Second Front

Chapter 34

“You say you detected a British Submarine? Finding such a submarine is not remarkable, but firing at it with a Special Warhead—that is another matter. I suppose that is wartime doctrine, but given the circumstances, it was most unwise. Strange that we have had no reports on any of this, and it is certainly something the British would know about if you did this. Yet they haven’t made even the barest whisper of a protest. So this is all very confusing.”

Gromyko shifted uncomfortably, waiting. The questions had been routine at first, but now they were getting to matters that were rather delicate. In fact, he had already said too much here. How much more should he reveal? What could he really say to these men—that he had been using a charmed control rod in his reactor and slipping about through time?…that he saw the world destroyed in a future that was even now right at the edge of events grabbing headlines all across the globe?…that he fled from that nightmare into the midst of yet another war, the Great Patriotic war, where he was bravely taking the fight to Russia’s great nemesis, Germany… until a British submarine intervened.

This was madness. It barely made sense to him at the moment, and he had lived through it all, hour by hour. Should he start over, from the very beginning? Should he tell them how he was summoned to the Sea of Okhotsk, and how the Admiral came aboard to brief him on a very secret mission? His remarks about that British sub had given up the game. Now they will have to know all the rest, and they could simply go mad right along with him.

Misery loves company.

His presence there was yet another mystery—or was it? Mister Garin, his Chief Engineer, had reported that Rod-25 was showing signs of physical damage. They had to retract it into a rad-safe container for further examination and analysis before attempting to use it again. So no, it was not Rod-25 that was the culprit this time. They had blown a hole right through time with one of their own torpedoes! It had happened in the heat of that last engagement with the German fleet in the Atlantic, and he was still trying to understand what had actually occurred there.

One minute they were feasting on the German Navy, the next minute his Sonarman Chernov was hearing a modern day British sub in the water, and Spearfish torpedoes followed soon after that report. He had reacted on pure reflex, an instinct born of long hours at sea in the heat of combat. That part was still clear in his mind:

“Launch noisemaker sled number one. Right rudder fifteen, down bubble fifteen! Rig for emergency silent running!” His own voice had been strident but sharp and firm. Kazan maneuvered like a shadow, its engines suddenly stilled, a great dark whale rolling over and slowly diving into the depths of the sea. At the same time, a special port on the nose of the ship launched a screw-driven sled, which trundled forward on the sub’s original course, leaving a trail of sound behind it designed to imitate the sub’s normal operating acoustic signature. The Matador twirled his cape, spinning deftly away from a threat he presumed was imminent—pure reflex.

He never had time to consider how that threat could possibly be there. That long honed instinct knew one thing: if Chernov was correct, and he was hearing a British Astute Class sub, then they most certainly heard Kazan as well. Those Spearfish torpedoes in the water had put the final word in on that argument. Nothing could be more real than a weapon intending the death of your ship—the death of every man aboard—your death.

“How far out are they?” He had asked Chernov.

“Quite a ways, sir. Sound Track has them at an estimated 30 klicks.”

They would be difficult to fool with the noise sled, he thought. We might get one to take the bait, but the other? The calculus of war was running through his mind in those few brief seconds. That was all the time he had to keep death at bay. Think! React! He remembered it all so very well….

What if I ran now? We’ve got about ten more minutes until those fish get close. They’re moving at 150kph! If I go all ahead full at 65kph now, I could run another twenty kilometers. That would put those fish right out near their maximum range, and well beyond their wire guided segment when they catch me….

“Secure silent running!” he said suddenly. “All ahead full battle speed!”

Kazan lurched ahead, her powerful engines straining. If Chernov’s read on the firing range was correct, things would be very close. The entire situation had now spun off in a wild twisted gyre of chaos. One minute it was WWII he was fighting, the next it was WWIII. It was the same shock that had just come to Kirov in the Pacific, though Gromyko knew nothing whatsoever of Karpov’s duel with Takami. Just the same, for him two wars were underway at the same time. He was either going to be dead in the next ten minutes, or someone else was. It came down to that single glaring choice.

The best defense was always a good offense, he knew. Those bastards are out there now, grinning at the other end of that fiber optic wire, and as long as that silent devil of a sub is out there, my life will not be worth five rubles. That sub is just too quiet. It’s a miracle Chernov heard the damn thing. If they don’t get me today, they’ll certainly try again tomorrow. He knew what he would do if this were 2021. Time to get serious…

“Load tube number one,” he said, his voice hard and low. “Special warhead. Mister Belanov,” he turned to his Starpom, “stand ready to initiate permissions sequencing.”

He reached for the Hammer of God….

He had fired his Type 65 torpedo, back along the axis of the undersea enemy attack. Soon, he thought, the sea will erupt with Neptune’s wrath.

It sounded like a great kettle being struck when it happened. Nearly a hundred meters deep, the 20 kiloton warhead went off with a resonant boom, the immense sphere of expanding gas and vaporized seawater creating a tremendous shock wave in all directions. The enemy Spearfish careened wildly off course, its sensitive sonar pummeled with the wrenching sound, dumbstruck.

Gromyko knew his torpedo would take too long to reach the enemy sub, but he only needed to get close. The shock of the warhead would expand out several kilometers, and all he needed was to get some of that awful explosive force close to his enemy to hurt this sub.

He didn’t really know what happened, but they could hear it. There came a rending sound, so deep and terrible that every man on the boat covered their ears, their faces taut with pain. It was a sound from another place, the moaning agony of eternity, long and distended, the meridians of infinity being wrenched and twisted until they broke.

The fissure opened, and Ambush plowed right into the expanding wave of shimmering phosphorescent plasma. It was as if the edge of that fire was the maw of some great wrathful sea demon, opening to consume the submarine. Ambush’s rounded nose vanished at the glimmering edge, soon followed by the long, bulbous body of the vessel, which plunged right on through a deep rupture in time, rent open by the violence of the explosion.

Then all was silent….

They had come to their senses, the tension slowly winding down, the boat slowly regaining its normal operations. But they were no longer there in the strange dream they had been sailing through—not with Fedorov, and Volsky, and all of WWII. In time he sent an encrypted message, hoping to make contact with Kirov again, but someone else answered, and when they did, Gromyko realized his strange ride on the sliding boards of time was not yet over. It was Severomorsk! They were no longer there in the old war, but home again, in the year 2021.

The warhead, he thought, that had to be the cause. That explosion must have opened a hole in time. It’s the only thing that can account for my presence here, for I must have sailed right on through that hole. One minute it was 1941, the next minute 80 years had passed and Kazan was adrift in the eerie quiet of an empty sea, and it was 2021.

He thought that world was long gone. After they had first shifted out, Gromyko had reached some unseen future, where the world he had come from was utterly destroyed, burned black to char, smashed by the final war they were facing when they first slipped away with Admiral Volsky. Yet there he stood, with a message in hand from Severomorsk, and one that was very insistent. Kazan was ordered home at once, and so there he was, sitting in front of the naval review board, answering questions put to him by these three blind mice.

He was trying to figure out how he might explain this whole incredible odyssey to these three men in drab grey suits and heavy overcoats, each one marked with the insignia of the Naval Intelligence arm of the Navy. A nice little lynching party these three would make, he thought.

“I am trying to understand this,” said the first. “You say you fired this warhead, and then this British submarine simply disappeared?”

“That is correct.”

“Then it was destroyed by your torpedo?”

“Possibly. All I know was that we had no further contacts. In time I ran the boat shallow to send out a signal.” Never mind that it was meant for Fedorov and Volsky, he thought to himself. But imagine my surprise when I get orders from Severomorsk in reply!

“Yes… We heard your signal. In fact, it was long overdue, and the navy was beginning to wonder what had happened to you, Captain Gromyko. Now you appear with this report of an incident with a British submarine, yet the British will not confirm your story, not even on the most discrete back channels where truth is sometimes told when it matters. One would think that the detonation of a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead might matter, particularly in light of the news today in the Pacific.”

The man stared at Gromyko, waiting, but before the Captain could say anything more, another man walked slowly through a door behind the dais where the three mice sat in judgment. He was wearing a black wool coat and Gabardine hat.

“That will be all, gentlemen,” he said matter of factly. “I will conclude this interview personally.”

The three men turned, seeing the man, and then immediately deferred, each one slowly standing, the wooden legs of their chairs skidding loudly on the plain tiled floor. They tramped slowly off stage, exiting through the same door that the fourth man had come through, and Gromyko watched, with just the hint of recollection, as the newcomer produced a pipe from his trench coat pocket, and slowly lit it with a silver lighter. He suddenly knew who this was!

“Captain,” the man said quietly. “Welcome home. I have only just arrived here myself, though I must say the ride was quite strange.”

“Director Kamenski?”

“One and the same, at least I hope as much.”

“You say you have only just arrived? Then Kirov has returned as well? The ship is safely home?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Gromyko looked at him, not understanding. “But sir, you were quartered there, were you not?”

“I was…. How to describe this. Let’s just say that report you were filing with the Naval Review Board had something to do with it. A nice little 20 kiloton warhead has a way of shaking the cups in the cupboard. Well I was one of the cups. I don’t suppose I could explain it to you, other than to say you are here, along with your submarine, and I am here as well. You moved—I moved, and here we are.”

“But sir, you were in the Atlantic? I sailed here with Kazan. How did you get here?”

“I would be very interested to know that,” said Kamenski. “I suppose, I landed here because this is where I was—in this time, on this day, in 2021. Yes, I was aboard Kirov, in my quarters as you say, and I could feel that things were starting to slip again. I left Mister Fedorov a little present on the nightstand, and the next thing I know I was sitting behind my desk in Moscow, but with a head full of new memories. I think if I had given that little gift away earlier, I might not remember anything of your remarkable mission with Admiral Volsky and Fedorov, but as it stands, you need not worry about explaining any of that to me. It’s all crystal clear.” The Director tapped a finger on the rim of his hat, then removed it, and sat down at the desk.

“Severomorsk called me concerning this hearing, so I thought I had better see to the matter of your sudden reappearance. Let’s not be formal. Please join me here at the desk.”

Gromyko was quite confused, but he came forward and took a seat with Kamenski at the table. How this man could be here, while Kirov remained elsewhere, still escaped him, but seeing was believing.

“So,” Kamenski began. “That was quite an engagement—Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out after the Rodney, the Graf Zeppelin burning on the sea, torpedoes flying everywhere, I suppose. Very dramatic. Whatever possessed you into thinking a 20 kiloton warhead was the weapon of choice?”

“Reflex. That’s how we would fight today. You either get the other fellow, or he gets you. I wasn’t going to take any chances, the fate of the Ambush aside.”

“Ah yes, that was the British submarine. Well, you may be surprised to know that it arrived here safe and sound as well. Those naval inquisitors may not have known about it, but Directors of intelligence tend to know a good deal more.” He smiled.

“I thought you were retired, sir.”

“So did I… at least I seem to remember I was. But not here—not now. I’m not even Deputy Director here—they’ve kicked me right on up to the top.”

“But you say you remember the mission, everything we set out to do—1908, the action off Oki Island, all that bouncing about in time, the rendezvous with Kirov, and all the fighting in the Mediterranean and Atlantic.”

“Chapter and verse. And yet, I have been here all along, while some other version of me was out riding about on your submarine and kibitzing with Mister Fedorov aboard Kirov. Yes, I’ve just been minding my affairs in Moscow. But this old head of mind suddenly filled up like a good glass of wine, and… I was understandably interested to learn that your submarine had returned. It’s happened to me before, though it may not happen again now that I’ve passed on my little gift to Mister Fedorov.”

“This is very confusing.” Gromyko scratched his head.

“It certainly is. Let me put it to you this way. That nice fat torpedo of yours didn’t kill the Ambush, but it poked a nice fat hole in the spacetime continuum. We’ve discussed all this before. Yes? Well, I suspect that British submarine found its way back to 1941 the same way you showed it the door. Infinity doesn’t like it when you disturb its long sleep. That’s what a nuke is—a brash knock on infinity’s door, and I’m afraid all too many will be thrown about in this next fight. Things are getting very tense here. I have it on good authority that we will be at war in a week… perhaps nine days at best. We’ve been here before, and it will happen again. In fact this will be the third time I’ll live through it all—assuming I do live it through.”

“The war?” said Gromyko. “It was just about to start the day we left for our mission.”

“Yes, and what a mission it was. Karpov took the ship out as the flagship of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. He thumbed his nose at the American 7th Fleet, and then that Demon volcano ended their argument. You and I know what happened after that. Well, don’t be surprised, Mister Gromyko, to find all that mucking about in the 20th century has had some effect on things here in the 21st! That was the idea, you see, to try and stop this war here from taking place. But a lot of breadcrumbs have already fallen through the cracks in the table—Karpov, Kirov, Kinlan, Kazan. Not to mention Ivan Volkov, and some we may not even know about yet. Well, it has to stop, because if we don’t do something about it, and quickly, time is going to start making some very hard choices.”

Gromyko shrugged.

“Well now,” said Kamenski. “Let me explain…”

Chapter 35

“You may not have known much about it, but some very strange things were happening aboard Kirov before you took that shot at a British submarine. Yes, very strange things. That ship and crew were all facing a real judgment, not just a few uncomfortable questions from nosy navy inquisitors. They were facing annihilation, because the day and time of their first arrival in the past was drawing ever nearer, and it was casting a very deep shadow. Men began to go missing on that ship, and I’m afraid I was probably one of them. My disappearance must have given Mister Fedorov quite a headache, but as you can see, time is rather fastidious.”

“Fastidious?”

“She doesn’t like wasting things, and is very fussy about that. I was almost certain that my lease on life had run its course. Heaven knows, I’ve been given more than enough time in this world. But it seems there are more worlds than we think, and this is just another one. Fedorov wanted to know where the missing men were going. Where was Orlov and all the rest? Then he became one of those missing men himself. Yet time takes away, and time gives back as well. She found a place for him, as she just found a place for me when I vanished aboard Kirov. You can feel it coming, you know. You tend to feel a bit… insubstantial. For the longest time I thought it was that little treasure I had in my pocket, the key. You know nothing of that, but let’s just say it was a kind of lucky charm. I thought it kept me safe and sound, but now I think it’s just something that helps time go about her business.”

“Director… I’m just not sure I’m following you here.”

“Ah, forgive me if I tend to ramble on. The older you get, the more things you have tucked away up here, and time keeps pouring more tea in my cup. One day it will run over, but for now, I still hold it well enough. Let me put it to you this way. Suppose you were writing a story. You think you have it just the way you want, then you get an idea that simply must be given form and shape in the narrative. So you do a little editing here and there, and write a new chapter. At the end of the day, you save it, overwriting the old file with the new. That’s what time is doing. Well now, you would think your characters would have the good manners to forget the old file—the way things were before you made all those changes and additions to the story—but it seems they don’t, at least in my case. I’m a file that has been saved and replaced a good many times, but I remember each version of the story I lived in before. Yes, each and every one.”

“I don’t understand…. You are suggesting this is not the year and time we first left Vladivostok?”

“Not at all. Let me see… Kazan… yes… You are carrying the P-800 Onyx missile now, am I correct? You have those along with the Kalibr Cruise Missile.”

“I gave all those to Kirov, but yes, I still have the Onyx.”

“Well they will be scratching their heads over that one if I let technicians and missile crews anywhere near your boat. Has it been boarded yet?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Good, good. We’ll keep things that way. I will have to arrange the replenishment cycle myself. You see, the Kazan of this day and time would be carrying all new missiles. It went missing three weeks ago—in the Atlantic—and we finally get word today that you are back. But if I am not mistaken, you are not the man that took that boat out from Severomorsk when it sailed three weeks ago. You were in the Pacific, yes?”

“Correct. But what do you mean here? You are saying that another man took Kazan out from Severomorsk? Impossible. I’ve had this boat since it was commissioned, and I was in the Pacific. You must be mistaken.”

“No, not another man—another Gromyko—another you, Captain, and I am not mistaken. I was at Severomorsk myself to see your boat off, quietly. That may sound impossible, but I was not the man you hob knobbed with aboard Kazan on your recent mission. No. I never left Vladivostok with Volsky and Fedorov, even though I now have a clear recollection of all those events. That’s what makes this all so difficult. You remember things, but you haven’t really lived them through—at least not on the meridian of time you presently occupy. Yes… You remember things you did in another meridian, another world, because after you met your fate there, Time saw fit to make a little deposit. Let me see, she says. What do I do with Kamenski? Ah! I’ll put him over here with the other one.”

“You’re saying there are two of you?”

“In this world? No, just one at a time please. But are there other worlds where I lived and breathed? Of course there are—two, three, a hundred, a thousand, even a million or more. Thankfully, only these few threads have become entangled in this business, or I would be a true basket case. In fact, I am coming to think that is what clinical madness may be after all, and any number of other mental ailments like schizophrenia—time confusion. I seem to recall about five different versions of myself—all in this one little head. No wonder I am losing my hair, eh? There’s just too much going on up here.” Again he pointed to his forehead.

“Well now. If the missile men get aboard your boat, they’ll start noticing things are different. I’ll see to the matter. We’ve a few new toys in this world. Probably because Putin wasn’t assassinated here. He’s the one who started pushing the reformation and upgrades in the navy. So we phased out the S-300s, for example, and went to the S-400 and then the S-500. And for the ship killers, there’s a new VLS system now, the 3S-14 in eight missile modules. The Zirkon replaced the Onyx, and so that is what you will get.”

“Zirkon? I thought that was to be restricted to surface ships.”

“Oh? So they were working on it in your meridian as well. Interesting. Technically it was for the surface ships, the 3M22, a hypersonic missile, much faster than the Onyx/Yakhont—twice as fast at Mach 5, but they have a variant for submarines now. If Kirov were here, it would get that missile too, 80 of them! Only they’ve renamed the ship the Admiral Ushakov in this go around, and it has brothers. Here we have Admiral Lazarev, Admiral Nakhimov, and Pyotr Velikiy, all in that same class. They were going to build another and call it Kuznetsov, but it was cancelled in 1990. Funny thing… I remember a world where we took the best of each one of those four hounds, and rolled them into a shiny new ship we called Kirov. Yes, we gave it back its old name, just as it was in the 1980s. That’s the ship we have to worry about, the one that went missing—in another world.”

Gromyko put a hand to his head, as if rubbing away a headache.

“I know, I know,” said Kamenski. “It’s a lot to take in all at once like this. Then again, you’ve sailed the waters of the 1940s, so this should be a good deal easier to swallow. Speaking of that… You’re going back. I have another mission for you.”

“Another mission?”

“I’m afraid so. You see, that ship that did go missing, Kirov, did so in a most interesting way. I never knew how in the beginning, but I do now. It was that nice little control rod, number 25, I believe.”

“Yes,” said Gromyko. “It’s still aboard Kazan, but we can’t use it. The Chief Engineer says it’s been damaged.”

“Worn out,” said Kamenski. “Well, don’t worry about that. Now that I know where it was made, and how, it will be easy enough to replace. In fact, it has brothers too, other rods that came from the same manufacturing lot. I’ll get one for you, and then we can get started.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of this,” said Gromyko.

“Neither do I,” said Kamenski. “It will be very dangerous.”

“You mean to say you want me to go back to the 1940s?”

“If we can get there. I’m banking a lot on getting an assist from Mother Time. That’s where her problem is just now, and our problem as well. We created this mess, and now we have to clean it up.”

“But sir… What about the men? They were looking forward to seeing their families, going home. They thought that would never happen again, and then we finally break through and make it home, or at least that’s what they think now.”

“Yes I know. It will be very hard on them, but given the state of affairs here, ‘home’ may not be here for them very much longer. You don’t think we can just muddle about in the history without consequences, do you? Not at all! In this case, the muddling about has become quite a bit more. Do you realize that they’re all back there, fighting for one side or another in that damn war?”

“They couldn’t get home,” said Gromyko. “Fedorov said the control rod they were using wasn’t reliable. It moved them in both space and time the first time they used it, and he wasn’t going to take a risk that the ship might disappear and then end up in the Alps.”

“I see… so the second son wasn’t reliable, but the risk Fedorov points out pales before the consequences we now face at this end of things. That’s the first thing you must communicate to them when you get back there.”

“What? Back to that damn war again? What for?”

“To get them out of there, of course. What else? We certainly can’t leave them there, not the men, nor their ship.”

“You want to try and bring Kirov home again? “

“Anywhere but there. World War Two is a vast pane of broken glass. The cracks are everywhere. Push on one and things change—rather dramatically. They change there in the beginning, with the history starting to do things that never happened before. Those events have consequences. Do you realize the Germans have taken Moscow back there? Burned half the city, and little wonder why. Stalin is long dead and Russia is fragmented into three warring states, one of them led by a renegade ex-naval intelligence officer! You can bet I’m keeping a close eye on him here now, very discretely.”

“You mean Ivan Volkov? So I heard, but I was just a little busy in the Atlantic with the Germans, getting some payback.”

“Gneisenau? For Moscow? Mister Gromyko, we will have to do a damn sight better than that. Let me tell you what’s going on now—things I’ve been carrying up in this stogy old head of mine for some time. In the time line where Kirov now resides, the Germans took Moscow, and we just barely stopped them in the winter of 1941. Well, I know how the rest goes soon. We stopped them, but they aren’t done with us yet. They’re going to strike south now, in the summer offensive of 1942. They want Stalingrad, Volgograd back there, and they want to push right over the Don and Volga to shake hands with Ivan Volkov. He’s another problem, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do about him just yet beyond keeping him under close surveillance here. For now, however, we’ll start with the things we have control over—the men, the ship. We start with Kirov.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“Go back and get them out,” said Kamenski with a smile.

“Director, haven’t we tried that once already? Look what happened!”

“Yes, that’s a point well taken. Well, we still have to try, because if we don’t…” Kamenski stopped, set his pipe down, and rubbed his eyes. “If we don’t, Mister Gromyko, than this is all going to unravel, this entire present moment I’ve called home for so long. It all depends on things that happened in the 1940s. Don’t you see? Well, they aren’t happening—at least not as they were supposed to. Things are changing, and we’re responsible. Never mind about trying to stop the war that is still on our doorstep here. Now it’s about something much more. If we don’t get back there and put a stop to all this, then everything, and I mean everything, is going to come flying apart. How did that poet put it? Yes… things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming!”

He looked at Gromyko now, and in his eyes there was a profound sadness, and a vast silence of finality. “That’s what caused it, the second coming of that ship to 1941. It created a loop, and if that doesn’t resolve properly there, if anything should happen to displace that ship to a moment prior to the time of its first arrival, then we face down Paradox yet again. Do this once, and you court a good deal of trouble, just as we experienced it.. Do it twice… Desolation, Mister Gromyko, that is what we are facing now, complete and utter annihilation. The cold frost of infinity is out there, and it’s a savage end, a futile end to the whole damn world. And do you know why? The second coming, that’s why. Kirov went back, and now it’s gone back a second time. Understand? If that happens again, and again, and again… See what I mean? The changes are already starting to ripple forward in time. We don’t notice them yet, but I can tell. They may seem insignificant—different missiles for your submarine and all. That doesn’t seem all that earth shaking, but I assure you, it is only the beginning.”

“You mean if we don’t get them back here safely…”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The whole damn loop will spin out again, and each time it does, the changes become more and more catastrophic. Try getting a future like this one sorted out under those circumstances. Don’t you see? Normally it takes… time for the variations to ripple forward to the future. But soon the changes will become so pronounced that they will reach this time, even before events have concluded in the past. That’s Mother Time’s problem now, and it’s also our problem. We started it, and so we’ll simply have to finish it.”

“But wait a moment… Didn’t you say this was, well, a different world, a different meridian of time here. Is Kirov’s intervention in your history here? Could I read about it in a history book in your library?”

“Very astute,” said Kamenski. “The answer to your last question is no—there is no mention of any of those events in the history of this time line. But that hardly matters. You see, this isn’t the Prime Meridian. It’s just one of many possible alternative Meridians that could arise from events happening in the Prime Meridian. That’s where Kirov is now, but the Prime is badly warped, bent out of shape, contaminated by all those missiles, and yes, nuclear bombs as well. It will change things, Mister Gromyko, and rather dramatically. It will change the fate of each and every possible meridian arising from those events—including this one. Understand? Kirov sits on the trunk of the tree, this is just one of the branches. But if you cut through that trunk, they all go down together, don’t they. That’s what Kirov is doing—cutting through the Prime Meridian like a buzz saw. So we have to go back, get them out, and that failing….”

He gave Gromyko those sad empty eyes again.

“We have to kill them,” said the Captain, understanding the darker side of the mission Kamenski was handing him now. “Kill Kirov, the ship—there won’t be any magic tricks with a control rod this time. That’s the only way we can really be certain this loop you speak of could not repeat—kill the ship and crew. That’s why you want to load all those nice new missiles onto my boat.”

“Captain, as I said, you are a very astute man.”

Chapter 36

Gromyko had a glum look on his face. He was to be a hired assassin, and worse than that, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Do you know I fought right alongside Kirov with Volsky in the Med?”

“Volsky? He’s our one hope. Yes, the Admiral is a very reasonable man; Fedorov as well. They can make a good deal of difference, and so your first option would be to make a delivery.”

“What kind of delivery?”

“As I said, those control rods come in batches, and guess what, we still have a perfectly sound Rod-25 here. In this world, there never was a ship christened Kirov in 2020. We still have the four brothers, Ushakov, Lazarev, Nakhimov, and Pyotr Velikiy, though it looks like only two can walk these days. In this time line, the original Kirov had a reactor accident in 1990. Now it’s just a rusty pile of radioactive metal. Understand? So in this time line, Kirov never goes back. The ship in the past came from another meridian, one with no direct line of causality to this one, which is why we still remain a bit shielded from the consequences I spoke of earlier. In time, however, that will change. This meridian has become entangled.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just think of it as two or three threads of time getting all knotted up in a loom. If you don’t correct it, you get a real mess, and sooner or later, out come the scissors. The ship caused all this, and it’s tearing the history apart, knotting it all up, and time is trying to correct that and stitch it back together—into a new Prime Meridian. And I am one of her darning needles, Mister Gromyko. I don’t know why she does me the honor, but that seems to be the case. In this old head, I remember all the events of the other meridians entangled with that fate line, the line where Kirov first went back, and so I have what you might call perspective. I’m one of the blind men that was suddenly given the gift of sight, and now I can see the whole elephant, not just his leg or ear or tusk. So Mother Time is using me to try and sort out this mess so she can stitch these errant threads back into one tapestry again—one nice new Prime Meridian. Then that time line will replace all the others… All the others Mister Gromyko, including this one.”

“But…. I came from the same world Kirov came from. Why would my submarine appear here, in this world? Why would I be mixed up in your business?”

“Because that’s the way Time wanted it. She plays a nice little shell game, does she not? One minute you are here, the next minute you are somewhere else. You see, on this meridian, it wasn’t Kirov that vanished weeks ago in the Norwegian sea, it was your boat, Kazan.”

“Vanished? What happened to it?”

“We don’t know—then again, if I’m to believe your story, you’ve been back in the 1940s. That torpedo you fired gave Mother Time the opportunity to work a little sleight of hand. She brought you here, and for a very good reason, because I am here, a nice little know-it-all to help get you back where you are needed.”

“Me? Kazan? Then I have to fix this mess?”

“Something like that. You may get some help, and from most unexpected places, but yes, you have a very important part to play now.”

“But I’m not the man you want. Don’t you need the man and sub that went missing in this time line?”

“A good point, but apparently this is the way she wants to play it now—Mother Time has her reasons.”

“But why? Why me and not the other?”

“That’s a secret She still keeps. It may be that you and your boat are that very same submarine and crew, only you simply don’t have the memory of those events poured into your heads as yet. If you start getting hunches, strange snippets of recollection, odd dreams and things, then that will be a very strong clue. Now then… Ours is not to reason why, Captain. Ours is but to do or die.”

“How am I supposed to get back where Time needs me?”

“With Rod-25, of course. I’ve a nice new version just waiting to be tried out.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“What if we both come down with Ebola tomorrow? You ask a lot of questions, Mister Gromyko. Time will tell. We’ll simply put the rod in, run the procedure, and see what happens.”

“But you say there are other threads of time entangled with this one—all knotted up. How can you be sure I’ll get where I’m supposed to go? What if I end up in some other thread—the wrong thread?”

“That’s not up to me, but something tells me that you will get where your needed. Time will see to that. Ours is simply to understand the imperative before us and offer time your able services—and your remarkable submarine as well.”

Gromyko nodded, his eyes dark, a simmering understanding there now. “Scissors,” he said. “Kirov has to be cut out of this tapestry, and I’m to be the scissors.”

“Quite possibly. I know it’s a very difficult thing to ask of you, but considering the consequences if we do nothing….”

“I understand…. Then I’m to go kill Kirov?”

“Assuming you can’t get the ship back safely, that will have to be the case. But first, you might simply try persuading them to shift home again.”

“Persuading them? Well I could probably convince Volsky or Fedorov of that, but Karpov is another matter.”

“Yes, he’s a real problem. In fact, he’s been at the root of this entire mess. Let me see… the last I knew, he was in Siberia flying about in airships. Volsky and Fedorov still had the ship, but Karpov will want it back again. That will be very dangerous if it happens, because you are correct, he will not be easily persuaded to attempt to return to the future. But let’s hope for the best. Get back there, wherever Rod-25 sends you, then try to make contact with Volsky or Fedorov. I wish I could tell you more, but you see, in spite of my earlier assertion, I don’t know everything, only those events where I survived in the entangled meridians. Every man’s fate line ends somewhere. In the time line where you are most needed, I… disappeared, and well before the moment of Paradox, before the second coming of that ship. In fact, I believe the entire ship disappeared as well, though I’m speculating on that score. The problem is, I don’t really know what’s been going on there, nor do you. So you’ll have to get back there, get up to speed on events, and then find Volsky and Fedorov. Start with them, and with Dobrynin.”

“Dobrynin?”

“Yes, the Chief Engineer on Kirov. He’s quite a talent where the use of that control rod is concerned. Remember Fedorov’s plan? Remember that attempt we made to try and lurk beneath Kirov and use the control rod to pull both ships out?”

“Yes—but it didn’t work. That’s what caused the situation we’re facing now. We got separated. They shifted forward, but only to 1940. I went further, all the way home at first. Yes, I saw what’s in store for this world, the end of the war that you’re worried about out there. Vladivostok was a black hole—gone. Volsky had warned me about that possibility, and told me I might be the one chance to prevent it. We could see no point in trying to live out our lives there, not in the future we saw. So we tried again, and this time we shifted backwards again, to January 11, 1941 to be exact. We were to send a coded signal to see if Kirov was there, and they were, only we later learned they arrived much earlier, in June of 1940.”

“Yes, I know that part well enough. It’s all up here.” Kamenski pointed to his head. “So you were both exposed,” he said.

“We arranged to meet the ship off Cape Town. That was when we learned everything was wrong, Russia was divided, the history all a mess.”

“Volkov,” said Kamenski. “I’m afraid I’m to blame for that. I was the one who ordered him to look for Fedorov on the Trans-Siberian rail line. In truth, I was just trying to get rid of the rascal, but way leads on to way. I should always remember that. He caused a great deal of mischief when he got to Ilanskiy. It’s a long story. But I think I need to hear the rest of your tale. I’m well aware of what happened after you made your rendezvous with Kirov—the fighting in the Med, your little mission to try and close the Dardanelles, the move through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic, and that business with the German Navy. Then what?”

“Then I got quite a shock. We detected an odd sound.”

“A sound?”

“Yes, Chernov had it on his sonar. He’s very good, but this one really had him stumped.” He remembered it now, thinking back to that moment when Chernov first made the report.

“Sir, I picked up an odd signal on the ultralow sonic bands. We get message traffic down there, but this could not be anything coming from our world.”

“No,” said Gromyko. “I don’t suppose it could. Then what is it?”

“I’m not exactly certain yet, Captain. But it has structure. It’s an organized signal—a kind of pulsing wave. It isn’t random, and it isn’t geothermal or of seismic origin. I was just running recordings through some filters to double check that.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Sir? Oh, that won’t work. The signal is below the threshold of our hearing. You might sense it, on one level, but not with your ears—unless they are very good.”

“Very well, Chernov. Carry on, but don’t forget that the Germans might have U-boats out here too.”

“Don’t worry about that, sir. I’ll hear anything that comes within 50 nautical miles of us—even a diesel boat.”

And then he did hear something, only it wasn’t a German U-boat, but another submarine, a British sub this time, but it certainly wasn’t from the 1940s…

“Con…. Undersea contact. Possible submarine…”

“German U-boat?”

“Sir… This sounds like a British sub.”

“British? We were not informed they had anything out here.”

“Sir! This is crazy. It’s reading as Astute Class! We got lucky and recorded one boat after learning its deployment date. It’s the only profile we’ve ever managed to get, but my readings are above a 90% match for this signal.”

“Impossible.”

Gromyko could still hear himself saying that word. Yes, everything he had been about since Volsky first tapped him for an unscheduled mission had been that way—impossible, and now here he was facing that same impossibility yet again. Then a deeper instinct had asserted itself, reptilian, a reflex born of many hours beneath the sea. “All stop!” he had shouted. “Launch noisemaker sled number one. Then right rudder fifteen, down bubble fifteen! Rig for emergency silent running!”

“Astute class?” said Kamenski. “Let me see… Astute was the first, of course, then came Ambush, Artful, Audacious, Anson, and Agamemnon. Those boats are all in service here today. They rushed to get Agamemnon ready early, given the political situation we’re facing now. Boat seven won’t join the fleet for at least another year, the Ajax.”

“Well it must have been one of those first six then. How it got to the 1940s eludes me, but perhaps you could explain it.”

“That isn’t something I witnessed, but if it came from our time, as it had to, then it might have been displaced as a result of the war. The way things are going here, all it will take is a mistake or two so set off a nuke, And when one goes off, the others are sure to follow.”

“I’m afraid I may have made that same mistake,” said Gromyko. “It was pure instinct, pure reflex. One minute I’m stalking the German Navy, the next I’m under attack by a modern day Spearfish torpedo! You don’t sit down with tea to think something like that over. You just react, which is what I did. Given the situation we were facing, I reached for a hammer.”

“I see,” said Kamenski. “A nuclear hammer, I suppose, and here you are. Very interesting. Well Mister Gromyko, we’re going to use another tool in the tool box this time, Rod-25, all new, never used, and at the height of its powers. You’re going back. The last time you used it the poor thing had been through many shifts. It was old, just like I am, and not quite up to the job. Let’s hope we cannot say the same for me now, and that this decision to send you back is a correct one. But a great deal goes with you. Understand?”

“I suppose so,” said Gromyko.

“As soon as I complete the missile bay refit, your boat will be ready. I’ll put my own people on it—very reliable. The new VLS Modules will install seamlessly in your existing bays. You’re getting the Zircons, hypersonic cruise missiles, over five times the speed of sound. Use them if you must, but Captain….” Kamenski paused now, thinking, and then looking like he was trying to remember something. His eyes had a distant look, as though he were seeing something that had not yet come to pass, a vision, a warning, a whisper in his soul that led him to make one further admonition to Gromyko.

“This submarine,” he began. “This Astute Class submarine you say you encountered. Should you run across it again, I would do everything possible to let it be.” He wasn’t sure why he said that, but he could feel it, sense it as necessary, as imperative, though he did not know why.

“Leave it be?”

“Yes, no more nuclear torpedoes please. In fact, do everything in your power to avoid such an encounter. It may never happen, but if it does, use all your considerable skills to steer clear of that submarine.”

Sometime later, Gromyko was back on Kazan, and breaking the sad news to his crew that their trial was not yet over. “Yes, I know this will hurt. We’ve been longing for home, for our families, our loved ones, but so have our brothers aboard Kirov, yes? They’ve been out there a hell of a lot longer than we have. We tried to get them home again, but we failed the first time. We sailed with them, fought with them, and now we will not abandon them in their hour of need. We have new orders, and that is why we signed on, so we will carry them out. And then, perhaps one day, we will come home again, only to a world that we might yet be able to live in, and not the one we saw the first time we tried. Yes, we thought this might be that world, but not yet… not yet…”

He let that settle in, let the men take it all to heart, a good crew, a fighting crew, and there was a war waiting for them, one way or another. He did not have the heart at that time to tell them everything, that they may have to make that war with the very ship and crew they were now going back to find and rescue from the cold grip of time. That would come later…

“Chernov,” he said when the boat was finally rearmed and getting ready to get underway. “Did you ever refine your contact data on the British boat we tangled with?”

“You mean the Astute Class boat? Yes sir, I’ve worked on that a good deal, and I found some other data we had on file from a trawler we had listening one day. I can’t be sure sir, but the Intel that I’ve been able to gather would lead me to make a pretty good guess as to which boat it was.”

“Well?” Gromyko liked answers, not questions.

“The Ambush, sir. The second boat in the class. I’ll put my money on number two.”

“Ambush,” said Gromyko. “Good name for that one.” He smiled, and Chernov knew what he meant.

So here we go again, he thought. We’re a nice angry wolf, and with sharp new teeth… a wolf in sheep’s clothing.