“We must believe it is possible, sir.”
“It will take more than belief. I tried to mend fences with Volkov, but we have seen the result of that. So instead I went to Sergei Kirov, and we reached an understanding. But our two states may not be enough. Volkov sits on all the oil, which is what the Germans really want. The situation we face is very difficult now.”
“I see…” Tyrenkov waited, seeing that Karpov was thinking about something. “Then you want me to go up those stairs this time?”
“I see no point in going down them from here,” said Karpov. “Even if they did lead us somewhere, the years before this time get somewhat tedious. Who knows where we would end up? So of course, from here our reconnaissance will be into some potential future. I need to know two things. First, does the effect still work from here. I know it worked from 1908, because my man Fedorov proved that. But we do not know if we can get anywhere from here.”
“We will find out soon enough,” said Tyrenkov. “I am ready any time you order it.”
“I would go myself, but what you said to me earlier has given me pause.” Karpov folded his hands.
“You mean my question about what might happen to you at the time your ship first appeared here?”
“Correct. What if we find those stairs do take us back to the 1940s? What day and year would it lead us to? It was March of 1941 when we left for London and ran into that storm. That was a freak incident, and one that may never repeat. So this stairway was my only bet at moving forward again with any chance of success. But I cannot take any unnecessary risk. Suppose this does lead to the 1940s? If I were to find myself there any time close to the date of my first arrival, then things could get difficult for me, as you suggested.”
“When was that, sir?”
“July 28, 1941. That was when it all started. So believe me, the thought that I may have only four months to live if I do return to March of 1941 is most unnerving.”
“Have you determined what would happen, Admiral?”
“Who can say? For me to be here now, I must survive that first experience and reach the past safely. Understand? So remember what I said about those musical chairs. If I am alive there in 1941 come July 28th, I just may find that I become my own assassin!”
“You mean you would have to die to be certain that the Karpov arriving from the future has a chair? Are there two of you?”
“No. That is the point you tried to make to me. There can be only one Karpov alive at any given point in time. And since I must arrive safely on July 28 1941 in order to be here now, then that instance of my life would hold priority.”
“Very strange, sir.”
“Indeed! To think you would be your own angel of death is most frightening. Volkov did not have to worry about this. He went down those stairs and got all the way to 1908—”
Karpov stopped, his eyes suddenly registering some great discovery. “No!” he said. “That isn’t true! He went down those stairs twice. I have only just remembered what he told me when we met at Omsk and he realized who I really was. He had been sent to look for that junior officer I told you about—Fedorov. He said he went down the back stairway here and met several men in uniforms who claimed they were NKVD!”
“Soviet security forces?”
“Yes! But from the 1940s, WWII! They were no longer called that in the future. Volkov never gave me the details. In fact, he thought the men were playing a ruse…” Karpov tried to remember what Volkov had told him, the other man’s voice replaying in his head…
“The little railway inn just east of Kansk near the old naval munitions center. That's when the madness started. I was searching the premises with my guards, and thought I discovered a hidden stairway at the back of that inn. I found someone was hiding there, and herded the rascal down to the dining hall. The next thing I know I encountered men who seemed completely out of place… I was downstairs in the lower lobby, the dining room, with a suspicious character by the ear, when I ran into a group of men who held me at gunpoint and claimed they were members of the NKVD! Imagine my surprise—no, imagine my anger—a pair of fools, or so I believed. Well, I dealt with them easily enough. I thought they were just stupid idiots playing with fire, but this fire burns. And yet… when I walked out of that inn later, the rail yard looked strangely different, nothing like the place I had come to. Beyond that, all of my guards had simply vanished. I could not raise them on my jacket radio…”
“Yes,” said Karpov. “If those were NKVD, then it certainly was not 1908—or any year from the future he came from. This stairway seems to have some odd connection to the 1940s. Fedorov came here from the year 1942, and returned. I clearly remember Volkov telling me he arrived there by going down those stairs from 2021. So he must have landed in the 1940s, which means he had to go down those stairs a second time to get all the way back to 1908!”
“Sounds logical, sir,” said Tyrenkov.
“All the more reason for this reconnaissance,” said Karpov. “I need to determine what year and day we can reach from here, and from this reasoning I must assume it will be some time in the 1940s.”
“But sir…” Tyrenkov had the odd look on his face now. “I was alive in 1941. How could I go up those stairs now in that case? What if I appear in January, before we even came here? Would I become my own angel of death, as you have just put it?”
“Yes, you were alive there until the day we ran into that storm. Then you vanished and you now find yourself here, in 1908.”
“You are assuming I will reach a day or time after that? After we hit the storm?”
“Correct. This is what I must find out—whether time makes allowances for this sort of thing or not. Whether it is all haphazard, a throw of the dice, or carefully watched and managed.”
“You speak of time as if it were a person—a god of some kind.” Tyrenkov folded his arms, clearly troubled. “Yet now you will ask me to go up those stairs and find out for you. You will order me to go.”
Karpov took a deep breath. “I could send one of the other men,” he said calmly. “I suppose I could tell him to just go up, and then turn right about and come back down. After all, you are somewhat valuable to me at the moment. I would not want to risk your life either. The only problem is that he might not know how to handle himself if this works. I need a man who can use his head, and determine clearly what time he reaches at the other end. This is why I have told you all of this.”
“But sir… I would have to reach a time after we vanished in the storm, and we both know that the stairway doesn’t exist. It was destroyed in August of 1940, and we haven’t rebuilt it yet. So how can I get anywhere in those years where I do not already exist. It seems I am doomed if I go. Where will I end up? Dead?”
“Perhaps you will reach a time after the stairs have been rebuilt. In fact, that is what I am counting on, so don’t be so gloomy, Tyrenkov.”
“But consider what has happened, sir. Everyone in Siberia will have heard the news that we have gone missing. That bombing of Berlin put us on the front page of every newspaper in the world. It is very likely that the news of Tunguska vanishing in that storm will also have been reported. Days will pass. There will be no sign of us—of you, sir. What will our people conclude—that we all perished in that storm? Then who takes over on the eastern front as the new operational commander? Will he have the same agenda as you? What if he orders work on the inn at Ilanskiy stopped? In fact, no one else knows of the importance of Ilanskiy. What if he moves the troops we have there, and Volkov sneaks in as he did before and takes control of the place? Odds are that back stairway never gets rebuilt, which means that neither you, or I, can ever reach a time in 1941 where we do not already exist, because those stairs won’t exist to hold us.”
“This is all speculation, Tyrenkov. I must know to a certainty. Shall I send one of the Corporals?”
Tyrenkov sat in silence for a moment. Then he shrugged, taking a deep breath. “No sir. Send me. I will handle the matter.”
“Very well,” said Karpov flatly. “Then handle it. I hope you enjoyed your stew, Tyrenkov, as I would hate to think of it as your last supper.”
* * *
They found the door to the back stairway was locked, but told the innkeeper to fetch the key. Now Tyrenkov stood before the door in the alcove next to the dining room hearth, his forehead hot, but not from the heat of the fire. He took one last look at the hearth, thinking how like a log of wood he was now, burning for a time, to give light and warmth to someone else. Karpov had said it himself. He said I was somewhat useful to him… for the moment. But look how he chooses to use me! I will be thrown on the fire of time for Karpov’s pleasure, and face the scalding light of eternity here, come what may. Yet he was determined to carry on. He would show Karpov who he was, and what he was capable of. He would lay down his life…
Tyrenkov looked over his shoulder, giving Karpov one last look where he still sat at the dining room table, then he slowly reached for the key in his pocket, inserting it to unlock the door. His hand was cold on the door knob, turning it slowly, firmly, with a certainty born of his inner resolution. Then he quietly pulled the door open, feeling the cold waft out from the unheated space, with a dank, musty smell.
There was no light on the stairwell, but he would not need one. It was only seventeen steps, or so Karpov had told him. He would simply count them, one by one, and would reach the top in little time. Then it was only a matter of unlocking the door at the top and stepping into the upper hall. What would be on the other side of that door? Would there even be a second floor there, or merely empty space for him to fall into. That might happen, but he could not know for sure. He could not even know if he would survive that short walk up those stairs to worry about it.
Yet thinking and worry was one thing, doing quite another. He stepped forward into the darkness, and immediately felt a heady feeling of terrible power. I am no mere mortal now, he realized. I have already moved in time once, just like Karpov himself, perhaps one of a small, select crew that has had that experience. Everyone aboard Tunguska has done the same, though many do not even know that yet. Now I make a willful journey to some other time if the stories about this place are true, and god help me as I go…
Seventeen steps. He counted them as the shadows enfolded him, hearing his boots hard on the wood, the creak of the old stairway under his weight. Half way up he began to feel strangely light headed. Was it the hand of death brushing his cheek? What if this stairway led to a place in 1941, the week before they left for Moscow. He could not go there, and also be tending to the business of the ship and his intelligence duties. Would he simply collapse there on that stairway, or vanish into oblivion?
No. He could not go to a place where he already existed. So that impossibility was not his enemy this day, but his friend. It would mean that his journey up these steps was either doomed to fail, taking him only to the upper landing of the year where he now found himself, or that it must take him somewhere else… somewhere else…
But where?
He would soon find out.
Fifteen… Sixteen… Seventeen…
The darkness of a solid door barred the way as he reached the upper landing. Was the journey ended, or did it require that he move through this door first? He ran his hand along the door frame, finding the old knob and seeing it was locked. He felt for the keyhole, wondering if both doors used the same key.
They did.
He did not know it at that moment, but he was now a member of a most exclusive club. He was a “keyholder.” The proprietor of the inn had been holding his seat warm in that select group, albeit unknowingly. For the innkeeper, the key was nothing more than a means of locking those doors, and hiding the trouble and mystery those stairs had brought to his life ever since that fateful morning in June of 19080—the day the sun rose twice—the day there was fire in the sky, and the rumble of war on the distant northern frontiers of Siberia.
With a hard click the key turned in the lock, and he slowly turned the knob. The light streamed in, chasing the shadows and he pushed forward, finding himself on a quiet, well lit upper hall—alive. His cold logic had been correct. Time could not take him to a place where he already existed. For him, the journey up those stairs would always lead to some safe upper landing, or to nowhere at all, and this had to be true of anyone who ventured to use that stairway.
He knew immediately, that it was not the upper floor of the place he had left in 1909. There was a strange music in the air, yet he could not fathom where it might be coming from. The hallway was carpeted, and off to one side a nook led to a window that he knew would face west towards the railway station. He closed the door behind him, ever so quietly, and then moved to the window. Find out where he was—when he was—that was the first order of business.
Chapter 36
Tyrenkov reached the window, peering out across the rooftops of single story buildings that extended for three short blocks to the rail yard. The town was much bigger now, so he reasoned that he had moved forward in time as Karpov expected he would. But this was not to any place in the 1940s. He looked and saw the sky streaked with the contrail of a fast moving aircraft. Out across the town itself, he saw strange vehicles moving on the main street, with shapes that were smooth and sleek compared to the bulky, squarish chassis of the cars and trucks he knew from his day.
So this was the future—some brave new world that was completely unknown to him. What year was it? He could go down to the front desk and find that out soon enough. For now he stood mesmerized to think that he must be in a time well beyond the span of his normal life. No man knows the hour or day of his own death, yet he is cursed to know he will die, unlike the other witless creatures he shared the earth with. Suppose he was fated to live out a normal life, seventy years or so. Then if he was alive here now, he must have traveled at least that far beyond the year when he was to die. Some quick math told him he could have moved into the early 21st century!
He knew that is where Ivan Volkov had started his journey back in time. He went down the stairs, not once, but twice as Karpov had deduced. So it was likely that this stairway would be rebuilt one day in the 1940s, because it existed to allow that passage by Volkov into the past. In fact, it had to be rebuilt before September of 1942! It suddenly struck him that he may have made that same journey in reverse. The odd music, shiny vehicles, strange craft in the sky, all conspired to tell him he was in the future—the world Karpov and Volkov came from.
There by the window he was a small table and two chairs. A book lay on the table near a candle, and he picked it up, curious. Then he heard a dull rumble, and the blare of a horn as a train began to pull into the rail yard. His attention was immediately drawn outside as the train arrived. These were not the old, weathered rail cars from his day, but sleek, rounded silver sided cars with many windows. He watched carefully, hoping to catch a glimpse of the people from this future world when they emerged from the train. There… he saw the conductor in a dark, navy blue uniform opening the door of a train car and lowering a small stairway down. Then, one by one, people emerged, strangely dressed, most carrying some small bag that they set on the ground, and then dragged along behind them with a thin handle that they pulled out of the bag itself!
Then he saw them, the men in uniform, and his keen eye soon picked out the details that seemed oddly familiar to him. He had been Karpov’s right hand man for some time now, always admiring the trim cut of the Admiral’s uniform, and the jacket he always wore. These men wore the same! They were obviously military, and they were security men. He could see their careful movements, fanning out, eyes searching, scanning the other passengers as they detrained. They were looking for someone, that much was obvious, and then another man emerged, taller, stiff backed, clearly the officer in charge.
His mind had flashed to a strange possibility. Could it be? If he was seeing what he thought he was, then time was of the essence now—every second. Instinct took over, and he turned and ran back to the upper landin
g of that stairway. He was through the door quickly, closing it firmly behind him, and then, with one hand against the wall to steady himself, he hurtled down, counting each heavy footfall as he went, his heart beating fast with the urgency of the moment.
He knew what he had just seen—who he had just seen—and the knowledge he now had in his head could change the entire world.
* * *
Karpov was waiting breathlessly at the bottom of the stairs, sitting at a dining table facing the door by the hearth, a service revolver ready in his jacket pocket. His mind ran along all the corridors of possibility. Would Tyrenkov return? Would he find a way safely into the future? If so, what year could he reach. He knew that if he could get back to 1941, it would have to be just after Tunguska disappeared in that storm over the English Channel. That was the only safe ground for him, days he had not yet lived in his own life.
There is just a narrow window there left for me, he thought. Tyrenkov was correct. I have only until July 28th of 1941, and then Time will be faced with an insoluble problem. Kirov could not arrive in the Norwegian Sea on that day without compromising his position there in time—yet the ship had to arrive for him to even be where he was now. Look what had happened to the older crewmen aboard Tunguska when we shifted in that storm! That was what he was facing now—clear evidence that Time would not hesitate to snuff out his life to see her chess board remained tidy. It was just that way. No two chess pieces could occupy the same square on the board. One had to die, no matter how powerful it was, if any other piece could reach its square.
Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) Page 31