Nemesis

by John Schettler

  “Well Fedorov?” said Karpov. “What is this about? How is it you knew the man at the other end of that radio call? A British Admiral? And why on earth would the man wish to speak with you in this situation? There is something very suspicious about this, so out with it. What dirty business are you wrapped up in here?”

  “I know it may appear very odd. How would a junior office in the Russian Navy be associated with a fleet commander in the Royal Navy?”

  “More than odd, Fedorov. But you forget that I reviewed the personnel records of all officers when I came aboard to assume this post. Yours is very interesting. It seems you spent a good deal of time in London last year during your annual leave. Care to explain?”

  “It’s not what you think,” said Fedorov quickly. “No, I am not working for the British, an agent of sorts. There is no cloak and dagger here. If you will listen to me, I can explain everything, but some of the things I will tell you may sound… impossible.”

  “Like scrapped ships rising from the dead, Fedorov?”

  “Yes sir.”

  How to begin, thought Fedorov? How to reveal the full magnitude of all I have gone through without sounding like a raving lunatic here? Karpov is on a hair trigger now. Things could tip one way or another very quickly. There isn’t really enough evidence to support anything I would assert about what has really happened to the ship. Should I wait? But yet, the Captain’s suspicions are up now, as he has just made very clear. I had to take that risk to prevent him from firing on those cruisers. Thank God for Nikolin. That call coming in from the Invincible saved the hour, but now I sit at the edge of a precipice here, and things could slide away very easily. I must be careful, but eventually the truth will out. Yet there is so little time.

  “Captain sir…” he began. “I can explain everything that has happened to the ship, and in fact, I can tell you things that may yet happen here.” That was the only way forward, he knew. Tell the Captain what his investigation will eventually turn up. It would sound incredulous in the beginning, but he would eventually be vindicated.

  “The survey being conducted by the submersible will discover no sign of wreckage. Slava will not be found.”

  “Another prediction? You sound very confident of that, Fedorov. This was where the ship was last on station, and I fully expect this is where we will find it. And when I do find it, then your British friends out there will have to answer for it. Now stop playing around here. How is it you know this British Admiral?”

  “I have met the man personally, sir.”

  “Indeed? Well I took the liberty of looking him up, Lieutenant. The only place you could have met him would be in one of your damn history books! There is no Admiral John Tovey in the active Royal Navy officer data files. The only reference I could find was to an officer of that name who served during the Second World War.”

  “Correct,” said Fedorov flatly. “Tovey was in command of the British Home Fleet until June of 1943.”

  “Yes… the man who sunk the Bismarck.” Karpov had a pad device in hand and he eyed a file he had called up, a wry smile on his face. I see he was even awarded the order of Suvorov, First Class, for arranging all those convoys to Murmansk.”

  “Yes sir, that is also correct.”

  “Well….” Karpov switched off his device, setting it aside on the desk. “Since we both know I was not speaking to the dead some hours ago, suppose you tell me what you were really up to, Fedorov. There is no HMS Invincible in the Royal Navy active ship registry either. I checked that as well.”

  “Correct again,” said Fedorov. Then he took a deep breath. “Captain… What I am about to tell you now will sound like a mad fairy tale. You will assume I am deluded, or even still suffering the effects of that injury I sustained, but you will be wrong in both instances. I can prove, categorically, that everything I will say now is true. Will you listen to me with an open mind? The safety of this ship depends on it, and far more than that, sir.”

  Karpov inclined his head, eyes narrowing as he regarded his young Lieutenant. “I will indulge you for the next fifteen minutes. Then I have to get back to the ship’s business. Very well—tell me this impossible truth.”

  “Sir… The incident with the Orel was an accident, just as Admiral Volsky suspected in the beginning. I know you believe that we were attacked by the British, but you must consider all the other evidence before you can come to that conclusion.”

  “All the other evidence?”

  “Yes sir. The lack of any wreckage of either Orel or Slava is most telling. If they were attacked, there would be clear evidence of that—flotsam, all over the sea.”

  “Unless they were completely vaporized.”

  “Then where is the mushroom cloud? We would have seen a vast spray dome erupting from the ocean, and we should still detect the radiation. Yes, the sea was very odd there for a while, but clearly there was no evidence of a massive detonation. It seemed that way in the beginning. There was that thunderous sound, but then things settled down much too quickly.”

  “Which leads me to suspect this was a torpedo attack by a stealthy British submarine,” said Karpov quickly. “Perhaps it used a low yield warhead. You know we have them.”

  “I can understand why you would think this, sir. But that did not happen. Even so, and assuming it did, we should easily detect the wreckage of both ships. Yet you will not find a thing, not the slightest trace of either vessel.”

  “We shall see, Fedorov. This investigation is only just beginning. I don’t know who that man was on the radio, though he was a fool to pose as Admiral John Tovey. Someone is playing games here, and I intend to find out who and why.”

  “Yet there is other evidence you should not overlook, Captain. The documentaries Nikolin has been listening to non-stop on the radio are a strong clue, and the presence of two County Class cruisers, which we both clearly saw on that video feed, is even stronger evidence. They would seem to point the story in an impossible direction if they were taken at face value, and assumed to be true. Clearly those ships could not be at sea, and we should be able to pick up any number of radio broadcasts with current news on the short wave—yet each and every station Nikolin tunes in has the same material. Why sir? Have you considered that?”

  “Part of this same little deception NATO seems to be running here. That is what I believe.”

  “Every station sir? Nikolin has even picked up broadcasts of Radio Moscow. He’s heard their interval signal: ‘Wide is my Motherland,’ clear as a bell. Yet we cannot even raise Moscow or Severomorsk on our secured military comm-link channels. We have no satellite links, I have no Loran-C link from the Met station on Jan Mayen. In fact, we seem to have no connection at all to the time and place we were in before that accident.”

  “All true, Fedorov, yet all explained easily enough if this was an attack. The satellites may be gone, and Moscow and Severomorsk with them. A surprise attack—this is what I think has happened.”

  “Then why not us, Captain? Why are we left unharmed? Are you suggesting the British and Americans have run out of missiles, and have nothing left for Kirov? Instead they decide to try and confuse us with a pair of old ships and a man posing as an Admiral from the Second World War? It makes no sense. Well, I have another explanation, and it will seem to make no sense to you as well, but each and every scrap of evidence you uncover from this moment forward will prove it to be true.”

  Karpov looked at his watch. “Ten minutes Fedorov. Let me hear your impossible story, and then I should get the real news from the submersible.”

  “Very well sir. Nothing we have seen or heard could be happing in our own time, in the year 2021. Even the phase of the moon is different now. I checked it today. We currently have a waxing gibbous moon, and it will rise just before 16:00. Yet it should be a morning crescent, rising five hours later, at about 21:00. That is a very strange anomaly. Yet everything we have seen, and everything you will see from this moment on, would make perfect sense if it were happening in another ti
me.”

  “Another time?”

  “Yes sir. I entered that moon condition data in to my computer and back checked for possible dates. I found a match in the year 1941, and on this very day, the first of August. The news broadcasts, those two ships, and the man on the radio all date from that same year. Nikolin tells me the radio broadcasts are even time stamped to that date. This is why there are no satellites, and no Loran-C link to the Met. The news we are hearing is, indeed, the current news broadcast from that time.”

  Karpov listened, as any Russian would when he began to hear good Vranyo. He raised his eyebrows, playing his part, nodded his head, and when Fedorov finished, he just smiled.

  “That’s very good, Fedorov.” He laughed softly. “Throwing in that bit about the moon was very clever. A nice touch, but I don’t think I’ll be wasting my time to verify that, or to listen to any more of this rubbish. You love your history books too much. Or maybe it was that knock on the head you took. Yet don’t sit there and insult me with the notion that you now believe we are sailing about in 1941. This meeting is a complete waste of time.”

  “I told you this would sound impossible, yet mark my words, it will be proven true. You can send a helicopter to Jan Mayen with Troyak and the Marines, and see for yourself. The Met station is gone. The entire facility is missing, even the airstrip. Yet it was not attacked. There will be no evidence of blast damage whatsoever, and all you will find there will be a couple Norwegians at an old, makeshift weather outpost. One will be named Ernst Ullring. If Troyak searches the Norwegians he will discover an identity card. They will also have a dog. I can show you what that facility looks like from the ship’s data files, sir. I have a bookmark to panoramic interior video files of the whole place. Yet if you send a helo there, you will find nothing. The entire facility will be gone, because it was not yet built in 1941.”

  “Good idea, Fedorov. I will take you up on this little bet, and have Orlov send a helicopter. And when he reports the station is completely destroyed, as I fully expect, then you will get your nose out of the history books and back in the here and now. This is an emergency situation, and I need officers with clear heads.”

  “I understand, sir. I would never suggest any of this if I did not believe it to be true.”

  “Then you are certifying yourself as insane? You agree this is impossible, and yet you tell me this is what you believe? I’m supposed to assume this ship is now in the middle of WWII? Nonsense! Look, if you want to be relieved, I’ll get Petrov back, and make him a senior Lieutenant at that station in the bargain.” Karpov planted a finger firmly on the table to underscore his threat as real and imminent.

  There came a quiet knock on the door, and he turned his head. “Come.”

  The door opened and Nikolin appeared, coming to the rescue again at a most opportune time. “Excuse me sir, but you instructed me to report any communications received on command link channels. We have a message sir, from Moscow!”

  “Moscow? At last!”

  “Yes sir. It came in on long wave, unscrambled, and it was addressed to Admiral Volsky.” Nikolin handed him the message, and Karpov read it silently, thinking. It was a stream of code, yet he knew what it meant, for it was clearly delineated in a secret alpha-numeric protocol used for Russian military commands: MDZHB 92 038 MIRKA 56 89 33 44 SIMVOLIKA 13 68 63 68 ODKORA 34 24 43 13 NIKOLAI. One word immediately caught his eye, MIRKA. He had been briefed before they left Severomorsk, and this was the code word that had been assigned to identify Volsky for this mission, and by extension, Kirov itself.

  “Very well,” he said with a nod of his head. “Unscrambled you say? That is very odd.”

  “Yes sir. It was down on 15.62 kHz, the normal Russian Navy Longwave frequency. I monitor that on a routine basis. The protocol is correct.”

  “So much for your stupid little theory, Fedorov. Nikolin, have you consulted the code reference book on this yet?”

  “As far as I could, sir. The first letter set is just a prefix to set my key. The next word, MIRKA, is our identity code, indicating the intended recipient. The destination is SIMVOLIKA, and that decodes as Severomorsk. It is followed by a timing word indicating the order is to be carried out immediately. Yet I cannot decode the last word, sir, NIKOLAI. That is the message authentication code, and only command level officers will have access to that.”

  “Of course,” said Karpov. “And if it is correct, as I believe it will be, then we have just been ordered to proceed directly to Severomorsk. I suppose such a message could be spoofed if this is part of the NATO PSYOP I now believe is underway here. Yet I can easily determine that when I retrieve the secure envelope from the safe, and check that authentication code. There is no way they could know that, as it was only assigned the day we left port. So enough of this nonsense. You can either report to your station now Fedorov, or stand relieved. The choice is yours, but if you persist in this business, I will make that choice for you.”

  The Captain stood up, straightening his cap, and was out the door. “Come along, Mister Nikolin. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  *

  Fedorov had no choice but to follow, trailing slightly behind the Captain who had Nikolin in tow as he made his way back to the bridge. There, in the flag plot room, there was a safe with a plain Manila envelope. It would contain a single coded word, and if that word matched the final word in the message they had received, it would confirm the order was coming directly from Russian Military High Command.

  Karpov wasted no time getting to that safe, as Fedorov settled sullenly into his chair. Perhaps he had gone about this the wrong way, he thought. Perhaps he should have tried to work with Admiral Volsky first, to secure his support before he tried to convince Karpov what had happened. Yet what was this strange message? He had not expected anything of the sort, and when Karpov entered the Flag Plot room, and closed the door, he leaned over towards Nikolin, glad that Orlov was not on the bridge at that moment.

  “Nikolin… Was that really on the Russian Navy frequency?”

  The other man nodded.

  “From Moscow? And was it formatted correctly?”

  Again, Nikolin nodded in the affirmative, and this only deepened the mystery for Fedorov. What was happening here? He knew that they had told the Soviets to use that frequency for routine communications with the ship. Volsky had Nikolin huddle with the Soviets as to protocols and message formats. They even left a code book with them, which assigned a different prefix key each day, which in turn determined the meaning of the other code words used, except the final word. That had not been disclosed, and had never been used, and the fact that it was transmitted here was very strange. How could the message incorporate the signals code key from the secure safe here aboard the ship? It had to be some kind of error, he thought. No one could know that code word, except perhaps Volsky or Karpov…

  What was going on here?

  Chapter 5

  My first attempt produced predictable results, thought Fedorov, but at least I achieved one thing, the helo mission to Jan Mayen was vital in our first attempt to understand what happened to us, and Karpov launched it with Orlov and Troyak as I suggested. Yet I have a long way to go here, and need some allies.

  Another thing suddenly occurred to him—they had a very short lease here. Chief Dobrynin was soon going to conduct that reactor maintenance procedure and Rod-25 might send them off again… Or would it? That shift occurred during a nuclear event, that first madness unleashed upon the world by Karpov. Yet would that happen now? We aren’t going to run the Denmark Strait pursued by the British as before. The first of August was a quiet day, as I recall it. We had already visited Jan Mayen, encountered that British destroyer, and then turned south off the coast of Greenland. Tomorrow we would face the first air strike by Wake-Walker’s Force P, but that isn’t happening now at all. That order to return home changed everything. Yet what could it be? Who could have sent it? Could it be coming from Sergei Kirov? How could it contain the proper authenti
cation code?

  Karpov was certainly acting as if it was authentic. He watched him go to the flag plot room again, seeing him draw out the command key that he always kept in a chain about his neck. It was the very same key he had used with such devastating consequences when he authorized the use of special warheads. What was it going to unlock this time?

  The Captain emerged, a smug look on his face, though he ignored Fedorov and simply went about his business, ordering the submersible back to the ship, taking the crew Chief’s report, and then ordering Orlov to take the KA-226 out to have a quick look at Jan Mayen with a few Marines.

  “It’s probably a waste of good aviation fuel, but see if the facility there is still operational,” he said quietly, as if not wishing anyone else to hear the order, though Fedorov overheard the remark. Then Karpov went down to the sick bay to confer with Admiral Volsky, and Fedorov’s shift ended before he returned.

  I need to find out what is happening here, he thought. Thank god those British cruisers turned about earlier. At least we don’t have the ship on a hair trigger and at action stations, yet this situation is far from resolved.

  With that thought, he started for sick bay himself the moment his shift ended that afternoon. He would pay his respects to the Admiral, and see if he could again forge the grand alliance with Volsky and Zolkin that had prevailed to save the ship from Karpov once before. He knocked on the door, hoping the Admiral was awake, and was not disappointed.

  “Come in, Mister Fedorov,” said Zolkin when he had poked his head through the hatch. “I hope you have no further problems?”

  “With my head? No Doctor. I’m fine. I was just wondering how the Admiral was doing. I’ve come to pay my respects.”

  “He is quite well, right in the next room resting if you would care to say hello. I think he’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” said Fedorov as they entered, and when the Admiral saw him, he smiled.