Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Read online

  That caught Kirov off guard. He had never considered that possibility. Could he go there and really find his younger self? He would be right there, having breakfast on the day it all first happened, the day the sky shuddered with the fire of a second dawn—Tunguska.

  “Finally you make a good point,” he said slowly, but a solution to the problem immediately dawned on him. “Ah…” He turned with new light in his eyes. “Suppose I write a letter—about all of this—Volkov, the war, the goddamned Orenburg Federation. Yes! That is all I would really have to do. Grishin, you are correct. Perhaps I can’t go there myself if I already exist there as a young man. Nor can I take this pistol, because it will already exist there as well.”

  “At last,” said Berzin. “You finally begin to see reason in all of this nonsense.”

  “Oh, do not be so hasty,” said Kirov. “You are correct in what you suggest, but I don’t have to go there personally to do what I am planning. I’m already there! All I have to do is get a message back to myself—to the young Mironov. I will tell him what to do, what he must do after he finishes off Stalin. I will tell him he must put one more bullet in his pistol, and go find a man named Volkov.” He looked at Berzin now, smiling.

  Outside the thunder of a storm rolling in off the Baltic Sea rattled the windows. Lightning flashed in the sky, and Kirov’s eye was drawn to it. He found himself looking out on the city, the last stronghold of the Soviet Union he had struggled all his life to build. The darkness in the clouds over the brown stone buildings seemed ominous. The Germans had leveled one great city after another, Kiev, Minsk, Kharkov, Moscow, and now they were about to devour all that remained. He had to stop them—stop Volkov from skewing the history of this war so badly that the material he had found as a young man now seemed like nothing more than a fairy tale.

  He could do this thing. He knew he could get there safely, get close, get inside that railway inn. Then all it would take is a message in a bottle. He could stand at the top of that stairway, and simply roll it down.

  Mironov will know what to do. I will know what to do, he told himself. He will read it and believe, because I know exactly what to say to him—things that only I will know.

  Yet Berzin could still hardly believe that he was hearing all of this. He had to find some way of convincing Kirov that this plan was absolute lunacy.

  “You want to send a letter? Down those stairs? Who will deliver it? Can’t you see how crazy this sounds now?”

  “I can send a nice young man down, someone who was not yet born to that time. He could get back.”

  “You assume he will arrive at the precise moment you were there having breakfast as you told me? Why? Why make such an assumption?

  “Fedorov got there that way, and yes, at precisely that moment.”

  “But not Volkov,” said Berzin quickly. “You see? Not Volkov. He was nowhere to be found while you had your chat with Fedorov. Correct? So what makes you think this man you send will arrive that same morning. Suppose he arrives months earlier, or later—even years. Then what? Does this man scour the countryside looking for Mironov? How would he find you—even recognize you?”

  “I have a photograph of myself at that age. I can give it to him, and if he is good, one of our very best, then he will find me.”

  “But not easily. Yes? Weren’t you hounded and pursued by the Okhrana all that time? I know you, Sergei Kirov. You are a very clever man, very cagey. You would spot this man in an instant, and try to evade him. You would think he was an agent of the Okhrana and avoid him like the plague. Even if your man did find you in the past, do you honestly think you would believe what he tells you—believe anything you might write in that letter you hope to send yourself?”

  “Yes! Of that I am certain. You don’t understand, Grishin. Couldn’t you write such a letter to yourself right now? Don’t you know things that you alone are privy to—things that no one else could ever possibly know about you? That is how I will convince my younger self. Understand? He will believe that letter, because he will know the truth hidden in that back stairway as well. Remember, I went up those stairs many times as a young man.”

  “That is another thing that has always bothered me,” said Berzin. “How could you have done that, come to this time, when you were already alive here?”

  “Because I wasn’t alive here. I was assassinated in 1934. It was Fedorov who first put me on to that—warned me. Then, when I first went up those stairs, I found material that explained it all to me. That was just one more reason for me to kill Stalin, because it was Stalin who arranged that little scenario. He found someone—Leonid Nikolaev. That’s the man who did his dirty work for him.”

  “Alright… Even if all this could happen, then what? You say you know Volkov came here that way, but you have no idea when he arrived, where he went, what he did after that. The history is largely mute on all that, until he emerges in the White movement as an aide to Denikin. So it could take our man months to find out where he went—even years. Will we just stand there like a pair of idiots and wait for our man to come tramping back up those stairs with the good news?”

  “You don’t understand. He could go there and spend ten years, then come back and return before we had time to finish a cigar. He would be ten years older, but for us only a few minutes might pass. Start thinking about who we can send. We will need one of our very best.”

  “But you assume he could return here at all. You are making one outrageous assumption after another, but it is all mere speculation. Anything could happen if you try such a thing, anything. It’s a very dangerous world back there. The revolution was just beginning to seed itself, and the Tsar was still a dangerous opponent. The Okhrana was very powerful, and very efficient.”

  “Our man will get the job done. We must believe that.”

  “And what if he does succeed? Suppose it all works as you believe. He finds you—delivers your letter. Your younger self believes it, and knows he must now find a man named Ivan Volkov and kill him, which is all another rack of balls on the billiard table. You really have no idea whether he could pull such a thing off, and if he did, then do we expect to wake up one morning for the intelligence briefing and find the Orenburg Federation no longer exists? All Volkov’s troops simply vanish? Madness! I cannot believe such a thing could ever happen.”

  “I have come to believe in the impossible many times in the last year,” said Kirov. “You forget; I was acquainted with the impossible as that young man Mironov. Then, imagine that impossible day when this young Russian Captain sends me a message inviting me to a meeting in Murmansk. Lo and behold, there he is, the very same man I met in that railway inn. But he had not aged a day. Lo and behold, there is a massive battlecruiser sitting out in the bay, a ship so powerful that it can single handedly challenge entire fleets! Yes, I have seen the impossible many times, Grishin. This will only be one more impossible thing that comes true. You will see.”

  Berzin rubbed his forehead, confused, and still shocked to hear all of this from Kirov. He’s desperate, he thought. He knows we are losing this war, and the pressure on him has been mounting and mounting with each passing month. We have no more divisions to send Zhukov, no more armies, so now he dreams up this crazy scheme to try and sweep half the black pawns right off the chess board. It is all utter lunacy, but what if it did happen as he says? He asked that question next.

  “I have granted you the benefit of every doubt thus far,” said Berzin. “We go there, get the welcome you expect, get our men close enough to that railway inn to reach the top of those stairs. Our man goes down and arrives at just the correct year to take action. He finds Mironov, convinces him that he must kill Volkov too.”

  “That may not even be necessary,” said Kirov. “We could just send our man to do the job. He does not need to find me at all with that letter.”

  “Again I grant you the impossible benefit of the doubt,” said Berzin. “Our man seeks out a man named Ivan Volkov—of all the hundreds of men who might bear
that name. He has no idea what he looks like, but he knows he will be thick as thieves with Denikin, so he eventually narrows down who this man must be, gets to him, and does the job. He puts a bullet into Volkov…. Then this entire world collapses before our very eyes. Yet only you and I know about it? We wake up one day as I said earlier, and the Orenburg Federation is gone. All of Volkov’s troops are now ours to command. Alright, mister General Secretary. I have stacked up all the plates, forgetting that if even one thing in this impossible stack slips, it all comes tumbling down. Here we sit on that fine morning when everything becomes more agreeable for us and Volkov’s armies disappear. This is how you think to win your victory? Magic and mayhem?”

  Kirov shrugged. The rain was beginning now, a cold rain that promised the long weeks of the Rasputista were coming. Soon the country would see every road become a quagmire, and the land would be a sea of mud. The German Summer Offensive was in its last throes. They were so very close to achieving all their objectives, but soon the mud would slow them down, and then the cold. The temperatures would fall, and for a brief time the ground would freeze hard enough for armies to move and fight again. Then the real winter would begin, the snows coming so deep that nothing could move again.

  Then it will be our time, he thought, our time to move and fight as we always have in the winter. But will we have anything left to fight with? Zhukov tells me he still has the Shock Armies on the line of the Don, rested, fat with supplies and equipment, and ready to try again. They failed in Operation Mars. What will he call the next one, Uranus? Saturn? Will it work? Can we survive the winter of 1942 if we do not make a Stalingrad out of Volgograd? The damn German 6th Army isn’t even fighting there. It’s all of Steiner’s SS Korps there this time—Hitler’s mad dogs, braying at the gates of the city, and Ivan Volkov on the other side of the Volga, salivating as he thinks to finally get his hands on Volgograd….

  Chapter 18

  “Sergei…” came the voice of Berzin again. He was watching Kirov as he gazed out the window, looking at the storm blowing in, hearing the rain on the windows, the thunder. “I know it looks black as hell for us now, but you must have hope. You must believe we can still win through. If not you, then how can we expect our soldiers to fight on? Look here at the map. The SS have been fighting tooth and nail in the Kalach bridgehead for over a month. That never happened. The Germans just waltzed right through in the material. We’ve done better this time. We avoided the pocket that formed northeast of Kharkov when Zhukov pulled out of Kursk, and we pulled everything back to the Don instead of trying to form a line west of the river. The Millerovo pocket never happened either. Don’t you see? It looks grim now, but it is not as dark as you believe.”

  “You think we can win?” asked Kirov. “Tell me, Grishin. You know everything going on out there, my faithful Chief of Intelligence. You honestly think we can prevail?”

  “I know we have avoided those errors I just spoke of. And in the material, the Germans captured Voronezh on the 5th of July! We are still fighting for it! They were approaching Stalingrad by late August, and here it is mid-September, and our troops still hold the line in the Kalach Bridgehead—against the very best they have. In the Material, they already had Rostov, and all the Kuban was overrun, but we still hold Rostov and the Kuban as well. That maneuver Zhukov pulled by moving the rifle Divisions out of Sevastopol was brilliant! They arrived just as the damn Germans were pushing tanks into the suburb of the city. We stopped them. Don’t you see? We are doing better than Stalin ever did. It may not seem that way, but it’s the truth.”

  Kirov inclined his head, looking at the map, thinking.

  “We can win, Sergei,” said Berzin with a hand on Kirov’s broad shoulder. “It won’t take miracles and magic, or all this cloak and dagger you spoke of just now. It will just take backbone, and the men who still fight so bravely for us out there in that storm. They aren’t going to sit down to a nice meal with wine tonight as we might here. For them it is live or die, and even a crust of bread is something to be grateful for. Give them that bread, Sergei. Give them the chance to win here. The Germans took most of Moscow last winter, but what did that get them but the burned out city they still huddle in? We can stop them. We can still win, not at Ilanskiy with a single man, or a mysterious letter and a string of impossible events that must all line up and salute us as we wish in order to come true. No! But we can win right here, right now. We can win at Volgograd, at Rostov, at Voronezh!”

  The radio had been playing quietly in the background, the sonorous strains of Tchaikovsky, his movements slowly rising, rising to the inevitable crescendo that once shook the world. The 1812 Overture commemorated that day, the day Russia stopped that other mad dog, Napoleon. Then, the music suddenly cut off, the signal tones of Radio Leningrad sounded, and a voice began speaking. There came at that same moment the sound of footsteps in the outer hall, men rushing, an urgency beat out with every footfall, and a hard knock at the door.

  Berzin instinctively reached for the pistol in his side holster, but Kirov raised a hand, his head inclined, listening. The news on the radio began to make the announcement. “This morning in the predawn hours, a combined British and American armada landed troops in Lisbon and Casablanca…”

  Berzin was at the door. “Who is it?” he said sternly.

  “Sir,” came the voice of a trusted Lieutenant, giving him relief. “Important news. I bear a message that just came over the teletype.”

  Berzin opened the door, seeing the man salute, then he handed off a plain white paper. “Is it true sir?” asked the Lieutenant. “Is this the Second Front we’ve been hoping for?” He was not supposed to read the messages he delivered. They were supposed to be placed in a secure pouch, meant only for Berzin’s eyes, and the eyes of Sergei Kirov. Under the circumstances, Berzin did not correct him.

  “Thank you Lieutenant. That will be all.”

  The man saluted stiffly, and withdrew. Berzin took the paper, scanning the lines of bold type there: 15 SEP, 1942. INTELLIGENCE CONFIRMS ALLIED LANDING AT BOTH LISBON AND CASABLANCA. GENERAL EISENHOWER DECLARES SECOND FRONT AGAINST GERMANY HAS NOW BEEN OPENED. MORE TO FOLLOW….

  Berzin turned, seeing that Kirov had moved to the radio, turning up the volume, hanging on every word of the announcement. “At last,” he said, turning to Berzin.

  “Our network confirms,” said Berzin, waving the paper he held. “The Second Front! You see, Sergei. They haven’t quit the fight. The convoys may have stopped after the disaster of PQ-17, but they haven’t abandoned us. Here they come! All we have to do now is hold on. We have to keep fighting.”

  “Get me more information,” said Kirov quickly, all business now. “I want to know how big this operation is, how many divisions, how many troops and tanks, how many planes. Get it all for me.”

  “You can rely on me, sir,” said Berzin. “And I hope to god the nation can now still rely on you.”

  Kirov looked at him, and he smiled. “How many divisions did Zhukov pull out of Sevastopol?”

  “Six, and they all made it safely to Azov and Taganrog. They are in Rostov, fighting as we speak.”

  “Good,” said Kirov. “Good….”

  * * *

  Berzin’s arguments were closer to the mark than even he realized. Steiner’s SS, the very best the Germans had, were still in a death grip with the defenders of the Volga Front, but the line had held. All of 2nd and Third Panzer Armies had delivered terrible blows to the Central Front, but Voronezh was still in Soviet hands, and Zhukov’s second withdrawal of the three armies he had extricated from the Kursk Pocket was now providing a pool of fresh manpower to hold the line of the upper Donets. The German infantry opposite those Armies had not pushed aggressively to pin them in place. All the supplies and most of the available fuel had gone to the panzer divisions, and they had broken through, but now the river, and all the men Zhukov could find, stood between them and further advances.

  The General had thrown 2nd Guards Army in to slow the advance,
then struck with the three tank corps of his 1st Tank Army, the first and last that he had. They could not stop the Germans, but they surely slowed them down. Model had sent a massed armored attack over the Donets, but the 17th and 24th Siberian Armies had arrived in the nick of time. For now, at least, on that morning of much needed good news, the line had held.

  The Soviet Armies had not broken. Ragged, burned out units fought on, with bravery and tenacity that defied description. The Motor Rifle Division in 19th Tank Corps had started the war with 300 rifle squads and 80 AFVs and tanks. Now there were ten squads, with a single engineer squad and a few companies of military police, with 28 AFVs, including three armored cars. But they still fought. Some divisions had to be fought to the very last man. Divisions were shattered, but the stragglers were rounded up, formed into a new regiment, and sent back to the front. They were holding. It was as if the Soviets were simply piling up sand before the seemingly unstoppable bulldozer of the Wehrmacht. Sooner or later, with enough sand, it would grind to a halt, its heavy tracks unable to gain traction, the sand all around it, smothering deep sand.

  That was what the Red Army had become in late 1942. Their potential for counterattack was severely limited, but the recruitment effort had put hundreds and hundreds of divisions in the field. Each one was perhaps the equivalent of a British regiment in actual combat power, with a single Allied division being the equal of a Russian Corps at this stage. But there were hundreds and hundreds of those grains of sand on the line, and the bull dozer was slowing to a crawl.

  It was early autumn, the rains thickening in the grey skies, the mud beginning. The Germans had been fighting for two months, over 60 days of ceaseless offensive operations. Manstein’s southern front had come some 350 kilometers, occupying the whole of the Don Bend and pushing over the river at Kalach. Rundstedt, Model and Hoth had gobbled up another 275 Kilometers, and more ground had been lost in the Donets Basin. Yet the Russians fought on. They had seen the enemy formations slow for lack of fuel and supply, and the casualties had mounted on the German side as well.