Winter Storm (4 page)

“Now
then… Grilikov is
Byki
to me. Understand? He covers my back, and he is
absolutely loyal. I will explain how I knew this man before, but there’s no
time to get into that now. Let’s just say that if I told Grilikov to cut off
his balls and eat them, he would. Enough said on that. But now we come to you,
Orlov. Grilikov is
Byki
, so you get a new job. I’m bumping you up to
Kassir,
the man of authority, the bookmaker, the man who collects from all the
Brigadiers. And guess what, you won’t be running a small group of six to ten cells,
like you might back home in Saint Petersburg with the Grekov Group. No. Beneath
you is the entire crew of this ship, and you are
Kassir
, Chief of the
Boat. Understand? The other officers like Rodenko and Samsonov, and even
Troyak, well, they are your Brigadiers, and the men beneath them are all
Boeviks
and
Shestyorkas
in those Brigades, the warriors, runners, messenger
boys, you get the drift. We call them
mishman
and
matocks
. Some
are torpedo men, missile men, and you know who they are. Others are messenger
boys like Nikolin.”

“What
about Fedorov?”

“Funny
you should mention him,” Karpov smiled. “He’s too damn smart to be a
Shestyorka
,
but he doesn’t have the temperament to be a warrior, or even a Brigadier. He
might make a good
Soveitnik,
a councilor for me once I vet the man
thoroughly. So you get another job in that for me. You are my spy keeping an
eye on Fedorov.”

“Right,”
Orlov nodded, instinctively leaning in closer to Karpov now, as though he was
taken into the confidence of his old
Pakhan
back in Saint Petersburg,
and being given a very important job. He always did think of himself as more
than a simple muscle man, even though he never got that high in any mob
structure, until he joined the navy. Karpov was putting things in terms he
inherently understood, and the situation was very clear to him when the Captain
proceeded.

“As to
the Japanese, think of them as a rival gang, and a big one, a very dangerous
one. They’ve been welching on the agreement they struck with us after the
Russo-Japanese war. They’ve moved into our territory, busted up our cells out
east, and took over all that business. They run our old neighborhoods and
districts, and by God, I won’t stand for that any longer.”

“Damn
right,” said Orlov.

“Good…
You understand, and now you know why we are sailing east. This ship has a new
Pakhan
,
and you’re looking at him. And this ship has power—real power, Chief. I’m going
to use it, carefully, at just the right time and place, and I’m going to run
the damn Japanese out of Vladivostok and every other territory they took from
us. You are the only other man I’ve spoken to about this. You are my number one,
Kassir
.

“What
about Rodenko?” asked Orlov.

“I need
to see how he plays the game. Frankly, being
Kassir
in a gang like this
is a great deal of responsibility, and only you really understand how it should
work. So that is why you need to step up now, and act like a man with real
authority. A little push or a shove may be necessary at times, but remember
what I said.”

“Stars
and bars,” said Orlov.

“Exactly.
I think we have an understanding.” Karpov smiled.

Part
II

Disclosure

“Seldom, very seldom, does
complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that
something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”

―
Jane Austin

When
Fedorov appeared at his door, Doctor Zolkin was very happy
to see him. “Come in!” he said with a warm smile. “You know, I was meaning to
speak with you, Mister Fedorov. I trust you are feeling well? No more
headaches?”

“Quite
well, sir. I’m my old self.” Even as he said that, Fedorov could not escape the
irony. Where was his old self, the man who might have come here in his place
before the hand on Time’s clock struck that Paradox? He still felt a strange
sense of guilt, for everything now, but even more keenly in thinking he was
responsible for the death of his own self.

“Good,”
said Zolkin, “because I was very remiss in not properly attending to you. Yes,
the line at my door was quite long after that incident in the Norwegian Sea,
but that is no excuse. Forgive me, Fedorov. I should have provided you with
better care. And another thing… That P.A. announcement by the Captain this
morning. It sounded like you two have reached an accommodation.”

“Yes
sir, for the moment. He wanted me to go about the ship and speak with the crew.
I’ll get to that in time, but I thought it best to begin with the officers, and
you were first on my list.”

“What
is this all about? News of the Admiral? I hope nothing has happened.”

How to
begin, thought Fedorov? “Sir, I went ashore with Admiral Volsky, at his
request. There we were met with a security team, and strangely, the Captain
appeared. There was a letter from Moscow. The Admiral was relieved of command.”

“What?
Because of that accident?”

“Partly,
but that is just the beginning of the story.” He took a deep breath. “Doctor
Zolkin, you heard my interpretation of these events, and what I believe
happened, yet I am thinking you attribute my tale to some aberrant mental
state—to that fall I took, hitting my head.”

Zolkin
folded his arms, nodding. “I will be frank with you and say that I did have a
growing concern about you, and all the more reason for me to have seen to your
care.”

“Well
sir… I have been asked to deliver some news to the entire crew, and you will
find it quite shocking. To be blunt about it, my assessment of what has
happened to us has now been proven correct.” He left that there, watching
closely to note Zolkin’s reaction.

“You
mean that story you told us about WWII? The Captain asked you to explain that
all to the crew? Mister Fedorov, the last time I saw that man he was fairly
well convinced that you were a lunatic, or worse, a traitor concocting this
story as a means of covering up your complicity with the British.”

“Yes,
sir. But he no longer believes that, because everything I have said was proved
correct, and the Captain has finally accepted those facts. You may ask him
yourself.”

“Proven?
You mean this moon business? What are you talking about?”

Now
Fedorov shared his story of the mission ashore, making a detailed description
of the condition of the harbor, the city virtually gone. Zolkin had a strange
look on his face, for he had heard much the same, in whispered confessions from
crewmen who had caught a glimpse of the harbor from their stations,
particularly the men who were assigned to the boat launch detail, and one of
the Marines, Zykov. The man had been in here saying something terrible had
happened to Severomorsk, and he thought it was war, but he seemed very
confused. Could it be true? Could all the rest of Fedorov’s story be true along
with it?

“You’re
asking me to believe that this is now 1941?”

“I know
you were down here, below decks, and you didn’t see anything of what I have
described, except that moon I pointed out when I spoke with you and the
Admiral. If it is any comfort to you now, Doctor, I will also tell you that the
Admiral accepted all of this. He was finally convinced.”

“But
then who sent that recall order?” Zolkin protested. “I know he was tussling
with all of this, but that was the one objection he could not seem to
overcome.”

“We
solved that at Severomorsk. And now I must tell you something even stranger
about all of this. But I will begin by saying this to you. While we were
ashore, the Admiral told me to come to you with all of this, and to ask that
you believe me in every respect. I have said he was convinced of this truth, by
the evidence of his own eyes at Severomorsk. I know you were both long time
friends, and so I ask you to have faith that what I say to you now is true.”

Zolkin
gave him a long look, waiting. “Very well, Fedorov. Tell me everything my old
friend came to believe, everything you now say the Captain believes. I will
give you an open ear here.”

And so
Fedorov explained it all again, the reasons, all the evidence, and then he also
recounted the encounter with the patrol ship
Tuman
, something even
Zolkin knew about from the history. When he came to the mission ashore at
Severomorsk , he lowered his voice.

“Doctor,
I have already said why I knew all of this was true—that I had lived it all
through before. Yes, you thought I was experiencing
déjà vu
, perhaps as
a result of that bump on the head I took, but that is not the case. I did live
through all of this once, and the memories are so clear in my mind that it
seems like it all happened yesterday.”

“I will
be frank with you,” said Zolkin. “Yes, I took all of that to be evidence of a
mental disturbance. I believed you were fantasizing because of the stress of
your confrontation with the Captain. He can be a most intimidating man.”

“It was
no fantasy, sir. It all happened. You were involved in it all as well, and came
to believe everything I have told you just now, because you lived through it
with me.”

“Yet
only you remember these things? No one else?”

“Apparently
not…. God, I wish I could produce a log book, something tangible, but I’ve
checked for that on the bridge with Nikolin. He keeps the logs, and there was
no evidence there. Then I remembered why, because we purged the files.” Fedorov
had a frustrated look on his face now, for he needed Zolkin to believe here,
and the man’s own intelligence and training was working as an adversary to
that. Then Zolkin had a strange look in his eye, as if he recalled something
very important.

“Fedorov…
Log entries… I was wanting to speak with you, because I was consulting my
medical logs the other day, and came upon something very odd.”

“Tell
me.” Fedorov’s eyes were dark and serious.

“Oh, I
was just reviewing my records, looking for something that might explain away an
old bloodied bandage I found in my medicine cabinet. That may not seem like
much, but I’m a very meticulous man, and somewhat of a creature of habit. So I
wanted to see if I had made a log entry detailing an incident when that bandage
might have been used. I couldn’t remember anything about it… then I found
something very odd, an encrypted file. Apparently I put a strong password
protection on it, because I tried several of my old favorites, and it
eventually opened.”

“I see…
What was it, Doctor?”

“A list
of members of the crew… An Autopsy report on each name I found there.”

That
hit Fedorov like a wet fish in the face. Autopsy reports? Now he remembered
what had happened in Vladivostok when the Inspector General came aboard, with
that damn intelligence officer, Ivan Volkov. There had been a list of names,
all the members of the crew that they had lost in combat during those first
harrowing missions in time. Volkov managed to force Zolkin to surrender that
list, and it was then found that Moscow had no record that any man on the list
ever existed! His heart beat faster as he realized what this might be—that very
same list, encrypted and hidden by the Doctor during that period before they
made port, when the effort was made to erase all evidence of what had happened
to them. Of course, that was why I could find no computer logs. But Zolkin did
not erase his files, he merely encrypted them!

All
this passed through his mind in a heartbeat, and now his eyes widened as he
looked at the Doctor, knowing exactly what to ask.

“Doctor
Zolkin… Did the list you found have a report on a crewman named Markov? Did it
include a man named Voloshin? Another named Lenkov—the man from the galley?”

Zolkin
had a stunned expression on his face. “Yes! All of them. My God, the moment I
saw that list I knew you were the one man I needed to speak with about it… I
just knew… But how could you know this, the names of those men?”

“Because
I can tell you how each man died.” He went on about Markov, and how he was
simply reported as missing in action while working at the Primorskiy
engineering facility. Then there was Voloshin, found dead in his own quarters,
an apparent suicide. There were others he remembered, men he knew who had died
in the reserve battle bridge, or at some other station during the many hours of
combat they had endured. He could not remember them all, did not even know some
who had given up their lives, their very existence, though he felt responsible
for all of them. Then he came to Lenkov.

“He was
found, half embedded in the galley floor, and then later the rest of his body,
his legs in fact, were discovered in one of the Marine lockers…”

Zolkin
shuddered. It was exactly as he had written it up in his report, that ghastly
incident of which he had no recollection. Much of it was garbled, but there
were enough clear segments in the file for him to realize that Fedorov somehow
knew about everything he had written into those files. Could he have found the
log entry? Could he have broken the encryption? Fedorov was very clever, but
that would have been a difficult task, if not an impossible one. Then Fedorov
spoke again, telling him the impossible truth yet again.

“Yes,
Doctor, I know what you must have written into that file, because I was there
when all those events occurred. I lived through them all, just as I told you
earlier. Can you believe me now? Admiral Volsky did.”

“God
almighty,” said Zolkin. “Then it is all true. Those things really happened?
Even that ghastly write-up I discovered on Lenkov? I haven’t looked at the man
the same way since I found that file.”

“It all
happened.”

“Then
everything else you told us also happened? Karpov tried to take the ship?”

“Yes
sir, and he’s done it again, only not the same way. You see, we never got a
recall order the first time I experienced these events. After we investigated
the facilities on Jan Mayen, we turned south, and ran the Denmark Strait into
the Atlantic, just as I told you earlier.”

Zolkin
shook his head. “What in the world is going on here? I was so quick to diagnose
your own mental condition, but now I begin to doubt my own sanity!”

“No
sir, you are quite sane. Yet all these insane things did happen to us, and to
this ship—God’s truth. I think if I saw that list of yours, I could tell you
how every man there died, and why.”

“But
Lenkov… That was gruesome!”

“Very
strange. That happened just before the ship made its final shift.”

“Using
that control rod you told the Admiral and I about?”

“Yes.
You see, in the course of all these shifts, we ended up in 1940. We stayed
there for some time, but as we approached this time, the time the ship first
appeared here, these strange things began to happen. Was Orlov on your list?”

“He
was, but I edited that entry, and that was very puzzling. I had written him up
as a K.I.A.”

“In a
helicopter incident involving the KA-226?”

“Yes!”
said Zolkin, amazed again that Fedorov knew the exact contents of that entry.
“Fedorov, are you certain you never saw or read this file before? Swear on your
Mother’s heart.”

“Oh.
I’ve seen it before, Doctor, but that was when these events were actually
taking place, just as I’ve told you. You know that list is something completely
aberrant. How could you possibly account for such a list? From your
perspective, we just left Severomorsk a few days ago for those life fire
exercises. None of those events had even happened, but they did once. This is
what I’m telling you. You know damn well that you didn’t write that list in
your sleep after we left Severomorsk. The password you used to encrypt it was
very personal, am I correct?”

Zolkin
nodded grimly. “So… I did write it, but not me… not this confused idiot in
front of you now, but another version of myself? Is that what you are telling
me now?”

“Apparently
so. You were on the ship with me through all those events. You endured it all
too. I only wish you could remember.”

Zolkin
was silent for a moment, his mind in a deep well on something. Then he got up,
went over to his desk, and opened a drawer, producing, to Fedorov’s surprise, a
soiled bandage, stained with blood.

“I
found this in my medicine cabinet, as I mentioned earlier. That was what set me
to looking through my files, because I could not remember how or when a bandage
like that was ever used on this ship.”

But
Fedorov could, and now the look on his face was deeply sympathetic, an almost
painful expression, for he recognized that was the arm bandage Zolkin had used
to dress his own arm during that terrible incident on the bridge, way back in
1908, decades past now. He hadn’t witnessed the incident, for he was still
aboard
Kazan
when it happened, but for days after, he remembered seeing
that bandage on Zolkin’s arm.