Paradox Hour (5 page)

“Look here, Mister General Secretary. That was a nifty little trick you pulled with that escape pod, and yes, it looks as though you will make good your escape here as well. You and I both know I’m not giving up four thousand meters in elevation to settle this now, as much as I would love to see you leaping from another burning airship. Was the ride down comfortable last time? So, you can run your mouth all you want about the Germans. You think you can push all the right pawns, and king yourself on the back row before this game ends. But don’t forget
me
, Volkov. I’ll be sitting on the other side of the board now, right at Sergei Kirov’s shoulder. I know the history as well as you do.”

“Then let the game begin,” came the challenge. “Pawn to King four! You can castle to King side or Queen side. It won’t matter. The Germans will get through, in the south. They drove all the way to the Terek River, and that was with no help from me! So they’ll get through, and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” Karpov came back. “You’re forgetting the very reason you tried to pull this little maneuver here again—Ilanskiy. I beat you here, Volkov, and decisively, no matter how many airships we traded. I control Ilanskiy, and that’s the end of it. Do you realize what I can do when I complete the reconstruction of that back stairway? Yes, I’ve got all the original plans now.” He let an interval of silence play on the airwaves before he finished, then spoke only one word. “Checkmate!”

No response came back for some time, and there was static on the line from the storm. Then he heard Volkov’s voice again, a distant crackle on the speaker.

“See you in hell, Karpov. I’ll see you in hell.”

“I suppose you will,” said Karpov. “Yes, I’ll be sitting on Lucifer’s throne down there one day, so please come and pay your respects. Karpov out.”

He switched off the radio set, folding his arms and smiling. Let Volkov think long and hard about Ilanskiy. Let him wonder just what I might do when that stairway is complete again. He hasn’t the foggiest idea where I was these last few weeks and days, what I can do now with this ship, where I can go when I have need. I am no longer a simple fleet Admiral here. I’m not merely Kolchak’s lieutenant and Minister of all Western Siberia. No. I am so very much more now. I’m the master of time itself, and I can count the hours, minutes and seconds Volkov may have to live at my leisure. I can figure a way to put an end to that man, and a way to do the job myself instead of sending Tyrenkov. So let him raise his army here, while I raise mine.

For now, it was time to get back to the bridge.

Part II

Ghost Ship

“Nor does the man sitting by the hearth beneath his roof better escape his fated doom.”

―
Aeschylus

Chapter 4

Schlachtkreuzer
Kaiser Wilhelm
was a beautiful ship, fast and deadly as it plowed ahead through light swells that day. Laid down in 1937 by Deutsch Werke at Kiel, it was a design that evolved from the fast Panzerschiff models planned as successors to the
Deutschland
class pocket battleships. The Germans wanted a faster ship with 11-inch guns to better the performance of the
Deutschland
Class, but to get that speed required a longer hull and widened beam. This required more armor to cover that hull, which in turn added weight, and a vicious circle ensued. Thus only two of twelve planned Panzerschiff Kreuzers had been built, the
Rhineland
and
Westfalen
, and designers moved to a larger ship that could accommodate the armor and also get a dual propulsion system with both diesel engines for efficient long haul cruising, and turbines for high speed engagements.

The result was the
Kaiser Wilhelm.
At 35,400 tons, it was over 10,000 tons heavier than the Panzershiff, and with better armor and guns. Yet the designers had labored to give the ship the best speed possible, with four high-pressure Wagner boilers, which had a distinctive sound when they were fully fired for high speed performance. The engineers had come to call them “Wagner’s Girls” when they were singing, and Chief Engineer, Otto Kremel, was fond of putting on a recording of the famous composer’s
Ride of the Valkyries
when the ship ran at high speed. Designed to achieve over 33 knots, the ship had demonstrated the ability to run at 36 knots in trials, an amazing feat for a ship with a displacement equal to British battleships of the
Revenge
Class, which labored to achieve top speeds of 21 to 23 knots.

Kaiser
was all of 840 feet long to achieve that speed, a third longer than
Revenge
and with a wider beam as well. Yet that gain in speed had come at the expense of both armor and firepower. While the old
Revenge
Class had eight 15-inch guns,
Kaiser
had six, and while
Revenge
had heavy 330mm belt armor, the protection on
Kaiser
maxed out at only 190mm. This had led some designers to christen the ship
Ohne Panzer Quatsch,
disparaging its lack of armor.

As a battlecruiser design, the ship was more comparable to the British
Renown
Class, where it could match or better that ship in almost every category. Kapitan Werner Heinrich had been given command, and he was well schooled in cruiser operations, having served under August Thiele aboard the heavy cruiser
Lutzow
before this posh assignment. Now he was set on putting the whispered comments about his ship to rest. As he stood on the bridge that day, he was proud to be the vanguard of the fleet flagship,
Hindenburg
, and when the order came to close on the enemy contact and engage, his blood was up.

Now we get our chance, he thought, staring through his field glasses at the smoke ahead.
Goeben
has been busy this morning. One of those hot
Stuka
pilots has already got a hit, and now we’ll come in like a shark to the blood. The British don’t have anything here that can match my firepower, and I can outrun any ship in their fleet. But we won’t be running this time, we’ll be hunting!
Kaiser Wilhelm
is the best ship I’ve ever set foot on, and now I get my chance to earn my keep. We were out of the action earlier in the Med, keeping a good eye on the
Goeben
. This time the ship will be put to its proper use, as an advance guard and scout ship, a hunter out to find and hurt the enemy. And my 15-inch guns will do exactly that.

“Ready for action, Schirmer?” he said to his Chief Gunnery officer.

“Ready sir.”

“Good, because I intend to fight here, in spite of these orders to disengage if the British attempt to close the range. Let them try. Word is that they have three cruisers, but it is more likely that we’ll see those pesky destroyers turned loose on us.”

“Let’s see how they like our guns, sir.”

“All ahead full!” Heinrich wanted to get over the horizon and get a good look at that smoke as soon as possible. It was not long before his watchmen made the sighting, a large ship, possibly a carrier, and burning at the bow. Then the scene clouded over with heavy haze, and Heinrich knew what was happening.

They’re making smoke with the destroyers, he thought. They’re running, but they don’t have the speed to match me. This ship is a whole new evolution at sea. Those British carriers could always outrun our heavy ships, but no longer. Now we close the range here with each passing minute, and let us see if they send anything our way to challenge us.

* * *

That
challenge was inevitable. The Royal Navy was not about to allow one of its principle assets to go down here without a fight. Of the five destroyers escorting
Glorious
that day, three turned after making smoke as ordered, and now they were set to make a brave charge in the hopes of discouraging the oncoming enemy raider.
Icarus
was out in front, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud, a barrel-chested man with a heavy black beard and his favorite blackthorn walking stick always at hand, which he tapped on the deck whenever they made their torpedo run.

Maud’s fate had been strangely entwined with the long odyssey that had brought
Kirov
into this war. His ship had been in Force P under Admiral Wake-Walker, en-route to the North Cape area to attack German airfields at Kirkenes and Petsamo, though they never got there. Later, he would steam with Admiral Tovey in a hunt for another fast German raider, as that story once played out. Yet the raider was not a German ship, but a strange vessel with weapons so advanced that it managed to hold the entire Royal Navy at bay for weeks in the North Atlantic. Maud’s ship had been screening Tovey’s battleships when the rockets came in, weapons unlike anything he had ever seen.
Icarus
was hit and sank that day, putting Maud and his crew into the water, along with his beloved bulldog Winnie.

Rescued at sea, Maud was eventually given command of another destroyer, the
Intrepid
, a ship sailing right off his starboard bow at that moment. As fate would have it, he would meet the ship that killed
Icarus
and Winnie again in the Mediterranean, and lead
Intrepid
on a desperate attack to try and even the score. He was lucky enough to survive that encounter this second time, but not lucky enough to get his vengeance. But his story was not finished. A German U-Boat Kapitan would have something more to do with his fate, one Werner Czygan aboard U-118. It was his stealthy web of mines that would catch a fly off the Coast of Spain, a ship named
Duero
.

It seemed like a small thing, a lowly tramp steamer hitting a mine laid by a hungry, frustrated U-boat Kapitan, but it was the night that changed the entire course of history—not only of the war, but for every day that followed. For a very special passenger was aboard the ship that night, a drifter, indigent laborer, and a virtual nobody that had been taken on as cheap muscle in the fire room a few weeks earlier. His name was Gennadi Orlov.

While serving with Force H,
Intrepid
came to the rescue of that stricken ship, and Maud became very suspicious about a couple Eastern Europeans aboard, and particularly with the man named Orlov.

But all that had not yet happened. It was action that had began in a frantic naval chase between July 28 and August 8 of 1941, days that had not arrived yet. And it was action that might never occur now, for this world was strangely altered, with whole nations like Russia fragmented into warring states. Even so, details in the picture this history was painting held true, and Maud was aboard
Icarus
again. Yet the ship that had sent his destroyer to the bottom in one telling of these events to come, was no longer the mortal enemy of the Royal Navy. Instead it sailed as an ally.

Perhaps Maud would never be fated to meet Orlov like that now, though that encounter was a crucial link in the chain of events that now saw
Kirov
here in this world. If his keen eye had not spied that Glock Pistol at Orlov’s side, then he would not have sent the man to Gibraltar so British intelligence could have a look at him. There Orlov would meet and be interrogated by a man who was a double agent with the KGB, and as a result of that, he would be sent east through the med on a Turkish cargo ship, transferring to a Soviet trawler in the Black Sea.

Orlov’s sojourn east, in search of his grandmother, eventually evolved into a hunt for the man who had caused her harm, Commissar Molla. It took the Chief to a place called Kizlyar, where Molla’s men picked him up and sent him to a prison near Baku. Along the way he left clues in the history, particularly a journal note that a very keen eyed navigator used to find him. If Orlov had not gone east like that, then Fedorov would have never made the journey west along the Siberian rail line to try and rescue him and return him to his own time. He would have never found the back stairway of the Inn at Ilanskiy, and never met young Mironov, Sergei Kirov. It was that meeting, and the careless whisper of warning in Mironov’s ear, that saw this world now shattered in pieces, altered states, skewed history that was becoming more and more unrecognizable with each turn of
Kirov’s
screws in the turbulent waters of this war.

All that depended on the man now standing on the bridge of the Destroyer
Icarus
, Colin Douglas Maud. Or was it Werner Czygan aboard U-118, and his decision to alter his tactics and lay those mines instead of hunting with his torpedoes? It was that choice that sent
Icarus
and Maud to the
Duero
in the first place. Who could say where the seed of causality was really hidden in the garden? Time was tormented by these circuitous loops and changes, like unseasonable rain that caused things to grow and bloom that were never meant to be. It remained to be seen what part Maud would now be asked to play in this hour, here in May of 1941, long before he ever lived out those events that so altered the history of the world—events that he might never see now.

Out there on the grey horizon, another shadow loomed, the tall mainmast and conning tower of
Kaiser Wilhelm
becoming more prominent with each passing minute. Maud looked at it with narrow eyed respect. He knew his ships were no match for a fast German raider, but here he was, and with the fate of a fleet carrier riding in the balance.

Glorious
had turned south, he knew, and now we have to buy her the time she needs to make good her escape. We’re not likely to hurt that ship out there with our deck guns. They’ll have us in range long before our guns can engage. The only thing we’ve got that matters here are those nice fat 21-inch torpedoes. Between the three of us we’ve all of thirty fish aboard, and that will make one mean spread for that enemy ship to avoid out there. But to launch torpedoes that will have any chance of posing a real threat, we have to get in close. The range of our torpedoes is only 5000 meters, and between here and there, it’s all guts and glory.