Winter Storm Page 6

  “Somewhat…”

  “Do not fear, Admiral. You will settle into your role here soon enough.”

  “Yes,” said Karpov, “that’s a good way of putting it, isn’t it—my role. This is all just nice theater for the moment, a little act to keep the men in line. Yes? Well, do not think of me as a simpleton, or a yes man, Chief Tyrenkov. I saw the wisdom in what my brother proposed, and I willfully accepted this post.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I did not think it came with such perks… that’s quite a samovar there on the side table.”

  “A gift, sir, from Sergei Kirov.”

  “What? He gets twenty divisions and we get a samovar and five airships? It sounds like he got much the better of that deal.” Even as he said that, the Captain knew quite well what else was on the scale in those negotiations—the ship, Kirov, the greatest concentration of raw military power on this earth.”

  “Did my brother know I was aboard that ship?”

  “Sir? No, I do not believe he was certain. In fact, he thought this situation could not happen, that it would be either one or the other who must survive, but it never occurred to him that you would both survive the… incident.”

  “Then he did not scheme to take my command from me?”

  “No sir. He schemed to take it from Admiral Volsky.”

  Karpov turned, not appreciating that remark, and Tyrenkov could perceive the frost as he spoke. “Make no mistake, Mister Tyrenkov. That was my command. Volsky was merely a figurehead aboard for live fire exercises. He was a desk Admiral in Severomorsk. The ship was mine.”

  Again, his need to use the past tense in that spoke unsaid volumes. Yes, it was once his, but no longer. He passed a moment with that, the uncomfortable feeling that he was again standing in another man’s shadow, albeit his own shadow now in every real sense. Yet it nonetheless made him feel the same way when a superior rival was in the mix of his life, and his instincts were always geared at finding a way around the man, a way to undermine and subvert him. But how could he do that now? Could he ever raise his hand against his very own self?

  Yet the thought that he would muddle about, the outward sign of power that was really vested in his brother, was very disconcerting. He decided he would wait and see what developed, but wondered, deep down, what might happen should he ever come to a real disagreement with his other self?

  As if to comfort himself, more than out of any need, he gave Tyrenkov an order. “Inform Bogrov that we are to hover over the aft quarter of the ship at 200 meters. No man is to be at any battle station, and all weapons will be un-chambered and cold. Understood?”

  “As you wish, Admiral.” Tyrenkov noted one thing in the man. His tone and manner when he gave an order were identical to that of the Siberian. Even the way he finished the order with that single word, which Tyrenkov quietly repeated back for confirmation. “Understood.”

  Part III

  Unmasked

  “Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till, with full cups, they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.”

  ― Kahil Gibran

  Chapter 7

  The Siberian was not satisfied. He had done a very thorough search of the ship’s computers, and even spent time in the library, but he had come up empty. He was looking for any reference he could find to the British use of the word Geronimo in the second World War, but the data was very sketchy, and most of his hits related to more modern operations of the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. In WWII, the American Airborne troops were said to have shouted out the name as they jumped from their planes. There was a liberty ship by that name, and a USS Geronimo, no more than an auxiliary fleet tug built in 1944. No other references were even that close.

  There was one vague reference to a P-51 fighter pilot calling a British radio station code named Geronimo, but that was in 1944. Yet Tyrenkov had discovered the secret code handle some time ago, and informed him that the British were using it to refer to Kirov… So how could Fedorov have plucked it from his history books? Clearly his material must be much more detailed than anything available in the ship’s library. He wanted to get to the bottom of this little mystery, and soon.

  “This is the reference?” he said to Fedorov, who sat sheepishly across the desk from him in the command briefing room off the main bridge citadel on Kirov. There it was, a simple list of British code words of WWII:

  GABLE - Eastern Fleet evacuation craft interception, 4/45

  GABRIEL - Planned raid on Cotentin, 1942

  GAMBIT - Midget submarine navigational markers, 6/44

  GANGWAY - Planned Landing at Naples, Italy, 7/43

  GAUNTLET - Allied landings & evacuation at Spitsbergen, 8/41

  GEARBOX - Relief supplies to Spitsbergen, 6/42

  GERONIMO – British radio operations center, London, 1941

  “Where did you get this list? I could not find anything like it in the ship’s library.”

  That put Fedorov on his guard, realizing that Karpov had been suspicious enough to investigate the matter himself. Would he believe this ploy?

  “It was just a reference PDF I’ve had in my files for some time. This is only the data for the letter G. I can show you the entire file if you wish, sir.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Karpov, scanning the rest of the page. “Interesting… Operation Grasp, the British takeover of French vessels in England, and a good name for that one. Guillotine, the transfer of RAF personnel and weapons stored to Cyprus. That was putting their heads under the blade, wasn’t it? The Germans have the place now, right along with Gibraltar and Malta…. Gymnast, the planned landing in North Africa in February of 1942. Yes, they’ll have to have the skill of a gymnast to get past Gibraltar. That isn’t very likely now, is it Mister Fedorov?”

  “That will depend on what happens with Rommel,” said Fedorov.

  “I’ve heard the British have a new heavy tank in North Africa?”

  “Sir?” Fedorov knew he had to play dumb on that score.

  “Yes, I’ve had Nikolin listening in on long range shortwave chatter, and it was just a gurgle in the stream. Anything about that in your books, Fedorov?”

  “Not that I recall, sir, unless that refers to the Matilda II tanks replacing the earlier models prior to Operation Crusader.”

  “Crusader?”

  “The planned British relief of Tobruk in November of 1941.”

  “I see… Another code word. Well, I suppose that settles the matter. As for your research, have you been studying the Japanese plans for December as I asked?”

  “Yes sir, I know that history fairly well.”

  “Good. You and I will sit down and have a long talk about it. Now that the weapons transfer to the Siberian airships is complete, we can set our minds on the journey east.

  That was the one thing Fedorov had been worried about. He had gone down to the Helo Deck to see Troyak and sound him out, trying to think of a way he might broach the subject he had just discussed with Doctor Zolkin. He remembered that mission with Troyak, along the Trans-Siberian rail, and how he had first told the Sergeant of his amazing experience on the stairway of Ilanskiy. Yet this was something else entirely. This Troyak would have no recollection of that, or any of their other missions where he served so ably—the rescue of Orlov with the Anatoly Alexandrov, and that incredible amphibious assault he led. Then there was the mission to the desert to rescue O’Conner, Operation Scimitar in Syria, the attack at Habbaniyah to relief that beleaguered garrison, the raid at Palmyra.

  All of that happened. The sergeant had already done things in 1940 and earlier that same year that he would now have no recollection of… Unless there was some strange way to trigger the memories, like that bandage had with Doctor Zolkin. That was very odd, something that had clearly survived from the old ship. How could it remain here, along with those files Zolkin had discovered? What did Time accomplish in this little shell game it was playing with the two ships. Clearly this was n
ot the ship he had last set foot on. The presence of a fully functional battle bridge aft was testimony enough to that fact, and there was no other sign of damage. But yet… there were these strange remnants, fragments of the time he had lived through earlier, even digital records in Zolkin’s medical computers.

  It remained an inexplicable mystery, but also a sign of hope for Fedorov. Might he find something else like this that could serve as a trigger with Troyak? He decided to test his proposition, rustling the branches and leaves of memory on the tree to see if any fruit might fall.

  “You’re from Siberia, correct Sergeant?” he had asked Troyak.

  “Chukchi Peninsula. Small town there.”

  “I hope all was well with home when we left.”

  “Still there,” said Troyak, a man of very few words.

  “I suppose you’ve heard a great many taiga tales over the years. Ever hear of a thing called the Devil’s Teardrop?”

  Troyak raised an eyebrow, his face registering recognition. “An old story,” he said. “Tunguska.”

  “Tunguska? What do you mean?”

  “The sky light. It goes back a good long way. Something fell, maybe a hundred years ago or more. Nobody knows what it was, but things were found on the tundra, or so it’s been said.”

  “I see… May I ask what you think of our present situation? The Captain has asked me to brief the crew, and you and your men were high on my list. You’ve heard the news, yes?”

  “Very strange,” said Troyak. “Severomorsk…”

  “Ah, yes, you were ashore, and also aboard the Tuman. I suppose it was quite a lot to swallow. I was the first to argue that we had slipped somehow. Who knows how? Probably that accident on the Orel. It’s quite a mystery.”

  Troyak simply nodded, and Fedorov continued probing a bit.

  “Sergeant, ever get the feeling you’ve lived through this before? They call it Déjà vu.”

  “Can’t say that,” said Troyak, apparently oblivious.

  “Can you handle what has happened to us? And your men?”

  “I serve this ship and crew,” said Troyak, “on any sea, on any mission.”

  “Yes, but could any of us have ever expected this would happen?”

  “Never expect anything,” Troyak had said quietly. “Be ready for everything.”

  Fedorov nodded, recalling his conversation with the dour faced Sergeant, and then realizing he could use something from that here. He had dodged a bullet just now with this doctored PDF of the code listings for the letter G. All he had done was extract that page from a document, add the reference to Geronimo, and re-saved it as a PDF. But it was clear to him that Karpov remained wary, and he would have to be very cautious. That question about the heavy tanks was a good example. Was Karpov probing?

  Fedorov knew he needed some way of covering for any stumble he might make, and his question to Troyak was the perfect answer. He could act as if he were getting odd snippets of memory returning to him, a sensation of Déjà vu. Yet even as he embraced that thought, he realized it might also endanger him further. What if Karpov thought he might suddenly remember things that would be… Dangerous?

  “So tell me, Fedorov…” said Karpov. “What will the Japanese be doing now concerning this plan against the Americans?”

  “Training,” said Fedorov. “Their Chief of Naval General Staff, Osami Nagano, will not approve the plan until the 3rd of November, and in fact, the General Staff was against the operation from the very first. It was Yamamoto’s brainchild, and he had to threaten to resign to get the Navy to go along with his plans for Pearl Harbor.”

  “What was the General Staff worried about?”

  “It was a very risky operation,” said Fedorov. “Japan’s six best fleet carriers would have to make a two week journey east, risking detection the whole time, and they also argued the loss of those carriers would not provide enough fleet air cover for their offensive into Southeast Asia.”

  “But Yamamoto got his way,” said Karpov, “and the Americans took their lumps. Strange that it had no real lasting effect on the Pacific war.”

  “It did set the Americans back on their heels,” said Fedorov, “but they recovered quickly, mostly because there were no carriers at Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese failure to destroy the fuel bunkers.”

  “Where were their carriers?”

  “Yorktown and Hornet were actually at Norfolk Harbor on December 7th. Wasp was at Bermuda.” At least in one telling of those events, thought Fedorov silently, until we arrived, but he could never voice that objection.

  “Ah,” said Karpov, recalling how Fedorov had begged him not to attack the American carrier. He knew now that had been a mistake, but a part of him still exulted to the fact that he had dealt the real nemesis of the Russian navy such a telling blow.

  “And the other carriers?” he asked.

  “Saratoga was in San Diego. Lexington was delivering aircraft to Midway, and Enterprise was also out to sea, returning from Wake Island when the attack came in. Those were really the only carriers at risk, but there were 96 ships of all types in the harbor that morning, and they were not among them. The Japanese hit 21 of those ships, but only twelve took enough damage to keep them inactive for more than a few months. Three of those were the battleships they sunk, Arizona, Oklahoma and the old Utah. That ship was going to be used as a target ship for gunnery practice! The other battleships they hit, California, Tennessee, and West Virginia, all eventually returned to action.”

  “So the Japanese didn’t really hurt the Americans that badly.”

  “No sir. They really only killed about ten percent of the ships in Pearl Harbor, and those represented only about 15% of America’s total naval strength, except in the battleship category.”

  “Interesting,” said Karpov. “So it wasn’t the decisive victory Yamamoto had hoped for. And what about those fuel bunkers? They were fools to overlook that.”

  “That would have been more difficult to pull off than you might expect. The Japanese were carrying mostly armor piercing bombs, and very few incendiaries. They could have damaged the fuel farms, and it certainly would have caused trouble for the Americans, but the Japanese planner, Mori Genda, made no provision to attack those fuel tanks. Even if they had hit them, they were surrounded by dikes that would have contained the oil, and much of it would have been recovered.”

  “Not burned?”

  “That fuel is much harder to set on fire than one might think. And face it, sir, the United States would have moved mountains if necessary, and rebuilt those stores in a matter of months. If the Japanese had taken out a lot of their fleet oilers, however, that might have hurt them more than the loss of the fuel farm. Operations at sea required considerable refueling capabilities in the Pacific. And there were many other logistical targets the Japanese ignored—dockyards, repair facilities, machine workshops—and military targets like the submarine pens that would have counted for more than the old battleships they sunk. In fact, they attacked only 15 U.S. merchant ships between Hawaii and the West coast in December, and then only four more during the next ten months! Their mentality seemed to perceive those soft targets as unworthy of battle. Meanwhile, a single submarine they left untouched at Pearl Harbor, USS Tautog, would go on to sink 26 Japanese ships during the war. That is more damage than Nagumo’s attack inflicted on the US Navy.”

  “Agreed,” said Karpov. “The damn submarines were the real threat.” The Captain found Fedorov’s knowledge refreshing. He had reached an accommodation with the man once before, and even saw him become a promising young officer. Yet his reluctance to disturb his history was his great downfall, as Karpov’s saw things. Fedorov didn’t realize it was simply impossible to preserve the course of events as he might read them in his books. In fact, there was no way to know for certain if any of what Fedorov had just said was really going to happen again. Tyrenkov was fairly certain the Japanese were still planning to attack Pearl Harbor, but the battle could play out very differently.


  “What if those facts no longer hold here?” he asked Fedorov.

  “That is a real possibility, sir. These are details that one might think would be lost in the wave of change that seems to have overtaken this time period. Considering that Russia is a divided state, why should Lexington be delivering planes to Midway, just as it was when the history remained intact?”

  “My point exactly,” said Karpov. “I suppose that would be a matter for a good intelligence network to discover. Yet if the Japanese do carry out this attack, do you believe their route would change?”

  “You mean the approach to Hawaii? No sir, they chose the most efficient route to evade shipping lanes and achieve the surprise they wanted. Yet that, too, contributed to their downfall. The attack so angered the Americans that the outcome of the war was inevitable. But sir… May I ask why you are so interested in this operation? Are you planning to intervene?”

  “A fair question, Mister Fedorov. This is not likely to be a pleasure cruise. We have no place to hang our hat and coat in the Pacific. The Japanese have Vladivostok. They call the place Urajio. Well, I would like to persuade them to make a graceful withdrawal, and to do so I will need some leverage.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  At that moment there came a shudder, and the lights dimmed and fluttered. The two men passed a moment where each tried to ascertain what was happening, looking up at the overhead lights. Karpov quickly thumbed the intercom, punching up engineering.

  “Chief Dobrynin, do we have a problem with the reactors?”

  There was a brief delay. Then Dobrynin’s voice could be recognized by its tone, but there was an odd static on the line that garbled what he was saying. Fedorov looked around, his pulse quickening. Then he remembered—Rod-25! He looked at his watch and saw the date, realizing that it was now the twelfth day since their initial arrival shift. How could he have forgotten this? Dobrynin was going to schedule rod maintenance today!

  All this passed through his mind in an instant, as he chided himself for becoming so caught up with his subterfuge and quest for allies that he could have forgotten something so important. And yet, the ship had required the power of a nuclear detonation to disturb the continuum when they shifted before. That had clearly not happened, yet the static on the line made him very worried that something was amiss. Could the ship have reacted to Dobrynin’s rod maintenance? The chief’s voice finally cleared.