Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (41 page)

When they first returned to Vladivostok Fedorov spent some time
trying to find out what may have changed in the history of WWII as a result of
their actions. He had run across that name, but struggled now to remember—yes!
He was looking at operations that were supposed to have transpired, and
comparing them to his books—the books that had remained aboard
Kirov
when they shifted. Strangely, they bore the history of the world they had come
from, even though copies of those same volumes found elsewhere had changed.
Then he remembered it!
Operation Agreement!
Yes, the operation that had
been written up in that article he found in Russia Today. He even remembered
the title: ‘British Remember Losses In Agreement Gone Bad.’

Markov had that magazine with him in the operations room of the
Primorskiy reactor test center! It went back with him and must have been
discovered there where he appeared in 1942, and it clearly recounted an
operation the British would conduct the following month. It was this that led
him to believe the history was still at risk, subtly changing, and that is what
led him to look for any evidence of Orlov in the past. He had found something,
and took it to Karpov first. The memory of that meeting in the flag bridge of
Kirov
returned to him now…

“I’ve been trying to find out what happened to him for a good long
while, and I think I may have found a trace of the man in my research last
night.”

“You mean in the history books?”

“Of course. Nobody goes through this world without leaving some
mark on it. Again, thank God we’re living in the information age and I can call
up archival records on the computer. Well I found something. You’ll be amazed.
I found that man’s footprints in the history, and by God I think I can figure
out where he went after he jumped from that helo.”

“Where? What did you find about him?”

“It seems the British got hold of him and had him at Gibraltar.
Then he slipped away. The next fragment I picked up was an entry in this very
book.” He held up the new volume of the
Chronology Of The Naval War At Sea
.

“His name came up in a brief engagement between a Soviet
Minesweeping trawler and a German U-boat in the Black Sea. So I followed the
breadcrumbs. He was listed as a prisoner and suspected murderer of three NKVD
guards in Poti. Then comes the kicker—the British went after him. They mounted
a commando raid to try and recapture him. Take a look at this…” He opened to a
new bookmark and showed Karpov the Passage:
25 Sept. 1942 – Operation
Escapade sends a small commando unit into the Caspian region to look for a
suspected Russian agent.

“But it doesn’t say anything about Orlov,” Karpov protested.

“No, the book is very vague, but I found two other sources that
give more details. They were after Orlov. It was kept very secret, but I dug
things up….”

These were those very same men! These were the men sent on
Operation
Escapade
to find Orlov! Now he remembered who Haselden was, the Captain in
charge of the whole mission, and it was his fate that first set him searching
through this part of the history. Haselden was supposed to have been on another
mission—
Operation Agreement
, the planned British raid on Tobruk. In
fact, he was supposed to have been killed on that mission, but it was
cancelled.

My God, thought Fedorov. Haselden was a zombie, the walking dead.
He was a perfect example of a man who lived that should have died, and he was
reassigned to
Operation Escapade
to look for Orlov! That change in the
history had led him to find evidence of Orlov here in those letters from the
dead, the journal entry that enabled him to locate Orlov at Kizlyar. He was
astounded at how all these facts twisted round one another, and how all these
men were all caught up in the net of mystery now.

He looked at Sutherland, understanding why the man was so ill at
ease, and believing that he had, indeed, seen the third man simply vanish—but
why? Was it because Haselden had been fated to die all along? Was he deemed
expendable in the strange, convoluted accounting logs Mother Time was keeping
of these events? Then another thought came to him.

“The third member of your party—the man you called Haselden a
moment ago—may I ask how old he was?”

Sergeant Terry gave Fedorov a strange look. “Can’t say as I would
even know.”

“Well then…” Fedorov took another tack. “You men seem young, and
very fit, not much over twenty if I had to venture a guess.” His eye was very
good. Sutherland had been born in 1920, and was only 22 years old in 1942.
Sergeant Terry survived the war and was to die at the age of 85 in the year
2006, and so he was just a year younger than Sutherland.

“This may seem an odd question, but was this Haselden your same
age?”

“What does that matter,” said Sergeant Terry, thinking this
Russian officer was fishing. Sutherland should have kept his mouth zipped
tight. What was wrong with the Lieutenant? He gave his companion a stern
glance, thinking to buck up his morale.

Fedorov discerned a good deal with that response. Haselden must
have been the commanding officer. He had asked Orlov about him earlier, getting
a description of the man, and the Chief seemed to think this Haselden was in
charge. If he was above the Lieutenant then he would have been a major, or even
a Captain by rank. Yes, and he would have been older and more experienced than
these two here. If they were in their early twenties, then they were born
around 1920. But if Haselden was much older he might have been born…
before
1908!
What would happen to a man if he tried to shift to a period in time
where he already existed as a younger man or child? If Haselden had been born
before 1908, which would put him in his later thirties in 1942, he might be an
infant or child in the year we find ourselves in now—1908.

Yes! It would be impossible for the man to manifest here in a time
where he already existed. He had often wondered about that. What if they shifted
to a near past, a time just before they had been born? What would happen to
them at that moment of their own birth? Could two versions of the same person
co-exist in the same moment? It was a maddening paradox, but he thought he may
have discovered the answer—a flat NO! Time would not permit this to happen.
Haselden could not shift here with the others if he had already been born
before 1908. Sutherland was telling the truth. The man simply vanished during
the transition, vanished into the oblivion of paradox.

Time had balanced her books, yet now he had to decide what to do
with these other two men. He could not tell them where they were, and if he
left them here they would face the same paradox that may have claimed Haselden,
for in just a few years they would reach the time of their birth. Yet how could
he get them back to their own time in 1942? They were getting ready to run the
procedure with Rod-25 again. If, by any chance, they ended up bouncing back to
where they were in that year, then he might set them adrift well outside the radius
of the
Anatoly Alexandrov
. If they shifted somewhere else…He realized
that their fate was somehow bound up with his own now; with Orlov, and all the
rest of them there.

“Well gentlemen,” he said quietly. “We’ll have to hold on to you
for a while yet. In fact we may have to hold on to you for quite some time. I
can’t explain everything now, but in time, once we sort this business out, I
will try. In the meantime, our Sergeant Troyak here will see to your needs.”

He left the room, heading for the operations center where Dobrynin
was preparing to run the procedure again. The Chief had listened to the
recording they made of their shift here, and now he was given the daunting task
of trying to reverse that outcome and get them home.

“Can you do it, Chief?”

“I have no idea, Mister Fedorov. Yet all I can do is try, and we
are ready to begin.”

“Very well, we’ve lingered here long enough. I used the time
trying to find that missing British soldier while we were waiting to hear from
Karpov, but I think I know what happened to him now. The ship is battened down.
Everything is securely fastened and radar says there is nothing within five
kilometers of us at the moment, so hopefully we won’t take anything else with
us. Let’s begin.”

Even as he gave that order a sudden thrum of anxiety rose in his
chest. What if Karpov changes the history so radically that we are never even
born or alive in the year 2021? If we try to return there, how would time
account for our presence there in 2021? Will we vanish like Haselden? He
realized they could be trying to shift themselves right into oblivion! Then
another inner voice calmed him. It said that Karpov would never even be here
unless they were all alive on
Kirov
and lost on this strange odyssey.
Somehow he had to feel an essential part of it all, and have faith that paradox
could not reach out to steal him away.

A darker thought came to him…What if Karpov does something that
set the world on a course to catastrophe? What if Rod-25 politely takes us to
the year 2021, but there is nothing left of the  world—just those devastated
cities we saw each time we shifted forward? This means the Great War was fought
before
2021! That’s why we saw the destruction everywhere! Then we had
Kirov
at hand to go back into the past and try again. But what could I do with the
resources here on the
Anatoly Alexandrov
? His mind went round and round,
but there was no more time to consider these things.

Dobrynin nodded, looking over at a technician at the operations
console and raising his finger like a conductor about to begin a composition.

“We’ve selected rod number eight for replacement, and so let us
begin.”

The technicians began throwing switches and even Fedorov could
hear a change in the sound of the reactor now as servo motors and other systems
kicked in to begin the procedure of withdrawing a the control rod from an
active reaction. Meanwhile, Rod-25 waited in place above the core, ready to descend
again into the nuclear soup.

Chief Dobrynin closed his eyes and listened. He had to remember
the sound of their fall to this place in time, and now reverse it. He listened,
hearing the overture in the subtle vibrations and sound frequencies; hearing
things that none of the others seemed to notice at all. He raised a hand,
speaking softly as he listened. “Begin replacement rod insertion. Set timing at
interval two.”

There it was, he thought, the song to the Angels. He could hear
it, feel it, and with each vibration pattern he knew what should come next. He
made several other adjustments, first subtly increasing the insertion rate,
then slowing it down again, and all the while Rod-25 sang its song, a
distinctive voice in the choir of the 48 other rods working to control the
nuclear reaction, like the soloist leading on the others in a rising chorus of
neutron flux.

It was not long until they began to notice the same strange
effects again. There was a tang of ozone in the air, a sudden chill, and the odd
luminescent, pulsing waves that emanated from the
Anatoly Alexandrov
.
Then the air seemed to thicken around them, a deep mist enveloping them.

And they were gone.

Chapter 36

The
score was played, to the very last note, ascending the scales of infinity
to find shape and form again in another time. Dobrynin heard every note,
varying the rhythm and time at intervals, and subtly leading the operation with
the harmonies he listened to in his head so many times.

 They were back—somewhere, and Fedorov wasted no time trying to
find out where they were as soon as it became evident that the
Anatoly
Alexandrov
had stabilized in this new milieu. He turned to the
communications station and had them immediately send out an emergency signal to
the Naval facility at Kaspiysk on channels that had been reserved for his
operations, and with special coding. To his great surprise, they got a return
signal in confirmation, and voice communication soon ensued.

“Wild Geese, Wild Geese, we read you. This is Mother Hen. Over.”

“Mother Hen. This is Wild Geese, please confirm date and time.
Over.” To his great surprise and delight, they had arrived back in the year
2021, just hours after they left! Of course, he thought. He just learned that
they could not ever shift to a time where they already existed. They would have
to arrive there after they left, or they would be faced with the paradox of
seeing duplicates of themselves. If Haselden’s experience was any guide, Time
would not permit that.

“You did it, Chief! My God that song in your head brought us home.
We still have time to do something. It isn’t too late! How did you manage it?”

“Don’t ask me to explain it, Fedorov. Just be grateful we’re
here.”

“Yes, and we have no time to lose. We need to get everything ready
to go, Rod-25 and the other two control rods as well. Get them on the
helicopter and we’ll head for the airfield at Kaspiysk. There was an Antonov
transport plane there, and it can get us to Vladivostok faster than any other
way I can imagine. Now get me Admiral Volsky on the secure mission channel. Top
priority!”