Zolkin gave him a long look, waiting. “Very well, Fedorov. Tell me everything my old friend came to believe, everything you now say the Captain believes. I will give you an open ear here.”
And so Fedorov explained it all again, the reasons, all the evidence, and then he also recounted the encounter with the patrol ship Tuman, something even Zolkin knew about from the history. When he came to the mission ashore at Severomorsk , he lowered his voice.
“Doctor, I have already said why I knew all of this was true—that I had lived it all through before. Yes, you thought I was experiencing déjà vu, perhaps as a result of that bump on the head I took, but that is not the case. I did live through all of this once, and the memories are so clear in my mind that it seems like it all happened yesterday.”
“I will be frank with you,” said Zolkin. “Yes, I took all of that to be evidence of a mental disturbance. I believed you were fantasizing because of the stress of your confrontation with the Captain. He can be a most intimidating man.”
“It was no fantasy, sir. It all happened. You were involved in it all as well, and came to believe everything I have told you just now, because you lived through it with me.”
“Yet only you remember these things? No one else?”
“Apparently not…. God, I wish I could produce a log book, something tangible, but I’ve checked for that on the bridge with Nikolin. He keeps the logs, and there was no evidence there. Then I remembered why, because we purged the files.” Fedorov had a frustrated look on his face now, for he needed Zolkin to believe here, and the man’s own intelligence and training was working as an adversary to that. Then Zolkin had a strange look in his eye, as if he recalled something very important.
“Fedorov… Log entries… I was wanting to speak with you, because I was consulting my medical logs the other day, and came upon something very odd.”
“Tell me.” Fedorov’s eyes were dark and serious.
“Oh, I was just reviewing my records, looking for something that might explain away an old bloodied bandage I found in my medicine cabinet. That may not seem like much, but I’m a very meticulous man, and somewhat of a creature of habit. So I wanted to see if I had made a log entry detailing an incident when that bandage might have been used. I couldn’t remember anything about it… then I found something very odd, an encrypted file. Apparently I put a strong password protection on it, because I tried several of my old favorites, and it eventually opened.”
“I see… What was it, Doctor?”
“A list of members of the crew… An Autopsy report on each name I found there.”
That hit Fedorov like a wet fish in the face. Autopsy reports? Now he remembered what had happened in Vladivostok when the Inspector General came aboard, with that damn intelligence officer, Ivan Volkov. There had been a list of names, all the members of the crew that they had lost in combat during those first harrowing missions in time. Volkov managed to force Zolkin to surrender that list, and it was then found that Moscow had no record that any man on the list ever existed! His heart beat faster as he realized what this might be—that very same list, encrypted and hidden by the Doctor during that period before they made port, when the effort was made to erase all evidence of what had happened to them. Of course, that was why I could find no computer logs. But Zolkin did not erase his files, he merely encrypted them!
All this passed through his mind in a heartbeat, and now his eyes widened as he looked at the Doctor, knowing exactly what to ask.
“Doctor Zolkin… Did the list you found have a report on a crewman named Markov? Did it include a man named Voloshin? Another named Lenkov—the man from the galley?”
Zolkin had a stunned expression on his face. “Yes! All of them. My God, the moment I saw that list I knew you were the one man I needed to speak with about it… I just knew… But how could you know this, the names of those men?”
“Because I can tell you how each man died.” He went on about Markov, and how he was simply reported as missing in action while working at the Primorskiy engineering facility. Then there was Voloshin, found dead in his own quarters, an apparent suicide. There were others he remembered, men he knew who had died in the reserve battle bridge, or at some other station during the many hours of combat they had endured. He could not remember them all, did not even know some who had given up their lives, their very existence, though he felt responsible for all of them. Then he came to Lenkov.
“He was found, half embedded in the galley floor, and then later the rest of his body, his legs in fact, were discovered in one of the Marine lockers…”
Zolkin shuddered. It was exactly as he had written it up in his report, that ghastly incident of which he had no recollection. Much of it was garbled, but there were enough clear segments in the file for him to realize that Fedorov somehow knew about everything he had written into those files. Could he have found the log entry? Could he have broken the encryption? Fedorov was very clever, but that would have been a difficult task, if not an impossible one. Then Fedorov spoke again, telling him the impossible truth yet again.
“Yes, Doctor, I know what you must have written into that file, because I was there when all those events occurred. I lived through them all, just as I told you earlier. Can you believe me now? Admiral Volsky did.”
“God almighty,” said Zolkin. “Then it is all true. Those things really happened? Even that ghastly write-up I discovered on Lenkov? I haven’t looked at the man the same way since I found that file.”
“It all happened.”
“Then everything else you told us also happened? Karpov tried to take the ship?”
“Yes sir, and he’s done it again, only not the same way. You see, we never got a recall order the first time I experienced these events. After we investigated the facilities on Jan Mayen, we turned south, and ran the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic, just as I told you earlier.”
Zolkin shook his head. “What in the world is going on here? I was so quick to diagnose your own mental condition, but now I begin to doubt my own sanity!”
“No sir, you are quite sane. Yet all these insane things did happen to us, and to this ship—God’s truth. I think if I saw that list of yours, I could tell you how every man there died, and why.”
“But Lenkov… That was gruesome!”
“Very strange. That happened just before the ship made its final shift.”
“Using that control rod you told the Admiral and I about?”
“Yes. You see, in the course of all these shifts, we ended up in 1940. We stayed there for some time, but as we approached this time, the time the ship first appeared here, these strange things began to happen. Was Orlov on your list?”
“He was, but I edited that entry, and that was very puzzling. I had written him up as a K.I.A.”
“In a helicopter incident involving the KA-226?”
“Yes!” said Zolkin, amazed again that Fedorov knew the exact contents of that entry. “Fedorov, are you certain you never saw or read this file before? Swear on your Mother’s heart.”
“Oh. I’ve seen it before, Doctor, but that was when these events were actually taking place, just as I’ve told you. You know that list is something completely aberrant. How could you possibly account for such a list? From your perspective, we just left Severomorsk a few days ago for those life fire exercises. None of those events had even happened, but they did once. This is what I’m telling you. You know damn well that you didn’t write that list in your sleep after we left Severomorsk. The password you used to encrypt it was very personal, am I correct?”
Zolkin nodded grimly. “So… I did write it, but not me… not this confused idiot in front of you now, but another version of myself? Is that what you are telling me now?”
“Apparently so. You were on the ship with me through all those events. You endured it all too. I only wish you could remember.”
Zolkin was silent for a moment, his mind in a deep well on something. Then he got up, went over to his desk, and open
ed a drawer, producing, to Fedorov’s surprise, a soiled bandage, stained with blood.
“I found this in my medicine cabinet, as I mentioned earlier. That was what set me to looking through my files, because I could not remember how or when a bandage like that was ever used on this ship.”
But Fedorov could, and now the look on his face was deeply sympathetic, an almost painful expression, for he recognized that was the arm bandage Zolkin had used to dress his own arm during that terrible incident on the bridge, way back in 1908, decades past now. He hadn’t witnessed the incident, for he was still aboard Kazan when it happened, but for days after, he remembered seeing that bandage on Zolkin’s arm.
“Doctor,” he began slowly. “I think if you analyze the blood type on that bandage, you will see it matches your own.”
“Damn if that isn’t so!” said Zolkin. “Then…”
“Yes,” said Fedorov. “That is your own blood on that bandage, and now I will tell you how and why it is there.”
Zolkin sat down, almost as if his legs could no longer hold his weight. He settled into a chair by the wall, hand on his chin, waiting.
Chapter 5
“Then it’s all true,” said Zolkin. “Everything you have said, the whole impossible story. You have lived through it all before, and apparently I have as well! My God, why can’t I remember it clearly, like you can.”
That statement jolted Fedorov. “Remember it clearly? You mean to say you get memories that seem fuzzy on some of this? Things you can almost grasp, and then they slip away?”
“Exactly. The first was the moment I found that bandage in the medicine cabinet. I could not think why it would be there. That space is reserved for things of importance, but now I see why I would have put it there. So I stood up to that bastard and he actually shot me! That is hard to believe, but you know, I wouldn’t put anything beyond that man. Fedorov… Do you think Karpov knows any of this? Might he be catching snippets of these events in his recollection as well? That would make him a very dangerous man if he should learn all of this—all that you know.”
“Quite true, but things are far more serious than that.” Fedorov gave him a dour look. “He does know all of this. He lived through it, just as I did.”
“You mean he can remember? Then why was he so damn adamant that your story was nonsense when you first started to explain the evidence?”
“Because the man up there on the bridge is not the same one who leveled those charges against me when we met here with Admiral Volsky.”
“What? Not the same man? What do you mean?”
Fedorov took a long breath. “There are things I haven’t told you yet. When we went ashore, I told you Karpov was suddenly there, and with a message from Moscow for the Admiral. The moment he saw us, he began to taunt us, saying things that he could only have known if he had lived through the events I described to you. I think he was trying to see how the Admiral and I would react—trying to see if we remembered those events as well. Thankfully, the Admiral was quick enough to realize the danger in that, and he played dumb. I went along with that as well.”
“I don’t understand,” said Zolkin. “How would Karpov know any of this—unless he does remember it, just like you do? But then why would he play dumb with us here on the ship, particularly when he was trying to convince the Admiral your story was hogwash, and you were some kind of traitorous spy for the British?”
“That wasn’t the Captain—not the one we left on the ship when we went ashore. That was the man who fired that gun at you on the bridge.”
Now Fedorov laid out his theory, that somehow, by some strange twist, the other Karpov, at large in Siberia, had managed to survive the hour when the ship appeared on July 28th.”
“I once thought that would be impossible,” he said. “How could that man survive, as well as the Captain still being here on the ship? You remember my saying how stunned I was when I first saw the Chief here, and then also learned Karpov was here as well. I think that literally drained the blood from my head, I was so shocked by it, and that’s what caused me to keel over! From my perspective, Karpov was long gone the last time we shifted. He was not on the ship, but I knew he existed, at large in Siberia, and a very meddlesome presence there. He had worked himself into a position of great power.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Zolkin.
“Yes,” said Fedorov, “I even had evidence of that, and how we first learned of his existence. You see, after that incident in 1908 on the bridge, we all thought he had perished. Then we find he was alive in Siberia, and had positioned himself as Admiral of the Free Siberian Air Corps.”
“He’s a power grubbing monster, in any form,” said Zolkin.
“Have you seen him since he came aboard?
“Only from a distance, in the dining hall. I saw that gauze on his cheek, and meant to ask him about it, but you know how he keeps to himself when he eats.”
“True, well it may be that he is hiding something with that. When I saw him ashore at Severomorsk, it was very obvious to me, knowing all I’ve told you, that this was the Siberian Karpov, and not the Captain that shifted here with us just days ago. He said things to us that he could not have known unless this was so. And so the shock of that was on me again, to realize both men must have survived that hour on July 28th.”
“Are you certain? Might it be that he simply remembers things, just as you do… Just as I struggle to recall things when something suddenly hits me, like when I first touched that bloodied bandage.”
“No,” said Fedorov. “I’ve spent a good long while with him since then. In fact he was just visiting me in my cabin for a little chat. I think he was still probing to see if I might know more than I let on. While ashore, I realized how dangerous that would be for me, and the Admiral, bless his soul, realized it too. We both played dumb, and I think Karpov bought our act, but he remains leery about me. I could sense that when he spoke to me in my quarters. He’s still probing; still suspicious. I let a good deal slip when I was trying to convince the Admiral of what had really happened. I was afraid I may have said something to compromise my real identity.”
“Your real identity? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I am not the same man who left Severomorsk on this ship a few days ago either, Doctor. I know this to the depth of my bones. I sometimes bite my fingernails when I am thinking or worried about something. Before that last shift, we were in battle, and things on the ship were very serious, very dangerous. Look…” He held out an index finger and Zolkin could see how the nail was bitten down so far that the fingertip had bled.
“I remember doing that before… But in the Atlantic, right before that final shift. Then I found myself here on this ship, but look at that finger. It may seem an insignificant testimony to what I am saying now, but I know it to be true, just like everything else I’ve said. I am the man who was at sea in the Atlantic, in May of 1941 when we made that final shift. I am not simply Fedorov, remembering things I once lived through. I’m the man who lived out each and every one of those moments, and up on the bridge, Karpov is the same. That man wasn’t with us when we sailed from Severomorsk. He arranged to meet us there. It was he that sent that coded recall order—the only man alive in this time who could have known how it should have been formatted, and known the confirmation code word. ”
“Good Lord, Fedorov! You mean he’s replaced our Captain—the man who was in here arguing you were a spy?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s… some kind of duplicate? A Double?”
“A doppelganger,” said Fedorov. “It’s a German word—means Double Walker. This is what I believe, though I’m not sure how it happened. I thought only one or the other could survive, but not both men, never two men alike allowed in the same time. But I was obviously wrong on that score.”
Zolkin scratched his grey-white hair. “Then what happened to the Captain who sailed with us days ago? For that matter, what happen to you—to your other self? W
here is that young officer who was always lost in his history books?”
“I don’t know. I think the Captain may have done something with his other self. Who knows, but the man aboard this ship now is the Siberian. I’m certain of that, and he is very, very dangerous.”
“And your other self?”
Fedorov had a glum look on his face, the guilt obvious to Zolkin’s careful eye. “I don’t know… But I don’t think that man survived…”
Now Zolkin gave him a heartfelt look, slowly nodding his head, thinking of all he had heard from Fedorov, and realizing all he had endured. Now he was standing there, head down, knowing he may be responsible for his own death.
“My good young man,” he said. “You’ve been through purgatory here, worse than that. You’ve been through hell and back again. I’m so sorry… I wish I had believed you earlier, but you can surely understand why I came to those other conclusions.”
“Of course… But that doesn’t matter. Now you know the real truth, but I have been posing as if I were still that unknowing young officer. Yet I don’t know how long I can hide that way. I’m telling you Karpov is different, and if you spend any time around him in the days ahead, you will notice that too. Well I’m different too. I have been through hell and back, and that has to change a man. Can you see that in me now?”
“That I can, Fedorov,” said Zolkin softly.
“Others may notice it as well,” said Fedorov. “Orlov tried to pull his tough guy routine on me a couple days ago, and I stood up to him. He had to know that wasn’t the Fedorov he knew me to be. Others may have noticed things about me too.”
“Volsky certainly did,” said Zolkin. “Me? I was busy diagnosing your mental state, and seeing those differences as a result of anxiety. Now I know better.”
“Yes? Well I’m worried Karpov may soon figure this out himself. He’s been asking me some very probing questions—about that message I asked the Admiral to send out. I tried to cover for that by saying I got it from one of my books, but he asked me to produce that reference.”
Winter Storm Page 4