Paradox Hour

Chapter 16

Air defense officer Lieutenant Don Campbell did not expect to be very busy that week. HMS Rodney left the Clyde some days ago, steaming with the troop ship Britannic, the third ship in the ill-fated White Star line to bear that name, and four destroyers, Eskimo, Mashona, Somali and Tartar. A bright faced young man, Campbell was glad he was not yet on duty in the gun director Octopodial behind and above the bridge. It was a lonesome, windswept eyrie high above the conning tower, and very lightly armored. While the men there had a splendid view of everything around them, they also suffered from numb hands, red noses, and cold faces, with too little to keep them warm. Instead, Campbell was on the bridge, seeing to some crew re-assignments with a staff officer.

“I’ll be one man short today,” he said. “Lennox is down with a gut buster. Anyone free for duty on my station?”

“I can give you Mister Byers when he’s finished ferrying Captain Coppinger back over to Britannic.”

“Good Enough. Shall we say zero nine-hundred hours?”

“I’ll have him there.”

Rodney was well out to sea on her secret mission, the King’s business beneath a cover of old crates and boiler tubes all over the decks. A message had come in from the fleet flagship, and it was something Captain Dalrymple-Hamiltion wanted to discuss with Coppinger, Captain of the White Star liner Britannic. The two men were meeting in the plot room, their voices low and hushed, which was enough to arouse Campbell’s curiosity. Campbell was just about to leave when they emerged on the bridge again, and the ship’s Captain caught his eye.

“Ah, Mister Campbell, I’ll want you and your people sharp today, and I’ll have to ask you to take your watch station a bit early.”

“Of course, sir,” said Campbell, realizing that there went breakfast, and he would be lucky if he could even get down a cup of tea now before he went aloft to his assigned perch on the Octopodial. “I was just seeing to crew assignments.”

“Very good,” said Hamilton. “Because it seems we’re going to be paid a visit soon. You’ll probably be one of the first to make the sighting, so be on the lookout for a ship coming up from the south. We’re to make a rendezvous, and will have visitors aboard soon after.”

The staff officer heard that, realizing the man he had just re-assigned might be needed at his regular post. “Excuse me, Captain,” he said. “Will we be needing the cutter?”

“No, they’ll come to us when they get here.”

It was not the only thing coming at that moment. A watchman suddenly shouted out a warning: “Torpedo off the starboard bow!” Yet it was too late. Seconds later the was a dull thump, and then a shuddering explosion. Far beneath the sea, a man with a very peculiar fate had just struck a blow that would change the whole complexion of the mission.

Days earlier, U-556 under her young captain Herbert Wohlfarth had left the submarine base at Kiel for his first patrol in this new boat. It was the third U-boat he had commanded, after logging nine kills in U-14 in the first eight months of the war, and then almost equaling that when he was re-assigned to U-137 in September of 1940, with eight more kills. The biggest feather in his cap to date had been the armed merchant steamer HMS Cheshire, at over 10,000 tons, and now he was hoping to better that on his maiden patrol in U-556.

Strangely, his personal fate seemed to be entangled with that of one of the ships now operating in these waters, and the connection persisted, like that of two entangled particles, even though this was an altered state of affairs. Newly built, U-556 had the distinction to berth right next to the mighty Bismarck while she was also fitting out, and came to think of her as an elder sibling.

Wohlfarth had developed a strange connection between his boat with Bismarck, perhaps like a pair of entangled quantum particles, as Director Kamenski might have explained it. He had pledged he would defend the mighty Bismarck in any sea, and do his utmost to keep the ship from harm. And now he was to get his chance in a way he could not yet truly fathom.

His big brother had been gone for some time, sailing in the Mediterranean with the fleet flagship, and Wohlfarth had been appalled when he heard the news that both ships had been hit by a strange new British weapon at sea—a rocket. It worked just like a torpedo, or so the rumors had it, only it flew through the sky instead of hiding beneath the sea, and like an aircraft, it had a very long range.

Wohlfarth went so far as to request his next mission might end in a French port instead of seeing him return to Kiel, thinking he might slowly work his way into a berthing at the new German base at Gibraltar, and a Mediterranean patrol to be closer to Bismarck. He learned that both Bismarck and Hindenburg would be laid up in the French port of Toulon for some time, getting refitted with fresh armor plating and a few innovations designed to give them better protection against these rocket weapons. Then news came that Hindenburg was returning to the Atlantic, and Bismarck would be coming along with the flagship to prey on the convoys Wohlfarth had been feasting on in his earlier patrols. What could be better!

He set out from Kiel ten days earlier than he did in the history Fedorov knew, and soon got his first chance at action when he encountered a small 160 ton steam trawler off the Faeroes Islands. He had been ordered there to observe and report on operations at the new British airfield, but when he encountered the Emanuel, he could not resist. Not wanting to waste a torpedo on a small vessel like that, Wohlfarth surfaced and sunk it quickly with his deck gun. It was a small kill, and nothing much to boast about, but he would take it, and sail on with the hope of getting many more.

Fleet rumors had been circulating at Kiel, saying that the whole navy was out to sea now, and something very big was in the works. The truth of that was soon made apparent to him when he was ordered to scout the channel between the Faeroes and Iceland. Tirpitz, the sister ship of Bismarck, was leading another powerful German task force there, intending to break out and join the Hindenburg group in the Atlantic.

It was a grand operation, and he was proud to be a part of it. Then came the coded orders from Group West that befuddled him. He was ordered to alter his course immediately, turn south, and be on the lookout for any British convoys escorted by battleships.

“A pity,” said Wohlfarth. “We’re going to miss seeing the Tirpitz in action. All the fun will be further west.”

“Perhaps,” said his navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Souvad. “A convoy to the south sounds like good prey.”

“Escorted by a battleship? You know they only assign the older ships to that duty,” said Wohlfarth. “They are too fat and slow to run with the action out west. And where those ships sail, there will be destroyers.”

“Still, we might find better fare there,” Souvad suggested. “Destroyers are always a problem, but this new boat is very quiet. And remember, Bismarck is coming out of the Med. You may get a chance to make good on your pledge, Kapitan.”

“Bismarck has good company now,” said Wohlfarth. “But orders are orders. Come to one-eight-zero. We will see what has Group West all in a tither.”

A few days later he had his answer. There, right in the center of his periscope, was one of those old battleships he had been talking about, and a nice fat steamship liner right in her wake! Wohlfarth had come upon a small, heavily guarded convoy, and he knew immediately what he was looking at.

“Good lord,” he said. “That’s the Rodney!”

HMS Rodney, an interwar build, had an unmistakable silhouette because all of her big guns were on the forward segment of the ship, with her armored superstructure and bridge con well back of the huge turrets, like a solitary iron tower. Slow and heavily armored, the Rodney was often used in convoy escort roles, as her best practical speed was in the range of eighteen to twenty-one knots, though she normally cruised at fifteen to eighteen knots. From the size of her bow wash, Wohlfarth estimated the ship was moving with some urgency, and he could see a pack of fast destroyers steaming in escort, four in all, with two well ahead, one behind and one closer to Rodney, yet on the far side of the ship.

Four destroyers… There must be some reason these two ships are given such an escort. He wondered what it was, having no idea of what Rodney carried in her hold, or the fact that there were 550 precious pilot trainees embarked aboard Britannic at that moment, bound for training in the US under a secret agreement with the Americans. It was the business of war, made even more vital by adding in the King’s business. And yet no one back in London, or Buckingham Palace, knew the most precious thing at stake at that moment—the key embedded in the base of the Selene Horse, crated away in Rodney’s hold.

He had been lucky enough to get this sighting in a perfect position to fire, and perhaps he could get both these big ships before those destroyers forced him to run for his life. The temptation was overwhelming.

Sink an oiler or merchant ship, and they say well done when you get back home, he thought. But if I were to hit that battleship… That’s a knights cross sitting out there, right in front of me, and right behind it is my oak leave cluster. This is too good to be true!

He turned to his Executive Officer Schaefer with a gleam in his eye. “Pass the word for battle stations, but make it very quiet. No alarm. There are four destroyers up there!” His blood was up and he was eager for a fight.

“You’re going to take a shot at that battleship?”

“What do you think they give us torpedoes for, Herr Schaefer? I think this is the ship we were told to look for.”

“Are you certain?” asked his navigator Souvad. The thought of those four destroyers was none too comforting.

“Look out for convoys escorted by battleships,” said Wohlfarth. “Well, that is exactly what we have in front of us.”

“Shouldn’t we report it first?”

“And let it slip away? The damn ship is probably zig-zagging. It could turn at any moment, and right now, we have perfect alignment, and plenty of torpedoes. Ready forward tubes!”

And so he fired his underwater version of a naval rocket. The torpedoes had a very short range, but they were very deadly, and soon struck home with a big water splash and booming sound that they could all hear. U-556 had put its hands on HMS Rodney, interfering with the King’s business, and it was going to complicate things more than anyone realized just then.

“Well Gentlemen,” said Tovey. “We have a problem.” The Admiral had signaled Kirov that he wished to convene a private conference using the special equipment the Russian engineers had given him. They had rigged out a small radio set, with special encryption module, that would allow Kirov and Invincible to communicate by voice without the need to worry their conversations might be intercepted. Using the computing power available to them, they were rapidly rotating the encryption stream on the data, and unscrambling it as the signal was received on each unit. Anyone listening in would just hear a wash of static that would sound like jamming, but the communication was crystal clear on both the friendly ships, and it was something no power on this earth of 1941 could ever decipher or unscramble. A similar unit was given to the Argos Fire to allow Miss Fairchild to listen in from her executive office.

Tovey had more to discuss than simple wireless message traffic could easily carry. He opened the conference with the news he had just received from Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton on Rodney.

“In spite of our best effort, it appears we’re already too late. Rodney has happened across a German U-boat, and she’s been hit by a torpedo, right amidships. There’s flooding below decks, very near the cargo hold, and a small list has started. They will counter-flood, but the outcome is uncertain. Seas are rising, and things could get… difficult.”

Elena Fairchild cringed at that. She was listening with her own Captain Gordon MacRae, and Mack Morgan. She fingered the send button, unable to contain herself. “Is the ship in danger of sinking?” she asked, the worry evident in her voice.

“Not at the moment,” came Tovey’s reply. “But that could change. There were four destroyers in escort, and they went off like mad hounds after that U-boat. There was no confirmed kill, but the enemy appears to have been beaten off. Rodney has had to cut speed to ten knots, and now it appears unlikely that she’ll be able to make the transit to Boston. Her Captain has convened a meeting of his own, and he’s asking me for orders now. Admiralty will hear about this in due course and weigh in. It’s very likely the ship may be recalled to a British port. In that event, sailing in and announcing you have a cargo inspection to make will be somewhat complicated. In fact, it may be out of the question. Any suggestions?”

“We need to get to that ship while she is still at sea,” said Elena. “I can break off and make the rendezvous directly if you still wish to stay in pursuit of the Hindenburg.”

“Yes,” said Tovey. “I had thought I might be of some use in that meeting, but we’ve other news that bears on all of this. The Tirpitz group is making a good run on the Faeroes-Iceland Gap. King George V and Prince of Wales are on that watch, but we must plan for every contingency. If those ship’s break through, I’m afraid Invincible, and the Fleet Admiral commanding her, will have to continue west.”

“Then we must divide our forces,” Admiral Volsky suggested. “I might recommend that we send our own submarine, Kazan, along with Miss Fairchild. That would secure the undersea threat to Rodney. As for your business west, Admiral Tovey, I do not think it wise that you sail alone. Kirov will accompany you, and we will stay in the chase. Does anyone object?”

“That is well and good, Admiral,” came Tovey’s voice. “Captain Hamilton has asked about transferring his cargo to Britannic. In fact, if it is determined that his ship is seriously compromised by this damage, I believe that is exactly what the Admiralty will order.”

“They’ll attempt to move all that cargo?” said Fairchild. “Won’t that be dangerous. Gold bullion and these Elgin marbles are quite heavy.”

“Indeed,” said Tovey. “It would mean that Britannic will have to moor alongside Rodney, and the two ships will be one big target if there are any more U-Boats in the region.”

“All the more reason to get Kazan moving as soon as possible,” said Volsky. “Gromyko may have more work than he expected out here.”

The Admiral’s comment was prophetic, and it was a matter of some discussion far to the north, where another conference of Naval hat bands was being convened aboard the Battleship Rodney.

Chapter 17

“Well Gentlemen, that’s our present situation,” said Captain Hamilton. “We’ve no further instructions from the Admiralty, but that could change. Your thoughts are, of course, welcome.”

The Captain had pulled his senior officers together, the Commander John Grindle, RN, the navigator Lt. Cdr. George Gatacre, RAN, the Torpedo Officer Lt. Cdr. Roger Lewis, RN, Captain Coppinger from Britannic, and an American, one Lieutenant Commander Joseph H. Wellings, USN. He looked at the American as if he knew the man would be the first to speak, and he was not disappointed.

Wellings had come aboard as a liaison officer, and was now returning home to the United States. He seemed to want Dalrymple-Hamilton’s ear the moment he arrived, and had pressed him on details concerning the ship’s course, and other events underway that might affect operations here.

“If I may, sir,” said Wellings. “What’s to be gained by holding this heading? With that torpedo damage, we’ll be lucky to make ten knots, and the danger from U-boats remains very real. Beyond that, I have learned there is a strong German battlegroup to our northeast. A lame duck makes for easy prey. If they get wind of us here, our situation could become even more perilous.”

He was a tall, thin man, dark eyed, clean, and dressed out in proper US Navy whites. The stripes on his cuff and shoulder insignia made him to be a Lieutenant Commander.

But Wellings was more than he seemed.

He had first come on the scene in Bristol, England, near the Clyde anchorage where HMS Rodney had been waiting to escort Convoy WS-8B on her initial outward leg, before breaking off with Britannic and heading west to Halifax and Boston. It was the second half of the ‘Winston Special’ series that was bound to reinforce the British position in Egypt. The first half had been designated WS-8A, dubbed the Tiger Convoy by Sir Winston himself, as he wanted it to sail boldly across the Med instead of going round the Cape of Good Hope. Thankfully, he had been persuaded that would be suicidal, and the presence of unexpected reinforcements in Egypt mitigated the urgency.

So Tiger Convoy had become a domestic cat instead, passing safely round the cape, and making a much needed delivery of precious Matilda and Crusader tanks, and Hurricane fighters, to General Wavell. Those tanks would soon help Wavell and O’Connor hold off Rommel’s new offensive aimed at Tobruk.

That night in Bristol the real Lieutenant Commander Wellings, USN, was having dinner at a hotel when a tall man in crisp navy whites came drifting into the dining room, his eyes searching and immediately falling on his fellow naval officer. He came right over, removing his cap as he spoke.

“Lieutenant Wellings?”

“Yes?”

“May I join you, sir?”

Wellings was accustomed to receiving odd messages at any hour, for he had been an American Assistant Naval Attaché in London for the last year. Now he was heading home, scheduled to board the British battleship Rodney for the trans-Atlantic cruise. The battleship would escort Convoy WS-8B out of the Clyde, and then eventually steam for New York and Boston for a refit.

The man seated himself opposite Wellings and smiled. “Forgive the interruption, sir, but I have new orders for you.”

“New orders?”

“Yes, sir.” The man handed him an envelope. “It seems Washington would like you home just a bit sooner. You’re now scheduled to fly out of Bristol on DC-3 number 171, sir. Your flight will leave at 20:30 hours. One stop at Reykjavik, Iceland for a 24 hour layover.”

“Damn,” said Wellings. “That’s only just enough time to get to the air field.”

“Oh, don’t worry, sir, I’ve arranged a cab for you. It should be waiting outside in about twenty minutes. They’ll hold the plane.” The man looked at a wrist watch, too loose on his thin wrist, and smiled again. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. Somewhat of an inconvenience, but at least you’ll get straight home in a couple of days.”

“Better than idling aboard Rodney for a week,” said Wellings, finally warming to the idea. The man saluted, excused himself, and slipped away. He didn’t even recall his name, though he did note the man was of equal rank. Funny he should not have met him sooner, but he assumed he was one of many new officers arriving in theater as the war began to heat up to a low boil.

We’ll be in it soon enough, he thought, but for the moment I’m happy to be out of it. Wellings finished his steak, quaffing down the glass of wine he had hoped to linger over, then opened the envelope and briefly noted his new assignment. Everything seemed in order—a bit hastily typed, but in order. He sighed, looking at his watch, then got up and went to look for the cab.

Hours later a man boarded HMS Rodney with a crisp salute as he was piped on, one Lieutenant Commander Wellings, American Liaison to the Admiralty, at least according to the guest manifest. Yet he was not who he seemed.

Sometime later Wellings sat contentedly in his navy whites, and comfortably in his assumed identity, one of seven men around a table in the Captain’s quarters on HMS Rodney. They had been detached ten hours ago, and Convoy WS-8B was now steaming due south, diverted away from the area where the Royal Navy was trying to find and engage a German raiding task force led by the much feared battleship Tirpitz. Captain Hamilton was looking for support for a decision he was already leaning heavily on, and Wellings was just the man to give it to him.

“I’ve got some information I’ve been ordered to share, sir.”

“Information?”

“Yes, sir,” Wellings leaned in, lowering his voice slightly as if to convey the notion that he was now speaking confidentially. The others were clearly interested.

“We have a Coast Guard cutter at sea in the vicinity of the operations out west,” he began. “Her regular duty is ice watch patrol, but it seems one of your convoys out of Halifax took it on the chin recently. She was therefore detailed to assist in survivor recovery for convoy HX-126.”

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “Bloody business that. The poor lot ran afoul of a wolf pack. Lost quite a few ships, I’m afraid.”

“Right,” said Wellings, “Cockaponset, and British Security went down in the final attack. Darlington Court had a near miss. Well, the Modoc, that’s our cutter, reported in yesterday, sir, and I am now at liberty to disclose this message to you here. She sighted battleship Tirpitz at these coordinates and times.” He handed the Captain a paper, and Hamilton squinted at it briefly before handing it off to his navigator.

“If you chart that,” Wellings continued, “You’ll see that this present heading is all wrong, sir. Your Admiralty may believe the Tirpitz group was still on a heading to the southwest, but from this sighting, it’s clear they have turned southeast. We believe they are now attempting to rendezvous with another German task force emerging from the Med.”

“Bad dinner guests,” said Captain Hamilton, “the lot of them.”

“I’m afraid so sir,” said Wellings. “Remember, Tirpitz is not alone. We had seaplanes up from Iceland to see if we could spot this battlegroup, and one had a good look… before it was shot down.”

“Nasty flak guns on the Tirpitz,” said the Captain. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“Oh, it wasn’t shot down by flak, it ran into a German fighter patrol. Gentlemen, the German carrier Graf Zeppelin is also a part of this enemy battlegroup, along with the battlecruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, a heavy cruiser and two destroyers. If this is so, our position here, and any further movement west on this course, is extremely hazardous. You’ll have to turn due south at once to have any chance in the world of evading the Tirpitz battlegroup. In fact, returning to England would be the better course.”

“I see,” said Hamilton. “Excepting the fact that I have orders to the contrary, Mister Wellings. I assume this report of yours was also forwarded to the Admiralty? We’ve heard nothing from them at all on this.”

“As you might imagine, sir, Western Approaches Command is all astir with this business. The message was sent, but whether it received prompt attention or not is anybody’s guess. They may not have picked up this heading change yet. I’ve been there, and I can say the situation gets a bit chaotic at times, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Hamilton. “Get enough Admirals in any one room and no one ends up knowing what to do.” He considered for a moment. “And what course would you say we adopt, Mister Wellings?”

“If you intend to stay at sea, then 180 degrees due south, sir. It’s really your only option, and you will have to make your best speed even then, in spite of the damage. Wellings folded his arms. He had made his pitch, and knew enough not to say anything further until someone else spoke first.

“Gentlemen?” Captain Hamilton regarded the other men present, but no one seemed to have any objection to the idea. The navigator knew his business well, and even without having to look at a chart he confirmed what Wellings was saying. “We’ll definitely be in the stew here if we don’t turn, sir,” he said.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Captain Hamilton decided. “It may also interest you that I am in receipt of a message from Admiral Tovey that pertains to this decision. In fact, I was just discussing it with Captain Coppinger of the Britannic when this damn U-boat stuck it to us. This isn’t just any mission we’re on here. This is the King’s business, and my charge is to get this ship, and its cargo, safely to Boston. However, Admiral Tovey is of a mind with Mister Wellings here. He suggests that given the German operation now underway, to proceed west as planned would be very perilous. In fact, he has asked me to move south to effect a rendezvous at sea with a ship being detached from his task force, an air defense cruiser, though he did not mention what ship. Considering his opinion on this matter as the commander of Home Fleet, and in the absence of any response to my request for instructions from the Admiralty, I think we have a consensus here. I must agree with everything that Mister Wellings has said.”

To his navigator and senior staff officer he said: “Come round to course 180 degrees south at once, and give me all the speed we can manage. The faster the better, should there be any more U-boats about. I know the damage control teams will have fits, but it can’t be helped. That’s a good bit of timely intelligence, Wellings. I appreciate your candor. Now then, let’s get another signal off to the Admiralty notifying them of our intentions. I daresay Admiral Pound may have other ideas about it, but I believe Admiral Tovey on Invincible will be more than gratified to learn of the action we’re taking here.”

“Very good, sir,” said Captain Coppinger. “Then you won’t be transferring your cargo to Britannic?”

“That may become necessary at some point,” said Hamilton. “But for the moment, we’ll keep things as they are.”

“Of course,” said Coppinger. “And as I would be a fool to continue west under these circumstances, Britannic will stay right in your wake.”

“That would be wise,” said Hamilton. “At least there’s nothing wrong with those guns on my forward deck. If things heat up, you’ll be glad we’re here. Then again, we may be grateful to have a ship at hand capable of taking on our cargo and crew if that damage below cannot be controlled.”

“If I may, sir,” said Wellings. “I’d like to have a look down below at the damage situation. I heard it was very near the torpedo magazine.”

“Close,” said Torpedo Officer Lewis, “but no cigar, as you Yanks like to say. We’ve managed to seal off the water tight doors, and the magazine is not in danger at the moment.”

“Might I have a look?” said Wellings again.

“I don’t see any harm in that, Wellings. Suit yourself, but some of the engineers can get a bit surly with officers underfoot. Just a warning.”

“I understand, sir.”

So it was that Wellings had given the situation a brief nudge in the right direction, insofar as he saw things. His intelligence concerning the German movements had been most alarming, and enough to move Dalrymple-Hamilton off his perch of uncertainty. Tovey’s request had made that a little easier, in spite of what the Admiralty might say when they got his message informing them of the decision to head south.

All of this had been an unknowing conspiracy of sorts, for Director Kamenski’s assessment of one possible reason how those mysterious file boxes might find their way into this world had been very telling. There were, indeed, other agents moving in time, and not only Karpov, driven as he was by his own quest for revenge and personal aggrandizement. They were not the key makers, as Miss Fairchild came to call those mysterious voices and signals from the future that had suddenly gone silent, but one man had once been a key holder himself, the same enigmatic figure who had stopped off at that hotel on a cool night in Bristol, the man who now posed as one Lieutenant Commander Joseph H. Wellings, USN.

Wellings was off at once, soon making his way into the bowels of the lumbering battleship Rodney. He knew the way well enough, for he had been there once before, in another time, another evolution of the history of these events. This time, things were different, for he now had foreknowledge of what he would find hidden away in Rodney’s hold, or at least he believed as much.

Thank God the Captain was as amenable this time as he was before, he thought to himself. Now to get down to that cargo hold and find that key. Will it still be there? Last time the crate it was in took a hard jolt to enable my discovery. Will that have happened again this time? It was only by chance that I went that way, and made my little discovery. I heard the call of that seaman in distress, and my impulse was to answer it. That too was a part of all of this, that one moment of compassion in the heat of all that was happening. Yet something tells me there was more than chance or luck at work in that damn torpedo hit this time around.

Wellings knew much more about all that was now transpiring than he could ever reveal to Captain Hamilton. He knew more than the names of the ships that had suddenly turned in his direction, with new orders—find the Rodney, sink her, at any cost… Yes, he knew so very much more… He knew the number on the U-Boat he believed responsible for this recent attack, and who was out there commanding it, caught between a moment of both jubilation and fear as he struggled to evade those four British destroyers.

Wohlfarth! I’m on to you again, you rascal! Something tells me you have much more mischief in mind here, but first things first. Let’s hope that torpedo hit was enough to shake things loose here in this Meridian, but not enough to sink this ship before I get my hands on that key!

Chapter 18

There were four of them, and they had been hot on the case for some time now, about much more than the secretive business of the King. One was a Keyholder, or at least he was for a while, until the fitful warning of the machine that had started this whole intervention again, a mindless bank of computer circuits that seemed to have an uncanny ability to ferret out the ripples and aberrant eddies in the quantum fog of time.

There were four of them, each with a peculiar skill to make them the perfect team, a synthesis of four determined minds, involved in a project that would decide the fate of untold generations yet to be born. They had names, Dorland, Nordhausen, Ramer, Lindford, and one of them was now dressed in the naval uniform of a Lieutenant Commander, a costume that had been dredged up for a mission very much like this one, pressed into service again in a desperate gamble to set a situation right, where it now threatened to careen into utter chaos. This would be the last mission, or so they hoped, though it had not been the first.

They were children in the beginning, he realized. They thought they would use their amazing new technology to go see a Shakespeare play. They made enormous errors, landing in the late Cretaceous at one point, and bouncing all over the history until they managed to get their methods understood and well honed. Once they had dallied in time for personal fetishes, to find and retrieve things they had always been curious about, until they discovered what was really happening—they were not alone. Others were moving in the unseen meridians of time, agents from a unknown future, locked in a bitter struggle with one another. A Time war was underway, and it was causing more damage than the alterations to the history these agents conspired to bring about. It was causing damage to the fabric of time itself!

Their chief research consultant, Robert Nordhausen, was finally convinced of the serious nature of any further breach of the continuum. Considering what they had seen in recent events, the many interventions were now becoming very dangerous. Their last operation had tried to be careful, sending information back through time to try and catalyze the actions of Prime Movers instead of directly intervening themselves. In the end, it had taken considerably more effort, and Wellings had intervened like this on Rodney once before, giving this whole affair a strange feeling of Déjà vu for him.

The effect of information sent back through Time, particularly to Prime Movers, was also very unpredictable, particularly in the deeply fractured Meridians of World War II where their last mission had been run. There were so many Pushpoints there, lurking in the Nexus Points of battles, campaigns, and roiling sagas at sea, that even the slightest nudge could set the whole mountain of events tumbling. A tiny drop of information could cause an immediate and significant change, like a sudden chemical reaction in a lab beaker, and the changes were no longer predictable with any degree of certainty. It might fall like a saving antidote, or fester like a lethal poison, and there was no way to predict all possible outcomes, or to safely restore the time meridian to its former state.

Realizing all this, the presence of this key hidden in the Elgin Marbles was baffling and surprising to the man who had posed as Lieutenant Commander Wellings. He knew to a certainty what Kamenski had come to suspect, that there were other agents at large in the history, and many had very dark agendas. Why was this key embedded in the base of the Selene Horse? Was it evidence of a failed operation by one of these hidden agents, or was it placed there deliberately? If so, what did that operation entail, and why was it mounted? Or worse, why was it called off in such a way that this object would have been so carelessly left behind? Was it meant to be left behind, and if so, why? And why did they have no inkling of it in the Golem alerts?

Yes, the Golem system bad been a life saver. That was the name of the intrepid computer module that was ceaselessly scanning the history over the vast web of the Internet, and making lightning fast comparisons to information about that same history stored in a secured RAM Bank. Whenever a major deviation was found, an alert was sounded, analysis run, and the moment of deviation from the norm could be isolated, the very Pushpoint of divergence, where history that had once been codified in the stillness of the past was now spinning off in a wild new direction. One module in particular had been very enterprising, Golem bank number seven. It produced the warning that had led to the discovery of that key, and that changed everything.

Yet as Wellings descended into the lower levels of the ship, every question in his mind led him on to another, a long corridor of unopened doors that perhaps would be breached with this very key if he chose the correct one. First off, how was it that the object itself could have moved forward with him in time when he returned from his last wild ride aboard HMS Rodney in the Atlantic ocean? Never mind that, he thought. It did come forward, and he once had it well in hand.

He remembered how he had placed the key on a chain and wore it around his neck, under his shirt at all times, from that moment on. He also made an entry in Kelly’s protected RAM Bank, describing the key, how and where he found it, and including a set of images. It was well encrypted, so he had no fear of that data ever being discovered. If something did slip, he wanted to know it immediately—at least insofar as this key was concerned. He had the RAM Bank programmed to notify him once a week about the hidden file, and ask him a question only he would ever know the answer to before allowing him to view the contents. If the key ever vanished, he wanted to know it immediately—know that it had existed, where he had found it, and what he had discovered about it since.

Yet how would any of them ever know again what was real, or what was the contorted product of another Time intervention? They were the first, or so they thought, to ever open Time. They had created the device, the Arch, their gateway to a thousand yesterdays, or a thousand tomorrows. Yet now they would have to keep the Arch spinning on low standby mode at all times, an enormously expensive proposition, and one that also presented challenges involving maintenance and engineering.

Even so, he worried that one day, by some means, his machine would falter and fail when it was most needed. Yes, there were others operating on the Meridians of Time now. They were not alone. They had discovered that two sides in a distant future were at war with one another, one known as the Order, the other labeled Assassins, each side attempting to bend the lines of fate and time to their liking—Time War.

They had met some of these nefarious agents in time, and eventually forced the two sides to agree to a truce and end their Time War. Now he wondered if the Golem alert system would be efficient enough to pick up any potential violation of the truce they had negotiated. What if the warring parties used some unknown technology, or even a principle of physics unknown to his day, to spoof their system and conduct another stealthy operation? Was this key evidence of exactly that?

He said nothing of his discovery during those negotiations, but kept that thought in the back of his mind. What were these future agents really up to, he wondered? Was it Rodney they had been gunning for all along? Old lumbering Rodney, with a secret cargo, in more than one way—the King’s business, the gold bullion, the Elgin Marbles, the hidden key… and me!

We had to threaten them, both sides at war in the future, before they would listen, for they knew we had power. We were the first, the Founders, and from our unique position on the continuum, we had the ability to frustrate any move they made. What if the Assassins took our threats to heart, and decided that their next and only mission must be to eliminate the meddling Founders from the continuum in a way that still permitted Time travel to occur in the future?

Physicists were still taking pokes at Einstein. The CERN research institute near Geneva recently announced they had measured particles that had to be exceeding the speed of light. It was only a matter of getting somewhere 60 nanoseconds sooner than expected, but it was enough to raise a lot of eyebrows in the physics community. It meant, in one possible application, that it would be possible to send information back through Time, something Wellings could clearly confirm now if ever asked around the water cooler conversations at the Berkeley Lab facilities, though he could never speak a word of this to anyone outside the four core members of the project. Even the interns and lower level staff had been banned from the main facilities after that first mission. The team could take no chance that the true purpose and utility of the Arch would ever become generally known. If the government ever discovered what they were doing here, it would be confiscated and shut down in a heartbeat. In that event he had little doubt that a new Time War would soon begin.

It was a very slippery slope, he knew. Others would reason that if information could be sent back in Time, matter and people would come into the discussion shortly thereafter. He smiled inwardly when he learned that Steven Hawking had remarked: “It is premature to comment on this. Further experiments and clarifications are needed.”

He could write them all a book, but the more he considered things, the more questions piled up, one on top of another. Be careful what you wish for, went the old maxim… You may get it. And what did he have hanging round his neck that day when he first revealed the existence of the key to his good friend Kelly Ramer. The key… a strange relic that should never have been found, or left, where it was discovered—the very same key he was laboring to find again now as he reached the lower decks of Rodney, and began to make his way forward towards the main cargo hold.

A curious man, he had immediately applied a little forensic investigation to the key, regretting that he had twiddled with it in his pocket and largely extinguished any finger prints he might have found on it. Yet a little non-invasive scan revealed something very interesting, for this key was not what it seemed at all. There was something machined on the side, a series of numbers that could only be read under intense magnification. Beyond that, it was hollow! There was something inside it, and he would spend a good bit of time thinking about that before he went any further, or even whispered the fact to his closest associates.

There was something inside it! The metal end, machined to engage lock tumblers, had clearly been designed for some other purpose as well, and this turned the cylinders of his mind, opening a universe of possibilities. What was it, he wondered? Surely the contents would tell him where it had come from, and what its purpose was, he thought.

Now all he had to do was find out how to open the damn thing. Yet, being inventive and resourceful, he soon answered that challenge. He found that the head of the key could be turned with sufficient torque, and slowly unscrewed. He still remembered that moment of breathless opening, when everything he ever knew and believed turned at the head of that key, and its slow untwisting became the great unraveling of all that ever was. When he finally had it open, and tilted the shaft ever so gently to urge the hidden contents out onto a lab dish, he stared with amazement and perplexity at what he had found.

Days later, he knew the answer to many of his questions, and he also knew why there had been no answer from the distant future when others had called out to their successive generations. From that day forward his life, and his entire understanding of the world he lived in, was never the same. But who to tell?

He spent a long time thinking about that before he ever spoke a word of this key again. Yet it was something too big for him to carry alone. Like Frodo’s ring, it began to weigh upon him, seeming heavier and heavier with each day that passed. But unlike Frodo, there was no place he could take it and cast it away, and there was no way he could simply forget about it either… not this… not this…

Then one sunny afternoon at his cottage in Carmel, he was sitting with his good friend Kelly, down on a getaway visit while the other team members stood watch back in their Berkeley Lab facility, the Arch complex as they called it now. They had been walking on the coastline of Asilomar that day, and later dined at a favorite restaurant, the Sardine Factory in Monterey. Afterwards, they were drinking wine in the cottage, looking at some of Kelly’s photo albums, and listening to the music they loved and shared together, talking over things in a way only two very old friends could. The music played on in the background and Kelly came in with a good bottle of Pinot Noir from the wine rack.

The man who would be Wellings knew that he had to finally unburden himself concerning his discovery of that key. Yet he knew the moment he opened his mouth, he would pass this hidden knowledge on to his friend, germ like, and Kelly’s life, and his awareness of life itself, would change forever. He, too, would never be the same. He hesitated briefly, thinking to leave his friend in the relative innocence and simplicity of his life, to leave him unbothered, unburdened, unaware. But if this would eventually lead them all to renewed Time missions, the whole project team would have to be informed. He could bear it no longer. The sheer loneliness of carrying the key, and all he knew about it now, was like a great weight crushing down on his soul.

He reached into his shirt and slowly drew out the key on its chain, feeling like Gandalf visiting Frodo in the Shire, there to tell him what the quaint little magic ring was really all about.

For one last moment he waited. Then he spoke. “It’s about this key,” he said…

Later that night, the Arch was still slowly spinning on low power mode back in the Berkeley Hills, just enough to keep the systems energized and ready for quick startup if needed. The project team was taking no chances. They wanted to be able to monitor the newly enforced cease fire closely. The Golem Module was to be in use 24/7, now strongly reinforced with the addition of many new data banks and much more processing power.

At around four A.M. that evening, the Golem Module suddenly came to life again. The threat warning filters had been jarred awake by a lone sentry, while the world slept, blissfully unaware of the impending danger. Normally it would take an assessment from at least three Golem Banks to trigger a warning like this, a call to arms as it were. This time, however, the system had been reconfigured to move into alert mode if just one Golem Bank reported sufficient evidence of a variation. They were taking no further chances. So the alarm went out again, the threat module responded and sent start signals to the main turbines, and the low thrum of the Arch immediately revved up from 20% to 40% power, just enough to open and sustain a small Nexus Point around the facility. Signals were sent out to each of the four project team members, and they were all bound to come to the facility as soon as possible. Within that Nexus, they would be immune to any changes resulting from a Heisenberg Wave that may have been generated by the variation.

One of the Golem banks had found something oddly incongruous while it performed its routine scans of data available on the Internet. It was out of alignment with at least fifteen data points in the RAM bank, and so the digital “stand to” had been sounded again by the vigilance of this single search cluster. It was Golem 7, the same dogged module that had first set them on the trail of German warships on the seas of WWII.

The alarm came in, and that was the night everything again took a most unexpected turn. The man who now called himself Wellings had another name, Paul Dorland, Chief Physicist in the time travel project in Berkeley, one of the four “Founding Fathers” that had first opened the continuum and discovered the Time War. Something had happened. The Golem module was returning red flags concerning an incident in the Norwegian Sea. A Russian battlecruiser had been involved, and then suddenly went missing… as did something else.

That night, as he reflexively reached for the key that had been hanging around his neck since that last harrowing mission, he found that, like Alan Turing’s watch, it was gone…