“But I don’t think they knew anything about this one,” said Elena darkly.
Paul considered that. The messages were coming to the watch from the future stretching beyond his day, the meridian he came from. They could not be coming from any future arising from this altered meridian, because this time loop has been preventing any clear outcome. What if Miss Fairchild was correct? What if they knew of these other time rifts, but knew nothing of Ilanskiy? They apparently went to great lengths to find and secure the other rifts—under lock and key. Yet if one existed that they had not uncovered… He saw now how their plans could all be thwarted, simply because the existence of that unseen rift was allowing major contamination to the continuum.
“They had their finger in the dike,” he said, “and at more than one place. You say you knew of at least one more key, in addition to the one that was lost on Rodney. Might it relate to this rift at Ilanskiy?”
“No. I don’t think so. As far as I know, neither British intelligence, nor the Watch, knew anything about that rift at Ilanskiy either.”
“Very strange,” said Dorland. “And yet it’s been sitting there all this time. We know it goes all the way back to 1908!”
“The time of yet another first cause,” said Elena, “Tunguska. I believe exotic material from that detonation may be able to disturb, even rupture, the flow of time, just as I told you earlier. In fact, that is how I believe my ship appeared here. A key that led to a box, that then brought me and Argos Fire here to this place. And apparently the whole affair was well considered—planned.”
“There I go again,” said Tovey. “You’ll say I was behind it all.”
“Well Admiral, I’ve been listening very carefully to Professor Dorland here,” said Elena. This bit about sending information through time really struck home. You see, that is what the Watch received, and it is what I received that sent me on this journey—information. It came to me as an order, just as you suggested, on a special red telephone aboard my ship. Information! Someone was aware of this whole adventure, and trying to get me involved.”
“The keys,” said Dorland. “We simply must solve that part of this puzzle. We must get hold of all those other keys, because if they do secure these time rifts, they also do the inverse and allow access to them. We could move heaven and earth to try and prevent Kirov from ever displacing here, only to find those open rifts in time still allow a contamination to undo all our work.”
“Agreed,” said Elena. “So how do we proceed?”
“You hold one key, correct? And you say you know of another Keyholder.”
“I know one exists, but not his identity. Nor do I know what that key might open.”
“Most likely the location of another time rift. We simply must discover that, but first things first. We need to get our hands on the one other key we know of, now at the bottom of the Atlantic.”
“Along with all the King’s business,” said Tovey. “Churchill was quite upset about that.”
“Undoubtedly, but the loss of the key is our only concern. I think I know how to find it again, and I’ll make that my little project. As for this rift at Ilanskiy, that seems to be the odd man out in all this. That site will have to be secured as well.”
“No small task,” said Tovey. “It seems Ivan Volkov and this Vladimir Karpov have been tussling for control of the place. Captain Fedorov mounted a raid to try and destroy the entrance, and then those two have been back and forth over it ever since.”
“But there it is,” said Dorland, “and we’ll have to deal with it somehow. We need these keys, all of them, and this won’t be easy getting our hands on them. These rifts in time must be secured. One is completely unknown, another apparently exists in a location controlled by the Germans, and the third is controlled by a very dangerous man, a man who should not even exist now, just like this ship—a Doppelganger.”
Chapter 36
Doctor Zolkin could not take his mind off that bandage, or even his eyes. From time to time he found himself staring at his medicine cabinet, and he was bothered by the nagging feeling that something about that bandage was important, though he could not think what it was. He spent three hours, going through all his personnel patient records, and looking through his diagnostic computer files for some trace or clue as to when he might have used that bandage. He was very meticulous in keeping his records, because the quartermaster was also very meticulous in allocating the ship’s budgets for medical supplies. One day I’ll have to buy that man a good bottle of vodka, he thought, and loosen up his purse.
Yet his search had been fruitless, until just before noon, even as the ship slipped away from all visible land that day, now lost in the Barents Sea, heading for the Kara Strait at the southern tip of the long barrier island of Novaya Zemlya. He had been troubled by things he heard among members of the crew these last few days, and the line at his door seemed a bit longer. Strangely, he found the men often presented some minor complaint, which was really nothing that should have sent them to the infirmary, until he realized that what they really wanted to do was simply talk with him.
The Doctor heard a great deal in those little chats, things about the strangeness of coming home, and the veil of secrecy that seemed to surround the operations of the ship now. He heard about the newcomers, some kind of security force that had come aboard, quartered well aft in the reserve cargo area, and kept segregated from the rest of the crew. Some of the men complained that they had to give up an extra blanket from their laundry allotment to accommodate these men, who were sometimes seen, moving in groups of three or five in their long dark overcoats, like shadows.
He heard of one man in particular, a burly Sergeant named Grilikov who was now making the rounds with Orlov, and the crew seemed more than unhappy about that development. Soon he learned why, when a man came in with a ripe shiner on one eye, and when Zolkin started to lecture him about fighting, the other sailor interrupted him.
“It wasn’t me, sir. It was that big Sergeant. He said I was too slow with the fire hose drill.”
“Big Sergeant? You mean Troyak did this?”
“No sir… It was Grilikov.”
Zolkin heard more in that than he liked, shaking his head, and he also heard things about the Captain as well. Like everyone else on the ship, the absence of Admiral Volsky was keenly felt, particularly by Zolkin, for he was a long time friend of the Admiral. He had heard the announcement on the P.A. by the Captain, yet he felt it odd that Leonid would leave so abruptly like this, without the slightest whisper of his intentions. Yes, the Admiral of the Northern Fleet often knew many more things that he would share with other officers, but he always shared most of them with Zolkin—but not this. Moscow had summoned the Admiral for a very important meeting, or so the Captain’s announcement explained. In the meantime, the ship was heading for Vladivostok as previously planned.
Zolkin also found that strange. They had not docked at Severomorsk, by the Admiral’s order, and he knew Leonid well enough to realize that he had some good reason for that. Volsky went ashore, and did not return. Instead came these shadows, led by some big brute of a man named Grilikov, and the unrest in the crew was a palpable thing now.
Yet the Doctor had been in the service a good long while. He knew that things happened that required secrecy, and the incident with Orel and Slava was more than enough to have the ship’s commanding officer summarily called to account in Moscow the moment they made port, even if he was a Fleet Admiral. That was probably it, he thought. The Naval inspectorate most likely sent these men aboard, and Leonid was being called on the thick red carpet. He silently wished his friend well, and attended to his business as always… but that nagging thought about the bandage kept bothering him. When he encountered that odd glitch in his computer files, the feeling he had when he first touched that bandage redoubled.
He was plowing through his records on the medical log computer, and suddenly came across a very strange entry. It was a file that would not open—password prote
cted—yet he could not remember ever securing that data, or think of any reason why he should. Curious, he began typing in the most typical password he would used to lock a file, his cat’s name, Gretchk0, with the last character being a cypher zero instead of the normal letter, but it failed. Then he tried something stronger, passwords he would only ever use for very sensitive matters, and one of them finally opened the file.
In places he could see that some of the data remained badly garbled, as if the encryption algorithm had failed to decode properly. Yet in other locations he could clearly read snippets of the file data, and he was very surprised by what he saw there—in fact quite shocked! He soon realized that this was a list of names, all members of the crew, along with all their digital personnel records. Why would he find it necessary to secure that information? It gave him a very troubling feeling as he scanned the document, for at the end of each man’s file he found diagnostic notes he had apparently typed in the closing comments box. As he read them, he realized that they were autopsy notes! Several men were designated KIA, and three files really got his attention—Markov: MIA; Voloshin: Apparent Suicide; and the last one completely befuddled him. It was a bizarre report he had apparently written about a man he knew quite well from the ship’s galley, a man named Lenkov. What in god’s name was this all about?
He leaned back in his chair, somewhat shaken by the discovery, and now the odd feelings he had about that soiled bandage prickled up again, more insistent, and with a sense of urgency that actually sent his pulse racing. Of all the members of the crew who might be troubled by recent events, there was one man who should be at the top of his list—Fedorov. For some reason, Zolkin wanted to speak with him again. In fact, he almost felt compelled to do so, though he thought that was more his own guilt in having neglected the man, overlooking the seriousness of the injury he might have sustained.
Yes, he thought, I must go and check on Mister Fedorov to see if he is still wrestling with this strange interpretation of these recent events. His condition had begun to show signs of mild psychosis, so he made a mental note to check on the officer’s rotation schedule and see when he might be in his quarters. Better yet, he thought. I will look for him in the officer’s dining room tonight, and make a point of sitting with him to make a quiet assessment before I do anything more formal.
Even as he thought that, he realized there was more in his intention than he openly admitted to himself. The contents of that encrypted file had shaken him, and somehow for some reason that he could not divine, he felt compelled to talk to Fedorov about it…
But the Senior Lieutenant was not in the dining hall that evening, and he soon found out why.
*
Zykov was lounging in the helo bay as always. He had finished his weapons cleaning ritual, and completed the readiness check on the KA-40 that had been up earlier that day, as all the Marines pulled double duty on the ship, and performed service maintenance on the helicopters they would so often have to use. Now he was lounging, his work for the day complete, and a copy of a girly magazine more than enough to keep his attention while he waited for the chow bell to ring. He was a Corporal, which put him one leg up on all the other men, who were all privates, and so he thought it just a privilege of rank that he might steal these little moments of distraction from the day’s work rotation.
The other men were all up on deck with Troyak finishing the damage control drill, but his squad had already scored high marks, and so it was exempted. The four men under his immediate supervision had already gone to the mess hall to wait in line, leaving Zykov alone with his magazine, and a smile.
Then he heard hard footfalls at the far end of the bay, looking over his shoulder and thinking the Sergeant was back early with the other two squads. Instead, he was surprised to see Orlov leading in a group of the newcomers, and one was the big mountain of a man they called Grilikov.
“Up off your ass, Zykov,” said the Chief. “Where’s the Sergeant?”
Zykov stood, as he would for any officer, though he had no great respect for Orlov. “He’s up on the helo deck running a drill.”
“Oh? Then what are you doing here?” Orlov spied the magazine, grinning. “Thinking to flog the stick, Corporal? You can start with mine!” The other men with him chuckled at that, all those strangers that had come aboard in their long overcoats, the shadows, as the crew called them.
“Give me that, you idiot!” Orlov went to snatch the magazine away, but Zykov pulled it back.
“Hands off, Chief. This is personal property, but you can have it when I’ve finished.”
Orlov frowned. “I think I’ll have it now, Corporal…”
The bigger man stepped very close now, the man they called Grilikov, looming over Zykov like a stony shadow. But the Marines were not just any men aboard the ship, not regular members of the crew. They were a special detachment, combat trained, and under the supervision of Sergeant Troyak. They were not even on Orlov’s work rotation lists, and so Zykov was not accustomed to taking orders from Orlov, and he was not the sort to be easily intimidated either, a Marine of the elite unit the service called the Black Death.
He smiled, looking up at Grilikov, then at Orlov. “Find something else to play with Chief, this is the Marine section.” He reminded Orlov he was off the ranch here, and stood his ground, slipping the magazine behind his back with one hand, the other on his hip, with a smug look on his face.
Grilikov move so fast Zykov never saw the blow coming. The big man simply swatted him across the face, and hard enough to nearly knock the Corporal down, though he staggered and regained his balance, a hot anger suddenly in his eyes. Orlov grinned at him spitefully.
“Smart mouth, Zykov. See what you get for that? You want more of it? Now give me that damn magazine!”
At that moment there was a commotion on the aft stairway to the helo deck, and Zykov looked to see the Marines were all coming back down from their drill. They were talking amiably, teasing one another, and then they suddenly saw the scene at the other end of the bay, near the lockers where Zykov had been sitting.
Orlov quietly cursed their untimely arrival, gritting his teeth, but with three security men with him, and Grilikov, he was more emboldened than he might otherwise be. After all, he was Chief of the damn boat. Yes? This was a disciplinary matter now.
The Other Marines saw the scene, and instinctively sized up that something was wrong. They had heard about these new security men aboard, and some of the other crew members had complained to them about them, but this was the first they saw of them.
The Chief looked over his shoulder at them, for he had come here for some other reason, to see about getting into the weapons lockers as Karpov had instructed him earlier. The magazine in Zykov’s hand was not the one he needed to be attending to now, and he realized that, so he thought twice.
“Alright, Zykov,” he said, raising one hand as if to call Grilikov off. “I’m here for the real magazine anyway, not that girly rag you need to keep yourself happy. Keep the damn thing. But I’ll need keys to the lockers. You’re a big tough Corporal. You should know where they are.”
At that moment one last man came down the stairway, and as he landed on the lower deck, the other Marines parted to make way for him—Troyak, a billed cap pulled low on his forehead, his sleeves rolled up, and a five o’clock shadow on his chin that gave him an even rougher hewn aspect than normal.
Silence…
The Marines just stood there, eyes moving from the group at the far end of the bay and then to the Sergeant. Troyak took one look at the scene, and he could immediately sense something was wrong here. He knew Zykov very well, saw the look on his face, saw Grilikov, and he knew a man ready for a fight when he saw one. Then he slowly walked across the bay, his footfalls deliberate and purposeful, hard thumps on the deck, and the beginnings of a frown starting to appear on his face. Orlov… He never liked the man.
Troyak stepped up to the group, eyeing the three men in their dark overcoats with a scowl, and
then giving Grilikov a long look. “What is going on here, Chief?”
“Nothing much,” said Orlov. “Zykov was just telling me about his girly magazine. Really, Sergeant, you should keep your hens in line down here. He was lounging about like this was a pleasure cruise.”
“Fuck you, Orlov!” said Zykov, and the eyes of the Marines at the other end of the bay glimmered with that.
“Fuck me? No thanks, Corporal. You can stick it to your magazine.”
Troyak gave Zykov a look, seeing the red weal on his face, noting Grilikov’s stance, clearly at the ready, a very threatening presence, and feeling the tension as thick as steel. He knew what had happened here, and was angry with what Zykov had just said to a senior officer. Yet he was even more perturbed with Orlov, and the scene he had clearly engineered here. So he slowly stepped up to the Chief, looking him square in the eye.
“Sir,” he said his voice like gravel. “Discipline of the Marine contingent is the responsibility of the Sergeant Major.” He was so close to the Chief that Orlov instinctively took a step back. Troyak was, in fact, the Sergeant Major, and he was letting the Chief know that he would not tolerate his usual brash and strong armed methods where his men were concerned.
Even as he said that, Orlov had the strange feeling that this had happened once before, those words, low and firm, the Sergeant’s stony presence in front of him, the odd prickling of Déjà vu he felt seemed chilling…
Now Grilikov turned slowly, looking at Troyak with an unfriendly face. Kandemir Troyak was a Siberian Eskimo from the Chukchi Peninsula, a short, broad shouldered man, very stocky, yet all muscle. But Grilikov was over six feet tall, a wall of flesh and bone when he stood close, massively threatening.
Troyak simply ignored the man, keeping his eyes on Orlov, unmoving, silent, the scowl on his face enough to frighten a rabid bulldog. Orlov knew he was the one man on the ship that had never been under his thumb, something he quietly resented, and now, with Grilikov and three other security men behind him, he felt just a little bolder, just a little more brash, just a little more his own ornery self.
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