Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) (13 page)

Karpov's eyes widened in shock
and surprise. He leaned back, clearly staggered by what this man had just said.
There was simply no way this could be possible. And yet, the more he looked at
the man the more he began to recognize similarities to the younger man he had
confronted aboard
Kirov
, the meddling intelligence officer, the man he
called Kapustin’s lap dog. Yes, Volkov had that same gray hair, dark aspect,
penetrating eyes, and now even his voice sounded familiar. But he was older, so
much older. Karpov was speechless. Could this, indeed, be the same man? How
could anyone else have known about the facts he had just disclosed?

“Yes,” said Volkov, “I remember
all too well now. It was that night before you sortied with the ship from
Vladivostok. You tried to explain away those missing men on your doctor’s
roster. I didn't buy it, of course, but somehow you managed to convince the
Inspector General. We went to director Kamenski with the matter, and it was he
who ordered me to pursue this man, Fedorov. We knew there was no way he could leave
the city by sea or air, as we were watching very closely, but just in case he
might've slipped away on the trans-Siberian rail, I was sent to look for him.”

“But that is impossible,” said
Karpov. “The man I knew was no more than thirty years old, and you are twice
that age.”

“Yes, I am. You have a very good
eye, Karpov. I am exactly twice as old as I was when you saw me last. How could
I be here now, you must wonder? How could I have aged like this? Believe me, I
wondered it myself for years. But in time I put my insanity aside and came to
realize that I
was
here. Then I got busy.”

“Volkov… Why it is you, but how
could this be?”

“Let me be more direct, Karpov. I
went looking for Fedorov on the Trans-Siberian rail in the year 2021, and I
thought I almost found him. Yes, where was the place? The little railway inn
just east of Kansk near the old naval munitions center. That's when the madness
started. I was searching the premises with my guards, and thought I discovered
a hidden stairway at the back of that inn. I found someone was hiding there,
and herded the rascal down to the dining hall. The next thing I know I
encountered men who seemed completely out of place.”

 “Out of place? What do you
mean?”

“I was downstairs in the lower
lobby, the dining room, with a suspicious character by the ear when I ran into
a group of men who held me at gunpoint and claimed they were members of the
NKVD! Imagine my surprise—no, imagine my anger—a pair of fools, or so I
believed. Well, I dealt with them easily enough. I thought they were just
stupid idiots playing with fire, but this fire burns. And yet… when I walked
out of that inn later, the rail yard looked strangely different, nothing like
the place I had come to. Beyond that, all of my guards had simply vanished. I
could not raise them on my jacket radio…”

He smiled, inwardly remembering
his indignant anger and surprise over what had happened, and realizing now that
there was no one on earth who could ever possibly have received his plaintive
radio call as he sought to reestablish communication with his men. That was
thirty-two years ago.

“Yes, the year was 1908, though
it took me some time to discover that. Imagine my surprise, Karpov. Imagine
opening a door, stepping outside, and finding you are in a completely different
world! Of course you immediately doubt your own sanity, and this I did, but in
time the weight of reality builds and builds and you cannot argue the evidence
of your own senses. It was some time before I could actually believe it. I was
indeed in the year 1908, and I have been here ever since.”

“1908?”

Karpov was completely amazed at
what he was hearing now. Ivan Volkov! This man was telling him he was indeed
the naval intelligence officer he had met aboard the ship. One part of his mind
was able to accept what he was saying on one level. Karpov had been to the year
1908 himself, equally bemused, bewildered, and yet ready to make the most of
the opportunity that madness presented him. He had been displaced in time,
lost, bouncing from one era to another for months on end. The ship had finally
moved again, after he was flicked from the weather bridge of
Kirov
like
a flea off the back of a rhino. Then time just seemed to discard him, as if it
had no place for him any longer. He was cast back into the sea like an unwanted
fish and ended up in 1938. Then things had finally settled down when he was
returned to Vladivostok on that old merchant ship. At least he had remained
here, stable in time, for the last two years.

“You are telling me that
you
moved in time?”

“Don't be so surprised, Karpov.
Your very presence here tells me you have done the same! Yes, how could you be
here, I say this to myself? But the evidence of one's eyes is very convincing,
is it not? You are Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the battlecruiser
Kirov
.
Do you deny it?” Volkov could see that Karpov remained speechless, bewildered,
and now somewhat ill at ease.

“No, you do not deny it. You
are
Karpov, the same man I spoke with. And given what happened to me, and your
presence here, I now begin to understand what happened to your ship.”

Chapter 12

“This
is astounding!”

“Yes, it truly is, and I have
lived with it for the last thirty-two years. Tell me, Karpov, how long have you
been here? As I said, you do not look like you have aged much since I remember
seeing you last, except for that scar you bear on your cheek.”

Now that the awful truth was
plain between them, Karpov's words spilled out, unrestrained.

“Thirty-two years? 1908 you say?
There is something about that year. I don't suppose you know what happened to
me after the Inspector General sent you on your way and I sailed out of
Vladivostok later to face the American Navy. No, I don't suppose you have any
idea at all what I have gone through. Face them we did, and we hurt them. Then
that Demon volcano erupted in the Kuriles and blew what was left of my fleet
into the past again. I say
again
because you are right, that is what
happened to
Kirov
in July during those live fire exercises in the
Norwegian Sea. All your suspicions were correct. You could clearly see that the
ship had been in combat, that something was amiss, but the pieces of the puzzle
did not add up. There was no way for you to see the big picture, and of course
no way you could possibly believe what we might have told you if we had
revealed the truth. But, as you say, the evidence of one's eyes becomes
indisputable after a while, and so I, too, came to believe that the impossible
was real.”

“Demon volcano? I don't
understand.”

“It's a very long story, Volkov.
Perhaps one day we will have more time to discuss it, but for now it seems we
share one thing that few in this world could comprehend or ever know. Yes,
Kirov
moved in
time
. It was an accident, and just as you say you found
yourself somewhere else in time, our ship did the same. We found ourselves in
the 1940s, fighting in this damnable war, struggling to find any way we could
to get home. At times that struggle was rather fierce, and I had to resort to
some extreme measures. But it seems all I did was worsen our situation. Then we
found ourselves displaced deeper in time, to the year 1908, as impossible as it
sounds for me to casually say such a thing. Then, unaccountably, the ship
vanished, but I was left behind… Somewhere else.”

Volkov was trying as best he
could to follow all of this, and only his own incredible experience gave him
any reference point to understand it or accept it. But now each of the two men
were coming to believe the impossibility that was before them, and Karpov’s
candor was evident.

“You say the ship moved to
the1940s? How was it I had no word of that? My intelligence apparatus is very
good, as you might suspect.”

“Because you weren’t here,
Volkov. None of this had happened. There was no Orenburg Federation or Free
Siberian State. The Japanese were not in Vladivostok, and Stalin ruled a united
Soviet Union with an iron hand.”

“Stalin? What about Kirov?”

“He was dead, just as he should
be now. Yes. We were in the past, but the history had not yet changed. It was
all our meddling while we were there—all my meddling to be fair about it. That
is what gave rise to all of this.” He waved his arm, encompassing the entirety
of the world beyond the confines of that meeting room.

“Your meddling? So the entire
ship did move in time as I suspected. How? Have you discovered that yet?”

“Yes, we thought we knew how and
why it was happening, but now I come to feel that ship was cursed, along with
every man aboard. Yes, we moved even as you did, Volkov. Then, in the midst of
combat, I was thrown clear of the ship when we were struck by enemy gunfire,
and when I awoke I was here… That was two years ago.”

“Two years ago? You mean to say
you appeared in the year 1938?”

“Correct, and I have been busy
too! I see you have made the most of your situation, so do not be surprised
that I made the most of mine. Cream rises to the top, does it not? You and I
seem to be common fated, Volkov. We are two men cut from the same cloth.”

“This is amazing!” Volkov put his
hands flat on the table now, as if he were testing the reality of this moment,
needing something common and tangible to get hold of and anchor him. On one
hand the presence of Karpov in the room relieved the terrible burden he had
carried all these years, that he was a derelict, and outcast in time, a lost
soul condemned to this wicked torture, exiled in the past. Here was another
confederate, someone he could finally unburden himself to, a man and face from
the old life he had come from. So he
wasn’t
insane, and this was not his
private hell any longer. There was another fallen angel before him now,
scarred, haggard in spite of his prim uniform and cap, and all those medals
pinned on his chest.

“So you have been busy,” he
pointed. “Old Man Kolchak seems to have taken a liking to you.”

“That is so. He knows strength
when he sees it.”

“How did this happen, Karpov?”

“We don’t really know.”

“You say it was an accident?”

“At first, yes, that is what we
believed. Then we discovered it may have had something to do with our reactors,
with a control rod we were using in a maintenance procedure. That’s what we
were doing at the Primorskiy Engineering Center that night, Volkov. We were
testing that damn control rod, and the man you were sent to look for, Fedorov,
he was behind it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once we suspected the control
rod may have been the cause of these time displacements, he thought he could
use it to go back and fetch that last missing man you uncovered in your
inspection—Orlov.”

“Orlov… Yes, I remember now. He
was listed as missing, the only officer on the ship casualty list.”

“Well he was missing—in 1942!
Yes, we were there—the whole damn ship and crew—and Orlov jumped ship. Fedorov
thought he would cause nothing but trouble if we left him there, and he hatched
this wild scheme to go and fetch him. War was at hand, and we could not take
the ship back again.
Kirov
was needed in the here and now, at least as
we once held it in 2021. So we installed the control rod in the Primorskiy test
reactor, and Fedorov went back. He was going to travel west on the Siberian
Rail if he made it back safely, and apparently he did. So I suppose Kamenski
and Kapustin had the right idea—just the wrong time. You were on his trail
alright, Volkov, but some eighty years late. Fedorov did make it back to 1942
with that control rod. What I can’t understand is how
you
slipped in
time.”

“Nor can I.”

“When did it happen again?”

“At that railway inn… Now I
remember the name. Yes, the place was called Ilanskiy. I was searching every
rail station and inn on the line.”

“And you had men with you up
until then?”

“Yes. Then I went downstairs with
a suspicious character I found hiding in a locked stairwell, and that is when
the madness started.”

“Madness?”

“I met men there, as I said. They
claimed to be NKVD.” Volkov related the entire story.

Karpov shook his head. “This is
truly astounding. Could it be that place has something to do with your
disappearance, your movement in time?”

“That had not occurred to me. It
took me months to believe I was even sane. Yet, now that you mention this, that
may be something worth investigating.”

Karpov paused, considering,
taking this all in and accepting it, swallowing the impossible yet again. “It
seems you and I have had a steady diet of madness and mayhem for some time,
Volkov. Now I understand why they call you the Prophet. Well that makes two of
us. You see how easy it was to use the knowledge we have and seize power here.
They tell me Stalin was killed in 1908—was that your doing?”

“No. I had nothing to do with
that. But I think Kirov killed him.”

“Sergei Kirov?”

“Who else? Stalin and Kirov were
going to be old friends one day—until 1934.”

“That explains why Kirov now
controls the Bolsheviks. He was far more popular than Stalin, which is probably
why he was assassinated.”

“Probably true…” Volkov took a
deep breath. “Now what about us, Karpov? What about this little war we’re
fighting here while the whole world is choosing sides and getting ready to go
crazy out there.”

“I see you have allied yourself
with Germany?”

“That seemed to be the thing to
do at the moment.”

“But you know what happens, Volkov.
Germany loses this damn war. The Axis powers are utterly defeated.”

“Perhaps. But who really beat the
Germans in that war? We did! Russia! It was mostly our burden. The British and
Americans stuck their thumb in the pie at the end, and wanted half of Germany
for their trouble. That won’t happen now, not with the whole country back
stabbing in this civil war.”

“Don’t sound so sanctimonious,”
said Karpov. “What are your troops doing here in Omsk, eh? Renaming airships
now, are you? Feeling comfortable here?”

Volkov smiled. “So you noticed.
Well, don’t get your dander up, Karpov. Now that I know who you are things will
change. As you say, we are cut from the same cloth, you and I. There is much we
can accomplish together.”

That sounded like a good opening
now, but Karpov knew he had to be cautious. “We have business here first,
Volkov.”

“Yes, and I see you’ve moved more
than this single battalion of the18th Siberians west.”

“You see much.”

“Don’t be surprised. I was an
intelligence officer, remember? Very well, Karpov, you came here to see if we
can settle matters, and I came here for the same reason. Let’s get on with it.”

“We can start with Omsk,” Karpov
said quickly. “Kolchak lived here for years. He has a sentimental yearning for
this place. Beyond that, we invested a great deal in getting the rail yards in
order here—before you showed up with your Grey Legion last winter.”

“Life has its surprises, does it
not?”

“Indeed, well Omsk must be
returned. We begin with that. If you cannot agree, then we have nothing further
to discuss.”

“I lost a lot of men last
December trying to take this place.”

“You’ll lose a good many more
trying to keep it.” Karpov folded his arms, adamant.

Volkov smiled. “I remember that
face, that look, and the way you backed down the Inspector General with that
load of
Lozh
about those missing men.”

“Yes, and I could see you were
quite upset about it, but Kapustin had a head on his shoulders.”

“I suppose that is true. I was
somewhat impulsive in my youth, but age and the careful winnowing of the soul
that power brings to a man have changed me Karpov. Oh, don’t mistake me, you
will find me as headstrong and determined as I always was, it’s just that age
brings a certain wisdom. Yes? Very well, you can have your city back if that is
what it will take to secure this border. Then we can turn our attention to more
important matters once we bury the hatchet here.”

“You will withdraw all your units
west of the river? Well west?”

“I’ll give the order tonight.
We’ll pull back to the old border, in fact, I’ll quarter my men in
Petropavlovsk and we can get away from these damn mosquitoes. Fair enough?”

“Done. We’ll reoccupy the city
five days after you withdraw to make sure there are no incidents with the men.
I’ll want a border checkpoint at Isilkul, and an outpost at Moskalenki, but
other than that we’ll leave the border zone alone.”

“And what about the Tartars?”

“You noticed those as well, did
you?” Now it was Karpov’s turn to smile. “Listen, Volkov. This war is only
getting started. You have an arm full of it right now on the Volga, and you
certainly don’t want us at your backside. For that matter, we’ll need troops in
the east to stop the damn Japanese. I came in through Vladivostok. You wouldn’t
recognize the place if you saw it now. They have warships in the harbor ten
deep—troops all over the region. And you know they’ve moved into Mongolia as
well.”

“They are biting off more than
they can chew.”

“Of course. You and I both know
where their real war effort will be directed soon, and how that turns out once
the Americans get involved.”

“I suppose we do.”

“Yes, and so if I’m to restore
what we’ve lost in the Pacific, first you and I have to come to an agreement.
Let me be blunt. I can put half a million Siberian and Tartar cavalry in the
field within six months. If I were to move west now in force the Tartars would
rally to my banners by the tens of thousands from here to the Urals. Those are
fast moving troops, and if we combine our airship fleets we can move thirty-six
battalions, that’s three full divisions of regular infantry, and all in one
lift, and Sergei Kirov has nothing that can stop us. With our airships and the
cavalry I command we can move like the wind. I can swing up through Perm and
secure your entire northern flank, or set it on fire and raise hell for you—the
choice is yours.”

“Half a million? Yes, I suppose
you could. But it’s 1100 kilometers from here to Perm. That’s a long way to go
on horseback, and over very rugged terrain.”

“My horsemen live there. They
know that country like the back of their hands. They’ll get there, and I’ll
organized them when they do. Believe me, we will give the Bolsheviks fits. I
can take Perm, and secure the Kama river line all the way to Kazan. Then we
have the Urals, the resources, and when Hitler turns his panzers east Kirov
will have nowhere to run when the Germans drive on Moscow.”

“You dream big, Karpov.”

“Of course I do. I know you think
you will live forever, Volkov, but you won’t. Someone is going to have to take
over when you go, and I’m your man. Kolchak won’t be around much longer either.
You are not yet old, however. I can see that in spite of your age. With what we
know now, the two of us can shape the course of events for the next twenty
years. Then you can retire and leave the work to me.”

Kolchak gave him a narrow eyed
grin. Then he did something unexpected, though it did not produce the reaction
in Karpov that he thought it might. He reached into his inner coat pocket and
pulled out a gun, aiming it right at Karpov’s chest.

“So you think you will inherit
everything I have given half my life to build here, eh? I could put a bullet in
your heart right now, order my airships to blow those overinflated balloons of
yours out of the sky, and have that battalion you brought with you for
breakfast!”

Karpov didn’t move a muscle. He
just smiled. “Look under the table, Volkov. Before you can move a finger to
release the safety on that pistol I could blow your balls off.”

At this Volkov laughed, releasing
the tension, and he set his pistol squarely on the table now. Karpov drew his
hand up from beneath the table and he, too, was holding a pistol, which he set
right beside Volkov’s.

“I think we may have reached an
understanding,” said Volkov. “And now I think we should put our pistols away
and drink on it. I have some very good Vodka on ice in the next room.”

“Good, Volkov. Very good. Yes, I
will drink with you now, and we have much to discuss. Oh… One other thing.
Rename that damn airship, and have it done before I leave here today.”

At this Volkov laughed, reaching
in his pocket again. But this time he pulled out a pair of good cigars.