Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (9 page)

For his part, Admiral Tovey had
anguished over what to do in this situation. He was the only man who really
knew the whole terrible truth about the Russian ship and crew, or so he
thought. At that moment, another man was learning that truth, as Fedorov
struggled to convince Brigadier Kinlan of his impossible fate. Yet Tovey knew
nothing of this when he stood to greet Admiral Tovey as he arrived for the
meeting. He had been considering the situation for some time, and had
determined that, given the circumstances calling for this meeting, there would
be no way he could keep Admiral Cunningham in the dark. The man was simply too
essential to the operation of the fleet here, a steady and reliable hand on the
tiller that would be difficult to replace.

Volsky entered with two other
men, one the young Lieutenant who would serve as his translator, and the other
an older man in civilian dress, bespectacled, wizen with age, yet obviously
carrying the wisdom those years had brought to him. He seemed like an amiable
old grandfather, but Tovey could see there was something more to the man, a
layer beneath that outer shell that spoke of something much deeper. The men all
exchanged hearty handshakes, and Nikolin was pleased that Tovey remembered his
name as well, taking his seat next to Admiral Volsky. There were still two more
place settings at the table, and Nikolin wondered who was missing. He found out
soon after when, to his surprise, a woman entered the stateroom, accompanied by
a man in a dress white naval uniform, clearly a Captain by rank and bearing.

Cunningham looked up, also
raising an eyebrow when he saw Elena Fairchild enter the room. Then he assumed
this must be part of the diplomatic mission from Greece, though it seemed
somewhat unusual. His reflex for propriety and decorum soon asserted itself,
and he stood, as did the other men, politely greeting the woman as she was
introduced.

“Miss Elena Fairchild,” said
Tovey. “Allow me to welcome you aboard HMS
Invincible
. Please meet
Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Commander of our Mediterranean Fleet and Admiral
Leonid Volsky, a special representative of the Russian Navy.”

Fairchild gave Volsky a searching
look, then quickly introduced Captain Gordon MacRae as they all took their
seats. She had seen the long, dangerous lines of the battlecruiser
Kirov,
cruising
on the far side of the British battleship, and it raised her hackles. There it
was,
Geronimo
, the phantom ship that had bedeviled the British Empire,
and led to the foundation of the Watch. When she first received the emergency
message from the Russians, she had been shocked to learn the ship was here.
From all she knew in her induction as a member of the Watch,
Kirov
had
first appeared in the Norwegian Sea, in late July of 1941. Yet they had
determined it to be January of 1941, six months before
Kirov
supposedly
appeared!

The request for parley had been
odd enough, but given that the two ships were both on a razor’s edge, it was a
welcome reprieve, and much better than a scenario where their missiles would
speak to one another in a battle at sea. The news that Admiral Tovey was on the
line had been the next shock:
“All is well, Argos Fire. All friends here. We
request a rendezvous in the Gulf of Chania. Over.”
So here she was, and
that meeting was now about to convene.

As she seated herself, she gave
both Tovey and Volsky a lingering look. There he was, the legend in the flesh,
Admiral John Tovey, founding father of the Watch. And there he was, the terror
of all their nightmares, the Captain Nemo that had been the object of all their
early operations. This man and his ship had been tearing through the history
like a sharp knife, and yet, as she looked at Volsky, he did not seem a man who
could carry any of the sinister thoughts she had associated with him in her
mind. This was obviously a part of the story she knew nothing about. The calm
presence of these two men here together, the obvious demeanor of friendship and
warmth between them… well it seemed most irregular to her, most unexpected, and
she was now wondering how all this had come about.

“Well then,” Tovey began,
thinking this to be a most challenging meeting. He had sat through sessions in
the Admiralty and War Cabinet, and knew how turbulent the waters could be, but
this was something else. Here was a woman, who seemed to know him, or at least
know of him, and he had the feeling that she was looking on him with a certain
awe and reverence, which he did not quite fathom. And here was Admiral Volsky,
who had never met this woman before, though he seemed to know of her ship. They
were two birds of a feather in one respect, both impossibly here from that far
distant future, but yet, his observant eye perceived some tension between them,
and uncertainty. And finally there was Admiral Cunningham, completely in the
dark about all of this, and blind to everything before him. He looked as
bemused as a boy freshly assigned to his first mission at sea. How would all
these loose ends be tied into the same knot here?

“No doubt this meeting was a
surprise to all of us, yet here we are, and we’ll make the best of it as we
go.” He looked first to Admiral Cunningham, a sympathetic expression on his
face. “Admiral, I’m afraid you are about to hear some things that will be most
unsettling. In fact, you may conclude that we are all quite daft, but bear with
us. Everything will be made clear to you in time. That said, I must tell you
that what you will now learn is the most highly classified secret of this war—a
secret so dark and inaccessible, that only one other man within the British
Government has any knowledge of it, and you will be surprised to learn that our
Mister Churchill is not that other man. Bear with me, Andy,” Tovey used the
familiar handle that only two friends might share, hoping to ease the shock for
Cunningham if he could.

Then he looked at Admiral Volsky,
addressing Elena Fairchild as he gestured to the man. “I can see that the
presence of Admiral Volsky here and his ship is somewhat unexpected. Let me say
that I was once as unknowing about all of this as you both seem to be. Yet it
begins with the Admiral here, and with his ship. So perhaps it might be best if
I yield the floor to you, Admiral Volsky. If there is any man among us who might
sort this whole matter out, I would start with your chair.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said
Volsky, “and may I introduce our Director Kamenski, Russian Intelligence. He
has been with us aboard
Kirov
for some time, and I thought he might be
able to help us sort through all of this. In fact, he will likely do a much
better job than I could. Director?”

“Admiral,” said Kamenski, “this
is one odd kettle of fish we have. Here are two adversaries, and unfortunately
so, from a time neither you or Admiral Cunningham here could ever see or
imagine. And here you both sit with us, two new friends from a past long
removed from us, yet one we have been shaping with our very hands, unknowing at
first, and now with more deliberate endeavor. It is a strange enterprise, and a
mighty challenge we all face now. Yet I fear that if we are to measure it, and
prevail with any sense of sanity, we must all now reach across this table and
join our hands in a common understanding. Here we sit, like a group of
blind men around the elephant, each holding onto a piece
of the truth as they grope that mighty beast. We all know something of this
truth, some more than others, but we must all hear each other now as we
describe it to one another, so that we can see the whole as one together, and
determine what we must do.” He looked at each one around the table now, the
knowing and the unknowing, and smiled. Nikolin completed his translation, and
now he continued.

“Opening
your eyes and actually seeing the elephant is quite another experience, ladies
and gentlemen.
To do so we will have to drink of the same cup of poison,
I fear, for only then can we die together, and be reborn with some new
understanding that can unite all present in one accord. Forgive me if I sound
more like a bad poet than a diplomat at times, mixing my metaphors like this,
but we have a fine and arcane business before us now, a mystery as deep and
unfathomable as time itself, and we are its minions. Admiral Volsky here has
asked me to begin this discussion, and yet where to start the tale? I think the
only way is to just come right out with it, crazy as it will sound at first
blush. My name is Pavel Kamenski, all seventy five years worth, and I was born
on the twelfth night of June, in the year 1946…” He let that hang there, waiting
to see the reaction of Admiral Cunningham as Nikolin translated.

“Excuse me, Mister Kamenski, I’m
afraid your Lieutenant here has his number wrong. 1946? Surely you meant 1865,
as I cypher it.”

Nikolin translated that back, and
Kamenski smiled.

“No Admiral Cunningham, the
Lieutenant had it right, but to hear it right you will have to extend your hand
now and take hold of the elephant’s tail.” And then he began to speak of the
war, the long struggle ahead, and how the nations of the earth were now engaged
in the making of weapons to prosecute it. He told them one weapon that would be
forged in the crucible of this conflict would be so terrible that it would cast
a deep shadow of doom on the world for generations, and one day make an end of
the human endeavor on this planet. He told them how this weapon was made, and
that he knew, for a fact, that many nations were now engaged in the effort to
bring this terror to life. And then he slowly began to describe the arms race
they would engage in, and the nuclear testing that would be a part of that,
until Soviet Russia would build a bomb unlike any other, and set it off in the
frozen north on October 30, 1961.

“Yes, and you have heard that
date correctly as well,” he said looking directly at Admiral Cunningham. “Yes,
I am speaking of all of this as though it had already happened, and from my
perspective, that is true. You see, I am a man from tomorrow—your tomorrow at
least—and all of this
has
happened, and more than once I’m afraid. The
only question before us now is whether or not it will happen again—whether or
not we can do something about this war without planting the seed in this
Devil’s Garden that will make the next war a certainty. So I will tell you now,
Miss Fairchild, how it is that our ship came to be here, and you can then tell
us the same thing about your ship. Hold tightly to the tail of that elephant,
Admiral Cunningham. We’re all about to climb on the damn thing and give it a
good stiff spur in the gut, and hopefully you will be dragged along with us.”

Then he went through everything,
the odd effects they discovered in their weapons testing program,
temporal
effects that were affecting the flow of time itself, and he laid out the whole
impossible story, chapter and verse.

Chapter 8

Brigadier
Kinlan sat with Lieutenant Colonel Sims and Major Isaac at
Brigade HQ, a thousand dilemmas on his mind. The evidence he had seen, or not
seen, at the old Sultan Apache site was damning enough. Now he had Italian
infantry at Giarabub, and showing every intention of marching on Siwa, the
small British held oasis manned by ghosts from the past. He shook his head.
When I was with this Russian Captain and his confederates they were so damn
convincing. Yet now, the more I think on this the more insane it all seems,
particularly when I try to talk about it with the other officers.

“I’ll
have to reinforce Siwa,” he said. “Not much there beyond this Australian
motorized cavalry and a couple squads of the Long Range Desert Group.”

Major
Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “Excuse me, sir. You’re going to reinforce Siwa?
What for?” The Major was just about to be eased over the line with information
on what had happened to them, and he did not take it well. His initial reaction
was to take the whole matter for a bad joke, or an idle wish that they might
find themselves anywhere but the sands of the empty Libyan Desert, at any time
other than the days they would now be facing. The brigade was to have made a
night march to Mersa Matruh to meet roll on/roll off ships there for transfer
to Toulon, and start a new deployment in Europe, until this! Was the General
mad? Had he finally broken under the long strain of this endless deployment?

He soon
learned that General Kinlan was stone cold sober, and in deadly earnest. He was
actually telling him that he had come to the conclusion that they were no
longer in their own time. They had moved, vanished, and reappeared, and it was
now 1941 by every account they could surmise. They had moved in time—all of
them—the entire brigade! Kinlan shared the evidence, the testimony of the
Russian Naval Captain, the photographs from the library pad on both Popski and O’Connor,
but Isaac remained unconvinced.

“Ludicrous!”
he objected. “I’ll admit that the resemblance of these two men to those
historical figures is uncanny, but you can’t really believe this. It’s rather
convenient that these Russians show up Johnny on the spot when that damn ICBM
comes wheezing in on us. They were obviously here for reconnaissance and battle
damage assessment. Can’t you see that? And look here… You could have told me
Reeves had stumbled on Shangri-La out here and I’d believe that before this
preposterous story. You mean to say that Russian Captain actually told you
this? And you just send him off on his helicopter with the prisoners as if it
were all true?”

“Major,”
said Kinlan. “Now you know as much about all this as I do. Suppose you go on
over to Sultan Apache yourself and explain what happened there. Sims and I went
over the place with a Geiger counter and magnifying glass. It was completely
undisturbed. There was no sign of any blast damage, no wreckage of any kind, no
radiation. Now you tell me how twenty square miles of British Petroleum
disappear in a heartbeat like that? Tell me! I’ll gladly listen to any
explanation you might have, because I haven’t got any answer aside from the one
this Russian Captain gave me.”