Cauldron of Fire

EPILOGUE

“Ship ahead!” A watch stander called from the weather bridge, pointing off his starboard bow. Captain Clark stood on the flag bridge of the cruiser Sheffield, field glasses at his eyes as he peered at the distant ship.

The word was flashed quickly by lantern and signal flag to their companion, the heavy cruiser Norfolk, steaming a few hundred meters in their wake. From there it was passed again to the distant gray silhouettes of the big battleships farther out to sea. It was here… It was coming through the straits even now. Clark could see it—the white bow wave kicked up by the long, sharp prow, the dark mass behind it, her superstructure climbing up and up, bristling with strange antennae and pale metal domes. The sight of it gave him a chill, for every line and cut of her jib spoke of power, massive and threatening power. He had heard all the rumors about this ship; that it bloodied the noses of both Nelson and Rodney combined!

“Hal-o Mate,” he said aloud to the distant ship. “What are we to do with these six inch popguns if Nelson’s sixteen incher’s weren’t enough?”

He passed the word on to the Signals Lieutenant where he would let Captain Wilson on Norfolk worry about it with his eight inch guns. He was just told to get out in front of the fleet with Shiny Sheff and keep a sharp eye out for this ship at all times, and that is what he would do.

Sheffield had been selected for a very special mission. His ship was called ‘Old Shiny’ in the navy, because all the fittings that were normally crafted in brass on the other ships in this class had been machined in stainless steel on Sheffield. All her railings, stanchions, horns and even the ship’s bells, were made of steel, and the ship sometimes glimmered in the light as she rolled in the heavy seas. But that had little to do with her mission here today. It was more her speed, good endurance, and most of all her advanced radar that made her the perfect scout ship.

The radar was mounted well up on the foremast, which came to be called the “cuckoo’s nest” when sailors finally got a look at the odd antenna mounted there. The ship he was looking at now had even more wizardry about it. He could see the slowly rotating antennae on her aft mast and it gave him the chills to think of how far it might see, through weather and darkness, and even the smoke and fire of battle. By comparison the antennae rigged out in the cuckoo’s nest on Sheffield seemed feeble.

Clark watched, spellbound, as the ship emerged from the mouth of the straits, like some evil sea beast being spewed from the belly of a whale. He looked over his shoulder again at the heart of Home Fleet, glad the stalwart battleships were there, spread out behind him in an arc of steel. They were cruising at wide intervals, their huge guns gleaming in the morning sun.

The strange interloper loomed ever nearer, then he saw the phantom ship turn fifteen points to port on a heading to take it quickly past the sharp rocky headlands of Cape Spartel west of Tangier. Its mass and size were even more evident now at this angle, and he found himself admiring the hard, yet elegant beauty of the ship, an amazing synthesis of artistry, power and speed. Yet, peering through his field glasses, the gun turrets he could make out at this range seemed no bigger than his own. He had heard about the rocketry, all the rumors, and had even seen some of the damage himself, but it was still hard to believe.

After a hard and costly journey through the cauldron of fire of the Mediterranean Sea, Kirov was finally back in the Atlantic. Admiral Tovey had sent word three hours ago that if this ship would accept an escort of two British cruisers and sail to the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, then he would accept the offer of armistice in exchange for neutrality for the duration of the war. Admiral Volsky was grateful that he did not have to order the ship to fight again that morning, and that no one else would have to die. And he would have his island in the bargain as well! So he had agreed to sail on a course that would have him skirt Funchal Island, then to Palma in the Canaries and finally Ribeira Grande in the Cape Verde Islands where coast watchers could also mark their progress south. From there it would be southeast to St. Helena, the island where England buried its monsters and the place where Napoleon Bonaparte had lived out his final days in captivity.

Fedorov had impressed the significance of this upon Admiral Volsky, urging him to accept Tovey’s offer, but the Admiral needed no convincing. He got what he had asked for, a grudging peace, but peace nonetheless, and an island where he and his crew could rest, far from prying, curious eyes to have some time to decide their fate. Volsky had agreed to sail at no more than twenty knots speed at all times, and not to jam the British radar, as long as the two British ships would come no closer to his own vessel than 5 kilometers. He knew that range was nearly point blank for a well sighted naval gun, but trusted to the integrity of the men who had made their pledge in this negotiation. He wanted Kirov’s war on the world to be over, but like the wishes of so many others that have gone unfulfilled, the world would not yet give that to him.

It was the fifth day since the ship had first arrived in the Tyrrhenian Sea of 1942, and Kirov sailed on through the Straits of Gibraltar on the 15th of August, cruising boldly past the long baleful line of Tovey’s Home Fleet, the squat metal shapes of four identical battleships watching in silence. High overhead they saw fitful flights of British aircraft off the carrier Avenger, circling with watchful eyes.

Kirov turned south with Sheffield and Norfolk in her wake, starting the long sea cruise that would last all of seven more days. They followed the route as planned, through calm seas and past the exotic islands off the coast of Africa. And on the seventh day, a day when God himself was said to have rested, they saw a heavy shroud of fog lying low on the seas around a distant island peak.

They had agreed to heave to off the southern shores of St. Helena, anchoring at Sandy Bay off Powell’s Gut at the base of a high ridge of tawny brown hills that rose 600 meters above the sea. There they would wait beneath the folded ravines and auburn cliffs known as the Gates of Chaos, or so it had been agreed. Volsky watched the distant island looming on the near horizon with rising curiosity. Karpov brooded, unhappy over the agreement but resigned. Fedorov seemed to be fidgeting nervously, his eyes glancing at the ship’s chronometer as they approached the low haze laced island, the fog thickening around them as they went.

Five kilometers to either side of them, the watch officers on both Sheffield and Norfolk were relieved that the long sea journey was finally over, their charge nearly delivered. The strange ship would soon come under the observation of a special Royal Navy team that had been flown in ahead of them to Jamestown on St Helena. Soon the cruisers could finally turn and head north again.

The watchmen peered through their field glasses one last time, seeing the sleek battlecruiser pass slowly into the thickening fog. The land based observers were to call them from the top of High Ridge above the Gates of Chaos to report the ship’s anchorage. In the meantime Norfolk and Sheffield would sail round either side of the island themselves, with each captain bound to log and report that the ship had been duly delivered to its place of internment, and obtain photographic evidence of such.

The Royal Navy was taking no chances that their new ward and visitor would slip away unseen. There were already three planes up from Jamestown with watchful eyes on every side of the island. The seaplane tender Pegasus would also make the long journey south to anchor at Jamestown with six more search planes for good measure.

And so it was that twelve days after she had again been pulled through time to the year 1942, Kirov sailed into the low bank of fog off the Island of St. Helena… and never sailed out. The observers on High Ridge would wait for her in vain, and would never see her arrive at Sandy Bay. For other Gates of Chaos had opened for her again that morning, and she was gone, lost, vanished from that day and year.

Norfolk and Sheffield searched in vain all that day, as did every plane available on the island, but not a trace or a whisper of the ship was seen or heard. In desperation the ships put divers in the water to look for any sign that the Kirov might have foundered and sunk while approaching the island through that heavy morning fog. Nothing was found…

Days later a car drove quickly up the lane towards a stately estate, its buildings clustered one against another in an odd mingling of architectural styles. Bletchley Park, or ‘Station X’ as it was called, was one of ten special operations facilities set up by MI6, where ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’ was supposed to be enjoying afternoons on the adjoining sixty acre estate, with shotguns and hounds to hunt down quail. Yet its real purpose was derived from the feverish activity of the Government Code and Cypher School, England’s code breakers, a collection of brilliant and dedicated men and women who would generate the vital intelligence information needed to prosecute the war.

Here there were walls of colored code wheels, strange devices like the Enigma machines and odd looking equipment fed by long coiled paper tape, dimpled with a series of small black dots of varying sizes. The minds of Bletchley Park were already in the first stages of digitizing the analog world into forms their nascent computing machines could digest and ruminate upon. A year later the estate would see the installation of the first “Colossus” machine, a rudimentary computer housing all of 1500 vacuum tubes to power its mechanical brain.

The car stopped, its door opening quickly as Admiral Tovey stepped out, a thick parcel under his right arm. He did not approach the styled mansions up the main walkway, but veered left towards a green sided extension—Hut 4, the heart of naval intelligence. A year ago the men who worked there had been reveling in their first breakthrough, the deciphering of the German Enigma code. Then came the unaccountable appearance of a strange ship in the Northern Seas, and it set the whole community back on its heels.

Tovey walked past the row of white trimmed windows and entered through a plain unsigned door. He was immediately greeted by a Marine guard, who saluted crisply and led him down the narrow hall to the office of Professor Alan Turing, who had been reading a volume of Byron’s poetry as he waited for the Admiral.

“Good day, Professor,” said Tovey as he walked briskly in, his hand extended. Turing set his poetry down and rose to greet him, his dark eyes alight with a smile.

“I’ve brought you a little something more for your file boxes,” said Tovey.

“Ah,” said Turing, “The photography!”

“Indeed. Two reels of film here with photos, and a full report. I’ve collected the logs of all ships involved, so you’ll have a good time sorting it all through before it gets filed away with everything else on this Geronimo business.”

“Very good, sir,” said Turing, his curiosity immediately aroused. “I wonder, Admiral. Might I persuade you to allow me to fly out to St. Helena one of these days and have a look for myself?”

Tovey raised an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious, and seated himself, his eye falling on the open volume of Byron’s poetry. He scanned the lines, reading inwardly:

With a heavy sigh he looked at Turing, and all the unanswered questions in his mind took a seat there with him, waiting to have their say. “I’m afraid I have some rather interesting news for you, Professor,” he said quietly. “And I think it’s high time that you and I have a very frank chat.”