Altered States – Volume II. Darkest Hour

Chapter 14

June 24, 1940

They would meet near the first stone building ever constructed in the city of Murmansk, a stately red brick walled structure with tall concrete exterior columns and two high arched windows flanking the heavy wood door, framed in bright white paint. It sat adjacent to the rail yard on Lenin Street, at the edge of the harbor where Admiral Volsky’s launch was tied off. Just a short distance beyond the broad rail receiving yard, they caught sight of the old Hotel Arctic, built in 1933. They were told that quarters had been arranged there, and a reception was planned at the main dining hall.

The men who received them at the quay when they arrived were military police, and they eyed Sergeant Troyak and Corporal Zykov darkly when they saw the burly Sergeant emerge from the cabin of the launch. He snapped off a crisp salute, which was then returned, and something about this time honored gesture of good will and perhaps the red hammer and sickle flag Volsky had retrieved from his sea chest and fixed atop the boat, seemed to defrost that the situation. When Volsky appeared in the uniform of a naval Admiral, the security men stiffened at attention, affording him the respect the uniform and rank was due, even if they did not know anything of the man who wore it.

“Right this way, Admiral.” A tall man in a dark trench coat gestured to a waiting line of cars, and there was room in the vehicle for the entire party.

They could have easily walked to the meeting site that had been arranged. Volsky had suggested the location in communications exchanged with the City Commandant before the meeting. He knew of the old hotel, as his father had often spoken of the place. They drove through the familiar intersection known as “Five Corners” and arrived at the hotel just minutes later. Volsky looked around and noted the absence of the statue that would commemorate Gunner Andre Bredov, who gallantly defended his position and then blew himself up when surrounded by Nazi soldiers when they tried to storm Murmansk during their Operation Silver Fox.

Not yet, Anrdre, he thought. That was in 1944. I used to have lunch there in the grounds near the place where they will erect that statue, assuming Bredov was still out there somewhere and was destined meet the same fate. The monument to the victims of political repression was missing as well. The town was dramatically different, with none of the tall brick and concrete buildings, and almost no vehicular traffic on the broad empty streets. There were many more buildings of wood, some using the unhewn trunks of pine trees to construct log cabins.

After a brief security check, and profuse apology for the necessity, they were ushered into the lobby, where Troyak and Zykov would wait, served hot tea and cakes. They had instructions to contact the ship using the hidden radio in the lining of Troyak’s service jacket. A full contingent of well armed Naval Marines was ready on board Kirov, with the KA-40 loaded for bear. The Admiral did not think it would be necessary to call on them, but the uncertainty inherent in the situation prompted him to arrange for his extraction should he not contact the ship within 24 hours. All the men had hidden transceivers and could be easily located.

Volsky and Fedorov were then led off to the meeting room, flanked by four guards in the same dark trench coats, and they saw more security men at intervals along the long hallway. Doors were dutifully opened at the end by two more guards, and they were let into a spacious room, with an elegant crystal chandelier above a table dressed out with candles, oil lamps, and white linen. Tea service was waiting, and they were quietly attended by white coated hotel staff while they waited.

Ten minutes later a door opened and two men stepped in, taking up positions to either side of the entrance. The next man they saw seemed like a demigod walking out of the mists of time itself-Sergei Kirov. His stocky frame, broad face, ruddy features were unmistakable to any Russian, as they had been depicted in statues, postage stamps, posters and artwork for decades after his assassination in 1934… But that had never happened in this world. Stalin had died in Kirov’s place.

The tallest guard, clearly a favored adjutant, announced the arrival in a clear voice. “The Secretary General of the Communist Party!”

Kirov looked at them as they stood in respectful greeting, both men removing their caps as though they were in the presence of a saint. Volsky saw the light of awe and respect in Fedorov’s eyes, and noted how Kirov stared at him, an equal light of amazement plain in his expression. Then he smiled.

“All security personnel will leave the room at once,” he said, still standing by the door. The men obeyed, though their officer’s face betrayed some concern. Volsky noted a small hand gesture by Kirov, reassuring the man that all would be well. Then Kirov stepped forward and extended his hand to the Admiral in a warm greeting, yet his eyes were ever on Fedorov, glittering with silent realization.

A man of just 54 years, Kirov seemed in the fullness of his life, with just a touch of grey starting to appear in his thick head of hair, combed back above his broad forehead. A handsome man, he exuded an energy of confidence and authority.

“Admiral Volsky,” he said smiling. “I must admit that we have no Admiral by that name here in Soviet Russia, and so imagine my surprise when I was invited to this meeting. And you… He turned to Fedorov, his eyes strangely distant, as though he were seeing back through the years to that moment when he had first laid eyes on this man outside the dining hall of the inn at Ilanskiy. “You are Fedorov, and if you can assure me that you are not working for the Okhrana, I would be happy to share my breakfast with you!”

Fedorov smiled. “Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov,” he said warmly. “I am honored to make your acquaintance again, after so many long years.”

“Not for you, Fedorov! You appear exactly as I have remembered you all these many years, even as I remembered every word you whispered to me on that stairway before I went down. Imagine my surprise when I received your message-a message only I could understand, and so I hastened here to this meeting, unwilling to believe it might be the same man I spoke to back then… in 1908. Ah, but it wasn’t 1908 when we parted, was it Fedorov? It was 1942! Yes, I found that out as well. Yet every step I took down those stairs gobbled up two years! I counted them-seventeen steps, a nice prime number. When I got to the bottom all was as I expected, but I must tell you that the room where we spoke that day on the upper floor was not in the same world I left. Yes, I know that now.”

He gestured to the table and they all took seats, with Kirov sitting opposite his visitors. Now he looked at Admiral Volsky. “I did not see your ship in the harbor, Admiral, though they tell me you have given it a familiar name.”

“We have, sir,” said Volsky.

“Well, when I first heard of this ship I came to believe you had come here from the Black Sea, sent by Volkov in a warship built by the Orenburg Federation, though that seemed surprising to me. We saw no sign of this at Sevastopol or any other port on the Black Sea, and we still control Odessa and the shipyards there.”

“No, General Secretary.”

“You need not be so formal. Just call me Mironov, for old time’s sake. That is who I was when I first met this man. Then he told me he was just a sailor being transferred, but I had my own suspicions about him.”

“Very well, Mironov, I must be forthright and tell you we have not come from the Black Sea, nor are we in any way affiliated with Orenburg.”

“Oh? Then where have you come from? Surely not from the far east, unless you’ve managed to Shanghai a Japanese warship and sail it all this way as a prize.”

Volsky smiled. “In fact, we have come from there, but not in a Japanese ship.”

“I see…” Kirov thought for a moment, then leaned forward, lowering his voice to an almost conspiratorial tone. “I can see you hesitate to say more, Admiral. You must think that to do so would be too much for me to comprehend. Perhaps it would be so, but…” now he looked at Fedorov. “I am a very curious man, you see. So curious that I must tell you I took more than one trip up that stairway at Ilanskiy. Some of the things I saw and learned were quite shocking, and I think you know of what I am speaking.”

“You went back up those stairs?” Fedorov’s eyes registered surprise and just a touch of fear.

“I know you told me to get as far away from that place as I could, and never come up those stairs again, Fedorov, but that is one bit of advice that I’m afraid I did not take. It wasn’t until I did go back up that stairway that I finally realized what you meant with that other bit of advice you gave me, that whisper in my ear as we parted. Yes, I learned more than any man should ever have to know-the very day, time and moment of my death! But as you see, I have avoided that fate. You wanted that, did you not? Yes, you did. Well then let me shake your hand one more time, Fedorov, and give you my thanks. Because of you the man that would arrange that unfortunate business scheduled for December of 1934 was not in the world to do so.”

“Because of me?” Fedorov had a guilty look.

“Only in part,” said Mironov. “The rest was my hand writing in the ledger of fate. It was I who made an end of Josef Stalin. Having seen the world that resulted from his reign of terror, no sane man could do anything else. Yes, I went to Bayil when I found out the Okhrana had him there. It was risky, the most dangerous thing I ever did in my life. I gave myself even odds of living out that night, but I gave Stalin worse.”

Fedorov was shocked to hear this. “You killed Stalin?”

“I did. And thank god for that. Unfortunately I have not been as willing to cut off heads as he might have been, and so the effort to unify the country became mired in this endless civil war. I suppose I saved millions of lives by taking Stalin’s, but now we have this damnable war. On the one side we sit watching the Polish border for any sign of the German buildup there that is almost certain to come. On the other we remain locked in this perpetual civil war with the Whites-with Volkov’s Orenburg Federation as he has come to call it these days.”

“It appears Time and Fate have a way of balancing their books,” said Volsky.

“Very true, Admiral. I must ask you one thing now, though I believe I may already know the answer. When I met you in 1908, Fedorov, you were not born to that world. Am I correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“You came from the world at the top of those stairs? From the world we live in now?”

“No, sir.”

Mironov folded his arms, his brow registering some confusion. “No? Here I thought you waited all this time to arrange this meeting. You see, you look exactly as I remember you.”

Fedorov looked at the Admiral, and Volsky nodded, giving him quiet permission to explain himself. He cleared his throat, thinking what he might say and how he could elucidate that they were from another time altogether. Then the image of the stairway itself gave him some graspable way of explaining things.

“You lived on the first floor back then, sir, in the dining room of 1908. That was a very memorable day. I suppose you now may know what we were looking at to the northeast when the sky seemed to be on fire there. Well… when you came up that stairway after me, you know where you ended up. Suppose that inn had a third floor. That is the world I came from. How I came to be there in the year you met me is a very long story, but we-the Admiral and I-we live on the third floor sir, if that makes any sense.”

Sergie Kirov was quiet for a time, his eyes alive, thinking. “A third floor? Yes, I get what you are saying, Fedorov. Why not? Then you are telling me you came from years beyond that time?”

“We did, sir.”

“But why?” The question was obvious, burning, unanswered in the whole impossible saga they had lived through thus far.

“At that moment I was looking for a man, a member of our crew in fact. I was sent to find him by the Admiral here.”

“And how did you get to the place on that second floor where we spoke, Fedorov? How did you get back? Are there other stairways out there that wend their way through madness and time? Yes, I thought I was mad for a while, truly insane. But I got over it when I learned what was really going on at the top of those stairs.”

Fedorov was not quite sure what to say now. Kirov would have no comprehension of nuclear reactors, and control rods. How could he explain what happened when he barely understood it himself?

“Sir… We are not exactly certain. There was an accident-in our time-and we found ourselves adrift on the oceans of your world.”

“Just the two of you?”

“No, said Admiral Volsky. Now you have the explanation as to why you cannot seem to recall the construction of my ship.”

Kirov leaned back, quite shocked now. “You mean to say your entire ship moved in time? My god, how many are you?”

“Our crew? About seven hundred men. Our ship was christened Sergie Kirov, yes, in your honor.”

“When?” Kirov’s eyes held intense anticipation as he waited for the answer.

Volsky looked at Fedorov, then folded his arms. “Well I don’t suppose there is any harm in saying it now. The ship was originally laid down in the year 1974, launched three years later, and finally commissioned in 1980. It was later extensively re-designed, and re-commissioned again… in the year 2020. Since you, yourself, have been up and down those stairs, sir, you are aware that the stairway may continue on and on. We never know what lies beyond the floor we are born to, unless something very strange happens to us, but I think that stairway does go on into the future, and we are a small clique of men, fortunate or not, who have moved from one floor to the next.”

“2020? This is amazing! Unbelievable. Yet you are correct in what you say. If anyone might hear what you have just said and not think it wild vranyo, it is I, someone who has walked that back stairway, more times than I should have. But what are you doing here now?”

“Fedorov here is saying hello to an old acquaintance,” said Volsky. “Beyond that, it was our hope to make a new friend or two here. You see, General Secretary, as Fedorov said, we are not quite sure why we find ourselves here-but here we are and, at the moment, we seem to be marooned in this day and year. Believe me, I am as bewildered as you seem to be now about it all. I have spent hours wondering just who I really am now, in this world. You see, I am a little older than you are, Mironov, but I was born in the year 1957, and young Fedorov here… why, when were you born, Captain?”

“1994, sir.”

“Remarkable,” said Kirov. “This ship of yours… Why it must be very powerful.”

“That it is, the most powerful ship in the world, and we have been tested against many others who might like to make that claim. It was our hope to minimize any contact with the world we found ourselves in after we first went down the rabbit hole. Now we have come to realize that we have already made a very grave difference in the world. Our presence in the past has had a shattering effect. Your presence here, at this very moment, is one result. You see… you did die on that cold December night in Leningrad, in 1934, but here you are. Everything is different now, in more ways that we can possibly have time to explain. Fedorov here calls it a broken mirror, and when we look into it now we wonder who we are at times. We thought we could reverse the damage, preserve it, put things back the way they were. Finally we gave up trying, as it seems it is an impossible task. So here we are, Sergei Kirov, beggars at your doorstep-a place we once called home. We left this very harbor in the year 2021, and sailed out on a bright sunny day. The weather has been very stormy for us ever since, but now we are finally back… not quite home yet, but we are here at long last.”

Kirov had a grave expression on his face. These men have been through the same madness I suffered through, he thought. Yes, I can see it in their eyes. We are brothers, the three of us.

“Admiral Volsky, in one sense we are all in the same boat, the three of us here, and I, too, am a member of your crew.”

They smiled.