Hammer of God

Chapter 24

Gromyko got the order to proceed into the Aegean Sea, scratching the back of his head as he looked over the charts. Kazan was already in the Eastern Med, and it had been useful in discouraging a flotilla of fast French cruisers and destroyers when they appeared off Cyprus, intent on reaching the Syrian coast. Two torpedoes had been used, wake homing on the speedy destroyers and taking out two ships before the flotilla scattered and reversed course for Taranto.

“What do you make of this one?” he asked his Starpom, Belanov.

“Restricted waters,” he said. “Particularly in the Dardanelles. Look at that bottleneck there,” he pointed at the chart, to a position just off Canakkale. “The channel is less than a mile wide there. Once we get into the Sea of Marmara there would be plenty of room to maneuver, but not there. What if they have anti-sub nets and minefields?”

“They probably do,” said Gromyko, “but we won’t have to transit the Dardanelles unless we want to use torpedoes.”

“You want to use cruise missiles?”

“Why not? We know they’ll need to board trains on the Asian side, right near the existing Marmaray rail terminal. We have those exact coordinates and we can program the missiles to target that spot. It would be no good lurking in the channel waiting for big fat ferry boats. We wouldn’t know the schedule, and what good would sinking a few ferries do? We would have to get out of there right after the attack.”

“I understand,” said Belanov. “So you are thinking we could saturate that rail terminal easily enough. I suppose that would do much more damage, but won’t it cause problems? There are already rumors that the British have been using Naval missiles. How would they be able to deny the attack? It would be a deliberate act of war against Turkey.”

“I raised that with Admiral Volsky,” said Gromyko. “He has communicated our intentions to Moscow, and they are going to issue a statement that the attack was a reprisal for allowing German military units to transit neutral territory.”

“The Soviet Union isn’t even at war with Germany yet,” said Belanov.

“I know, but I’ll let Volsky sort that out with the British and Sergei Kirov. All I know is that I have obtained permission for a missile attack, and that seems the safest way to get the job done. Volsky says the British need time, and we have to do something to slow down the German troop buildup in Syria. So this is what we will do.”

Gromyko pointed out a position on the navigation charts. “We can get here, between the Island of Lemnos and the Turkish coast. From there it is just about 300 Kilometers in a straight shot to the target. We can use the new Inertial Measuring Unit function on the guidance system. That chip can do absolute position tracking while the missile is in flight. I have no doubt that we can hit the target, even without GPS.”

“Shall we set course now?” Belanov looked over his shoulder at the helmsman.

“See to it. I’m going aft to check on the missile bays. This will be a night attack, so time our arrival appropriately.”

“Aye sir.”

Elena Fairchild was stewing in her executive suite when the knock on the door came that she expected. “Come,” she said quietly, and Captain MacRae entered, removing his hat. She gave him a long look, remembering that last fitful night here before they launched the mission to Delphi. That seemed so long ago now, though she knew she could count the days if she thought about it. Yet so much had happened, the discovery of that strange box at Delphi-the device-the unexpected time shift it caused.

Now it was that mystery that continued to haunt her, and she wanted someone to talk to, someone to share the burden she was carrying. Gordon was the only one she could take to heart, and she was glad to see his smile. It had been all business on the ship since the shift that brought them here, and she longed for a simple human moment where she could put this incredible situation out of her mind for a time and just live.

So she took this opportunity, saying nothing, and merely walking across the room, her eyes on MacRae’s the whole while, and embraced him. He took the opportunity as well, his Captain’s hat dropping unceremoniously to the carpeted floor, and the kiss long and deep. They would spend some hours there, as they did before, and found the time and place a sanctuary that they both dearly needed to hide in, a refuge from war, and fate, and time itself. When it was over she felt whole again in a way that was hard to describe, grounded, joined to someone, and not trapped in the isolation of the solitary watch she had maintained these many years.

The Watch… She was still officially Watchstander G1, though now the very ship she had been told to look out for was riding at anchor with the British fleet, not 300 yards off their starboard bow. So I guess my watch is over, she thought. Geronimo has turned out to be a friend this time around, and not the demon ship that bedeviled us in the past. That alone strained her mind, because she realized something profound in coming to that conclusion. This wasn’t the world she had left behind with her oil filled tankers off Delphi. In this place, none of the history that had led to her taking this position in the Watch had even occurred, though strangely, there seemed to be evidence and odd artifacts from that reality that still dangled like loose, errant threads in the tapestry of this world.

The box she had found… That note signed by Admiral John Tovey, and then the other box he had mentioned when they spoke here after that first tour of the ship. How did these things get here? Tovey had told her that Bletchley Park had come across a file box of evidence that could only have come from that other world-the world she left behind. He said it was found within the archives of BP itself, as if it had been there for years, covered in dust and long forgotten.

“Gordon,” she said after they had finished a light meal together, talking superficially of the workings of the ship at first, and getting assurance that all was in order.

“I know that tone well enough by now,” he said calmly. “So what are you worried about this time?”

“Not worried,” she said. “Just curious, I suppose. That box we found at Delphi… It’s been nagging at me.”

“Aye, Mack and I have tried to get a handle on that, but he hasn’t any ideas either.”

“Not something our Intelligence Master could help us with this time,” said Elena. “It’s very odd. I told Admiral Tovey about it, and that note with his name on it. He seemed to take it in stride, as I suppose he’s seen more than a fair share of the impossible in these last months. Yet he had no answer for me either. The note said it would serve to keep us in a safe nexus, and I’ve some inkling of that, but I just can’t figure how it might work.”

“Safe nexus? The last time you brought that up, we ended up here.”

“That we did. Mack came in with the report of that odd interference on all comm systems-couldn’t raise anything, not even on AM or FM.”

“Yes, and you said something very odd, Elena. You seemed to know some mischief was underway.”

“I guess I could feel it,” she said. “The shift was happening-the time shift that brought us here.”

“Did you expect that to happen? Did you know about all of this?”

“Not at all. At least I didn’t expect things to happen as they did. But I haven’t told you everything, Gordon. That key I have, the one that opened that hidden chamber at Delphi, and the one we used on that box… Well, it isn’t the only one. There are others.”

“Others? Other keys? Other boxes like that one?” He pointed to the back bulkhead that hid the secret inner office where the Red Phone was harbored.

“Other keys? Definitely. Other boxes? I’m not sure on that.”

MacRae folded his arms, dark brows lowering as he looked at her. “So what about these other keys. Let’s start with that.”

“I don’t know how many there are,” she said. “Or even where they are, but I know there are more. We had one other in our possession, but it was lost.”

“We? Who are you speaking of.”

“The Watch-the group I was a member of, a very secret organization within the highest tiers of the Royal Navy. Alright, you can look out that port hole there and what do you see? That damn Russian battlecruiser, and, believe it or not, we knew about it before the ship arrived here, because this isn’t the first time we’ve had dealings with it… Or is it?” She rubbed an eyebrow now, thinking, a perplexed look on her face.

“What I mean to say is that the Royal Navy first encountered that ship in the summer of 1941.”

“Summer? It’s March here, Elena.”

“Correct, but that ship was not encountered until late July of 1941, in the Norwegian Sea. It was Admiral Tovey who had the pleasure of trying to sort out the mystery when it first came on the scene, and he was still Admiral of Home Fleet a year later when it appeared again.” She shared the story with him in more detail, telling him of that second ‘incident’ in the Mediterranean Sea, and how the ship vanished again just as it reached the Island of Saint Helena.”

“Very strange,” said MacRae.

“Yes, well when that ship reappeared off the coast of Australia a day later, Tovey eventually concluded that the ship had to be moving in time, as there was no way it could physically move from Saint Helena to the place it appeared next within that interval, some 24 hours. So there was that ship, moving in and out of our history, like a phantom, and raising considerable mayhem every time it appeared. Meeting that Admiral Volsky, and that young Captain Fedorov of theirs, put a human face on the demon. You see, the Watch was established to stand guard against any future appearance, but this time the Russians fooled us all, and they dropped in well before that first incident in July of 1941. That was quite a twist, but the odd thing has been these artifacts that persist here in this time, evidence from those earlier incursions. It’s mind boggling.”

“And what does it all have to do with those keys and that bloody box?”

“The keys… Yes… Well I was more than a Watchstander. I was also a Keyholder. There were others, or so I was told, and there would come a day and hour of grave emergency when the keys were to be used. At that time I was to be given specific coordinates, and I was to go there and utilize my key.”

“You mean Delphi? Then your superiors in this organization knew about that place?”

“Apparently so, and there were others-other places like Delphi in the world. How many there were, I don’t know, but we did have one other key once, until it went missing. It was found long ago, by a man named Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, in 1801.”

“Elgin? The same fellow who made off with those Greek statues?”

“The same fellow. He was trying to simply document the remains of the Parthenon Marbles, but his ardor for the subject soon compelled him to remove a good portion of the marbles and bring them to Britain. They’re still in the British Museum, in the Duveen Gallery, and as strange as this may sound, a key was found embedded in the base of one particular piece recovered by Lord Elgin-the Selene Horse.”

“Well how in the world did it get there?” MacRae asked the obvious question.

“That we don’t know. In fact, we weren’t even aware that it was anything of importance. It was an oddity, to be sure. What would an old key like this be doing in marbles dating to the time of the ancient Greeks? Who put it there, and why, was a mystery, but we later found out that it was quite significant, something to be guarded very carefully, and kept very secret.”

“You found that out? How?”

“We were told about it by others who knew.”

“And who were they?”

“We aren’t sure.”

MacRae rolled his eyes. “Well this cricket ball just keeps getting batted all over the field, doesn’t it. I don’t understand.”

Elena sighed. “Yes, it’s all very confusing. Do you remember I told you about those signals we were sent-with information that predicted events that had not yet happened.”

“Ah, yes, that tip off on the World Trade Center attack, and that information on the stock market.”

“Correct. Well, that was when we realized the information could not be coming from anyone in our time. No one could predict the events that were described that accurately, and so we came to the only conclusion possible-that the information was being sent from the future. Well then, we received information concerning these keys as well. They were apparently hidden away for a reason, because it seems there are other places like Delphi in the world.”

“You mean with hidden chambers like the one we uncovered?”

“Yes, but that was all we were told. The keys would open doors, and a day and hour would come when they must be used. That was all we learned.”

“What about the other key. What was it to be used for?”

“The key we found in the Elgin Marbles? We never discovered that, because it was lost, in May of 1941, the 27th of May, to be precise.”

“You know the exact day it was lost? How is that?”

“Because at that time some of the Elgin Marbles were being moved to safety in the United States, along with a considerable amount of gold bullion. They were loaded onto the battleship Rodney, which was scheduled to sail for an American port to have an extensive refit. She had boiler tubes crated all over her decks at that time. Well, then the Germans got in the back door with the sortie of the battleship Bismarck. The urgency of that chase forced the Admiralty to pull old Rodney off its leave and get the ship into the hunt. It eventually joined with King George V in that final battle that stopped the Bismarck for good. But when those 16-inch guns fire they have quite a kick, or so I’m told. I suppose Admiral Tovey could tell us more, but the fact is that when the Rodney eventually did reach her port berthing at Boston, it was discovered that the key embedded in the Selene Horse had gone missing.”

“Missing? Then we were trying to get the key to a safe port, and it was filched en route?”

“We aren’t sure what happened to it. We only know it was there, imbedded in the base of the Selene Horse when Rodney set off from the Clyde, but it was missing when the ship reached Boston. Things were jostled around quite a bit in the course of that battle with Bismarck. Several of the crates were tossed about, and some broken. A chink came off the Selene Horse, right where that key was hidden. Oh, they searched the ship from top to bottom, very discretely, and we had people interviewing the whole crew, but it was never found. There are things about that incident that history does not record, but we knew about them. It’s a nice little mystery, isn’t it? So there are other keys out there, Gordon, and yes, they may open other hidden doors, or even other little boxes like the one we found at Delphi. And they may lead to some very unexpected places. This is all we know.”

“Interesting,” said MacRae.

“Yes, and now that I’ve got your curiosity up with my own, I was wondering something-whether that chamber under Delphi is still there.”

“You mean you don’t know when it was built?”

“Not at all. In fact, I’m not even sure it exists in this go round-in this world where we find ourselves now. But this damn key of mine exists, and for every key there’s a locked door out there somewhere. I wonder…”

“Well you could satisfy yourself,” said MacRae. “Delphi isn’t very far away.”