Men of War (2013) (42 page)

“Thank
you for your timely call, Lieutenant. Please go to storage bin number 317. Use
the key you were given to gain access. There you should find a steamer trunk
with a naval officer’s coat. Please search the pockets, and should you find any
envelopes or papers of any kind, secure the trunk and bin and then bring the
documents to this office at once. In fact, bring anything you may find in those
pockets. You may leave the jacket undisturbed. Understood?”

“Yes
sir. Would you like me to call and verify the discovery of any items before I
leave the facility, sir?”

“I
will hold on this line, Lieutenant. Please make your inspection while I wait.”

“Right
away, sir”

Volsky
heard the man’s footsteps echo in the hallway as he went, a hollow sound that
grew fainter with each footfall, as if the man were now stepping back over
years and decades with each footfall. There came the sound of a dry metal
squeak, an old door opening with great reluctance, complaining like a sleeper
roused in the long dark of night. There was a shuffling sound, something heavy
being moved on the metal floor of the storage bin. He waited breathlessly,
imagining the scene with the light of his mind’s eye standing in for the small
flashlight that must surely be in the Lieutenant’s hand. What was there?

He
heard a quiet bump, then the plaintive creak of the metal door on the bin as it
closed, and a brief rattle as the padlock was secured. Then came the footsteps
again, faint and growing louder, returning from the past. Volsky took a deep
breath, waiting, his heart beating faster. Suddenly there was a sharp sound, muted
but discernable, a single hard plunk followed by a heavy dull thump, and
something falling heavily to the floor. Then silence…
no!
Not silence… A
second set of footfalls, the sound of dry leather on cold concrete, and a hard
heel—clop, clop, clop…
Someone else was there!
Volsky heard the dull
sound of something being moved, his eyes widening as he tried to imagine the
scene. He knew immediately what was happening. It was a body being dragged on
the concrete floor! There was another rattle of metal, a crisp zipping sound
and someone grunting with physical effort. Then he heard a door of a metal bin
close, and the clopping footfalls receded, echoing as they faded away.

Silence…Dark,
awful silence.

Volsky
waited, but he knew what had happened. He slowly put the receiver back in its
cradle, and reached for another phone, thumbing a secure line, his pulse
quickening.

“Security,”
came the voice.

“Admiral
Leonid Volsky here. Please send a detachment of five Marines to my office at
once.”

“Yes,
sir… Is there a problem, Admiral?”

“Five
Marines, please, on the double.”

“At
once, sir.”

* * *

They
stood there in the silence of a very dark room, chilled by a sudden cold. The
sound they had been listening to had reached its shrill crescendo, and then the
shadows around them slowly resolved to form and shape. The Sirens had called
them to another shore and, to Fedorov’s amazement, one appeared to have died in
the singing of that fatal lure.

He
stared at a heavy set elderly woman, slumped on the threadbare couch, her tousled
gray hair disheveled and a look of utter shock frozen on her face. Clearly she
had been sitting there, a cup of tea still steaming on the tea stand to the
right of the couch, when four men suddenly appeared in the midst of her living
room, he thought. She must have been literally shocked to death by these
apparitions manifesting in the midst of her living room. Their intervention had
produced its first casualty, he realized with some misgiving. The woman was too
old to bear children, but who knows whether or not she had something yet to
give to the world before she died. No one would ever know.

Four
men? He looked this way and that. Where was
Bukin
?
Troyak and
Zykov
were there, but there was no sign of
the other team member. The Sergeant touched his collar button, listening to the
earbud and called for the missing man in a low voice.

While
he did this
Zykov
, a tall, broad shouldered, white
haired man, with muscular arms and a chiseled face, was already sweeping the
room with a small hand held infrared detector, and searching the premises for
any sign of another inhabitant. Troyak looked at Fedorov. “No response from
Bukin
,” he said flatly, his steely eyes searching the
shadowed corners of the room.

“It
seems that our 12 rod test bed reactor has limited power,” said Fedorov. “The
three of us obviously displaced intact, but
Bukin
could not be moved. Too much mass.”

Troyak
nodded, inwardly recalculating mission parameters and assignments in his mind.
No plan survives first contact in a mission, he knew well enough.“Very well,
Colonel.” The Sergeant smiled. We’ll make do.”

Fedorov
spent the previous day ferreting out old WWII era uniforms from army surplus
dealers in Vladivostok. He was able to find insignia and rank pins for an NKVD
Colonel, and his research even indicated that there was such a man named
Fedorov in the NKVD during the war. His historical counterpart was Deputy Head
of the Main Transportation Directorate, People's Commissariat of Defense, a
rather high ranking official, and he rose to the rank of Major General. Fedorov
even bore medals for the Order of the Red Star on his right chest, correctly
placed after the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class. The red enamel
five-pointed silver star, with straight rays in the background, and crossed
saber and rifle gleamed in the light of a solitary lamp by the tea stand.
Troyak and
Zykov
were both decked out in NKVD
uniforms as well, with black Ushankas bearing insignia. They would pose as
Fedorov’s personal security detail.

“We
must get across the bay to the Naval Logistics and Storage Administration.” He
reached into his pocket, relieved to find he still had his key. He had given a
copy to Admiral Volsky for him to check the storage bin there and look for the
letter that he already had waiting in an envelope in his breast pocket. They
had two choices, to go by car or boat, whichever they could secure with the
least effort.

Zykov
had already surveyed the house and outside
surroundings. Fedorov searched the home quickly, finding a newspaper on the tea
stand. The date was September 22, 1942, a perfect landing! He tore off a
segment of the paper with the date as evidence, and slipped it into the
envelope. That done, he sealed the envelope as they made ready to leave.

They
had entered the test bed facility seventy-nine years in the future on September
21st. He thanked their good luck. They were well ahead of the date on Orlov’s
letter, the day he arrived at the Kizlyar on the 30th of that same month. Yet
they would have little time to lose. It was a long ride ahead on the
Trans-Siberian rail, and anything might delay them.

 No
one else was home and the night was cold and silent. They moved quietly,
stepping out into the misty darkness of the sleeping city, and made their way
down the hill towards the harbor below. They had left under a rising full moon
in 2021, and arrived with no moon to be found at all. Only the fog remained a
common denominator.
Zykov
was point man, with Fedorov
following and Troyak watching from the rear. Reaching the quay they found a
small dinghy and commandeered it. It would be three or four kilometers to go
around the tip of the Golden Horn Bay and reach the other side, and there were
few vehicles to be found. The boat would get them across easily enough, and cut
their journey in half.

They
crossed in a few minutes to the
Dalzavod
Shipyard on
the northern bank of the bay, paddling up to a short pier there and slipping
quietly ashore. The silent hulks of several cargo vessels and an old destroyer
sulked in the foggy night, riding gently at their moorings. The moan of a fog
horn sounded in the distance as they melted into the stacks of crates and old
rusting oil cans stacked on the quay. Soon they had worked their way into the
city, and up to Svetlanskaya Street, a much narrower road than it was in 2021.
From there they turned left, heading west toward the naval Logistics
Administration building, which still held that function in WWII. It was only a
short walk, a little over one kilometer before they reached the building and
then they just walked boldly in through the front domed entrance.

As
they approached the inner door, Fedorov had an odd feeling and reached to touch
the letter in his breast pocket. He felt as if a cold shadow had slipped out of
the building the moment he opened the  door, and he shivered. A night
watchman roused from slumber when they entered, then stood groggily to
attention when he saw three NKVD men walk in, two looking very threatening, and
very well armed.

“As
you were,” said Fedorov. “Go back to sleep. We’re just checking on a delivery,
and we’ll leave by the rear entrance.”

“Very
good, sir.” The man was more than happy to see them stride away, and then he
settled back into the warmth of his chair, wrapping himself in a thin wool
blanket.

It
was not long before they found themselves in the cellar, and located Fedorov’s
storage bin. He took out the letter, fishing out a pencil in his pocket so he
could let the Admiral know the their fourth team member was not present.
Fedorov hoped
Bukin
was still safe in the test bed
center in the future. That would be one less life on my shoulders, he thought,
and one less soul on the ledgers of time.

He
opened the steamer trunk and slipped his freshly sealed white envelope into the
breast pocket of his grandfather’s naval blazer. Again he had the strange
thought that nearly eighty years on, a Marine was standing patiently in the
cold empty cellar hallway, waiting for a telephone call from Admiral Volsky.
Dobrynin must have just informed him, and he was about to make his call.

What
he could
not
have imagined would be that another man was also waiting
there, crouching low in the shadows beneath the stairway to the upper floors,
his eyes peering wolf-like in the dark as he waited with a small pistol that
would fire a drug-laden dart. A real revolver would be much too messy. How to
explain the blood? No. He was waiting there with his dart gun, and the man he
had shadowed to this strange place would soon be quite incapacitated. He
watched him carefully, seeing him take something from the locker and then start
back down the hall toward his position. Then he stood and fired, the crisp snap
of the gun echoing in the empty corridor. He was unaware that another man had
heard it on the open phone line, miles away in Fokino, his rising pulse chasing
a hundred questions down that darkened hall.

But
Fedorov knew nothing of this.

* * *

The
shadow
Fedorov thought he felt may have been nothing more than a
strange intuition, but the man who had cast it was passing through that same
door at that very moment, some eighty years on, as he left the Fleet Logistics
Building on Svetlanskaya Street. A black limousine was parked just outside the
main entrance to the building. The moon had risen hours earlier and was well up
riding above a thin veil of misty fog and casting a wan diffused light over the
scene. The man in a dark gray overcoat walked briskly from the yawning arched
entry where a domed roof dating back to 1903 brooded over the walkway. He
stepped quickly to the waiting limousine. The rear door opened as he arrived
and he slipped into the shadowy interior.

Another
man was seated in the back, and he tapped the soundproof glass partition
screening off the driver’s compartment. The car pulled away from the curb and
rolled quietly up the street, passing the Circus amusement building and then
turning left off the main boulevard, along a winding road leading into a small
residential district.

“Well?”
the voice in the shadows spoke, the man’s face dark and unseen beneath the rim of
his hat. The other man handed him a sealed plain white envelope.

“That
was all?”

“I
searched very carefully, sir.”

The
other man studied the envelope in the dim light. “Very unusual,” he muttered,
turning it over and seeing nothing of any note, just a blank envelope. Then he
looked at his messenger, as if suddenly remembering something. “What did you do
with the body?”

“As
we planned. I put it in Bin 400. I will have men remove it within the hour.
Don’t worry, he’ll wake up in the park tomorrow morning with a bad headache,
and he won’t remember a thing. The drug is very effective.”

“Very
well. Draw the shades, please.” They pulled down the black privacy shades on
the side windows and driver compartment screen, then the man with the envelope
reached slowly to the back of the seat in front of him, groping for a light
switch.

“Well
done, Captain Volkov,” he said calmly. It was Inspector General Kapustin,
slowly removing his black fedora and setting it on the seat beside him as he
eyed the envelope with obvious interest. He opened it slowly with his thumb,
noting how the glue seemed so old that it barely held, the paper yellowed with
age, though in fact it had been sealed just a brief moment ago…a moment that
had been stretched into long, long decades.

 “Now
then…let’s see what we have here.”

Chapter 33

The
car
pulled up to #21 Tunguskaya Street, a small wood sided home shaded by
walnut trees. Two men exited the vehicle, one speaking quietly on a cell phone,
dressed in a long gray overcoat and grey felt Ushanka, the other in a dark coat
and black fedora. They walked quickly up to the front entrance, and considering
the late hour Kapustin did not ring the bell, tapping lightly on the window
pane in the door.