Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) (29 page)

Feeling
very dejected, and harried by a nagging sense of guilt, he reached for another
book, a study of the French naval buildup between the wars. Then his eye fell
on a plain manila envelope, and he opened it to see what the Russians had
tucked inside. It was marked, “Free Siberian State,” and Fedorov found that it
contained a few folded newspapers, some very recent by the dates. He found
himself drawn to the headlines and photos, turning the page on one issue and
then nearly choking on a sip of tea as he did so.

Another
man would have cursed, or invoked the deity, but this time Fedorov just stared
in shocked silence, slowly lowering his teacup, his hand noticeably shaky as he
did so. A sense of rising apprehension gathered like a sickness in his belly
and rose like bitter bile in his throat. His impulse was to sound battle
stations, raise the alarm! There, standing on an airfield tarmac beneath a
massive tethered zeppelin, was a man in a uniform that Fedorov clearly
recognized, right down to the pips on his collar.

Fedorov
leaned forward, his pulse racing, a rising sense of distress in him now that
bordered on panic. He squinted at the photograph, the man’s face, his stance,
the cut of his shoulders. His eyes scanned and rescanned the photo caption, as
if he was simply unwilling to believe or admit what he was reading there. “Air
Commandant Karpov inspects the fleet flagship
Irkutsk
as operations
begin on the Samara Front.”

Air
Commandant Karpov…
It
was
him!

Fedorov
stood up, stiff and alert, looking about him as if to seek help. He stared at
the newspaper again, noting the date as April 10, 1940. How? How?
How
could this be? Were his eyes deceiving him? Was he seeing something here born
of his own fear and recrimination? Could this be nothing more than a
coincidence, another man, a mistaken appearance?

He sat
down again, his hands shaking as he fished out all the other newspapers in the
large envelope. Then he began to go through them, page by page, his eyes dark
with misgiving. He soon found that he was not imagining anything at all. There
were three other articles referencing the man, and one giving his full name:
Admiral Vladimir Karpov, First Air Commandant of the Siberian Aero Corps.

Vladimir
Karpov…

He was
up, quickly gathering and folding all the newspapers again, and tucking them
under his arm. His footfalls were quick and heavy on the deck, his breath fast
as he went. Where was the Admiral? He found himself almost running now, racing
to the officer’s deck and down the long hallway to the Admiral’s cabin.
Resisting the urge to simply barge in with the urgency of his news, he stopped,
took a deep breath, and then knocked on the door.

There
was movement from within, then the door slowly opened and he saw a red-eyed
Volsky peering at him, a look of surprise on his face.

“Excuse
me, Admiral,” Fedorov gasped, still breathless. “Something very important has
come up.”

“Another
contact? Is the ship in danger?”

Is the
ship in danger, thought Fedorov wildly? My god, the whole damn world was in
danger now! “No sir, but I have found something in the research that you must
see at once.”

Volsky
looked a bit disheveled and weary, but he opened the door, beckoning for
Fedorov to enter. The young Captain could not help but notice the small glass
of Vodka on the Admiral’s desk near the photo of his wife, the letters there.

The
Admiral gestured to the other chair by the wall, and shuffled to his desk,
reaching to put away the letters. “You will forgive an old man a moment of sentiment,
Fedorov,” he said quietly. “I was just reading the last letter I had received
from my wife before things started going crazy at Vladivostok. And I suppose I
was drowning my sorrows in a glass of good Vodka. Don’t worry, I am not one to
overindulge, but we all have places to hide and heal, do we not?”

“Of
course, sir. Please forgive me for barging in like this. I can come another
time—”

“No,
no, please be seated. I can see by the redness in your cheeks that you have run
all the way here, and you can barely catch your breath. Very well. Let me hear
what you have found. Sit please. Take a moment if you must.” The Admiral eyed
the newspapers under Fedorov’s arm, a squall of trepidation on his face now,
yet curious.

Fedorov
composed himself, looking at the photo of Karpov beneath the looming hulk of
the airship, seeming a doppelganger, a dark shadow of the man he was, something
born again of trouble and the whirlwind of chaos.

“
Sir,” he began haltingly. “Have a look at this!”

He
handed the Admiral the paper.

Chapter 26

Doctor
Zolkin was surprised to see them when Volsky and Fedorov
arrived at the sick bay hatch. Shocked by what they had discovered, the two men
immediately sought out Director Kamenski, learning that he was in for a medical
check.

“More
headaches?” said Zolkin as they entered. But Zolkin new the Admiral well enough
to know that something was very wrong. He had been listening to Kamenski’s
heart, satisfied with what he was hearing. Now he set his stethoscope aside and
folded his arms, waiting.

“Misery
loves company,” said Kamenski. “Did you have a restless sleep as well,
Admiral?”

“I hope
nothing is wrong, Director.” Volsky glanced from Kamenski to Zolkin as he
spoke, civility trumping the news they carried in that bundle of newspapers
under Fedorov’s arm. Here they were, huddling in the sick bay again with
Zolkin, the place they had discussed the business of the ship so many times,
and Karpov more than once.

“He’s
fit and likely to live another hundred years,” said Zolkin with a smile.
“Nothing to worry about beyond a bit of indigestion.”

“Glad
to hear some good news for a change,” said Volsky, looking sheepishly at
Fedorov. The two men sat down near Zolkin’s desk, and then Volsky simply looked
at Fedorov.

“Out
with it, Fedorov. Tell them.”

Fedorov
cleared his throat, looking from one man to the next. Just say it, he thought,
and then he spoke, certain of what he was now about to assert.

“I
believe Captain Karpov is alive.”

 “What
is that? Alive?” Zolkin’s hand strayed unconsciously to his arm where he had
only recently recovered from the gunshot wound during that wild moment on the
bridge.

Fedorov
just handed him the newspaper, and gave another to Kamenski, watching them take
in the information with growing surprise.

“Excuse
me, gentlemen,” said Zolkin, “but now you have gone and made the Doctor ill. If
Kamenski thought he had trouble with his dinner, my indigestion will be worse.
How could this be?”

“Your
guess is as good as mine, Doctor.”

“We
think Karpov must have been thrown clear of the weather bridge. Perhaps he even
jumped,” said Volsky, putting forward the only logical explanation he and
Fedorov could come up with.

“Jumped?”

“Yes,”
said Fedorov. “If he fell into the sea just as we shifted, he would probably
have been pulled forward in time with us as well, just as we pulled that
trawler forward with us when the
Anatoly Alexandrov
shifted back from
the Caspian. That was how we eventually reeled in Orlov.”

“But look
at the date on this article, Mister Fedorov,” Kamenski pointed with his finger
as he spoke. “It reads May of 1940.”

“This
one reads April of that same year,” said Zolkin, trading newspapers with the
Director.

“Yes,
well that is before we appeared, correct?” Kamenski pointed out the obvious key
fact. “It was June of 1940 according to our calculations.”

“Correct,
sir,” said Fedorov, a question in his eyes as if he were hoping the Director
would solve the puzzle for him.

Kamenski
gave him a wan smile. “Big fish, little fish,” he said calmly. “The ship moved,
and it obviously pulled this man along in its wake. But the little fish get
thrown away, yes? We made it all the way to 1940. He was thrown out earlier. For
him to be standing in these photos—in Siberia—and in the spring of 1940… Well
that means he would have had to appear some time before that. It would take
time for him to get there, yes?”

“That
is what I thought,” said Fedorov. “From what I can make out in those photos, he
does not seem to have aged much. I was also thinking he may have fallen out of
the shift we made from 1908 and arrived some time before us. Who knows why? He
might have arrived years before. That would account for his present position as
these articles indicate.”

“My,
my,” said Zolkin. “So he’s given himself a promotion now. Admiral Karpov, is
it? First Commandant of the Siberian Aero Corps?”

The men
just looked at each other, each one hoping the other would know what to do
next. Then Volsky raised the obvious question. “Gentlemen,” he began. “Those
articles make it obvious that Karpov has survived, and he has deviously been
able to get himself mixed up with Kolchak in the Free Siberian State.”

“They
consolidated power in the far east,” said Fedorov.

“Kolchak?”
said Zolkin. “But he should have died in the 1920s?”

“A lot
of things should have happened that did not happen,” said Volsky. “Now I fear
that the presence of this man in a position of power there is going to change
quite a bit more.”

“Indeed,”
said Kamenski. “It is clear that events we are witnessing now clearly derive
from the death of Stalin, and from the foolish prank I thought to play on
Volkov. I wanted to get him out of our hair, so I sent him east to look for
you, Mister Fedorov.”

“That was
all my fault,” said Fedorov, looking at the floor as he spoke. “I caused all of
this.”

“Now,
now,” Volsky tried to console him.

“No
sir. It was all my doing.” Fedorov unburdened his guilt, confessing all that
had so bedeviled him of late, but Kamenski gave him a forgiving smile.

“Listen
now, Mister Fedorov. You want to count the dominoes and you just pick out the
ones that
you
have tipped over. What you must realize is that the row
goes on and on. You think your insistence on finding Orlov caused the fall, but
this man used his parachute to jump to safety, did he not? He had a service
jacket on just like the one this Karpov is wearing in that photograph. Why did
he not call for help?”

“He
thought we were trying to kill him,” said Fedorov, still sullen. “A logical
assumption after we fired five missiles.”

“Perhaps
he did, but he still had the choice as to what he should do—to call and clear
the matter up, or to slip away. Something tells me your Mister Orlov didn’t really
want us to find him, and it was not because he thought we were trying to kill
him. Something tells me he wanted to get away on his own. So you see, there are
just too many variables at play here. Remember, it was Orlov who wrote that
journal note that you discovered. Without that you would have never launched
your mission to rescue him.”

“I
suppose Orlov would have had good reason to jump ship,” said Volsky.

“He
might have,” said Kamenski. “But not unless this Karpov here had hatched his
little plot to take the ship. So you see, Fedorov, you want all the blame to
begin with you, but nothing you did would have ever occurred if not for
Karpov’s little rebellion, or Orlov’s strange letter. He is more than a little
fish, I think. Karpov is a free radical, a wildcard, an unaccountable force in
all of this history we’ve been writing and re-writing. Everything that has
happened, except perhaps that first explosion on the
Orel
, can be laid
at Karpov’s feet, so do not be greedy in taking all this on yourself, Fedorov.
You were just reacting to events he had already set in motion.”

“But if
I had not spoken to Mironov—to Sergie Kirov—then Stalin might have lived and
the nation would not be fragmented.”

“Don’t
think you killed Joseph Stalin now, Fedorov,” Kamenski chided. “Sergie Kirov
has already confessed to that crime, or so I was told. Correct Admiral?”

“That
is what he told us.”

“So you
see, Fedorov, Kirov is not a puppet. Your whisper in his ear decided nothing.
He used his own free will to do what he did. He made choices too, another free
radical in the stew.”

“But if
I had not warned him as I did, he might have died as in our history.”

“If,
maybe, perhaps.” Kamenski held up his hands. “Nothing is certain, Fedorov. Things
happen, and all this history we now find ourselves reading about in those books
and newspapers is the result of millions of tiny choices and actions taken by
people all over the world. Yes, we single out a few and claim they are the ones
that matter, but I have not found that to be the case. We want certainty. We
make big plans and hope things will all turn out well, but life seldom
cooperates. Just when you think you have it all tied off and ready to slip into
a drawer, the story continues. It resists resolution. It evolves to something
new.”