“Sergeant,” he said grimly. “Send Zykov the code: Downfall.”
Chapter 36
On the 30th of June, 1908, Train 92 was heading east on the Trans-Siberian Rail when it was jolted by the intense shock of the fiery blast above the Stony Tunguska. Even though the event was nearly 400 miles away, the train shook so violently that the Engineers brought it to a halt. Many on that train saw the terrible tail of fire in the sky as the object surged in from the southeast with a terrible roar. The air quavered with its massive sonic boom. The shock wave would circle the entire earth, vibrating instruments at meteorological stations as far away as London.
When the worst of the blast had subsided, they moved on, the train cars buzzing with frightened conversations about what had happened. It was decided to halt the train at Kansk to inspect it for damage, or even something as nefarious as a bomb, but nothing was found. The Engineers inquired as to what may have happened, and the locals reported that they had felt the earth shake and a heavy blast of wind. Many windows were broken, which prompted local magistrate Pytor Sukhodaeff to cable the Seismic Commission in Saint Petersburg to report the event. Rumors had begun circulating that a meteor had fallen nearby, and some residents were already out in the countryside looking for it. One reported he had found something near the hamlet of Filimonovo, but it turned out to be nothing more than a large rock.
Train 92 was delayed there all that day, as the Engineers were told the tracks were blocked by debris ahead. They decided to go out on horseback to inspect the line as far as Ilanskiy, but found no blockage. The next morning, they would move on to Ilanskiy for a brief stop to pick up any passengers wanting to head east. That was the train that Mironov had been waiting for. It would continue on to Irkutsk, where he had relatives he could visit while he was laying low after his recent discharge from prison.
Yet the events of that day had been most unusual, the violent sound of explosion and rattling shock wave, the terrible red sky to the northeast, then came the strange man dressed in military garb that had suddenly appeared on the scene. Mironov had been very curious about him, and very suspicious. He would see the shadow of the Okhrana everywhere, and so, when he saw the man slip away up the back stairway, he decided to follow him, leaving the English reporter, Thomas Byrne, alone for a time in the dining room with his interpreter.
That man had been Fedorov himself, appearing there for the first time after he followed that curious rumbling sound during his hunt for Orlov. Following him up the stairs, Mironov had been apprehended by other soldiers, who took him to this Fedorov, as the man had called himself. While he was gone, to a place he only later came to know as the distant future of 1942, other things were happening at the railway inn.
Byrne, the reporter, had been sent there to cover the Great Race by the industrious owner of the Times of London, Alfred Harmsworth. A few days earlier he had interviewed the leading American team as it came through, and that day, the German team had been staying at that inn, making ready to move on west. Needless to say, the events of that day caused them to linger, but Byrne, hearing them near the front desk, believed they would soon depart. So he thanked his local interpreter with a hearty handshake, wanting to get up to his room on the second floor as soon as possible to gather his belongings.
He had seen Mironov go up the back stairs after that other strange man left them, the one who called himself Fedorov. Then Mironov appeared again, a troubled look of astonishment on his face. He said nothing, striding quickly across the dining hall and out the main entrance by the front desk.
Seeing the doorway still ajar in that nook near the hearth of the dining room, Byrne thought he would go that way to save time, but it was to be a most fateful decision. He started up the dark stairway, feeling very odd half way up, a prickly feeling sweeping over him, and with a sensation of slight nausea. He reckoned it was only the dark confined space, and sudden disorientation as he groped about in the shadows. When he finally reached the top, shuddering to feel the sticky brush of a cobweb on his brow, he heard voices. Trying the door, he found it locked, which was probably why Mironov had made such a hasty retreat, he thought. But rather than simply retreating back down those stairs as Mironov had, he decided to knock, and the sound of his knuckles on the door would reverberate through time like a great boom.
Mironov did not find the door locked on his journey up those stairs. Unbeknownst to him, it had taken him to 1942, where Fedorov and Troyak had collared him, questioning him briefly, before releasing him again. That whispered warning that had haunted Fedorov ever since had been made right there on that upper landing near the door where Byrne heard those voices, but 79 years earlier! For some unaccountable reason, Thomas Byrne’s journey up that stairway took him much farther forward in time, all the way to the year 2021. The voices he had heard were those of the modern day innkeeper and a very diligent Captain in the Russian Naval Intelligence Service, Ivan Volkov. He had been looking for Fedorov along the Trans-Siberian Rail in 2021, ordered to do so by Director Kamenski.
What happened next was a strange twist in the history, which never would have happened were it not for the presence of Thomas Byrne there that hour. Hearing that knock, and Byrne’s voice on the other side of the door, Volkov had forced the very edgy proprietor to unlock the door, seizing upon Byrne as a suspicious character. The pulse of history itself quickened in those moments, for Volkov thought he had found a hidden passage in the inn, and he forced Byrne back down those steps and back into the dining room, where his suspicions were confirmed by the sudden appearance of three men with guns.
These were the NKVD Colonel and another henchman, with Lieutenant Surinov, the officer Fedorov had berated for the poor treatment of prisoners heading east to one of Stalin’s gulags in 1942. Seeing Volkov and Byrne, they immediately apprehended them at gunpoint, and Surinov was asked if this was the man that had caused all his trouble. The uniform was similar, but Surinov was not certain. The violence that followed that interrogation stunned Byrne, with Volkov gunning down all three of his captors and then seizing Byrne again, determined that he was behind some nefarious plot here.
“You!” Volkov pointed his weapon at Byrne. “Come with me.”
The Captain prodded him, goading him up the main stairway to the second floor this time, until they reached the upper landing.
“Where is the room you were staying in?”
“There, sir… The second door on the right, I think.” Byrne was very confused, frightened, and could not imagine who this man was, though his garb looked much like the uniform worn by that other man they had encountered, the man named Fedorov.
His captor forced open the door to his room, easing in carefully before he pushed Byrne inside. “Russian Naval Intelligence!” he shouted, leaping in behind him, but the room was dark and silent. Byrne was very surprised to see that none of his things were there, and he immediately thought that he had pointed out the wrong room in his haste and fear. The bed was facing the wrong direction, the bed clothing all different, the curtains on the window gone, the oil lamp on the night stand missing. He was, in fact, standing in the correct room, number 214, but it would never enter his head that it was the year 1942 at that moment.
His captor’s eyes narrowed as he methodically scanned the nightstand, made up bed, and then he walked to inspect the closet and restroom to make certain no one was concealed there.
“Well it doesn’t seem that anyone has stayed in this room for some time.” The suspicion was obvious in his tone. “Very well, come with me. Let’s find that old proprietor and see what he has to say about things. What was your name again?”
“Thomas Byrne, sir. I’m a Reporter for the London Times—just here to cover the great race, sir.”
“Well, Mister Byrne, your name should be on the register of this inn, yes? You had better hope I find it there. Now move!”
They were out into the hall, very near the back stairwell, and the hard hand of the man on his shoulder steered Byrne towards the entran
ce.
“So you say you were meeting with friends in the dining hall, eh? Some associates? I trust you saw what happened to them when they presumed to trifle with me. Bear that in mind. Now get down those stairs!”
And so down they went, the first downward movement by Byrne, the second for Volkov. As Fedorov had theorized, Byrne would get unerringly right back to the year and time where he started, 1908, and all the while, Volkov’s hand was tight on his shoulder, his pistol jabbed in the hollow of his back. And so he would take Volkov back, right along with him, each of those 17 steps down marking off the years, 34 in all. That was how Volkov got back to 1908, not because Fedorov had whispered anything to Mironov, but because an enterprising Newspaper man named Harmsworth had sent Thomas Byrne to far off Siberia, to look for news that might boost his circulation.
If Thomas Byrne had not been there at the railway inn that day to cover the arrival of the German race team, Volkov would have never reached that fateful year. But how far back did the line of causality go? Where was the real Pushpoint on that event? Was it Byrne’s decision to hasten up those stairs to fetch his belongings, or should the fault be laid on the desk of Harmsworth? Then again, the history of that man’s life led even further back, into the lives of the parents that had given birth to Harmsworth. Was the Pushpoint there, hidden in the romance that had given birth to Harmsworth? Or was it the school master he encountered later in life, one J. V. Milne, where Harmsworth was educated at Henley House School in Kilburn, London? It was he who had encouraged the young Harmsworth to start the school newspaper, setting him on a career track that would later see him found the Times, and send Thomas Byrne off to Siberia.
Strangely, one of Harmsworth’s teachers there at that very same school was someone who would later do a good deal of speculating and writing on the arcane possibility of traveling through time—a man named H. G. Wells….
One thing or another led Byrne to that railway inn, and it was he who led Volkov back to 1908. The dining room they found themselves in when they made that final descent was obviously the same room he had been in before. Byrne could tell by the shattered windows from that terrible blast, and the amber glow that was still illuminating the room. Yet his assailant seemed very confused and surprised. The bodies of the three men Volkov had murdered so violently were nowhere to be found.
Byrne could feel his captor’s hand tighten painfully on his shoulder. They moved to the front desk, and the stranger looked over everything very carefully. No one was there, but he saw the guest register open on the desk, a pen there as if it had been dropped at a moment’s notice, and squinted at the scrawled handwriting. Byrne knew his story would be vindicated, for he could see where he had signed his own name there, right along with the names of the German race team when they had arrived.
“Koeppen,” said the stranger. “The thirtieth of June, oh eight? The year is obviously wrong. 2008?”
“One of the contestants,” said Byrne, glomming on to the information as if to buttress his story with this strange and dangerous looking man with a gun.
“Contestants?”
“In the Great Auto Race, sir. The race I am here to report on.”
“What are you talking about, you fool?”
The stranger gave him an odd look, then scanned the front desk area, seeming more confused with each passing moment.
“Where is everyone?” he said, his eyes dark and dangerous.
“Probably out near the tracks, sir, where I should be. The Protos is leaving this morning. That’s the German team’s car. I was just running upstairs to fetch my notebook when I found the door locked on the upper landing and began knocking to see if I could gain access. Then you appeared with that other older man, and… well, I’m very confused, sir. Are you with Mironov?”
“What? Mironov? I am with the Russian Naval Intelligence, and I have had more than enough of this nonsense. Is this Mironov the associate you spoke of earlier?”
Byrne followed what the man said as best he could, in spite of the fact that his Russian was limited. Yet he heard enough to realize this man was an intelligence officer, and Mironov’s warning about the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, rose as a caution in his mind now. “He was just another boarder,” he said, not knowing what else to tell this dangerous man. “I had breakfast with him. I thought perhaps that you were with his party.”
Now the man peered outside. “Through that door,” he said gruffly, nudging Byrne out. They emerged to find the northeastern sky still aglow with a strange light, for there had been some tremendous explosion there and the whole taiga forest was set aflame. There was still a distant rumble of thunder in the air, as though from a cannonade, or more explosions.
“My God,” the man said as he stared at the sky. “They’ve finally done it,” he breathed. “It’s begun.”
Byrne had no idea what the man was talking about. He seemed to be reading some meaning in that terrible glow on the horizon, but the Things he said next made no sense.
“Alright,” said Volkov. “Your story pans out. Get on with your business. But see that?” The man pointed. “The war has started, and if you have any sense in your head you will get away from here as fast as you can. There’s a big naval weapons arsenal south of here, and an airfield at Kansk to the west. They’ll certainly be targeted, so you had better head east. I must find my men. What could have happened to them?” The man seemed to say that more to himself than to Byrne, who nodded, grateful that he was set free, and thinking only of getting away from this man.
He turned heading towards the railway yard to see if the train had arrived. At that moment it was still at Kansk to the west, and would not continue on to Ilanskiy until the next day. So Byrne wasn’t going to get anywhere that day, war or no war. What did this strange man mean by that remark about the war—Naval Weapons Arsenal? Airfield? Orville and Wilbur Wright had only just made the first flight in a rickety flying machine a little over five years ago. Such craft existed, but they were mostly experimental, and the airships developed by Count Zeppelin never came here, so there was nothing that might pass for an airfield at Kansk that he knew of. He had stopped there briefly when the train last brought him here before getting off at Ilanskiy. He sighed, thinking he might as well try to find Mironov again, and warn him of what had happened to him. That strange man had to be Okhrana, which means the other fellow named Fedorov might be the same. First, he decided to go back to his room to look for his belongings, only this time he took the main stairway up, as he noticed that a very nervous looking innkeeper had closed the lower door to the back stairway off the dining room and latched it with a padlock.
“Sir,” he asked, “will the train be in this morning?”
“After that?” said the innkeeper, motioning to the red glow outside while sweeping up the broken glass by the windows. “Not likely,” he said gruffly.
“There was trouble here,” Byrne ventured. “A bit of murder and mayhem; strange characters everywhere. You found the bodies?” He could see no blood on the floor or carpet.
“Bodies? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” said Byrne, still very confused. The man acted as though his only concern was the broken window. “I’ll be in my room,” he said. “It looks as though the German team will be staying here another night as well. Good day sir, if it could possibly be redeemed after a morning like this.”
Byrne went up to room 214, as much to gather his wits as his belongings. There would be quite a bit of commotion about the inn that day, with several visitors getting off Train 92 and taking carriages on the muddy roads all the way to Ilanskiy seeking lodging. They had come to see the race, though they were late, and when they heard the German team was still at Ilanskiy, they came to make good their effort.
The following day there would be more than stray guests off that train. Something would loom low on the horizon from the northeast, where the dull glow of burning fire still lit on that distant edge of the wilderness. Byrne would see it, ju
st after dawn, rising up in the deep crimson light, a great silver-grey whale in the sky, soon backlit by the sun. A Zeppelin, he thought, amazed that such a craft would be here. Then came the wrenching sound of another explosion, and there was fire in the sky again where the airship had been, and the sound of something crashing down to the earth. Frightened guests came running from their rooms, thinking this was yet another terrible red dawn, as the day before, and hearing the sound of booming explosions yet again.
Byrne was one of them, rushing down the main stairway and reaching the doorway there just in time to bump right into a man he immediately recognized. There were two other hard looking men with him in soldier’s uniforms, one brandishing a dangerous looking weapon.
It was Fedorov, with the implacable Sergeant Troyak, and Orlov in his wake. There was a look of despair on Fedorov’s face, his eyes wet and glassy, and with a desperate, almost vacant look in them. Symenko, with all his crew on the Irkutsk, had just met the wired fate set off by Fedorov’s order transmitted to Zykov—Downfall. The sound of those thermobaric rounds exploding, and the demolitions Zykov’s men would carry out in the wreckage, would be reported again by the locals as that same strange artillery fire they had heard the previous days.
For Fedorov, each sharp report was scoring a mark on his soul, and the worst of it was still before him. Then, with a sudden awareness of recollection, he knew who he had just bumped into—the reporter! Now he had to find Mironov.
The Saga Continues….
Kirov Series: Thor’s Anvil
As Fedorov arrives at the moment of dread and destiny, he must now struggle to find Mironov, and steel himself for the mission he has taken upon himself. His decision, and the events that follow, will shape the course of all future days from that moment on.
Meanwhile, as the world awaits that decision, events proceed on the East Front in the altered history of WWII. Steiner’s decision to withdraw east of the Don has created a thorny problem for Manstein, and now he must gather the resources to try and defeat Zhukov’s sudden counteroffensive, and restore the line of communications to Kalach. At the same time, Steiner presses his SS legions forward towards the embattled city of Volgograd, determined to deliver the prize to Hitler and redeem his apparent failure during the bloody month of Red October. The history has again conspired to give us the grueling trial and terror that became the greatest battle ever fought in human history, only this time it will be known as the Battle of Volgograd.
Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Page 31