Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (24 page)

But
the ship… that damnable battlecruiser. At the moment the Germans have no idea
what they are dealing with. Yes, they’ve seen the missiles, and felt them as
well. Perhaps this will spur them to get busy with their own missile
development as I have been urging. Thank God they built those naval service
jackets to last. I’m amazed that mine lasted as long as it did, and all those
long hours extracting data, having things transcribed into my archive, will
come in very handy in the days ahead.

I
can help the Germans along with their own rocket technology. Is Volsky doing
the same thing for the British? And what about the warheads? That ship is
certain to have several operational nukes in the magazines. They haven’t used
any yet, not even to prevent the fall of Gibraltar, which was quite a surprise
to me. Then again, they know this is going to be a long struggle, and perhaps
they are sitting on those eggs for use later in the war.

My
own project is taking more time than I had hoped. We have the materials, but
those bumbling idiots in the research labs haven’t been able to enrich enough
fuel yet. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Look how long it took the Iranians to
enrich the fuel for their first bombs, and that was in modern times. That said,
it will be a few more years before I have a working bomb for testing. If the
war goes as I foresee it, the bomb may not even be necessary. It remains to be
seen how much fight Soviet Russia will have in it after I eliminate the
Siberians.

Certainly
once Operation Barbarossa begins, the clock will be ticking for Sergei Kirov.
Kymchek tells me the Germans have transferred Manstein to the southern front
early. That is a most capable general. I have no doubt that he will push into
the Crimea within thirty days, and once that objective is secured, Kirov’s
Black Sea Fleet will be bottled up in the Sea of Azov, and useless to him.
After that, I will see that the Germans drive on Rostov as soon as possible,
and that will settle the matter.

So
it is only a matter of time now before this little squabble in the Caucasus
ends favorably for me. Then I do my part and the oil flows west on any rail
lines the Germans manage to clear and keep operational—and by sea as well. The accord
recently concluded with Turkey was a major plum! It will mean I will also have
access to their rail system. The question remains as to where my armies would
be best positioned for the fighting in 1942.

The
British have had quite a few surprises this year. Losing Gibraltar, Malta and
now Cyprus was quite a blow to their war effort in the Med. Now they think to
redress the matter by securing Syria and Iraq, but with German troops able to
move by rail, that is going to be much more difficult than they expect.

These
reports of a new British tank were most disturbing. Rommel’s setback was not
foreseen at all. Kymchek hasn’t been able to get me any hard intelligence on
those tanks yet. All we have is hearsay from the Germans. Who is calling the
shots for the other side? Did they produce plans for an new armored vehicle?
How could the British have produced it so quickly, even if they did have good
plans? Was Volsky behind this development, or that little gutter snipe
navigator of his? Yes, most likely this Fedorov I was after all those years
ago—all those years hence. Odd to think of it that way. I spent my youth in
days I will never see now, in the far off future.

He
settled into his chair, needing coffee, for there were still a great many
things to plan and consider.

Chapter 24

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

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

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

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

“You
want to use cruise missiles?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aye
sir.”

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We?
Who are you speaking of.”

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

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

“Summer?
It’s March here, Elena.”

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

“Very
strange,” said MacRae.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You
found that out? How?”

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

“And
who were they?”

“We
aren’t sure.”

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

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

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

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

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

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