Altered States – Volume II. Darkest Hour

Chapter 8

Karpov seemed startled at the mention of Kirov, but the man went on, and it was soon clear that he wasn’t talking about the ship, but the man. ‘Kirov’s lot’ seemed to refer to European Russians from the far west, or so he reasoned, though he could not understand why.

“Out here you can forget all those nice European ways, and don’t think anyone here will cut you any notice, whether you’ve come in from Leningrad or Moscow. Here the Japanese empire is all that matters. Yes sir, and they’ve started expanding again. If they don’t know that back west in Orenburg or Moscow they soon will I suppose. Like I say, there’s troop ships arriving here every week. Rumor is that my own ship will be commandeered soon for similar duty. Taking Vladivostok, Sakhalin and all of Primorskiy and Amur province wasn’t enough after the last war. No sir. Now they’ve got all of Korea, Taiwan, Manchuko, and they may just push all the way to Lake Baikal if they have a mind to. Siberians can’t do much about that, can they? Kolchak will try, but he’ll be no match for these little weasels. Brutal when they get to war, and that’s a fact.”

Karpov was astounded by what he was hearing now. The last war? The man seemed to be saying the Japanese invaded and occupied Russian territory long ago. He knew that had happened once. Japan sent troops to Vladivostok in the midst of the Russian Civil War along with troops from many other powers, British, French, Italians, Czech, even Americans. They occupied the place in 1918 to support the Whites but after Kolchak’s White Army collapsed in the war against the Bolsheviks in 1919, the Japanese remained in Vladivostok until 1922, fearing the rise of a communist state so close to their Imperial homeland.

“So 600 miles is nothing,” said Koslov. “It’s nearly a thousand miles to Zabaykalsk on the border. There’s Japanese troops there, or so I hear tell. More coming every week. And they’re in Mongolia now too. Rumor has it that they’ve pushed all the way to Ulaanbaatar. Damn industrious, these Japanese. They ran us out of the only port we had on the Pacific. That was inevitable after what happened before the war.”

“This war?”

“The last war-the Great War as they called it. Something tells me this next one will be even bigger. All the ships are bigger, and now they have planes-planes on ships, mind you, and submarines too. No. This will be the great war, but maybe we can stay out of if this time around. After all, we’re still at each other’s throats, eh?”

Karpov did not know what to make of all this, and was very confused. Was this man telling the truth or exaggerating. 1938? How could he possibly be here? Did something happen to the ship? Did it move again and pull him along with it? But how was that possible? Kirov had no control rod this time, and there was no great explosion, nuclear or otherwise, that could have moved the ship. Then the image from his nightmares returned, that horrible moment when he plunged into the water, opening his eyes in a panic to see the long, evil shape of a submarine lurking in the shallows beneath the ship. Could it have been real?

“Are you sure you are well?” Koslov was watching him closely now, but Karpov just looked at him, saying nothing. “Well or not, it’s time you were on your feet and off this ship. Considering you were put on by the Jappos, I’ll grant you free passage this time. Get ashore and hole up in a good hotel for a while. The whole harbor district is overrun with Asians, but inland the city is still much as it always was. But mind what I said-wear an overcoat and don’t flash those stripes on your cuff on the street or you’ll likely be picked up by the Jappos for questioning, and you won’t like that one bit. No sir, not one bit.”

Karpov rubbed a cramp from his neck. “I will take your advice, Koslov, if I can find an overcoat as you suggest.”

“Look in that locker, Captain. Help yourself… Tell me, are you regular navy?”

“I was.”

“No longer?”

“It seems not. At least I have no ship now.”

“Where were you headed?”

“Look, Koslov. I would rather not talk about it.”

The other man gave him a knowing look. “Very well,” he said. “A man has a right to bury his troubles, and it looks as though you have been digging for quite a while.” He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of coins. “Here, take these. The medic says you haven’t two rubles to rub together. A man needs to eat, and there’s enough here to get a modest room in the Moscow Hotel if you choose. But unless you want to bow and scrape to the Jappos rank and file every time you see them-and you better learn a proper bow, mate-then I would head straight to the train station and get on train number four. It will take you up to Khabarovsk. Japanese took that as well, so stay on the train. Once you get up over the Amur bend you don’t see them much at all. Get to Irkutsk, my friend. Then you hear good Russian. Old Man Kolchak is still there trying to re-organize the White Army. Otherwise the Japanese will take that too. Yes, get to Irkutsk. Once you get there, you can breathe again.”

Karpov gave him a wan smile. “Thank you, Koslov. I will remember you.”

“God go with you.”

Karpov took the advice given him, along with a plain trench coat to conceal his uniform. He removed his service jacket, stuffing it inside a pillow case and using it for just that, something to lay his weary head on for the long train ride he contemplated. As he stepped ashore on the quay, the recollection of the last moment he had stood on this place was a sharp barb in his mind. The waterfront and piers were crowded with onlookers, the Mayor and his entourage were lined up with their tall hats, and out in the bay sat the mighty Kirov, its crew assembled on deck in dress whites, and the sound of the Russian national anthem resounding from the surrounding hills. There he stood, his Marine honor guard around him, a demigod to these men. That was only days ago… days… thirty years… a lifetime now it seemed. Then he was Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the most powerful force on earth and the new self-appointed Viceroy of the Far East-invincible.

He wondered what had been recorded of that moment, and what was written about the engagement he forced against Admiral Togo’s fleet and the Japanese Navy. It was all history, the first domino to fall that set off a long chain reaction to produce the world he found himself in now, a world made by his own hand. This is all my legacy, he thought. I was going to restore Russia to its rightful place as a Pacific power…

Now look at me, he thought. Now I skulk ashore, head down, scarred and broken, humiliated, powerless, a lost and forsaken soul adrift in a world I can never escape from now. It was said that hell was a prison where every iron bar on the windows and doors was forged in the fire of your own mistakes and misdeeds. This was the hell I made for myself, and not just for me, but for everyone I see here now. The Japanese are certainly happy, but look at the suffering I have brought upon my own people.

He remembered all the many conversations he had with Admiral Volsky. The man had put his trust in him, and he swore he would not let him down. He remembered their conversation in the briefing room off the main bridge while they cruised for the Torres Strait. Volsky had discovered the special warhead still mounted to the number ten P-900, and wanted to make certain I had no more ideas about using it. The Captain remembered clearly what he had said.

“It would be just like me to say I assumed that you discovered the warhead earlier, and had it removed, but that would be a bowl of lozh, just another lie from the man I was back then.”

Volsky had given him a long look. “You asked me to give you a chance and I did so. I will not say that I have been in any way disappointed with your performance, but I wonder, Karpov… Is there any remnant of that old man still alive in you?”

Karpov met his gaze, unflinching. “A man may never purge himself entirely of his bad habits and faults, Admiral, or fully atone for his sins. But if he is a man, he can control himself and do what is right. This you have taught me well enough.”

“No, Karpov, that you learned on your own.” He smiled, obvious absolution in his eyes. “I tell you this because it may happen, by one circumstance or another, that you find a missile key around your neck again one day. Then you will have to decide what you have learned or failed to learn, particularly if I am no longer here to weigh in on the matter with this substantial belly of mine.”

One day… And look what I did when I had that key around my neck. What did I really learn? Did I control myself, restrain those inner urges in me that wanted to do just what Dostoyevsky said was so gratifying? Whether it is good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things…

He could hear his own voice now, like a whining sycophant as he buttered the Admiral’s bread. “I would hope to find the courage to be half the man you are, sir, if I ever do find that key around my neck again.”

“Yes,” Volsky had finished. “If God dies, then we see how the angels fare…”

Oh look how they fared. I tried to intimidate and destroy the American Navy in 1945 and got Admiral Golovko and Orlan in the soup instead. God only knows what happened to Orlan. But I sunk another big ship just to show the Americans what real power was, and then Kirov slipped away like a thief. What happened after that? I never took the time to try and find out. There was no way I could find it out. Suddenly we found ourselves in 1908! There would be nothing in any of Fedorov’s books, but I can imagine that the Americans were not happy to see that Russians had atomic weapons too, and were more than willing to use them.

A strange thought came to him now. It’s 1938! It’s seven years before any of that happened. It’s three years before Kirov ever showed up in this war in 1941. What will happen come late July that year when the ship is supposed to appear in the Norwegian Sea? But how can that happen now? Look at the world I have made. The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist any longer, nor is it likely to exist in any form resembling the nation that built Kirov. Fedorov must be having fits with all of this. Serves him right for sticking his thumb in my pie.

What happened to the ship? Was Kirov still out there somewhere, its sharp bow cutting through the seas? Fedorov was aboard that submarine. Yes, the same one from my nightmare- Kazan. He had to use Rod-25 to get back and find me. He and the Admiral planned this whole thing! He would not leave Orlov when he jumped ship, and he moved heaven and earth to go and fetch him. It was no surprise that he came for me as well, only I underestimated him again. That damn intrepid son-of-a-bitch, Fedorov.

His thoughts unerringly led him back to that traumatic moment on the bridge. So that was Kazan that I saw when I went into the sea. Those bastards were so stealthy that they must have slipped right beneath the ship! That’s what they planned! Kazan would shift and take Kirov right along with it, only something slipped. Maybe the big fish got caught in the net and Kirov and Kazan vanished right in the thick of that last battle. I was cast off, a little fish thrown back into the sea, unwanted.

What was Tasarov doing, listening to his music again? I told him to find that submarine. He was probably in league with the rest of them, from Rodenko, to Samsonov, to Nikolin. I can understand why Rodenko and Zolkin did what they did, but Samsonov? That was the final straw. When he stood up and refused my order, I knew it was all over for me. I was a fool to think I could do whatever I choose simply because of the stripes on my jacket cuff. Did I let Volsky’s rank deter me when I tried to take the ship? No… Not one minute. Those goddamned traitors stood against me in the heat of battle. But who betrayed who? Did they betray me, or did I betray them? Either way you learn the hard lesson, Vladimir. You can lead, but it is only those that choose to follow you that place the power into your hands. Without them you are nothing. Never forget that again.

He did not forget. It was a very long train ride up through Khabarovsk, following the same route that Fedorov, Troyak, and Zykov had taken when they set off to find Orlov. On occasion a Japanese guard would eye him briefly, but he looked so decrepit, his face still bandaged, lean and hungry, eyes darkened with sorrow and regret, that no one seemed to want to bother him. So Karpov rode the train all the way to Irkutsk, doling out the last of the rubles Kaslov had given him for food along the way.

He found an old newspaper, dated two weeks earlier and read. The shock of what he learned there stayed with him for some time. Russia was divided, and still at war with itself. Sergie Kirov was alive, though he should have been killed four years ago in 1934. There was no mention of Stalin, none at all. Another nebulous and shadowy figure named ‘The Prophet,’ Ivan Volkov, ruled the central province now named the Orenburg Federation, a principle antagonist against Kirov’s Western Russian state centered on Moscow and Leningrad.

Here in the east, the wild steppes and thick taiga forests of Siberia remained untamed, a free state. It seemed loosely controlled by groups of warlords, like the Cossack clans that had once ranged in the heartland of Russia. The name Kozolnikov seemed to appear prominently in Irkutsk, along with that of Old Man Kolchak. He was still alive too. Apparently the Bolsheviks were never able to assert control beyond the Urals.

Orenburg, all of Kazakhstan and the Caspian region, along with all of Siberia had remained provinces of the White Russian movement. Now Volkov’s forces in Orenburg referred to themselves as the Grey Legion. He saw odd line drawings of what looked to be airships in the sky. What had happened to the world?

This was my doing, he thought. I did this the moment I took it upon myself to challenge Japan. No! It was Fedorov’s meddling that caused it all. If I could have finished what I started none of this might have happened! He could not leave things be. He had to come back in that goddamned submarine. Was it still out there somewhere too?

He thought for a long time on his sad state, with plenty of time for regrets. Yet something within him folded in on itself, a hard kernel of stone that refused to yield, refused the mantle of shame and held but one thought in mind- revenge. That’s what I said to that Inspector General and his dog from Naval Intelligence. Yes… Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.

At Irkutsk he decided to go and find Old Man Kolchak and see what he was up to. The first thing he did was pull his uniform jacket back out of that pillowcase and put it back on, and proudly. Some would say he tarnished it with all he had done, but let them talk, he thought. I know more than anyone alive in this sad world. If there is any man who is rightfully a prophet, it is me.

This was what Orlov had in mind when he jumped ship, yes? Well, I had something else in mind, and I didn’t jump. The world threw me here, and here I will stay. With all I know, power will come easily into my grasp if I reach for it. And what better place to find it than in the hands of the men who already hold the reins? Yes, he thought. Go find this Old Man Kolchak, and the other one, the young Turk, Kozolnikov. I will soon be very useful to them. That’s how it will begin. But before long… yes… before long they will be answering to me!