Men of War (2013) (39 page)

“Well,
gentlemen, I expect you have seen the theatrics at the United Nations.
Astounding to think the Chinese would make such a display.”

“The
talk is that there has been a split between the civilian leadership and the
military, sir,” said Karpov.

“Perhaps,”
said Volsky. “The Chinese ambassador seemed as surprised as everyone else when
that general stormed in and took the microphone. So now they are pouring over
their maps over there, and pointing fingers at islands and rattling off numbers
and the names of men and ships they will send there to fight. There is nothing
more dangerous than an Admiral or General with a compass and a map. Sadly, that
applies equally to me at this moment. I called you here because Moscow wants us
to mobilize the fleet and make a strong show of force in accordance with our
‘obligations’ under the SinoPac treaty.” He used his fingers to put quotation
marks around the word “obligations,” a cynical look on his face. “Of course the
Americans are also dipping that same old tea bag into their hot water, and so
the table will soon be set for some very uncomfortable company in these
waters.”

“It
appears so, sir,” said Fedorov. “I’ve been watching for the clear warning signs
we were privileged to learn about from that Australian newspaper. We’ve already
avoided one tripwire when we spared the
Key West,
and I suppose that was
mutual, as they could have put torpedoes into us long before Tasarov’s
equipment came back on-line and we knew the sub was even there. Yet it looks
like that may have only bought us a brief respite. The other warning signs are
shaping up in the news now like a bad storm on the horizon.”

“Quite
so,” said Volsky. “We received word this morning that the Chinese are lighting
the fires under that old carrier they bought some years ago. The
Liaoning
is blooming on infrared and getting ready to put out to sea from Dialan. We’ve
seen deliveries of additional J-15 fighters on satellite, and their new J-20s.
They’re putting together a strong flotilla this time. This was the next major
incident mentioned in that newspaper, was it not?”

“Yes,
sir,” said Fedorov. “Yet the spin on that report in the article we found seemed
to indicate that the American submarine that sunk the
Liaoning
did so in
reprisal for the loss of the
Key West
. We’ve already re-written that
part of the story.”

“Perhaps,
but I tend to think this attack on
Liaoning
was also meant to send a
strong message to the Chinese not to attempt an invasion of Taiwan.”

“Yes,
sir, but it would be an alarming way to do so. A telephone would serve just as
well, or a microphone at the UN.”

“Very
true,” Volsky smiled. “Perhaps the Americans will act intelligently in this
situation and this attack will not occur. But remember Dostoyevsky: it takes
something more than intelligence to act intelligently. I wonder if the
Americans have that missing factor in this situation. They’ve had their way on
the world stage since the end of World War Two. They won’t like the Chinese
starting to throw their weight around, and may act stupidly.”

 “Well
it seems we may have only bought ourselves a couple week’s delay in the course
of events, sir. That article stated that the
Liaoning
sunk on September
7th, and here it is weeks later on the 21st and it has not yet left Dialan. CV
Eisenhower
is presently in the Strait of Malacca and approaching Singapore. It was
supposed to have been sunk a week ago, so events are running about two weeks
late. That time has been filled by the incident in the Diaoyutai Island group
and this war of words in the UN. Unfortunately, it may have worsened the
situation. There was no mention of that incident in that newspaper we found,
but now the Japanese are also involved. That means the US is obligated by two
treaties. This may compel them to take stronger action.”

“The
question is whether the Americans will attack
Liaoning
this time,” said
Karpov. “If they do then the dominoes are falling as before. But even if they
do not attack the ship, I think these dominoes are going to fall another way.”

“Correct,”
said Volsky. “This is why there may be some wisdom in what Moscow wants for the
moment, strange as that may sound. If we make a strong show of force now, it
might convince the Americans that they will have to deal with us along with the
Chinese. It could give them pause, and perhaps allow time for negotiations. I
have already spoken with their Admiral Richardson and expressed my sentiments
on the matter. He seems a reasonable man, but may soon be compelled to act by
the civilian leadership over there, just as I am now.”

“There
was news today that their Admiral Ghortney may be named Fleet Admiral and
replace him,” said Fedorov. “That is very rare event to see a five star Admiral
there. It only happens during wartime.”

“Yes,
the Americans have sent a strong signal with this move. Richardson came up
through their nuclear propulsion division, but Ghortney is a carrier man, a
fighting Admiral. Let us hope the Chinese get the message. We certainly would,
but they haven’t had a nice long eighty year cold war with the Americans. We
have instincts and understand the nuances of an adversarial relationship like
that. The Chinese may not yet know how to play the game. They have made their
first move by pushing a pawn out to challenge the Japanese for those useless
islands, but it is clear they now mean to post a strong knight on Taiwan. The
Americans will play out the
Ruy
Lopez
,
of course. And post a Bishop with their carrier battlegroups holding a knife to
that knight’s neck.” Volsky was referring to the famous
Ruy
Lopez
chess opening where a white bishop immediately sortied to challenge
the black knight. “But as for the moves we must now make, and the message we
must send, I’m afraid no one is getting any sleep at the RVSN.” He was
referring to Russia’s strategic missile command center. “The missile fields of
Svobodnyy
may soon be warming up the silos. Hopefully it
will not come to that any time soon, but in the near term I will have some
orders for you now. I hope the ship is seaworthy, Mister Karpov.”

“We’ve
done a great deal in the last week, sir. Byko has had men in the water every
day reinforcing that hull patch, and we’ve done more metal work from the
inside. The Fregat system is up and running again, and they’ve mounted a new
sensor on the top mast, though they still have a lot of work to do there before
it’s functional. As for the aft citadel, I’m afraid all we could do was clear
the wreckage, clean it up, and throw a coat of paint over it. They put up some
bare frame steel beams to support a new roof and laid down some metal plating
there to keep out the elements, but there’s no armor to speak of. The space is
just being used for storage and other equipment. The damage aft from that bomb
hit we took has been patched over, but we still have no fire control system for
the Klinok silos there, so we’ll be a little light on SAMs for that system. I
told them to load the missiles anyway. We can always move them, and Rodenko is
seeing about cross circuiting with the forward fire control radars. To
compensate, they replaced our S-300s with a nice new upgrade.”

“The
S-400s?”

Karpov
nodded in the affirmative. “All three range variants.” The newest Russian
ship-based air defense system, S-400F
Triumf
, 
was a ‘suite’ of air defense missiles that utilized the new long-range 40N6
missile effective out to 400 kilometers, 250 miles, with a bigger 180kg
warhead.

“That
will be an unpleasant surprise for the Americans,” said the Admiral.

“Indeed,
sir. As for the rest, we’ve completed missile reloads for the
Moskit-IIs
and other SSMs late last night and they are moving away the cranes.”

“Then
you will be ready to put to sea directly?”

“The
ship is ready, sir.”

Fedorov
had a troubled look on his face and spoke up, haltingly at first, but gaining
more resolve as he went. “Sir… I have a request to make. Are you aware of the
incident with Markov over at the test bed center?”

“The
missing man? Yes, Dobrynin reported it, but I have been too busy to follow up.
I had him seal off that facility, and I suspect you have been doing some
digging on the matter, right Fedorov?”

“I
have, sir.” He told the Admiral what he had discovered about the changed
passage in the naval history chronology, and his thoughts about Orlov. Karpov
folded his arms, thinking they had put this to rest, but bearing with the
situation as Fedorov had his say.

“Very
mysterious,” said Volsky. “You suspect the British found that magazine article
and cancelled their operation, and then your book changed? That is somewhat
disturbing if it is true.”

“Indeed,
sir, but only one book changed—the one I bought in the city when we arrived. My
original book is just as it was.”

“What
does that mean, Fedorov?”

“It
means that we remain in a privileged position sir. We are unaffected by the
changes in the history, at least this is what I believed at first. But then I
discovered something else. Another crewman went missing the same day Markov
vanished, a
matoc
named Yolkin in supply. He
went into town to fill an order for Martinov and never returned.”

“I
see,” said Volsky. “Well as much as I hate to suggest it, this may be a simple
AWOL, Mister Fedorov. Who knows why this man was missing? It could be a
girlfriend, or some other matter that sent him off.”

“Possibly,
sir, but I did some further research. Inspector Kapustin was somewhat perturbed
when he discovered they had no records in Moscow for any of the men we listed
as casualties. Well we must now add yet another man to that list—Yolkin. I
checked with Moscow on him as well. There is no record that such a man was ever
signed on to our active duty roster.”

“But
we’re sitting here discussing the man,” said Volsky. “I remember him, short, a
little heavy set, and his nose was always red from the cold when we were up
north.”

“Yes,
and the men in his section remember him as well, sir. But there is no longer a
physical record of him, not even in the backup of the data we made before we
purged our logs and files. It’s changed, sir, just like the book. It was made
after we shifted forward, and did not come from the world we left behind in
Severomorsk. I interviewed Yolkin’s closest friends, found out his birth date
and went so far as to look for this man’s birth certificate. There are lots of
Yolkins, of course, but not this one. He’s vanished, just like Markov, but it’s
as if he never even existed…”

That
statement surprised Volsky, and lent considerable weight to Fedorov’s argument.
“Never existed? Are you telling me the incident with Markov caused this man’s
life history to be changed to a point where he was never even born?”

“All
I can say for certain is that there is now no record of his existence, no birth
certificate, school records, medical records, tax or credit information. Yolkin
has been completely erased from the ledger of life. It could have been a side
effect from the Markov incident, but he died within minutes of his appearance
in Vladivostok of 1942. I found the police report in the wartime archives. They
found his wallet, of course, and when they saw his identification they probably
assumed it was a fraudulent ID, though I’m willing to bet that if he had any
Rubles in there it would have raised an eyebrow or two. It’s hard to make any
connection between Markov and Yolkin’s disappearance, other than the fact that
they both vanished the same day, which could have been coincidental.”

“Then
how, Fedorov? How do you explain this?”

“I
wish I could tell you, Admiral. More time and research might lead me to a more
definitive answer, but there is one other possibility—Orlov.”

“Orlov?
He would have died long ago. How could he be responsible?”

“This
is what I first believed, Admiral—that Orlov’s life and fate had been sealed,
and that the world we returned to here was therefore the final result of any
change he may have worked on the history. It was easy to think he may have had
something to do with this imminent war we are facing, but I discarded that.
There are too many thumbs in that pie to blame it all on Orlov. Then I
discovered something in my research on the man.” He reached into his coat
pocket and handed the letter he had shared with Karpov to the Admiral, who read
it with a silent sadness shrouding his features.

 Volsky
read the last few lines aloud: “
Be heroes, be valiant men of war so that
history will remember you as defenders of the Rodina. Should you ever find
this, and learn my fate, I hope that you, courageous Russian sailors, will
avenge my death.”
He folded the letter slowly, setting it in the desk.

“Very
sad,” he said. “Avenge him? We do not yet know how he died, or at who’s hands.
Kizlyar…Yes there was an NKVD division operating there once. Strange that you
should find it, but I do not understand how that changes anything here, or
causes a man like Yolkin to simply disappear.”

“This
is what I told him,” said Karpov. “He suggested we attempt to go find Orlov and
bring him home, but there is a little more on our plate to deal with now.”

“Go
and find him? What do you mean, Fedorov?”

The
young Captain explained what he had suggested, and then admitted that Karpov
had convinced him that such a mission would not be feasible with the ship given
their present circumstances. “But there is one thing I wish to bring up, sir,”
he pressed on.

 “It
has to do with that letter, and yes, also with these crazy ideas I have in my
head now about bringing Orlov home. I was doing some reading on all
this—theoretical papers on the idea of movement through time. Believe it or
not, there are serious minds who have contemplated this possibility. Well, I
found a paper published by an American physicist—a man named Paul Dorland. His
ideas were very radical, and he posited a complete theory of time travel and
how it might be possible through the creation of a controlled micro black hole.
I was trying to discover some reason for the odd effects caused by Rod-25, but
it wasn’t the physics in his paper that caught my attention, it was this
amazing glossary of terms he had dreamt up to define how time travel would
work, and what the consequences would be should it ever occur. He put forward
an idea, a term that he called a Nexus Point. The essence of it was that once a
willful agent with the power to act determined to do something to alter the
past, time seems to be suddenly held in abeyance. The outcomes and
possibilities resulting from this person’s decisions and actions seem to have
an effect on what actually happens, and the power to physically change events—just
like that book changed or like Yolkin vanished, or like Voloshin when he
discovered his wife and apartment were missing and killed himself.”