Men of War (2013) Read online

  “Well, keep your eyes on the monitors, Markov. You can read your magazine in the break room. Yes?”

  “Go and eat, Ilya. I’ll see you in another hour.”

  It was actually going to be a good deal longer. Garin went down the long corridor past the inspection room where Dobrynin was working, and into the cafeteria for his meal break. Half way through his sandwich there was a noticeable flutter in the overhead lighting. He looked up, saw a neon bulb winking fitfully, and gave it no more thought. A little over an hour later he finished his tea and went back down the hallway, sticking his head into the inspection room to tell Dobrynin he was going back to relieve Markov.

  “Very good, Mister Garin. How’s the food tonight?”

  “It’s very tasty, sir. Good rye bread. You should try it.”

  “When I have finished looking over these readouts.”

  “Markov says you want me to collate the data again?”

  “If you would be so kind, Mister Garin.”

  Garin looked at his watch. “The cycle is nearly over now, sir. Any problems?”

  “We won’t know until we get all the data from the scan. But you can commence your shutdown sequence now. Number twenty-five has already been withdrawn and the original twelve apostles seem to be praying quietly. Move in the remaining 12 rods now and commence shutdown. Markov can take his meal break.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get right down there.”

  Garin slipped out the door, and ran down the hall to the reactor room, inserting his key card for entry and waiting until he had a green access light. He pushed open the door, thinking the room seemed a bit dim, and heard it close behind him.

  “Markov, your turn,” he said. “The bread is pretty good tonight, but not before we run the shutdown sequence. Then I’ll have to spend another two hours collating the data from the scan.”

  He walked into the control room, thinking it seemed oddly strange. Then he realized what was wrong. His coat was missing from the wall rack. There was nothing on the monitor desk, not the book he had been reading, the empty tea cup or his pen. Markov’s magazine was gone as well. In fact the chairs were missing. What was going on here?

  “Markov?”

  Garin leaned around to look behind the monitor station, but there was no sign of the other man. Where was he? Dobrynin would have a fit if he found out Markov had left his shift early. There was no restroom in the test-bed monitoring station, but perhaps he drank too much tea and had to run out. He could understand him taking the book and magazine, but the chairs? It made no sense. The Chief was going to skin him alive. Human eyes had to be on the monitors at all times during any part of a core maintenance procedure, and he shook his head, looking at the monitors with relief when he saw no warning lights.

  Stupid Markov, he thought. He’ll get himself into some real trouble if I tell the Chief he left his station. What’s he doing with the chairs? Then he reached up and toggled the switches to initiate a full system shutdown, concluding the test. Another set of twelve more rods would descend into the reactor vessel, stilling down the fission to a very low level prior to final shutdown.

  The wall intercom buzzed, and he walked over to it and thumbed the call button. “Reactor Testing Room, Mishman Garin speaking.”

  “Garin? Have Markov come in here with his clipboard before he takes his meal break.” It was Chief Dobrynin.

  Garin looked around…the clipboard was also gone. “Sir,” he began. “Markov is no longer here, and the clipboard is missing. He must have taken it with him.” He hated to be a snitch, but it had to be said. “He was not here when I arrived to relieve him, Chief.”

  “Not there? I’ll fry him in oil! Where is he, that good for nothing… Never mind, Garin. Just complete the shutdown sequence. I’ll be there in a few minutes. If I find him in the head I’ll flush his own stupid head down the toilet!”

  “One more thing, sir…” Garin bit the bullet and made his report. “The chairs are missing. Both of them, sir.” He felt stupid as well, but what else could he say?

  “The chairs are missing?”

  The chairs were missing, the clipboard was gone. Garin’s jacket was no longer on the wall rack, the book and magazine were gone, and Markov’s tea was missing too. Markov was missing, and it would be the last that any man alive on earth that day would ever see of him.

  Part IV

  Storm Clouds

  “What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?”

  ― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

  Chapter 10

  Doctor Zolkin was the first senior officer on the scene, arriving behind the two Seamen and a 2nd Class Petty Officer. There were a cluster of three or four other sailors outside the hatch, and he quickly shooed them away. Peering into the cabin, he saw the men ready to lift another man from the cot, and stepped quickly inside, closing the hatch behind him.

  “Leave him there, please,” he said, stepping to the side of the cot and seeing the man’s limp body. One look told him he was not merely asleep or unconscious. He opened an eyelid, saw the dark weal and purple bruise marks on the man’s neck, checked for a pulse there and noted the stain on his pants in the groin area. It was Voloshin, the man who had come to him a few weeks earlier with nightmare visions of a Japanese plane flying right through him. Zolkin had prescribed a good meal and bed rest, with a couple of aspirin infused with a mild tranquilizer, and sent the man to this very room on the officer’s deck for some peace and quiet. That was weeks ago, but Voloshin had come back. An orderly had been cleaning the empty rooms and found it difficult to enter here. Forcing the hatch open he saw Voloshin hanging from a high welded metal hook on the wall. He was stone cold dead.

  “When did you find him?”

  “Just ten minutes ago, sir. He was there.” The Petty officer pointed to the hook, and Zolkin nodded gravely.

  “Very well, fetch a stretcher and take him down to the sick bay. I’ll have to do an autopsy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I think it would be best if you do not dwell on this in the ranks,” the Doctor admonished. “We have all had a hard ride of late, and the men are worn out.”

  “It wasn’t only that, sir.”

  “Oh?”

  “Voloshin got some bad news today.”

  “What news?”

  “His wife, sir. He called home, but no one answered. The second time there was another man on the phone. He asked for her, but the man said there was no one by that name there.”

  “I see…” Zolkin picked up his emergency medical kit. “And you think Voloshin believed his wife was seeing this other man?”

  The two matros seamen shifted uncomfortably now and the other man continued. “It’s not that, sir. Voloshin moved his family here to Vladivostok two weeks before we made our farewell voyage from Severomorsk. He had a small apartment right here in Vladivostok—in the Leninskiy District. We went there with him yesterday but…”

  “But what?”

  “There was no apartment there, Doctor. He had building number twenty, but the numbers were all wrong: nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-three.”

  “You were on the right side of the street?”

  “Of course, sir. But there were no even numbers, not anywhere on the street. It was very strange, sir. We looked up the address for his phone number, and it was way over on the other side of town, number 20 Partisanskiy Prospekt. But his apartment building was on Nevel’skogo Street. He was very upset about it, sir.”

  “I can imagine he was.”

  Zolkin wanted to think that the men had simply gone to the wrong address. After all, Voloshin had just moved to a new town thousands of miles from the cold north of Severomorsk. It may have been easy to become confused in the unfamiliar streets and neighborhoods of the city here. Yet, the more he thought about it the more he realized that the man woul
d not likely forget the place of his new home, and the new life he hoped to start here.

  “Very well, gentlemen. I’ll look into this. See that he is taken to sick bay at once.” He went to the linen cabinet and took out a clean sheet, covering Voloshin’s body with an air of solemnity. He was reaching for his medical bag again when someone stepped through the hatch, a tall officer in a gray overcoat with silver buttons and Captain’s stripes on his cuff. The man took a quick look at the scene and fixed his attention on the Doctor, knowing he would be the senior man present.

  “What happened here?”

  Zolkin gave him a quick glance. He did not know the man and so he stood formally and introduced himself. “Doctor Dmitri Zolkin, Ship’s Physician.”

  “This man is ill?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but who might I be speaking to?”

  The other man seemed annoyed, his eyes narrowed and a haughty air about him. “Volkov,” he said dryly. “Captain Volkov, Naval Intelligence.”

  “Yes, well it’s Captain Zolkin here as well.” The Doctor smiled, extending a hand, which Volkov shook without much warmth. “There,” Zolkin continued. “Now that the Captains have tipped their hats, I think we would be more comfortable discussing this in my office. These men will have some work to do. Would you walk with me, Captain Volkov?” He gestured to the open door, and Volkov frowned, then stepped outside.

  “You haven’t answered my question, Doctor,” he said as they started down the corridor.

  “Was the man ill? No, Captain. The man was quite dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Unfortunately so. From my initial observations it appears to be a suicide, but of course I will complete a formal autopsy and make a full report.”

  “Were those other men involved?”

  “No, no. They were just orderlies assigned to clean the officer’s quarters. They found him here.”

  “This man was an officer?”

  “In fact, he was not. That was Able Seaman Voloshin. Apparently he had some family problems—bad news.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “It will most likely be a long story, Captain.”

  “I see…Well I will want the full report, Doctor.”

  “You will want the report? Are you a new command level officer assigned to the ship, Mister Volkov?”

  “I told you. I am with Naval Intelligence, Inspectorate Division.”

  “Well I am not in the habit of filing my medical briefs with the Naval Inspectorate. I thought you people were mostly concerned with ship’s systems and weapons inventories.”

  “I’m afraid we concern ourselves with a great deal more, Doctor, though I can’t say that is a matter I need to discuss with you. Simply file your brief in the medical log, and of course I will want a complete copy of all those files as well.”

  Zolkin raised his eyebrows. “I will hate to inconvenience you, Captain, but the logs were damaged during the accident. I’m not sure if you heard. Yes, nothing seemed to function properly and the technicians haven’t had time to get round to my office yet with a new computer. I’ve kept a few manual records, of course, for all prescriptions and drugs issued from the inventory. But there have been no formal computer logs, beyond documenting those men lost in the accident and other injuries sustained by the crew.”

  They paused at a ladder, and it was clear that Volkov was not happy. “No medical logs?” he said, a note of recrimination in his voice. “This is most irregular, Doctor. In fact I may go so far as to say it was a dereliction of duty.”

  “I can assure you, Captain, where the notion of duty entered my mind it was entirely to be of service to the men lined up outside my sick bay door. Of course I made basic notations in my medical journal, which I would be happy to release to the inspectorate upon approval by a ranking command level officer.”

  “I am such an officer, Doctor. Don’t trouble yourself by going to the Admiral.”

  “You are now in the command structure for this ship? When did you transfer in, Volkov?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I haven’t transferred in. I’m here to complete a thorough investigation on this matter, and I will expect the full cooperation of every man aboard, particularly from the officers.”

  “Oh, I will be very happy to satisfy you, Captain, but around here we do things by the book. I’ll need approval from ether Captain Karpov or the Admiral. After that you can spend all the time you wish trying to interpret my miserable writing scrawl. But then again, Physicians are notorious for that, yes?”

  Zolkin smiled, gesturing to the ladder well. “After you, sir.”

  Volkov clenched his jaw, then relented and started down the ladder, flashing an angry glance at Zolkin as he went.

  * * *

  Admiral Volsky had finished his main meeting with Pacific Fleet Commander Boris Abramov, clearing the way for his takeover of that position. Now the two men sat in a well appointed office at the Fleet Headquarters building at Fokino, a small closed town above a small inlet some twenty-five miles southeast of the main harbor at Vladivostok. Volsky set down his teacup, staring out over the blue rooftops of the town to the small islands in the bay and wondering if he would ever get back to a place like Tahiti before he died.

  “So that is the situation, Leonid,” said Abramov. “One old Slava class cruiser, five rusting destroyers, a few frigates, ten submarines with so many leaks we issue the men chewing gum so they can have something handy to plug them when needed. Thank God they sent us Kuznetsov, and now your ship. The fleet is a bit of a mess, particularly with the present situation down south in the Sea of Japan.”

  “Where is Kuznetsov?”

  “Up north at the moment, running drills with her Mig-29F Squadron. We’d still be flying the older SU-33s if India hadn’t placed that order in 2012. That gave us enough economy of scale to roll out thirty-six Migs for Kuznetsov. It must be getting lonely up in Severomorsk with Kirov and our only fleet carrier here now.”

  “They just commissioned the Leonid Brezhnev. He’ll stand in for us there. And they get most of the new Orlan Class ships. But what’s this business with Japan? We must talk about that now. We’ve been incommunicado for the last five or six weeks and missed out on all the news.”

  “That was quite a hat trick,” Admiral. “If not for the fact that NATO staff are getting flayed alive for failing to detect your transit to the Pacific I think you would be the one being skinned. Suchkov was very upset. How did you manage it?”

  “Suchkov is so old he can’t even think straight any longer,” said Volsky with a laugh. “He has nothing better to do than huff and puff before they put him in dry dock for good. We are the navy now, my friend. You, me and Tamilov in the Black Sea. God only knows who they will appoint to take my place up north. Suchkov can sit in Moscow and write his memoirs now.”

  “You and Tamilov can run things, Leonid. I’m afraid I am not well—heart problems, and the doctors want to do some surgery.”

  “You’ll pull through,” Volsky encouraged, but he could see that Abramov was also on his last voyage, tired, pale and with that rheumy eyed look that spoke of too much time on the seas of life.

  “As for how we slipped by, that is our little secret. I have some very good people aboard Kirov. We had a lot of trouble with the electronics when Orel blew up, but we managed to get a few things running from ship’s stores. I put my best people on it, and we used a new ECM package that we unfortunately lost in that last missile misfire incident I told you about earlier. But while we had it up and running it was enough to get us through the northern route undetected. That and some very bad weather and thick cloud cover.”

  “Amazing. I would have thought they would have had three submarines on you the moment you deployed.”

  “Perhaps they did, Boris, but that was a very large detonation when Orel went up. Who knows what it did to their electronics? I knew that the whole place was going to be crawling with planes, ships and helicopters within twenty-four hours. We made a cursory inv
estigation, found nothing—not even Slava—and so I wanted to get my ship as far from that area as possible. NATO spent the next three days searching south of Jan Mayen, yes? I went northwest, and that’s the last thing they might have expected.”

  “I still can hardly believe it. You lost contact with Slava too?”

  “Must have been our faulty equipment.”

  “Radar, Sonar, Radio?”

  “Have you ever tried to listen to the deep ocean after an underwater nuclear explosion?”

  “It was nuclear?”

  “We believed as much, and given the threat of radiation I wanted to get my ship to safer climes. I assumed Slava would do the same and return home. Those were her orders, mine were to transit to the Pacific, and since I was the one who issued those orders, I decided to follow them.” Volsky smiled.

  “They didn’t even find you with satellites, at least not that we know of.”

  “Good point, Admiral. We don’t know what they really knew about it. For all we know they could have been watching me from up there the whole time and now they are making this media fuss to simply cover their tracks. In any case, I am here, the ship is here, and once he’s been patched up, Kirov will put some backbone into the Pacific Fleet again.”

  Unlike their Western counterparts, ships were masculine in the Russian Navy. The Russians couldn’t think of anything with the sheer raw power and hard lines of a battlecruiser as feminine.

  “But tell me about this trouble in the Sea of Japan.” Volsky folded his arms, watching the white haired Abramov reach for a computer pad and slide it his way across the desk top.

  “There you are,” he said. “I’ve poked at it long enough. See if you can make any sense of it.”

  Volsky read the headline, thinking of the newspaper they had found on Malus Island with an inner shiver. It read: CHINA PROTESTS NEW JAPANESE NAVAL MANEUVERS, an old story in the Pacific, but one that was increasingly occupying the front pages of news outlets across the world.”