9 Days Falling, Volume I k-5

by John A. Schettler

  They went back to the dining room with that other strange man, who also had a pistol. Byrne could only assume that this man before him now was an associate. In fact, the cut of his clothing was oddly familiar, much like that of the man he had seen in the dining room. They were obviously security men—what was it that Mironov called them? He could not remember the name, but there was no mistaking the pistols they were carrying. What if I get into trouble, he thought? What if I get deported? Old Mister Harmsworth would be most unhappy in that event. I could even lose my job!

  “I think you and I will take a little walk,” said Volkov. “I wish to speak with this guide you mentioned. Then he turned to the innkeeper. “And you, sir, will be kind enough to go to the front desk and look up this man’s reservation. I wish to examine those records.”

  “As you wish…” The innkeeper was still staring at the young man as though he were seeing a ghost.

  “Very well, let’s go down and find this guide of yours.” Volkov gestured to the stairwell, waving the young man on.

  “Oh, you won’t want to use this stairway, sir.” The innkeeper seemed very flustered. “As I have said, it is not used any longer. There is no light and the dust and cobwebs—”

  “Don’t be stupid, this man obviously just came up those stairs.” Volkov gave the innkeeper a discerning look. He dropped all pretense of civility now. The man was very edgy, nervous, ill at ease, and now he seemed to be trying to impose himself between Volkov and the stairwell.

  “Please, let us all use the main stairs, and I’ll get this old drafty stairway locked up again, eh? The boards on the steps are loose with rusty old nails. It isn’t safe.”

  “Stand aside!” Volkov raised his pistol. “What are you hiding old man? I think I had better go and find out.”

  Volkov pinched his collar to activate his jacket microphone. “Jenkov. Meet me in the dining room—and get a man on the main stairway at once. Keep an eye on the innkeeper.” He looked at the innkeeper with a snide smile. “And you can meet me at the front desk, old man. I’ll have a guard there to interview you further. Something is going on here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

  Volkov flashed a toothy grin at the young man now. “We can begin by getting to the bottom of these stairs.”

  The innkeeper could see there was nothing to be done, so he raised his hands in frustration and walked off toward the main stairway, very agitated. Volkov waved his pistol at the young Englishman. “Get moving, down the stairs, just the way you came.”

  “Of course. My guide will explain everything. I meant no harm, sir. In fact I was just going to my room to fetch my belongings and check out.”

  Volkov waited while the man turned and started down the stairs. He followed, close behind, watching the man’s hands carefully in case he tried anything. The shadows enfolded them as they descended, and he heard a distant rumble, like the sound of artillery firing, which alarmed him. Half way down the stairs there came a strange sensation, a light-headedness that made him feel faint, and he reached for the wall to steady himself, his hand brushing against old cobwebs there. The sensation passed, and they reached the bottom of the stairs, stepping into a small alcove.

  “Just a moment…” Volkov edged past the man, peering cautiously around the edge of the wall as if he might find someone waiting in ambush. It was the dining room, or so he thought, but perhaps a lower level. This room seemed very different, cold and cheerless, lit only be the fire from the hearth. There were no lights, no chandelier, and the table settings and linen were all gone, leaving him more suspicious than ever. A secret room, he thought. This old stairway leads down to another room—perhaps a hidden cellar.

  He turned to the Englishman, a gleam in his eye. “Well? Where is this guide you speak of? Be quick man, I don’t have all day here.”

  “I…Well, I don’t know…” the young man seemed very confused. Then they heard the sound of heavy footfalls on the hard wood floor and Volkov turned, expecting to see Jenkov coming as ordered.

  Three men came stomping in, all dressed in military garb, olive green uniforms, blue caps with red hatbands and insignia, and they all held weapons. A fourth man followed them, moving with a slow deliberate gait, a cigarette in one hand, a pistol in the other. “Stand where you are!” he said sharply. “Get his weapon!”

  The men all trained their guns on Volkov, two with submachine guns and the third, a shorter man in a leather military jacket with black boots and faired trousers also held a pistol. He walked slowly up to Volkov, extending his hand slowly to reach for his weapon.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Volkov was immediately angered, but he could see he was out gunned here, and surrendered his pistol. This was most likely a military security sweep, he thought. He would straighten matters out directly.

  “Do you know who I am?” he said indignantly.

  “That remains to be seen,” said the fourth man, obviously an officer, with flat shoulder board insignia inlaid with blue stars. He turned to the short man with the odd glasses. “Is this the man?”

  The shorter officer leaned in close, squinting behind small round wire frame spectacles as he looked at Volkov. It was Lieutenant Mikael Surinov, the NKVD man Fedorov had cowed and chastised at Irkutsk for mistreating the detainees on his train. He looked Volkov up and down, rubbing his chin.

  “His uniform is suspicious,” he said. “Somewhat familiar….I don’t recognize him, but there were others. Perhaps this man is one of them!” He smiled, stepping back from Volkov and the Englishman, a smirk on his face. “We had better question them both.”

  The officer dropped his cigarette, crushing it slowly under his boot. “Well, well, well,” he began. Then he came out with the line that had opened interrogations the world over for generations.

  “Your papers! Both of you. I’ll get to the bottom of this soon enough.”

  Chapter 27

  Fedorov slept for a long time after they reached the train, weary in a way he could not explain. He was plagued by strange dreams, visions of Mironov’s face, a city at the edge of a vast inland sea, and high on a hill the prominent statue of a uniformed man, arm raised in a proud salutation. Then he slowly awoke to the gentle rocking of the train, the monotonous sound of the wheels on the rails growing louder as he regained consciousness.

  He opened his eyes, realizing where he was again, in the enclosed kupe compartment at the back of the coach car. The provodnits, saw him stir and he went forward to heat water on the samovar. Troyak was sitting across from him, looking fresh and alert. Zykov was sleeping on the upper bunk.

  “How long?” said Fedorov.

  “A good long while,” said Troyak. “We’re puling into Omsk in ten minutes.”

  “Omsk? Then I must have slept all day!”

  “We all did,” said Troyak. “Listen…Zykov is still snoring.”

  “We leave the main line here,” said Fedorov. “We must take a spur heading west through Chelyabinsk to Orsk on the Kazakh border. From there we cross into Kazakhstan and take a local rail line from Aktobe to Atyrau on the north Caspian Sea. After that we’ll have to see how we get down south, but we must steer clear of Astrakhan.”

  “We’ll need to eat,” said Troyak. “Sleep is one thing, but the food on this train leaves something to be desired.” He gave Fedorov a long look, a question in his eyes. “Colonel… what happened back there, at Ilanskiy? You seemed very shaken when we boarded the train. You wouldn’t speak a word.”

  Fedorov thought for a moment. “I… well I’m not exactly sure. We were all up stairs in the room when we heard that sound, like an avalanche, distant thunder. The two of you started your sweep, and I was at the top of that old back stairway. It was very odd, probably just an echo, but I had the firm impression the sound was coming from that stairwell.”

  Troyak gave him a knowing look, but said nothing, listening with a serious expression on his face. Fedorov sat up, the memory of that harried awakening returning.

  “I went do
wn the stairs—into the dining hall, but it was…different, strangely different. All the tables had linen and ornate oil lamps, but the windows were shattered and I heard sounds of people shouting outside.”

  Then he told him how he had gone outside to see the massive glow on the horizon, the brightness of the sky, and the ominous sound of explosions, far away. “That’s what woke us, Troyak, that terrible sound. When I ran outside I encountered a group of men, Mironov, an Englishman, and his guide, a man named Yevchenko, or so I was told.”

  “Mironov? You mean the man Zykov brought in?” Troyak was surprised to hear this.

  “Exactly! But Troyak! That place—the inn—it was the same in many ways, yet different. I mean, it was clear to me that this was the inn at Ilanskiy, but the village outside was much smaller. There were no buildings at all between the inn and the rail lines. And the train…yes! The train was gone too!”

  Troyak gave him a strange look now, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. “We couldn’t find you, Colonel, not even using the comm-link locators in your jacket. Zykov and I searched the whole building—outside too. Zykov went all the way to the rail yard, but the train was there. We’re sitting on it, Fedorov.”

  “I know…I know…but what I’m saying is true.”

  Fedorov shook his head. “This is going to sound very odd now, Troyak, but you must believe me. It happened just as I’m about to tell you. This whole place, the town, the rail yard, the inn, was completely different. And another thing—it was morning! At first I thought it was that massive explosion we heard, but then I could clearly see the morning sun, though it was rising through a terrible orange fire in the sky to the northeast.

  “But Fedorov…We saw none of this! It was an hour before midnight when we were awakened.”

  “Yes I believe you, Sergeant, but you must believe me as well. I spoke with that man—Mironov—and he even invited me to join his party for breakfast. He handed me…” Fedorov reached into this coat pocket, a look of excitement in his eyes. “Yes!” He pulled out a piece of dark rye bread, his hand shaking a bit. “He handed me this piece of bread when he made the invitation! Then three men came in—Germans, Troyak, so you can understand I was very surprised and confused by all this.”

  “Germans? Here?”

  “I swear it.” Fedorov shook his head. “All I could think to do was get the hell back up those stairs and then I saw you in the upper hall.”

  “Did the Germans get this far during the war? I thought we stopped them on the Volga.”

  “No, no. You misunderstand me. What you say is correct. We did stop them on the Volga, but these men we not soldiers…and it wasn’t 1942.”

  Now Troyak cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing. What was the Colonel talking about?

  “Bear with me,” Fedorov continued.

  “Alright, but it’s almost midnight, Fedorov. You were gone for an hour. We searched the whole area. Now you’re telling me you were just downstairs? And this explosion you speak of. Yes, I heard it too when I was searching the top floor of the inn. And yes, it seemed to me that it was coming from that stairwell, so I went down to have a look.”

  “You went down the back stairs too?”

  “Yes, and all I found was that woman by the fire. Nothing else, Colonel.”

  This gave Fedorov pause, his eyes dark and searching, as if he was trying to determine something and solve the riddle. “So it doesn’t always work,” he said, more to himself than to Troyak. “Listen…The Man Zykov brought in… He called himself Mironov, but do you remember what I asked him? I asked him what year it was. And did you hear what he said? He said it was 1908! Well, when I was near the front desk and those Germans came in I saw a calendar there, and sure enough, it was set to June 1908. That doesn’t necessarily prove anything, and that’s why I asked that man the day and year. Yet he said it was the thirtieth of June, 1908, and without the slightest hesitation. This sounds crazy, but it happened, Troyak. You heard him yourself.”

  “Yes, I heard him say that, but a man might say anything when he is frightened. It seemed like he thought we were police.”

  “Yet why give such an outlandish date?”

  The Sergeant folded his arms over his broad chest, breathing deeply. “It’s been a long trip, Colonel. You slept a very long time. Perhaps this was all just a dream?”

  “Not this, Troyak. No, I’m certain of it. It sounds impossible, but when I went down those stairs I was…somewhere else. It was too real to be a dream. I mean, I was here, but in another year. That’s the only way I can understand it now. That would sound completely insane were it not for the experiences we’ve both lived through these last months. The impossible has become commonplace for us. But I just can’t figure out what happened exactly—or how it happened. It must be a localized event, possibly even an aftereffect of the big event. It must be confined to that one small space—the stairway.” Again he seemed to be speaking more to himself now, sorting through something in his mind.

  “What do you mean?”

  When I went down, I regressed in time, Troyak! Yes, to the year 1908! That explains why everything was different, even the time of day. I could dismiss it all as a delusion or dream until Zykov brought that fellow in—Mironov! That was the man I spoke with in the dining hall; the man who gave me this bread. And look, it’s still fresh!”

  “But how, Fedorov? I don’t understand any of this. You tried to explain how the ship moved before, but even that was beyond me—all this business about the reactors and Rod-25.”

  “I can’t say I understand it all yet either, but it happened. I swear it. Zykov brought Mironov in and I was truly shaken, because the moment I saw him I knew everything that I experienced at the other end of those stairs was real and not a dream. Understand? So I asked him the date, and you heard what he said.”

  Troyak sighed, nodding.

  “Well that is a very special date, Sergeant. June 30th, 1908. Do you know what happened on that day?” Fedorov smiled now, his eyes alight with the vigor of his inner thoughts. “The explosion, the rumbling sounds, the glow we saw—I confirmed that it was some massive detonation to the northeast. Well, on the morning of June 30, 1908, about 600 kilometers northeast of Ilanskiy, something exploded above the taiga near Vanavara, along the river they call the Stony Tunguska.”

  “Tunguska?”

  “Yes, you’ve heard of it. We all have. It’s been a great unexplained mystery for decades. Some say it was an asteroid, others a comet, still others say it was caused by some kind of miniature black hole but, whatever it was, it happened on that date—the same date Mironov reported. It was the morning of the Tunguska event, Troyak, and I saw it, plain as a second sunrise in the northeast. I saw it with my own eyes!”

  Troyak remained silent. He did not know what to make of all this, but then again one thing Fedorov said struck home. The impossible was made commonplace for the men of Kirov. He had watched, dumbfounded, as the ship fought its way through the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, amazed at what he was seeing, but stalwart nonetheless. Seeing was believing. He saw the Japanese planes from the Second World War dive bombing the ship, and he himself had vanished from the world he once knew to appear here, on a train to Omsk in the middle of 1942! Things that he once deemed fantasy had become grippingly real. He was now a believer. He had heard the siren song of time like the others and it was trying to drive him mad.

  He steadied himself, deciding to give Fedorov the benefit of any doubt. He had gone down those stairs himself, and saw nothing—except the same strange illusion they were still riding in at this very moment, the Trans-Siberian rail line in Stalin’s Russia. What Fedorov was saying is that time slipped again. He went down those stairs and saw something. At least he could believe that much. What reason would the Colonel have to make up a story like this? He had no haversack to put this into, no drill or military routine to set in motion. This was just another here and now, and the old instincts that had served him for so many years in the Marines would ju
st have to do.

  “Perhaps the Tunguska event caused all this,” said Fedorov. “Perhaps it ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time—right there, in that one small place—the back stairs of the inn at Ilanskiy. How that could have affected the ship I have yet to see, but it was a very strange coincidence. Very strange. Yes, it’s crazy, but there it is. I know what I saw, and I’ll tell you another thing…” He looked searchingly at Troyak, not sure that he had followed him this far and unwilling to lose his strength and support.

  “That man Zykov brought in…Well he called himself Mironov. That name rankled in the back of my head for a while, and then I remembered it. Mironov! That wasn’t his real name, of course. That’s why I pressed him on it. His real name was Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov. He just shortened that middle name and called himself Mironov as an alias. I read a lot of history, Sergeant. In 1907 that man was arrested on charges of distributing leaflets against the state, and imprisoned.”

  “Who was imprisoned?”

  “Mironov, or I should say Kostrikov. Do you know that name, Troyak?”

  “Can’t say I do. Who is he?”

  “Well he went by that name when the Tsar’s secret police began to shadow him. He was a member of the Social Democrats before the revolution. Then he assumed an alias and called himself Mironov. There was an illegal printing press in a hidden room in Tomsk. This was back in 1907, you see, and he was part of all that, though the Okhrana never found it until 1909.”

  “Okhrana?”

  “The Tsar’s secret police. They had enough suspicion to arrest and indict him. He was imprisoned at Tomsk for 16 months, though he later claimed he was sentenced to three years to make it seem he suffered more heroically than was the case back then. He was a revolutionary, you see, arrested for advocating the overthrow of the existing civil structure of the state—the Old Russia, Troyak, under Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov—Nicholas II, the last Tsar! Well, they released Mironov in June of 1908, and very little is known about his life for the following eighteen months. It was believed that he went south to Novosibirsk, and then wrote his sister in Irkutsk and went to visit her there. If that is the case then he would have seen it—Tunguska! He would have been right there where we were on the Trans-Siberian rail line heading east to Irkutsk on the morning of June 30th, 1908.”