A new beginning meant opportunity, and that prospect was not lost on wealthy entrepreneurs, which came to the city by sea in search of profit and fortune. A great department store stood near the main railway station, Kunst & Albers, burgeoning with wares from every quarter. Here also were the famous Versailles Hotel and the Golden Horn, offering a taste of real European luxury to passengers debarking from steamers. Military barracks surrounded the docks, a steady source human firewood for the fires of gambling, prostitution and crime in the city. Yet all this existed side by side with elegant performances at the Pushkin Theater, museum lectures, Sunday tea parties, opera at the German Singing Club, and Victorian ladies meeting in sewing circles.
With all these contrasts apparent, the city was also both a gateway to the heartland of Asia, accessible by rail and sea, and a bulwark of defense. Its famous fortress would reach final completion in 1912, standing in the shadow of concentric circles of brooding hills. It invited even as it held the world at bay and, like any gateway city, the door might be open one day or closed the next.
It was to this bawdy and feral port that Kirov now sailed, and one thing was at least immediately familiar to the crew as the ship approached—the mid-year gloom of fog and low clouds. Like many coastal cities, the heat of the summer simply added humidity to the atmosphere, and rain and fog was almost a daily occurrence in June and July. By the same token, the Arctic chill of winter would often be broken by many clear days of welcome sunshine in January and February, and the autumn was particularly pleasant, the so called “velvet season” of mild temperatures, falling leaves and soft fluffy clouds painted by glorious sunsets.
If Karpov hoped to conquer the world, as it now seemed his inner ambition once again, he would first have to face the challenge of conquering Vladivostok. Yet his first great trump card was the massive and looming might of the ship itself. With accurate navigational charts, he decided to arrive well after sunset, and with the ship’s lights darkened. They could creep slowly up through the Eastern Bosphorus Strait, noting that there was no longer a great bridge there spanning the gulf.
Rodenko suggested they at least send a telegraph signal ahead to notify the authorities that a ship of the Russian fleet was returning to base. “There will be guns at the fortress, Captain, and numerous shore batteries. We don’t want some startled gunnery officer to put a shell through the citadel window.”
“Good point, Rodenko. Very well, I will have Nikolin cable the arrival of the new Viceroy of the Far East—Vladimir Karpov, to be expected before dawn on the main quay of the Golden Horn Harbor. We will have to turn out in full dress uniforms—flags, honor guard with swords and baton. Spectacle will be a big part of our initial impression. The ship alone should put them in awe, but I want to make an equally intimidating appearance.”
“But sir…Won’t they send to St. Petersburg for confirmation on this? As soon as they find out that we have not been sent by the Tsar their suspicion will become poison. They will never trust another word we say.”
“I’ve considered that, so I will make no claim to that effect. I will say we have come on our own accord, and that will be the truth. What they don’t know works in our favor. Our words will mean nothing in the end, unless there are actions to back them up. They will see the ship, and our actions will speak volumes when we put it to good use.”
“But why make contact at all then, sir? Won’t that merely complicate matters?”
“To tell them what will soon happen,” said Karpov. “I will let them know what I intend to do, and then deliver it. Only then will my demands receive any real ear from the Imperial government here. Now, we must see to the landing ceremony.”
“Very well, sir…Or should I now begin calling you Viceroy, your grace?” Rodenko smiled, yet he was inwardly worried that Karpov’s newfound energy and ambition would end up being the same heady drink that had seen him let loose two nuclear weapons on forces he perceived as mortal enemies, and the heartlessness of a man who could do that frightened him.
The Captain moved from the edge of despair to the ebullient energy of the conqueror in a heartbeat, thought Rodenko. There is something inherently unstable about him, and without Fedorov or Volsky here, as Starpom I am the only countervailing force that might serve to moderate him. Yet thus far all I have done stand by and watch stupidly while the Captain raged on. Fighting to defend the ship in time of war was one thing. I knew my duty was clear there. But this plan to start a war that was never supposed to be fought is quite another thing. Yet what should I do?
He decided that there would be at least one other mind on the ship that might be a confederate soul in this regard. “Well, Captain,” he said. “I am glad you have recovered. It’s been a very long shift. May I stand relieved, sir?”
“Yes, of course, Rodenko. Get your rest. I will summon you in six hours, just before we are due to make port. You will not want to miss the event, I assure you.”
“Of course, sir.”
Chapter 12
It was decided that security would be a major concern. Many of the ship’s Marines had gone ashore for Fedorov’s mission, but there were still two squads aboard as replacements, and Karpov gave orders that volunteers were to be recruited from the crew and a new detachment formed as naval infantry.
“I want at least two hundred men under arms,” he told Sergeant Savkin. Choose the best men and start regular training exercises at once. We will not dock at the quays. Instead we will anchor well out in the bay, and go ashore by boat. The water barrier will provide additional security for the ship, and you are to mount a 24 hour guard on every quarter. No one from the mainland is to come aboard under any circumstances unless I directly order it.”
“Very good, sir,” said Savkin, a tall, dark haired man, sturdily built and dressed out in full cammo uniform. “And what about security ashore, Captain?”
“I will be taking a full squad, with you in command, Savkin. That should be sufficient for the time being. After all, these are our countrymen.”
“Let us hope they give us a good welcome, sir.”
“Why wouldn’t they? But I tell you one thing—this ship is going to bug out quite a few eyes come dawn tomorrow. The city will look out as see the most marvelous vessel on earth sitting in the Golden Horn Bay, and it will be flying the flag of the Russian Navy!”
Karpov held the image of his arrival in mind with great anticipation now. It would be just as he had imagined it before when he first thought to present himself at the negotiation table with Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941, at the Atlantic Charter meeting in Argentia Bay. He thought he might get his second chance at Sagami Bay for the surrender ceremony of Japan. In both cases the obstinate and implacable nature of his enemies had frustrated him. This time he would realize his inner dream.
He ordered his Marines to conform to the image he had long carried in his mind. They were to assemble on the foredeck in their dress olive greens, long double breasted trench coats with gold buttons and collar tabs, braided gold belts and the brilliant red sash strap from shoulder to waist, where a six inch tasseled gold horsetail tied it off. The boats was decorated with red and would proudly fly the Russian Naval Jack as they approached. The Captain made sure Nikolin had communicated his desire to meet with the local authorities at once, and requested a reception committee on the harbor quay. He called out the ship’s band and had them rehearse all evening below decks before sleep. They would play the old national anthem as he and his Marines boarded their boat and came ashore.
It was a very strange night as Kirov slipped quietly into the bay, surrounded in a fog so thick that no one ashore could see the ship. The crescent moon had set at 13:27 hours and was down, yet there was an unaccountable glow in the sky to the northwest, and the light played eerily over the low hanging clouds, infusing the heavy fog with a strange radiance, a pale glow that carried on all through the night. The ship sat silently in the bay, all running lights darkened and rigged for black. Karpov did not want to disturb the vel
vet night, but with dawn his theater would begin.
The sun came, a wan light diffused through the fog, and all that he surmised quickly came to pass. Residents of the city woke up that morning and looked out their windows to see a strange shape darkening the misty the bay. The peered at it as if it had been formed of the vapor and sea itself, a massive ship, bigger than any they had ever seen in the harbor. It dwarfed the armored cruisers that were the last remnants of the once proud Russian Pacific Fleet. Where did it come from? Why was it there?
Karpov waited in the silence, watching from the citadel bridge, rocking back and forth on his heels with obvious amusement. Then, as the light slowly bloomed and restless crowds gathered on the edges of the harbor, he gave the order that all running lights should be put on and the ship’s horn would blast out a greeting. The crowd reaction made him smile, some turning and running away, back into the city, and all their voices rising as they spoke to one another, wondering what this ship could be.
He knew that the mystery of his sudden appearance would serve him well, and he was counting on it to set the tone of his arrival and endow him with an aura of power and mystery. Now it was time for the show. He picked up the bridge phone and called down to the Chief Boson with the order to begin the debarkation ceremony. The ship’s horn sounded once again, then came the shrill high note of the Boson’s whistle. Twenty-five members of the ship’s band marched out onto the long sweeping forward deck and assembled on a special platform they had set up directly above the Moskit-II missile silos. They would be his opening salvo now.
The sight of human beings on the ship, and not monsters from the sea, seemed to calm the crowds for a time. Then Karpov watched as the band struck up the old Russian anthem, its opening chorus being immediately greeted by applause and welcoming shouts from the shoreline. He turned to Rodenko, his eyes bright with the fire of his inner excitement.
“I believe that is my curtain call,” he said. “You have the ship, Mister Rodenko. I will be in constant contact with the bridge via the remote receiver in my coat collar. I expect no difficulties, but remember your briefing.”
Karpov had told him that should any demonstration of the ship’s capabilities be required, he had ordered a Klinok SAM to be manually targeted at the high hills above the city. Should they run into any difficulties ashore, the second Marine squad would come in on the KH-40, sure to shock and amaze the locals to no end.
“I anticipate no trouble, but be prepared should I call. The code will be Lightning, so remember that. This is a ship of war, and we are men of war. Remember that as well.”
“Aye, sir. I relieve you, sir.”
“I stand relieved,” Karpov repeated the familiar ship’s litany for watch standing rotations, then added one thing more with a raised finger. “For the moment…”
He turned and gave one last order. “Let the ship’s log read that Captain Vladimir Karpov disembarked to meet with the Russian delegation at zero eight hundred hours on the 13th day of July, in the year 1908.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Recording log entry as ordered.”
Minutes later Rodenko looked down from the weather deck off the citadel and watched Karpov appear on deck in his dress uniform and officer’s cap, surrounded by the Marine squad honor guard. Their black berets rose proudly as they marched, stiff backed, their pace timed precisely to the beat of a drum, black jack boots polished to a mirror like finish. Each man carried a bayoneted rifle, and the squad leader held a long silver sword, gleaming balefully in the cold morning light. Behind him came the flag bearer, with the Russian Naval Jack snapping proudly in the wind. They had no Imperial flag, so this seemed the best solution. After the humiliating defeat of the Russian Navy at the hands of the Japanese, the Captain thought the Naval ensign would be just the thing to bolster the crowd. The symbolism would be apparent to all those who watched them come, their eyes glazed with awe, jaws slack with fear, surprise and awe. They would be the sword of Mother Russia. They would seem a phalanx of doom as they marched, with the Captain strutting boldly in their midst as commanding officer.
White gloved salutes snapped in the still morning air as the Captain was piped off the ship, the detachment smartly climbing down the ladder to board the boat tied off the port side of the ship. Horns and whistles played a flourish on cue, just as Karpov had ordered. The band had rehearsed well, and now the entire crew turned out in dress uniform, standing to attention on every deck of the ship. As the anthem ended they gave a great hurrah to the Captain as he stepped off the ship.
The band struck up the Imperial anthem a second time as the boat pushed off, the Marines manning oars now instead of using the on-board motors. Karpov did not know the words to the old anthem, if there ever were any, but the new lyrics were fresh in his mind.
Russia – our sacred homeland,
Russia – our beloved country.
A mighty will, great glory –
These are your heritage for all time!
* * *
“How is we have heard nothing of this?” The Mayor was clearly quite flustered, as much as he was amazed as he stared out the window that morning. The mist was slowly rising to reveal a massive ship, its battlements rising up like the crenellated walls of a fortress, its long foredeck and bow now crowded with officers and sailors, and a full military band. “Not a word; not a whisper of this from St. Petersburg!”
“Yet it must have been sent from St. Petersburg, sir. Where else? It was certainly never a part of the Pacific Fleet.” Tomkin was the Mayor’s chief aide for city administration, a tall thin man with a stiff hat that made him appear taller yet, and always seemed to teeter to one side on his narrow head. His prevailing trait was calm in the face of unrest, a quality that had served him well during these tumultuous times. In the last three years the city had been shelled by the Japanese, up in arms with the incipient revolution in 1905-06 where upstart rebels had actually occupied the Oblast Governor’s residence and presumed to take control of the city’s affairs, and now this…This ship…This enormous thing in the harbor appearing out of the mist like a behemoth that had arisen from the depths of the sea.
Mayor Proshukin was his polar opposite, short rotund, impetuous, easily upset, and prone to worry. He fingered his pocket watch nervously. “Eight ‘o clock. Time we were at the quay to receive this new Viceroy, Tomkin. But I want a telegraph sent to St. Petersburg about this. If I’m to be upstaged by another administrative buffoon from the west, I damn well want to know about it! You would think the Tsar has enough on his hands to worry about without meddling in our affairs here.”
“Well, sir,” said Tomkin quietly. “Perhaps the unsettled nature of our affairs is precisely the reason for this man’s appearance. After all, things have been less than ideal here since the disaster of 1905.”
“Yes, and the ship may have been sent to redress that in some ways. Enormous, isn’t it? The thing is certainly a warship, but where are the big guns, Tomkin? I don’t see any big guns.”
“Perhaps it is merely a large armed ocean liner, sir. There are a few smaller batteries fore and aft.”
“Well those are Russian navy sailors there, are they not?” He snapped his telescope down, setting it on the desk. “Odd uniforms, but they certainly know how to move with military flair. Let’s get down there and meet this gentleman.”
It was so unlike the first meeting of men from two eras on that isolated spike of rock off the southern coast of Spain in 1942. There Admiral Volsky had come with a small party, as inconspicuously as possible, to stand face to face with Admiral John Tovey of the Royal Navy and negotiate a brief peace. In that meeting the Admiral had made every effort to conceal his true identity, and the origins of his ship. Karpov remembered how he fretted aboard Kirov while the Admiral was gone, wishing he could have been part of the meeting.
Now, however, the meeting Karpov arranged was a bold, brash theater, one part ruse, one part bluster, and one very large part consisting of his ever expanding ego. He strode briskly from the r
anks of his Marine squad, his boots hard on the wooden boards of the wharf, and walked up to the Mayor where the man stood with an assemblage of ministers and city officials. The Captain saluted crisply, more as a flourish than out of any deference to the other man’s authority.
“Vladimir Karpov,” he exclaimed, deliberately avoiding any mention of rank. “Russian Navy.” He gestured to the battlecruiser anchored now in the bay. “Gentlemen, may I present the battlecruiser Kirov, the new flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet. Am I to understand that you have, of late, experienced the dishonor of defeat at the hands of the Japanese? Well I am here to restore order, gentlemen, and to reverse that fate insofar as I am able.”
Proshukin looked at Tomkin, clearly flustered and not having the slightest idea what to say. His chief aid spoke first, aiming to learn more of this man, and find out what this ship was really all about.
“Excuse me, Mister Karpov…you are the Captain of this vessel?”
“That I am, though my authority will extend far beyond the gunwales of that ship, sir. It is my charge to assume control of the city, its port and fortifications, and all military facilities in the Primorskiy region.”
“You have been sent from St. Petersburg?” The Mayor finally found his voice.
“I came on my own accord,” Karpov knew that a lie here would be easily found out, so he told the truth instead. “The Tsar has been somewhat preoccupied with the events that have become a source of much unrest in the empire. The setbacks here have not gone unnoticed, however, and they will take some doing to reverse. I am here, very briefly, to tell you what will happen.”
“I don’t understand,” said the Mayor. “I was told to receive the new Viceroy of the Far East, yet we have had no confirmation from St. Petersburg on this appointment.”
“Nor will you. St. Petersburg is a mess of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and the Okhrana chasing both out of every church and Labor Party meeting they can find. The unrest there has only just begun, gentlemen. It will get much worse. In the meantime we are here, and there is much to be done. If you wish, please notify St. Petersburg and inform them that I intend to repudiate the Portsmouth Treaty settling the war of 1905.”
Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) Page 10