“We can try,” said Fedorov glumly. “We all go together, right up those stairs.”
“What about Symenko and his crew? He’s got 30 men aboard. We gonna all file up those stairs, nuts to butts, like a string of blind men, and then what? Do we all come out in 1942 on the second floor of that inn? Excuse me, party of 35 checking in, but we don’t have a reservation.”
Now that Orlov put it to him that way, Fedorov scratched his head, thinking. Yes, what to do about Symenko and his men? It had been easy enough when he thought it would just be his own small group, but Orlov had painted a fairly difficult picture just now. He was silent for a moment, thinking. Timely cruelty… He had come here to wield that sword, and he could have no scruples if he was actually going to do this. They were knee deep in the borscht now, and he knew he could leave no loose ends here—no dangling threads that would spoil the loom of time in the days ahead.
“I’ll… think of something,” he said, but those thoughts were very dark and troublesome for him.
“Well now,” said Orlov glibly. “This will be like shuffling the deck right in the middle of the goddamn poker game! And guess who is sitting across the table—with a fist full of high cards? That bastard, Karpov, and that ham fisted brute of his, Grilikov, he’s the dealer. What will happen when he catches us in his precious railway inn?”
Fedorov knew more than he could say just then. He hadn’t told Orlov the whole story. The Chief thought he was wanting to make certain Kirov lived, not that he had come there to murder him. The Chief thought Karpov’s security men would be waiting for them at the top of those stairs if they all filed up, and had no inkling that none of that was likely to ever take form and shape if he killed Kirov. If he did what he had come here to do, then the whole world would be different when they climbed those steps. Stalin would be back, the Orenburg Federation likely gone, and Volkov dead or in a gulag if he tried to buck the man of steel. If there was one man who could handle Volkov, it would be Josef Stalin.
So there wouldn’t be any Free Siberian State either, and it would not be likely that Karpov ever seized power there. These airships would have gone the way of many other old inventions of history, and so airship Captains like Symenko, and the Irkutsk itself, would have no place in Stalin’s world. The ship and its crew were here, and that thought caused him some trepidation. How would Time account for them if they did try to return to 1942? They might not have a place in the changed future they would be returning to, and now that he thought of it, the airship itself remained a huge unsolved problem. He certainly could not leave it here, with radio sets, rudimentary radar equipment, WWII era guns and engineering. It would simply have to be destroyed, and he made a mental note to have a talk with Troyak about how they might accomplish that.
There was so much on his list to now. Be careful what you wish for, he thought. I got my wish to get through to Ilanskiy and reach this very time. Well, here I am. Now what do I do?
Chapter 35
The black rain was behind them now, but the sky was still alight with that strange astral light. It would be seen as far away as Moscow, where the night was illuminated to near daytime brightness. In Europe and England, people saw the horizon lit by a luminescent red glow, and some reported they could read a book by that light in the dead of night. The next hours saw Fedorov’s mind surrounded by so many questions.
He was reasonably sure of the time, believing this was late on the day after Tunguska, July 1, 1908. Now he struggled to remember the events that took place here earlier. Karpov told him they determined their arrival date when the met a clipper ship at sea. That was on July 10, so if he was correct, and they were back on the old Prime Meridian, then Karpov would appear here in a few days—in the Pacific. Then Fedorov appeared here a week later, shifting back with both Orlov, Troyak and others on the Anatoly Alexandrov. They determined that they arrived on 17 July, staying only briefly, and shifting forward again on 19 July to reach the year 2021.
That was when he hatched the plan to use Rod-25 on Kazan and try to return to 1908. It was a bumpy ride, taking them first to 1945, but they eventually shifted back, right on the eve of Karpov’s big showdown with Admiral Togo. That was July 25-26, 1908. So whatever I decide to do here now must be accomplished before Karpov arrives on 17 July. I have a little over two weeks here, and then I must be gone. Otherwise I could never arrive here on the Anatoly Alexandrov as I did. He realized the incredible danger he was in by arriving in this narrow window between his two appearances in 1908. The threat of Paradox loomed like a cold shadow in his mind.
Now his thoughts moved to Mironov. It was likely that he might still be at the railway inn. He told me he was traveling somewhere, but where? Ah, I remember now. He was traveling to visit relatives at Irkutsk. It was just blind chance that he found himself at the railway inn at Ilanskiy on the 30th of June. I researched that time after that encounter. That was right in the middle of the Great Race, the teams of men from various countries trying to race around the globe in a custom auto. In fact, the German team had just arrived at Ilanskiy, behind the Americans by a couple hundred miles. They were staying right there at the inn on the second floor. I bumped into them near the front desk before I retraced my steps up the back stairway. That was when I realized where I was. I saw the calendar at the front desk—1908!
He closed his eyes, summoning up the memory of that brief adventure. Mironov had two other men with him, a tall man with a Ushanka, and then that stranger—yes—the Englishman. After he got over his suspicion that I was working for the Okhrana, Mironov told me that second fellow was a reporter working for the Times of London, covering the Great Race, a man named Byrne. He might still be there as well.
I also know that Volkov used that stairway to get to 1908, but the details on that are fuzzy. I have no way of knowing how he did that. Or when he appeared—what day. He could be there this very day, or he might not appear for months. One thing I do know, Mironov followed me up those stairs on June 30th of his time, and like Orlov said, that was where I made my mistake and warned him of his fate. Kamenski didn’t think I was fully responsible. He argued that anything Mironov did after that warning was of his own free will, but would he have done those things if not for my warning?
So there he was, approaching that same fateful moment in time again, and wondering if the same actors would be on the stage. Would Mironov still be at the inn? If not, then Fedorov would be in a most difficult position. Mironov should be close, but it might take time to find him.
If he boarded a train for Irkutsk, thought Fedorov, then I suppose I could use the airship to find it, but that would be a very awkward rendezvous. Lord, I hope he hasn’t left the inn to travel by other means. It could take days to locate him, and I have so little time here. He tried to recall if there was a train there in 1908, but it was too fuzzy. The only thing to do was to get there, get on the ground, and then sort the situation out, but he had a lot of loose ends to deal with, and the thoughts in his mind about them weighed heavily on him.
What if I simply cannot locate him? Then what? I have one last play here—Karpov’s arrival in the Pacific. We have just enough fuel, and just enough time to get there. He was in the Sea of Japan, and I could simply radio him. He’ll certainly be surprised to hear from me, won’t he? But what would I be doing? I have no Rod-25 with me, and there would be no way to get him back to 2021. So there I would be, counting out the hours and minutes before the Anatoly Alexandrov appeared in 1908, and I was on that platform.
There it was—Paradox.
He had a very limited life span here, and now he knew he had no play in the Sea of Japan looking for Karpov. All he could do would be to try and persuade him not to take the actions he was planning, and to wait for the Alexandrov—to wait for his own arrival, and most likely his own death by Paradox. No. His only solution had to be here, at Ilanskiy. It was Mironov, just as he had reasoned it out with Karpov. It was Mironov’s death, or nothing. At least he had the stairway up to escape the Paradox
, but that presented other problems.
How to resolve the issue of the Irkutsk?
I can’t very well leave that airship here, he thought. Suppose I do what is necessary at Ilanskiy, then we re-embark on the Irkutsk. If I took it back to the epicenter, would we shift again? Would Time deliver us back to 1942? That sounded all too convenient. While he had good reason to assert his travel up and down the stairway would always deliver the walker back to the approximate time he last left, that same logic did not necessarily apply to his travel on that airship.
I can see how we might have been pulled here to this time by the sheer gravity of the Tunguska Event. I’ve thought that all along, when Kirov shifted here after Karpov set off that nuke in 1945 and killed the Iowa. Things seem to fall through to 1908 easily enough, perhaps pulled by that time gravity I’m speculating on. But would the inverse be true? I was able to get the Anatoly Alexandrov from 1908 back to 2021 again, but that was the work of Rod-25 and possibly Chief Dobrynin’s magic as well. Something tells me that I would only be courting further disaster if I took Irkutsk back to that epicenter. It’s just too risky. So what do I do?
The words that spoke now in his mind might have easily been uttered by Karpov. He would have the solution easily enough, but for Fedorov, getting there was an agony—the Irkutsk had to be destroyed, and not just the airship itself, but perhaps Symenko and the entire crew as well. Orlov had come out with his comical description of the whole damn crew, all packed into the downstairs dining room at the railway inn, and filing up that stairway, one after another. Would it work? He would have to try, because his only alternative would be Karpov’s solution—take down the airship, crew and all.
To do this, we would have to anchor the airship at Ilanskiy, a nice eyeful for anyone there to see. I’d need Symenko’s cooperation, and then the crew would have to disembark, probably using the same basket they hauled us up on. What a scene, and what effect would it have on the locals here, particularly when I give Troyak the go ahead to take that airship down? Could he? I haven’t even spoken with him on this.
“Sergeant Troyak?
“Sir?”
“A word with you please. We have a situation here… I can’t allow this airship to remain at large here, and I don’t think we can navigate back with it the way we came. Understand?”
Troyak merely nodded, waiting.
“Can you destroy it? Is there any weapon you have that could do that?”
“Yes sir. We have a handheld ATGM, and three thermobaric rounds.”
“Thermobaric? You’re talking about fire now.”
“Aye sir, and it would wreak havoc on this airship if we hit it from the ground. I could also rig up grenades at a few key places, the engineering section, engines. It would bust up the equipment.”
“Yes,” said Fedorov. “Nothing could be left for the locals to find or use. All the equipment, radars, radio sets, even the guns would have to be destroyed.”
“Most of the ship would die in the fires,” said Troyak, “but the bigger guns might have to be revisited on the ground and we could pop grenades down the barrels, or into the breech. That should do it.”
“You brought all this with you?”
“Standard weapons loadout. We assembled these things in packs, then we can just grab them and deploy.”
“I see. Well, that airship coming down would make quite a scene. Perhaps we should plan to do this at some distance from Ilanskiy, then we move to the town on foot. I have business at the inn, and I’ll need to get there as soon as possible. I suppose you could lead the crew to the railway inn after the demolition. It would be very important that this gets done flawlessly. No useable equipment could be left behind, and each and every last crewman would have to be herded to the town, and right to the railway inn. We can’t lose a single man. Otherwise they’d be stranded here.”
Even as he said all this, he realized how insane it was going to sound to Symenko. There was no way he could get him to understand and accept what was involved here. He was still under the assumption that this was 1942, and his fate was sailing towards a safe haven in Soviet Russia. Trying to explain that he needed his entire crew to assemble in that railway inn was going to be quite a challenge.
“Sergeant,” he said. “It’s occurred to me that Captain Symenko may not be cooperative in all of this. But neither he, nor any of his crew, can remain here, and that airship has to be destroyed. I may have to make a very tough decision here.”
“Aye sir,” said Troyak. He knew what Fedorov was saying now, hard as it sounded.
“This is 1908,” Fedorov went on, looking for the rhyme and reason. “If any of them fail to come with us… well, they can’t remain here. The impact that could have on future days would be impossible to calculate, and I cannot allow it to happen, not under any circumstances.”
“I understand, sir,” said Troyak stoically. “You give the order. My men and I will do whatever is necessary.”
Troyak could see that this was bothering Fedorov a good deal, but he was a soldier, signed on in the service of the Black Death. It was therefore no problem for him to know that he would become death in that service, and it would not be the first time he had taken lives, and for reasons, under orders, that would be trivial compared to what Fedorov was explaining here. He tapped his collar, where the comm-link microphone was embedded in all their service jackets. “Sir, pinch off that collar mike you have there, and give the order ‘Downfall.’ My men will handle the rest.”
Fedorov could say nothing more, simply nodding, but the look of guilt was plain on his face. In another hour they would make their approach to Ilanskiy. Now he had to see what he could do about Symenko.
* * *
“Look,” said Symenko, “I don’t have to know your business here. All I was to do was ferry your ass to Irkutsk! Now look at me. So now it’s back to plan A, and we’re coming up on Ilanskiy. Strange that we haven’t been spotted and challenged yet. I suppose that wreck off to the northeast has the radios all fouled up, but that doesn’t matter. Riga and Narva might be waiting there to blow us to hell.”
“They won’t be there,” said Fedorov, “I can assure you, but here’s my plan. There’s good clear ground just west of Ilanskiy. We can come in real low. The sun set two hours ago at 21:40. It won’t rise until a whisker after 03:00. We’ll come in before that and go to ground to drop land anchors. Then I’ll make my way to Ilanskiy on foot from there. All I ask is that you wait there.”
“What for? You won’t be coming back. Karpov’s men will have you in no time at all.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Symenko just grinned at him. “Alright, assuming we get anywhere near the place, I’ll hover shallow for you. Since you parlayed a safe harbor for me and my men with the Soviets, I owe you one. But if I catch even a glimpse of another airship, I’ll be up and on my way. You’ll be on your own down there. Understand? I’ve told you that I’m a dead man if Karpov gets me, and there it is.”
“Deal,” said Fedorov, realizing he was making one hell of a devil’s bargain here, and he was the devil! But what else could he do? The mission before him was all important. Everything depended on him now—everything. The moods and whims of Symenko could not be allowed to interfere. That didn’t make what he was doing here any easier. He still felt the weight of this man’s life, the lives of his entire crew, all piled on his weary back. But they were nothing compared to the weight of the whole world. That’s what he was carrying now, the weight of the whole goddamned world.
It was a world that was still strangely alight when they arrived, even in the dead of night. At this latitude, the sun would not be gone long, and even at its darkest, they could see easily, as if it were a grey, overcast day. Yet the horizon to the northeast still glowed eerily red, and the sky above it was strangely alight. The forest was still burning there, as now Fedorov reckoned these must be the pre-dawn hours of July 2nd.
Symenko was very surprised, but just as Fedorov had told
him, there had been no sign at all of the Riga or Narva. So the Irkutsk was able to sneak in low, to an open field about four kilometers east of the town. They put down a light ground anchor, but Symenko remained edgy, and requested that Fedorov and his party use the basket. In his mind, that was the safest and quickest way to get these intruders off his ship, once and for all.
“Symenko,” Fedorov told him before they lowered. “The radios are clear, and I will send you a signal if I have success. I’ll ask you to do something more, you and your crew, and it will be a matter of life or death for you all. Do as I say, will you? Your life, and the lives of your entire crew, will depend on it.”
“Fine,” said Symenko, wanting nothing more than to get this man and his Marines off his ship. I’d promise to kiss your ass if you asked nicely, he thought, but that doesn’t mean I’d really pucker up. Once you and those thugs of yours are on the ground, then I’ve got only one thing in mind. I’m taking this ship up into that red sky, and we’re running for Soviet territory. We don’t have to make it all the way to the Dolphin’s Head to rendezvous with that damn submarine. No, all I have to do is get my own ass to Soviet territory, then we can go to ground, hand over Irkutsk, or simply abandon her, and disappear.
That was what he was planning to do now, and so Fedorov would never make that plaintive call on the radio, asking Symenko to disembark his entire crew and foot it to Ilanskiy. Instead, it would be a call that came the other way as Fedorov, Orlov and Troyak approached the town, very near the inn. Zykov and the other four Marines were in the trees opposite the clearing where Irkutsk had been hovering. He called Fedorov over their service jacket comm-link, warning that the Irkutsk was pulling up its land anchors and making ready to depart, already drifting up and away. Fedorov knew what Symenko was doing, what he had obviously decided, and that he had no time to argue with him now. He took a deep breath and looked at Troyak heavily.
Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Page 30