Nemesis (2 page)

“You
are making this a condition for the arms support I’m asking for?”

“That’s
the bargain,” said Kirov. “You send me the manpower, and I’ll equip these men
and build five shock armies for our winter offensive—
our
offensive,
Karpov. You will be right here at the planning table with me.”

Karpov
pursed his lips, hesitating, yet knowing this was exactly the time to put one
last twist on these negotiations. “Very well,” he said. “I will agree to this,
but with one caveat. There is something I want from you beyond a couple of
airships and the promise of tanks and artillery. First off, let’s make sure
those promises are well kept. For every tank and artillery piece you build for
these new shock armies, I get one to equip my own divisions—tit for tat.”

“Agreed,”
said Kirov, without hesitation.

“And
then I want one more thing.”

“Name
it.”

“My
ship.”

There
was a long silence as Kirov slowly reached for a cube of sugar, pouring himself
another cup of tea. “Your ship?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “And here I
thought you’d be happy with a pair of new airships.”

“Not
quite. As you have said, I’m a navy man at heart, just like Kolchak, and I want
my ship. You know what I’m talking about.”

“What
makes you think I have any control over that ship?”

“Because
if you asked Admiral Volsky or Fedorov to come home to papa, they would,” said
Karpov. “You know damn well they would.”

“I
would hope as much,” said Kirov. “Yet I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.
The ship vanished. It was reported missing six weeks ago, and hasn’t been seen
since.”

“It’s
back,” said Karpov. “It’s in the Norwegian Sea.”

“Your
intelligence chief told you that? I’ve had no report on that from Berzin, and
he’s very good.”

“Berzin
doesn’t know a thimble full of what I know,” said Karpov. “So let me be as
frank and direct with you here as you were a moment ago.” Karpov leaned
forward, knowing this was the time to deliver the coup de grace.

“Yes,”
he said, “I came out of nowhere, and I’m a bit of a devil at heart. I know this
to be true, but better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, or so the old
saw goes. And yes, that ship is back, because it had to come, just as it did
before.”

“Before?
You mean when it appeared last June?”

Karpov
realized he had slipped here, for he did not want to reveal the real truth to
Kirov, that the ship had originally appeared in July of 1941, just days ago.

“My
intelligence is very good, Mister General Secretary. Trust me, the ship is back,
and it’s in the Norwegian Sea, but it may not be there for long. I want you to
order it to Murmansk, and as soon as possible.”

“Order
it there?”

“I can
tell you what channel to use to get through, if you don’t already know, and you
can use all that sugar in your tea to convince them they need to come see you
in Murmansk, just like before. But I am the rightful Captain of that damn ship,
and I want it back. Give me that, and I’ll send you all the men you need. You
can build five shock armies, and yes, you can give them to Konev. And you’ll
get my full and complete support for the duration of this war. That’s your
little deal with the devil now. You give me my ship, I’ll give you the manpower
you need—real fighting men. It’s either that or you can continue to raise raw
recruits from the peasant farmers, and see how well they like dancing with
Hitler’s SS.”

“Why
in the world would you need that ship?” Kirov shifted in
the chair, squaring off to Karpov. “The last time I consulted a map, Siberia
had no viable ports.”

“For
the moment.”

That
gave the General Secretary pause. “Vladivostok? You are thinking to try and
take back that port from the Japanese?”

“You
and I both know that will have to be done,” said Karpov. “Why bandy words about
it here? Of course I want it back, and with that ship I’ll have the power to
take it.”

“The
Japanese have at least five divisions in Primorskiy Province. I’m told that
ship has some marvelous weapons—rockets that are very powerful, but it can’t
win a land battle like that. Surely you must know this.”

“It can,
and it will. A moment ago you were telling me how I could put the troops
Kolchak has in the Trans-Baikal to good use. Taking Vladivostok is a good
choice. If I do this it will make the position of their Kwantung Army
untenable. For that matter, we should take back Port Arthur as well.”

“We?
You are expecting Soviet support for these operations?”

“Of
course, just as you are expecting Siberian support for the building of these
new armies. Face it, Kirov. I don’t know what you saw when you went up those
stairs at Ilanskiy, but at least you had the good sense to know what to do
about it. Once this war is over, and that is a matter of just a few more years,
then Russia must be re-united as one state. There can be no Orenburg
Federation, and no Free Siberian State either. There must be only one nation.
Correct? Otherwise we will not survive the challenges that come after this war.
History does not end in 1945, even if this war may end that year.”

Now
Kirov realized that there was another dimension to this man that he must never
forget. Yes, he was a devil, just as he had said to the man’s face, but he was
also from another time, a future time, and the knowledge of all that might
happen in the decades ahead was a very powerful thing. Now he indulged a moment
of weakness that he had tried to resist before, even with a man as amiable as
Admiral Volsky there to confer with him.

“You
spoke of that future time when we first met. Tell me more,” he said quietly,
his tone suddenly very serious.

Karpov
saw his moment had come, and knew he needed to take every advantage of it.
“Long years of enmity fall between Russia and the West—yes, your nice loyal
allies, with all their talk of cooperation, Lend-Lease trucks, and a second
front against Germany. After this war ends, a chill falls on Europe, and the
frost line runs right through the heart of a divided Germany. They called it
the Cold War, because we seldom ever fired a shot in anger at one another, but
it was war nonetheless. It was waged with politics, covert operations, spies, economic
oppression, and a long, guarded watch was set on all our borders.”

“The
British did this?”

“They
were just the devil’s adjutant. No. It was the United States that became our
real nemesis. Great Britain was just their cute little shadow puppet after the
war. They never survived as an empire after 1945. They lose India, and most
every other outpost of note, forsaking all colonies East of Suez, as they
called it. But they didn’t even hold Suez for very much longer, or any of their
hard won territories in the Middle East. Oh, their oil companies continued on,
but there was no longer any real power beyond the exchange of oil for pounds
sterling. That was what Great Britain became. In my time their vaunted Royal
Navy, unrivaled at the start of this war, was reduced to no more than twenty
active ships. But the Americans? That is a completely different story.”

“They
become our enemy?”

“Our
chief opponent on the world stage, until their meddling and grinding finally
wore us down. The Soviet Union, as we called it, collapsed, and formally
dissolved in December of 1991, fifty years from now. After that, the entire
state disintegrated into not three, but
fifteen
separate nations. We
lose all the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Belarus. We lose
all of the Ukraine, and the Crimea with it, and everything Volkov now controls
disintegrates into a patchwork of six or seven separate states. We manage to
hold a little slice of the Caucasus, for the oil, of course, and the heartland
of Russia itself, and all of Siberia, remain united. Yes, Kirov, Siberia
remains loyal. And the nation I will soon lead even had all of Primorskiy
Province under its control, and a nice deep water port at Vladivostok. It
wasn’t until another man named Vladimir decided to do something about this sad
state of affairs, that we began to get back on our feet, but that took us
nearly twenty years.

“I… I
had no idea…”

“Of
course not. You went up those stairs at Ilanskiy from 1908, and they took you
to this war, did they not? You saw enough of a disaster underway here—the
gulags, concentration camps that killed millions, and forced millions more into
slave labor. Hitler gets busy with that soon as well. He has a particular
dislike of the Jews, and starts rounding them up and literally gassing them, and
burning the bodies in brick ovens.”

“This I
have seen,” said Kirov, his face drawn and hard now. “And just a little more...
Once I went up the stairs twice, and I think I may have reached your time.
Things were very different, particularly the rail yard. There were books on a
shelf near the window, and I saw it was about the history of the war, this war!
So I took them, and hastened back down those stairs. It was a very eerie
feeling, to think I had reached some far off future, and I never went back
again.”

“Then
you know what the Nazis have planned,” said Karpov. Few knew about it in the
beginning, but by the end of the war they called it the Holocaust, Hitler’s
‘Final Solution’ gone awry. And realize that is exactly what he will do here if
he wins this war. But we can stop him, Mister General Secretary. We can stop
him. In fact, we will be the two men most directly responsible for doing that.
You have seen the history. Yes? So you know that the British and Americans will
liberate France and the Low Countries, and knock Italy out of the war as well,
but the rest is our task. Germany fields about 330 divisions in this war, and
at any given time, eighty percent of them are fighting us, here on Russian
soil, until we eventually grind them under our heel and drive all the way to
Berlin. We beat the Americans there, but just barely. After that, the ‘Iron
Curtain’ falls and divides Europe for the next 50 years… Until
we
fall…”

The
silence in the room was broken only by the slow ticking of a great Grandfather
clock that stood imposingly on one wall of the stateroom. Its steady tick-tock
marked out the moments, and Kirov suddenly realized that far more was at stake
now than the resolution of this war. That clock would strike out the hours,
year after year, and here was a man who had knowledge of all that might happen,
a window on the decades that would transpire long after he, himself, was dead.

“In
truth, I have been so beset with the immediate crisis of this war that I have
given little thought to things like this.”

“That
is understandable,” said Karpov. “You are a time traveler too, Kirov, only you
come to this moment from the past. A choice you made in that past has served to
shape the world we now stand in, the moment you killed Stalin. It was a wise
choice, for otherwise he would have done the same to you.”

Kirov
nodded gravely, a look of anxiety on his face now as he remembered that moment
when his finger clenched the cold trigger of that pistol, and changed all
future history.

“I told
you how I came to that decision at our first meeting,” he said. “Though I had
no idea things would turn out this way. My part, I controlled easily enough.
But Ivan Volkov was quite a surprise. He was never mentioned in any of the
material I found on my forays up those stairs at Ilanskiy. Yes. You know I have
read the history of this war, but it only takes us so far before it becomes
useless. Things are happening now that never occurred. I should have all the
Caucasus, and all of the Orenburg Federation under my belt when I face the
Germans.”

“And
all of Siberia,” said Karpov. “And yet it was still a nightmare when the
Germans came, and four bloody years of fighting that have only just begun.”

“If we
can survive,” said Kirov. “We are fighting hard, in fact even doing a little
better than we once did, according to what I have read. We’ve been stubborn in
the north, but the Germans are raising hell in the south. If we lose there, and
they get through to link up with Volkov’s troops, then we lose the oil. Yes, I
can build tanks, but soon the factories will run out of fuel for the machines,
and what will those tanks run on?”

“Don’t
worry about that,” said Karpov. “I told you I am presently sitting on massive
reserves of oil in Siberia. But it will take some effort to get at it. I know
exactly where it is, at Perm, Emba, in the Western Urals, and in the Far East
on Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka. You see why we will need to run the Japanese
out of those territories soon? So don’t worry about oil, my friend, I can get
you all you need. But first I want that ship—
my
ship—so I can deal with
the Japanese Navy. I would have done all this earlier, but for the stupid
interference of Volsky and Fedorov. They are the reason Japan now sits on the
Golden Horn Harbor, and I intend to reverse that, but I need my ship. Do we
have a bargain?”

For
what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul,
thought Kirov? Here I sit, dickering with the Devil. Everything he says sounds
so reasonable, for even the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose. Yes, I
have read Shakespeare along with all the great Russian writers. He had a good
deal to say about this man
… a villain with a smiling cheek. A goodly apple
rotten at the heart…

Yet
what if all he says about our future is true? Do my allies here turn on me as
he describes? Will that reoccur this time around, or can I forge a different
understanding with the West, as Volsky hopes?

“Something
tells me it isn’t just the Japanese Navy you are worried about, Karpov,” he
said, voicing his inner concern. “It’s the American Navy too.”

“It is
any navy that would set itself in opposition to the rightful interests of
Russia,” said Karpov flatly. “You think I do this for personal aggrandizement?
I am not so foolish, or even so selfish. No. I act in the interest of the
nation I swore to serve—the nation you have been struggling to re-unite, after
it broke like bad china. Well, you have heard what I said about the future. If
you think three separate states is difficult now, try fifteen after 1991. I
know you cannot know whether this is all true, because you haven’t seen it. Yet
I give you my word that what I have told you actually took place. You could
even ask your newfound friend—Fedorov. He will tell you the same.”

“And
you think we can prevent that? How? Buy facing down the American Navy in the
Pacific? You forget that I was a young man when that incident occurred in the
Tsushima Straits that re-ignited the old Russo-Japanese war. I saw that history
unfold in slow motion. At one point I thought I might go east and fight the
Japanese myself, but the Revolution, and then the sudden appearance of this man
Volkov, compelled me to stay in St. Petersburg and fight for the Bolshevik
movement. Things did not turn out so well the last time you had that ship there
in the Pacific, did they?”

“You
can thank Volsky for that. That man is a traitor to his own nation. Do you know
he came for me with another warship? Yes. He managed to find a way to bring one
of our most deadly fighting ships back to get after me—a submarine. He thought
he was going to slink up on me and stab me in the back!” Karpov’s anger got the
better of him now, and he restrained himself, reaching for his cup, and sipping
the cold tea.

Kirov
perceived that flash of anger, and the darkness behind it, and he knew the
danger he would court if he did what this man asked of him now. “I’m told that
ship has certain weapons,” he said in a hushed tone. “Weapons far more powerful
than the rockets you have used on other ships. We spoke of this before.”

Karpov
thought for a moment, realizing Kirov must have learned this from Admiral
Volsky. How much did he know? Is he aware of the fact that I used those
weapons? Kirov knew of a mysterious ‘incident’ in 1908 that served as a trigger
point for renewed war with Japan, but he could not know I used a nuclear warhead
on the Americans, because that happened August 8th of this very year, a week
from now…. Unless Volsky told him…

“Yes,”
he said, “the ship can do more than many realize. It has power to decide any
engagement decisively in our favor. You have probably read of what the
Americans did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is why I know I can prevail in
the Pacific, but I do not even have to consider the use of these weapons. I can
beat the Japanese Navy by simply using the conventional weapons that ship will
now possess. I have been rash in the past, Kirov. I’m sure Volsky told you as
much, and I will be the first to admit that. Yet everything I ever did was for
Russia. Now I see things differently. I know the measured use of power can
achieve the best results. Yet I also know that unless you are willing to use
the power you have, then you can achieve nothing. So give me back my ship, and
I will give you all our eastern provinces in return, and the oil the Japanese
now unknowingly sit on at Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka. I will give you back the
only port on the Pacific Russia ever had, and, if need be, I could even sail to
the Black Sea and help you keep the Crimea and Sevastopol.”