Well then… What should I do here? We will anchor here briefly and see to external repairs. I must be certain the solar fabric is well, and able to provide backup power when we need it. It appears that the nuke I ordered here was the only one to touch this place—a near miss, because all the buildings are still standing, and there is Tyrenkov’s plane. Yet there is no ship out there in the bay; no sign of Kirov.
“Sir!”
Trushin came rushing into the stateroom.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Report from the ground party. They went down in the sub-cloud car an hour ago. They say the compound is deserted, except for a few wandering packs of wolves.”
“Wolves? Interesting. Tell the men to catch me a few.”
“Catch them, sir?”
“You heard me clearly enough the first time, Trushin. Don’t make me repeat myself. Rig out some kind of cage, and have them find me a couple tough old beasts. I once kept dogs, but taming a few wolves would be quite interesting. Yes? Here, give these to one of the Sergeants.”
“Pills, sir?”
“Tranquilizers. Tell them to stick them in a hunk of meat and throw it to the wolves. In another hour, they’ll be able to get a few caged up. Otherwise, we’d have to shoot the dam things to capture them.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll tell Voronin and the guards. But what has happened here, sir? Where is everybody?”
“What has happened? World War Three, Trushin, that’s what happened here. What else? We won’t be long here in the Arctic. It’s just too goddamn cold. No, I think we will be heading south soon. Have the ground party see if there’s anything useful on that plane down near the airstrip, and search every building. Then get me a pair of wolves and we’ll be on our way. That is all.”
Trushin nodded, and backed out through the door, closing it quietly. Wolves, he thought. Well, the man’s name is Volkov. So, the war is over, or so it seems. I wonder what’s left out there? I suppose we will soon find out. Amazing to think that we skipped out on the worst of it. Just where are we now? Volkov says we moved forward in time, as impossible as that sounds. How far forward? This place is eerie, scary. I’m glad I won’t be the one trying to collar those wolves out there.
They spent a long Arctic day at the Northern Shamrock, and by that evening, Volkov had a pair of strapping, snarling Arctic wolves caged in a nook off the main stateroom of Tunguska. He let them sit there, growling, biting at the wired cage, threatening to attack if they could, but there was nothing they could do to escape. One was a great grey beast, with an orange glow in his eyes when they caught the light. The other was ghostly white, with fur meant to blend in with the snowy terrain, and just a hint of tallowy yellow.
When the sun finally lowered and dipped just beneath the horizon, it was bloody red outside, the landscape painted auburn and crimson by the last fading light. Volkov had been dining, and he set aside a portion of choice steak for the wolves. They had settled down, smelling the food, still eyeing him darkly from their cage, and with hunger in their eyes.
“Well now, that is much better. Yes? We’re all friends here. We are three of a kind, are we not, brothers? Here, see if you enjoy al little I kept for you from my table.”
When he stood up, they took to snarling, growling and baring their teeth again, hackles raised and shoulders hunched as though they were about to jump right through the cage to get at him.
He stood there, calm as a rock, and then stared at them, right in their wolfen eyes. Long minutes passed when he met the angry fire of their eyes with his own, but his stare was unremitting. Things might have gone differently if the beasts had not been caged, but in time, the wolves began to quiet, stared down by the steely will of Ivan Volkov.
Then he threw the beasts food, enough for two so they would not fight with one another. He saw that both had all they might want, nice raw chunks of freshly thawed steak.
“Good… Good…” he breathed softly, which caused them to growl again. But he persisted, and then began to speak to them in a calm and steady voice.
“I have fire in my eyes like you do,” he said as they were eating. “Yes, and I have brought fire with me on this airship. This will be a first for the two of you, eh? Soon we will take to the skies again, and you will see and do what few of your kind have ever experienced. Yes, I have fire, and wrath in my heart as well. Tyrenkov thought he was clever, stealing away aboard that ship, but he neglected one thing—when you give an order to kill someone, be sure you see the dead body. In this case that pertains to this airship. You were just too hasty, Tyrenkov. Not like you. Very sloppy, but through your kindness, here I sit in this gilded stateroom, and with two new friends.”
He smiled, watching the wolves eat, and occasionally throwing them a few more choice chunks of meat from his feeding bowl.
“Eat well tonight,” he told them. “Oh, your meals won’t always be so sumptuous and filling. It is always best to feed a newcomer well the first night, so that they remember just how gracious I can be. But there will be days when you will wait, and be hungry, and days when the meals will be lean. Yes, every man must learn that—how to wait, and how to ride out the lean time, until the fat is rich again.”
He threw them yet another morsel as he spoke, knowing that they were now associating this satisfying meal with the sound of his voice.
“This is lean time for me, if you want to know the truth. The war was most inconvenient, destroying the country I was conspiring to rule just when it seemed I could finally grasp the reins of power. Yet there are other days, other places, other lands out there for the conquering, and with this airship, other times as well. Tunguska is tremendous power, is it not, but that is not all. You see, I have stolen some of the fire that just consumed the world I came from. Yes, three little eggs, all quietly nested here on this ship. Intelligence and a ruthless nature can take a man far, and determination, but with three nuclear weapons… well, that can take a man so much farther.”
The wolves had literally “wolfed” down the last of the meat from his bowl, a better meal than they had taken for many weeks. He poured out two generous bowls of water, and slid them through the special opening at the bottom of the cage. The engineers had done a very good job, he thought, and on short notice. They might get some meat thrown their way tonight too.
“Three little eggs, but big enough to make for a very bad day in places like Berlin, or Paris, or London or New York. That would certainly get someone’s attention, but I must use these little eggs wisely. Better to plant them, like seeds, and then wait for the proper time to use the first. Once that goes off, then I could say I had any number of them, deep in the bowels of the great metropolitan cities of my enemies. Let’s put Shanghai on the list too, and Beijing. And then what would they do when I light my hidden candles? How would they find me? All I would be is a voice on the radio, and I can be very clever in the way that signal is transmitted, so as never to give them my true location. Yes, I can make my demands, endure their laughter, until my first little egg goes off. If necessary, I’ll use number two, and then they might just believe me when I tell them I have twenty.”
He smiled. Looking at his wolves, who now watched him to see what else might come their way this night.
“My friends, we are going to cause a good deal of mischief… but not here, not now. No, this cannot be the place where Karpov and Tyrenkov ended up, not at all. They would never suffer the desolation that must be out there now, all those smoking radioactive cities. Such a waste. There is clearly evidence out there in the snow that they were here. Yes, they were here, but fled in that ship of theirs, and to who knows where? So I must try again. Tonight we rest here, and you can listen to your brothers braying and howling at the moon. That should give you some comfort. But tomorrow we take to the skies again, to find another storm, and you will find another life—at my side, my faithful wolfhounds.”