Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (14 page)

He
decided that there would be at least one other mind on the ship that might be a
confederate soul in this regard. “Well, Captain,” he said. “I am glad you have recovered.
It’s been a very long shift. May I stand relieved, sir?”

“Yes,
of course, Rodenko. Get your rest. I will summon you in six hours, just before
we are due to make port. You will not want to miss the event, I assure you.”

“Of
course, sir.”

Chapter
12

It
was decided that security would be a
major concern. Many of the ship’s Marines had gone ashore for Fedorov’s
mission, but there were still two squads aboard as replacements, and Karpov
gave orders that volunteers were to be recruited from the crew and a new
detachment formed as naval infantry.

“I
want at least two hundred men under arms,” he told Sergeant Savkin. Choose the
best men and start regular training exercises at once. We will not dock at the
quays. Instead we will anchor well out in the bay, and go ashore by boat. The
water barrier will provide additional security for the ship, and you are to
mount a 24 hour guard on every quarter. No one from the mainland is to come
aboard under any circumstances unless I directly order it.”

“Very
good, sir,” said Savkin, a tall, dark haired man, sturdily built and dressed
out in full cammo uniform. “And what about security ashore, Captain?”

“I
will be taking a full squad, with you in command, Savkin. That should be
sufficient for the time being. After all, these are our countrymen.”

“Let
us hope they give us a good welcome, sir.”

“Why
wouldn’t they? But I tell you one thing—this ship is going to bug out quite a
few eyes come dawn tomorrow. The city will look out as see the most marvelous
vessel on earth sitting in the Golden Horn Bay, and it will be flying the flag
of the Russian Navy!”

Karpov
held the image of his arrival in mind with great anticipation now. It would be
just as he had imagined it before when he first thought to present himself at
the negotiation table with Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941, at the Atlantic
Charter meeting in Argentia Bay. He thought he might get his second chance at
Sagami Bay for the surrender ceremony of Japan. In both cases the obstinate and
implacable nature of his enemies had frustrated him. This time he would realize
his inner dream.

He
ordered his Marines to conform to the image he had long carried in his mind.
They were to assemble on the foredeck in their dress olive greens, long double
breasted trench coats with gold buttons and collar tabs, braided gold belts and
the brilliant red sash strap from shoulder to waist, where a six inch tasseled
gold horsetail tied it off. The boats was decorated with red and would proudly
fly the Russian Naval Jack as they approached. The Captain made sure Nikolin
had communicated his desire to meet with the local authorities at once, and
requested a reception committee on the harbor quay. He called out the ship’s
band and had them rehearse all evening below decks before sleep. They would play
the old national anthem as he and his Marines boarded their boat and came
ashore.

It
was a very strange night as
Kirov
slipped quietly into the bay,
surrounded in a fog so thick that no one ashore could see the ship. The
crescent moon had set at 13:27 hours and was down, yet there was an
unaccountable glow in the sky to the northwest, and the light played eerily
over the low hanging clouds, infusing the heavy fog with a strange radiance, a
pale glow that carried on all through the night. The ship sat silently in the
bay, all running lights darkened and rigged for black. Karpov did not want to
disturb the velvet night, but with dawn his theater would begin.

The
sun came, a wan light diffused through the fog, and all that he surmised
quickly came to pass. Residents of the city woke up that morning and looked out
their windows to see a strange shape darkening the misty the bay. The peered at
it as if it had been formed of the vapor and sea itself, a massive ship, bigger
than any they had ever seen in the harbor. It dwarfed the armored cruisers that
were the last remnants of the once proud Russian Pacific Fleet. Where did it
come from? Why was it there?

Karpov
waited in the silence, watching from the citadel bridge, rocking back and forth
on his heels with obvious amusement. Then, as the light slowly bloomed and
restless crowds gathered on the edges of the harbor, he gave the order that all
running lights should be put on and the ship’s horn would blast out a greeting.
The crowd reaction made him smile, some turning and running away, back into the
city, and all their voices rising as they spoke to one another, wondering what
this ship could be.

He
knew that the mystery of his sudden appearance would serve him well, and he was
counting on it to set the tone of his arrival and endow him with an aura of
power and mystery. Now it was time for the show. He picked up the bridge phone
and called down to the Chief Boson with the order to begin the debarkation
ceremony. The ship’s horn sounded once again, then came the shrill high note of
the Boson’s whistle. Twenty-five members of the ship’s band marched out onto
the long sweeping forward deck and assembled on a special platform they had set
up directly above the
Moskit-II
missile silos. They would be his opening
salvo now.

The
sight of human beings on the ship, and not monsters from the sea, seemed to
calm the crowds for a time. Then Karpov watched as the band struck up the old
Russian anthem, its opening chorus being immediately greeted by applause and
welcoming shouts from the shoreline. He turned to Rodenko, his eyes bright with
the fire of his inner excitement.

“I
believe that is my curtain call,” he said. “You have the ship, Mister Rodenko.
I will be in constant contact with the bridge via the remote receiver in my coat
collar. I expect no difficulties, but remember your briefing.”

Karpov
had told him that should any demonstration of the ship’s capabilities be
required, he had ordered a Klinok SAM to be manually targeted at the high hills
above the city. Should they run into any difficulties ashore, the second Marine
squad would come in on the KH-40, sure to shock and amaze the locals to no end.

“I
anticipate no trouble, but be prepared should I call. The code will be
Lightning
,
so remember that. This is a ship of war, and we are men of war. Remember that
as well.”

“Aye,
sir. I relieve you, sir.”

“I
stand relieved,” Karpov repeated the familiar ship’s litany for watch standing
rotations, then added one thing more with a raised finger. “For the moment…”

He
turned and gave one last order. “Let the ship’s log read that Captain Vladimir
Karpov disembarked to meet with the Russian delegation at zero eight hundred
hours on the 13th day of July, in the year 1908.”

“Aye,
aye, sir. Recording log entry as ordered.”

Minutes
later Rodenko looked down from the weather deck off the citadel and watched
Karpov appear on deck in his dress uniform and officer’s cap, surrounded by the
Marine squad honor guard. Their black berets rose proudly as they marched,
stiff backed, their pace timed precisely to the beat of a drum, black jack
boots polished to a mirror like finish. Each man carried a bayoneted rifle, and
the squad leader held a long silver sword, gleaming balefully in the cold morning
light. Behind him came the flag bearer, with the Russian Naval Jack snapping
proudly in the wind. They had no Imperial flag, so this seemed the best
solution. After the humiliating defeat of the Russian Navy at the hands of the
Japanese, the Captain thought the Naval ensign would be just the thing to
bolster the crowd. The symbolism would be apparent to all those who watched
them come, their eyes glazed with awe, jaws slack with fear, surprise and awe.
They would be the sword of Mother Russia. They would seem a phalanx of doom as
they marched, with the Captain strutting boldly in their midst as commanding
officer.

White
gloved salutes snapped in the still morning air as the Captain was piped off
the ship, the detachment smartly climbing down the ladder to board the boat
tied off the port side of the ship. Horns and whistles played a flourish on cue,
just as Karpov had ordered. The band had rehearsed well, and now the entire
crew turned out in dress uniform, standing to attention on every deck of the ship.
As the anthem ended they gave a great hurrah to the Captain as he stepped off
the ship.

The
band struck up the Imperial anthem a second time as the boat pushed off, the
Marines manning oars now instead of using the on-board motors. Karpov did not
know the words to the old anthem, if there ever were any, but the new lyrics
were fresh in his mind.

Russia –
our sacred homeland,
Russia – our beloved country.
A mighty will, great glory –
These are your heritage for all time!

* * *

“How
is we have heard nothing of this?”
The Mayor was clearly quite flustered, as much as he was amazed as he stared
out the window that morning. The mist was slowly rising to reveal a massive
ship, its battlements rising up like the crenellated walls of a fortress, its
long foredeck and bow now crowded with officers and sailors, and a full
military band. “Not a word; not a whisper of this from St. Petersburg!”

“Yet
it must have been sent from St. Petersburg, sir. Where else? It was certainly
never a part of the Pacific Fleet.” Tomkin was the Mayor’s chief aide for city
administration, a tall thin man with a stiff hat that made him appear taller
yet, and always seemed to teeter to one side on his narrow head. His prevailing
trait was calm in the face of unrest, a quality that had served him well during
these tumultuous times. In the last three years the city had been shelled by
the Japanese, up in arms with the incipient revolution in 1905-06 where upstart
rebels had actually occupied the Oblast Governor’s residence and presumed to
take control of the city’s affairs, and now this…This ship…This enormous thing
in the harbor appearing out of the mist like a behemoth that had arisen from
the depths of the sea.

Mayor
Proshukin was his polar opposite, short rotund, impetuous, easily upset, and
prone to worry. He fingered his pocket watch nervously. “Eight ‘o clock. Time
we were at the quay to receive this new Viceroy, Tomkin. But I want a telegraph
sent to St. Petersburg about this. If I’m to be upstaged by another
administrative buffoon from the west, I damn well want to know about it! You
would think the Tsar has enough on his hands to worry about without meddling in
our affairs here.”

“Well,
sir,” said Tomkin quietly. “Perhaps the unsettled nature of our affairs is
precisely the reason for this man’s appearance. After all, things have been
less than ideal here since the disaster of 1905.”

“Yes,
and the ship may have been sent to redress that in some ways. Enormous, isn’t
it? The thing is certainly a warship, but where are the big guns, Tomkin? I
don’t see any big guns.”

“Perhaps
it is merely a large armed ocean liner, sir. There are a few smaller batteries
fore and aft.”

“Well
those are Russian navy sailors there, are they not?” He snapped his telescope
down, setting it on the desk. “Odd uniforms, but they certainly know how to
move with military flair. Let’s get down there and meet this gentleman.”

It
was so unlike the first meeting of men from two eras on that isolated spike of
rock off the southern coast of Spain in 1942. There Admiral Volsky had come
with a small party, as inconspicuously as possible, to stand face to face with
Admiral John Tovey of the Royal Navy and negotiate a brief peace. In that
meeting the Admiral had made every effort to conceal his true identity, and the
origins of his ship. Karpov remembered how he fretted aboard
Kirov
while
the Admiral was gone, wishing he could have been part of the meeting.

Now,
however, the meeting Karpov arranged was a bold, brash theater, one part ruse,
one part bluster, and one very large part consisting of his ever expanding ego.
He strode briskly from the ranks of his Marine squad, his boots hard on the
wooden boards of the wharf, and walked up to the Mayor where the man stood with
an assemblage of ministers and city officials. The Captain saluted crisply,
more as a flourish than out of any deference to the other man’s authority.

“Vladimir
Karpov,” he exclaimed, deliberately avoiding any mention of rank. “Russian
Navy.” He gestured to the battlecruiser anchored now in the bay. “Gentlemen,
may I present the battlecruiser
Kirov
, the new flagship of the Russian
Pacific Fleet. Am I to understand that you have, of late, experienced the dishonor
of defeat at the hands of the Japanese? Well I am here to restore order,
gentlemen, and to reverse that fate insofar as I am able.”

Proshukin
looked at Tomkin, clearly flustered and not having the slightest idea what to
say. His chief aid spoke first, aiming to learn more of this man, and find out
what this ship was really all about.

“Excuse
me, Mister Karpov…you are the Captain of this vessel?”

“That
I am, though my authority will extend far beyond the gunwales of that ship,
sir. It is my charge to assume control of the city, its port and
fortifications, and all military facilities in the Primorskiy region.”