Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (17 page)

“Lord
above… How did you receive these transmissions?”

“The
Watch was a creation of the Royal Navy, Gordon. Every one of the early members
was a Royal Navy Admiral, save one or two, and I can’t disclose names. But it
was an organization rooted in the Royal Navy over the years, very secret. The British
government itself didn’t even know about it. Over time selected individuals
were recruited as members—people from industry, the sciences, people that
mattered and worked to make a difference in the world. What they ever saw in me
is beyond my imagining, but I was recruited seven years ago, and I have had
certain responsibilities to the Watch I was given ever since.”

MacRae
thought back, remembered that time when she had suddenly seemed different, when
that distant look appeared in her eyes, a low flame of fear.

“Why
do you think it was so easy for me to procure a
Daring
class destroyer
for the company flagship, the ship we’re sitting on right now? The Watch is a
naval organization to this day. Its presiding members are always at sea, always
minding a given watch, always on patrol. When these signals were received they
always came the same way—at night, on a lonesome sea, and on a tightly controlled
transmission beam to a ship of the Watch. We tried to trace it to a point in
space but that led us nowhere. It was as if the signal just manifested right
above the ship. I’ve never been privileged to receive one directly myself, but
I’ve seen the footage of several striking events days before they actually
happened. They sent us the closing price of every stock on the Dow three days
before the big crash, and it was accurate to the decimal point. Someone in the
future wanted to find a way to get our attention. Well they bloody well did.”

“Then
this warning, Elena. This business about the 48 hours. It has something to do
with these transmissions?”

“That’s
about the size of it.”

“And
how does this Russian ship get under the umbrella?”

“We
received footage of its re-appearance in the Pacific—actual surveillance video
shot by one of our satellites. The thing was this—we got it weeks before it
happened. Nobody knew what to make of it, though we knew it was
Geronimo
—it
was
Kirov
. We went over that footage with a fine toothed comb. No one
else in the Navy had it, or knew anything about it. So we took this to be a
strong indication that this event was very significant, and we moved a few
assets into the region. The Americans cooperated, though they didn’t know what
we were really up to. They moved the submarine
Key West
into the sector we
determined the footage came from. Now comes the interesting part…”

“I’m
all ears!” He was more than that now. The Captain’s very soul was open and
waiting, still trying to believe all that he was hearing.

“We
got two transmissions. In the first one the submarine
Key West
was
attacked and destroyed by the Russian battlecruiser, and that ended badly. In
the other the
Key West
survived! The Russians even shipped them a couple
boxes of Cuban cigars! We didn’t quite know what to make of that until it
struck us that they were trying to tell us that the history was changing. That this
was a point of divergence.”

“What
do you mean?”

“It’s
a single action that sets the course of events off on a new heading. Sometimes
such an event can be dramatic, like 9/11, and other times it might be something
truly insignificant, like the cow that kicked over the lantern that started the
Chicago fire in 1871—Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, though that has been disputed. Yet
it’s still a good example of how a small thing can have dramatic consequences.
It doesn’t take anything really big to move things in another direction.
Sometimes events have a momentum of their own and all it takes is the slightest
nudge at the right place and time, and you get a whole new reality.”

“Astounding…Truly
astounding.”

“You
might think of it as if a big asteroid were hurtling towards the earth. Trying
to stop it at the last minute is almost impossible, but if you can get to it
years before it arrives, then all it would take is a gentle nudge to divert its
course. Understand?”

“Well
enough.”

“We
thought the transmission was trying to tell us we were spared the holocaust of
a great war that’s hanging over our heads this very minute. We thought that was
the gentle nudge. The sinking of
Key West
was a trigger point in the
first version of the files we received. The second version was our salvation,
or so we believed at first, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

“You’re
telling me this Russian ship was deliberately trying to prevent this war?”

“We
think so. But they failed. They forestalled the attack on
Key West
, but
it only bought us a brief respite. The events leading to the war have too much
kinetic energy in them. The outcome is too close to us now, just like that big
asteroid in my example.
Kirov
bought us a short interlude, a brief
delay—nine days in fact. As things turned out the war starts nine days later
than it might have. There’s a prelude of nine more days of conventional warfare
before it all goes ballistic—literally—and this is day eight, Gordon. So now
you know what I mean about the 48 hours. The clock is ticking, and time’s
nearly run out.”

“Then
the Russians know about all this?”

“We
aren’t certain of that. They know something, but we don’t know whether they are
being sent any information from the future. Our intelligence is good, but let’s
face it, it’s much easier to hide something than it is to find it. We don’t
really know what the Russians have learned.”

“Then
what was that order about to go after the Spetsnaz operation in the Caspian?”

“Good
that you should mention that. I’m sorry about the loss there. Yes, it was
probably stupid to think we could pull off a surprise attack and not have it be
opposed. Well, Navy intelligence has had a look at the objective site. There’s
nothing there now.”

“Nothing
there? Did Lieutenant Ryan get off a missile and take the target out?”

“That’s
not what Mack Morgan tells me. No. We lost an X-3 trying, and Ryan got out,
thank god for that. But the target is gone.”

“So
the Russians sailed off. That was a ship we were after, eh?”

“No,
it was a floating nuclear power plant. They moved it alright, but not in
space.”

MacRae
took that in, realizing what she must be saying now.

“You’re
telling me they moved it in
time?”

“This
is what we believe.”

“The
bloody Russians are operating in time? With Spetsnaz commandos?”

“We
think it was Naval Marines, but yes, they were mounting some kind of an
operation involving time displacement. They’ve learned how to move discrete
objects—objects as big as a ship like
Kirov
, and everything aboard or
within a limited radius of the ship. We couldn’t understand why at first, but
from our lead Admiral’s perspective it made perfect sense. A warship like
Kirov
is an ideal vehicle for intervention in a given time period. You’ve got
mobility, autonomy, survivability, and power all rolled into one. If you want
to stay hidden, the ocean is a very big place to hide. You can get to virtually
any place in the world on a ship, and a ship with helicopters is even better.
This is another reason why the Watch is always at sea.”

“That
objective site—Morgan told us the Russians had a big helicopter on the roof of
that powerplant.”

“We
had to wonder where they planned to go with it, and with what looked like a
heavy company of Naval Marines. We have people working on that problem right now,
though we may not solve it in time. The bottom line is this: we think the
Russians are trying to change history, possibly to redress failures or
shortcomings that affect their nation badly. Up until now the changes have not
been truly significant. We’ve received transmissions of dual files, a kind of
before and after, if you will, and they’ve showed us how some things have
changed. When did the United States enter the Second World War?

“Easy
enough,” said MacRae. “August of ’41, right after the Germans torpedoed the
Mississippi
.
The Yanks were shouting ‘remember the
Mississippi’
all through the war.”

“Well
you might be surprised to know that we’ve receive a transmission of another
starting point for the American entry. It was in December of that same year,
over three months later after the Japanese Navy attacked the American fleet at
Pearl Harbor. That never happened in the history you and I know, yet we have
video of the USS
Arizona
being blown sky high in the harbor.”

“From
the future?”

“Precisely.”

“Then
the Russians are trying to change things? They’ve got the ability to shift a
thing like that battlecruiser through time, and they’re deliberately using it
as a lever on events.”

“We’ve
debated the why of all this for decades, ever since we first deduced that
Geronimo
was actually from the future.”

“How
long have you known—the Watch—how long have they known this ship was from the
future?”

She
smiled at him. “Here’s another kick in your ribs,” she said. “Since 1942!”

“All
that time?”

“Yes,
but it took that long watch of eighty years to finally confirm it when
Kirov
vanished during that accident in the North Atlantic last July. The thing
finally came full circle.”

“Well
if you know the Russians are up to something, have you figured out what it is?
You mean to say that when the Americans were closing in on the Russian fleet a
few days ago, the Russians just pulled a fast one and slipped away in time?
Where did their ruddy ships go this time?”

“We
think we know that now. They re-appeared in 1945, at the very end of the war,
and raised a ruckus with the US Pacific Fleet. But get this, Gordon. We have
another version of how that war ends. The Americans hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki
with atomic bombs, and that is what prompted the Japanese surrender.”

“Then
there was no battle over Hokkaido with the Russians?”

“Not
in the files we received presenting an alternate history.”

“How
do you know which one is correct?’

“We don’t. All we do know is that we now have direct
evidence that the Russians are trying to change history, and in some ways they
have been successful. The gap between the old line of events and what is
happening now is getting wider and wider, and soon it will be a chasm that will
make it impossible to ever set right again. They’re changing the history,
Gordon, but instead of applying a scalpel to the delicate weave of time, they
sent this damn battlecruiser to do the job, and someone aboard has been a real
bear. We haven’t got all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but we’ve seen enough to
realize their meddling is going to have severe consequences. Whatever they’re doing
is going to unhinge everything, and it may be too late now to do anything to
stop it.”

Chapter
15

Once
the God Zeus released two eagles from
opposite ends of the earth, and they met at Delphi, high on the slopes of Mount
Parnassus in Greece. It was the center of the world, the navel of the earth, the
center of Greece itself, and the heart of an ancient mysterious Oracle that
carried the words of Apollo when she spoke, revealing the fate of men and
nations in days yet unseen. Now it was a national park and ski resort, with a
tourist center at the Oracle site ruins that drew over two million visitors
every year.

They
were in the Strait of Artemisia.
Argos Fire
sped on through the night as
the mission was being prepared. Now MacRae looked out the cabin window,
watching the hills rising in the pre-dawn light, the Rocks of Phaedrades on the
high slopes as they tumbled to the Malian Gulf below. His mind was still
brooding over all he had heard the previous evening. That and the gin was
enough to send his head spinning. That and the scent of the woman as he sat
close to her on the loveseat. He spent a long, restless night with her there,
and they finally joined in a way he had always dreamed about, though there was
a hurried urgency to it all, as if they both could hear that clock ticking in
the room.

“O
lente, lente currite noctis equi!”
she had whispered in his ear. “Go slow, go slow, ye chariot horses of the
night…” It was a reference to from Ovid's "Amore," and a plea to slow
time’s chariot and extend the hours they had together that night, both the
first night as well as the last night in this world they would share that way
together.

Yet
MacRae was a well read man, and he also knew it was a phrase uttered by
Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. He was awaiting the arrival of Lucifer at
midnight, who would come to collect his soul, and Faustus was trying to do
anything possible to put off that terrible moment. MacRae felt that same way
when Elena whispered her Latin, a swell of both longing and dread rising in his
chest. Some devil was at work in the world now and its work was drawing nigh.
He could not see him. He did not know where he was, but he suspected he might
be the Captain of that damn ship—
Kirov
—the battlecruiser that had sailed
through hell into some distant past.