Karpov gave him a wan smile. “Thank you, Koslov. I will remember you.”
“God go with you.”
Karpov took the advice given him, along with a plain trench coat to conceal his uniform. He removed his service jacket, stuffing it inside a pillow case and using it for just that, something to lay his weary head on for the long train ride he contemplated. As he stepped ashore on the quay, the recollection of the last moment he had stood on this place was a sharp barb in his mind. The waterfront and piers were crowded with onlookers, the Mayor and his entourage were lined up with their tall hats, and out in the bay sat the mighty Kirov, its crew assembled on deck in dress whites, and the sound of the Russian national anthem resounding from the surrounding hills. There he stood, his Marine honor guard around him, a demigod to these men. That was only days ago… days… thirty years… a lifetime now it seemed. Then he was Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the most powerful force on earth and the new self-appointed Viceroy of the Far East—invincible.
He wondered what had been recorded of that moment, and what was written about the engagement he forced against Admiral Togo’s fleet and the Japanese Navy. It was all history, the first domino to fall that set off a long chain reaction to produce the world he found himself in now, a world made by his own hand. This is all my legacy, he thought. I was going to restore Russia to its rightful place as a Pacific power…
Now look at me, he thought. Now I skulk ashore, head down, scarred and broken, humiliated, powerless, a lost and forsaken soul adrift in a world I can never escape from now. It was said that hell was a prison where every iron bar on the windows and doors was forged in the fire of your own mistakes and misdeeds. This was the hell I made for myself, and not just for me, but for everyone I see here now. The Japanese are certainly happy, but look at the suffering I have brought upon my own people.
He remembered all the many conversations he had with Admiral Volsky. The man had put his trust in him, and he swore he would not let him down. He remembered their conversation in the briefing room off the main bridge while they cruised for the Torres Strait. Volsky had discovered the special warhead still mounted to the number ten P-900, and wanted to make certain I had no more ideas about using it. The Captain remembered clearly what he had said.
“It would be just like me to say I assumed that you discovered the warhead earlier, and had it removed, but that would be a bowl of lozh, just another lie from the man I was back then.”
Volsky had given him a long look. “You asked me to give you a chance and I did so. I will not say that I have been in any way disappointed with your performance, but I wonder, Karpov… Is there any remnant of that old man still alive in you?”
Karpov met his gaze, unflinching. “A man may never purge himself entirely of his bad habits and faults, Admiral, or fully atone for his sins. But if he is a man, he can control himself and do what is right. This you have taught me well enough.”
“No, Karpov, that you learned on your own.” He smiled, obvious absolution in his eyes. “I tell you this because it may happen, by one circumstance or another, that you find a missile key around your neck again one day. Then you will have to decide what you have learned or failed to learn, particularly if I am no longer here to weigh in on the matter with this substantial belly of mine.”
One day… And look what I did when I had that key around my neck. What did I really learn? Did I control myself, restrain those inner urges in me that wanted to do just what Dostoyevsky said was so gratifying? Whether it is good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things…
He could hear his own voice now, like a whining sycophant as he buttered the Admiral’s bread. “I would hope to find the courage to be half the man you are, sir, if I ever do find that key around my neck again.”
“Yes,” Volsky had finished. “If God dies, then we see how the angels fare…”
Oh look how they fared. I tried to intimidate and destroy the American Navy in 1945 and got Admiral Golovko and Orlan in the soup instead. God only knows what happened to Orlan. But I sunk another big ship just to show the Americans what real power was, and then Kirov slipped away like a thief. What happened after that? I never took the time to try and find out. There was no way I could find it out. Suddenly we found ourselves in 1908! There would be nothing in any of Fedorov’s books, but I can imagine that the Americans were not happy to see that Russians had atomic weapons too, and were more than willing to use them.
A strange thought came to him now. It’s 1938! It’s seven years before any of that happened. It’s three years before Kirov ever showed up in this war in 1941. What will happen come late July that year when the ship is supposed to appear in the Norwegian Sea? But how can that happen now? Look at the world I have made. The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist any longer, nor is it likely to exist in any form resembling the nation that built Kirov. Fedorov must be having fits with all of this. Serves him right for sticking his thumb in my pie.
What happened to the ship? Was Kirov still out there somewhere, its sharp bow cutting through the seas? Fedorov was aboard that submarine. Yes, the same one from my nightmare—Kazan. He had to use Rod-25 to get back and find me. He and the Admiral planned this whole thing! He would not leave Orlov when he jumped ship, and he moved heaven and earth to go and fetch him. It was no surprise that he came for me as well, only I underestimated him again. That damn intrepid son-of-a-bitch, Fedorov.
His thoughts unerringly led him back to that traumatic moment on the bridge. So that was Kazan that I saw when I went into the sea. Those bastards were so stealthy that they must have slipped right beneath the ship! That’s what they planned! Kazan would shift and take Kirov right along with it, only something slipped. Maybe the big fish got caught in the net and Kirov and Kazan vanished right in the thick of that last battle. I was cast off, a little fish thrown back into the sea, unwanted.
What was Tasarov doing, listening to his music again? I told him to find that submarine. He was probably in league with the rest of them, from Rodenko, to Samsonov, to Nikolin. I can understand why Rodenko and Zolkin did what they did, but Samsonov? That was the final straw. When he stood up and refused my order, I knew it was all over for me. I was a fool to think I could do whatever I choose simply because of the stripes on my jacket cuff. Did I let Volsky’s rank deter me when I tried to take the ship? No… Not one minute. Those goddamned traitors stood against me in the heat of battle. But who betrayed who? Did they betray me, or did I betray them? Either way you learn the hard lesson, Vladimir. You can lead, but it is only those that choose to follow you that place the power into your hands. Without them you are nothing. Never forget that again.
He did not forget. It was a very long train ride up through Khabarovsk, following the same route that Fedorov, Troyak, and Zykov had taken when they set off to find Orlov. On occasion a Japanese guard would eye him briefly, but he looked so decrepit, his face still bandaged, lean and hungry, eyes darkened with sorrow and regret, that no one seemed to want to bother him. So Karpov rode the train all the way to Irkutsk, doling out the last of the rubles Kaslov had given him for food along the way.
He found an old newspaper, dated two weeks earlier and read. The shock of what he learned there stayed with him for some time. Russia was divided, and still at war with itself. Sergie Kirov was alive, though he should have been killed four years ago in 1934. There was no mention of Stalin, none at all. Another nebulous and shadowy figure named ‘The Prophet,’ Ivan Volkov, ruled the central province now named the Orenburg Federation, a principle antagonist against Kirov’s Western Russian state centered on Moscow and Leningrad.
Here in the east, the wild steppes and thick taiga forests of Siberia remained untamed, a free state. It seemed loosely controlled by groups of warlords, like the Cossack clans that had once ranged in the heartland of Russia. The name Kozolnikov seemed to appear prominently in Irkutsk, along with that of Old Man Kolchak. He was still alive too. Apparently the Bolsheviks were never able to assert control beyon
d the Urals.
Orenburg, all of Kazakhstan and the Caspian region, along with all of Siberia had remained provinces of the White Russian movement. Now Volkov’s forces in Orenburg referred to themselves as the Grey Legion. He saw odd line drawings of what looked to be airships in the sky. What had happened to the world?
This was my doing, he thought. I did this the moment I took it upon myself to challenge Japan. No! It was Fedorov’s meddling that caused it all. If I could have finished what I started none of this might have happened! He could not leave things be. He had to come back in that goddamned submarine. Was it still out there somewhere too?
He thought for a long time on his sad state, with plenty of time for regrets. Yet something within him folded in on itself, a hard kernel of stone that refused to yield, refused the mantle of shame and held but one thought in mind—revenge. That’s what I said to that Inspector General and his dog from Naval Intelligence. Yes… Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.
At Irkutsk he decided to go and find Old Man Kolchak and see what he was up to. The first thing he did was pull his uniform jacket back out of that pillowcase and put it back on, and proudly. Some would say he tarnished it with all he had done, but let them talk, he thought. I know more than anyone alive in this sad world. If there is any man who is rightfully a prophet, it is me.
This was what Orlov had in mind when he jumped ship, yes? Well, I had something else in mind, and I didn’t jump. The world threw me here, and here I will stay. With all I know, power will come easily into my grasp if I reach for it. And what better place to find it than in the hands of the men who already hold the reins? Yes, he thought. Go find this Old Man Kolchak, and the other one, the young Turk, Kozolnikov. I will soon be very useful to them. That’s how it will begin. But before long… yes… before long they will be answering to me!
Chapter 9
Alan Turing reached for his handkerchief again, still bothered by the pollens of early summer, as he always was in June. As deviously clever as he was, he had not yet discovered a way to defeat Mother Nature, or to defend himself from the perennial attacks of Hay Fever that beset him. Not even the full gas mask he wore as he rode his bicycle to Bletchley Park each day for his work in the cypher busting unit seemed to do him any good, and probably frightened scores of roadside passersby and children when they saw his macabre, masked specter, head down, peddling furiously and breathing hard behind the leering visage of his goggle mask.
The bicycle also seemed to conspire against him at regular intervals, its gear chain slipping and clogging the works, bringing him to an ignominious stop on the long country roads. Then he would be forced to remove his gas mask to see well enough to re-set the chain, and the pollens would find his nose, still breathing heavily with the exertion of his ride. So he took to carefully calculating the interval between gear chain failures, counting each rotation of the pedals, and cleverly intervened, tightening and adjusting it just before the average time elapsed to ward off the failure.
In spite of his Hay Fever, he remained fit and trim, sometimes taking to running the three miles from his cottage to work each day, a bona fide marathon man in his own rite. All the while, his mind was feverishly working on some problem or another, be it an equation or expression in his calculations, a thorny problem in his effort to crack some devilishly complex code, or perhaps dreaming up another of his strange devices, like the Universal Machine that stood as a good foundation to the modern understanding of computers. Find the flaws, he thought. Find the loose ends, the contradictions. From those you can get a lever into the code and deduce everything. Then all it required was the proper machine to aid the decryption effort, and of course good signals intelligence. He was determined to have a solution to the German Naval Enigma code in short order.
His associate, Gordon Welchman, has been working with him on a device, which they called a “bombe,” but the work was frustratingly slow. It was a series of drums arrayed in rows that rotated at 120rpms with each setting off the next in a precise order, and the motion migrating down and down to turn the positions of the lower drums, almost like the gears of a clock…or a bicycle. By brute force of trial and error the machine would test the possible relationship or “connection” between two letters.
It might deduce that E was connected to H until a contradicting case appeared in its machination that proposed E was connected to J or some other letter. Since E could not be connected to both H and J at the same time, it was the contradiction that allowed the code breakers to eliminate one case or another and eventually arrive at the correct connection—a connection that corresponded to the assignments on the German Enigma code machine. In effect, Turing and Welchman were building and using a massive analog computer to help them break the German code. It was all much more complex than that, but the principle was sound, and it was slowly producing results.
They had it up and running just a few months ago, in the ides of March, 1940, and at times its clattering and churning could be heard throughout the whole facility. To Turing, it sounded much like the feverish pedaling on his bicycle, mixed in with the chugging repetition of a printing press. The only problem was that there were too few men on the job, and too few “bombe” machines clattering away to move the effort forward. Building on the work of several Polish cryptographers, Turing was also attempting to decipher the German Naval Enigma code. He boldly announced it could be broken, and eagerly set to work on it.
“Look Gordon,” he said one day, “no one else is doing anything about it and I could have it to myself.” That was an idea particularly appealing to him, as it could become a perfect testing ground for his methods and machines. He kept Peter Twinn busy on the project as well, and innumerable girls providing hands and eyes for the enormous clerical work involved. A little luck also helped when the British captured the German Trawler Polares on April 26, 1940, which held numerous pieces of equipment related to the code.
Known as the “Narvik Pinch” it aided the work immensely. The German Enigma machine operators also helped in many ways. Thinking the code unbreakable, they would often pair three letter sets with a second series that was easily related. It was found that the three letter code set for LON was often followed by DON for London, and the three letter set for BER was often followed by LIN, just as HIT was finished off by LER. If any one of the sets could be identified in a message, the related series was easily deciphered.
By May of 1940 Turing and other dedicated cryptanalysts, notably Hugh Foss, had a breakthrough that led to the deciphering of a complete day’s messages. The success was celebrated ever thereafter as “Foss Day,” but as the code changed daily, there was still a great deal of work to be done to allow reliable deciphering for an entire month.
Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, or Station X as it was sometimes called, was a very busy place. That day Turing was wiping his weary nose, lamenting that his gas mask did not seem as reliable as he hoped on the morning ride, even though he had successfully averted a gear chain failure by stopping at a precise interval to effect a repair. A bit weary and bedraggled by his Hay Fever, he went over to the cupboard and quickly unlocked the padlock and chain which he used to secure his favorite coffee mug from any “unauthorized use” as he called it. Coffee! That was what he needed now to get the gears, wheels and bombes of his own mind working and clattering again.
Just as he was settling back into his chair and savoring the aroma as he breathed in thin curls of coffee vapor to soothe his nose and sinuses, in came Peter Twinn, with what looked to be a large photo in hand and a thick manila envelope under his arm. Turing caught the return label and knew it had come in on the morning delivery from Whitehall and the Admiralty.
“Well,” said Twinn, “we’re in trouble, Alan. What, pray tell, do you make of that!”
“What is it?” Turing seemed uninterested.
“It’s the prodigal son, that what it is.” Twinn pressed the photographs into his lap.
Turing took the first photo, eying it suspiciously.
It was a typical aerial reconnaissance photo of what appeared to be a large warship at sea. “Well it certainly is exactly what it looks like,” he said. “A ship.”
“Yes, but not a German ship this time, Alan. Take a good guess as to who owns this one. Then have a look at these close-ups under my arm. I think you’ll be quite amazed.”
Turing set down his coffee mug, reached for his magnifying glass, and took a closer look. “Russian naval ensign,” he said definitively. “That’s clear enough. Where was it taken—the Baltic?”
“Southwest of Iceland, right in the middle of this big operation underway out there now.”
Turing looked again, this time his gaze lingering on the photo, eye roving from place to place behind the big round lens of the magnifying glass and a strange feeling coming over him that he could not quite decipher. It was an odd ripple, shiver like, that ran up his spine and tingled at the back of his neck, yet he could not see why he would react thus way to a simple photograph.
“Dear Alan,” said Twinn. “Having another allergy attack, are you? Don’t worry, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation as to why we could have missed a ship like this in the Russian order of battle. After all, we’ve never seen them as much of a threat. It’s the Germans we’ve been hot about, eh?”
Saying nothing, Turing extended an arm, gesturing for the manila envelope Twinn was holding, his eyes still riveted to the original photo, a furrow of growing concern creasing his brow. He had seen this ship before… That was the feeling at the back of his neck now, and it was bloody dangerous, a rising discomfort and warning alarm in his mind. He had seen this ship before, yet he could not recall the where and when of that, strangely bothered, as his mind was a steel trap that little escaped from once embraced by the cold steel of his logic. He took the envelope, opening it hastily as Twinn looked on, now somewhat concerned himself.
Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) Page 7