Grand Alliance

Chapter 7

HMS Queen Elizabeth was in the vanguard of the fleet that day, her bow awash with rising seas as the grand old lady led the way at 16 knots. Laid down in 1912 and commissioned two years later, the ship had seen extensive service in WWI, with most of her combat hours logged near the Dardanelles until a troublesome turbine sent her home for repairs. She missed Jutland, eventually returning to Scapa Flow, but was nonetheless honored to present the terms of surrender to the German Admiral von Reuter after the armistice in 1918. After the war she went through two major refits, and first saw duty in the warm waters of the Mediterranean in 1925. Her latest refit was completed in the shadow of impending war at Portsmouth, where the ship had her guts torn out when 25 old boilers were removed to be replaced with 8 of the new high pressure boilers. New AA armament was installed, and her guns were modified to elevate just past 30 degrees, improving their range to 32,000 yards. Even the bridge structure got a facelift, and her distinctive tripod mainmast was finally crowned with the oddments of radar fittings, technology that had not existed when she first went to sea.

All this work kept the ship in the dockyards through most of 1940, and she had been scheduled to visit the powder room at Rosyth one last time before doddering out to sea for duty. There the Queen would have received her new Type 279 and Type 284 radars, but it was not to be. In this altered reality, the pressing need to reinforce Admiral Cunningham sent her off to Alexandria instead. Old but proud, she remained a stout hearted warrior, out now on her first real sortie of the war with the intent to find and hurt the enemy. Behind her two other old warriors sailed in stately review, Malaya and Warspite, both ships in this same class, and veterans of Jutland.

Captain Claud Barrington Barry was on the bridge that hour, a bit restless, as the fleet had been ordered to circle in place while the Admirals detached for an unusual rendezvous to the northeast off Crete aboard HMS Invincible. Cunningham had been aboard when the fleet left Alexandria, more to tour the ship and hearten up the crew than anything else. He had set his flag on Warspite, where his staff still waited, and would return there after the conference.

So Captain Barry was enjoying the last moments of calm he might know for some time. The fleet knew what they were in for, knew the odds were steep. The arrival of HMS Invincible and the strange Russian super destroyer, as the men called it, had been a welcome reinforcement, but that aside, the enemy outnumbered them two to one in capital ships. None of them really knew just what the Russian ship could do at sea, though they had heard rumors that it had played a vital role in turning back the Kriegsmarine north of Iceland. The aerial rocketry it displayed on arriving at Suez had given everyone quite a surprise, most of all the Italians, but you couldn’t sink a battleship with fireworks like that, or so the men thought.

The fleet had sailed west along the coast, all the way to Tobruk where the big guns cleared their throats lending fire support for the besieged garrison. They lingered there for a day until Admiral Tovey signaled that he would detach for an urgent meeting at sea, with no further details. Cunningham left in a hurry, boarding a destroyer and slipping off into the night, leaving Barry and the other fleet Captains in the dark as to what was causing the delay.

That night, on the 30th of January, they sailed north to a position well screened by British submarines. Since that time they had been sailing in a wide circle, attended by cruisers and destroyers just in case an Italian sub might get curious. They had been overflown by recon planes from Greece on the 31st, even while Fedorov was having his most unexpected first meeting with Brigadier Kinlan.

It was hard to keep up morale in these circumstances. Gibraltar had fallen, Malta was battling for its life, and the British army had just been chased halfway across Libya into Egypt again, wiping out all the gains O’Connor had delivered with his remarkable campaign. Captain Barry had a restless, worried feeling now, and the long slow circles he was sailing did little to calm his mind. Anything would be better than this, he thought. The men are as worried as I am, and it’s plain enough on their faces. We should be charging off to Malta now, guns at the ready, but instead here I am idling north of Derna, twiddling my thumbs and reading reports from the Chief of Engineers.

There had been an odd clicking sound in one of the turbines when they left Tobruk and started north. The engineers noted it, and were rousting about to see what it might be, but it did not seem serious. Probably just needs a little grease, he thought. The ship had been too long abed, and she was bound to have some creaks and squeaks now that she was up in her slippers and shuffling about again. That was all…

Cunningham had been welcomed aboard HMS Invincible, curious as to what this meeting was all about. It seemed very odd to be detaching like this, and politics were now uppermost in his mind as he sat down with Admiral Tovey for a briefing. He had assumed this meeting might have something to do with organizing fleet operations aimed at covering an evacuation of Greek forces, possibly to Crete, as they were sailing for Chania Bay. Andrew Browne Cunningham, old “A.B.C.” as he was called from his initials, had been disappointed when the planned attack on Taranto could not be teed up. He finally got hold of a pair of aircraft carriers, and now they were relegated to fleet air defense and anti-submarine patrols. His bid to even the odds and catch the Italians napping in port had been tabled with the news of the attack on Malta.

Now it was down to the real brass tacks, he thought. If we lose Malta the whole central Med goes with it. It was our unsinkable aircraft carrier, battered and beaten up daily by the Italian air strikes, but defiant. He knew the airfields at Ta’qali and Luqa would not hold for long. The Luftwaffe had come in droves, adding its considerable weight to Regio Aeronautica, and there was simply no way the threadbare squadrons on Malta could survive. They did their best, he thought, but we would have needed to get another thirty Hurricanes out there to make a fight of it. The carriers were here, and now I’ve a mind to see what we can do. Cunningham had a great deal on his mind that day, but he would soon learn things that would send him spinning like a top. The knowledge he was about to be handed, like an apple picked from the tree in paradise, was forbidden fruit. He would not be the same man when he returned to the fleet.

For his part, Admiral Tovey had anguished over what to do in this situation. He was the only man who really knew the whole terrible truth about the Russian ship and crew, or so he thought. At that moment, another man was learning that truth, as Fedorov struggled to convince Brigadier Kinlan of his impossible fate. Yet Tovey knew nothing of this when he stood to greet Admiral Tovey as he arrived for the meeting. He had been considering the situation for some time, and had determined that, given the circumstances calling for this meeting, there would be no way he could keep Admiral Cunningham in the dark. The man was simply too essential to the operation of the fleet here, a steady and reliable hand on the tiller that would be difficult to replace.

Volsky entered with two other men, one the young Lieutenant who would serve as his translator, and the other an older man in civilian dress, bespectacled, wizen with age, yet obviously carrying the wisdom those years had brought to him. He seemed like an amiable old grandfather, but Tovey could see there was something more to the man, a layer beneath that outer shell that spoke of something much deeper. The men all exchanged hearty handshakes, and Nikolin was pleased that Tovey remembered his name as well, taking his seat next to Admiral Volsky. There were still two more place settings at the table, and Nikolin wondered who was missing. He found out soon after when, to his surprise, a woman entered the stateroom, accompanied by a man in a dress white naval uniform, clearly a Captain by rank and bearing.

Cunningham looked up, also raising an eyebrow when he saw Elena Fairchild enter the room. Then he assumed this must be part of the diplomatic mission from Greece, though it seemed somewhat unusual. His reflex for propriety and decorum soon asserted itself, and he stood, as did the other men, politely greeting the woman as she was introduced.

“Miss Elena Fairchild,” said Tovey. “Allow me to welcome you aboard HMS Invincible. Please meet Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Commander of our Mediterranean Fleet and Admiral Leonid Volsky, a special representative of the Russian Navy.”

Fairchild gave Volsky a searching look, then quickly introduced Captain Gordon MacRae as they all took their seats. She had seen the long, dangerous lines of the battlecruiser Kirov, cruising on the far side of the British battleship, and it raised her hackles. There it was, Geronimo, the phantom ship that had bedeviled the British Empire, and led to the foundation of the Watch. When she first received the emergency message from the Russians, she had been shocked to learn the ship was here. From all she knew in her induction as a member of the Watch, Kirov had first appeared in the Norwegian Sea, in late July of 1941. Yet they had determined it to be January of 1941, six months before Kirov supposedly appeared!

The request for parley had been odd enough, but given that the two ships were both on a razor’s edge, it was a welcome reprieve, and much better than a scenario where their missiles would speak to one another in a battle at sea. The news that Admiral Tovey was on the line had been the next shock: “All is well, Argos Fire. All friends here. We request a rendezvous in the Gulf of Chania. Over.” So here she was, and that meeting was now about to convene.

As she seated herself, she gave both Tovey and Volsky a lingering look. There he was, the legend in the flesh, Admiral John Tovey, founding father of the Watch. And there he was, the terror of all their nightmares, the Captain Nemo that had been the object of all their early operations. This man and his ship had been tearing through the history like a sharp knife, and yet, as she looked at Volsky, he did not seem a man who could carry any of the sinister thoughts she had associated with him in her mind. This was obviously a part of the story she knew nothing about. The calm presence of these two men here together, the obvious demeanor of friendship and warmth between them… well it seemed most irregular to her, most unexpected, and she was now wondering how all this had come about.

“Well then,” Tovey began, thinking this to be a most challenging meeting. He had sat through sessions in the Admiralty and War Cabinet, and knew how turbulent the waters could be, but this was something else. Here was a woman, who seemed to know him, or at least know of him, and he had the feeling that she was looking on him with a certain awe and reverence, which he did not quite fathom. And here was Admiral Volsky, who had never met this woman before, though he seemed to know of her ship. They were two birds of a feather in one respect, both impossibly here from that far distant future, but yet, his observant eye perceived some tension between them, and uncertainty. And finally there was Admiral Cunningham, completely in the dark about all of this, and blind to everything before him. He looked as bemused as a boy freshly assigned to his first mission at sea. How would all these loose ends be tied into the same knot here?

“No doubt this meeting was a surprise to all of us, yet here we are, and we’ll make the best of it as we go.” He looked first to Admiral Cunningham, a sympathetic expression on his face. “Admiral, I’m afraid you are about to hear some things that will be most unsettling. In fact, you may conclude that we are all quite daft, but bear with us. Everything will be made clear to you in time. That said, I must tell you that what you will now learn is the most highly classified secret of this war — a secret so dark and inaccessible, that only one other man within the British Government has any knowledge of it, and you will be surprised to learn that our Mister Churchill is not that other man. Bear with me, Andy,” Tovey used the familiar handle that only two friends might share, hoping to ease the shock for Cunningham if he could.

Then he looked at Admiral Volsky, addressing Elena Fairchild as he gestured to the man. “I can see that the presence of Admiral Volsky here and his ship is somewhat unexpected. Let me say that I was once as unknowing about all of this as you both seem to be. Yet it begins with the Admiral here, and with his ship. So perhaps it might be best if I yield the floor to you, Admiral Volsky. If there is any man among us who might sort this whole matter out, I would start with your chair.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Volsky, “and may I introduce our Director Kamenski, Russian Intelligence. He has been with us aboard Kirov for some time, and I thought he might be able to help us sort through all of this. In fact, he will likely do a much better job than I could. Director?”

“Admiral,” said Kamenski, “this is one odd kettle of fish we have. Here are two adversaries, and unfortunately so, from a time neither you or Admiral Cunningham here could ever see or imagine. And here you both sit with us, two new friends from a past long removed from us, yet one we have been shaping with our very hands, unknowing at first, and now with more deliberate endeavor. It is a strange enterprise, and a mighty challenge we all face now. Yet I fear that if we are to measure it, and prevail with any sense of sanity, we must all now reach across this table and join our hands in a common understanding. Here we sit, like a group of blind men around the elephant, each holding onto a piece of the truth as they grope that mighty beast. We all know something of this truth, some more than others, but we must all hear each other now as we describe it to one another, so that we can see the whole as one together, and determine what we must do.” He looked at each one around the table now, the knowing and the unknowing, and smiled. Nikolin completed his translation, and now he continued.

“Opening your eyes and actually seeing the elephant is quite another experience, ladies and gentlemen. To do so we will have to drink of the same cup of poison, I fear, for only then can we die together, and be reborn with some new understanding that can unite all present in one accord. Forgive me if I sound more like a bad poet than a diplomat at times, mixing my metaphors like this, but we have a fine and arcane business before us now, a mystery as deep and unfathomable as time itself, and we are its minions. Admiral Volsky here has asked me to begin this discussion, and yet where to start the tale? I think the only way is to just come right out with it, crazy as it will sound at first blush. My name is Pavel Kamenski, all seventy five years worth, and I was born on the twelfth night of June, in the year 1946…” He let that hang there, waiting to see the reaction of Admiral Cunningham as Nikolin translated.

“Excuse me, Mister Kamenski, I’m afraid your Lieutenant here has his number wrong. 1946? Surely you meant 1865, as I cypher it.”

Nikolin translated that back, and Kamenski smiled.

“No Admiral Cunningham, the Lieutenant had it right, but to hear it right you will have to extend your hand now and take hold of the elephant’s tail.” And then he began to speak of the war, the long struggle ahead, and how the nations of the earth were now engaged in the making of weapons to prosecute it. He told them one weapon that would be forged in the crucible of this conflict would be so terrible that it would cast a deep shadow of doom on the world for generations, and one day make an end of the human endeavor on this planet. He told them how this weapon was made, and that he knew, for a fact, that many nations were now engaged in the effort to bring this terror to life. And then he slowly began to describe the arms race they would engage in, and the nuclear testing that would be a part of that, until Soviet Russia would build a bomb unlike any other, and set it off in the frozen north on October 30, 1961.

“Yes, and you have heard that date correctly as well,” he said looking directly at Admiral Cunningham. “Yes, I am speaking of all of this as though it had already happened, and from my perspective, that is true. You see, I am a man from tomorrow — your tomorrow at least — and all of this has happened, and more than once I’m afraid. The only question before us now is whether or not it will happen again — whether or not we can do something about this war without planting the seed in this Devil’s Garden that will make the next war a certainty. So I will tell you now, Miss Fairchild, how it is that our ship came to be here, and you can then tell us the same thing about your ship. Hold tightly to the tail of that elephant, Admiral Cunningham. We’re all about to climb on the damn thing and give it a good stiff spur in the gut, and hopefully you will be dragged along with us.”

Then he went through everything, the odd effects they discovered in their weapons testing program, temporal effects that were affecting the flow of time itself, and he laid out the whole impossible story, chapter and verse.

Chapter 8

Brigadier Kinlan sat with Lieutenant Colonel Sims and Major Isaac at Brigade HQ, a thousand dilemmas on his mind. The evidence he had seen, or not seen, at the old Sultan Apache site was damning enough. Now he had Italian infantry at Giarabub, and showing every intention of marching on Siwa, the small British held oasis manned by ghosts from the past. He shook his head. When I was with this Russian Captain and his confederates they were so damn convincing. Yet now, the more I think on this the more insane it all seems, particularly when I try to talk about it with the other officers.

“I’ll have to reinforce Siwa,” he said. “Not much there beyond this Australian motorized cavalry and a couple squads of the Long Range Desert Group.”

Major Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “Excuse me, sir. You’re going to reinforce Siwa? What for?” The Major was just about to be eased over the line with information on what had happened to them, and he did not take it well. His initial reaction was to take the whole matter for a bad joke, or an idle wish that they might find themselves anywhere but the sands of the empty Libyan Desert, at any time other than the days they would now be facing. The brigade was to have made a night march to Mersa Matruh to meet roll on/roll off ships there for transfer to Toulon, and start a new deployment in Europe, until this! Was the General mad? Had he finally broken under the long strain of this endless deployment?

He soon learned that General Kinlan was stone cold sober, and in deadly earnest. He was actually telling him that he had come to the conclusion that they were no longer in their own time. They had moved, vanished, and reappeared, and it was now 1941 by every account they could surmise. They had moved in time — all of them — the entire brigade! Kinlan shared the evidence, the testimony of the Russian Naval Captain, the photographs from the library pad on both Popski and O’Connor, but Isaac remained unconvinced.

“Ludicrous!” he objected. “I’ll admit that the resemblance of these two men to those historical figures is uncanny, but you can’t really believe this. It’s rather convenient that these Russians show up Johnny on the spot when that damn ICBM comes wheezing in on us. They were obviously here for reconnaissance and battle damage assessment. Can’t you see that? And look here… You could have told me Reeves had stumbled on Shangri-La out here and I’d believe that before this preposterous story. You mean to say that Russian Captain actually told you this? And you just send him off on his helicopter with the prisoners as if it were all true?”

“Major,” said Kinlan. “Now you know as much about all this as I do. Suppose you go on over to Sultan Apache yourself and explain what happened there. Sims and I went over the place with a Geiger counter and magnifying glass. It was completely undisturbed. There was no sign of any blast damage, no wreckage of any kind, no radiation. Now you tell me how twenty square miles of British Petroleum disappear in a heartbeat like that? Tell me! I’ll gladly listen to any explanation you might have, because I haven’t got any answer aside from the one this Russian Captain gave me.”

Major Isaac folded his arms, frowning. He knew Kinlan to be a competent, no-nonsense man. For this to be coming from him was the hardest blow. There was no way in hell that the man he had known and served under for the last three years would concoct such a story. Not now, not here, with the whole damn brigade strung out in column of march and the missiles lighting up the sky. No. Kinlan wasn’t mad, nor drunk, nor groggy with sleep. He was standing there, plain as day, and telling him this was 1941! Bloody World War Two!

“Add it up for me, Major. Sims and I have gone round and round with it for the last two hours. I spent four hours with this O’Connor and by god if he isn’t the real thing I’m a goat. Then Lieutenant Horton says the stars are all wrong. The moon was wrong last night, or did you happen to notice that? You explain it! Then, when you have it all figured out, you tell me how I’m going to explain it to the men…”

There was a long silence, and in that stillness Isaac realized this was Kinlan’s real burden now. Could he have this conversation with every man in the brigade? They had been out here for months, away from home, knowing now that the lives of all their loved ones were in dire jeopardy. If the missiles were flying here, they were damn well lighting up the skies over London as well.

Major Isaac sat down, a distant, vacant look in his eyes, his expression blank, and almost lifeless. The pallor of his cheeks betrayed the awful strain they had all been under, battle ready, the whole brigade wound tight like a watch spring, under ballistic missile attack, and buttoned up in their vehicles these last 48 hours, knowing the war to end all wars had finally begun in earnest. Every man among them had the image of someone back home in his head, wondering now whether any of them were still alive, wondering what lay ahead for them, or whether they would even make it to Mersa Matruh alive before another missile came at them and the Aster 3 system was not good enough to save them this time.

“No answers?” Kinlan left the question out there, but he could see the defeated look on the Major’s face, and relented. “I didn’t have any either, Bob, so don’t feel bad. You think I bought this story hook, line and sinker without smelling the fish first? There was only one explanation that accounts for all these anomalies and makes any sense — Sultan Apache, the stars all wrong, this fellow calling himself General O’Connor, not to mention Wavell on the bloody radio chewing my ear. We’ve no satellite links, nothing on any command level channel, but plenty on the AM and FM bands. And guess what, it’s all news of the war, the last big war, news of Rommel in the desert, and Wavell’s last stand at Sidi Barani. And then there’s that Italian infantry unit down south at Giarabub. I scouted the damn thing myself. There’s a stack of photos right there on the desk, and Sims and I spent the last hour with them. So call me crazy, and yes, this whole thing sounds completely insane, but there it is. You think I’d make a fool of myself like this? Here? Now? Not bloody likely.”

Sims scratched his head. “Look, General, there’s only one thing to do here. Reality has a way of rearing up like a stone fence, no matter what we think of it. I say we head north as planned. There will either be RoRo ships waiting for us at Mersa Matruh… Or we’ll run into Rommel and his Afrika Korps.”

“And the men? Am I going to have to go through this with the whole rank and file one by one? I thought the very same thing the Major did here — that the Russians were up to no good. But that didn’t explain away any of the hard evidence we uncovered.”

“You could say nothing of this,” said Sims. “If it’s all a fairy tale then the road north will hopefully be uneventful. But I’d suggest we keep the air defense units on full alert.”

“And if it’s not a fairy tale? What if the Russians were telling us the truth and it is 1941?”

“Then woe betide General Rommel,” Sims smiled. “That’s the wall I was talking about, sir. He’s either out there as we speak, or not. Time will tell. It’s as plain as that. As to the men… We do an all points signal and notify all units. You get on and lay it all out. Tell them there’s been an anomaly, some odd effect of that ICBM attack, and we’re looking at some unanswerable questions. Tell them what the Russians said about it, preposterous as that sounds. Yes, they’ll have a good laugh, and you can laugh right along with them. But then tell them we’re going north, and if, by any chance, we do run into the German Army… Well tell them they’ll know what to do about it. Yes sir. Let them find out as we do, by heading north and walking right up to that wall if it’s there. Things will sort themselves out after that, I can assure you.”

Kinlan nodded gravely, his eyes tormented, yet knowing that was the only course they could take. “Major?”

Isaac shrugged, shaking his head. “By all means,” he said half heartedly. “We go north as Sims says. At least that way we all become fools at the same time, and no one can point a finger at anyone else and call him a madman. We all just go stark raving mad together. Shall we?”

“Very well,” said Kinlan. “I’ll want to brief all battalion commanders here personally. Have they arrived yet?”

“They’re all here sir,” said his Chief of Staff, Sims, “waiting just up the line with the artillery.”

“We’ll bring them in on this shortly, and we’ll have to throw the same bucket of ice water in their faces that I just dumped on Major Isaac here. I’ll want them ready for anything when we move north. But first I’ll want senior staff briefed on this, and on our planned movement north in the next 24 hours.”

“We’re taking the whole brigade?” Sims had one last question.

“No, I’m sending the Gurkha Light Infantry Battalion to Siwa, just in case those really were Italian infantry in those photos. They certainly weren’t Egyptian Army, and they certainly weren’t Berbers. This Fergusson fellow at Siwa might be glad to have a little company. The rest of the mechanized elements move north. But I’ll want to know what we’re up against, one way or another. We have no idea what’s really going on — no reliable sit-rep.”

“What about that Russian Helicopter?”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Kinlan. “Gentlemen, I think it’s time you met this Russian Captain that Reeves rounded up out here… and someone else.”

Fedorov had struggled for some time with everything that was happening, and Popski did not have to work too hard at finding out what was going on. Fedorov realized that if he were to communicate here in any way that could be convincing, he would have to rely on Popski for the moment. The man would simply have to know what was happening, who they were, yet he felt a deep reluctance to reveal the information. Something told him that they wanted to keep this secret for as long as possible, but here he was, in the midst of an entire armored brigade from the year 2021. They were going to be pulled into the maelstrom of this war, and there was nothing he could do about that. They were going to know — a few key officers at the outset, yet all the rest in due course. They were all going to know, but what chaos was he now about to unleash upon this world?

He had worried about contaminating the time line, cracking that pristine mirror of history. Look at the damage they had already done! Their homeland was shattered in civil war, a circumstance that now made the prospect of a German victory in WWII very likely. He had long since abandoned any hope that they might ever get the history back on track again. It was broken beyond repair. There were now simply too many men who must know why, and that knowledge would spread like a fatal illness and contaminate this whole world.

What should he do? He wished he had Admiral Volsky here, or Director Kamenski, and he remained haunted by the dreadful, aching feeling that he had been responsible for the hell they had unleashed upon this world. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to be silent, to hold the secret within, but how could he do this with these men here? They were going north and in another 24 hours they were going to learn a very hard truth, one with or without his intervention. That fact alone decided his course. He could not stop what was about to happen. He could no longer hold back the flood — the dam of secrecy was breaking, but what he could do was try to open the sluice gates slowly. He could try to channel and guide what happened next, as best he could.

It was his doing, he thought. Admiral Volsky wasn’t here, and Director Kamenski wasn’t here, so this was all on his shoulders now. It was up to him.

“Alright, Popski,” he said just as Sims was waving them to approach. “You are going to hear some things now that will sound unbelievable, but bear with me. I tried my best to speak with General O’Connor earlier, but I will need you to translate here now, and this is of critical importance. Stay with me, believe in me, and do your best.”

“Alright, Captain. I’ve had my notions that something was amiss here, but you have your say.”

“Popski…” Fedorov gave him a long look. “You might think I’m making a fool of myself, and you in the bargain here, but I assure you, everything you are about to hear is the truth.”

The truth… a terrible truth. A secret about to be revealed that could shake this world to the core. That was how Fedorov began his briefing, feeling the awful weight grow heavier on him with each word he spoke.

“I will see the unbelief in your eyes,” he said with Popski translating. “And yes, I know that you may look upon me as your enemy, though I offer my hand in friendship now, and I speak to you with absolute fidelity and sincerity. Yet the information I must now disclose is critical, the darkest secret the world has ever known. I do not use these words lightly. Secret. Yes, My ship and crew have lived with the burden that word implies since the accident I will soon reveal to you — a mishap that changed the course of history itself. Only one man among us is entirely convinced that he has his feet firmly planted in the here and now — General O’Connor. He will tell you to a certainty that this is the year 1941, and you must believe him, as I have had to believe this same terrible truth. Yet he now struggles to believe that we now stand here like dark angels from another world, with weapons and power at our disposal unlike anything this world has ever seen.”

He looked from one officer to another now, seeing various reactions in the eyes of the men, and when his gaze fell on O’Connor he felt an upwelling of compassion for the man. The innocence of his life was now forever gone. He would never be the same man again after hearing all this.

“Yes,” Fedorov continued, “that is how many might perceive us. This world may not be able to hear what you must now hear and know. The collective arms of every soul on this earth may not be able to hold what you must now grasp. Can you imagine it? This knowledge is, in itself, a force of chaos and terrible power. My crew learned all of this the hard way, in the fire of combat. Your men, each and every one, will soon learn the same way. Yet though it was easy to contain this terrible knowledge on a single ship, hidden in the vast oceans of the world, that will not be the case here if this brigade goes north, as it certainly must in the hours ahead.”

He looked at them, an almost pleading look on his face. “But anything we can do to limit the general knowledge of what you learn here is of the greatest importance. In war there are secrets — we all know this. Weapons will be built, forces moved and gathered in secrecy, plans devised and sprung into motion. Secrecy is no stranger to the war fighter. Lives depend on it. The hope of victory over a determined and dangerous enemy requires it. But in this we face the hard task of denying even those we fight for the full knowledge of who we are, and where we have come from — a future that was again wracked in the throes of an all consuming war. Well, I have seen the end of it, as I will soon relate. I have seen the place we were all condemned to, the purgatory, the hell of our own making, and I have been struggling here to prevent that enmity and war from ever taking shape — the war that will follow this one as surely as night follows day. And yet we must struggle on in the shadows, gentlemen, even though we few will be the sole carriers of this light of truth, and we will bear a very hard burden as we do so.”

He could see that some of the officers were following him, others waiting for more clarity, still others with expressions of disbelief and suspicion, but he struggled on.

“Some men of this world must know what I will now reveal, a chosen few who find themselves entrusted with the fate of all those they now guide and command in this war. Up until this moment only two men in this world have come to learn this truth. General O’Connor here is the third, and soon we will have to welcome General Wavell to this dark circle. Yet, as I will now tell you, the force inherent in this knowledge can tear this world apart. It is fantastic, unbelievable, terrible, but nonetheless true. And we are now watchers on a crumbling wall of secrecy that hold the full fury of this knowledge from the innocence of this world. If it breaks, if we break, and this truth were to become generally known… I fear the fabric of history, perhaps even the fabric of human society itself, might be rent asunder and lost forever. And what world would it give rise to? This will be our responsibility, because Destiny now lies prostrate at our feet. Fate waits at our beck and call, and gentlemen, Time itself has lost her cold hard grip upon our souls. We are men unlike any others who have ever walked this earth, and we must measure that, stand up now, and act accordingly.”

Then he told them… he told them the whole long and bewildering journey that had brought him to this place, beginning slowly with that last moment when he still sat in the innocence of unknowing.

“It was the 28th of July, in the year 2021, and I was at my station as acting Navigator on the bridge of the Russian battlecruiser Kirov…”

Chapter 9

The three men huddled together at the back of the FV432, and Popski stood respectfully off to one side, waiting. He had heard more than he expected in the briefing, and more than he could get comfortably under his belt for the moment. Yet here were two British Generals taking the whole matter in hand, and with the utmost seriousness. The Russian Captain was also there, waiting while Kinlan activated a digital map of the region.

“Captain Fedorov, that was one hell of a story,” said Kinlan.

“My Captain says that is not too far off the mark,” said Popski. “It has been his private hell for a good long time now, and while sharing it here might offer him some relief, he knows that he has laid a heavy burden on your shoulders, and those of all your men.”

“That he has.”

Fedorov spoke again and Popski interpreted. “I took a grave risk in telling you this, and I hope that all I have said concerning the importance of secrecy was taken to heart.”

O’Connor had listened, dazed and confused at the outset, but then slowly embracing another mood, one driven by a burning inner energy. At one point he had quietly tapped his riding crop on his thigh as Fedorov spoke, his mind galloping ahead like a wild beast, seeing a thousand possibilities if this incredible story was true.

“You know what this means,” he said, looking from Kinlan to Fedorov. “Why, if this is true then you know everything — the history, the war, the outcome of all this madness.”

It was a question Fedorov had been waiting for, and he turned to O’Connor now, knowing that silence on this subject would only invite frustration. Yet his answer was much the same as the one he and Admiral Volsky had given Tovey.

“Yes,” he began. “We know how these events once played through, but our presence here in the past, and the actions we have taken, have obviously altered the course of events, as I tried to describe in my briefing. The Germans never took Gibraltar in the history we know, nor did they ever put troops onto Malta. These developments will make for a dramatic change in the course of the war here, but the most critical change is the civil war that continues within my homeland. It took a strong, united Soviet Union to defeat Germany, and that was with all the might of Great Britain and the United States thrown into the equation as well. General O’Connor, the Germans have committed no more than two divisions here at this point. Yet before this war ends, they will field over 300. Understand? Britain has not yet faced the real strength of the German war machine, and so the outcome of events now is completely in doubt. I know you look to me as a signpost with knowledge of all that is yet to come, but that is not so.”

“But surely you can provide the most valuable intelligence we could ever possibly want,” said O’Connor. “Why, you at least know what did happen once, and whether we stumbled here or prevailed. I’m no fool, and I know that mistakes are made in war by men who have every good reason for acting as they do. You know all of this, the victories, the blunders, the wrong turns and dead ends on the long road ahead.”

“Yes, what you say is true, insofar as any of the history holds true. In some ways it does echo our own history. Your first offensive, for example, was known as “O’Connor’s Raid,” and from what I have been able to determine, it played out much as it did in our history — a bit early, but the outcome was the same. Yet listen now, General, in the counter offensive now underway our history records that you never made it safely back to Alexandria, and not because your Blenheim crashed here in the desert and you met up with us. No. Both you and General Neame stumbled right into a German column and you were captured. You spent the next several years as a prisoner in Italy, escaping in December of 1943.”

“I see… 1943, you say? So we have a good long slog ahead of us, do we? The war drags on another two years?”

Fedorov was reluctant to get into a discourse on the future course of events, but he knew he had to give O’Connor something here, if only to impress upon him the true gravity of what they were all now facing.

“This war goes on a good while longer than that. It eventually ended in 1945.”

“And we prevailed? General Kinlan is standing here with his brigade, so we won the damn thing, yes?”

“Yes,” said Fedorov, knowing that answer would put at least one thing into O’Connor’s soul — hope. “A grand alliance was formed between Great Britain, Russia and the United States. Together we defeated the Axis powers, in a long and bitter struggle that consumed all of Europe and Asia, and lasted until late 1945.”

O’Connor’s eyes narrowed, an expression on his face akin to that of a hiker looking up at a mountain he must climb, knowing he could get to the top, but realizing the agony and hardship that climb might bring. Fedorov continued, needing to emphasize the key point he had been trying to make.

“What you must understand now, General, is that this history may not repeat itself. There is no united Russia. Even if Sergie Kirov is inclined to join with you now, Ivan Volkov is not, and the Siberians are a wild card that could figure heavily in the outcome.”

“This Captain of yours, what was his name again?”

“Karpov.”

“Yes, well could you talk some sense into the man?”

“Possibly, yet Karpov is a man of dark ambition. At the moment that appetite has led to his conflict with Ivan Volkov and Orenburg — a Federation that never existed in our history. Don’t you see now how dangerous the knowledge we possess is? Volkov obviously used that knowledge to achieve the position he has. Our wayward Captain Karpov has done the same. And both men know full well how all this ended once. It may be that Volkov sees advantage now in his alliance with Hitler, but realize how dangerous that is. Orenburg controls 80 % of the oil that Soviet Russia needed to prosecute its war — the very same oil Hitler coveted, which was one reason he invaded Russia in the first place.”

“Yes, I don’t have to be a mind reader or man from tomorrow to figure that much.”

“So you see, the Soviet Russia today under Kirov is in a very serious and dangerous position. At the moment, there is still a cautious neutrality between Germany and the Soviets, even though Kirov has publically signed an accord with Great Britain. There is fighting on the Volga, and in the Caucasus, and none of that occurred in our history. Kirov’s army is on the offensive, but you, yourself, know the bitter tides of war.”

“I do indeed.”

“Exactly, and if the Soviets are defeated…”

Fedorov did not need to say anything more. He could see that O’Connor now appreciated the gravity and the magnitude of all that lay before them. He nodded grimly, but then looked up, another question in his eye.

“Indulge me one step further, if you would, Captain Fedorov. I have come to gather that this grand alliance you spoke of was short lived. This war you speak of in your time, the war you are trying to prevent… Your country was our enemy?”

“Sadly, this is the case. Soviet Russia and the West never found any true harmony after the war. There were decades of guarded watch, on both sides. We called it the Cold War, as no open conflict occurred, though both sides maintained armies at the ready.”

“Yes.” Kinlan had been listening to all this, and now he finally spoke. “This very brigade stood a long watch in Germany as part of an allied force facing down the Russians — and with German troops as our allies, if you can fancy that.”

“German troops?” O’Connor raised an eyebrow at that. “I see the future holds a good deal more than we might expect.”

“It does,” said Fedorov. “But the enmity that separated our two nations need not repeat, any more than the history governing your own personal fate has — though I might advise you to watch where you are driving in the days ahead, General O’Connor.”

O’Connor smiled at that. “Then you have come here to try and mend fences and set things right?”

“No, our presence here was a complete accident. We have been trying to get back to our own time ever since we arrived, but it seems time had business for us here, and so here we stay.”

“But you say you moved about from one year to the next?” Now it was Kinlan’s time to look for answers. “How did you manage that?”

Fedorov had not told them everything. He indicated that their position in time remained unstable, but said nothing of Rod-25, or the stairway at Ilanskiy. He anticipated this question as well, but knew that his best answer was to simply say they did not know.

“We’re as much in the dark as you are, General. In fact, we truly don’t know what really caused all this to happen. It’s a mystery I could guess at, and we are gathering clues as we go along, but I can’t say I have put all the pieces together.” That was true enough, he thought.

“But you say you saw the outcome of the war — our war — in 2021? How was that possible? How did you get back there?”

“As I have said, our position in time was unstable. We moved forward again, like a rock skipping off a pond I suppose, but then fell back again. On one of those skips, I think we arrived at a future time beyond the onset of that war, and we saw the utter devastation of the entire world — our world. Then we fell back again, and now that we are here we decided to try and do something about that. It started with the hand of friendship we extended to Great Britain. That grand alliance has to begin somewhere, does it not? Perhaps this time we can hold it together.”

“Good enough,” said O’Connor. “Any man who’ll sail and fight with Admiral John Tovey is a friend in my book. And as for you, General Kinlan, I don’t think there’s any question where you and your men will stand in this fight.”

“None sir. I signed on to fight for the Crown, no matter who’s wearing it at the moment.”

“Good enough, but may I ask… As to the chain of command.” O’Connor gathered his thoughts, then came out with it. “Are you and your men prepared to fall into line behind our current leadership?”

Kinlan had thought about this, and knew the question might soon arise. O’Connor was a Lieutenant General, and the ranking officer present in the British chain of command. “It seems you are a couple rungs up on the ladder, General O’Connor. Yet you must understand my position here is … rather unique. You saw the inside of that tank, and I daresay that the methods we use have changed somewhat when it comes to war fighting. I have the greatest respect for you, and for the chain of command, and intend to do all in my power to cooperate and achieve victory here. But we fight a new style of maneuver war, General. I think it is one you would take to easily enough. In fact, your tactics and maneuvers are well studied in our training schools.”

O’Connor seemed to glow at that, very pleased.

“That said,” Kinlan continued, “if the General would grant me the license of a free hand here, I think it would best serve the interests of all concerned.”

“The Captain has a point on that,” said Popski. “Aside from yours truly, General O’Connor is the only man here in theater that knows what we have been discussing. He says that General Wavell will most likely have to be briefed, but wonders where the line should be drawn.”

“Secrecy,” said Fedorov on his own in English. “Is very important.” Then Popski translated further.

“Some men must know the truth I have shared with you. Certainly all the men of your brigade will know in due course. As to the men of this time… I think the less they know the better. The true nature of this unit, and its origin, must be kept the most closely guarded secret. This may mean that it would be best, as General Kinlan suggests, if this unit remains a separate fighting entity.”

“Yet you’ve told us your own ship now flies the flag of our own Horatio Nelson,” said O’Connor. “You sail right alongside HMS Invincible.”

“Yes, but we remain the sole authority insofar as the operation of our ship is concerned, and there are no British seamen aboard Kirov. Only one man in the Royal Navy knows we are from your own distant future, Admiral Tovey himself. And he has even held this secret from the Admiralty, and from your own government.”

“I see… Somewhat cheeky, wouldn’t you say?”

Popski found a Russian equivalent for that, and Fedorov smiled. How could he impress upon this man the utter seriousness of this situation. “General,” he began. “Suppose knowledge of our presence here became generally known. I would say you have a thousand unanswered questions in your mind about what the future holds, and as I have told you, not all of that future is rosy. The war in Asia ignites into a new conflict just five years after this war concludes. It continues for over a decade, then the oil wars begin, the struggle for resources and energy that has its roots even in this conflict. Yes, there are marvelous things in the future, like that digital map there on General Kinlan’s television, but there is poverty, inequality, racism, disease, and yes, there is war. Any knowledge of these events can become a poison in this world. There are wonders ahead, but also darkness and terror, and like our Ivan Volkov, and Captain Karpov, there are men who would use the knowledge of the future for personal gain, and many others who would stop at nothing to obtain this knowledge. Understand?”

“I think I follow you. I understand the importance of secrecy, as you have urged.”

“Your own Mister Churchill said once that ‘In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ It is a well turned phrase, and carries the essence of what I am trying to tell you now. Yet Churchill may never utter those words. They were spoken to a man named Joseph Stalin — a man who no longer exists in this world of yours. So you see, things have changed. Our knowledge of what is to come may seem a solid thing to us, but in reality, it is becoming more and more insubstantial with each passing day. I told you that you should be in an Italian prison now, but here you stand, and your freedom, and the knowledge you now have, makes you one of the most significant men alive. Here we stand, discussing all this, like three kings on a raft at sea. Yet those waters are turbulent, and the tides of war are flowing even now as we speak. Rommel is not waiting on our decision. One day soon he will factor our potential choices into his war planning, but for the moment, he is ignorant. That will soon change, because even now he is driving east against the last few reserves General Wavell has managed to scrape up.”

“Then we’d best see about that,” said O’Connor.

“Yes, we must. It is time for Generals to confer over maps, and we have much to plan and do here. The fate of your nation, and the outcome of the war is now in our hands. General Kinlan’s brigade represents a powerful new addition to the British order of battle here, and a shocking new threat and rude surprise for General Rommel and his Afrika Korps. Yet know this… With every round your troops fire, your power diminishes. This brigade is a force that must devour itself every time it is used. Yes, some of the munitions you expend might be duplicated in this world, but most will remain beyond the capabilities of any industry here to replicate. Look there, general O’Connor. The map on that screen, and the equipment that displays it, could not be designed or duplicated by the combined knowhow and resources of your entire nation, even if we were to give you detailed blueprints of how it was made! There are materials and processes in this equipment that will not be understood or mastered for decades, just like the armor on those tanks you visited earlier. Understand? Well then you must also understand this… Take a hammer and put it through that screen, and that equipment is gone — permanently — and it is irreplaceable. So when you plan your war, realize that some of your vehicles will be lost, and worse, that men here will die, as they have already died aboard my ship. This is the nature of war, and we are but a torch in the wind here, bright, powerful, but doomed to expire one day, as all men must.”