Three Kings (Kirov Series) (12 page)

The
cruisers swept away, the tracks churning up the dust and sand as they wheeled
in a well coordinated turn, storming in and taking the last of
Bergonzoli’s
tanks in the flank, smashing up an already
badly disorganized formation. It was the final straw, and the Italians had had
enough. They were not going to break through at Beda
Fomm
,
and would soon be herded back to become prisoners for the long duration of the
war.

Operation
Compass had come to its wheezing end, over nearly 800 kilometers of
inhospitable desert, against a force five times its size. The brilliance and
determination of General O’Connor, and all the Brigadiers that commanded the
dogged troops he led into battle, had given Great Britain the one thing it so
desperately needed at that time, a victory.

O’Connor’s
face would make the news, the energetic British Terrier that had beaten the
Italians senseless in the Libyan Desert, defending Egypt and liberating all of
Cyrenaica. He had taken two small ports in Bardia, Tobruk and soon added
Benghazi as the Australians continued to press the Italians from behind. The
airfields he had secured would be vital to the defense of Malta, for when the
Italians moved into Egypt, the only way the British could get more
Hurricanes
to Malta was by carrier. Now they would have plenty of new airfields to leap
frog the fighters forward.

It was
a jubilant time, and a much needed relief from the anxiety that the Italian advance
into Egypt had caused. Secretary of War Anthony Eden took a leaf from
Churchill’s book and characterized the victory in a single phrase: “Never has
so much been surrendered by so many to so few.”

Churchill
himself was a bit more direct: “It looks as if these people were corn ripe for
the sickle,” he said in a congratulatory message to Wavell. The stalwart
General placed the praise on O’Connor’s handling of the battle, getting the
utmost from the slim resources he had, with imagination, skill and considerable
daring. Yet O’Connor never sought the limelight and considered his actions as
nothing more than the simple performance of his duty. His face did make the
news, however, and more than an admiring population in Great Britain would see
the magazine covers. Dark eyes would soon take interest in what was happening
there in the Western Desert. A conjunction of minds and forces was soon about
to change everything again, as Germany decided how it would now deal with the
sudden and complete defeat of the Italians in North Africa.

* * *

Aboard
Kirov
, Anton Fedorov had been following all these
developments closely from any reports Nikolin could fish from the wire traffic.
He knew what lay ahead, at least in one telling of these events, and he had
been amazed at the integrity of the history concerning O’Connor’s Raid and
Operation Compass. He turned to Admiral Volsky, explaining that all this was
about to be reversed, and wondering what they could do about it.

“You
mean to say that after such a resounding victory this British General will be
defeated by the Italians now?” Volsky did not understand.

“No
sir, not the Italians, though they will reinforce their position in
Tripolitania and continue to fight. If the history continues to hold this
course, the British will soon be sent reeling across the desert in retreat by
the Germans, and principally by one man, General Erwin Rommel, the man who will
come to be called the Desert Fox. He’s out there somewhere even as we speak,
waiting in the wings, and he is about to take center stage if things hold
together. In fact, O’Connor may soon be captured, along with many other
Brigadiers who just fought this victorious battle against the Italians. Britain
will lose one of its most daring generals just as a foe of equal skill comes on
the scene for the other side. This reversal sets back British plans for half a
year, and in this history it could be even more significant, possibly fatal.”

“My,”
said Volsky. “History can be a stubborn mule at times. Must this happen, Fedorov?
Might it not change?”

“It
might if I could do one thing, sir.”

“What
is that?”

“Warn
General O’Connor, so the British will not be deprived of his brilliance. We
must warn them, sir. Information is as much a weapon as anything else in this
war, and that we have in abundance, no matter how many missiles remain in our
magazine.”

“Admiral
Tovey has sent word that there will be a meeting in Cairo to plan the defense
of Egypt and the future course of the war. We are invited as observers and
agents of the Soviet government. It is either that or we sail for Murmansk to
arrange these convoys, but Admiral Golovko can handle that for the time being.
These old bones are starting to feel the cold up here. Warmer waters would be
most welcome. Would you like to go?”

“Of
course!” Fedorov was elated.

He
thought it would be a perfect time to discretely offer the British the benefit
of his foreknowledge of what was to come. Nothing was certain, but he might
help them avoid some key blunders, like the ill fated and futile effort to
reinforce Greece. He might also let them know how important Malta will become
to the future war in the desert.

As he
pondered this, another event was about to happen that would now weigh heavily
in the balance. It would begin with a simple coded signal, heralding an arrival
that had been long expected, and one that would change the entire course of the
war.

Part
IV

Arrivals

“One must pass through the circumference
of time before arriving at the center of opportunity.”

―
Baltasar
Gracian

Chapter 10

The
periscope mast broke
through the placid sea, leaving a quiet frothing wake behind it. There,
cruising like a great whale just beneath the surface, was the massive shadowy form
of the hidden submarine. On the bridge of the boat, its commander had hoped to
see the gleam of moonlight on the water, a glimmering trail that would lead his
eye over the stillness of the sea, but there was nothing. The night was thick,
the darkness so solid that it seemed a tangible thing. Then he saw the strange
luminescent light, just as before, a soft pale glow swelling away from the sub
in all directions. He sat eyeing the charts of the region, his hand slowly
rubbing the back of his neck to chase away the tension there.

“Anything?” he said quietly in
the taut stillness of the bridge.

“Nothing sir. Clean in all
directions, but my coverage seems very limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m getting the peninsula, but
not much else beyond fifteen to twenty kilometers.”

The Captain leaned over his radar
operator’s position now, eyeing the screen, then glancing furtively at the
digital displays from the sub’s mast cameras. “Fifteen kilometers?”

“Range seems to be increasing now
sir, but very slowly. It’s as if there’s a bubble expanding around us.”
Lieutenant Gorban pointed to his screen as he spoke. “That’s the tip of Cape
Aniva, and this is the peninsula stretching up to Korsakov, but I can’t see
across Aniva Bay to Cape
Crillon
. It’s as if it
wasn’t even there!”

“No surface contacts?”

“Nothing, sir. Absolutely
nothing. But who can say with the equipment acting up like this?”

Gromyko ran his hand over the
short close cropped hair on the back of his head. “They said this was likely,”
he said quietly to his executive officer, Belanov. “We should have full sensor
coverage within the hour, but what about
Kirov?”
He turned to his
communications officer now, Lieutenant Alexi Karenin.

“Get that message off.”

“Aye sir, initiating beacon
signal now as programmed, but—”

“But what, Mister Karenin?”

“Well my equipment doesn’t seem
to be functioning properly either.”

Gromyko gave him a frustrated
look. “Chernov?” The Captain looked to his able sonar man now,
Lieutenant Andre Chernov.

“There’s
a lot of noise, sir, a very deep rumble. I have no contacts but with the sound
field this distorted I would have to go active to be sure.”

“Belay
that for the moment. Sit tight and keep listening, Chernov. Until we know where
the hell we are I’m not moving a muscle.”

“Sir,” said Belanov, “has it
happened? Have we moved?”

“Take a look at those screens,”
said Gromyko, pointing to the digital displays from his mast cameras. “One
minute we had decent moonlight, the next it’s pitch black, so something has
obviously happened to us.”

Even as he said that he recalled
the words of Director Kamenski when he was with them on the boat, first trying
to explain the impossible truth that was now before them.
It was very strange indeed. He had told them they
discovered odd effects related to nuclear detonations, effects beyond the
blast, radiation, and EMP pulse.

“The
detonation ruptured the time continuum,”
said Kamenski, but it took a while for the information to register on his own
internal sonar.

“Excuse
me, Director… Time continuum?”
The recollection
of his own plaintive question was the only meager protest he had offered. It
was incredulous, preposterous, unbelievable, but here was a former Director of
the KGB, certainly not a man given to flights of fancy, and he was giving him
this story with plain faced candor evident in every aspect of his tone and
manner.

“Yes,
Captain, the fourth dimension. Time. You know the first three well enough as
you move about them in this vast ocean here—length, breadth and height, or
depth in the case of your submarine. Well you must also know that you move in
the fourth dimension as well—in time. Until Tsar Bomba went off, everything
moved in only one direction through time, from this moment to the next in that
second by second journey we all take from the cradle to the grave. But Tsar
Bomba showed us that journey could also be affected by very powerful
detonations—and time itself could be breached. Physical objects could be blown
through that breach, and they would end up in the same spatial location, but in
another time.”

It was
all so wildly impossible that if he had not seen it happen with his own eyes he
would not have believed it. In fact he did not quite believe it now. He had
half a mind to surface the boat and put those human eyes to the test. Might his
digital readouts and screens be lying to them? In the world of 2021 they had
all grown so accustomed to believing the digital image of a thing was reality.
But what if it was all wrong? What if all those ones and zeroes in the data
stream between the mast camera’s lens and his monitors here was as befuddled as
the radar seemed to be now? He knew that was very unlikely, but there was still
something in him that wanted to break to the surface, wanted air, the smell of
the sea, a look at the night stars overhead. But that would not happen—not
until he knew what their tactical situation was. Gromyko was a very cautious
man. That was a good submariner’s first order of business—caution.

“Very
well,” he said still rubbing the back of his head. “We wait. Down periscope.
The boat will run silent.”

“Aye
sir, main mast down and the silent running lights are on.”

Now
Gromyko looked at his sonar man. “Your game, Mister Chernov. Until you can
certify the sea is clean around me, we’ll sit here like a hole in the water and
wait.”

Chernov
vanished beneath his headset, using the ship’s powerful sonar to listen at high
amplification to all the sounds around them now. The deep, threatening rumble
he heard filled him with a sense of dread. Then he realized that he had heard
something very like this before. Following that thought, he reached over,
toggled on his signature bank, and looked for a pattern match. There it was!

“Captain…
That background noise I reported—it’s geothermic.”

“Geothermic?”

“It’s
that damn volcano sir, the one we were trying to get away from when the Chief
Engineer on
Kirov
reported it was muddling up his procedure.”

“Yes,”
said Gromyko. “And that led us on quite a merry little adventure.”

Kazan
had moved south through the Sea of Japan to a point very close
to the North Korean port of Wonsan. There they had stumbled upon an operation
by the North Korean Navy, and an accident in the engine room had created a
sudden noise on a squeaky bearing that gave their position away. It had plagued
them ever since, on the run down past
Ullung
Do
Island, and during that encounter they had with a combined Japanese American
ASW group. Then the Shadow Dance had begun, the stealthy undersea duel where
the slightest failure of nerve and technique could have finished them.

That
had been a very close thing. There was little margin for error with the odds
stacked so heavily against him. They had been engaged by at least three enemy
subs, one of them a good American boat, and a Japanese surface action group
with helicopters. They had been fired upon, more than once, and it took all his
considerable skill to evade the deadly undersea lances aimed his way, though
his boat and crew performed admirably.