Kirov (8 page)

Volsky
called down to engineering for a status update on the reactors, pleased to
learn that the system readings were now normal again.

“It
sounded a bit odd there for a while,”
said Chief Dobrynin.

“It
sounded odd? What do you mean?”

“I’m
not sure, sir. It’s just…Well I’ve been around this equipment most of my career
in the service, and you come to know a thing by how it sounds. The harmonics
were odd—that’s all I can say. It didn’t sound right to me, but the readings
are normal, sir. There is nothing to be concerned about.”

“Very
Well, Chief. Carry on, and report immediately if you hear anything else that
disturbs you. Anything at all, yes?” The Admiral knew exactly what the Chief
was trying to tell him. Years on ships at sea gave some men an uncanny sense
that could detect the slightest abnormality in the ship—the way it sounded, or
moved in the sea. Volsky settled into his chair, musing as he listened himself,
thinking he might hear an answer to their dilemma in the faint hum of the
ship’s consoles, or the thrum of the turbines.

Karpov
lingered near Nikolin’s communications station for some time, as if he was
waiting for a coded signal message to return from Severomorsk at any moment.
Yet the time stretched out, and Nikolin waited with him, seeming edgy and
somewhat discomfited by the Captain’s close presence. Karpov had a way of
hovering over a workstation, and asking entirely too many questions. He was
tense and uneasy as well. Somehow the sense of isolation in the long silence
left him feeling strangely adrift.

 Severomorsk
was not merely home, but also the rein of ultimate control on the ship. Orders
might come from home port that could supersede those of Admiral Volsky himself.
Volsky was Admiral of the Northern Fleet, but above him was Commander-in-Chief
of the Navy itself, Gennady Alexandrovich Suchkov, and his Deputy Chief of
Staff Vladimir Ivanovich Rogatin. Karpov had been slowly building relationships
with these men, hoping they might be useful one day. Vlasky had succeeded
Suchkov as Admiral of the Northern Fleet, and Rogatin had been a former Captain
of the old battlecruiser
Kirov
before he moved on to higher ranks. Vlasky
was also the most likely candidate to take the aging Suchkov’s place, so Karpov
found himself well positioned to advance even further if recent history was any
guide.

Now
the strange silence from Severomorsk was most discomfiting to him. A favorite
tactic against a man of senior rank had always been an appeal to higher
authority. Karpov had ingratiated himself with the Naval Staff as he wheedled
his way into the command chair of the
Kirov
. Volsky was his senior, and
by a wide margin, but he could always appeal to Severomorsk for a
countervailing decision. So his first order of business was to seed the matter
there with his own opinion as soon as he possibly could. He wanted to see if he
could color the matter at hand in the eyes of senior officers back home, and
possibly influence any decision that they might make about the situation. Yet
more than this, he wanted to make certain his own actions would be viewed in a
proper light; he wanted to begin, even in official discourse, the line of
subtle truth-bending that was
vranyo
. The Admiral had countermanded his
orders just now, and Karpov still burned with a quiet inner resentment over
that. He did what he believed was proper, and in his mind the Admiral was
remiss.

On
one level, he saw a glimmering of opportunity in this situation.
Orel
and
Slava
were both missing, and the Admiral was being far too lax in
his assessment of the potential dangers here. This incident would be viewed
harshly back home, and blame and scapegoating were sure to follow. The Admiral
was responsible, he knew, but he would make sure that any fault found rested
squarely on Volsky’s shoulders. He would let Severomorsk know exactly what he
thought, and somewhere in his mind he was already launching missiles at the
Admiral. The struggle for the first salvo was the essence of modern naval
combat. The Captain wanted to be sure he had himself in the best possible position
if it came to an inquiry on these events. A report would have to be written on
the matter, and he was already hard at work, drafting copy in his mind, and
thinking just who best to put on the distribution list.

Yet
for now, it was the silence that bothered him most. Who could he tell his
stories to, his half-truths and darker lies, if no one was listening back home?
What was going on? Why didn’t Severomorsk answer? He badgered Nikolin about his
equipment—was it working correctly? When was the last time it was given a full
maintenance check? Who had the duty here on the last watch? Was he trying the
secure Satellite com-link line?

“I
have
no satellite link, sir,” Nikolin explained. “I cannot establish
links to any of our com-sat bands. It must be the interference, sir.”

Karpov
was wagging an accusatory finger at Nikolin, and frowning. “Keep trying, Mister
Nikolin. I expect you to get this equipment sorted out!” Then he saw Nikolin
had an iPod sitting off to one side, and he snatched it up, shaking it in the
young Lieutenant’ face. “Perhaps you should spend more time focused on your
duties, Nikolin, and less with this.” He took the device and strode away, like
a strict school master chastening a wayward student.

Nikolin,
shrugged, deflated, harried, and trying harder than ever to get through to
Severomorsk. He sighed with relief when the Captain finally wandered off,
looking for Chief Orlov, though he hoped Karpov would not pass the matter on to
the him.

Orlov
was a strong man, iron willed, and often too much of a disciplinarian when it came
to running the ship’s schedules and training exercises, meting out swift
punishment to any crewman who was lax in his duties. He was Karpov’s hard whip
when it came to discipline and firm handling of procedures on the ship. The
Chief was actually a Captain of the 3rd Rank, two rungs below Karpov, but stood
as “Chief of Operations” and was therefore simply called the “Chief” by the
men.

He
had fifteen years in the navy, most served by default because he never had the
babki
to do anything else, or so he claimed. The truth was, he was sent here after a
stint in prison when running with the criminal element known as the
blatonoy
,
the purveyors of
blat
in its most extreme forms. A man needed a little
dough in life, the money to grease a few palms or open a few doors, like the
small dough cakes called
babki
the Russians delighted on and gifted one
another with at times. Orlov never made his big deal with the
blatnoy
,
so he found himself in the navy, and then found that he enjoyed the rigors of
the service, and his position of authority there was better than any life he
could find ashore.

Where
Karpov was duplicitous, scheming and often indirect, Orlov was brutally
straightforward. He would have made a proper drill sergeant in the army, and
would often dress men down with a boisterous harangue when he found them easing
off in their duty. He enjoyed throwing his weight around, and his muscle stood
him in good stead when it came to matters of discipline. A good hard shove or a
slap on the back of the head were par for the course when Orlov got hot, and if
a man got him particularly angry things might go far worse.

The
men said Orlov’s father had done the same to him, with a hard “spare the rod,
spoil the child,” attitude. Orlov made no bones about it, even bragged about it
at times. “If my old man had found me doing something like that he would knock
some sense into my thick head right off,” he would say. And then he would
proceed to knock some sense into a junior midshipman just to illustrate the
point. The men feared him more than they respected him. They jumped to order
when Orlov growled, but there was no question that the Chief was disliked.

Orlov
bullied and cowed every crewman on the ship, save one, the steely sergeant of
the marine contingent, Kandemir Troyak, a Siberian Eskimo from the Chukchi
peninsula. He was a short, broad shouldered man, very stocky, yet all muscle. When
the Chief had first met the man he had tried to impose his will on Troyak as
well, bawling out an order with a derisive tone, and berating a member of the
marine rifle squad. The Sergeant had taken two quick steps, squaring off to the
big Chief and staring him right in the eye. “Sir,” Troyak had hissed out in his
low, threatening voice. “Discipline of the marine contingent is the responsibility
of the Sergeant Major.” He was so close to the chief that Orlov instinctively
took a step back. Troyak was, in fact, the Sergeant Major, and he was letting
the Chief know that he would not tolerate his usual brash and strong armed
methods where his men were concerned.

“Well,
see that it gets done then!” Orlov rejoined, his neck reddening, but the
Sergeant simply stood his ground, unmoving, an implacable silence about him
that left the Chief feeling most uncomfortable until he dismissed the matter,
looking around him quickly to spot a Maintenance Warrant Officer and wave him
down as he lugged a tool kit through a hatch.

“Hey,
kudá namýlilsja?
Where are you going with those, you idiot?” Orlov used
the incident as cover to extricate himself from the standoff with Troyak, and
he never bothered the Sergeant again. When he saw seaman Martok had turned his
head from a work bench, noticing the confrontation, he cuffed him hard on the
right ear and told him to keep his nose in his work or he would get worse. This
was Orlov, a big, brooding, intolerant presence on the ship, quick to lord it
over any man junior in the ranks, yet oddly quiet and deferring around senior
officers.

Karpov
had seen an able confederate in the man, and often foisted off the unpleasant
matters of the ship’s discipline on Orlov. So it was no surprise when he handed
the Chief Nikolin’s iPod with a disapproving look on his face. “Mister Nikolin
can’t hear anything on his radio. Perhaps he is deaf listening to his rock and
roll.”

Orlov
responded with a sneering smile, and slipped the iPod into his pocket, giving
the Communications Officer a hard-faced look.

The
Admiral noticed the incident, but overlooked it for the moment, his thoughts
elsewhere where he sat in the command chair. The gray ice fog seemed to close
in around the ship, isolating it, smothering it, choking off air and life. Leonid
Volsky struggled to clear his mind and come to grips with the situation, and soon
the claustrophobic feeling he had, drifting slowly forward through the frozen
mist, his ship almost blind and deaf, prompted him to act.

“If
you gentlemen can keep your heads about you,” he said to his two senior
officers, “I’m going to see the doctor. My head is killing me!” He slid off his
command chair, and shuffled past Orlov, tapping his pocket. “I’ll take that,”
he said quietly, and the chief handed him Nikolin’s iPod. “Let the matter go,
Chief,” said Volsky. “The men are a little bewildered at the moment.” He would
make it a point to return the device to Nikolin later.

“Very
well, sir,” said Orlov, and the Admiral was piped off the bridge as he went
below.

Karpov
gave Orlov a knowing glance. “Gone to see the wizard,” he said. He was
referring to the ship’s chief medical officer, Dmitri Zolkin,
a big,
warm hearted and amiable man, well suited to his role as physician and
psychiatrist aboard
Kirov
. He was a healer in every respect, and one who
knew a man’s psychological health had everything to do with the condition of
his body. His remedies were many and varied, and sometimes would include along
quiet talk over a cold beer, which might do more to set a man straight than
anything he could inject with a needle or force down his throat with a pill.

Zolkin
could take a man’s soul right inside him through the portals of those open
brown eyes, and give it back to him in the warmest smile anyone had ever seen
beneath his ruddy red cheeks. The ship’s crew loved him, and the officers
thought of him as a big brother in whom they could confide their deepest
troubles. Like a great father confessor priest, he held them all in the palm of
his hand, keeping every confidence and dispensing as much wisdom as he did
medication from the ship’s infirmary where he held forth with the official
ship’s mascot, the gentle green tabby, Gretchko the cat.

When
the Admiral arrived at the sick bay two crew members were just leaving the
doctor's office, their heads lightly bandaged where they had apparently
sustained minor injuries from the blast wave that had recently shaken the ship.
They stiffened to attention, saluting the Admiral as he went through the door,
then rushed back to their posts, casting a wary glance over their shoulders and
wondering what was happening. They had experienced the concussion of the
explosion, seen the odd effects in the ocean and sky around them, and although
they still stood at action stations, no order to continue the exercises had
been forthcoming.

“Leonid,”
said the doctor. He had been on a first name basis with the Admiral for years
now, ever since they met and became good friends at the naval college, over
twenty years ago. Zolkin smiled, his eyes alight, drying his hands on a towel
near his first aid station as the Admiral came through the door. “Don't worry
about the crew,” he said. “Just a few bumps and bruises here and there; nothing
to be concerned about. But what is going on up topside, Admiral? The ship took
quite a jolt there. Did we hit a mine?”