Altered States – Volume II. Darkest Hour

Chapter 30

More than one man was thinking that night. Ivan Volkov was also awake, turning fitfully in his sleep as he thought about the presence of Karpov here. The news he had received about the location of that ship- Kirov — had shaken him further.

So Kirov has hold of the ship they gave his name. Or does he? What was that ship doing at Murmansk? Clearly whoever is now commanding it must have had a mind to go home. Yet how did it get there? Karpov left to fight his battle in the Pacific. He claimed he was blown into the past, but still in the Pacific. My intelligence network is very good. I built it, and it has served me well. There was a squabble between the German navy and Russian ships in the Kara Sea some days ago. Now I learn that the Germans ran into trouble and got a nice kick in the pants as they tried to slink away. What Soviet ship could have backed the Germans off? Was it this ship?

Who would be in command there? Not fat old Volsky. He was stuck at Naval Headquarters at Fokino. So it must be one of the other officers, the Starpom — the ex-navigator. Yes, he was the one who was promoted so oddly, skipping three full ranks. I knew something was amiss with that. Is he working for Sergie Kirov now? Are they in league? That would certainly be a problem. That ex-navigator, Volsky’s resident historian… Yes, it all makes sense now.

My god… that seems so long ago. Yet I can remember it. Yes, it is as clear to me as if it were just yesterday, and when I saw Karpov’s face it all came flooding back. I wonder what really happened to Karpov. Was he lying? Did he really find himself in 1938 as he told it? Was he sent there to perform a mission of some kind? But he seemed genuinely surprised to learn I was still alive-that I was the Volkov at the heart of this Federation. Was that all an act?

Yes, Karpov seemed quite astonished to see me here and learn who I really was. He could simply not understand how I came to be here. That is no surprise to me. I still don’t know what really happened. What was it Karpov suggested? He asked me if I had ever considered that my strange movement in time had something to do with the place where it happened, that old railway inn.

The news he had received earlier that night pricked at him now. It was most unsettling. His intelligence network said that Karpov had taken his airships back to Novosibirsk, but two set out almost immediately and headed northeast. His operatives had spotted them overflying Krasnoyarsk, still heading northeast. Why?

He sat up in bed and reached for the lamp switch, squinting at the harsh light in the darkened room. Immediately he heard movement at the door, and a quiet knock. “Is anything wrong, sir?” came a muffled voice from the guard outside.

“No, nothing.” He said, shuffling to his writing desk across the room and turning on another light. He looked at the clock there, seeing it was five in the morning.

“Coffee,” he said at the door. “Hot coffee.” He had always had a taste for the bean, eschewing tea and needing something stronger to stimulate his thinking.

“I’ll send for it at once, sir.”

Back at his desk Volkov opened a drawer and took out a map and ruler. He laid one end on Novosibirsk, and then lined the ruler up on Krasnoyarsk, following it on to see what lay beyond on that heading. There it was! Of course! Kansk, the river, and then just a little ways beyond-there was the tiny hamlet of Ilanskiy! His operatives had been very specific. Two zeppelins continued northeast. They did not turn southeast for Irkutsk, so Karpov wasn’t running home to Old Man Kolchak to get another medal pinned on his chest.

No, he was up to something else, and his course points right to Ilanskiy. There’s nothing else beyond that town of any import for hundreds of kilometers. Sookin Syn! He’s curious. That son-of-a-bitch has gone to stick his nose in things and see what he can find. But what would he find there?

There was a quiet knock on the door, and a servant came in with a tray and two coffee cups. He poured coffee into both, drank one, and left the second filled on the table. Volkov looked at the guard and gave him a terse order.

“Send for Kymchek. Tell him to bring anything he has on what those zeppelins are doing, the ones Karpov brought with him. I want to know where they are and what they are up to-understand?”

Even as he said that a cold thought occurred to him. What would I be up to, he said to himself? Karpov and I are two fish from the same pond. If I were him I would be trying to figure out how I got here… Ilanskiy. Yes, he’s trying to see if there’s any connection with that place and my strange appearance here. I’m almost certain of it. Kymchek will come in and tell me exactly what I already know.

He walked over to the coffee tray and poured a fresh cup, using the mug the servant had drunk from. There could have been poison at the bottom of that other cup. One could never be too careful, could he? Karpov would certainly like to serve me a spiked coffee if he could, wouldn’t he? The grand admiral of the Siberian Aero Corps is probably already planning my undoing. I could crush him like a bug. My fleet is three times the size of his little airship navy.

Now Volkov remembered a lesson he had learned and put to good use many times over the decades in his rise to power here. First, know what the other man wants to know-and get it before he does. Information was power. Second, kill your enemies before they are powerful enough to kill you. Sergei Kirov had plucked Stalin out of the stream when he was just a tadpole.

This Karpov has made remarkable strides if he only showed up here in 1938. The man’s ambition is impressive. So now is the time to get the bastard-now while he thinks we’re all nice and friendly, now while he can crow that he liberated Omsk with a simple threat. Did he really think I bought that lozh about half a million Tartar Cavalry?

Volkov smiled. Planning the demise of one’s enemies was such a satisfying endeavor. So what should he do now? Find out what Karpov knows, and why he’s squatting on that railway inn if that is where he went. I’ll know soon enough. If he finds nothing he will simply leave and stick his nose somewhere else. But if he sees an egg or two in that nest, then he’ll sit on them. Yes, he’ll sit there, and I should begin to see a buildup in that sector soon.

He did not have long to wait. Kymchek was very efficient, at any hour. The telephone rang and the voice of his Intelligence Chief gave him a satisfied smile.

“The zeppelins you have inquired about are at a small hamlet east of Kansk.”

“Ilanskiy?”

“Yes, Governor-General, that is the place.”

“What are they doing there?”

“We do not yet know. But Karpov is there with Abakan and Andarva, and he is disembarking the entire battalion he had with him during the negotiations. There is a good deal of activity around the rail yard. They could be setting up a new military depot or command center.”

“At Kansk? That makes no sense. It is too far behind the front to perform either role effectively. Why set up facilities there when he has them in abundance further west at Krasnoyarsk?”

“We are looking into the matter, sir.”

“Please do. Now tell me what airships we have available to operate east of the border.”

“Sir? We have Pavlodar, Astana, Oskemen and the Alexandra still in the Eastern District.”

“Anything north of Omsk?”

“Alexandra is presently at Tyumen, en-route to Perm. Oskemen is at Petropavlovsk. A little south of the city, but close enough.”

“Who commands?”

“Symenko is senior officer aboard Alexandra. A bit surly these days. He wasn’t happy about having to rename the ship.”

Volkov laughed. “He’ll get over it. Form a long range reconnaissance group of those two ships. I’ll send the flight plan and orders through normal channels. I’ll want a full battalion with each. Understood?”

“Very well sir.”

“And put all the other airships in the Northern Division on standby alert, including the Orenburg.”

“The fleet flagship, sir?”

“Are you going deaf, Kymchek?”

“I will see the orders go out immediately, sir. Anything more?”

“That will be all.”

Even as he hung up the telephone something told Volkov that it would not be all, that there was much more that would come of this. What he contemplated now was very risky, and as he looked at the map lit by the wan light of his desk lamp he began to consider how best to make this approach.

I cannot send them due east. The Alexandra is already well north, so I will send Oskemen to rendezvous here, at Tobolsk, but it must not overfly Omsk along the way. These are good, fast airships, and well gunned. Will two battalions be sufficient? Anything more might cause a major incident, particularly if Karpov stays at Ilanskiy for any length of time. So I will send these two ships northeast across the Ob River all the way to the Yenisey River. They can follow that south and then skirt over to Ilanskiy from the north. The area is a complete wilderness. If they stay above the cloud deck there is every chance for them to arrive undetected.

Yet this is risky. It could upset everything I have just negotiated with Karpov. It will definitely upset Karpov himself. He smiled. Too bad in that case. Perhaps I should have killed him the minute I realized who he really was. Curiosity stayed my hand. I need to know more about why he is here, and about that damn ship he was on. There are just too many unanswered questions. He was wearing a service jacket. Why did he not use it to contact his ship? There is more to this story than I know now, and if Kymchek cannot find out what is happening at Ilanskiy, I want a detachment ready to see firsthand.

This must be done carefully. I must plan it well.

Orlov was standing on the Gondola bridge of the Narva, watching the long ragged coastline off the starboard side viewports, amazed by the vastness of his homeland. He had never seen it quite like this, drifting a few thousand feet up, slipping through the mist and clouds and then breaking into the clear to see the sunlight dappling the Barents Sea. He had always enjoyed flying, his face at the window seat of any flight he ever booked. The vastness of the sky and the landscape below him were an altogether different experience from that aboard the ship. He felt airy light, like the zeppelin that bore him, with a sense of freedom that he had not felt since he took that fateful jump from the KA-226 helicopter in the Mediterranean, so long ago as it seemed now.

He had been very excited to learn his request to accompany the mission had been approved by Admiral Volsky. Duties on the ship had fallen into that old tedious routine for him again, checking ship’s rotations, assigning crews to maintenance details, knocking a few heads together when the work was slack. He missed the freedom he felt when he was at large in the world, this time, the 1940s, and with his head full of information that he knew he could use to become as rich and powerful as any man alive.

He remembered how he felt, almost invulnerable, a kind of demigod among these unknowing men. He never worried for one minute, not when the British found him, then when the NKVD had him, or even after those commandos pinched him. Persistent little rats, weren’t they? Why was everyone so interested in him, he wondered? But he really didn’t care. He had his own mission at the time, and he never doubted for one minute that he would do what he set out to accomplish-find Commissar Molla and choke the life out of the man before he could harm anyone else like he hurt his grandmother. Yet that conversation with Fedorov had left him feeling strangely perturbed. Molla was still alive! Sookin Syn! The son-of-a-bitch was out there somewhere-or was he?

Commissar Molla was one of Beria’s men, working in the Caucasus regional commiserate. From what Fedorov had told him he had learned that whole area was now controlled by someone else, a man named Volkov. Would Molla still be up to no good there? Stalin was gone, killed long ago, so was Beria working for this Volkov figure now? He didn’t learn much about him, but it was clear that Fedorov was very upset about that man. He could see it in the young officer’s eyes, hear it in his voice.

If Molla was still alive, would things happen as his grandfather had told him? Would he still find his grandmother and do what he did before? If that is so, he thought grimly, then I am going to have to enjoy choking him again. He smiled at that, still seeing the Commissar’s red face turn slowly purple, his eyes bugging out and his smart ass mouth shut once and for all. He finished what he came to do, then walked calmly out of that prison to freedom-until the Russian Marines found him.

Damn Fedorov had the balls to come all the way across the continent just to bring me home. He scouted on ahead for 2000 miles to sniff out my trail and then brought in the Marines! And all of that coming from the year 2021, or so he knew now. Pretty damn ballsy, eh? Fedorov was a hard-nosed boss when he had to be. He got things done too.

Orlov shook his head, but he could not help but admire Fedorov. The man had trail blazed a path all through his own damn history books to find me, and then to get after Karpov when he learned he had the ship way back in 1908. The men had told him all about it.

“Hey Orlov,” they said, “you missed all the fun. Karpov was kicking every ass we ran into, throwing missiles everywhere-nukes too! But this damn ship just wouldn’t stay put. We kept slipping farther and farther back. Can you believe it? 1908?”

No, he still couldn’t believe it. The whole thing was too confounding and mind boggling to contemplate. Orlov believed in very few things to a certainty-a good steak, vodka, a nice piece of ass when he could find one, and a hard fist when he was real pissed off. Those were the bounds of his reality. All this business about traveling through time was more than he could think about or comprehend. He never understood why all this happened, but he had come to accept it, because there was still vodka in this world, good food, and there were still women there too worth the trouble. 1940 wasn’t so bad. He would get on quite well here, but look at me now, he thought. Here I am floating over the Barents sea in a blimp! What are we really after this time? Why is Troyak here with all his men?

He had been in on the main briefing, but Fedorov seemed deliberately vague about what they were doing this time. They were to go east to Port Dikson, a place Orlov had visited only once in his day, then from there they would turn south and vanish into the endless taiga wilderness of Siberia. What was the name of the place? Ilanskiy. Orlov had never heard of that town, just another desolate hamlet on the edge of nowhere, like so many lost and forgotten settlements in Siberian Russia.

We go there, Troyak and Zykov go in to scout the place out and take down the objective. They brought enough explosives with them to leave a crater ten feet deep! I asked why they were doing this, but Fedorov just said it was classified. What the hell was that? Well I’ll classify this whole situation in two seconds. It’s got something to do with this time travel crap. Fedorov wouldn’t say anything else, but that’s what I think. What could it be?

In once sense it did not matter. Orlov knew he was just along for the ride. He was given command of the reserve squad, and it was to stay aboard the zeppelin unless Troyak and Zykov got into trouble down there.

Trouble… Yes, that was going to be his only ticket off this blimp this time. Trouble. Well, if there was one thing Orlov was good at, that was high on the list. I’ll find some way off this ship, he thought, just like I found a way off Kirov. I jumped ship before and I can do the same now if I want to. And this time I’ll be a little more careful and no one will ever find me.

Russia is a very big place