Men of War (2013) (14 page)

Part IV

Storm
Clouds

“What
if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if
once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again
ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?”

 
―
Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

Chapter 10

Doctor
Zolkin was the first senior officer on the scene, arriving behind the two
Seamen and a 2nd Class Petty Officer. There were a cluster of three or four
other sailors outside the hatch, and he quickly shooed them away. Peering into
the cabin, he saw the men ready to lift another man from the cot, and stepped
quickly inside, closing the hatch behind him.

“Leave
him there, please,” he said, stepping to the side of the cot and seeing the
man’s limp body. One look told him he was not merely asleep or unconscious. He
opened an eyelid, saw the dark weal and purple bruise marks on the man’s neck,
checked for a pulse there and noted the stain on his pants in the groin area.
It was Voloshin, the man who had come to him a few weeks earlier with nightmare
visions of a Japanese plane flying right through him. Zolkin had prescribed a
good meal and bed rest, with a couple of aspirin infused with a mild
tranquilizer, and sent the man to this very room on the officer’s deck for some
peace and quiet. That was weeks ago, but Voloshin had come back. An orderly had
been cleaning the empty rooms and found it difficult to enter here. Forcing the
hatch open he saw Voloshin hanging from a high welded metal hook on the wall.
He was stone cold dead.

“When
did you find him?”

“Just
ten minutes ago, sir. He was there.” The Petty officer pointed to the hook, and
Zolkin nodded gravely.

“Very
well, fetch a stretcher and take him down to the sick bay. I’ll have to do an
autopsy.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“And
I think it would be best if you do not dwell on this in the ranks,” the Doctor
admonished. “We have all had a hard ride of late, and the men are worn out.”

“It
wasn’t only that, sir.”

“Oh?”

“Voloshin
got some bad news today.”

“What
news?”

“His
wife, sir. He called home, but no one answered. The second time there was
another man on the phone. He asked for her, but the man said there was no one
by that name there.”

“I
see…” Zolkin picked up his emergency medical kit. “And you think Voloshin
believed his wife was seeing this other man?”

The
two
matros
seamen shifted uncomfortably now
and the other man continued. “It’s not that, sir. Voloshin moved his family
here to Vladivostok two weeks before we made our farewell voyage from
Severomorsk. He had a small apartment right here in Vladivostok—in the
Leninskiy
District. We went there with him yesterday but…”

“But
what?”

“There
was no apartment there, Doctor. He had building number twenty, but the numbers
were all wrong: nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-three.”

“You
were on the right side of the street?”

“Of
course, sir. But there were no even numbers, not anywhere on the street. It was
very strange, sir. We looked up the address for his phone number, and it was
way over on the other side of town, number 20
Partisanskiy
Prospekt
. But his apartment building was on
Nevel’skogo
Street. He was very upset about it, sir.”

“I
can imagine he was.”

Zolkin
wanted to think that the men had simply gone to the wrong address. After all,
Voloshin had just moved to a new town thousands of miles from the cold north of
Severomorsk. It may have been easy to become confused in the unfamiliar streets
and neighborhoods of the city here. Yet, the more he thought about it the more
he realized that the man would not likely forget the place of his new home, and
the new life he hoped to start here.

“Very
well, gentlemen. I’ll look into this. See that he is taken to sick bay at
once.” He went to the linen cabinet and took out a clean sheet, covering
Voloshin’s
body with an air of solemnity. He was reaching
for his medical bag again when someone stepped through the hatch, a tall
officer in a gray overcoat with silver buttons and Captain’s stripes on his
cuff. The man took a quick look at the scene and fixed his attention on the
Doctor, knowing he would be the senior man present.

“What
happened here?”

Zolkin
gave him a quick glance. He did not know the man and so he stood formally and
introduced himself. “Doctor Dmitri Zolkin, Ship’s Physician.”

“This
man is ill?”

“I’m
sorry, sir, but who might I be speaking to?”

The
other man seemed annoyed, his eyes narrowed and a haughty air about him.
“Volkov,” he said dryly. “
Captain
Volkov, Naval Intelligence.”

“Yes,
well it’s Captain Zolkin here as well.” The Doctor smiled, extending a hand,
which Volkov shook without much warmth. “There,” Zolkin continued. “Now that
the Captains have tipped their hats, I think we would be more comfortable
discussing this in my office. These men will have some work to do. Would you
walk with me, Captain Volkov?” He gestured to the open door, and Volkov
frowned, then stepped outside.

“You
haven’t answered my question, Doctor,” he said as they started down the
corridor.

“Was
the man ill? No, Captain. The man was quite dead.”

“Dead?”

“Unfortunately
so. From my initial observations it appears to be a suicide, but of course I
will complete a formal autopsy and make a full report.”

“Were
those other men involved?”

“No,
no. They were just orderlies assigned to clean the officer’s quarters. They
found him here.”

“This
man was an officer?”

“In
fact, he was not. That was Able Seaman Voloshin. Apparently he had some family
problems—bad news.”

“What
was he doing here?”

“It
will most likely be a long story, Captain.”

“I
see…Well I will want the full report, Doctor.”

“
You
will want the report? Are you a new command level officer assigned to the ship,
Mister Volkov?”

“I
told you. I am with Naval Intelligence, Inspectorate Division.”

“Well
I am not in the habit of filing my medical briefs with the Naval Inspectorate.
I thought you people were mostly concerned with ship’s systems and weapons
inventories.”

“I’m
afraid we concern ourselves with a great deal more, Doctor, though I can’t say
that is a matter I need to discuss with you. Simply file your brief in the
medical log, and of course I will want a complete copy of all those files as
well.”

Zolkin
raised his eyebrows. “I will hate to inconvenience you, Captain, but the logs
were damaged during the accident. I’m not sure if you heard. Yes, nothing seemed
to function properly and the technicians haven’t had time to get round to my
office yet with a new computer. I’ve kept a few manual records, of course, for
all prescriptions and drugs issued from the inventory. But there have been no
formal computer logs, beyond documenting those men lost in the accident and
other injuries sustained by the crew.”

They
paused at a ladder, and it was clear that Volkov was not happy. “No medical
logs?” he said, a note of recrimination in his voice. “This is most irregular,
Doctor. In fact I may go so far as to say it was a dereliction of duty.”

“I
can assure you, Captain, where the notion of duty entered my mind it was
entirely to be of service to the men lined up outside my sick bay door. Of
course I made basic notations in my medical journal, which I would be happy to
release to the inspectorate upon approval by a ranking command level officer.”

“I
am such an officer, Doctor. Don’t trouble yourself by going to the Admiral.”

“You
are now in the command structure for this ship? When did you transfer in,
Volkov?”

“Don’t
be stupid. I haven’t transferred in. I’m here to complete a thorough
investigation on this matter, and I will expect the full cooperation of every
man aboard, particularly from the officers.”

“Oh,
I will be very happy to satisfy you, Captain, but around here we do things by
the book. I’ll need approval from ether Captain Karpov or the Admiral. After
that you can spend all the time you wish trying to interpret my miserable
writing scrawl. But then again, Physicians are notorious for that, yes?”

Zolkin
smiled, gesturing to the ladder well. “After you, sir.”

Volkov
clenched his jaw, then relented and started down the ladder, flashing an angry
glance at Zolkin as he went.

* * *

Admiral
Volsky had finished his main meeting with Pacific Fleet Commander Boris
Abramov, clearing the way for his takeover of that position. Now the two men
sat in a well appointed office at the Fleet Headquarters building at Fokino, a
small closed town above a small inlet some twenty-five miles southeast of the
main harbor at Vladivostok. Volsky set down his teacup, staring out over the
blue rooftops of the town to the small islands in the bay and wondering if he
would ever get back to a place like Tahiti before he died.

“So
that is the situation, Leonid,” said Abramov. “One old
Slava
class
cruiser, five rusting destroyers, a few frigates, ten submarines with so many
leaks we issue the men chewing gum so they can have something handy to plug
them when needed. Thank God they sent us
Kuznetsov
, and now your ship.
The fleet is a bit of a mess, particularly with the present situation down
south in the Sea of Japan.”

“Where
is
Kuznetsov?”

“Up
north at the moment, running drills with her Mig-29F Squadron. We’d still be flying
the older SU-33s if India hadn’t placed that order in 2012. That gave us enough
economy of scale to roll out thirty-six
Migs
for
Kuznetsov
.
It must be getting lonely up in Severomorsk with
Kirov
and our only
fleet carrier here now.”

“They
just commissioned the
Leonid Brezhnev.
He’ll stand in for us there. And
they get most of the new
Orlan
Class ships. But what’s this business
with Japan? We must talk about that now. We’ve been incommunicado for the last five
or six weeks and missed out on all the news.”

“That
was quite a hat trick,” Admiral. “If not for the fact that NATO staff are
getting flayed alive for failing to detect your transit to the Pacific I think
you
would be the one being skinned. Suchkov was very upset. How did you manage it?”

“Suchkov
is so old he can’t even think straight any longer,” said Volsky with a laugh.
“He has nothing better to do than huff and puff before they put him in dry dock
for good. We are the navy now, my friend. You, me and
Tamilov
in the Black Sea. God only knows who they will appoint to take my place up
north. Suchkov can sit in Moscow and write his memoirs now.”

“You
and
Tamilov
can run things, Leonid. I’m afraid I am
not well—heart problems, and the doctors want to do some surgery.”

“You’ll
pull through,” Volsky encouraged, but he could see that Abramov was also on his
last voyage, tired, pale and with that rheumy eyed look that spoke of too much
time on the seas of life.

“As
for how we slipped by, that is our little secret. I have some very good people
aboard
Kirov
. We had a lot of trouble with the electronics when
Orel
blew up, but we managed to get a few things running from ship’s stores. I put
my best people on it, and we used a new ECM package that we unfortunately lost
in that last missile misfire incident I told you about earlier. But while we
had it up and running it was enough to get us through the northern route
undetected. That and some very bad weather and thick cloud cover.”

“Amazing.
I would have thought they would have had three submarines on you the moment you
deployed.”

“Perhaps
they did, Boris, but that was a very large detonation when
Orel
went up.
Who knows what it did to their electronics? I knew that the whole place was
going to be crawling with planes, ships and helicopters within twenty-four
hours. We made a cursory investigation, found nothing—not even
Slava
—and
so I wanted to get my ship as far from that area as possible. NATO spent the
next three days searching south of Jan Mayen, yes? I went northwest, and that’s
the last thing they might have expected.”

“I
still can hardly believe it. You lost contact with
Slava
too?”

“Must
have been our faulty equipment.”

“Radar,
Sonar, Radio?”

“Have
you ever tried to listen to the deep ocean after an underwater nuclear
explosion?”

“It
was nuclear?”

“We
believed as much, and given the threat of radiation I wanted to get my ship to
safer climes. I assumed
Slava
would do the  same and return home.
Those were her orders, mine were to transit to the Pacific, and since I was the
one who issued those orders, I decided to follow them.” Volsky smiled.

“They
didn’t even find you with satellites, at least not that we know of.”

“Good
point, Admiral. We don’t know what they really knew about it. For all we know
they could have been watching me from up there the whole time and now they are
making this media fuss to simply cover their tracks. In any case, I am here,
the ship is here, and once he’s been patched up,
Kirov
will put some
backbone into the Pacific Fleet again.”