose he offered this man safe passage and escort to St. Helena, a place far enough away from the curious eyes of anyone, to be sure. Yet his ships were already low on fuel and St. Helena was another thousand sea miles to the south. Yet he could transfer fuel to Norfolk and Sheffield, topping them off. That accomplished those two ships would have both the range to serve as escorts, and the speed to serve as a shadow if this ship attempted to slip away.
That thought was a foil opposing his hope in this alternative. If he needed every battleship the Royal Navy could spare here just to have an even chance with this demon, then Norfolk and Sheffield would be no match. They could not prevent this ship from sailing off if it wished. Then he realized it all came down to that one thing this Admiral had argued—trust. He had looked in this man’s eyes and the mysterious and impenetrable riddle had become a human being, just another ordinary man and not a wizard from heaven or a monster from hell. His ship and its weapons might be monstrous, but so were the guns on King George V. Men build these monsters, and it is men who decide whether or not they will be used.
He folded his arms, staring at his battle plots in the chart room, seeing the action unfold in his mind’s eye, wondering which ships would be stricken by those deadly sea rockets, or if the ocean would again be seared and boiled away by another of those terrible atomic weapons. He could probably sink this ship, but a very great many men would die tomorrow if he tried.
He decided.
Epilogue
“Ship ahead!” A watch stander called from the weather bridge, pointing off his starboard bow. Captain Clark stood on the flag bridge of the cruiser Sheffield, field glasses at his eyes as he peered at the distant ship.
The word was flashed quickly by lantern and signal flag to their companion, the heavy cruiser Norfolk, steaming a few hundred meters in their wake. From there it was passed again to the distant gray silhouettes of the big battleships farther out to sea. It was here…It was coming through the straits even now. Clark could see it—the white bow wave kicked up by the long, sharp prow, the dark mass behind it, her superstructure climbing up and up, bristling with strange antennae and pale metal domes. The sight of it gave him a chill, for every line and cut of her jib spoke of power, massive and threatening power. He had heard all the rumors about this ship; that it bloodied the noses of both Nelson and Rodney combined!
“Hal-o Mate,” he said aloud to the distant ship. “What are we to do with these six inch popguns if Nelson’s sixteen incher’s weren’t enough?”
He passed the word on to the Signals Lieutenant where he would let Captain Wilso
n on Norfolk worry about it with his eight inch guns. He was just told to get out in front of the fleet with Shiny Sheff and keep a sharp eye out for this ship at all times, and that is what he would do.
Sheffield had been selected for a very special mission. His ship was called ‘Old Shiny’ in the navy, because all the fittings that were normally crafted in brass on the other ships in this class had been machined in stainless steel on Sheffield. All her railings, stanchions, horns and even the ship’s bells, were made of steel, and the ship sometimes glimmered in the light as she rolled in the heavy seas. But that had little to do with her mission here today. It was more her speed, good endurance, and most of all her advanced radar that made her the perfect scout ship.
The radar was mounted well up on the foremast, which came to be called the “cuckoo’s nest” when sailors finally got a look at the odd antenna mounted there. The ship he was looking at now had even more wizardry about it. He could see the slowly rotating antennae on her aft mast and it gave him the chills to think of how far it might see, through weather and darkness, and even the smoke and fire of battle. By comparison the antennae rigged out in the cuckoo’s nest on Sheffield seemed feeble.
Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Page 33