Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  Then the answer struck him like a wet fish in the face, so obviously simple that he was surprised he had not considered it earlier. Troyak may have just destroyed the stairway, but he obviously did not destroy the time rift itself! So the only solution to his problem was that someone must have rebuilt those stairs. Could this be done?

  This had to be the answer. The inn was restored, sometime between this moment and that date in 1942 when he first discovered the rift. Then the darker implications of what he had concluded struck him. Was the restoration done by someone who knew what they were about—someone who knew that rift in time existed? If so, who might that person be? He realized that any number of people might have inadvertently gone up or down those stairs, and now he wondered if that inn had a history of these events, the people who may have boarded there and unwittingly stumbled through that rift as he did. Some may have returned to their correct time, even as Fedorov returned when he retreated back up those stairs. Yet others may have been trapped in some other time, like Volkov.

  Then he realized that there was a record of everyone who had ever boarded at that inn—the guest register! Boarders would sign in on a routine basis, and there might also be billing records. Did the innkeepers know about the strange effects on that stairway? Could they be the ones behind this restoration, or was it someone else?

  That thought led him to one dark name that might be on the list of possible suspects, and one of the primary reasons he sent Troyak on that mission in the first place—Vladimir Karpov. The threat that stairway represented may have only been temporarily forestalled by Troyak’s mission. Yet there might be no way he would ever know who rebuilt the inn, or when they might do this, which would make any future operation difficult to plan.

  Yes, Mother Time had found a way, and he could at least know that he was not responsible for creating another insoluble paradox with his mission plan. That thought gave him little solace.

  “Admiral on the bridge!”

  Fedorov turned to see that Volsky had returned to take up his post after a long eight hour shift below decks.

  “Good day, sir,” he said, but Volsky took one look at his face and knew something was wrong.

  “You do not look so happy today, Mister Fedorov. Is something troubling you?”

  “No sir… I was just thinking how we will recover the mission team.” Fedorov did not want to burden the Admiral again with more talk of paradox and time theory that neither of them really understood in the first place.

  “Ah,” said Volsky. “I have sent a message to Admiral Golovko on this while you were busy setting up the Ice Watch team. The Narva has safely returned to Murmansk, refueled, and is already on its way to rendezvous with us here. Along the way they can reconnoiter to see if the Germans are up to anything.”

  “A very good idea, sir.”

  “Yes, and how was the deployment of the Oko panel? Any problems?”

  “No sir. We laid in a month’s supply of food, fuel and other items for the six man team there. They are on-line now and feeding data to our main radar display. Contacts will display on our navigation board in blue.”

  “Is there adequate security? We must not allow this technology to fall into the wrong hands, which is why I hesitated to release it to the British unless necessary.”

  “The Ice Watch is very isolated, sir, and the team would certainly see anything coming by air or sea in time to warn us. I’ve also given some thought to the risk of sharing technology. Perhaps we were too paranoid earlier with the fear that nothing must ever fall into enemy hands.”

  “Oh? Why do you say this, Fedorov?”

  “Well sir, there is simply no way any of our technology could be reverse engineered in this era. Think about it for a moment. Take the Oko panel radar set, for example. It uses a powerful 6m² radar antenna with 360° azimuthal coverage. The processing power in a single unit exceeds that of all computational devices that will be made on planet earth through the 1980s! It has integrated micro-circuitry, millions of transistors, and wafer thin digital circuits, exotic materials and other components that no power on earth could even begin to duplicate until the 1990s. The technology could be used by men from this era trained to do so, but there is no conceivable way it could ever be reverse engineered or duplicated. In many ways the same can be said of our missile technology. Our engineers could certainly improve existing models of rocketry here, but face it, you could gather the very best of the missile scientists of this era into one project, and they could not reproduce a functioning Moskit-II if they worked round the clock for ten years! It simply requires advances in too many technological areas. Our computer technology is quantum leaps above anything of this era, and it is an essential integrated component in all of our systems. Computers handle all radar and infrared detection, inertial navigation, guidance and targeting. Without them the missile is just a very efficient and deadly unguided bomb, and no power on earth could ever duplicate our computers in this era. It simply could not be done.”

  “Now that you explain it this way, I must agree with you. In fact, one day the shoe may be on the other foot and we may wish these people could manufacture just a little more 30mm ammunition for our AR-62 close in defense guns.”

  “That might be possible, but all our missiles and munitions benefit from decades of advanced metallurgy. We might get a 30mm round from them that we could fire, but certainly not with the performance of our own munitions.”

  “Which is why we must be very stingy about using them,” Volsky admonished, though he knew Fedorov would be the last to use unwarranted force in battle.”

  Nikolin interrupted them, saying he was receiving a radio message from Operations Chief Orlov on the Airship Narva. In the next few minutes they learned that the Germans had finally stirred again from their cold northern outposts on the Norwegian coast. The Narva was flying high, and could not recognize exactly what they were seeing, but they had spotted two large ships out from Narvik and on a course that might take them very near the Island of Jan Mayen.

  “There’s one more thing, sir,” said Nikolin. “I’ve been monitoring long range signals traffic and pattern filtering. The volume has taken a sudden increase, and when I listened in I discovered those letter sets again.”

  “Letter sets?”

  “Yes sir. A stream of letters in sets of five, and quite of bit of that now.”

  “Do you have any of it?”

  “I printed out this latest message, but there’s a good deal more.” Nikolin handed Fedorov the message, and he noted the telltale letter sets that indicated this was a special message being sent in the German Naval Enigma code. NVXCO TYQUY BTURS OVWPD VPVKZ UPZGH, and on it went. Fedorov wasted no time getting to his pad device with the Enigma decoding application. Using that day’s date, he soon established that his rotor position should be set at IV-V-III, with a rotor start position KXU and the rings set at VQG. Ten letter pairs were also set on the plugboard, and when he decoded the message he soon had his answer. It read: ‘Activate Plan Fimbulwinter, Stage I, with Alfargruppe, effective immediately. Fleet commander to execute Stage II, with Jötnargruppe, at his discretion. Plan Felix to follow.” The Admiral was watching him closely, noting his intense concentration with some admiration.

  “Trouble, Mister Fedorov?”

  “What else? These are fleet movement orders, Admiral. These words here are ship units being ordered to sea—a major fleet movement, sir. The shocking thing about it is that there are only two ships on that list which might have been active at this time in the war, Scharnhorst and Bismarck. Unless they are code names, there are others listed that I’ve never even heard of. They must be code for something else, because the Germans could not possibly have this many ships operational in 1940.”

  “I suppose we should not be surprised, Fedorov. Admiral Tovey has a new ship. Yes? So the Germans may have been busy in the shipyards as well.”

  “Indeed sir. But it’s this last word here that I’m worried about.” He pointed to his applicati
on screen. “Felix.”

  “A new German battleship?”

  “No sir. The battleships on the list are Bismarck and Hindenburg, more than enough to worry about. But this last word comes later, after a series of movement orders. It refers to an operation name—Operation Felix. That was the German plan to attack Gibraltar! But it never happened in the real war.”

  “The real war, Mister Fedorov? This one isn’t convincing enough for you?”

  Fedorov forced a smile at that. “This would indicate a major point of divergence, sir. At this time the Germans had three options for prosecuting the war. One was to strike directly at Great Britain with Operation Seelöwe. That plan was discarded when Goering failed to break the R.A.F. and secure airspace over the Channel. The second option was to open hostilities against Soviet Russia with Operation Barbarossa, but that did not happen until 1941. The third was to pursue a Mediterranean strategy, striking indirectly at Britain by driving a wedge right through the heart of her empire. Remember our discussion when we were down there, Admiral?”

  “How could I forget it? I still get headaches from that fall I took.”

  “Yes, well there are three places Britain needs to hold to have any chance of prevailing in the Mediterranean and eventually knocking Italy out of the war. Suez in Egypt is the heart of their operation in the east, Malta is the lynchpin in the center, and Gibraltar the key outpost in the west. It’s the gateway to all future offensive plans there—Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, the Tunisian campaign and invasion of Sicily and Italy—these all depend on Gibraltar standing as a viable British base of operations. Up until now the war in the West has followed a fairly familiar course. The campaigns in France and Norway have turned out much as they did in our history. But if Gibraltar falls we could be looking at a radical change in the entire course of the war. It would have to mean that Spain is either invaded by Germany or that it becomes an active belligerent against England. If this is so the Germans will have access to ports from Tromso to Gibraltar.”

  “These German ships plan to sail all that distance? That does not make good sense to me.”

  “Agreed. But I don’t think that is their objective. These orders simply indicate the Germans are planning to put battlegroups out into the Atlantic. Operation Felix would be undertaken by the army, but a sudden sortie by the Kriegsmarine like this would certainly strain British resources. It would mean Admiral Tovey could not send reinforcements to Force H at Gibraltar.”

  “That at least makes sense. Does it say where the Germans are planning to break out?”

  “No specific locations are mentioned, but there are references to rendezvous points. The names for battlegroups appear to be Jötnar and Alfar. I looked those up. They refer to giants and elves in Norse mythology. And the whole operation is being called Fimbulwinter.”

  “Codes within codes.”

  “It appears so, sir, but I do not have to think too hard to interpret this. Fimbulwinter was the name of a harsh north wind that comes before the end of the world. Jötnargruppe would probably be the heavy battleships, Alfargruppe the lighter supporting ships.”

  “I see…” Volsky pursed his lips, considering all this. “A cold wind blowing from the north…. We had best pass all this on to the British, Mister Fedorov.”

  “With your permission, I will have Nikolin send a report to Sheffield, and they can transmit to the Admiralty on their normal channels.”

  “Agreed,” said Volsky. “And we should notify the Ice Watch that the weather in the Denmark Strait may be taking a turn for the worse. They may soon be picking up this contact the Narva spotted. In the meantime, let us steer to the southern end of the Denmark Strait. We may have unexpected guests for dinner, though I do not think they will like what we have on the menu. If the Germans bother my watch, I’ll be serving up missiles in short order.”

  Chapter 26

  More than one dinner was going to be bothered by uninvited guests that night. Phones jangled in the Admiralty, and alarms leapt over the wires from Whitehall to Scapa Flow. The British already had wind of the operation, the first rising swells of a cold north wind. There was movement in the Norwegian Sea, and reports of much activity on the waterfront and berthings at Kiel. The berth for Germany’s formidable new battleship Hindenburg was reported to be empty from the latest R.A.F. overflight. The Bismarck was also missing, and presumed to be on the move north. Giants were on the loose again, and British Sunderlands took off, flying north of Dogger Bank to scour the sea even though sighting was hampered by thick clouds and fog. the Germans had deliberately chosen this weather as the perfect cover for their operation.

  One Sunderland pressed on north towards Kristiansand and got into trouble when a pair of Me-109s found it and riddled the plane with gunfire. The signalman got off a plaintive S.O.S. before he went down into the sea for a forced water landing.

  High above, Oberleutnant Marco Ritter banked his Me-109 and came around with a grin.

  “Somebody is getting curious!” he said over his short range radio to his wing mate.

  “And someone else gets credit for another kill,” came the return.

  “Not for me, Heinrich,” said Ritter. “I don’t count fat seaplanes. If you want it you can chalk it up on your account. I’m just counting British fighters.”

  Ritter was flying top cover again for the Graf Zeppelin, operating now to clear the airspace around the carrier and its escorts as the ship waited the arrival of her principle battle units, Bismarck and its big brother, the new flagship of the German fleet, the Hindenburg. Admiral Raeder’s heavy chess pieces were on the move. Their mission was to first link up with the carrier, then move at high speed up to Bergen. From there they were to continue north into the Norwegian Sea, eventually turning west towards Iceland.

  The two ships that had been reported by the Narva west of Narvik were the battlecruiser Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, a bishop and a knight taking up their posts south of Jan Mayen. Kurt Hoffmann led Alfargruppe, and its mission was to demonstrate towards the Denmark Strait in advance of the main breakout attempt by the heavier battlegroup, Jötnargruppe under Admiral Lütjens. It was Raeder’s shadow play, as he called it. With a big operation slated to begin soon in the Mediterranean, he wanted to draw the British Admiralty’s eye north to the cold Norwegian Sea, and thereby prevent any further reinforcement of Force H.

  The Kriegsmarine had licked its wounds over the last several months, refueling and repairing ships damaged in the abortive Operation Valkyrie. Of the bigger ships, only Gneisenau was still in the docks, but the Bismarck and Tirpitz were ready for operations again, though the latter was being held in reserve at Bremen. The second aircraft carrier, Peter Strasser, was not yet operational as hoped, and it would be another six months fitting out and running through trials in the Baltic. Graf Zeppelin was therefore out on her second major operation of the war, and Marco Ritter and Hans Rudel, both survivors of the first engagement, were out for blood again.

  While both of the older pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer were also still under repair, they had been replaced in the order of battle with the addition of two faster new Panzerschiffe class units, the Rhineland and Westfalen, and another even faster new design, the battlecruiser Kaiser, was included in this operational plan. There was one more surprising ship in the flotilla, steaming twenty kilometers to the east in the heavy fog, a secret new addition to the Kriegsmarine that Raeder was now adding to his active ship list, the Goeben. Marco Ritter had a special assignment involving that ship, but it was one he kept under his hat, saying nothing to any of his wing mates until the moment was at hand.

  These were the names Fedorov had decoded with his Enigma application, all assigned to a new operations It was dubbed “Operation Fimbulwinter,” a cold north wind to chill the frayed nerves of the Royal Navy on the eve of an even bigger operation planned to the south. Admiral Raeder would show the British his cards, let them see his Ace, King and Queen, and in so doin
g put as much pressure as he could on the already overburdened Home Fleet.

  The movement of his ships would coincide with yet another sortie by the French Force de Raid from their Atlantic African ports. The long month since the action off Dakar had allowed them to make repairs, though their fuel situation was not good, and stores were running down at Casablanca. Yet they had enough to join in the operation now being planned, a strong wind from the south as well. The battleship Normandie would be joined by Jean Bart, two cruisers and four destroyers, again in a feint towards Gibraltar with the aim of keeping Force H well occupied for the real thunder yet to come with Operation Felix.

  Now the cold north wind began to blow across the tall battlements of Germany’s newest and most powerful battleship, the Hindenburg. First conceived nearly a decade past, the ship was laid down in late 1935, the first of six planned ships authorized by Hitler in his fateful meeting with Raeder in January of 1936. Hitler first proposed that ships H and J be named after two relatively obscure figures from German history, Ulrich von Hutton and Gotz von Berlichingen. The former was a scholar, poet and leader of Imperial Knights, the latter an iron fisted mercenary who was known as Gotz of the iron hand, literally because he wore prosthetic metal forearm, complete with moveable thumb and five fingers that could be fashioned into an armored fist.

  Raeder eventually suggested the name Hindenburg would be more closely associated with the modern era as Germany rose from the humiliation of WWI. Hindenburg was the symbolic heart of Germany’s new rise to power and Brandenburg the province surrounding Berlin itself, the heart of the nation. Hitler fretted over the dark possibility that either ship might be sunk.

  “That name is associated with disaster,” he complained, referring to the terrible loss of Zeppelin LZ 129. “And we have already had a ship by that name in the first war.”

  Raeder shook his head, his demeanor calm and confident. “My Führer, we are not building another airship here, but the greatest battleship on earth. SMS Hindenburg was the last battlecruiser to be built by the Imperial German Navy, and the last to be sunk when the fleet was scuttled. Now let this new ship be the first of this new era of German sea power, Hindenburg, rising from the ashes like a phoenix, just as Germany rises again under your able leadership. It must have this name! The symbolism is perfect.”