Men of War (2013) (10 page)

“Svetlana
my ass,” he breathed. “He had known Orlov was not what he seemed from the very
first moment he spoke to him. He was navy, that much was certain, but there was
something very odd about the man. He was an officer, that was also apparent.
But where? When? On what ship? The ship had been called
Kirov
, and that
was very amusing as well. That cruiser, he knew, had been trapped in the Gulf
Of Riga up north at the outbreak of the war with Germany. It had managed to
reach Tallinn and then moved to Leningrad where it had been bottled up ever
since behind German minefields, harassed by the Luftwaffe as it tried to use
its main guns as artillery supporting the defenders of that beleaguered city.

This
Orlov was navy, he thought, but he certainly wasn’t the Captain of the cruiser
Kirov.
But intelligence had learned of a strange ship at large in the Med between
August 11 and 14 last month, and Loban had been curious enough to slip off the
Rock and head east, driving along the Spanish coast through Malaga and all the
way to
Adra
and Matagorda on the cape when he heard
this ship was heading that way. He had been there in time to see the fireworks
of an amazing naval battle off the coast on the night of August 14th, and he
had ordered several bottles of Zinfandel the very next day.

For
Lieutenant Thomas Loban was a double agent, just another of many who had come
out of the hallowed halls of the Cambridge Apostles, and he had been effectively
working as a translator for MI6 while also collecting and passing information
to the USSR for the last year. This month he had been keen on the trail of a
word that had been picked up in the radio stream…
Geronimo
. Bit by bit,
the real Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU, came to associate the
word with a ship, and the ship was soon connected to some real naval chaos that
had been underway in the Mediterranean Sea that month. They wanted to know why
the British were suddenly so interested in Russian naval activities in the
Black Sea, or the presence of any Russian naval personnel in the Med.

Loban
told them all about Orlov, and now he thought he might be able to give them a
real prize in this catch, and deny the same to the British in one fell swoop.
He lit a cigarette as he made his way through the deep tunnel network, pleased
with himself. This would likely shake things up a bit in Moscow, he thought,
though he did not know just how much. His act of betrayal would lead to a wild
hunt that would span thousands of miles, cross continents and long decades yet
to come, and the fate of the world would rest on its outcome.

Part III

Rod-25

“It
doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because
you can't control them. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that.
Sometimes, people can go missing right before our very eyes.”

—
Cecelia
Ahern

Chapter 7

8000
miles and nearly 80 years away another cruiser named
Kirov
was finally heading
home. They had a long voyage, with plenty of time to make the ship as
presentable as possible, and Damage Control Chief Byko was kept very busy. As
they approached the port Admiral Volsky thought it best to make their presence
known, recalling that there had been increasing tension in the Norwegian Sea
even before the ship set out for those fateful live fire exercises long weeks
ago.

They
were followed much of the way home by the American submarine, and Tasarov kept
a pair of good ears on the boat the whole while. Volsky had decided to swing
north of Hokkaido, and it had been a strange feeling when Nikolin picked up
Japanese radio traffic and put it on the speakers. It brought back memories of
that harrowing cruise through the Coral Sea, but this was the Japan of 2021.
The likes of
Isokoru
Yamamoto, and men like Hara,
Iwabuchi, Hayashi, Sakamoto, and all the others they had faced and fought were
now long gone. No D3A1 Dive bombers or B3N2 torpedo planes would be darkening
the skies as they approached, and it was a welcome relief.

Their
submarine shadow left them as
Kirov
neared the Japanese mainland, but
they noted the Americans now had an old reliable P-3 recon plane up from Misawa
Air base to take over the duty. The ship waited until it sailed through the
Soya Strait and entered the Sea of Japan before they radioed home on Sept 15th,
already relieved that the headlines on the newspapers Fedorov had hidden away
had not come to pass. The fuse had not been lit on the war to end all wars, but
the powder keg of rising tensions was still a matter of some concern.

Once
Admiral Volsky made their presence known, the Russians had their own air recon
operation up within the hour, overflying the ship with an old TU-142
Tupolev
maritime recon plane, the Bear F/J turboprop. It
was escorted by a pair of Mig-31 fighters, which flew low and slow over
Kirov’s
bow, the crew waving and cheering as they came, the fighters tipping their
wings in reply. The pride of the Russian Navy was coming home. Wounded and
limping,
Kirov
was still the most formidable fighting surface ship in
the fleet.

“We
never thought about the impact the loss of the ship would have on the country,”
said Karpov as they watched the planes roar past from the weather deck off the
citadel.

“It
would be as if the Americans lost one of their big carriers,” said Fedorov.
“There’s a lot of national pride wrapped up in this ship.”

“Yes,”
said Karpov dryly, “they’re going to love us for about a week. There will be
marching bands, a lot of saluting and flag waving, then the questions come.” He
realized that they were back in the same old calcified structure of the Navy
again. Admiral Boris Abramov commanded here at the Pacific Fleet HQ, but Volsky
was to have transferred in to relieve him after the live fire exercises.
Kirov
was also leaving the cold northern waters of the arctic for warmer climes here,
as the Russians were getting ready to commission the second ship of her
resurrected class, the
Leonid Brezhnev
, finally built out from the older
Pytor
Veliky
to take over the mantle of the
flagship of the Northern Fleet.

“The
Admiral will be happy to hear that there is finally a ship bearing his name,”
said Fedorov. “At least his first name.”

“I
think he’ll soon have more on his mind that that. Yes, the questions will come
soon. Do we have our answers ready, Fedorov?”

“We’ve
done our best, Captain. Byko has re-metaled all the 20 millimeter round holes
in the superstructure and painted them over good as new. The hull damage we can
explain away easily enough as a kick from
Orel
when she exploded. I’m
not as comfortable about the damage to the aft battle bridge, or even the file
damage with our missing logs.”

They
had decided to try and kill a couple of birds in one throw by saying a KA-40
had been aloft, hovering just above the ship when
Orel
blew up. The
story was that the helo had plunged down onto the aft citadel, her weapons load
igniting to cause the extensive damage there. To make it seem convincing, Byko
had placed some of the old damaged KA-40 parts there, though they would largely
claim that they had taken the long cruise to clean away the remainder of the
wreckage. He kept these few mangled parts collected from the real accident on
the aft deck as trophies, and hoped they would help explain away the total loss
of the ship’s secondary command citadel.

As
for the missing logs and data, they could not claim EMP damage as Fedorov first
thought. Dobrynin told him that effect only could occur in the atmosphere, so
instead they decided on a massive power surge that had damaged the ship’s
systems and files. It was thin, but they hoped it would cover their tracks long
enough to pass the inspection that was surely coming.

“How
does it feel to be Captain of the First Rank again, Karpov?”

They
had also thought it best to restore Karpov’s old rank and authority. Admiral
Volsky said he had earned it many times over, and was quick to promote him once
again. No mention was to be made of the ‘unfortunate incident,’ in the North
Atlantic, a grace the Captain did not think he deserved, but one he was
grateful for. The missing nuclear warhead would be a little more difficult to
explain away, but Admiral Volsky told the men to say nothing of it, and said he
would handle the matter personally.

As
for Fedorov, he would stand as Captain of the Second Rank now, and the official
Starpom
under Karpov. He had no objection, saying he preferred it that
way, as the two men had come to a very good understanding of one another, and
cooperated well.

“I
was not ready to take the ship when Volsky gave it to me,” said Fedorov. “I did
my best, but thank God for you, Karpov. I don’t think I could have fought those
battles as you did. The Admiral was correct when he said you were one of the
very best.”

Karpov
nodded, grateful for the praise, and hearing it now as sincere for the first
time, not the fawning flattery he had been used to from other officers who
wanted to get on his good side in the past. He was a new man now, though he
knew it would probably be some time before others who knew him in the navy
would see or realize that.

“What
about Dobrynin?” asked Karpov. “What about this business with the reactors?
They will have to perform that maintenance procedure again one day soon. What
then, Fedorov? Will the ship vanish again?”

“Admiral
Volsky and I had a long discussion with the engineers about it. When we reach
harbor he is going to have Rod-25 removed for replacement, and he says he can
run some tests and then arrange to have it stored in a very safe place.”

“You
still believe that control rod had something to do with it?”

“Who
knows? But it was the only common denominator in all the displacement events.
Each time it happened, Rod-25 was the wild card in the deck. Dobrynin is going
to go over it with a microscope to see if he can make any sense of it. In the
meantime, we can only hope
Kirov
stays put.”

“Agreed,”
said Karpov with a solemn nod. “Do you think they learned anything about us?”

“About
the ship? Our time in the past? Well the British certainly learned enough, and
the Japanese got some hard lessons too.”

“They’ve
had almost eighty years to try and figure out what happened, Fedorov. That’s a
very long time. That little chat the Admiral had with the British may have
revealed more than we think, and I will tell you another little secret—what the
British learned in 1942 the GRU and KGB learned soon after.”

That
thought darkened the moment, for Fedorov had worried about it for some time.
“So far I haven’t found any clean references on the Internet now that we have
satellite traffic again. A lot of vague references, but nothing solid. We’re
‘Raider X’ to some, ‘enemy action’ to others, but I’ll keep looking when we
make port.”

 “They
will most likely send out the
Varyag
to welcome us home. That cruiser has
been the flagship here, and now we hold sway, old king
Kirov
, that is if
the navy can find the money to patch us back up again. Believe me, Suchkov will
not be happy when he learns of the damage to the ship.”

“We’ll
have to let Admiral Volsky handle that, but don’t be surprised if you find
yourself at sea again soon, Captain. We aren’t out of the woods yet. China
could make that play for Taiwan at any time, and then what? Then they’ll want
every ship in the harbor trimmed for action as soon as possible.”

“It’s
going to be very difficult, Fedorov. I mean, knowing what happened—what
could
happen so easily again. It may not be my hand on the trigger this time, but
there are too many others like me in the navy…too many others like the man I
once was. Knowing that this world could all blow up and go to hell again any
moment will not be easy, particularly if the other side gets pushy. And if they
do find us at sea again, and come at us in anger, then I may have no choice but
to become that other man, that man of war I was back then. Can we avoid it?”

“That
will be hard to say. We can’t disclose anything about what we’ve learned, at
least not directly. All we can do is be men instead of machines if they ever
send us out here again. We’ve learned some hard lessons, but yes, we are still
men of war—not just you, Captain. All of us.”

“A
crash course!”

“Yes…
Well, if they do get
Kirov
operational again, do you think they will
give the ship back to you, Captain?”

“I
suppose that will depend on how the investigation goes.”

“Investigation?”

“Certainly...
The questions. The Naval Inspectorate will have men here in black suits in no
time. The Grand Inquisitor will pay us a visit. They did the same to Christ on
his return—showered him with reverence for a week, and then started the trial.
Karpov was referring to the famous parable by Dostoyevsky,
The Grand
Inquisitor
, which saw Christ tried and condemned yet again after his second
coming.
Kirov
, the presumed savior of the fleet, was resurrected and now
coming home again, but he had little doubt that she would fare any better than
the Son of God. “They’ll be a week or two going over the ship, most likely
interviewing every man aboard.”