Able Fire: The Next War - 2025 and Beyond

Chapter 31

The stateroom was a very dangerous place now, thought Trushin, and he always quailed at the thought of entering the room, deep at the heart of the airship, just above the main bridge gondola. But enter I must, at the beck and call of my master, Ivan Volkov. I was the fool who thought it would be a good idea to get close to the man, and serve him as Adjutant in all his busy ways.

Yes, I know him quite well now, more than I ever wished to know. He was always ruthless, determined, self-absorbed, and often cruel, but now he has changed for the worse. The man is obsessed, and bent on revenge. He tells me Tyrenkov betrayed him, and fled to some far off future, and that he will find that place if it is the last thing he does. God only knows, but it may be the last thing any of us do on this dreary airship. Three times we have tried to ride the storms, tried to move again, but all we find is this barren, frozen emptiness, a silent cold world where nothing moves or lives. And now Volkov is getting restless, frustrated, angry.

He stood at the stateroom doom, eyes fearful, and then took a deep breath before he knocked.

“Come,” said the familiar voice from within, and Trushin saw his hand quaver as he reached for the latch to enter. As soon as he knocked, the wolves began to snarl and growl, raising his hackles and sending a chill up his spine. He pushed the door open, and there they were, two great beasts, one dark and grey, the other tallow white, and their eyes glowed with wild, savage anger, their teeth barred.

Volkov was sitting at his desk, reading something, and then he shuffled some papers aside and snapped his fingers. At once the two wolves became silent, slinking away through the open iron barred door of their cage, and then lying down, though they eyed Trushin darkly, watching his every move.

“Close the damn door, Trushin,” said Volkov. “It’s drafty!”

Sealing the hatch, Trushin kept one eye on the wolves, the other on Volkov as he sidled up to the desk, waiting. Volkov had a thick sheaf of documents, and several books, things they had taken from the library at the Northern Shamrock.

“Well?” he said. “What news, Trushin. The wind is up, and it’s getting colder. What does the Weatherman say this time?”

“Sorry sir, there’s no danger of a storm just now,” said Trushin, hating to be the bearer of bad news to Volkov. “But the ground observation crews are a little confused.”

“Confused?”

“Yes sir, they say things have… well, they say things have changed, sir. I’m not entirely sure what they mean.”

That got Volkov’s attention, and he set down his pen on the desk, looking at Trushin for the first time. He inclined his head.

“The ground has changed? In what way?”

“The trees… the small lake we were using as a landmark is now completely forested over, sir.”

“Just where are we, exactly?”

“Well sir, we overflew the site as you wished. It was unmistakable, or so the spotters claimed. We’re over the Reka Khushma River now, bound for Vanavara, about 55 kilometers from the town. We should get there in half an hour at our present speed.”

“And the observation teams say the ground has changed? …. This I’ll have to see.”

Volkov got up, setting his papers aside, and starting towards the iron cage first. He smiled at his two wolf hounds, then closed the cage door and set the latch. The beasts tended to get curious if left uncaged in his absence, and should anyone enter the room while he was gone…. At times he would leave the cage door open for that very reason, knowing his preserve in the stateroom was perfectly safe with Greyback and Ghost on the watch.

“Come, Trushin, let’s get down to the bridge gondola.”

An airship was like a ship turned upside down. Instead of climbing the main superstructure to the bridge, one descended into the metal gondolas at the bottom of the great mass of the ship. The ground was always the surest reference for navigation, and observation teams would be posted at special nodes along the lower outer canvas ‘hull’ of the airship, peering through field glasses and noting the lay of the land as they compared it to their maps. They could call the bridge directly on the intercoms to report anything unusual, and that is what they just did, which sent Trushin to the stateroom with the news for Volkov.

They tromped down the metal stairway, and a ladder to reach the main gondola. There was Voronin, the security man Volkov had taken in tow, smoking a cigar, as he often did. Captain Gorev was at his post, saluting Volkov as he entered. The rest of the bridge crew were busy at their posts, and diligently so, now that Volkov was on the bridge.

“What’s this nonsense about trees in the lake?”

“See for yourself, sir,” said Gorev, pointing out the spot. Ground spotters called in the lake a few minutes ago as we were approaching the river. Then one called back to say it was gone.”

“Gone?”

“I took a look myself when they called the lake in, sir, but sure enough, I can’t spot the damn thing now—just trees, as far as the eye could see.”

“But you can see the river?”

“Yes sir, overflew that just a minute ago. The Reka Chamba is coming up now, about 40 kilometers from Vanavara. We turn due south and follow that to the next river, then turn to port for another ten kilometers to approach the town from the west.”

“Very well, let’s get there and sort this out.”

It was another twenty minutes before the spotters called in again, saying they could now see the gleam of wan sunlight on water ahead. The rivers they had overflown earlier were just thin wandering ribbons, but this was bigger, the Stony Tunguska, a watercourse that was 800 to 1000 feet wide in many places.

“River ahead, sir,” called the navigator.

“Come to 055 degrees southeast,” said the Captain. They would just keep the river off their starboard side now until it made another turn that became a sharp bend to the south. Minutes later, they could see the bend ahead, but there was no sign of the town.

“Ground observers, do you have Vanavara?”

Men in the forward gondola or the nose observation ports would have the best view ahead, but one by one they reported the disturbing news.

“Negative, sir. No settlement on the river.”

Volkov shook his head. “Navigator!” he growled. “What in God’s name are you about?”

“Sorry sir,” said the Navigator, “but there is no error. That’s the final bend in the Stony Tunguska up ahead. It will turn south now.”

“Well look, gentlemen,” said Volkov, clearly irritated. “Lakes and towns do not simply vanish! Captain, slow down and hover over the bend ahead, and if I find out this is the wrong hump in that river, I’ll skin you alive, Mister Delov.”

The navigator gave Volkov a nervous look, but he knew he had made no mistakes. The river was bending south ahead, just as it was on his charts, and yet, the town of Vanavara, 3000 plus souls, was simply not there.”

“My God,” the Captain breathed. “What’s going on here? The airfield is gone too. We should be able to see that easily enough, but the whole area is forested. It’s as if the city was never….”

Never there.

Volkov’s eyes narrowed. He reached into his pocket and took out a cell phone device, wherein he had stored the “Mobile Wiki,” an encyclopedia at his fingertips, quite literally. A few taps later, a dark light kindled in his eyes as he stared at the device.

“This can mean only one thing,” he said in a low voice. “I see no sign of distress in the woodland around that river bend, do you, Captain Gorev?”

“No sir.”

“No craters or any sign of war damage?”

“No sir, we’d spot that easily enough.”

“Then this can mean only one thing—we’ve moved again.”

“Moved? In time, sir?”

“How else can this be explained.”

“Then we’ve gone even farther forward? My God, sir. For the landscape to be completely grown over like this, why, we’d have to be decades farther on—perhaps centuries!”

“Perhaps,” said Volkov, “or decades in the past. It says here that Vanavara was an old hunting lodge site for trappers and fishermen on this river, and then a weather station, and the town started up here in 1932.”

“Mister Kornev,” the blond haired Captain looked over his shoulder. “Anything on the radio?”

“Nothing sir. All quiet.”

“Another clue,” said Volkov. “Not that it helps us much. The first radio news broadcast was in 1920. So if we moved forward, we hear nothing because no one is there. If we went backwards, however, then we might have moved to a time before radio broadcast was common. If Vanavara is gone, then we know we went beyond 1932. Navigator, what’s the next closest settlement?”

“Well, if we head south from here we’ll hit the Angara River, and there should be settlements there—possibly Bratsk. Then of course Irkutsk is farther south, and Krasnoyarsk to the southwest.”

“Those would be old city sites, sir,” said the Captain, “well established.”

“Yes…” said Volkov. “Kansk is very near Krasnoyarsk. Plot me a course there. How far is it?”

The navigator traced the route, walking his calipers quickly across the chart. “About 585 Kilometers, sir.”

“Good,” said Volkov. “Take me there, 100 kph. We’ll have breakfast in Kansk, gentlemen, and we’ll sort this business out there once and for all.”

There were a hundred little towns on the navigator’s charts, but most, if not all, were missing as they flew southwest. As with Vanavara, they saw no sign of distress in the landscape—just no settlements, which was strong evidence that none had been founded. How deep had they gone, Volkov wondered when he had returned to his stateroom. How far back? I didn’t think Time wanted us here. Why in God’s name would we slip into the past? Time has to work very hard to send me to the past. There are so many complications, and the risk of Paradox is very high. Moving me forward would be relatively effortless. They say that flowing water seeks the easiest course—this is what I reasoned before when this question first came to mind. So I set my will on going forward, only to find the war in 2021 had come to a desolate end.

Now this!

Where in hell have we ended up this time? How did we get here? There was no storm at all… yet we did overfly the site of the Tunguska Event just a little while ago. Tyrenkov told me that was how all this got started, so I got curious. Could that be a region of temporal instability? Did my sightseeing tour just float blithely through some fissure in time there? If that is so, could I get back that same way if we are marooned in the past here now as I suspect?

It was all so confusing.

Even as he thought that, his wolves started growling, their eyes red, hackles raised. They had been eating their dinner in the iron cage, quite content, but now they were suddenly agitated. There came a shudder, a quavering in the air, and then came a terrible sound. The airship shuddered heavily, as if struck by a great concussion wave. The wolves were howling now, their toothy snouts raised, calling, calling….

Volkov strode quickly to the door of his stateroom, throwing it open and stepping out into the interior corridor. He was amazed to see the entire ship seemed to be glowing, as if some terrible light was on the other side of the exterior canvass shell of the airship, and for a moment, he thought there might be a fire.

That sent a jab of regret through his mind. I should have brought Siberia along on this mission, he thought, just in case, but I left that ship back at the Northern Shamrock when I set off into the wilds it was named for. What has happened? He was on his way to the stairway down, and the ladder to the main bridge gondola again. When he got there, the bridge crew were working the elevator wheel and stabilizing the ship.

“What’s happened?” he shouted, hearing the distant rumble of thunder, explosions. Then they grew quiet, fading, fading away, the light subsiding, the neon green glow suddenly gone, until all was as it was.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” said Captain Gorev. He was on the intercom. “All hands, report and damage to the bridge immediately. Chief of Engineers—check all stations. This is the Captain.”

They would check, but no damage would be found, and no reports would come. All was as it was before that first shudder trembled in the air of his stateroom. Now he had the distinct feeling that something had reached for him with deadly intent. Something had sought his life. It was a deep, ominous realization, and though there was nothing he could see as any evidence around him, he was certain that something had just tried, with all its might, to crush this ship and end his life—but it had failed.

Now he smiled, knowing what it was.

Chapter 32

Paradox, he thought. I believed I needed to be in the future, and that Time would certainly send me there. It was so much easier, but no, we shifted to the distant past. I’m sure of it now. Yet the past is so powerful, so laden with possibility. From here I can effect catastrophic change. That’s what I did before, finding myself in 1908 to eventually rule the Orenburg Federation… yes, I remember everything now. The dreams were all real. I know everything at long last, and particularly how that conniving bastard Tyrenkov worked so diligently with Karpov against se during WWII.

My head had been filling up with memories for months now, and I think Tyrenkov was beginning to suspect I was learning things he wanted to keep sleeping. But now I know it all, the mind of every Volkov on various meridians of time all joining hands in one head. It is wonderful, and terrible at the same time.

We have moved, and surely to the past. That is always dangerous. Tyrenkov spoke of this many times. He said that a man could never go to a place where he already existed, and I spent hours when I first considered this, wondering where I could go, and where that prohibition would hold me at bay… And yet…. Didn’t that rodent Vladimir Karpov do exactly that? He was there in the 1940’s when Kirov came that second time, and look what happened! Suddenly there were two Karpov’s.

Yes… and he was aboard this very ship when it happened— Tunguska. That’s how he managed to defeat my other self in the past. He went back, even while he already existed on that damn battlecruiser as another self, and the two of them survived—Doppelgangers. The Siberian then took over all the duties the original Karpov wished to shirk off on him, but the senior partner was always the first Karpov, the man who first came back…. The bastards double teamed me, and they undoubtedly poisoned Sergei Kirov’s ear to get him to send his armies against me during that war.

Of course they did. They knew my Orenburg Federation and alliance with Hitler could have changed the entire outcome of the war. It would most certainly have done so… until Karpov appeared. Once that brigand seized the reins of power in Siberia, then he and his lacky Siberian self both double teamed me.

Once Volkov got over the anger and resentment in remembering all of that, he composed himself, eyes narrowed. He was watching his wolves, seeing how they both settled down again, their eyes on him, watching him as closely as he was watching them. Then a sudden thought came to him. Two wolves, Greyback and Ghost…. Why not two of me? Yes…. Two Volkovs! What if I pulled the same rabbit out of my hat, just like Karpov did? What if we are in the past now, a past where I already exist, yet I remain alive and well here on this ship. Would my other self also survive? Would I get a Doppelganger, just like Karpov did? Interesting….

But what would I do here? Yes, I could use my foreknowledge of the history, and this airship, to wield tremendous power. I could certainly set myself up as a nice little emperor in my own rite. Why, men would flock to my banner like they did to Napoleon when he returned to Southern France. But how dreary it would be, living out all those long years in the early 20th Century, struggling through the Revolution, building my network, consolidating power, watching that monster Adolf Hitler rise to cast his shadow over Europe again, fighting that long terrible war…

He thought about that a good long while, until he realized he did not have to suffer that fate. He could leave here any time he wished. He could go anywhere with Tunguska, even though he had no real control over where he would end up. He was not marooned here.

As this certainty settled on him, he began thinking of how he should exploit this time, and what he might do. First things first, he thought. I must learn exactly where we have ended up. It’s clear now what happened. We must have flown right through some temporal instability over the site of the Tunguska Event. Why we were thrown into the past, I may never know, but if we are here, I must not let this opportunity go to waste. There is so much mischief I can work, but first I must know where we have ended up. Kansk will tell the tale. When I get there, I will learn what the date and time is now, and all these questions will be answered. Then I can begin.

Kansk was only six hours away, the great mass of Tunguska soaring above the white clouds over the taiga and tundra. In modern times, it was a city of 92,000 people on the Kan River, and the site of a naval arsenal. As they approached, beginning their slow descent, Volkov remembered how his men fought here during the war, falling on the city, and nearby Ilanskiy, with a fleet of airships and his 22nd Air Mobile Brigade.

I was a much older man then, he remembered, pulling the memory from another head. I had lived out all those long hard days from the madness of 1908 when I first stumbled down those stairs at Ilanskiy, to the heat and fire of WWII. Yes, I was aging, but still strong, still as determined as ever. I took three of my airmobile battalions in, and then brought in reserves with those German transports I wrangled from Hitler, my Air Landing Brigade. It was a glorious attack, the airship fleets dueling in the skies, the men parachuting into battle. Or leaping from our airships when they went to a low ground hover.[10]

Three times we fought to control that railway inn, but the Siberians fought hard, and I could never succeed in taking it. Now it is right there for the taking, before any of those battles will ever be fought—assuming I am correct about our movement to the past. So we will go to ground quietly, north of Kansk, and then take a shore party on the ground into the city. No use frightening the locals when they see this massive airship in the sky. No, that must be avoided.

Then again… is the inn still there?

Memories flooded in, of that fateful moment when they set that railway inn on fire…. They watched it burn for a good long while, the dark grey smoke thickening to black, the bright red and yellow flames raging ever higher. The wood would hiss and pop as it burned, and little by little, the key load bearing beams and columns were consumed, until they gave way in a chaotic snap, sending a plume of wild red cinders and glowing embers up into the deepening gloom. It was as if long decades were burning, the death of the railway inn being a key supporting beam that had allowed them to ever exist, the floorboards of the years warped and bent, then broken in the collapse, and devoured by the flames….

Well, we certainly created on massive problem for Mother Time, when we kindled that fire, he thought. If that railway inn was burned in 1908, then how did Tyrenkov get there to even light the fire? How did I get there, and Orlov too? None of us could have been standing there watching that railway inn burn. It was impossible, a Paradox of the highest order, and it simply could not be happening. Unless….

Yes, unless Tyrenkov rebuilt that inn. He gave the innkeeper a pouch of Rubles and Kopecks in compensation, and he asked the innkeeper for the name of architect who built the place. So that has to be the answer. Tyrenkov rebuilt it, sometime between the hour we first burned it, and the day Fedorov first stopped there in WWII. That can be the only answer to that dilemma.

So it may be that I find myself unable to take possession yet again. Ironic, isn’t it? Here I come in the airship that Karpov used to lord over these grey skies. But I must know where we are… when we are.

“Captain—that clearing ahead looks suitable. Take us down, and notify the Guard to get a team together.”

“Will you be accompanying them, sir?”

“Of course not. Just get four or five men on motorbikes and get them into Kansk. They are to bring me back documentary evidence of the current date. Nothing more.”

“Very good, sir.”

That ended up being a very easy thing to do. They hovered, lowered four men and four motorbikes down in a cargo lift, and they sputtered off to the south in their black uniforms, submachineguns strapped over their shoulders. They would return a few hours later with newspapers in hand, the easiest way they could have possibly learned the date and time.

“You are certain these are current, Colonel Dobkin?”

“Yes sir, I asked a local if the date on that paper was accurate. He said it had just come out that morning. Someone brought a bundle in on the train from Krasnoyarsk.”

“Excellent work, Colonel. Dismissed.”

The dark coated man saluted, and was up the ladder from the bridge gondola and gone. Volkov held the freshly printed newspaper out to have a look, smiling.

“My, my,” he said with an evil grin. “It’s September of 1910, gentlemen. Interesting…. Captain, take us up. We are going to the Caucasus, to Baku, in fact. How far is it, Mister Delov?”

“One moment, sir…. I make it about 3,700 kilometers.”

“No small journey,” said the Captain.

“Indeed. Do we have the fuel?”

“Yes sir, and that we use can be replaced in Baku easily enough.”

“Perfect,” said Volkov. “Then, weather permitting, we could be there in 36 hours or so. See to it, Captain. I’ll be in my stateroom.”

Captain Gorlev knew enough by now to never ask why Volkov was giving an order. His job was merely to find a way to make it so, and this one seemed easy enough. Yet he could not help but wonder, nonetheless, just why this sudden move to the Caucasus would be in order. He would not learn that until they arrived….

Colonel Martynov was not happy. This wretch of a man that he and so many others in the Okhrana had been watching for months was trying to wriggle off the hook yet again. He was a man of a hundred faces, a hundred names, though the Colonel would never forget him now that he had a good long look. Yes, this is the same man they called Kuba when we had him here before, in 1908—the same man they called Soso, a cagey little rabble-rouser of the incipient revolution. Tracking him became almost impossible. He shifts identities as often as another man might change his clothes!

He was Gayoz Nizheradz when we first got our hands on him in March of 1908, but that name didn’t fool us for very long. Eventually we simply exiled the man, and two years later he is back again, up to his same old tricks. So we arrest him a second time, only this time he calls himself Zakhar Melikyantz. One day he is Kuba, or Beso, or Ivanov. The next day he is Kato, Solin, the Caucasian, the Priest, and today he is called the Milkman, perhaps because of his fondness for milk, because our spies found him frequenting a milk bar.

He is as shady a character as I have ever seen, and so once again, I recommend no less than five years exile in Siberia. This time, we will send him to Yakutsk! Yet today I learn he is appealing to the Caucasian Viceroy, asking for leniency. On what grounds, I might ask? All the man has done since we got our hands on him is work his bile through the prison inmates, accusing them of being spies, organizing gangs, attacking and killing his enemies in his ruthless self-styled purge.

He is as corrupt a man as I have ever seen, and the list of his crimes goes on and on—robbery, extortion, bribery, racketeering, and of course we cannot forget his subversive propaganda, his traitorous organizing in the shadows of this city. He should be locked up forever, but then that would only be my headache for as long as the man is under my guard. I am told the final decision on his exile will be made today, so we shall see what fate has in store for him. We shall see…

The greatest part of that fate was lying in wait for all of Russia, but few, if any, could see that far ahead, or ever believe what they would see if they could. The Revolution, like all rebellions against an established order, began with discontent, perceived injustice and oppression, and basic inequity in the distribution of wealth and services. It was the same story everywhere. Elite families husbanded wealth and power, while the common man or woman scrounged out a living as best they could. Capitalism had a genius for generating wealth, but its mechanism continued to move it higher and higher on the social pyramid, until the barest few at the very top controlled more wealth that all the rest combined.

The Revolution started as an idea, as grand and compelling in the minds of its creators as any other great social edict, and it began with every good intention. Yet like all social systems created by men, it would slowly become corrupt over time. The British writer George Orwell wrote his now famous parody of the Russian Revolution in the book Animal Farm, where the grand experiment began with the catchphrase “All Animals are equal!” Yet it did not take long before it was evident that “some Animals are more equal than others.” The same story played out in the United States, which had boldly proclaimed “all men are created equal! Soon, however, it was evident that those who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and those who came to America from foreign shores, were deemed less equal than others.

The oppressive world that Orwell painted in his more serious book 1984 was one path this inherent inequality of society could take. The other path was that described by Aldus Huxley in his landmark novel Brave New World.

No one knew it at that moment, though Colonel Martynov might have been one to suspect, that a man like the one he was ruminating over might one day seize real power, overthrow the old order, and become the “Big Brother” that Orwell was writing about in 1984, and it would not take nearly that long. Today was the day the Colonel had waited for, the final sentencing and banishment of the man he had been grumbling about, and at that moment, the thought that this same man would rise to seize control of the entire government of Russia was unthinkable.

He would use all the same old tactics and ploys that the Colonel saw him crafting in prison. He would sew suspicion and spread rumors to prompt others to take action against his perceived enemies. He would manipulate everyone around him to the service of his devious plots, and slowly breed an atmosphere of terror and fear. He would eliminate his opposition, one man after another, until no one dared oppose him. Even after they all fell into line, he would continue to decimate the ranks with grand purges to slake his own inner fear.

Then, all over Siberia, the place where he would be banished, he would build little prisons and detention camps like the one he found himself in now. What was good for the goose, was good for the gander. Everyone would suffer as he had suffered. There would be no exceptions. Even his most trusted associates would fall under his suspicion, particularly anyone who had gained any measure of popularity and respect. One by one, he would eliminate them all… in the purges, executions, labor camps… in the Gulags.

And it all started here.

Chapter 33

Bailov prison was a dark and cheerless place, a place of terror, and isolation, and the misery squeezed from one man after another where they huddled in the cold stone cells, behind heartless bars of iron. One man sat there, brooding, yet scheming in his mind. He had been arrested for his persistent criminal acts against the order of the state. The tall, fearsome agents of the Okhrana had finally tracked him down and dragged him before a court of censure, where he was lucky to have only been sentenced to 18 months in this rat’s nest.

He was born 18 December 1878 in a little town in the Caucasus called Gori. His mother had been a simple housekeeper, his father a cobbler who often drunk himself into a stupor and beat him cruelly in the early years of his life, where the world also branded him with the scars of smallpox, and physical ailments in his feet and left arm that would plague him in later years. Yet he endured the abuse, as if he was nothing more than another piece of stone beat upon by his father, and he grew to a handsome man in his twenties.

That childhood was perhaps the reason why he forsook his real name long ago, becoming a chameleon of sorts, changing names and identities, and moving in the shadows. He had come to Baku to rouse the oil workers, to rob and steal in order to fund other revolutionary cells, to drink and brawl, and hatch subversive plans.

His rebellious spirit soon found him in the activist circles and hidden meeting rooms of the incipient revolution in Russia. He read forbidden literature, the writings of men named Lenin and Marx, and soon began to agitate on their behalf. He wrote and circulated papers condemning the wealthy oil barons and bankers who had come to Baku at the edge of the Caspian Sea, and he helped organize workers strikes against them there. He joined the Bolsheviks, helped to print and spread their propaganda, and recruited new cells. He robbed the bankers he saw bleeding the country dry and used their money to foment further revolutionary activity… and he was tracked down by the Tsar’s secret police and arrested.

The Okhrana had been watching him for years, other shadows that seemed to follow him everywhere, instilling in him the ever present fear of being discovered. It came to a point where he could trust no one, and he was always looking over one shoulder, even with his most trusted associates, and he let them all know why he was so ardent in the pursuit of perceived enemies and spies.

“Betrayal is the worst fate a man can endure in his mind,” he told them. “The betrayal of someone with whom you’ve shared everything is so horrible, that no actor or writer could ever express it. It is worse than the very bite of Death!”

This dark sentiment would be a blight upon all of Russia one day, for he would never still his suspicion, his constant fear of betrayal, the urge to root out and eliminate anyone he perceived as a threat.

By the same token, he could never operate in one location for very long, and he learned to disassemble, move, and reassemble his printing press as a matter of course. Movement was life, stagnation death. Loyalty was an illusion, distrust the bitter way of life. That was how he saw things. In many ways, he was like a deadly virus in the body politic of his time, infecting the masses, always pursued by the antibodies of the Tsar’s secret police, then mutating to come again in another guise. And for this man, there was no vaccine.

The prisoner was a man with no heart, for it had died with his young wife of 23 years the previous autumn, a shattering life tragedy that left a terrible mark on Koba. He told his associates how he felt in no uncertain terms: “…Now she is dead, and with her passing goes my last drop of feeling for mankind.” He placed his hand on his breast in anguish. “Here, in here, everything is empty, unutterably empty.”

Now he sat in the prison of Bailov, brooding on how he might soon regain his freedom and continue with his revolutionary zeal. He had a plan, and it was all arranged. He would feign illness, something terrible like tuberculosis, so he could be taken from his cell to the infirmary, and there he would switch places with another patient being discharged, and escape. He had secretly sent messages to his comrades outside, and they would arrange a coach and driver to spirit him away into the cold countryside where he would travel north and east, far away from the black hole in which he now found himself. He would then change his name again, assuming another alias like so many other comrades in the struggle, and he would find another cell to infect and breed the virus of revolution. As Colonel Martynov had surmised so well, he was a man with a hundred identities.

That night he was thinking what he would call himself next, and something elegantly simple came to mind. The name would be easily grasped, and rooted in the Russian word that sounded much like his old family name, for he was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, and Dzhuga meant “Steel” in the old Georgian tongue. So he called himself by the Russian name for that word—“Stalin.”

It was all set to happen as he planned it, except for one small mishap. Three nights before he would set his plan in motion, a man arrived at the gate of the prison, dressed in the dark black garb of the Okhrana. He presented his badge and papers, and was let in through the high metal doors, slowly climbing the stone steps to the warden’s office. In his hand he held an order concerning a certain prisoner.

“Ah,” said Colonel Martynov. “You have come for the Milkman. It’s about time. I wanted to see him dealt with before I, myself, am replaced here. It seems a Captain Galimbatovsky is being sent to take my place, and for a moment I thought you might be him.”

“Not at all,” said the visitor. “But who is this Milkman?”

“Just an alias,” said Martynov. “Tomorrow we will be calling him something else, but you most likely know the man as Koba.”

“Indeed.”

“Well? Is he to be banished as I strongly suggested? The only thing to be done with this rogue is to get him as far from here as possible. Even Yakutsk would be too close. Perhaps Sakhalin or even Kamchatka would be better. I have heard that Colonel Eremin is softening on the man, but that would be a grave mistake. This one is a snake, and if left to his devices, there is no telling what he might end up doing next. He should be dealt with in the harshest possible terms.”

“Have no fear,” said the visitor. “But tell me,” he handed the Colonel a document. “Is this the man in question? I must be certain there is no mistake made here, particularly since you say this man has so many identities.”

Martynov looked at the document, a police report showing the man’s mug shot, face forward and in profile. There was no mistaking him, young, handsome, with wild dark hair, coal black eyes and that stiff mustache. “That is him, the Milkman today, Koba again tomorrow, or Sosa, or something else.”

“Very well, I must see him now to verify this with my own eyes, and then we can conclude this matter. I have a proper writ, which I will present to you after I see this man.”

“Good! At long last. Here is the cell number. I had him removed from the general population and put in isolation today pending this verdict. Go and see him for yourself. The Corporal will show you the way.”

“Very well, Colonel, but understand that the law may proscribe a harder fate than even you might dictate for a man like this. It will be taken care of this hour.”

“Can you assure me that he will not be permitted to stay in the Caucasus for at least five years?”

“Colonel, I can assure you that he will not live in the Caucasus another day…. Ever again.”

The visitor turned, led off by the young Okhrana Corporal, and soon the cold clap of his boots were echoing in the long stony hallway that led to the cell where Stalin slept.

It was not long before the Colonel would receive yet another visitor, this time a troop of armed men, carrying weapons unlike any he had ever seen. They were tall, in jet black uniforms that bore a double eagle insignia, but they were not like any soldiers or security officers he knew. Something about them spoke of fear, and behind them, flanked on either side by two great beasts that he held on iron chains, there were even more soldiers.

In they came, striding right to the central command offices of the prison, as if they knew exactly where to go. When one of his Okhrana guards stepped to block the doorway, two of the dark uniformed men hammered him aside with the butts of their weapons. Then they kicked open the office door, and three men entered.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Martynov. “Who are you? What business have you here?”

None of the Colonel’s questions were answered. The three men walked boldly up to the Colonel, removed his sidearm, searched his desk, and then one turned and nodded to another man by the door.

“This is outrageous!” said Martynov. “Do you realize who I am?”

In came a tall, trim man, in a light grey uniform with a dark outer cape draped over his shoulders, lined with burgundy. His boots were high and black, and his chest bore a single gold medal, again, the double eagle, overlaid with the platinum letter “V.” The two beasts were at his side, snarling and growling at the Colonel, enough to deflate all his indignant anger. He had never seen such a thing! Those were not dogs as he first thought, but wild wolves!

“Yes, Colonel Martynov,” said the man in grey. “I know exactly who you are. Now then… I will be brief. Do not worry, I have no interest in you at all. I am merely here to see to the fate of another—a man you know as Koba.”

“Koba? Then you are with the man I just spoke with?”

Volkov inclined his head. “What man is this?”

“Why… now that you ask, he did not even give his name. But he had a police report identifying Koba.”

“I see… And where is this man now?”

“He’s gone to see the prisoner, Koba, Sosa, Ivanov, call him what you will. They are all the same man.”

“The Milkman,” said Volkov, with a wry smile.

“You heard that too? Good. Then you must be Okhrana. Were you sent from St. Petersburg?”

“No more questions,” said Volkov. “Where is this prisoner, and this other man you say you just spoke with?”

“He was Okhrana too,” said the Colonel. “He said he was here to pronounce the final verdict, and needed to first identify the prisoner. You do not know him? My God… Could he be an accomplice? Might they be planning an escape?”

“Where is he!” Volkov raised his voice, and the two wolves lunged forward, snarling at the Colonel, who staggered back against the wall, terrified.

“The guard will take you!” he pointed, eyes wide with fear.

The prisoner was awakened in the night, squinting up through bleary, sleepless eyes when he heard the footsteps approaching. A long stony corridor led to his cell, which had once been a storage room, and it was lit by a single bare lightbulb, which flickered on and off at times in a most annoying way. Koba sat up, squinting at the figure approaching his iron barred cell door. Then a shadowy form stood there, his face unseen in the darkness. A quiet voice spoke from beyond the metal bars, saying his old family name, a question in the inflexion.

Who was this, he wondered? Was his appeal to the Viceroy finally granted? Yet how did he know his real family name? Was he a friend, an associate sent by his comrades to offer him aid? He should not have answered the man’s question, but as everything he ever said was mostly thought of as a lie, this one would think his real name was nothing more than another alias.

“Yes,” he breathed, wondering who the shadow was that had come to him in the dark of the night. The shadow was death—his own death—in the hand of a man who held a steel pistol, aiming it right at the center of the empty heart that would so blacken the world in decades to come with its insatiable hunger for violence and revenge. The shadow had a name as well, Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, though now he simply called himself Mironov, an alias, like the many names this Josef Stalin had taken upon himself. He never gave his name to Stalin, and he wasted not another second as he pointed his pistol, squeezed the trigger, and fired.

That one single act, the flexing of a finger in the night, would change the lives and fates of millions, redraw the borders of nations, and recast the entire political landscape of the world in decades to come. Was it born in Fedorov’s plaintive and desperate whisper at Mironov’s ear, and given life by his insatiable curiosity that led Mironov to discover what the stranger meant? Or did it spring from the hollow of Orlov’s darkened soul when he leapt from that helicopter and set Fedorov off on the long pursuit that followed? Where was first cause? Was it Karpov’s darkened soul that had set Orlov in motion? No man would ever know, but that did not matter now.

It was done.

Mironov could not help but flinch when he fired, and he could see the wound he had delivered to Stalin was surely fatal. Then, to his surprise, there came a great commotion echoing up the corridor behind him, and the sound of some growling beast. Hard footfalls slapped the stony hallway, but he knew he might face a moment like this when he first hatched his plan. Yet he had been very careful, very precise. He had well forged identity papers, written orders, a writ of execution and summary judgment that was so authentic that the men in the hallway would never doubt it

They would have to question him, of course, but he knew exactly what to say, and how to threaten them if they dared to interfere with him now. Mironov had every confidence that he would prevail, and soon be on his way. It was the same careful confidence that might have served him so well in the years ahead, when he, too, would take a new name like the man he had just killed. Yes, he had thought about it a good long while, and from this day forward, he would be known as Kirov…. Sergei Kirov.

The men came up the hall, and he turned slowly, seeing them leveling evil looking weapons at him. These were guards unlike any of the others, he thought. Did that Colonel Martynov send them? Then a voice spoke from the shadowy clutch of men clotting that corridor, and blocking any hope of flight.

“You are Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov?” came the question. “You were sent here to carry out a writ of execution for this prisoner?”

Kirov took a deep breath, and smiled. They must have already been informed, he thought, which meant the artfully crafted cover story he had labored to build, through one official after another, had held up.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “To both questions, and I have just carried out the sentence as ordered by St. Petersburg.”

“Good,” came the reply. Then Sergei Kirov heard the cold snap of fingers, the last sound he would hear in this life. The two guards opened fire with their automatic weapons, the bullets tearing through him like the Devil’s Teardrops. He fell, his body riddled and bleeding.

Then Ivan Volkov stepped forward, his face just now bathed in the wan overhead light, his heavy brows leaving the eyes wreathed in shadow.

“Open that cell door,” he said darkly to his men. “My wolves are hungry, and there is certainly plenty here to eat….”