Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  “What are you doing, Fedorov? Nose in the books again? You should have been promoted to the ship’s librarian.” Orlov said that with a grin, realizing, after all, that he was speaking to the ship’s Captain now, and remembering the humiliating lesson Troyak had taught him about showing due respect when he had been busted to the Marine detachment. He had come to the officer’s dining hall for a cup of coffee before going on duty, and found Fedorov sitting at a table reading.

  “The world has changed, Orlov,” said Fedorov. “I did not realize just how much has gone awry.”

  “I know you are wanting to blame me for that, yes?”

  “What? No Chief. I think I got to you in time, or at least those British commandos did. Besides, most anything you may have changed would have had to occur after 1942. The altered state of affairs I am reading about now all happened well before that. I think it was Karpov who had a great deal to do with some of the changes, and I must also confess that I am equally to blame.”

  “You, Fedorov? What did you do?”

  Fedorov confessed his crime, that errant whisper, and he told Orlov that it ended up resulting in the death of Joseph Stalin himself.

  “My god!” Orlov exclaimed. “Here I was worried a bit about choking Commissar Molla, and you took a contract out on Stalin!” As always, Orlov interpreted the events in light of his own life experience, running with the Russian mob for so many years before he had joined the navy had left him very jaded.

  “So you see, Orlov, you can sleep easy now. I’m the real culprit.”

  “And that bastard Karpov. He sleeps easy too—with the fishes!” Orlov grinned again.

  “Yes, I suppose so. In fact, as to that Commissar you speak of, remember, in this world now it is only 1940, so he may still be alive out there somewhere, though if he is he will be working for Volkov, and not the Bolsheviks.”

  At that Orlov’s face and mood darkened. “Still alive? But I killed him.”

  “In 1942, but that world, those events that saw you make your way to the Caucasus… well, they might never occur. This is a new world, Chief. Another life altogether, for you, and I suppose for Commissar Molla as well.”

  “Sookin syn!” Orlov swore, clearly unhappy with what he was learning now. “I wondered about that. Was another Orlov going to appear and do everything we just lived through?”

  “We’ve all wondered about it.”

  “It is not possible, right Fedorov?”

  “Director Kamenski does not think so. He believes we are in a completely altered world now, separate from the one we left. So come July 28, 1941 when we first appeared here, nothing will happen. In his mind we have trumped all our previous exploits.”

  “You mean none of it counts? Molla is alive, none of those ships we hurt are sunk?”

  “That could be so, Chief. Our appearance in 1908, and now here in 1940 predates all that experience. Perhaps it counted in the world we left, but not this one. It hasn’t even happened yet, at least according to Kamenski.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It does sound reasonable. Otherwise we will have a real paradox on our hands in another year.”

  “Yes,” said Orlov with a smile. “One ugly mug like this one is enough for the world.” He tapped his own cheek. “So that means we are living in a world where Karpov doesn’t exist any longer. There is one good thing about our fate, eh?”

  “I see you still have hard feelings about him.”

  “I hold a grudge, Fedorov. That’s why I killed Molla. Frankly, to learn he is still alive makes me want to go and kill him again! But don’t worry. I’ll stay put this time.”

  “Please do, Chief. We need you here.”

  “Now that you mention it, I have duty on the bridge in ten minutes. Keep reading, Captain!” Orlov clapped Fedorov on the back and went on his way, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

  Fedorov smiled, putting the book he had been perusing aside, entitled Rise of the Orenburg Federation. The photographs there had convinced him that the leader of that state was indeed the same man they knew and met on the ship with Inspector General Kapustin.

  He went down those stairs, he thought. So it wasn’t just what Karpov did, or even what I did. It was Volkov too. Yet it all comes back to me again. If I hadn’t insisted on retrieving Orlov, leaving as I did with Troyak and Zykov, then Volkov would have never tried to find me along that route, and never had a chance to take that trip down those stairs. Then again, Orlov’s recent visit put him in the spotlight again. If Orlov did not go missing… No, I was Captain, he thought. I was the one who gave that order to fire on the KA-226, so it all comes back to me again.

  He passed a moment wondering what might have happened if he had not fired. If there had been a fire on the helicopter as Orlov claimed, they might have made an emergency landing. They could have even parachuted to safety, and we could have rescued them by zeroing in on their service jacket transponders in both cases. It was only because we thought those missiles made an end of both the helicopter and Orlov that we failed to mount a search—that and the urgency of the hour with that race to Gibraltar underway.

  I was sloppy, he berated himself. I was too inexperienced to take on the role of ship’s Captain at that time. I wasn’t thinking clearly as to proper procedure. All I could do was think about avoiding any contamination to the history, but there we were, ready to slug it out with the Nelson and Rodney. How foolish I was! That duel seems to have caused very little change, but the little things—my failure to search for Orlov then and there—that’s what really put a missile into it all, and ripped the history open from bow to stern.

  Orlov slipped away, I hatched my plan to go after him, and then that stairway at Ilanskiy changed everything. There was the death of Stalin in one errant whisper. There was the rise of Volkov and the deadlock in the civil war that shattered my homeland. Now that will have a dramatic impact on the outcome of this war. How can Britain survive without a united Russia fighting against Germany on the Eastern Front? We have chosen to place Kirov on the scales of Time to try and help, but we are just one ship. How can we possibly counterbalance the grievous harm I have done?

  Feeling very dejected, and harried by a nagging sense of guilt, he reached for another book, a study of the French naval buildup between the wars. Then his eye fell on a plain manila envelope, and he opened it to see what the Russians had tucked inside. It was marked, “Free Siberian State,” and Fedorov found that it contained a few folded newspapers, some very recent by the dates. He found himself drawn to the headlines and photos, turning the page on one issue and then nearly choking on a sip of tea as he did so.

  Another man would have cursed, or invoked the deity, but this time Fedorov just stared in shocked silence, slowly lowering his teacup, his hand noticeably shaky as he did so. A sense of rising apprehension gathered like a sickness in his belly and rose like bitter bile in his throat. His impulse was to sound battle stations, raise the alarm! There, standing on an airfield tarmac beneath a massive tethered zeppelin, was a man in a uniform that Fedorov clearly recognized, right down to the pips on his collar.

  Fedorov leaned forward, his pulse racing, a rising sense of distress in him now that bordered on panic. He squinted at the photograph, the man’s face, his stance, the cut of his shoulders. His eyes scanned and rescanned the photo caption, as if he was simply unwilling to believe or admit what he was reading there. “Air Commandant Karpov inspects the fleet flagship Irkutsk as operations begin on the Samara Front.”

  Air Commandant Karpov… It was him!

  Fedorov stood up, stiff and alert, looking about him as if to seek help. He stared at the newspaper again, noting the date as April 10, 1940. How? How? How could this be? Were his eyes deceiving him? Was he seeing something here born of his own fear and recrimination? Could this be nothing more than a coincidence, another man, a mistaken appearance?

  He sat down again, his hands shaking as he fished out all the other newspapers in the large envelop
e. Then he began to go through them, page by page, his eyes dark with misgiving. He soon found that he was not imagining anything at all. There were three other articles referencing the man, and one giving his full name: Admiral Vladimir Karpov, First Air Commandant of the Siberian Aero Corps.

  Vladimir Karpov…

  He was up, quickly gathering and folding all the newspapers again, and tucking them under his arm. His footfalls were quick and heavy on the deck, his breath fast as he went. Where was the Admiral? He found himself almost running now, racing to the officer’s deck and down the long hallway to the Admiral’s cabin. Resisting the urge to simply barge in with the urgency of his news, he stopped, took a deep breath, and then knocked on the door.

  There was movement from within, then the door slowly opened and he saw a red-eyed Volsky peering at him, a look of surprise on his face.

  “Excuse me, Admiral,” Fedorov gasped, still breathless. “Something very important has come up.”

  “Another contact? Is the ship in danger?”

  Is the ship in danger, thought Fedorov wildly? My god, the whole damn world was in danger now! “No sir, but I have found something in the research that you must see at once.”

  Volsky looked a bit disheveled and weary, but he opened the door, beckoning for Fedorov to enter. The young Captain could not help but notice the small glass of Vodka on the Admiral’s desk near the photo of his wife, the letters there.

  The Admiral gestured to the other chair by the wall, and shuffled to his desk, reaching to put away the letters. “You will forgive an old man a moment of sentiment, Fedorov,” he said quietly. “I was just reading the last letter I had received from my wife before things started going crazy at Vladivostok. And I suppose I was drowning my sorrows in a glass of good Vodka. Don’t worry, I am not one to overindulge, but we all have places to hide and heal, do we not?”

  “Of course, sir. Please forgive me for barging in like this. I can come another time—”

  “No, no, please be seated. I can see by the redness in your cheeks that you have run all the way here, and you can barely catch your breath. Very well. Let me hear what you have found. Sit please. Take a moment if you must.” The Admiral eyed the newspapers under Fedorov’s arm, a squall of trepidation on his face now, yet curious.

  Fedorov composed himself, looking at the photo of Karpov beneath the looming hulk of the airship, seeming a doppelganger, a dark shadow of the man he was, something born again of trouble and the whirlwind of chaos.

  “Sir,” he began haltingly. “Have a look at this!”

  He handed the Admiral the paper.

  Chapter 26

  Doctor Zolkin was surprised to see them when Volsky and Fedorov arrived at the sick bay hatch. Shocked by what they had discovered, the two men immediately sought out Director Kamenski, learning that he was in for a medical check.

  “More headaches?” said Zolkin as they entered. But Zolkin new the Admiral well enough to know that something was very wrong. He had been listening to Kamenski’s heart, satisfied with what he was hearing. Now he set his stethoscope aside and folded his arms, waiting.

  “Misery loves company,” said Kamenski. “Did you have a restless sleep as well, Admiral?”

  “I hope nothing is wrong, Director.” Volsky glanced from Kamenski to Zolkin as he spoke, civility trumping the news they carried in that bundle of newspapers under Fedorov’s arm. Here they were, huddling in the sick bay again with Zolkin, the place they had discussed the business of the ship so many times, and Karpov more than once.

  “He’s fit and likely to live another hundred years,” said Zolkin with a smile. “Nothing to worry about beyond a bit of indigestion.”

  “Glad to hear some good news for a change,” said Volsky, looking sheepishly at Fedorov. The two men sat down near Zolkin’s desk, and then Volsky simply looked at Fedorov.

  “Out with it, Fedorov. Tell them.”

  Fedorov cleared his throat, looking from one man to the next. Just say it, he thought, and then he spoke, certain of what he was now about to assert.

  “I believe Captain Karpov is alive.”

  “What is that? Alive?” Zolkin’s hand strayed unconsciously to his arm where he had only recently recovered from the gunshot wound during that wild moment on the bridge.

  Fedorov just handed him the newspaper, and gave another to Kamenski, watching them take in the information with growing surprise.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Zolkin, “but now you have gone and made the Doctor ill. If Kamenski thought he had trouble with his dinner, my indigestion will be worse. How could this be?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Doctor.”

  “We think Karpov must have been thrown clear of the weather bridge. Perhaps he even jumped,” said Volsky, putting forward the only logical explanation he and Fedorov could come up with.

  “Jumped?”

  “Yes,” said Fedorov. “If he fell into the sea just as we shifted, he would probably have been pulled forward in time with us as well, just as we pulled that trawler forward with us when the Anatoly Alexandrov shifted back from the Caspian. That was how we eventually reeled in Orlov.”

  “But look at the date on this article, Mister Fedorov,” Kamenski pointed with his finger as he spoke. “It reads May of 1940.”

  “This one reads April of that same year,” said Zolkin, trading newspapers with the Director.

  “Yes, well that is before we appeared, correct?” Kamenski pointed out the obvious key fact. “It was June of 1940 according to our calculations.”

  “Correct, sir,” said Fedorov, a question in his eyes as if he were hoping the Director would solve the puzzle for him.

  Kamenski gave him a wan smile. “Big fish, little fish,” he said calmly. “The ship moved, and it obviously pulled this man along in its wake. But the little fish get thrown away, yes? We made it all the way to 1940. He was thrown out earlier. For him to be standing in these photos—in Siberia—and in the spring of 1940… Well that means he would have had to appear some time before that. It would take time for him to get there, yes?”

  “That is what I thought,” said Fedorov. “From what I can make out in those photos, he does not seem to have aged much. I was also thinking he may have fallen out of the shift we made from 1908 and arrived some time before us. Who knows why? He might have arrived years before. That would account for his present position as these articles indicate.”

  “My, my,” said Zolkin. “So he’s given himself a promotion now. Admiral Karpov, is it? First Commandant of the Siberian Aero Corps?”

  The men just looked at each other, each one hoping the other would know what to do next. Then Volsky raised the obvious question. “Gentlemen,” he began. “Those articles make it obvious that Karpov has survived, and he has deviously been able to get himself mixed up with Kolchak in the Free Siberian State.”

  “They consolidated power in the far east,” said Fedorov.

  “Kolchak?” said Zolkin. “But he should have died in the 1920s?”

  “A lot of things should have happened that did not happen,” said Volsky. “Now I fear that the presence of this man in a position of power there is going to change quite a bit more.”

  “Indeed,” said Kamenski. “It is clear that events we are witnessing now clearly derive from the death of Stalin, and from the foolish prank I thought to play on Volkov. I wanted to get him out of our hair, so I sent him east to look for you, Mister Fedorov.”

  “That was all my fault,” said Fedorov, looking at the floor as he spoke. “I caused all of this.”

  “Now, now,” Volsky tried to console him.

  “No sir. It was all my doing.” Fedorov unburdened his guilt, confessing all that had so bedeviled him of late, but Kamenski gave him a forgiving smile.

  “Listen now, Mister Fedorov. You want to count the dominoes and you just pick out the ones that you have tipped over. What you must realize is that the row goes on and on. You think your insistence on finding Orlov caused the fall, b
ut this man used his parachute to jump to safety, did he not? He had a service jacket on just like the one this Karpov is wearing in that photograph. Why did he not call for help?”

  “He thought we were trying to kill him,” said Fedorov, still sullen. “A logical assumption after we fired five missiles.”

  “Perhaps he did, but he still had the choice as to what he should do—to call and clear the matter up, or to slip away. Something tells me your Mister Orlov didn’t really want us to find him, and it was not because he thought we were trying to kill him. Something tells me he wanted to get away on his own. So you see, there are just too many variables at play here. Remember, it was Orlov who wrote that journal note that you discovered. Without that you would have never launched your mission to rescue him.”

  “I suppose Orlov would have had good reason to jump ship,” said Volsky.

  “He might have,” said Kamenski. “But not unless this Karpov here had hatched his little plot to take the ship. So you see, Fedorov, you want all the blame to begin with you, but nothing you did would have ever occurred if not for Karpov’s little rebellion, or Orlov’s strange letter. He is more than a little fish, I think. Karpov is a free radical, a wildcard, an unaccountable force in all of this history we’ve been writing and re-writing. Everything that has happened, except perhaps that first explosion on the Orel, can be laid at Karpov’s feet, so do not be greedy in taking all this on yourself, Fedorov. You were just reacting to events he had already set in motion.”

  “But if I had not spoken to Mironov—to Sergie Kirov—then Stalin might have lived and the nation would not be fragmented.”

  “Don’t think you killed Joseph Stalin now, Fedorov,” Kamenski chided. “Sergie Kirov has already confessed to that crime, or so I was told. Correct Admiral?”

  “That is what he told us.”

  “So you see, Fedorov, Kirov is not a puppet. Your whisper in his ear decided nothing. He used his own free will to do what he did. He made choices too, another free radical in the stew.”