Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (2 page)

“I’m as shocked to see these as
you are, sir,” said Fedorov. “But even more shocking is the notion that these
could have been forged. That could not happen. How could anyone of this day and
time, of this world, be privy to knowledge of those specific events to create something
like this? Those landforms are very telling. That is Cape Spartel west of
Tangier. And look at this one, sir! It was obviously taken from the shore, and
note the ships in the background. Those are
King George V
class
battleships, and I count four!”

Volsky raised a hand. “Forgive
us, Admiral Tovey. Just a moment more.” He nodded to Nikolin to translate that.
Then to Fedorov he said, “You are correct Fedorov. No one in this world could
think to create such photographs as a forgery. And I must tell you that last
image of the British fleet in the Western approaches is stunning. It is my very
own recollection of that moment, made real in this photograph. I must conclude
that these images are authentic, but how?”

“I don’t know how it could be
possible, sir.” Fedorov seemed completely flummoxed. Beyond that, how could
they possibly explain this to Admiral Tovey? It was a profound mystery. “I can
only propose one thing, sir. Remember what Kamenski said when I revealed the
strange properties of that stairway at Ilanskiy? He said there may be other
places on earth where these rifts in time persisted. Could someone have brought
this material from another time? After all, the existence of these photographs
is no more startling than our own presence in this room at this moment.”

Volsky nodded. “Agreed. But now I
think we have been impolite long enough.” He turned to Admiral Tovey, fixing
him with a lingering look, deciding something in a tense moment that might open
the doors of mayhem and madness here. But there was no other course as he saw
it then. To deny the images would plant a seed of suspicion, which was not what
he had come to do. What did Tovey know about them? He had to explore the matter
further.

“Please translate everything said
from this moment forward, Mister Nikolin. Admiral Tovey, I ask your forgiveness
again, but I needed to consult with Mister Fedorov here. As you may have seen,
these photographs are somewhat surprising, but you will now be equally
astonished to learn that they do, indeed, appear to present moments I have
personally experienced. We do not think they are forgeries. Please tell me how
you came by them?”

Even though Tovey half expected
and hoped he might hear such an answer, it nonetheless came as a shock. The
Russian Admiral was telling him these photographs were authentic? How? How
could that be so? He hesitated, ever so slightly, then spoke, resolved to dig
yet a little deeper into the mystery.

“Well, to answer your question,
Admiral, these images came from material collected by our intelligence
networks—at least it gives every appearance of that. They were all carefully
labeled and organized in a file box—all arranged according to our normal
formats and protocols. If you happened to review the labels on the back of
those photos you will see one thing that gave me reason to believe this was all
an elaborate hoax. You see, they are all date stamped in the years 1941 and
1942. This being an impossibility, I came to suggest that these photos were
fabrications. Are you telling me now that you believe them to be genuine?”

“That is exactly the case. They
clearly depict events that remain fresh in my memory, and that fact alone is
convincing evidence that they could not be forgeries. Who could anticipate or
dream up events as shown in these photos with such accuracy?”

That set Tovey back a moment.
“Were they taken earlier this year? I was not aware you were in the
Mediterranean.”

“Not this year,” said Volsky with
just the hint of some unspoken truth in his tone.

Tovey did not quite know what he
meant by that. His thought was that these were photos of the ship taken by some
other intelligence service or military arm earlier this year, and then tampered
with through some darkroom witchery as he had proposed it to Turing. The four
King
George V
class battleships and the deliberate misdating were damning
evidence to that effect. Then the Russian Admiral spoke again, and his next
words burst open the dike Tovey had his finger of disbelief firmly planted in
since he had first seen the images himself.

“Now I will reveal something that
you may find to be quite disturbing, Admiral Tovey. A moment ago you told me
that you had the feeling that we had met before. That is so. You may now think
me a crazy old fool, but the meeting we had in the Denmark Strait some weeks
ago was not the first time you and I have spoken with each other, strange as
that may sound to you now. We have, indeed, met before. This photo was taken
some hours after that very meeting, which occurred on a small island near your
base at Gibraltar.”

The minute that Volsky said that,
Tovey was struck with a powerful sensation of déjà vu, a shadow of a deeply
hidden memory upwelling in his mind, yet one he could simply not grasp. The
barest fragment emerged in his consciousness, a place, a name.

“Las Palomas,” he said quietly.
“That was the place, wasn’t it?”

Volsky smiled.

Chapter 2

Tovey’s
pulse began to
quicken as Nikolin translated, the yawning realization opening in his mind now
that was pushing this whole matter to the edge of oblivion—sheer lunacy! For
one other thing that Alan Turing had included in that Manila envelope had been
a copy of the report Tovey had written summing up the very same meeting and
discussion that Admiral Volsky had just mentioned! He thought it all part of
the carefully contrived deception, but here was an independent source, having
no connection to British intelligence whatsoever, calmly referencing the
meeting his report labored to describe! A meeting that he would swear had never
happened, yet one he
felt
on some inner level to be a reality.

Tovey was dazed, beside himself
with the implications that gathered like ravenous wolves about the fading
campfire of his mind. Yet even though he thought he was doing nothing more than
courting folly, he ventured another question. “If such a meeting took place,
Admiral, might you tell me what was agreed between us there?”

“Of course. The same thing we
have just set our minds to here—a truce. We found ourselves at odds, and rather
than continue a struggle that could do neither of us any good, I agreed to
proceed to the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic in exchange for free
passage of the Straits of Gibraltar and a pledge of non-belligerency in the war
that is before us both now.”

There it was, chapter and verse
as Tovey’s own report had described the meeting, and the agreement that was
negotiated—a meeting he knew he had never taken with this man, particularly on
the dates listed! Yet Tovey persisted, if only to test the fullness of the
mayhem that was now before him.

“I must tell you that I am a very
busy man, and one sometimes given to forgetfulness, but I could never put from
my mind a meeting of such importance. I have no recollection of ever seeing
you, or ever speaking with you before we first met aboard HMS
Invincible
,
though I have harbored, as I confessed, a lingering feeling that we had met.
Now you sit there and describe the very substance and purpose of that meeting,
and it corresponds precisely with this report on the matter—a report supposedly
written by my own hand by all appearances, but one I would swear before any
court that I have never contemplated, let alone produced. It would seem logical
for me to assume you are somehow connected to this document, and perhaps to all
the others found in the box I have mentioned. One more question, before I
certify myself as hopelessly insane, or conclude that you are a part of a grand
deception. The date… Do you recall just when this meeting was supposed to have
occurred between us? Even if my own memory has failed me, my whereabouts are
fairly well documented.”

Fedorov leaned over and whispered
something to Admiral Volsky now, and he nodded. “My Captain here informs me now,
as my recollection is a bit like Swiss cheese at times as well. But there will
be no record you can produce documenting your whereabouts in this regard—except
perhaps that report you have referred to. The date… Forgive me if what I now
say gives you every reason to think that I, too, am insane, or playing some
macabre game with you here. I assure you that I am not guilty on both counts. The
date of this meeting was August 14, and a little after 17:00, in the year 1942.”

The log on the fire popped
loudly, as if in protest to the facts that Admiral Volsky asserted. It was the
very same information documented in the report Turing had forwarded. They all
jumped at the sound, then sat there, looking at one another like marked men,
and certainly bound for the only place where any of this would make even the
slightest bit if sense—bedlam.

Tovey gave the Russians a narrow
eyed look. Could these men, this ship, all be part and parcel with the same
plot that produced that box of material Turing fished out of the archives? Why
would anyone contrive a story like this? He could think of no reason, but
reason was not the order of the day, or the moment here. This was all entirely
unreasonable, completely irrational, some perverse joke the world was playing
on them, or a devious plot that Turing may have inadvertently stumbled upon.

He shored up his will, resolved
to get to the bottom of this here and now. “The date you have given me is
exactly what I see noted here on this report—yet preposterous. I have read the
popular novel by our own Mister H. G. Wells on the matter of time travel,
gentlemen. In fact I read it many years ago, as a young boy of ten when it was
first published. But I am not given to such flights of fancy, so it should be
clear to us all here that this notion that we have met at some
future
time is poppycock… And yet…. I have had a long look at the material in this
archive, and I find it all rather disconcerting in a way that is difficult to
explain. It documents that our first meeting was in combat, with me aboard a
battleship that we have only just commissioned into the fleet. So this entire
box is either a wonderful work of fiction, like our Mister Wells’ story, or I’m
a bullfrog. Then I sit here and look at those photographs, note your own
astonished reactions to the same, and am I to assume you are all in league with
the perpetrator of this fiction?”

Admiral Volsky sighed. He could
either agree now that this was all a hoax and spare this man the trip down the
rabbit hole he had been forced to take, or he could reveal the impossible truth
that he had lived with and would continue to live with here—a truth that could
simply not be hidden any longer as he saw things. Then he thought of Ivan
Volkov, Vladimir Karpov, and even Sergei Kirov, all men who had also taken that
same impossible journey through time, all key players now in the shattered
reality of this world. The truth, as impossible as it seemed, was his only
recourse.

“Admiral Tovey, I could spend
hours trying to explain what I am now about to tell you, but I think there is a
better way. You were kind enough to invite me aboard your ship. May I suggest
now that you take a moment to visit me aboard
Kirov?
There you will have
the answer to all your questions, and if the evidence of your own eyes is not
something you can believe, then I will join you in happy retirement to your
Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the two of us can sit out the remainder of this war
as a pair of crazy old fools.”

* * *

‘Let us go then, you and I, When
the evening is spread out against the sky,          Like a patient etherized
upon a table…’
Tovey ran the words of T. S. Eliot through his mind now as
they made their way through the small settlement towards the Admiral’s launch
by the quay.
‘There will be time, there will be time… time to murder and
create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a
question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a
hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking
of a toast and tea…’

 The ship loomed in the lee of
the tall stony sail of Tinholmur rock, thrust up from the hidden depths below
in some upwelling of chaos in the earth itself, its sharp, jagged edge still
unweathered by wind and rain over the centuries. As he looked at the ship he
felt that its sharp metallic lines were also the product of chaos, something
wholly unaccountable, out of place, a misfit in time. It was as if this strange
ship had haunted his nightmares all his life.

He thought once that his
recollection of that harrowing moment aboard
King Alfred
in the Pacific
had been the source of this long steeped anxiety. One moment he was charging
ahead into battle, leading in the British China Squadron, his forward cannon
blasting away at the ominous shadow on the sea. The next moment the distant
ship seemed to be enveloped in haze, a green mist, luminescent, like the artful
and eerie dance of Saint Elmo’s Fire in the high mast at the edge of a storm.

The ship just seemed to vanish,
presumed sunk, but with no wreckage ever found in the shallow waters near Iki
Island in the Tsushima Strait. So the official report would state that it was
obliterated, though Tovey could recall no explosion big enough to destroy a
ship of that size. It was a deep mystery, and the report was since lost to the
weathering of time and events. Yet he always thought about it, the ship that
took the Captain’s life and thrust him into his first daring moment of command.

Now as he drew near to the broad
hull of the battlecruiser
Kirov
, he felt a strange magnetism, a
connection, linking his life and fate to the cold metal hull and decks and
battlements of this vessel. The closer he came, the more he felt that
compelling sense of discovery, as if he was finally to have the answer to a
stubborn question that had lingered in his mind all his life. It was here… It
was this ship… It was
Geronimo
.