He gave Gromyko those sad empty eyes again.
“We have to kill them,” said the Captain, understanding the darker side of the mission Kamenski was handing him now. “Kill Kirov, the ship—there won’t be any magic tricks with a control rod this time. That’s the only way we can really be certain this loop you speak of could not repeat—kill the ship and crew. That’s why you want to load all those nice new missiles onto my boat.”
“Captain, as I said, you are a very astute man.”
A very astute man…. Gromyko smiled to himself. Yes, this was the trunk of the tree now. This was the new Prime Meridian, not the world he first came from, and not the world he returned to, finding Kamenski waiting for him there with this mission. This was the Prime, and it was now his mission to decide whether it would stand, or whether it would fall, and that all depended on the life or death of that ship, Kirov.
At least I don’t bear the burden alone, he thought. Time shuffled the deck on me somehow, and I have an Ace in my hand this time—Admiral Volsky. It will be his choice, won’t it…. But what if he decides that Kirov must live? Then what?
Something told him this mission had many dark corners to get around before it would ever end. Here he was, and with Admiral Volsky at his side, and now they had to decide what to do.
Chapter 30
“So then,” said Gromyko. “What is our plan?”
He was sitting with Admiral Volsky in his cabin, a private meeting so none of the other officers and crew might overhear. Kamenski had briefed them both when they departed, yet Gromyko was still bothered by the jumble of memories in his head. Who was he now? He clearly remembered the secret rendezvous when the Admiral and Fedorov first came aboard, sneaking in on a submersible as his sub remained hidden in the still dark waters beneath the Admiral Kuznetsov.
He had been at war in 2021, his submarine already clashing with the Americans when Karpov took Kirov and the Red Banner Pacific Fleet out. Then Kirov vanished with the unexpected eruption of the Demon Volcano, and he had taken on these two other officers, hearing their impossible tale as to where the ship had turned up. It wasn’t dead as many in the fleet first thought. That volcano had sent Karpov’s flotilla careening into the past, and now Gromyko was to take his boat back and look for it. But how?
That was when he learned of the control rod they had brought aboard, and its amazing effects. He could still recall how hard it had been to internalize all of that, get his mind around what was happening and come to accept it. In time, the mind could embrace every impossible thing. He had seen the reality of the past, and used the power of his boat to fight there.
Then, while caught up in yet another duel at sea in the Atlantic, they had encountered a most unexpected challenger. Chernov had been at his station, as always, when he spoke those most unwelcome words.
“Con…. Undersea contact. Possible submarine…”
Gromyko turned, a question in his eyes. “An uninvited guest,” he said. “German U-boat?”
There was a moment’s hesitation as Chernov continued to toggle switches on the module he had been using to process the signal. “Sir… This sounds like a British sub.” His voice carried a note of alarm that surprised Gromyko, and he never liked surprises. “British? We were not informed they had anything out here.”
“Sir! This is crazy. It’s reading as Astute Class!” He gave Gromyko a shocked expression. “We got lucky and recorded one boat after learning its deployment date. It’s the only profile we’ve ever managed to get, but my readings are above a 90% match for this signal.”
“Impossible,” said Gromyko, but then a deeper instinct asserted itself, reptilian, a reflex born of many hours beneath the sea. “All stop!” he said. “Launch noisemaker sled number one. Then right rudder fifteen, down bubble fifteen! Rig for emergency silent running!”
Astute Class… And Director Kamenski was most curious about that when he heard about it, thought Gromyko. My own reaction was perhaps overblown. There I was, fighting the second World War, when suddenly I’m told we have a visitor from the third. In my mind, I had no way of knowing where I was. There was never any certainty on this boat from the moment they first brought that control rod aboard. I could have been anywhere. The boat could have shifted again for all I knew. Yet there was one sure thing that I could count on in those split seconds—Chernov. There was no way he would make a mistake and classify an old WWII boat as Astute Class. So I did what I would have done in 2021, fought as I would have fought there. We barely avoided that surprise attack, and when I threw my punch back at the unseen enemy, I wanted to make sure I killed him.
The next thing I know, the boat was somewhere else….
Now this.
Another mission with Volsky, and with the same objective as the first—find Kirov, bring it home, and that failing… kill the ship. Volsky looks tired, but he seems to have settled himself. Yes, he experienced the same thing I did, with memories of different lives all jumbled together in his mind, but now things have quieted, the shock of that receded, and he has been able to sort things through. I still don’t understand it—how could I be carrying all these memories in my head. Poor Volsky apparently has a good many more.
“Captain,” said the Admiral. “This is going to be a most delicate situation. Since Fedorov never kept his appointment with you, something must have happened to him—we know not what. But knowing that young man, I will bet he is still alive and well. We have remained radio silent up here for some time, but now I think we must contact the ship again. That would be the most direct way to address our problem.”
“It would reveal our presence here to Karpov,” said Gromyko.
“I understand what you are saying, but what else are we to do?”
“We could remain silent. If you might have to go to someone’s house and kill them, would you knock first? In that event, we must hit the ship the old-fashioned way. I don’t think it would be too hard to determine where they are. Karenin picked up some radio chatter just yesterday. Apparently, there was an attack at an important Japanese naval base.”
“That should not be surprising,” said Volsky.
“But it involved missiles….”
That got Volsky’s attention.
“Missiles? Then that must have been Kirov; Karpov. The man is fighting his own private little war with the Japanese out here. Such an attack would be very much in accord with the way Karpov thinks.”
“So we could just navigate to that sector and start the hunt there.”
“Suppose we do,” said Volsky. “I do not think we will just creep up on Kirov easily. You forget Tasarov.”
“Yes, yes, the best ears in the fleet. Our man Chernov is pretty damn good as well.”
“Yet one way or another, contact will occur,” said Volsky. “If we are to give Karpov the option of returning with us, then we’ll have to speak with him.”
“Frankly Admiral, I have very little hope in that. Didn’t we try to convince Karpov to return earlier? There he was, fighting the Japanese in 1908, and he was driven. I do not think he will be any different this time.”
“In that you may be correct.” Volsky shrugged. “He disobeyed a direct order from me to cooperate with us and return to 2021. Setting aside the fact that we have no idea whether or not we could even pull that off, Karpov will not want to cooperate this time either. He was quite determined to get control of Kirov, and now we see what he has in mind. He wants to fight the Japanese, and he will think that by doing so he can convince them to relinquish the territories they took from Russia after his last intervention failed in 1908. In fact, if we do contact him, he will throw that at us right from the beginning. He will say it was our interference that prevented him from settling things in 1908.”