Kirov (15 page)

“And
take that with you,” he said, pointing at the volume Fedorov had been holding. “Show
that to Zolkin.”

At
first Fedorov believed he was being sent down to have his head examined. After
all, he was the only one who had ventured to voice the possibility that the
planes and ships they had seen were, indeed, real. If this was an hallucination
or other strange after effect of that odd detonation, then the whole crew
should be examined. Why was the Admiral picking on him? It was Karpov, he
thought. Karpov and his damnable lap dog Orlov…yet he was fortunate the Captain
hadn’t put Orlov on to him, and the Admiral’s presence on the bridge seemed a
calming and moderating influence over the man. Sometime later, he slipped
through the hatch to the sick bay, a sheepish look on his face.

“Mister
Fedorov,” said the doctor. Zolkin was sitting at his desk, a cup of hot tea
steaming at his right hand. He looked at Fedorov over the top of his reading
glasses, smiling. “How may I help you?”

“I'm
not entirely sure, sir. I was ordered to report by the Admiral.”

“Feeling
blue, are you?”

“I
feel fine, sir, but the situation on the bridge is… Well, rather strained at
the moment.”

“Tell
me.” Zolkin waited folding his hands before him on his desk, his dark eyes
studying the man and noting the peculiar signs of both excitement and
nervousness about him.

Fedorov
told the doctor what had transpired, the strange surface contact, and the
over-flight by the old British fighter.

“So
that's what all that noise was,” said Zolkin. “What kind of plane was it?”

Fedorov
related the details, making a particular point to note that this plane had been
retired long ago, and only one was known to even exist.

“You
saw this plane?”

“With
my own eyes, sir. You heard it yourself!”

“I
certainly did.”

At
that moment both men were surprised to see Admiral Volsky step through the
door, removing his cap and tucking it under his arm as he exhaled deeply. Zolkin
noted how he closed the door, securing the bolt lock after he did so.

“Admiral
Volsky,” the doctor stood at once, taking a more formal tone with the Admiral
in the presence of another crewman.

“As
you were, gentlemen.” The Admiral looked at Fedorov, noting the book he still
had sitting on his lap. “Very well,” he said. “You have something more to say
about the situation, Mister Fedorov? Something in that book there?”

“Well
sir, you asked me to find as much information about operations in the Norwegian
Sea for the period we discussed. He glanced warily at the doctor, not knowing
how much he should reveal, but the Admiral’s expression made it clear that he
should speak freely. “It's here, sir,” he began, “I marked the place here on
page 75.”

“Read
it to me, please.”

Fedorov
opened the book, his ink stained finger tracing its way midway down the central
column on the page as he began to read. “22 July through 4 August, Arctic
sector. British carrier raid on Kirkenes and Petsamo. From 22 to 25 July the
ships earmarked for the operation are assembled in Iceland…” He paused,
skipping ahead slightly. “Here it is, sir… on 26 July the mine laying cruiser
Adventure
,
used as a transport to Murmansk, leaves with the destroyer
Anthony
.
There follows later Force P under Rear Admiral Wake-Walker, consisting of the
aircraft carriers
Furious
and
Victorious
, the heavy cruisers
Devonshire
and
Suffolk,
and destroyers
Echo
,
Eclipse
,
Escapade
and
Intrepid
… It's all here, sir.” He handed the Admiral the book,
pointing out the passage with his finger. “The Russian translation. A very rare
find I picked up in London last summer.”

The
Admiral read the passage, squinting at the fine print, yet nodding as he did
so. “Ten ships,” he said.

“Two
more destroyers and a tanker join the task force as well, sir. They refuel and
Wake-Walker proceeds with this attack, which was rather disastrous. The Germans
were ready for them. They were spotted by a seaplane and the Luftwaffe had
Me-109s lying in wait for them when they launched to attack the harbors.
Several British squadrons were cut to pieces.”

“I
see,” said the Admiral. “These ships mentioned here, they are the same vessels
you identified in the video?”

“I
believe as much, sir. The video clearly shows those carriers and 8 inch gun
Kent
class cruisers. I’ve looked up the these names in my old copy of Jane’s
Fighting Ships, and compared the photos to the video images we had.
Suffolk
is a
Kent
Class cruiser, sir. There’s no question about that—two turrets
forward, two aft, and three stacks amidships.
Devonshire
was London
class, but they’re all considered County Class heavy cruisers.”

The
Admiral closed his eyes, that headache still refusing to leave him in peace. “You're
going to have to do more for me than a couple of aspirin, Dmitri,” he said to
the doctor. “If I thought I had a headache before, what Fedorov is telling me
now is something even you may have no remedy for.”

The
doctor was very curious, leaning forward, looking over his glasses at the
volume the Admiral was paging through now. Volsky related the details
concerning the video feed from the helicopter, telling him how Fedorov’s keen
eye had apparently identified the flagship at first sight as HMS
Victorious
,
not to mention the plane that overflew the ship a few hours ago.

“You
mean to tell me you actually have live
video
images of the ships?”

“Yes,
Dmitri. That's what so, confounding about this whole thing! The evidence is
right before our eyes. I saw that plane myself—everyone on the bridge did.
Mister Fedorov here took it upon himself to rush out onto the outer watch deck
and have a very close look.” The Admiral gave Fedorov an admonishing glance. “Yet
this passage here names the very same ships our helicopter filmed just hours
ago. Now… the Captain believes we are all hallucinating, that this is some
elaborate psychological operation undertaken by NATO, and if that is true, then
they have cooked up something really sinister this time. Everything that has
happened since that detonation near
Orel
has been one impossibility
after another. Could these effects result from a nuclear detonation, from
radiation exposure? This I wonder. Yet we have not detected any radiation
threat whatsoever. And Mister Fedorov here has voiced the only possible scenario
where the presence of these ships and planes makes even the slightest bit of
sense.”

The
Admiral looked at his navigator, as if handing him the baton and urging him to
speak his mind. Fedorov cleared his throat, again realizing how insane his
words might sound. Was the Admiral merely sounding him out here in front of the
doctor so that he could demonstrate his odd behavior? He put that thought aside,
preferring instead to believe the Admiral was a confederate and not an
adversary concerning his views on the situation.

“This
will sound crazy,” he began. “But as I said on the bridge, sir, the presence of
these ships and planes cannot be explained in the year 2021, which can only
mean…”

Both men waited for him to finish the thought that they
themselves were thinking. Fedorov took a deep breath, forging on. “The BBC news
broadcast we received on the radio, sir… Did you hear the date? It was this
exact date, sir, 28 July 1941. And right there, in that book…” He stopped, the
conclusion obvious to them all.

No
one spoke, but both the Admiral and Navigator looked at Zolkin, as if his take
on the matter would certify their own sanity or delusion, one way or another.
Each, in their turn, had come to suspect the incredulous notion that something
profound had happened to the ship.

Zolkin
considered all the information they had shared with him, recalling the deep
thrumming drone of the aircraft that he heard some time ago, and piecing
together stories various crewmen had left with him as they filed in and out of
his sick bay these last several hours. Many had complained of headaches,
nausea, some experiencing an unaccountable dizziness. Yet he had found no sign
of fever, infection, or other pathogen in his examinations, and there was no
evidence of harmful radiation emanating from the strange explosion that had set
the sea aglow all around them hours ago. Others simply complained that they
could no longer access the Internet on their pads and personal computers, and
the sudden sense of isolation only added to a rising anxiety that was running
through the crew.

“28
July, 1941,” he breathed, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Of course I have
not seen this video, or this aircraft you speak of, but I will take your
testimony on faith. So let us reason the matter through. We have video images,
radio broadcasts, and the over flight of a single aircraft that Mister Fedorov
has identified as an old British fighter plane. The first two could be
deliberate deceptions, though I assume you have inspected this video file
obtained by the helicopter and found it to be valid, yes?”

“I had Nikolin go over it with a fine toothed comb,” said
the Admiral. Orlov was curious about it as well, and would not rest until he
had run the footage through the wringer. We find no evidence of tampering. I do
not believe, as Karpov suggests, that this file was a video feed by NATO
designed to deceive or confuse us.”

“Though
it has done exactly that,” said Zolkin. “So…At the risk of reinforcing a
fantasy, let me play the devil’s advocate here. If these ships and planes do
exist, as real and tangible things, and if we trust what we have heard on the
radio is no mere documentary, then let us assume the most outrageous
possibility that we are no longer in our own time…”

“Yes,”
said Fedorov, “But how is
that
possible?”

“The
explosion…The sea…” The Admiral began. “It was very odd, Dmitri. Like nothing I
have ever experienced.”

The
doctor nodded. “It seems to have had some unusual effects on the whole ship.”
He told the Admiral of the many complaints registered by various crew members.

“Dobrynin
in engineering said they picked up strange reading from the reactors,” said
Volsky. “He said things did not sound correct, and I know enough about ships at
sea to take such a statement seriously.”

“Alright,
for the sake of argument, if nothing else,” said Zolkin, “let us construct a
plausible scenario. Suppose the
Orel
did have an accident, either with
one of her missiles or reactor cores. There is a massive explosion, right at
her plotted position, and this has some strange effect on space-time. Who
knows, perhaps our reactor cores were affected as well.”

“Space-time?”
Volsky frowned.

“That’s
what we live in,” said Zolkin. “Four dimensions that we know of, length,
breadth, height and time. Lump them together and we get space-time, unless
Einstein is mistaken.” He laughed. “Alright… now, I am no Einstein, but if a
massive explosion can move things in the three dimensions comprising space as
we know it, why not the fourth as well?”

“You
are suggesting we were literally blown into the past by the shock wave of this
explosion?”

“For
the sake of argument,” said Zolkin. “Let us suppose as much. If we take this
view then everything we have observed would make sense in that light. The only
place in which it remains confounding, and clearly impossible, is if we assume
we are still in our own time, the year 2021. It is only there that these ships
and planes and voices on the radio become inexplicable, correct?”

The
Admiral nodded, and Fedorov shook his head as well, his eyes wide with renewed
excitement. If the ship’s physician could believe these things, then he was not
losing his mind after all. The doctor went on.

“And
considering a few other oddities…
Slava
and
Orel
have vanished,
yes? Well perhaps
Orel
was destroyed by this explosion, and
Slava
remains unaffected, still in position, only in the year 2021 where she should
be. That ship was well south of
Orel’s
position, the shock wave may not
have been enough to move her. So that would account for her disappearance. In
fact, from her perspective,
we
are the ship that has vanished!” He
laughed at that, pleased with his own circuitous reasoning. “Slava’s captain
could be there thinking that both
Orel
and
Kirov
were destroyed
in that explosion. What else would he conclude?”

“As
to the other oddities, if this is July of 1941, Mister Fedorov would indeed
have no GPS satellites to communicate with, nor would the crew be able to log
on to the Internet, as they have all been complaining. Severomorsk was not a
major modern naval base until well after WWII, though I believe we had air fields
there in 1941. But the place wasn’t even called Severomorsk until the 1950s. It
was Vaenga before that time, right?”

“Yes,”
said Fedorov, “and the fleet was called the White Sea Flotilla back in 1941,
not the Northern Fleet.”

“So
perhaps this explains the silence from North Fleet headquarters,” Zolkin
continued. “All these clues make sense if this is indeed the year 1941.” He
finished, taking a sip of tea and looking at them matter of factly.